Bored with my lengthy gazing at the temple, Tsurukawa picked up a pebble and with the graceful motion of a pitcher threw it into the center of the shadow that the Golden Temple cast on the Kyoko Pond. The ripples spread out through the duckweed and the beautiful, delicate structure instantly crumbled to pieces.
The one year that followed until the war ended was the period during which I was most intimate with the Golden Temple, during which I was ever concerned with its safety and utterly absorbed in its beauty. It was a period during which I had seemed to pull the temple down to my own level and, believing this, was able to love it without the slightest sense of fear. The temple had not yet given me any of its evil influence or its poison.
I was encouraged by the fact the Golden Temple and I shared a common danger in this world. In this danger I had found an intermediary that could connect me with beauty. I felt that a bridge had been built between myself and the thing that until then had seemed to deny me, to keep me at a distance,
I was almost intoxicated with the thought that the fire which would destroy me would probably also destroy the Golden Temple. Existing as we did under the same curse, under the same ill-omened fiery destiny, the temple and I had come to inhabit worlds of the same dimension. Just like my own frail, ugly body, the temple's body, hard though it was, consisted of combustible carbon. At times I felt that it would be possible for me to flee this place, taking along the temple concealed in my flesh, in my system-just as a thief swallows a precious jewel when making his escape.
During that entire year I did not learn a single sutra or read a book; instead I was busy day after day from morning till night with moral education, drill, military arts, factory work, and training for compulsory evacuation. My nature, which already tended to be dreamy, became all the more so, and thanks to the war, ordinary life receded even farther from me. For us boys, war was a dreamlike sort of experience lacking any real substance, something like an isolation ward in which one is cut off from the meaning of life.
When the first B-29's attacked Tokyo in November of 1944, it was expected that Kyoto would be raided at any time. It became my secret dream that all Kyoto should be wrapped in flames. This city was too anxious to preserve its old things just as they were; the multifarious shrines and temples were forgetting the memories of the red-hot ash that had been born from inside. When I imagined how the Great Battle of Ojin had laid waste this city, I felt that Kyoto had lost part of its beauty from having too long forgotten the unrest of war fires.
Tomorrow the Golden Temple would surely burn down. That form which had been filling the space would be lost. Even the bird on top of the temple would be revived like the classical phoenix and soar away. And the Golden Temple itself, which had until then been constrained by its form, would be freed from all rules and would drift lightly here and there, scattering a faint light on the lake and on the waters of the dark sea.
Though I waited and waited, Kyoto was never visited by an air raid. Even when I read on March 9 of the next year that the entire business district of Tokyo was a sea of flames, and that disaster was spreading far and wide, Kyoto was covered with the limpid sky of early spring. By now I was almost desperate as I waited, trying to convince myself that this early spring sky concealed within itself all manner of fire and destruction, just as a gleaming glass window hides what lies behind it. As I have already said, I was hopelessly weak in human feeling. Father's death and Mother's poverty hardly affected my inner life at all. What I dreamed of was something like a huge heavenly compressor that would bring down disasters, cataclysms and superhuman tragedies, that would crush beneath it all human beings and all objects, irrespective of their ugliness or their beauty. Sometimes the unusual brilliance of the early spring sky appeared to me like the light of the cool blade of some huge axe that was large enough to cover the entire earth. Then I just waited for the axe to fall—for it to fall with a speed that would not even give one time to think.
There is something that even now strikes me as strange. Originally I was not possessed by gloomy thoughts. My concern, what confronted me with my real problem, was beauty alone. But I do not think that the war affected me by filling my mind with gloomy thoughts. When people concentrate on the idea of beauty, they are, without realizing it, confronted with the darkest thoughts that exist in this world. That, I suppose, is how human beings are made.
I remember an episode that took place in Kyoto towards the end of the war. It was something quite unbelievable, but I was not the only witness. Tsurukawa was next to me.
One day when the power supply was cut off, Tsurukawa and I went to visit the Nanzen Temple together. This was our first visit to the Nanzen Temple. We crossed the wide drive and went over the wooden bridge that spanned the incline where boats used to be launched.
It was a clear May day. The incline was no longer in use and the rails that ran down the slope were rusty and almost entirely overgrown with weeds. Amid the weeds, delicate little cross-shaped flowers trembled in the wind. Up to the point where the incline started, the water was dirty and stagnant, and the shadows of the rows of cherry trees on our side of the water were thoroughly immersed in it.
Standing on the small bridge, we gazed absently at the water. Amid all one's wartime memories, such short absent moments leave the most vivid impression. These brief moments of inactive abstraction lurked everywhere, like patches of blue sky that peep through the clouds. It is strange that a moment like this should have remained clearly in my mind, just as though it had been an occasion of poignant pleasure.
"It's pleasant, isn't it?" I said and smiled inconsequentially.
"Uh," replied Tsurukawa, and he too smiled. The two of us felt keenly that these few hours belonged to us.
Beside the wide graveled path ran a ditch full of clear water, in which beautiful water plants were swaying with the flow. Soon the famous Sammon Gate reared itself before us. There was not a soul to be seen in the temple precincts. Among the fresh verdure, the tiles of the temple roof shone luxuriantly, as though some great smoked-silver book had been laid down there. What meaning could war have at this moment? At a certain place, at a certain time, it seemed to me that war had become a weird spiritual incident having no existence outside human consciousness.
Perhaps it was on top of this Sammon Gate that the famous robber of old, Ishikawa Goémon, had placed his feet on the railing and enjoyed the sight of flowers below in their full blossom. We were both in a childish mood and, although it was already the season in which the cherry trees have lost their blossoms and are covered in foliage, We thought that We should enjoy seeing the view from the same position as Goémon. We paid our small entrance fee and climbed the steep steps whose wood had now turned completely black. In the hall at the top, where religious dances used to be performed, Tsurukawa hit his head on the low ceiling. I laughed and immediately afterwards bumped my own head. We both made another turn, climbed to the head of the stairs and emerged on top of the tower.
It was a pleasant tension, after climbing the stairs, which were as cramped as a cellar, to feci our bodies suddenly exposed to the wide outside scene. We stood there for a time gazing at the cherry trees and the pines, at the forest of the Heian Shrine that stretched tortuously in the distance beyond the rows of buildings, at the form of the mountain ranges—Arashiyama, Kitanokata, Kifune, Minoura, Kompira—all of them rising up hazily at the extremities of the streets of Kyoto. When We had satisfied ourselves with this, We removed our shoes and respectfully entered the hall like a couple of typical acolytes. In the dark hall twenty-four straw mats were spread out on the floor. In the center was a statue of Sâkamuni, and the golden eyes of sixteen Arhants gleamed in the darkness. This was known as the Gohoro or the Tower of the Fiye Phoenixes.
The Nanzen Temple belonged to the same Rinzai sect as the Golden Temple, but whereas the latter adhered to the Sokokuji school, this was the headquarters of the Nanzenji school. In other words, we were now in a temple of the same sect as our own but of a different scho
ol. We stood there like two ordinary middle-school students, with a guide book in our hands, looking round at the vividly colored paintings on the ceiling, which are attributed to Tanyu Morinobu of the Kano school and to Hogan Tokuetsu of the Tosa school. On one side of the ceiling were paintings of angels flying through the sky and playing the flute and the ancient biwa. Elsewhere, a Kalavinka was fluttering about with a white peony in its beak. This was the melodious bird that is described in the sutras as living on Mount Sessan: the upper part of its body is that of a plump girl and its lower part has a bird's form. In the center was painted that fabulous bird which is supposed to be a companion to the bird on the summit of the Golden Temple; but this one was like a gorgeous rainbow, utterly different from that solemn golden bird with which I was so familiar.
Before the statue of Sâkamuni we knelt down and folded our hands in prayer. Then we left the hall. But it was hard to drag ourselves down from the top of the tower. We leaned against the railing facing south by the top of the steps that We had climbed. I felt as though somewhere I could see a small, beautiful, colored spiral before my eyes. It must have been an after-image of the magnificent colors that I had just seen on the ceiling paintings. This feeling that I had of a condensation of rich colors was as though that Kalavinka bird were hiding somewhere amid those young leaves or on some branches of those green pines that spread out everywhere below, and as though it were letting me glimpse a corner of its splendid wings.
But it was not so. Across the road below us was the Tenju Hermitage. A path, paved with square stones, of which only the corners touched each other, bent its way across a garden, where low, peaceful trees had been planted in a simple style, and led to a large room with wide-open sliding-doors. One could sec every detail of the alcove and of the staggered shelves in the room. A bright-scarlet carpet was spread out on the floor: evidently the room was frequently used for tea dedications arid rented for tea ceremonies. A young woman was sitting there. It was she that had been reflected in my eyes. During the war one never saw a woman dressed in such a brilliant, long-sleeved kimono as she was wearing. Anyone who went out dressed as she was would almost certainly be rebuked for lack of patriotic sobriety and would have to return home and change. So gorgeous was her form of dress. I could not sec the details of the pattern, but I noticed that flowers were painted and embroidered on a pale blue background, and that her vermilion sash was glittering with gold thread: it was almost as though the surrounding air were illuminated by the brilliance of her costume. The beautiful young woman was sitting on the floor in a position of perfect elegance; her pale profile stood out in relief as if it were carved, and at first I could not help wondering whether she was really a living person.
“Good heavens!” I said, stuttering badly. "Can she really be alive?”
“That' just what I was thinking. She's exactly like a doll, isn't she?" replied Tsurukawa, who stood leaning heavily against the railing without taking his eyes off the woman.
Just then a young army officer appeared in uniform from the back of the room. He sat down with stiff formality a few feet away from the woman and faced her. For a while the two of them sat facing each other quietly.
The woman stood up and disappeared silently into the darkness of the corridor. After a time, she returned holding a teacup in her hands; her long sleeves swayed to and fro in the breeze. She knelt directly in front of the man and offered him the tea. Having presented him with the teacup according to etiquette, she returned to her original place. The man said something. He still did not drink the tea. The moment that followed seemed strangely long and tense. The woman's head was deeply bowed.
It was then that the unbelievable thing happened. Still sitting absolutely straight, the woman suddenly loosened the collar of her kimono. I could almost hear the rustling of the silk as she pulled the material of her dress from under the stiff sash. Then I saw her white breasts. I held my breath. The woman took one of her full white breasts in her own hands. The officer held out the dark, deep-colored teacup, and knelt before her. The woman rubbed her breast with both hands.
I cannot say that I saw it all, but I felt distinctly, as though it had all happened directly before my eyes, how the white warm milk gushed forth from her breast into the deep-green tea which foamed inside that cup, how it settled into the liquid, leaving white drops on the top, how the quiet surface of the tea was made turbid and foamy by that white breast.
The man held the cup to his mouth and drank every drop of that mysterious tea. The woman hid her full breast in the kimono.
Tsurukawa and I gazed tensely at the scene. Later when We examined the matter systematically, we decided that this must have been a farewell ceremony between an officer who was leaving for the front and the woman who had conceived his child. But our emotions at that moment made any logical explanation impossible. Because we were staring so hard, we did not have time to notice that the man and woman had gone out of the room, leaving nothing but the great red carpet.
I had seen that white profile of hers in relief and I had seen her magnificent white breast. After the woman left, I thpught persistently of one thing during the remaining hours of that day and also during the next day and the day after. I thought that this woman was none other than Uiko, who had been brought back to life.
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS the anniversary of Father's death. Mother had an odd idea. Since it was difficult for me to go home because of my compulsory labor, she thought of coming to Kyoto herself, bringing along Father's mortuary tablet, so that Father Dosen might chant some sutras before it, if only for a few minutes, on the anniversary or his old friend's death. Of course she did not have enough money to pay for the mass, and she wrote the Superior, throwing herself on his charity. Father Dosen agreed to her request and informed me about it.
I was not pleased at this news. There is a special reason that I have until now avoided writing about my mother. I do not particularly feel like touching on what relates to my mother.
Concerning a certain incident, I never addressed a single word of reproof to Mother. I never spoke about it. Mother probably did not even realize that I knew about it. But ever since that incident occurred, I could not bring myself to forgive her.
It happened during my summer holidays when I had gone home for the first time after entering the East Maizuru Middle School and after being entrusted to my uncle's care. At that time, a relative of Mother's called Kurai had returned to Nariu from Osaka, where he had failed in his business. His wife, who was the heiress of a well-to-do family, would not take him back into their house, and Kurai was obliged to stay in Father's temple until the affair subsided.
We did not have much mosquito netting in our temple. It was really a wonder that Mother and I did not catch Father's tuberculosis, since we all slept together under the same net; and now this man Kurai was added to our number. I remember how late one summer night a cicada flew along the trees in the garden, giving out short cries. It was probably those cries that awakened me. The sound of the waves echoed loudly, and the bottom of the light-green mosquito net flapped in the sea breeze. But there was something strange about the way in which the mosquito net was shaking.
The mosquito net would begin to swell with the wind, then it would shake reluctantly as it let the wind filter through it. The way in which the net was blown together into folds was not, therefore, a true reflection of how the wind was blowing; instead, the net seemed to abandon the wind and to deprive it of its power. There was a sound, like the rustling of bamboo, of something rubbing against the straw mats; it was the bottom of the mosquito net as it rubbed against the floor. A certain movement, which did not come from the wind, was being transmitted to the mosquito net. A movement that was more subtle than the wind's; a movement that spread like rippling waves along the whole length of the mosquito net, making the rough material contract spasmodically and causing the huge expanse of the net to look from the inside like the surface of a lake that is swollen with uneasiness. Was it the head
of some wave created by a ship as it plowed its way far off through the lake; or was it the distant reflection of a wave left in the wake of a ship that had already passed this place?
Fearfully I turned my eyes to its source. Then, as I gazed through the darkness with wide-open eyes I felt as though a gimlet was drilling into the very center of my eyeballs.
I was lying next to Father; the mosquito net was far too small for four people, and in my sleep I must have turned over and pushed him over to one corner. Accordingly, there was a large white expanse of crumpled sheet separating me from the thing that I now saw; and Father, who lay curled up behind me, was breathing right down my neck.
What made me realize that Father was actually awake was the irregular, jumping rhythm of his breath against my back; for I could tell that he was trying to stop himself from coughing. All of a sudden my open eyes were covered by something large and warm, and I could see nothing. I understood at once. Father had stretched his hands out from behind to cut off my vision.
This happened many years ago when I was only thirteen, but the memory of those hands is still alive within me. Incomparably large hands. Hands that had been put round me from behind, blotting out in one second the sight of that hell which I had seen. Hands from another world. Whether it was from love or compassion or shame, I do not know; but those hands had instantaneously cut off the terrifying world with which I was confronted and had buried it in darkness.
I nodded slightly within those hands. From that nodding of my small head, Father could instantly tell that I had understood and that I was ready to acquiesce; he removed his hands. And, afterwards, just as those hands had ordered, I kept my eyes obstinately closed, and thus lay there sleeplessly until morning came and the dazzling light from outside forced its way through my eyelids.