THE MAKER OF BUDDHAS
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:
[Illustration]
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 phoenix 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_
_Ry[=u]gyo Shokinan_
_Nembi Kwan-on riki_
_Har[=o] fun[=o]motsu._"
(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:
"_Sh[=u]j[=o] kikon-yaku
Mury[=o]ku hisshin
Kwan-on myochiriki
N[=o]ku 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.