∗
So it came about that this ten-mat parlor awkwardly redone to become the sole Western-style room in the mansion became the scene for the first occasion in their long acquaintance that these two couples confronted each other stripped of all niceties. The women averted their eyes and each from time to time stole a look at her husband. Though the two men faced each other, Count Ayakura tended to hang his head. His hands, resting on the table, were small and white, the hands of a doll in a puppet play. In contrast, despite his essential weakness, the Marquis’s coarse, florid features could have served as a Noh mask of the angry devil with the fiercely contorted eyebrows. Even in the eyes of the wives, the Count appeared to have no chance.
As it turned out, the Marquis’s anger swept all before it for a time. But even while he was letting himself rage, he began to feel a little embarrassed over his display of self-righteousness. For after all, his own position in this affair was safe from first to last. Moreover, he could hardly have been matched with a weaker, more pitiful antagonist than the one who now confronted him. The Count’s color was unhealthy. As he sat there in silence, an expression, part sorrow, part dismay, came over his face, which seemed to be carved out of yellow ivory, the features delicately chiseled and quite composed. The crinkled eyelids emphasized the deep-set cast of the habitually downcast eyes as well as their melancholy. The Marquis had the feeling, not for the first time, that they were women’s eyes.
Count Ayakura’s languid reticence, his manner of slumping casually in his chair, clearly bespoke the graceful elegance of ancient tradition—something that was nowhere to be found in the Marquis’s pedigree—now displayed at its most deeply injured. It had something of the soiled plumage of a dead bird, a creature that had once sung beautifully but whose flesh was tasteless and so inedible after all.
“It’s quite unbelievable! A positively wretched thing to happen. What apologies could we offer to the Emperor, to the entire nation?” the Marquis declaimed heedlessly, intent on letting his anger sweep along on a stream of orotund syllables but aware that its supporting lifeline might snap at any minute. Anger was useless against the Count, who was neither acquainted with logic nor remotely inclined to initiate any course of action. Worse still, the Marquis gradually came to realize that the more enraged he became, the more the force of his passion was turned relentlessly back against itself.
He could not believe that the Count had plotted just such a result from the very beginning. But nonetheless he now saw with painful clarity that the Count had been able to use his endemic listlessness to forge so impregnable a position that, however monumental the catastrophe, the blame for it would come to rest not on himself but on his ally.
After all, it was the Marquis who had asked the Count to give his son an upbringing that would imbue him with a sense of elegance. It was undoubtedly the desires of the flesh in Kiyoaki that had brought on this misfortune, and one might well argue that this was the consequence of the subtle poison that had begun to infect his spirit after his arrival in the Ayakura household as an infant. But the ultimate instigator of this was none other than the Marquis himself. Furthermore, in this latest twist of the crisis, it was the Marquis who had insisted on sending Satoko down to Osaka without any forethought that something like this might occur. Everything thus conspired to turn the force of the Marquis’s wrath against himself.
Finally worn out by his exertions and unnerved by his growing anxiety, the Marquis held his tongue. The ensuing silence lengthened and grew more profound until it seemed as if the four of them had gathered in this room to practice group meditation. The noonday clucking of the chickens came from the yard behind the house. Each time the early winter wind blew through the trees outside, the pine needles that stirred at the slightest touch flashed brightly. There was no sound of human activity from anywhere else in the house, and the silence seemed to be in deference to the eerie atmosphere in the parlor.
The Countess finally broke the spell.
“It was my negligence that caused this. There is no way that I can apologize sufficiently to you, Marquis Matsugae. However, things being as they are, wouldn’t it be best to try and make Satoko change her mind as soon as possible and have the betrothal ceremony take place as planned?”
“But what about her hair?” was the Marquis’s immediate retort.
“Well, as to that, if we are quick and arrange to have a wig made, it would mislead the public eye for a while . . .”
“A wig!” the Marquis exclaimed, breaking in before the Countess had finished with a slightly shrill note of joy in his voice. “I never thought of that.”
“Yes, of course,” said his wife, chiming in at once. “We never thought of that.”
And from then on, as the others were infected with the Marquis’s enthusiasm, the wig was all they could talk about. For the first time, laughter was heard in the parlor as the four of them competed to pounce first on this bright idea as if it were a scrap of meat.
Not all of them, however, placed the same degree of faith in the Countess’s novel idea. The Count, for one, did not trust its efficacy. The Marquis may well have shared his skepticism, but he was capable of feigning belief with dignity. And the Count himself hastened to profit by his example.
“Even if the young prince gets a bit suspicious about Satoko’s hair,” said the Marquis, lowering his voice to a forced whisper while he laughed, “he’s certainly not going to touch it to see for himself.”
An atmosphere of cordiality pervaded the room, however fragile the fiction that sustained it. For the fiction supplied them with that tangible element so vital at this moment. No one considered Satoko’s soul; it was her hair alone that pertained to the national interest.
The Marquis’s father had dedicated all of his fierce strength and passion to the cause of the imperial restoration. His mortification would have been bitter had he known that the glory he had earned for the family name would one day depend on a woman’s wig. This sort of intricate and shady maneuvering was hardly the forte of the House of Matsugae. It was, in fact, far more characteristic of the Ayakuras. But the present Marquis, instead of leaving elegantly refined deceptions to the Ayakuras, who were bred to that kind of thing, had become fascinated by it, and so the House of Matsugae was now compelled to share an unaccustomed burden.
The truth of the matter was that this wig as yet only existed in their imaginations and was totally irrelevant to Satoko’s intentions. However, once they succeeded in dressing her in a wig, they would be able to construct a flawless picture from the pieces of a shattered jigsaw puzzle. Everything thus seemed to depend on the wig, and the Marquis gave himself over to the project with enthusiasm.
Each of the foursome in the parlor contributed wholeheartedly to the discussion of the nonexistent hairpiece. Satoko would have to wear one dressed in a long, straight hairstyle for the betrothal ceremony, but for everyday use, a wig done in the Western fashion would be necessary. And since there was no telling when someone might catch sight of her, she must not take it off even when she took a bath. And each of them began to use his or her imagination to picture this wig with which they had already decided to crown her: abundant, jet-black hair, even more glossy than her own. Such sovereign power would be hers despite herself, the grandeur of a towering, gracefully arranged coiffure radiating a dark fascination moreover that would imbue the flat brightness of midday with something of the essence of night. Each of the four was well enough aware that it would be no simple matter to achieve this—that beneath this peerless wig there would be a face marked with unhappiness, but no one was willing to dwell for long on this aspect of the problem.
“This time I would appreciate it greatly if you yourself, Count, went down there to impress upon your daughter how firmly your mind is made up. Countess, I’m so sorry that you must go to the trouble of a second trip, but I’ll arrange for my wife to accompany you again. Of course, I, too, should really go. However . . .” Here, the Marquis, who was sensitive to appearances, fal
tered slightly. “If I should go, you see, it might well make people wonder. So I’ll stay here. I would like the whole trip to be accomplished in the greatest secrecy this time. As far as my wife’s absence is concerned, we can let it be known that she’s ill. And in the meantime here in Tokyo, let me look around and I’ll hire the best craftsman available to make us a fine wig without anyone being the wiser. If a newspaper reporter should get wind of it, we’d have a pretty situation on our hands. But just you leave that question to me.”
46
KIYOAKI WAS SURPRISED to see his mother once again getting ready for a trip. However, she refused to tell him either the destination or the purpose of her journey, saying only that he was not to mention it outside the house. He sensed that something alarming was afoot and that it had to do with Satoko, but with Yamada constantly at his side to keep an eye on him, there was no way he could find out any more.
When the Ayakuras and Marquise Matsugae arrived at Gesshu Temple, they were met with an appalling state of affairs. Satoko had already received the tonsure.
∗
The circumstances that had led so rapidly to her renunciation of the world were as follows. When the Abbess had heard the entire story from Satoko that first morning, she had known at once that she must allow the girl to become a nun. Keenly aware that each of her predecessors at Gesshu had been an imperial princess, she felt bound to revere the Emperor above all else. And so she had come to the decision that she had to allow Satoko to enter even if this involved a temporary thwarting of the imperial will. She had concluded that, given the circumstances, there was no other way to discharge her loyalty to the Emperor. She had happened to uncover a plot directed at him, and she could not allow it to proceed unchecked. She was not one to countenance a breach of loyalty, no matter how elegant the cunning that disguised it.
Thus it was that the normally so discreet and gentle Abbess of Gesshu made up her mind, determined to give in neither to the force of authority nor the threat of coercion. Even if all the world should be ranged against her, even if she were forced to ignore a particular imperial decree, she would persist in what she had to do—to be a silent guard of the sacred person of His Majesty.
Her resolve had a profound effect on Satoko, who became all the more determined to turn her back on the world. She had not expected the Abbess to grant her request so readily. She had had an encounter with the Lord Buddha, and the Abbess, her eye as keen as a crane’s, had immediately discerned the firmness of the girl’s decision.
Although it was customary for a novice to undergo a year of ascetic discipline before her formal induction as a nun, both Satoko and the Abbess felt that in the present circumstances this period should be dispensed with. But the Abbess could not bring herself to disregard the Ayakuras so completely as to allow Satoko to take the tonsure before the Countess returned from Tokyo. Moreover, there was the matter of Kiyoaki. Would it not be wise, she thought, to allow him and Satoko to bid each other a long farewell before she sacrificed what hair she had spared so far?
Satoko could hardly endure the delay. She came to the Abbess every day and, like a child teasing her mother to give her candy, begged to be allowed to take the tonsure. Finally, the Abbess found herself prepared to yield.
“If I were to allow you to take the tonsure,” she asked Satoko, “you would never be allowed to see Kiyoaki again. That wouldn’t trouble you?”
“No.”
“Well, once you make the decision not to see him ever again in this world and so advance to initiation, any later regrets would indeed be bitter ones.”
“I will have no regrets. In this world I shall never set eyes on him again. As for parting, we’ve had farewells enough. So please . . .”
Her voice as she replied was clear and firm.
“Very well. Tomorrow morning, then, I will preside at the tonsure ceremony,” the Abbess replied, allowing one more day of grace.
Countess Ayakura did not return in the interval.
From that first morning at Gesshu, Satoko had plunged herself, of her own volition, into the disciplined routine of convent life. The distinctive character of Hosso Buddhism was in placing greater emphasis on the cultivation of the mind than the practice of religious austerities. Gesshu Temple, furthermore, was traditionally dedicated to praying for the welfare of the whole nation, and there were no households registered with it as parishioners. Sometimes the Abbess would observe with gentle humor that the “Grace of tears” was something never encountered in Hosso Buddhism, thus underlining the contrast with the more recently arisen Amida cult of Pure Land Buddhism, with its great stress on ecstatic prayers of gratitude.
Then, too, in Mahayana Buddhism in general, there were no precepts to speak of. But for the rules of its monastic life the precepts of Hinayana Buddhism were often borrowed. In convents such as Gesshu, however, the rule was the “Precepts of a Bodhisattva” contained in the Brahamajala Sutra. Its forty-eight prohibitions began with ten major injunctions against such sins as the taking of life, stealing, excess of any sort, and lying, and it concluded with an admonishment against destroying Buddhist teachings.
Far more severe than any commandment, however, was the monastic training. In the brief time she had been at Gesshu, Satoko had already memorized both the “Sutra of the Enlightened Heart” and the “Thirty Verses” expounding the doctrine of Yuishiki. Each morning she got up early to sweep and dust the main hall of worship before the Abbess came for her morning devotions, in the course of which she then had an opportunity to practice the chanting of the sutras. She was no longer treated as a guest, and the senior nun, whom the Abbess had placed in charge of her, was now a changed woman in her severity of manner.
On the morning of the initiation ceremony, she carefully performed the prescribed ablutions before putting on the black robes of a nun. In the hall of worship, she sat with her string of beads wrapped around her hands, which she held clasped together in front of her. After the Abbess herself had first taken the razor and begun the tonsuring, the old nun in charge of her took over. And as she shaved steadily with a skilled hand, the Abbess began to chant the “Sutra of the Enlightened Heart,” accompanied by the junior nun.
When she had consummated the works of perfection,
The Five Aggregates of living being became as
Things void before the Bohdisattva Kannon’s eyes,
And stricken from her was the yoke of human suffering.
Satoko, too, took up the chant, her eyes closed. And as she did so, her body became like a boat that is gradually lightened of all its cargo and freed of its anchor, and she felt herself being swept along on the deep swelling wave of chanting voices.
She kept her eyes shut. The main hall had the penetrating chill of an ice house. and so, although she herself was floating free, she imagined a vast expanse of pure ice gripping all the world about her. Suddenly the cry of a shrike came from the garden outside, and a crack raced across this icy plane with the swiftness of a jagged steak of lightning. But it sealed itself almost at once, and the ice became whole once more.
She felt the razor working its way with scrupulous care across her scalp. Sometimes she imagined the frenetic gnawing of a mouse’s tiny white incisors, sometimes the placid grinding of the molars of a horse or cow.
As lock after lock fell away, she felt her scalp begin to tingle with a refreshing coolness that was quite new to her. The razor was shearing off the black hair that had separated her from the world for so long, sultry and heavy with its sorry burden of desire; but her scalp was now being laid bare to a realm of purity whose chill freshness had not been violated by any man’s hand. As the expanse of shaved head broadened, she began to feel the skin coming more and more alive, just as if a cool solution of menthol was spreading over it.
She imagined that the chill must be like the surface of the moon, directly exposed to the vastness of the universe. The world she had known was falling away with each strand. And as it did so, she became infinitely removed from it.
<
br /> In one sense, it seemed as though her hair were being harvested. Shorn black clumps, still saturated with the stifling brilliance of the summer sun, piled up on the floor around her. But it was a worthless crop, for the very instant that the luxuriant black handfuls ceased to be hers, the beauty of life went out of them, leaving only an ugly remnant. Something that had once been an intimate part of her, an aesthetic element of her innermost being, was now being relentlessly thrown aside. As irrevocable as the amputation of a limb, the ties that bound her to the world of transience were being severed.
When her scalp at last shone with a bluish glint, the Abbess addressed her gently.
“The most crucial renunciation is the one that comes after formal renunciation. I have the utmost trust in your present resolution. From this day on, if you seek constantly to purify your heart in the austerities of our life, I have no doubt that one day you will become the glory of our sisterhood.”
∗
This was how Satoko’s premature tonsuring came about. Neither Countess Ayakura nor Marquise Matsugae, however, was prepared to give up, no matter how shattered they were by Satoko’s transformation. After all, there remained the wig, a potent weapon still held in reserve.
47
COUNT AYAKURA ALONE among the three visitors maintained an appearance of affability from first to last. He engaged the Abbess and Satoko in casual, unhurried conversation about the world in general, and at no time gave the slightest hint that he might want Satoko to change her mind.
A telegram arrived every day from Marquis Matsugae demanding a report on the situation to date. Finally the Countess broke down and wept as she pleaded with her daughter, but this gained her nothing, and so on the third day after their arrival, the Countess and the Marquise left for Tokyo, putting all their trust in the Count, who remained at Gesshu. The strain had worked such ravages in the Countess that she took to her bed as soon as she returned home.