Читать книгу Night Boat - Alan Spence - Страница 8

THE GATES OF HELL

My childhood name was Iwajiro, and I was eight years old when I first entered at the gates of hell.

The old monk looked like one of the gaki, the hungry ghosts. He was gaunt and skeletal, cheeks caved in, skin shrunk tight over the great craggy dome of the skull, fierce eyes bulging in their sockets under thick black eyebrows that met in the middle just below the third eye. (When he glowered I could see it there, blazing.)

My father had brought me to hear the monk deliver a sermon, on the Eight Burning Hells. When the monk started to speak, voice dry and cracked, rasping, I felt he was talking directly to me, as if he had singled me out. He glared at me, pierced me with his gaze, cut me to the core.

I whimpered, grabbed my father’s sleeve. My father shook me off, smacked the back of my legs.

Sit, he said. Listen.

The hells, the monk explained, descended in order of severity, down and down, ever deeper into the underworld. The first of them was the Hell of Reviving, and even here, he said, the heat was unbearable, far beyond endurance. The ground was a searing expanse of white-hot iron and it was impossible to rest your feet even for a second without being scorched.

I felt my feet twitch. It was a hot day and the shoji screens were open to the temple courtyard, shimmering in the glare. Inside at least it was shaded, cooler. The old wooden beams smelled of pine incense. I watched a little lizard, bright green, flick and dart across the wall.

In the Hell of Reviving, said the monk, you will be consumed by perpetual rage.

He looked at me, he definitely looked at me.

Think how angry you can get if you are thwarted in some small desire. You are ready to smash and destroy if you don’t get your way. Well, increase this a thousandfold so you would kill anyone who obstructed you. This is what you will feel in the Reviving Hell.

I wondered, why Reviving? How could coming back to life be hell?

In this realm of the angry dead, said the monk, there will be countless millions of others like yourself, like your self, so many, so many, all consumed by their own incandescent fury. You will fight and tear and hack at each other with weapons you can only imagine, forged from your own karma. You will slash and cut and gouge, you will stab and rip till you fall down dead, a death within death, a death beyond death.

The monk paused.

And then, he said, looking at me again, answering my unspoken question, you will be revived immediately, you will wake up, you will once again be fully conscious, and the whole process will start again. You will fight, you will die in agony, you will be revived. And so it will continue for what seems like endless time. The scriptures are quite clear. You will fight and die in this realm for millions on millions of years. To be precise, for a hundred and sixty-two thousand times ten million years, you will fight and die in anger and pain. And this is the first, the least, of the Burning Hells.

A young monk bowed and placed a small tea-bowl of water in front of the old man who nodded, took a sip, just enough to wet his thin old lips. I felt my own lips dry and parched. I looked up, saw the little green lizard scuttle across the ceiling, upside down.

The old monk coughed, loosed the phlegm in his throat. He sipped more water, continued.

The next level down, he said, the second level, is Black Line Hell. Again the ground is burning iron, hotter than the level above, and the demons of the underworld will lay you out on this white-hot surface and mark your naked body with black lines, dividing you up into ever smaller sections – four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two. And they will use these marks as guidelines for their burning saws and axes, and they will cut you into smaller and smaller pieces – sixty-four, a hundred and twenty-eight. And no sooner will you be reduced to tiny pieces of flesh and bone, than you will be reassembled, only for the whole process to start again, repeating, over and over, for twice as long as the first hell, for three hundred and twenty-four thousand times ten million years. And this is only the second of the Burning Hells.

Only the second, that meant six more to go, each one hotter and deeper and more terrible than the one above. The lizard had gone now, into the freedom of the world outside, and I wanted to follow, to run out, find my friends and play. My legs ached from kneeling on the hard wood floor, but when I shifted, tried to ease the discomfort, my father prodded me, cuffed the back of my head.

Be still, he said. Listen.

The third level, said the monk, is Crushing Hell. It is even deeper, even hotter. Here you will be rounded up with the millions of others suffering for their sins and you will be cast into a long valley between two ranges of fiery mountains. You will be packed in with these millions, piled on top of one another till there is no space to move and no air to breathe, and all that can be heard are the screaming and weeping of the damned in their agony and terror. Then the giant demons of this world will raise their mallets of red-hot metal, each one as big as Mount Fuji, and pound you to nothing. For a brief moment, an infinitesimal part of a second, there will be oblivion, then in a blink you will be awake, and immediately the whole cycle will begin again, the rounding up, the casting down, and this time the walls of the valley will close in on you, like great beasts butting each other, and once again you will be crushed. And this will continue for twice as long again as the previous level. Six hundred and forty-eight thousand times ten million years.

The numbers meant nothing. I could count, a little. But I couldn’t imagine a million. Ten million. Grains of sand on a beach. Snowflakes falling through a whole winter day. My mother would laugh when I asked about these things. How could they be numbered? But I knew the way the old monk spoke, he meant they went on for ever and ever. And every time you thought the torture was over, it would start again.

The sermon hadn’t even lasted a day, maybe not even an hour.

Howling Hell, said the monk. This is the next level down. Here you will be herded with all the rest into a gigantic red-hot building. And once you are inside, crammed together, suffocating, you will realise there is no exit, no door, no way out. You are trapped there, unable to move, as the intolerable heat increases even more and all you can do is howl and scream and cry and add to the cacophony of all those millions howling and screaming and crying all around you. And this you will endure for twice as long as the previous level. Ten million years, times twelve hundred and ninety-six thousand.

He looked at me again. I felt sick in my stomach.

You may think the exact numbers don’t matter. But when you are there, and every single second is agony, it matters very much indeed.

Thinking of the numbers made my head feel like stone.

Now, said the monk, we descend ever further, from the Howling Hell to the Great Howling Hell. Here you will be crammed into an even bigger, even hotter building with thick burning walls, and outside those walls are thicker, hotter walls. You will be in a box within a box, a prison within a prison, a tomb within a tomb, where the space between the inner and outer walls is filled with molten metal, sealing it completely. And all the time you are there, you are tortured by the knowledge that even if by some miracle you could break through the first wall, you could never ever broach the second. So you howl and scream and cry, endlessly, or at least for twice as long as before. Some of you can add it up for yourselves, I’m sure.

Did his features twist a little as he said this, into a kind of grimace that might have been a smile? That was even more unsettling, and already he was racing ahead, ever deeper.

The sixth level, he said, is known simply as the Heating Hell – as if the other levels were not hot enough. Here you will be impaled on red-hot spikes, you will be flayed and wrapped in strips of white-hot iron. And for how long? Yes, twice as long as the hell before.

I noticed at the corners of his dry lizard-lips were little flecks of spit. He closed his eyes for a moment, continued.

And what is below the Heating Hell? What is the next level down? By now you should know it will be even worse, even hotter, for this is the Intense Heating Hell. Here you will be boiled in vats of molten bronze, then dragged out and impaled on larger spikes that tear your insides apart, the pain so intense you lose consciousness for an instant, only to wake to the same torment, again, again, again, for twice as long as before.

He opened his eyes again, looked out from some deep dark place. His voice was low and gravelly, incantatory, the way he would chant the Nembutsu.

You have heard of the first seven hells, and the tortures and agonies that await you there. But these are as nothing compared to the last, the worst, the deepest hell. This is the Hell of Ultimate Torment.

I could read the words, blazing in the air, a sign written in flame.

In this realm, he said, the intense heat is seven times hotter than all the previous hells combined, and the pain is seven times greater. Here you will be trapped for seven times as long, in an immense edifice of blazing hot metal, at the centre of a mountain of white-hot iron. An army of demons will devise ever greater tortures, pouring molten bronze into your open mouth. Your body and the bodies of all the others suffering this damnation will be indistinguishable from the flames engulfing you. You will be separated only by the sound of your anguished screams which will echo back up through all the other hells. At times they can even be heard here in this world of ours, in the darkest night when you are racked with misery and despair. For surely these hells exist deep in your own being, and you can be pitched into them at any time.

Was that a bird shrieking out there in the courtyard? And was that an owl I’d heard screeching in the night? And was that really a cat that had woken me in the small hours, yowling like a baby stolen from its parents?

Don’t whimper, said my father.

Existence is suffering, said the old monk. Its cause is desire. To conquer desire you must follow the Buddha-path. There is no other way.

His sermon was finished. He bowed and folded his hands, sipped a few more drops of water from his bowl. I was anxious to get out, to get home, to see my mother. The monk stood up, his old legs stiff as he creaked and unfolded himself. He walked slowly towards the door and I bowed my head as he passed. But he didn’t pass. He stopped right in front of me. I kept my head down, stared at his gnarled old feet in their worn straw sandals, the thin toes bony and splayed, the blackened toenails thick and cracked.

So, he said. Have these words put the fear in you?

I looked up at him, that great domed head, that ferocious gaze, and my whole body shook. My mouth was dry, my throat closed. I couldn’t say one word.

A man of silence, he said. This is a good place to begin.

He held up his right hand, fingers spread, and for a moment I flinched, expecting him to strike me. But instead he closed his hand again, made a fist, clenched it in front of my face.

Ha! he said, shaking the fist. Then he let out a terrifying roar of a laugh, sprayed spit, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked at my father who tensed beside me.

Look after this one, said the monk. Teach him well.

He glared down at me again, nodded, gave a kind of rough grunt and moved on. I watched his old feet in their straw sandals, shuffling across the polished floor, then he was out the door and gone.

My father smacked the back of my head. Why didn’t you speak?

I had nothing to say, I said.

Useless, said my father.

All the way home I kept my head down, looked at my own bare feet leaving their mark in the dust with every step. The sun had baked the ground all day and it burned, made me walk quick, not linger. I looked up at Mount Fuji in the haze. I imagined it throwing up fire and smoke. Beneath me were all these worlds, deeper and deeper underground. I was walking on the roof of hell.

Back home I still had nothing to say.

My mother laughed, but she was gentle, not mocking.

That old monk’s a holy terror, isn’t he? He’d put the fear of death into anybody.

I still said nothing.

Sometimes it’s good to be just a little afraid, she said, so we’ll do the right thing.

She had made noodles with my favourite broth, ginger and scallions and the thing I loved most, tororojiru with the rich earthy taste of mashed-up yams. I ate it in silence apart from the slurping. I drank the last of the broth, pushed the empty bowl away from me.

My older brother came into the kitchen, made a face at me behind my mother’s back, tongue out, eyes popping, a demon.

She turned and saw him, laughed and waved him away. Then she stroked my head, ran her hands over the short cropped hair.

Go out and play a while, she said.

Outside, it was the same old place, the same old world I knew, but it was different. It was still Hara, way-station on the Tokaido, at the foot of Great Fuji. I was Iwajiro of the Nagasawa family, and my father ran the inn, Omodaka-ya. This was my life, here in this place. But it had changed. It was like somewhere I had dreamed. My friends looked the same, but they were strange to me. They moved around in their own dream, playing, not knowing.

At night, before I went to bed, my mother told me my favourite story, of the Dragon King’s palace at the bottom of the sea. It calmed me and soothed me a little, imagining the coolness in the depths of the ocean. But when I lay down to sleep, I fell into dreams of fire and torment and I woke in a fever. I burned and howled till my mother came and held me and hushed me, said it was fine, it was fine, it was just a dream and everything would be all right, and she lit a stick of incense, chanted the Nembutsu to protect me from all harm.

But from that day on, everything had changed. The fear was always there.

One day my mother took me to the bathhouse. It was something I loved, to soak in the warmth, surrounded by it, to drift away.

To purify the mind, she said, chant the Nembutsu. To purify the body, sweat out all the poisons, soak in a hot tub.

The attendant at the bathhouse was a young girl. My mother nodded to her, told her to make the water good and hot.

Turn it up, she said. The hotter, the better.

The girl bowed, gave me a smile, set to stoking the fire under the iron tub. She prodded and raked with a poker so the embers glowed, she added more firewood and topped it with chopped logs when it caught and flared. It was hot work. The girl’s face was flushed and a strand of her hair came loose, fell across her face. As she pushed it back, she left a smudge of soot on her cheek. She saw me looking and laughed. The flames flickered. I started to sweat.

Right, said my mother. Let’s get you scrubbed.

I stepped out of my sandals, took off my robe and hung it up. I sat on the low three-legged stool and my mother washed me thoroughly, filled a little wooden bucket and poured it over my head, twice, three times, rinsed me down till I stood there dripping, clean and ready for the bath.

I turned and stepped forward, aware of my own nakedness, this little body of mine so tiny and fragile, so vulnerable, soft flesh. The heat in the room had grown intense. Steam rose, swirled in the air. The water gurgled and churned. Two merchants had come in and their voices boomed. I stood still and could not move. Through the steam I saw the girl’s face as she smiled at me again, nodded encouragement. My mother pushed me forward. The fire was roaring under the tub. A huge flame suddenly leaped and the wood crackled, sent up sparks and cinders. There was a panic in my chest, a trapped bird desperate to escape. The waters would boil and scald me to death, my flesh would melt off the bone. I would plunge into the deepest hell and burn there forever.

No!

I heard my own voice, screaming, filling the place, till the girl covered her ears and the two men stopped their talking and stared, and my mother picked me up and wrapped me in my robe and carried me outside.

That night my father heard what had happened. He raged at me.

Why do you behave like this? Are you a baby?

I said nothing.

If you’re going to scream and cry like a little girl, at least tell us why.

I’ll tell my mother, I said, and no one else.

He looked for a moment as if he might slap me. Instead he let out a huge, long-suffering sigh and rubbed his face with his hands. Then he called my mother to come and talk to me.

So, little one, she said. That was quite a performance.

I stood with my head bowed, looked down at my feet in the straw sandals I wore indoors. This was me, standing here.

Well? she said.

It was the flames, I said. And the noise. And the heat.

Ah, she said.

I was afraid.

Of hell?

I nodded.

We have to put an end to this, she said. This fear is consuming you.

But how? If hell is waiting for us, how can we not be afraid? And if there is no escape, what is the point of anything we do?

There is a way, she said. But now it’s late and you need to sleep. I’ll tell you in the morning, I promise.

In the morning! That was no time, no time at all. She would tell me. I would know. I ran to her and she hugged me, stroked my back. The cotton of her robes smelled of incense from the shrine.

Some time in the night I heard a voice from behind the shoji screen, thin and wavery, a demon-voice wailing.

You’re going to burn in hell . . .

I sat up, alarmed, but immediately the demon let out a chuckle and I recognised the voice of my older brother Yozaemon. I laughed and lay down again. Everything was going to be all right. I slept well, released from the fear. In fact my sleep was so deep I woke late, well after eight, and the morning sun was streaming in through the shoji screen. I jumped up and threw my clothes on, rushed into the kitchen to find my mother. But she was bustling about the stove, cooking miso soup in a heavy iron pot.

Not now, she said, shooing me away. I don’t want you getting under my feet.

But you said!

Not now.

Well, when?

Later. As soon as I can. Now go and play.

She was hot and harassed, but she managed a smile.

Go!

I barely flinched at the little flames licking the bottom of the pot.

Outside I heard a gang of the neighbourhood children shrieking and yelling. I ran over, saw them kicking up dust, leaping and dancing like demons. One or two of them had sticks and were beating the ground with them, their screams getting more excited, high-pitched, as they stamped and screeched. I pushed through and saw what they were doing. They had tipped out a nest of baby crows and the boys ran and jumped and struck, chasing them, trying to stamp on them or hit them with the sticks.

I was excited and horrified all at once. There was a huge exhilaration in the game, in the hitting and beating and striking out, trying to crush and kill, and the crows were carrion, they were vermin, to be rid of them was good. But I could feel the panic and terror of the tiny birds as they fluttered and scurried, tried to escape. I felt it in my stomach, an agitation, discomfort, and maybe torturing the birds was a sin. I was suddenly hot, felt the prickle of tears. I pushed through the crowd of boys and ran back to the house.

My mother had said she would tell me, as soon as she could. But now she was sitting on the porch, talking to a neighbour whose husband was ill.

These things are sent to try us, said my mother.

What’s for us will not go by us, said the woman.

They were sipping tea. They could talk like this for hours.

He was fine in the morning, said the woman. Then in the afternoon he took a turn for the worse.

It’s often the way of it.

My mother looked over to me.

I haven’t forgotten, she said. I’ll talk to you soon. Now go and play a little longer.

Soon. A little longer. The whole morning could pass by and they would still be talking. I heard my mother tell the woman to burn the moxa herbs on her husband’s spine, and to continue chanting the sutras.

Back outside I saw the gang of boys running off into the distance, whooping and brandishing their sticks in the air. There was no trace of the baby crows, then I saw a scraggy stray cat had dragged one of the tiny carcasses into the shade of a tree and was holding it down with its paws, tearing it apart with its teeth, crunching the little bones.

My mother was still talking to the woman. At least they had stood up now, but that might mean nothing. They could still take another hour to get to the door and for the woman to actually leave. It was unbearable.

My head hurts, I shouted. I have a fever.

My mother smiled, nodded at the woman.

This young man has things on his mind!

When more time had passed, and the woman had finally gone, my mother turned to me.

So, she said. Your head aches. You have a fever. Let us deal with those things first.

No! You said you would tell me!

But headache and fever are no joke, she said, and she placed her cool hand on my forehead.

The thought had been niggling at me, and now it began to grow, that she didn’t have an answer after all, and she had been lying and stalling just to keep me quiet.

Tell me!

A remedy is called for, she said.

You told that woman to burn moxa and chant the sutras, I said. Is that what you’re going to tell me?

You were listening, she said. You have big ears!

Tell me!

Moxa would help your headache.

But moxa meant burning, and the fear would be there again.

Not moxa!

She laughed.

You’re the wisest child in the world, she said. You’ve found the answer all by yourself. No moxa, you only have to chant a sutra. But not just any sutra. You have to chant the Tenjin Sutra.

Tenjin. I said the name. Tenjin.

Tenjin is the deity of Kitano shrine, she said. In life he was Michizane, a scholar and poet, a great calligrapher. As a god he is Tenjin, with the power of fire and thunder. He can drive out angry ghosts and conquer the fear of hell.

Tenjin, I said again. Tenjin.

All you have to do, said my mother, is chant the sutra, every morning when you wake and every night before you sleep. It is only a few lines long, a hundred Chinese characters, but it is very powerful.

I felt a kind of fire kindle in me, in the centre of my chest, and below that, in my belly. I was excited, impatient.

Teach it to me now!

She laughed.

Come, she said, holding out her hand, and she led me out by the back door.

Where are we going?

Sanen-ji, she said.

Sanen-ji was the Pure Land temple, across the road from our house. It had a shrine room and a little sacred grove dedicated to Tenjin. The place was tended by a young monk who was sweeping the steps as we came in at the gate. He bowed to my mother, then to me, and asked if he could be of help to us. My mother explained about the sutra and he smiled at me, said yes. He could not have been more different from the old monk I had heard at the other temple, Shogen-ji, who had filled my head with hellfire and damnation. This young man had a mildness and a gentleness about him, a kind of lightness. He beckoned us to follow him into the shrine room, leaving our sandals outside. We kneeled beside him on the tatami floor and he lit a stick of incense at the altar. A few flowers had been placed in an old vase in front of a painting of Tenjin, one hand raised in blessing. The expression on the face was benign, kindly, but behind him a thunderbolt emerged from a cloud, and beside him was an ox, looking up at him.

The ox is his messenger, said the monk. So the best time to pray to him is the hour of the ox, between two and three in the morning.

My mother shifted uneasily.

But, of course, said the monk, a young man like you should just meditate as early as you can, whenever you wake up.

I will wake up at two, I said. The hour of the ox.

The monk nodded approval, gave a little chuckle. Then he became serious again, reached forward and opened a drawer at the side of the shrine, drew out a scroll of paper which he unrolled and handed to me. I could only read a few of the characters, like wind and fire. But the page had an effect on me – again I felt that sensation in my chest, in my belly, and something in my forehead, a kind of tingling.

We’ll chant, said the monk. Take it a line at a time. I’ll chant it first, then you repeat it with me.

He folded his hands and began, his voice surprisingly deep and resonant. I folded my own hands, copied him as best I could, my own small voice cracked and high but eager, and my mother joined in, a clear sweet singsong. By the time we’d gone through the whole thing two or three times I was singing out with all my heart and soul.

The monk bowed to me again and said I could keep the copy of the sutra, and from the same drawer he took out a smaller copy of the painting of Tenjin.

You should take this too, he said, for your shrine.

I carried my treasures home, overcome with excitement, and went straight to the little altar room in our house. I swept the floor and dusted the shrine. I took down the painting that hung in the alcove and replaced it with the image of Tenjin. I laid out my copy of the sutra in front of it. I emptied the ash from the incense holder and cleaned it out, lit a new stick. I pestered my mother for a few fresh flowers from the display in the front room and I put them in a vase. Then I bowed to Tenjin, and I chanted the sutra over and over till I knew the words by heart.

It was the middle of the night. I didn’t know the exact time, but I knew it must be close to the hour of the ox. The whole house was dark and quiet as I felt my way, step by step, to the altar room where I managed to light the oil lamp, put another stick of incense in the burner. Then I kneeled on the tatami in front of the shrine, folded my hands and started to chant the sutra.

Namu Tenman Daijizai Tenjin . . .

I thought I was awake, but from time to time my eyes started to close and my head nodded forward, jerking me awake again. Then I would start the sutra all over again, from the beginning.

Namu Tenman . . .

In the flicker of the lamplight, the image of Tenjin changed, came in and out of focus. Now it was kindly, the way I had seen it before, now the expression was fierce. I invoked him to ward off demons, to keep me from the perils of hell.

Namu Tenman . . .

My legs began to ache. Outside a wind rose, shook the pine trees. There was a howl, a shriek. Something darted past, brushed against the shoji screen, scared me. But I told myself it was only a bat, and if it was anything else, anything worse, out there in the dark, Tenjin would protect me.

Namu . . .

The house itself seemed to creak and groan. Shadows shifted, wavered. Something scurried, was gone when I looked. I shivered, chanted louder.

Namu Tenman . . . Tenjin . . .

There was a sudden noise behind me, a rustling, a thud. I sensed a huge dark shape, looming, and a great deep voice boomed out.

What the hell are you doing?

It was my father, his robe pulled about him, his hair dishevelled, eyes staring.

I am chanting the Tenjin Sutra.

Do you know what time it is?

The hour of the ox.

He growled.

The bloody hour of the bloody ox!

It’s the best time, I said.

It’s the middle of the bloody night!

I bowed low, kept my head down on the tatami. I heard another rustling and smelled a faint perfume I recognised as my mother.

The boy is doing what the monk told him, she said. He’s doing the right thing.

He’s wasting lamp-oil, said my father. At his age this is ridiculous. You’ll turn him into a useless layabout, a lazy good-for-nothing with his head full of nonsense about burning in hell.

At this rate, you’ll burn in hell yourself, she said. You neglect your own devotions and now you’re trying to stop the boy from following the way. You should be ashamed.

I thought my father was going to choke. The veins stood out on his thick neck. The lamplight changed his face, made him look demonic. He let out a kind of grunt and turned away, went crashing through the house, shaking the whole wooden frame of the building as he slammed shut the shoji-screen door.

My mother held me a moment, spoke calmly.

Don’t be troubled, little one. You are doing what you must. This is your path. For this I bore you. Now, chant the sutra one more time, then go and get some sleep.