Night Boat Read online

  I was wide awake at the hour of the ox – I hadn’t slept. So I sat as usual in front of the shrine and lit a stick of incense.

  There was something I had heard, a way of reading the smoke from the incense. I would ask the deity a question, and the smoke would give the answer. I folded my hands.

  Great Tenjin, I sit at your feet and ask you this question. If you can save me from the burning fires of hell, make this smoke rise straight up. But if you cannot help me, make the smoke blow this way and that.

  I concentrated intensely, my eyes clenched shut, my folded hands pressed tight together. Then carefully I opened my eyes and peered at the smoke. It rose in a long white line towards the ceiling, straight and unbroken. I felt sheer relief, elation. Tenjin had given me a sign. I laughed and let my hands fall to my lap, and immediately the smoke started writhing and breaking up, dispersing and drifting across the room.

  The answer was clear. Tenjin could not protect me. I was damned.

  Next morning I was miserable. There was no point in getting out of bed, no point in eating, or playing. No point in chanting the sutra. No point in anything.

  My mother came to me in my room.

  It was just an old painting, she said, a dusty old scroll. It can probably be patched up. And if it can’t, it doesn’t matter. It’s not worth the misery.

  It’s not just the painting, I said. And I told her about asking Tenjin, and the smoke from the incense giving me my answer.

  And, of course, she said, you’re such a terrible, terrible sinner.

  I could see she was trying not to smile, but I turned away. This was serious.

  In the first place, she said, sometimes it’s better if we face up to things. It’s better for our karma if we take our medicine. And second, you’re being very hard on Tenjin! Are you going to give up on him just like that, and believe some hocus pocus about incense smoke? Are you going to be like that smoke, at the mercy of a puff of wind, blowing you this way and that?

  I felt something in my chest, a bubble bursting, and I let out a great sob.

  There, she said, hugging me. There.

  A puppet show was advertised in nearby Suwa, and my mother said she would take me.

  They’re performing a wonderful story, she said, about the great teacher Nisshin Shonin. I wanted to know what happened in the story, but she wouldn’t tell me. She said she didn’t want to spoil it for me, she would let me see it for myself.

  The performance was outdoors, in a temple courtyard. It was early evening, the light beginning to fade, and lamps had been lit all around. A little stage had been set up with a simple black curtain as backdrop. I had never been to a puppet show, or any kind of theatre, so I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew from my mother’s quiet excitement it must be something special. The place was crowded but we had arrived early and sat near the front.

  A group of musicians sat at the side of the stage and suddenly, with the whack of wooden clappers, they began to play, the ripple and twang of a koto, wail of a samisen, breathiness of a shakuhachi flute. Immediately the atmosphere changed. The sense of anticipation intensified and it felt as if we were in a special place. I hadn’t seen the puppeteers come on stage, but suddenly they were there, dressed in black, the little puppet figures slumped in front of them.

  At first I felt a slight disappointment. The puppeteers were in full view, it would be obvious they were manipulating the figures, it would be distracting, it would spoil the illusion.

  Then the music changed, a rapid drumbeat, a man’s voice chanting, intoning the story, and slowly, slowly, one of the puppet figures began to move. The little body straightened up, the little head raised, the little hands came together. He bowed and the little eyes blinked once, stared straight out, right at me, and I caught my breath, completely and utterly transfixed.

  The everyday world fell away. None of it mattered, the courtyard, the crowd, the stage, the puppeteers, none of it was real. We had been drawn into another world where this little being was fully alive. He was Nisshin Shonin, come to life.

  He told us of the true path to enlightenment, the chanting of the Lotus Sutra, and how his devotion to that path might cost him his life. He had fallen foul of the Shogun, Yoshinori, and been denounced as a heretic. Now he was to be tortured and forced to give up his faith.

  Another figure loomed beside him. This was Lord Tokimune, the Shogun’s henchman.

  Tell me, he demanded. If you follow the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, can you bear the heat of a blazing fire?

  A true devotee, said Nisshin, can enter into a raging fire without being harmed.

  Indeed? said Tokimune. Let us put this to the test.

  I felt the fear again, for Nisshin, for myself. My throat was dry, a sick emptiness in my stomach. The voices and the music said the torturers were piling up firewood and setting it alight. I could smell it, I could feel the heat. Nisshin was ordered to walk through the flames. He moved forward, hands folded in front of him. He wavered a moment, as if from the intense heat, then he gathered himself again. The music grew louder and through it came the chant from the sutra.

  Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.

  He stood, unscathed.

  This is the protection of Kannon Bodhisattva, he said, and I felt a thrill, a tingling in my spine. The audience shouted their approval, applauded. I thought the show was over. But the music changed again as Tokimune stepped forward.

  So you can bear a little heat, he said. But do you think this can be compared to the fires of hell?

  I would not be so arrogant, said Nisshin.

  We must give you a sterner test, said Tokimune. Now, kneel.

  The music changed again, thud of a deeper drum, screech and wail of the flute and strings. Two more figures appeared, summoned by Tokimune. They moved awkwardly, carried between them two poles, and suspended from the poles was an iron pot, a cauldron. Tokimune explained that the cauldron was red-hot and the two men could hardly bear the heat. Nisshin was kneeling in front of them, and with difficulty they raised the pot over his head as he chanted once more.

  Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.

  The sky had darkened and a breeze made the lanterns flare. Steam and smoke rose from the cauldron as the two men shook from the effort of holding it up. The music grew louder still, the howling of demons, as the cauldron was placed on Nisshin’s head, and he flinched and the audience gasped and I thought my heart would stop. I clung to my mother’s sleeve.

  Courage, she said.

  Then we heard it, getting stronger, rising above the cacophony.

  Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.

  The two bearers staggered back and let the cauldron fall to the ground. Nisshin stood up, folded his hands and continued his chant.

  Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.

  There was a cheer and a few people at the back started chanting along with Nisshin.

  Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.

  More and more people joined in, and my mother was chanting, and I was too, and so was everyone else in the audience.

  Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.

  Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.

  The voices rose together, like one great voice, into the night, and I felt lifted up, outside myself. I had tears in my eyes, and my mother wiped them with her sleeve. On the way home I told her I knew what I wanted to be. I would be like Nisshin. I would leave home and be a monk.

  Yes, she said. Yes. When it’s time.

  WISE CRANE

  I

  was fourteen and felt as if I had been practising these devotions all my young life. I got up every night, shocked myself awake with cold water, lit incense and sat chanting the sutras. It meant I began each day with a kind of strength and clarity, even if it faded as the day wore on. But lately it had been fading more and more quickly. Some little thing would jangle my nerves, make me angry, and it felt as if all the austerity was for nothing. Then that old fear of hell began to stir in me, and I was once again that frightened child, terrified of burning in the fires.

  Something el
se was stirring too. My body was changing, and the young girls at the bathhouse looked at me differently. They would whisper to each other and giggle, glance in my direction and turn away. It filled me with confusion and a huge dumb longing. The pale little lizard between my legs would harden and redden, rear up like a dragon, and I had to hide it behind my towel as I eased into the tub, praying for it to subside.

  It would leap up again in the night, this tough stubborn little dragon, when I woke from muddled dreams involving those girls from the bathhouse. I imagined when I doused myself with cold water it would hiss and steam. I could picture it, the way I could sometimes see the figures on a painted scroll, on the storyteller’s kamishibai screen, move around with a life of their own, animated. It was another world, or another way of looking at this world. It was this world exaggerated, made fluid, and it made me laugh.

  I took to making little drawings myself, using a brush and inkstone I’d found in an old box at the back of the shrine room. I’d beg scraps of rice paper from my mother – discarded wrapping paper, out-of-date bills and receipts. I’d turn them over, sketch on the blank side, practise my calligraphy. Sometimes an unintended drip or smear of ink would make an interesting shape and I’d turn it into a bird or an animal, a mountain or a twisted branch. One time an accidental swish of the brush became my mother’s kimono and I quickly sketched in her round face above it with the tip of the brush. Another time a smudge looked like my father’s thick eyebrows and I added the glowering eyes, the grim line of the mouth. I showed both the portraits to my mother and she laughed, said I’d got them just right. But I didn’t show them to my father.

  Once I doodled a shape that looked like my own body, naked, the way I saw it when I stepped out of the bath. The brush made a quick approximation of my face, then before I knew it I had drawn that little dragon between the legs, just the way I had imagined it with steam rising as if cold water had doused its fire. Again it made me laugh but then the laugh cut short, stopped. I saw the expression on the face I had drawn, a leer, demonic. I took the brush and tried to wipe out the drawing, but I only succeeded in blurring, smudging the shapes. The face was distorted now, ugly, and the dragon shape was still there, darker, more solid.

  I crumpled up the paper, crushed it to a ball in my fist, looked for somewhere to throw it away. But I didn’t want my mother, or even worse, my father, to find it. If I dropped it outside, I imagined the wind catching, unfurling it, blowing it into the village where one of my friends would find it. It would be passed around, pinned onto a noticeboard. The girls at the bathhouse would look at it and snigger. It might even blow all the way to Mishima where my brother was at school. He would find it and recognise it as mine.

  I could tear it into tiny pieces and scatter it, but the pieces would never be small enough. Somebody might gather them up, put them together again.

  This was madness, but it took hold of me. Then I realised the only thing to do with the drawing was burn it. There was a lamp burning in the shrine room and I bowed before it. I unfolded the drawing and held it carefully to the flame, catching one corner and setting it alight. But I hadn’t allowed for it flaring up so quick. I had to get it outside or I’d burn down the house. I stumbled towards the door and out into the yard, shook the burning paper from my hand just as the flame reached my fingers, scorched me. My eyes smarted. My fingers stung, red. They would blister.

  I tucked the hand under my armpit to numb the stinging. I stamped barefoot on the ash, on the charred remains of the page.

  My father stuck his head out the window.

  What is it this time?

  Nothing, I said. I was just burning something. Out here. Outside.

  He took in a breath, about to say something, but then stopped as if he truly, genuinely, had no idea where to begin.

  My burned fingers nipped for days. I eased them in cold water, dabbed them dry. My mother asked what had happened. I told her I’d burned my hand on the lamp.

  Testing yourself again? she asked.

  I’d gone through a spell, a year or two back, of holding my hand over a candle flame, seeing how long I could bear it.

  Not this time, I said. It was an accident.

  But this pain, now, reminded me how little I could take, and how this was nothing, less than nothing, compared to that other, endless fire. And I knew it was the fire of desire that had brought me here, that fierce little dragon. I had read about it, and I’d seen beasts in their season, cattle in the fields, dogs in a dusty backyard, grimly coupling. My brother had taken a leering delight in telling me our mother and father had done this, that it was how we were made, how we came into the world.

  I made up my mind. The only way to conquer this desire, to go beyond it, was to throw myself into the spiritual life. It was time for me to go away, to become a monk.

  Fuji was this constant presence, this vastness, towering above the village, filling the horizon. It changed from moment to moment, day to day, season to season. It was hidden by spring mists, shimmered in summer haze, burned almost red in autumn, shone pure white in winter. But the shape of it, the form, was always there, taking the breath away, quickening the heart.

  I was wandering at the edge of the village, gazing up absently at the mountain, when I heard shouts in the distance. I had forgotten the procession would be passing through – the Daimyo and his entourage, his retinue, returning from Edo. Every year he had to make this journey – to Edo and back – on pain of death and at huge expense, to declare his loyalty to the Shogun.

  We heard crazy stories about the Shogun. He was known as Inu-Kubo, the Dog Shogun. He’d been born in the Year of the Dog and some rogue of a Buddhist monk had told him he’d been a dog in his last animal incarnation, before becoming human. So he’d issued an edict, On Compassion for Living Things, making a law that dogs should not be harmed and should be treated with respect. Anyone disobeying was liable to summary execution.

  I’d heard people talk about it at the inn. If they had too much to drink they might start by criticising the Daimyo, then they’d move on to the Shogun. (Somebody would bark.) Or they’d even criticise the emperor himself. Then a friend would make a cut-throat gesture or my father would clear his throat loudly and change the subject.

  I’d always loved watching the procession pass through Hara, the endless ranks of pikemen and flag-bearers, riflemen, armed samurai on horseback, ranks of foot-soldiers, priests and servants, palanquins wobbling on the shoulders of the bearers, the Daimyo himself in his elaborate norimon, curtained to shield him from view. There must have been a thousand men in the procession, and it took hours to pass through the village. Some of the Daimyo’s retainers would stop at the inn to water their horses, and my father would take charge and be suitably deferential as they ate and drank and shouted out their orders. The critics and gossips would stay well back, emerging later to share the news they’d picked up from the footsoldiers, rumours from the capital, tales from the floating world.

  I found a vantage point, back from the road, and settled to watch. The pikemen appeared first, the vanguard, all dressed in black silk, walking with their strange exaggerated slow march that was almost a kind of dance, raising the foot high then gliding forward. They did this in concentrated silence, the only sounds the swish of silk, the crunch of gravel underfoot.

  The lead man stepped for a moment to the side of the road, hitched up his loincloth and let out a great stream of piss, spattering in the dust. A few of the young girls from the bathhouse had been standing nearby and they jumped back, laughing.

  Did you see his thing?

  What a pike!

  The size of it!

  They laughed even louder, but the pikeman had returned to his position sombre and dignified, and resumed his slow march.

  A little way behind came the Daimyo himself, carried on high, hidden inside the norimon with its silk curtains, its elaborate carvings, and some way further back came another norimon, smaller, less ornate, but still beautifully decorated. This too
had its curtains closed, but just as it passed me, they opened with a swish of silk and a woman was looking out at me. Her face was the most beautiful I had ever seen, like an ukiyo-e painting, like the goddess Kannon herself, embodied.

  I must have been staring, and I’m sure my mouth fell open so I gulped like some stupid carp surfacing. The woman smiled and the curtain fell shut. I was shaken, but I bowed and turned away, continued walking up the hill, Fuji ahead of me.

  There was a haiku I had read.

  Beloved Fuji –

  The mist clears and reveals

  Your snowy whiteness.

  When I’d climbed far enough, I looked back, saw the procession still trailing into the distance, but so small, so insignificant. I imagined each and every one of that huge entourage plodding along with head down, eyes fixed on the ground, not once looking up at this. This.

  I knew when I went back to the inn I would have to help clear up the mess. My father would ask where I had been and raise his eyes to heaven.

  I bowed once more to the mountain, and dragging my steps I headed back down.

  Now I made drawings of Fuji, with swift simple strokes, and I tried to draw Bodhisattva Kannon. Sometimes her face looked like my mother, sometimes like the woman who had looked out at me through the curtains of the norimon.

  My restlessness increased and I went out walking every day, climbed the slopes of Mount Yanagizawa in search of a quiet place to sit, away from the everyday world. I found the perfect spot, a flat rock above a mountain stream, a sheer cliff face rising up behind. I sat for hours, totally absorbed, reciting what I knew of the sutras, looking down at the rushing stream, or up at Fuji.

  One day I noticed that a configuration of the rock, viewed from a certain angle, resembled Kannon herself. The next morning I brought a chisel and a small mallet, borrowed from my father’s workshop, and I set to carving the likeness into the stone, accentuating what was already there, bringing it to life. When I’d finished I stood looking at it in amazement, the Bodhisattva smiling at me. I bowed my head and chanted to her in reverence.