Читать книгу The Kingdom of Slender Swords - Hallie Erminie Rives - Страница 9

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The setting sun poured a flood of wine-colored light over Reinanzaka—the "Hill-of-the-Spirit"—whose long slope rose behind the American Embassy, whither the Dandridge victoria was rolling. It was a long leafy ridge stippled with drab walls of noble Japanese houses, and striped with narrow streets of the humble; one of the many green knolls that, rising above the gray roofs, make the Japanese capital seem an endless succession of teeming village and restful grove.

Along its crest ran a lane bordered with thorn hedges. A little way inside this stood a huge stone torii, facing a square, ornamented gateway, shaded by cryptomerias. The latter was heavily but chastely carved, and on its ceiling was a painting, in green and white on a gold-leaf ground, of Kwan-on, the All-Pitying. From the gate one looked down across the declivity, where in a walled compound, the rambling buildings of the Embassy showed pallidly amid green foliage. Beyond this were sections of trafficking streets, and still farther a narrow, white road climbed a hill toward a military barracks—a blur of dull, terra-cotta red. In the dying afternoon the lane had an air of placid aloofness. Somewhere in a thoroughfare below a trolley bell sounded, an impudent note of haste and change in a symphony of the intransmutable. Over all was the scent of cherry-blossoms and a faint musk-like odor of incense.

From the gate a mossy pavement, shaded by sacred mochi trees, led to a Buddhist temple-front of the Mon-to sect, before which a flock of fluttering gray-and-white pigeons were pecking grains of rice scattered by a priest, who stood on its upper step, watching them through placid, gold-rimmed spectacles. He wore a long green robe, a stole of gold brocade was around his neck, and his face was seamed with the lines of life's receding tides. At one side of the pavement, worn and grooved by centuries of worshiping feet, was a square stone font and on the other side a graceful bell-tower of red lacquer. Back of this stood a forest of tall bronze lanterns, and beyond them a graveyard, an acre thick with standing stone tablets of quaint, squarish shape, chiseled with deep-cut idiographs. Nearer the graveyard, overshadowed by the greater bulk of the temple, was a long, low nunnery, with clumps of flowers about it. Through its bamboo lattices one caught glimpses of women's figures, clad in slate-color, of placid faces and boyishly shaven heads. About the yard a few little children were playing and a mother, with a baby on her back, looked smilingly on.

The space where the priest stood was connected by a small, curved, elevated bridge with another temple structure standing on the right of the yard, evidently used as a private residence. This was more ornate, far older and touched with decay. Its porch was arcaded, set with oval windows and hung with bronze lanterns green from age. Its entrance doors were beautifully carved, paneled with endless designs in dull colors, and bordered with great gold-lacquer peonies laid on a background of green and vermilion. From their corners jutted snarling heads of grotesque lions and on either side stood gigantic Ni-O—glowering demon-guardians of sacred thresholds. Through the straight-boled trees that grew close about it, came transient gleams of a hedged garden, of burnished green and maroon foliage, where cherry-blooms hung like fluffy balls of pink smoke. The garden had a private entrance—a gate in the outer lane—and over this was a small tablet of unpainted wood:

Which, translated, read:

ALOYSIUS THORN

Maker of Buddhas

Directly opposite stood a small Christian Chapel. It was newly built and still lacked its final decoration—a rose-window, whose empty sashes were stopped now with black cloth. High above the flowering green its slanting roof lifted a cross.

It rose, white and pure, emblem of the Western faith that yet had been born in the East. Over against the ornate pageantry of Buddhist architecture, in a land of another creed, of variant ideals and a passionate devotion to them, it stood, simple, silent, and watchful. The priest on the temple steps was looking at the white cross, regarding it meditatively, as one to whom concrete symbols are badges of spiritual things.

Footsteps grated on the gravel and the occupant of the older temple came slowly through its garden. He was a foreigner, though dressed in Japanese costume. His shoulders were broad and powerful and he moved with a quickness and grace in step and action that had something feline in it. His hair, worn long, was black, touched with gray, and a curved mustache hid his lips. His expression was sensitively delicate and alertly odd—an impression added to by deeply-set eyes, one of which was visibly larger than the other, of the variety known as "pearl," slightly bulbous, though liquid-brown and heavily lashed.

The new-comer ascended the steps and stood a moment silently beside the priest, watching the gluttonous pigeons. As he looked up, he saw the other's gaze fixed on the Chapel cross. A quick shiver ran across his mobile face, and passing, left it hard with a kind of grim defiance.

Presently the priest said in Japanese:

"The Christian temple across the way honorably approaches completion. Assuredly, however, moths have eaten my intelligence. Why does the gloomy hole illustriously elect to remain in its wall?"

"It is for a thing they call a 'window'," said Thorn. "After a time they will put therein an august abomination, representing sublimely hideous cloud-born beings and idiotic-looking saints in colored glass."

The priest nodded his shaven head sagely.

"It will, perhaps, deign to be a gaku of the Christian God. I shall, with deference, study it. I have watered my worthless mind with much arrogant reading of Him. Doubtless He was also Buddha and taught The Way."

An acolyte had come from the temple and approached the red bell-tower. Midway of the huge bronze bell a heavy cedar beam, like a catapult, was suspended from two chains. He swung this till its muffled end struck the metal rim, and the air swelled with a dreamy sob of sound. He swung it again, and the sob became a palpitant moan, like breakers on a far-away beach. Again, and a deep velvety boom throbbed through the stillness like the heart of eternity.

"It is time for the service," said the priest, and turning, went into the temple, from whose interior soon came the woodeny tapping of a mok'gyo—the hollow wooden fish, which is the emblem of the Mon-to sect—and the sound of chanting voices.

Thorn, the man with whom the priest had spoken, crossed the bridge to the other temple with a slow step. He passed between the scowling guardian figures, slid back a paper shoji and entered. The room in which he stood had been the haiden, or room of worship. Around its walls were oblong carvings, marvelously lacquered, of the nine flowers and nine birds of old Japanese art. In one were set six large painted panels; the red seal they bore was that of the great Cho Densu, the Fra Angelico of Japan. In its center, under a brocade canopy, was a raised platform once the seat of the High Priest. It faced a long transept, like a chancel; this ended in a short flight of steps leading, through doors of soft, fretted gold-lacquer, to a huge altar set with carved tables, great tarnished brasses and garish furniture. The walls of the transept were done in red with green ornamentations. From the overhead gloom grotesque phœnix and dragon peered down and in the gathering dimness, shot through with the wan yellow gleam of brass, the place seemed uncanny.

Thorn drew back a heavy drapery which covered a doorway, and entered a room that was windowless and very dark. He lit a candle.

The dim light it furnished disclosed a weird and silent assembly. The space was crowded with strange glimmering deities—of bronze, of silver, of priceless gold-lacquer—the dust thick on their faces, their aureoles misty with cobwebs. Some gazed with passionless serenity, or blessed with outstretched hand; some threatened with scowling faces and clenched thunderbolts: Jizo of the tender smile, in whose sleeves nestle the souls of dead children; Kwan-on, of divine compassion, with her many hands; Emma-dai-O, Judge of the Dead, menacing and terrible; strange sardonic tengu, half-bird, half-human. The floor was thick with them. From shelves on the walls leered swollen, frog-like horrors such as often appear on Alaskan totem-poles, triple-headed divinities of India and China, coiled cobras, idols from Ceylon, and curious Thibetan praying-wheels. A sloping stairway slanted through the gloom; beside it was an image of the red god, Aizen Bosatsu, his appalling countenance framed in lurid flames, seated on a fiery lotos.

The master of this celestial and infernal pantheon closed and locked the door, and mounted the stairway to the loft—a low, rambling room of eccentric shape, under the curving gables.

Here, through a long window beneath the very eaves, the light still came brightly. In the center was a board table, littered with delicate carving-tools. He kindled the charcoal in a bronze hibachi, and set over it a copper pot which began to emit a thick, weedy odor. From a cabinet he took phials containing various powders, and measured into the pot a portion from each. Lastly he added a quantity of gold-leaf, slowly, flake by flake. At one side a white silk cloth was draped over a pedestal; he drew this away and looked at the unfinished figure it had concealed. It was an image of Kwan-on, the All-Merciful.

Through the open window the chant of the priests came clearly:

"Waku hyoryu kokai Ryūgyo Shokinan Nembi Kwan-on riki Harō funōmotsu."

(He who is beset with perils of dragon and great fish—who drifts on an endless sea—if he offer petition to Kwan-on, waves will not destroy him.)

Thorn crossed the room and leaning his elbows on the window-ledge, looked out. Through the odor of incense the monotonous intonation of the liturgy rose with the grandeur of a Gregorian chant:

"Shūjō kikon-yaku Muryōku hisshin Kwan-on myochiriki Nōku sekenku."

(He who is in distress—when immeasurable suffering presses on him—Kwan-on, all-wise and all-powerful, can save him from the world's calamity.)

Once, while the quiet yard echoed back the slow cadences of the antique tongue, the watcher's eyes turned to the image on the pedestal, then came back to an object that drew them—had drawn them for many days against his will!—the white cross of the Chapel. A last glow of refracted light touched it now, as red as blood, a symbol of the infinite passion and pain. A long time he stood there. The twilight deepened, the chant ceased, lights sprang up along the lane, night fell with its sickle moon and crowding stars, but still he stood, his face between his hands.

At length he turned, and groping for the cloth, threw it over the Kwan-on and lit a lamp swinging from a huge brass censer. Unlocking an alcove, he took out a fleece-wrapped bundle and sweeping the tools to one side, set it on the table. He carefully closed the window and thrust a bar through the staple of the door before he unwrapped it.

When the fleece was removed, he propped the image it had contained upright on the table. He poured into a shallow plate a few drops of the liquid heating over the fire-bowl—under the lamplight it gleamed and sparkled like molten gold—and with a small brush, using infinite care, began to lay the lacquer on its carven surface.

Once, at a sound in some room below—perhaps the movement of a servant—he stopped and listened intently. It was as if he worked by stealth, at some labor self-forbidden, to which an impulse, overmastering though half-denied, drove him in secret.

It was a crucifix with a dead Christ upon it.