Читать книгу Night Boat - Alan Spence - Страница 10

WISE CRANE

I was fourteen and felt as if I had been practising these devotions all my young life. I got up every night, shocked myself awake with cold water, lit incense and sat chanting the sutras. It meant I began each day with a kind of strength and clarity, even if it faded as the day wore on. But lately it had been fading more and more quickly. Some little thing would jangle my nerves, make me angry, and it felt as if all the austerity was for nothing. Then that old fear of hell began to stir in me, and I was once again that frightened child, terrified of burning in the fires.

Something else was stirring too. My body was changing, and the young girls at the bathhouse looked at me differently. They would whisper to each other and giggle, glance in my direction and turn away. It filled me with confusion and a huge dumb longing. The pale little lizard between my legs would harden and redden, rear up like a dragon, and I had to hide it behind my towel as I eased into the tub, praying for it to subside.

It would leap up again in the night, this tough stubborn little dragon, when I woke from muddled dreams involving those girls from the bathhouse. I imagined when I doused myself with cold water it would hiss and steam. I could picture it, the way I could sometimes see the figures on a painted scroll, on the storyteller’s kamishibai screen, move around with a life of their own, animated. It was another world, or another way of looking at this world. It was this world exaggerated, made fluid, and it made me laugh.

I took to making little drawings myself, using a brush and inkstone I’d found in an old box at the back of the shrine room. I’d beg scraps of rice paper from my mother – discarded wrapping paper, out-of-date bills and receipts. I’d turn them over, sketch on the blank side, practise my calligraphy. Sometimes an unintended drip or smear of ink would make an interesting shape and I’d turn it into a bird or an animal, a mountain or a twisted branch. One time an accidental swish of the brush became my mother’s kimono and I quickly sketched in her round face above it with the tip of the brush. Another time a smudge looked like my father’s thick eyebrows and I added the glowering eyes, the grim line of the mouth. I showed both the portraits to my mother and she laughed, said I’d got them just right. But I didn’t show them to my father.

Once I doodled a shape that looked like my own body, naked, the way I saw it when I stepped out of the bath. The brush made a quick approximation of my face, then before I knew it I had drawn that little dragon between the legs, just the way I had imagined it with steam rising as if cold water had doused its fire. Again it made me laugh but then the laugh cut short, stopped. I saw the expression on the face I had drawn, a leer, demonic. I took the brush and tried to wipe out the drawing, but I only succeeded in blurring, smudging the shapes. The face was distorted now, ugly, and the dragon shape was still there, darker, more solid.

I crumpled up the paper, crushed it to a ball in my fist, looked for somewhere to throw it away. But I didn’t want my mother, or even worse, my father, to find it. If I dropped it outside, I imagined the wind catching, unfurling it, blowing it into the village where one of my friends would find it. It would be passed around, pinned onto a noticeboard. The girls at the bathhouse would look at it and snigger. It might even blow all the way to Mishima where my brother was at school. He would find it and recognise it as mine.

I could tear it into tiny pieces and scatter it, but the pieces would never be small enough. Somebody might gather them up, put them together again.

This was madness, but it took hold of me. Then I realised the only thing to do with the drawing was burn it. There was a lamp burning in the shrine room and I bowed before it. I unfolded the drawing and held it carefully to the flame, catching one corner and setting it alight. But I hadn’t allowed for it flaring up so quick. I had to get it outside or I’d burn down the house. I stumbled towards the door and out into the yard, shook the burning paper from my hand just as the flame reached my fingers, scorched me. My eyes smarted. My fingers stung, red. They would blister.

I tucked the hand under my armpit to numb the stinging. I stamped barefoot on the ash, on the charred remains of the page.

My father stuck his head out the window.

What is it this time?

Nothing, I said. I was just burning something. Out here. Outside.

He took in a breath, about to say something, but then stopped as if he truly, genuinely, had no idea where to begin.

My burned fingers nipped for days. I eased them in cold water, dabbed them dry. My mother asked what had happened. I told her I’d burned my hand on the lamp.

Testing yourself again? she asked.

I’d gone through a spell, a year or two back, of holding my hand over a candle flame, seeing how long I could bear it.

Not this time, I said. It was an accident.

But this pain, now, reminded me how little I could take, and how this was nothing, less than nothing, compared to that other, endless fire. And I knew it was the fire of desire that had brought me here, that fierce little dragon. I had read about it, and I’d seen beasts in their season, cattle in the fields, dogs in a dusty backyard, grimly coupling. My brother had taken a leering delight in telling me our mother and father had done this, that it was how we were made, how we came into the world.

I made up my mind. The only way to conquer this desire, to go beyond it, was to throw myself into the spiritual life. It was time for me to go away, to become a monk.

Fuji was this constant presence, this vastness, towering above the village, filling the horizon. It changed from moment to moment, day to day, season to season. It was hidden by spring mists, shimmered in summer haze, burned almost red in autumn, shone pure white in winter. But the shape of it, the form, was always there, taking the breath away, quickening the heart.

I was wandering at the edge of the village, gazing up absently at the mountain, when I heard shouts in the distance. I had forgotten the procession would be passing through – the Daimyo and his entourage, his retinue, returning from Edo. Every year he had to make this journey – to Edo and back – on pain of death and at huge expense, to declare his loyalty to the Shogun.

We heard crazy stories about the Shogun. He was known as Inu-Kubo, the Dog Shogun. He’d been born in the Year of the Dog and some rogue of a Buddhist monk had told him he’d been a dog in his last animal incarnation, before becoming human. So he’d issued an edict, On Compassion for Living Things, making a law that dogs should not be harmed and should be treated with respect. Anyone disobeying was liable to summary execution.

I’d heard people talk about it at the inn. If they had too much to drink they might start by criticising the Daimyo, then they’d move on to the Shogun. (Somebody would bark.) Or they’d even criticise the emperor himself. Then a friend would make a cut-throat gesture or my father would clear his throat loudly and change the subject.

I’d always loved watching the procession pass through Hara, the endless ranks of pikemen and flag-bearers, riflemen, armed samurai on horseback, ranks of foot-soldiers, priests and servants, palanquins wobbling on the shoulders of the bearers, the Daimyo himself in his elaborate norimon, curtained to shield him from view. There must have been a thousand men in the procession, and it took hours to pass through the village. Some of the Daimyo’s retainers would stop at the inn to water their horses, and my father would take charge and be suitably deferential as they ate and drank and shouted out their orders. The critics and gossips would stay well back, emerging later to share the news they’d picked up from the footsoldiers, rumours from the capital, tales from the floating world.

I found a vantage point, back from the road, and settled to watch. The pikemen appeared first, the vanguard, all dressed in black silk, walking with their strange exaggerated slow march that was almost a kind of dance, raising the foot high then gliding forward. They did this in concentrated silence, the only sounds the swish of silk, the crunch of gravel underfoot.

The lead man stepped for a moment to the side of the road, hitched up his loincloth and let out a great stream of piss, spattering in the dust. A few of the young girls from the bathhouse had been standing nearby and they jumped back, laughing.

Did you see his thing?

What a pike!

The size of it!

They laughed even louder, but the pikeman had returned to his position sombre and dignified, and resumed his slow march.

A little way behind came the Daimyo himself, carried on high, hidden inside the norimon with its silk curtains, its elaborate carvings, and some way further back came another norimon, smaller, less ornate, but still beautifully decorated. This too had its curtains closed, but just as it passed me, they opened with a swish of silk and a woman was looking out at me. Her face was the most beautiful I had ever seen, like an ukiyo-e painting, like the goddess Kannon herself, embodied.

I must have been staring, and I’m sure my mouth fell open so I gulped like some stupid carp surfacing. The woman smiled and the curtain fell shut. I was shaken, but I bowed and turned away, continued walking up the hill, Fuji ahead of me.

There was a haiku I had read.

Beloved Fuji –

The mist clears and reveals

Your snowy whiteness.

When I’d climbed far enough, I looked back, saw the procession still trailing into the distance, but so small, so insignificant. I imagined each and every one of that huge entourage plodding along with head down, eyes fixed on the ground, not once looking up at this. This.

I knew when I went back to the inn I would have to help clear up the mess. My father would ask where I had been and raise his eyes to heaven.

I bowed once more to the mountain, and dragging my steps I headed back down.

Now I made drawings of Fuji, with swift simple strokes, and I tried to draw Bodhisattva Kannon. Sometimes her face looked like my mother, sometimes like the woman who had looked out at me through the curtains of the norimon.

My restlessness increased and I went out walking every day, climbed the slopes of Mount Yanagizawa in search of a quiet place to sit, away from the everyday world. I found the perfect spot, a flat rock above a mountain stream, a sheer cliff face rising up behind. I sat for hours, totally absorbed, reciting what I knew of the sutras, looking down at the rushing stream, or up at Fuji.

One day I noticed that a configuration of the rock, viewed from a certain angle, resembled Kannon herself. The next morning I brought a chisel and a small mallet, borrowed from my father’s workshop, and I set to carving the likeness into the stone, accentuating what was already there, bringing it to life. When I’d finished I stood looking at it in amazement, the Bodhisattva smiling at me. I bowed my head and chanted to her in reverence.

Enmei Jikku Kannon Gyo.

That afternoon there were heavy rains and I took shelter under an overhang of rock. When the rain had subsided I climbed down to head for home. The stream was swollen, the waters rushing fast, and I had to wade across, carrying the chisel and mallet, wrapped in cloth, above my head. Twice I stumbled, lost my footing and almost went under, the water reaching up to my chin. I made it to the other side, and I got home, drenched and shivering, my clothes sticking to me. But I was elated, and my mother could see it in me.

Perhaps it’s time, she said.

My mother was Nichiren Buddhist. That was why she had loved the story of Nisshin Shonin walking through fire, saving himself by chanting the Lotus Sutra. So it was no surprise when she suggested I go to Shoin-ji, a Nichiren temple. But then she said something else that did surprise me.

And after all, she smiled, it is where your father studied as a young man.

At first I thought I had misheard, or misunderstood.

My father? I said. He studied at the temple?

For a few short years, she said, he trained for the priesthood. He was taught by his uncle, Daizui-Rojin.

My head felt cold. There was a taste like iron in my mouth.

I didn’t know, I said. I had no idea.

There is much you do not know about your father, she said.

I bowed.

Where do you think that brush and inkstone came from? she said. The ones you’ve been using.

They were his?

His calligraphy was good, she said, though he lacked your talent for making these drawings and bringing them to life!

I thought of the drawing I had burned. I felt myself blush.

So you see, she said, when he gets angry at you, or loses patience, it is not a simple matter.

The drawing I had done of him, glowering.

He knows how difficult that life can be, said my mother. Perhaps he is afraid for you, and thinks you are too young.

He thinks I will fail.

She left a silence, then continued.

Perhaps in his heart he feels that he failed, and it pains him to think of such things, so he pushes them away.

My father, the businessman. My father with his brusqueness, his ferocious samurai manner, inherited from his father. My father’s impatience with me, his anger at my devotions, calling it all a waste of time.

The way is not easy, said my mother. And perhaps his real work, like mine, was to bring you into the world, to provide for you. Until now.

Tanrei, the head priest at Shoin-ji, was old and frail. He said I might be better to follow my vocation at another temple, Daisho-ji, in the neighbouring town of Numazu. Perhaps he also thought it would be best for me to move away from home, to put some distance – even just a few miles – between myself and my parents. But he said he would accept me into the order. I would receive the tonsure and he would give me a new name.

On the appointed day I bathed and dressed in monks’ robes of rough grey cloth. My head was shorn then lathered and shaved, scraped close to the scalp. The monk who used the razor had a steady hand and only once, when I twitched, he nicked the skin with the blade, just at the crown of my head. He dabbed the little bead of blood.

This one’s keen, he said. He wants to open his crown chakra already.

I rubbed my head, felt the rough stubble. I was led into the meditation hall and told to kneel in front of Tanrei who sat upright on a hard wooden bench. The sharp tang of incense filled the air.

From today on, he said, Iwajiro is no more. You will leave the name behind as you leave behind your childhood. Your new name is Ekaku. Repeat it after me. Ekaku.

Ekaku.

It means Wise Crane.

Ekaku.

Go to the shrine room, he said, and chant the name one hundred and eight times. Let the sound of it fill you. Become the name. Ekaku.

Ekaku.

The monk who had shaved my head handed me a string of juzu, counting beads. From the length of it I knew there must be 108 beads, the sacred number. I would count them between thumb and forefinger as I chanted. I thanked him and sat in front of the shrine. Here too the smell of incense was strong. The very walls, the old wooden beams and pillars, were infused with its ancient musky scent.

I straightened my back and began to chant, my own voice as strange to me as this new name, my mantra.

Ekaku. Ekaku.

Wise Crane.

As I chanted I felt the sound resonate in my belly, my chest, my throat. Then the word lost all meaning, became pure sound.

Ekaku.

It became the cry of a bird, a white crane in flight across the evening sky.

Ekaku.

Then I was the crane, neck thrust forward, spreading my wings. I alighted on a rock, folded in on myself, and I was an old Chinese sage, looking out over a range of mountains.

Ekaku.

My finger and thumb closed on the final bead, larger than the rest. I chanted one last time.

Ekaku.

I stepped outside and into this new life.

My shaved head. The spring breeze.

A few weeks later my parents came to see me off on my journey. The arrangements had been made. The head priest at Daisho-ji would be expecting me. My father had given me a few coins tied in an old purse, enough to pay for my keep when I arrived. I thanked him and bowed low, pressed my forehead to the ground, stood up again and dusted myself down. My mother held me a moment, stood back and bowed to me with folded hands.

I shouldered my pack and set out walking along the Tokaido. The spring morning was bright and cold. Looking up, I saw Fuji, immense above the clouds, then they swirled and closed in again, obscuring it. I turned and looked back, saw my mother and father still standing there. I waved and my mother bowed, my father gave a nod of the head and turned away, went back inside.

Further on I stopped and put my straw kasa on my head. Again I looked back and could still see my mother, small and distant. Again I waved, and this time she also waved. I walked on. At a bend in the road, I turned and looked back one last time, and she was still there, a tiny figure, just distinguishable. I thought she was waving again, and I did the same. I kept walking, and the next time I looked I could no longer see her, or the house, or the village. The world I knew had shrunk and disappeared, and now Fuji shook off its mist and cloud and loomed there, huge and serene, a great being, dreaming itself.