“At the present moment I don’t feel that I ever want to see it again.”
“Natural enough. Let us have a bout of jujutsu now.”
We stripped, and he threw me as he always did, but all the same I was
learning. I got a new lock that day and, more important, made an advance
in pliability. I stooped and yielded and released myself when I thought
he had got me for good. He shouted with pleasure.
“Right! You will be a shodan one day. That is our lowest teaching grade.
Now rest.”
He came up to me an hour later:
“You are wishing to go to the Kwannon monastery to see the Abbot. He
will receive you. Before you start would you like to hear the story of
my ancestor and the garden? It is very short.”
Strange. I had not thought of the Abbot, but I knew now that to see him
was my inmost wish. That had been the meaning of my joy. I nodded, and
Arima led the way to the willow. I did not then know why but the magic
of the garden centred in that willow, thrilled in every leaf of it.
We sat down in its shade; I, on the grass with my arms clasped about my
knees.
“My ancestor was a handsome young man, and the only son of a rich and
noble family who owned much land about here. Nearly all ran through his
fingers in his extravagance and flowed away from the family like
river-water, until only a few acres just here were left. I need not tell
you all his life—you can imagine the story of a rich, reckless,
sensuous fellow without bit or bridle. But he was a fine soldier, a fine
poet—we think much of that in Japan—and he wrote the story of his life
later with such fire and drama and such strange hidden things, that if
it could be printed—but it never could. People would not believe it.
Some day you shall read.”
A strange change came over the garden while he spoke. It extended itself
before my eyes—flowing outward softly. The flowering bushes which had
been within a few feet were now vague in the distance. The mountain
flung a cone of shadow over leagues. Even as I saw this, we were in the
land of True Sight—yes, that was its name—and Arima was telling his
story under the willow of my terror.
“He had broken his own wife’s heart. He coveted the love of the wife of
a man of good birth—a samurai named Satoro, and taking her by force
made her his own. The husband, unarmed, met him here in what is now this
garden, and when he drew his sword to attack him, by the power of the
most skilful jujutsu dashed the sword from his hand and himself to the
ground, breaking his jaw and blinding him with blood. He had to endure
the disgrace. Terrible humiliation for a nobleman! No help— Look about
you and see how lonely!”
“Awful and vast the mountains stretched away into snowy silences with
the muted roar of a distant avalanche. Cold, shudderingly cold the
river, frozen in the pools with a bitter glaze of ice. No life, no
death, but arrested petrifaction, with the moon stranded on a peak in a
dead world.
“And the sword! A sword worn by his ancestors in knightly fashion, pure
steel and gold—the very spirit of the house. Satoro picked it up and
stood leaning on it over the prostrate man as he lay on the rocks
writhing like a crushed snake to hide his ruined face.
“‘This place is your own heart,’ he said; ‘cold, empty and dead. You
will come back to it times out of mind. Kimi san, my wife, is on the
other side of the mountain. You never possessed her; she is mine. But
what I have to say is this. Your sword also is mine. I have a lien on
you. You are my slave. I tell you now to begin at the beginning. You
shall learn jujutsu. What it will teach you is to defend yourself from
yourself. And when you have learnt that— Then I shall give you fresh
orders.’
“The man raved and swore and spat blood, all unintelligibly as a beast.
He was humiliated in all that a Japanese noble most values, and his only
thought at the moment was revenge and suicide. The other stood, looking
down upon him with calm. ‘I will return the sword to my lord when he
knows its use. A good sword scorns an ignorant wearer. Now I leave you,
but we shall meet in this place.’
“He went off, walking lightly and strongly. The fallen man dragged
himself together. To lose his sword— Do Westerners understand that
bitterness? I cannot tell.
“A retainer came by and finding him, summoned help. When they got him to
the house, they told him the woman was dead. She had severed an artery
in her throat as a Japanese lady must do in the face of dishonour. Blind
with rage he sent to the house of her husband to slaughter him. He had
disappeared.
“Henceforth my ancestor was known as The Man without a Sword—a terrible
name. He could not appear among the nobles. His life was a ruined
thing.”
Arima paused again and then added:
“It would be better that the Abbot should tell you the rest. You will
think it remarkable.”
I stood up, so possessed with the story, for he had told it like one
inspired, that it was only as I moved that my position flashed on me.
“How can I go? I am lost in the mountains. Come with me!”
He stood beside me, looking onward:
“That is impossible. There are never any guides. There is only power.
Besides, there are different ways for different people and I know
nothing of yours.”
I looked about me, considering. The bridge was the obvious way and
certainly the easiest. I did not know the hour, and there was a hint of
dusk in the air, but I had already learnt that in this strange land time
and its phenomena have quite other meanings than with us. Night might
break on me in a wave of sunlight or dawn open its rose in the heart of
midnight. Who could tell? But the bridge way would be safer.
I turned to say a last word to Arima. There was no human being in sight;
it was a vast solitude dominated by the black cone of the mountain’s
shadow.
I made for the bridge walking as quickly as the rough stones allowed,
and climbing its semi-circular hump I looked before me and rejoiced to
see the track much clearer than it had seemed from the other side.
Evidently a well-used way, and this encouraged me in my hope of meeting
someone who could direct me to the monastery of Naniwa. Therefore I went
with more confidence, relieved from the crawling fear of the
supernatural which the other side of the bridge inspired.
The track took me up a slight rise and round a jutting rock which
obscured the river, and having done about two miles of quick walking I
heard steps coming round a bend of the trail and rejoiced to think I
could ascertain the way.
Nearer they came and disclosed a Japanese, his kimono pulled up through
the obi for the ease of walking. He made the usual polite bow and would
have passed but for my raised hand. I asked my way with the honorifics I
had learnt from Arima. He stopped at once and replied with the utmost
courtesy:
“The monastery? Yes— You could go this way. One reaches it by several.
But it is not the right way. Far from it.”
“Then will you tell me how to go?”
“Sir, I cannot tell you. I wish I could. I really do not know your way.”
It was infuriating. I said scoffingly:
“If you know this is wrong surely you know which is right?” He replied
as if he were saying the most ordinary thing in the world:
“Sir, it is not so easy as you think. Places are states of mind in this
country, therefore you will honourably see that no one can tell anyone
else their way and how best to get there.”
Bowing, he made to pass me. It was then that for the first time I
noticed two things. One that his hair was dressed in the old-fashioned
queue headdress which one sees in Japanese prints, shaved, but for a
knot drawn up on the head, the other that he had a most remarkable face.
The features were good, even excellent, and the dark bright colouring
fine. But the eyes were arresting under the black level brows, and
filled with tranquillity as a pool with shadows. On the impulse they
gave me I spoke.
“I wish I could go with you.”
“Sir, that could hardly be. I come from Yedo and I go to my garden in
the valley you have left.”
Yedo!—the ancient and long-disused name of Tokyo,—and Tokyo on the
central island and days’ journey away! Train and boat might have brought
him, and yet—shivering doubt assailed me like the thin creeping of
drops of water through a dyke which presages the later roar of the
flood. The garden! I could not withhold myself nor hesitate.
“May I ask your name?”
“If you want to know my name you must watch what road I take and know to
what I return. How can you know? I did not even think you would have
seen me. Since it is so however, I will repeat that in this road you
will have great need of self-defence. Now I bid you goodbye and wish you
safely at Naniwa.”
He was gone round the corner so quickly that I had a sensation of
vanishing. I ran after him and looked. Nothing. So I took my way onward.
He had told me nothing to change it. A word really would have sent me
backward to try my luck in another direction but he had not spoken it.
Soon after it was dark and raining, with a moon very young and
bewildered in drifting clouds. She gave a weary light scarcely enough to
hint the track and indicate a group of trees, the first I had seen, on
the right. Coming up, among them was a small flickering light, and the
barking of a dog sounded homely and even inviting, for by this time I
was dragging tired feet. If I could sleep there how welcome the rest and
shelter!
The place looked poor and dilapidated enough to be open to any offer of
payment though in any case I might have trusted to the hospitality of
the country Japanese.
I knocked at the rough door wondering that anyone could exist in such a
tumble-down place and a young girl came to the door, faintly seen in dim
lamplight. She stared at me in astonishment and bowing low, called
softly:
“Madam, mistress,—what shall I do? A gentleman.”
A young voice answered:
“Tell him to come in if he will do us such an honour,” and a graceful
little figure appeared in the opening of a lattice door, her face unseen
because the light fell behind her. I obeyed. Poor as the house was that
room was enchanting. Very simple, but the draperies were good, the
cushions beautiful in colour, the _hibachi_ was full of charcoal and
above and round all bathing it in charm was the delicate perfume of a
woman’s presence. She rose from her profound Japanese salutation and
looked me in the face.
“Hay sama!” she faltered, paling to the lips. And I knew—I knew!
Six months before in the crowded city of Tokyo I had gone to a dinner at
a restaurant near Shimbashi. I remembered the garden outside with clumps
of gorgeous chrysanthemums, lamps of splendid colour before the dusk
drowned them and the moon washed them with silver. Geisha attended us,
girls with every nerve braced and strung for their profession of
charming the wary and unwary alike. And I was charmed by the sad mirth
that looked out from one pair of dark and lovely eyes. I drew her aside
before the evening ended and asked her to follow me to the _machiai_—a
house of meeting, and escaping from the noisy party I waited in the cold
handsomely furnished room that never spoke of love, until she came.
That meeting led to many things—some merry, some sad, but when I left
Tokyo to see her no more I knew that the part I had played was to set my
heel on her little head and drive her deeper into the mire. Still, it
was ended and need trouble me no more. One could forget.
And now I sat by her side in this land of bitter memories.
She drew a cushion beside mine and leaning her little black head against
my shoulder looked up in my face, welcoming me with the sweet courtesy
mingled with fear that I remembered so well.
“And why are you here in this wild place, Hana san? Have you given up
your work?”
Her bewildered look! I can see it now.
“How can I tell? I—I came. I was told it must be.”
“You are resting here? You go back?”
“Let us talk of other things, Hay sama. How I am glad to see you!” I
could get nothing more from her than that.
Silence and the little noises of dropping charcoal, and the softness of
her in my arms. It was a renewal of that passionate intimacy which had
left a wound in the very heart of my soul.
We talked into the small hours,—so much to say, so much to hear, and
time passed—hours, days— How could I tell? And then as fatigue and
quiet and warmth overpowered all my resolution she put her arms about me
and gathered me to her bosom and the night melted into passion and
passion into dream and the dark stole past us on noiseless feet.
I waked in a chill dawn alone, disillusioned and abashed, dragged back
violently to a thing I had forgotten and abhorred. The room was empty, a
cold wind blowing through the tattered paper of the window, and when I
called, no answer. The two women had gone with the night. No food, no
fire, dead ash in the _hibachi_, emptiness and the squalid decay of a
wooden house long forgotten. What had a beauty of Tokyo been doing in
such a place?
Fear of the loneliness seized me. I went out quickly without looking
after me, then at the twist of the path turned and saw—desolation and
waving weeds and a bough of some bush thrust through the window that had
taken root within. I pushed on toward Naniwa, sick at heart.
It was at that moment a thought shot through me and chilled my blood.
When Arima and I had visited Naniwa it had taken us exactly two hours
from his house to the monastery hill. But yesterday I had walked for
many hours, and to-day seemed no nearer my goal. Grey interminable
moorland stretched before me with a mountain blocking the way at a
distance and other tossing peaks beyond. Where was I? Where was Naniwa?
Might I not walk for ever and ever in widening circles to a lost goal?
The ground whispered with evil in every blade of grass. It hissed in the
rustle of dry squat bushes. And last night—last night! There were
reasons why that memory brought horror and shame to be my companions on
the right and left. But I went on from sheer inability to consider what
else I must do.
The clump of bushes on the right parted and a tall strong fellow burst
out of them and planted himself across my way. A Japanese, broad,
brawny, violent-faced. As I halted he sprang at my throat like a wolf.
“And you tracked her here? You could not let her be? Then take your
payment from her husband Kondo!”
What happened next came in a blinding flash. He struck at me with a
loaded stick. It missed the first blow and I had him by the throat with
the new lock I had learnt from Arima, shaking him violently to and fro,
driving my fingers deeper and deeper into his flesh in a frenzy of rage
and hate. I would have the innermost heart’s blood of the brute.
I had it. He reeled in my grasp with horrible choking noises, and
suddenly I was shaking the life out of a dead thing. As I thrust him
from me with sickening triumph he fell heavily as a full sack prone on
the track before me.
It must have been long before the rage died in me and I stood face to
face with my position. I—a foreigner—had killed a Japanese, and after
an intrigue with his wife. It felled me beside him—I crouched and hid
my face and tried to think.
Presently I rose and with the murderer’s instinct dragged the corpse
into the bushes to hide it. Thought was impossible. I suffered as a dumb
beast must suffer the extremity of torture without the power to reason.
Only I must hide it and flee. The neighbourhood of the horrible thing
was hell.