The hill to which Tsuda took her, his hand hot, trembling now and then a
little as it supported her up the rough trail, proved to be the same hill
upon which reposed the prostrate slab sacred to the remains of Vander
Hagen. It was one of the loftiest spots on the island. They stood just
beside the grave to watch the rain ceremonial.
In the valley below were a few Ainu huts. In their midst was a bit of
open sward, and half the tribe was assembled. Most of the Ainu lay on
the ground and kept nodding their heads in the dust in a patient, abject
way. In the centre of the sward a post had been set up, and upon it was
fastened the dilapidated skull of a raccoon brought down from Paromushir.
It seemed to leer in the sunshine. There was no cloud in the sky. The
island simmered and baked. This was, indeed, an unusual spell of drought
in a realm so lush, and where scarcely a day passed by without its brief,
warm drenching. In the valley they prayed for rain, and some capered
solemnly, sprinkling each other with water. Nobody remembered at length
how the curious custom had begun. Its origin lay swallowed up in the void
that stood in lieu of history. These Ainu had no heritage: a weary race
devoid of yesterdays.... Tsuda had seized upon this piece of ritual, but
he had subtly touched it, too, with the finer genius of Shintō. Tsuda
could never outgrow the sacerdotal atmosphere which had surrounded his
youth in the Shinshū mountains. The lure of the gods was in his blood.
This was his other self—his soul’s deep hinterland.
“These are days again—gn,” he murmured, “of the working of magics and
miracles!” His face looked shiny and very serious. And the curious thing
about Tsuda was that he just hazily believed, himself, in the magic
and the miracles—without, of course, quite sacrificing any of that
conflicting shrewdness and that worldly subtlety, which were also such
deeply imbedded elements in his nature.
Stella sank down on to the broken slab to watch, curious, yet with
unmoved face. And Tsuda squatted beside her, very humbly.
“Yes _sir_!” he murmured. “We see the wonders coming to pass!”
He raised his fists high above his head in an attitude of odd yet
convincing religious ecstasy. There was a weird, poetic quality in his
voice. Stella felt her soul shrinking. She seemed on the very brink of
some nameless despair.
“These are great days for the children of the White Kami!” he cried.
And he hugged his knees and rocked. And his eyes were bright. And he
wheezed with asthma. Everything about Tsuda was at once so simple and so
profoundly mixed up. All the complexes of a lifetime of frustration and
cleverness and hard knocks, with always that queer shine underneath of
the priest-wish, seemed converging now into a high mood of conflict.
“It is good—gn—we think much on the ways of the gods.”
The pagan plea for rain proceeded in the valley at their feet. The old
chief, Cha-cha-kamui, clad in his paraphernalia of state, including the
august crown of shavings and gilt, sat amongst his people intoning a
chant or saga in a high, shrill voice—a voice so haunting in the still
white sunshine that Stella felt it would echo in her soul as long as
she lived. The chant was slow and of a droning cadence. At intervals
the singer raised his voice in a wailing crescendo, but the wail always
drifted back afterwards into the tonic, and the chant would recommence
and proceed as before. And all the while the dancers moved on about the
leering raccoon skull, capering and sprinkling each other with the
symbolic water.
In a flash Stella saw herself, vividly, at home in the old days, and her
heart was seized with a fierce ache. Tears slipped from her eyes and she
never heeded them.