But there was no sign of Isao. The disciple reappeared and knelt at the threshold.
“According to the students, Isao was very angry over your taking him to task a little while ago, and he borrowed a hunting gun at the gatekeeper’s house and said he was going to shoot a dog or a cat to get it off his mind. It seems he headed out toward the mountains, probably to Tanzawa.”
“What? Shedding the blood of animals after being purified? Such infamy!” Kaido stood up, his lion’s eyes blazing. “Assemble every man in that study group of Isao’s. Tell them that each is to take an oblation branch in his hand and go out to confront Isao. He’ll be as bad as Lord Susano himself, defiling our sacred precincts.”
Strength seemed to drain out of Iinuma as his consternation deepened, a plight that the bystander Honda had to view with some amusement.
“But what could my boy have done? Why was it that you had to scold him?”
“For nothing serious. Don’t worry. But in that son of yours the harsh god is too strong. I reprimanded him because unless he works hard to be more receptive to the mild god, he’ll stray from the right path. In your son it’s the heedless and intractable spirit that’s dominant. Since he’s a boy, that’s fine, but he goes much too far. When I admonished him, he hung his head dutifully and listened, but then, afterwards, it must have been the harsh god suddenly breaking loose.”
“I must take an oblation branch myself and go along to purify him.”
“That would be well. Go quickly then, before he defiles himself.”
Hearing all this, Honda at first felt somewhat cowed by the uncanny atmosphere, but suddenly his intelligence was affronted by the utter absurdity of it. These people around him took no thought of the flesh but were altogether absorbed in the spirit. Here was a quite ordinary incident of an independent young man becoming furious when reprimanded, but they viewed it as a manifestation of the dread power of the realm of spirits.
Now Honda regretted that his strange sense of rapport with Isao had made him come to such a place. But some unknown peril to Isao seemed to be taking form before him, and he felt that he should do whatever lay in his power to hold it back.
When they went outside, some twenty young men, each holding a sakaki branch hung with white paper pendants, stood gathered there with tense expressions. Iinuma raised his branch and started to walk. The entire group fell in behind him. Honda, who alone was wearing a suit, took his place immediately in back of Iinuma.
At that moment Honda had a peculiar feeling. What he was doing seemed somehow linked to a distant memory despite its being not at all likely that he had ever found himself in the midst of a white-clad group such as this. Yet he seemed to hear a metallic sound, as though a hoe were at work unearthing a memory of inestimable value and striking against the first rock that lay in its way. The sound echoed strongly within his head, but then it was gone like a phantom. The impression had held him but for an instant. What had caused it?
It was as though a length of beautiful, thick golden thread had arched its graceful way past the needle of Honda’s perception, barely grazing it. It had touched the needle, but, just as it seemed about to pass through the eye, it had turned aside and was gone. As though fearful of being woven vigorously into the embroidery material, blank but for the faint pattern sketched upon it, the thread had slipped to one side of the needle’s eye and passed beside it. The fingers that guided it were huge yet slender and extremely supple.
23
IT WAS ABOUT three o’clock on a late October afternoon, an hour when the sun had already begun to conceal itself behind the surrounding mountains. The light from the cloud-streaked sky enveloped the wooded ridges like mist.
The procession led by Iinuma crossed the old suspension bridge in silence, three or four men at a time. As Honda looked down, he saw that to the north of the bridge the water was still and deep, but on the south side, where the place of purification was located, the river ran swift and shallow between graveled shores. It was this rotting bridge that marked the division between the depths and the shallows.
After he had crossed, Honda turned and looked back at the young men solemnly marching behind him on the bridge, their oncoming footsteps sending shudders along its planks.
The young men, each holding up his sakaki branch, moved forward against a background formed of the oaks on the opposite side, the mulberry fields, the ravaged red leaves of the nurudé trees, the hut atop the bank, and one black-trunked persimmon from which a single red fruit hung with sensuous grace. Their figures shone in the few rays of the setting sun that just then broke through the clouds hovering over the mountain ridges. The sunlight threw into sharp relief the pleats of their hakama, and gave such brilliance to their white robes that each marcher seemed to be his own source of brightness. The leaves of the sakaki branch he carried gave off a dark green luster, and the white pendants hung upon it were flecked with delicate shadows.
There was some delay before the entire group of almost twenty men had crossed. Honda gazed around him once more at the autumn mountain scenery that he had already had leisure to study on the two-and-a-half-mile walk from Shiozu to Yanagawa.
Since this was in the heart of the mountains, the varied dark and light colors of near and distant slopes were superimposed one upon the other and seemed to press in on the viewer. Every mountain had a generous share of cedars that stood out darkly with severe aloofness from the mild red warmth that surrounded them. Autumn was not yet advanced, and the seasonal coloring, though apparent, was like a mantle of shaggy yellowish wool mottled with rust red. A listless mood seemed to weigh upon the reds, yellows, greens, and browns, muting their brilliance. The smell of wood smoke and the mistlike sunlight enwrapped everything. The more distant slopes were sharply etched in pale blue beneath their shroud of light mist. None of these mountains, however, offered a forbiddingly steep aspect.
When everyone had crossed the bridge, Iinuma set out in the lead again, Honda still behind him. The ground beneath their feet had been covered with fallen oak leaves on the other side of the bridge, but now, along this high, rocky road, it was the leaves of cherry trees that predominated. From the bridge on, these lay like fallen red flowers. Some wet leaves, already decaying, had faded to a pink that was the color of the dawn. Why should decay take the color of the dawn? Honda wondered, the pointless question nagging at him. A fire tower stood at the top of the cliff, its small bell silhouetted against a pale blue sky. Now it was the leaves of persimmon trees that covered the path. On either side there were cabbage fields and farmhouses. Reddish purple wild chrysanthemums were everywhere, and each yard had its persimmon trees, bare except for a remnant of fruit which hung from their branches like New Year’s ornaments. The path wound this way and that, between the hedges of the farmhouses.
Just as they had passed one of these houses, a much wider view abruptly opened before them. The path too, at a point where a Buddhist requiem stone from the Kaei era stood overgrown with weeds, suddenly turned into a broad road amid the farmland.
To the southwest there was but one small mountain. Directly in front of the marchers, tall Mount Gozen, together with the other mountains that filled the northern horizon, rose up beyond the river and the road. So far in their journey, except for this village in the foothills of Gozen, there had been no sign of a human dwelling.
Clusters of red-flowered knotgrass bloomed along the straw-littered side of the road. The chirping of crickets could be heard faintly. Rice-drying racks lined many of the fields, and in others the new-cut sheaves were spread out upon the dark, cracked ground. A young boy, proud of his new bike, turned to gawk at the strange procession as he slowly pedaled by.
Autumn tints, like smudged powder, covered the small mountain to the southwest. Before them, the way lay open to the north as far as the bank of the Katsura. A lone cedar, torn by lightning, stood in a nearby field, its rent trunk bent back and its withered needles the color of dried blood. Its roots were partially pulled up out of the ground, an
d bearded grass sprung out in all directions from them.
It was then that a figure dressed in white appeared ahead on the road, and one of the young men called out: “There he is.”
Honda felt an unaccountable shiver run down his spine.
A half hour earlier, Isao, his eyes bloodshot, had ranged over this same area with a Murata rifle in his hand. He was not angry at Master Kaido’s scolding. But in the course of it an intolerable idea had come to him. He found he could not help thinking that the crystal vessel of beauty and purity he sought had already fallen to the ground and lay in fragments, and that he was stubbornly refusing to acknowledge it. Was it not true, he wondered, that if he wanted to take action he now had no choice but somehow to make secret use of the thrust of evil and let its strength drive him forward? Just as his father had done? No, certainly not. This had nothing in common with his father’s behavior. For him there would be no diluting righteousness with evil and evil with righteousness. The evil that he wanted to store within himself had to be pure evil, no less pure than the righteousness within him. In any event, once he had attained his purpose he would turn his sword against himself. At that moment, he felt, the pure evil within him would also die in the clash with the pure righteousness of his act.
Isao had never felt like killing anyone out of personal hatred. How was the desire to kill stirred up, he wondered. And what connection did it have with the sober events of everyday life? It was a problem that had long troubled him. He would first have to perform a small act of pure evil, commit a minor sacrilege.
Master Kaido, as a devoted follower of Atsutané, had lectured on the defilement brought about by the flesh and blood of beasts. And so Isao had borrowed a rifle and set out, hoping to hunt down a deer or a boar in the autumn mountains or, if that proved too difficult, to shoot a dog or a cat and bring the bloodied carcass back to Yanagawa. If that meant that he and his followers would be expelled from the camp, he was prepared to accept it. Indeed it would no doubt instill in them a new kind of courage and resolution.
He walked toward the southwest, his eye fixed upon the small mountain wrapped in scarlet leaves. He could see that a mulberry field encroached upon the gentle western slope of the mountain, and that a narrow path led uphill between the field and a bamboo thicket. The cedars were dense above the mulberry field, but someone had told him that the path climbed on up through them.
The Murata rifle, about two and a quarter feet in length, was like an iron bar in his hand, and the autumn air chilled its metal so that it squealed beneath the touch of his fingers. It was hard to believe that the bullet already in the chamber had the power to give heat to the metal. And the three bullets he carried in his robe, their chill, metallic touch pressing against his chest as he walked, seemed not so much murderous pellets as three cold eyes focused upon him.
Since there was no dog or cat to be seen, Isao decided to follow the path between the bamboo thicket and the mulberry field up the mountain. The interior of the thicket was a tangle of red-berried creeper vines and ivy. A moss-grown heap of mulberry roots, dug up and piled beside the field, stood in his way. From somewhere close at hand, he heard the song of a green finch. Isao imagined the figure of an unwary stag lazily taking form before the muzzle of his rifle. He was sure that he would fire without hesitation. He would have the will to kill. The victim would be unaware of it. There was no need for hatred. And in dying the stag would for the first time expose the full force of evil. It would shine in the dark gleam of the blood pouring out from the heart of the beast.
Isao pricked up his ears. There was no sound of movement over the fallen leaves. He stared at the path ahead. There was nothing that looked like a deer’s track. If something was holding its breath, it was, Isao felt, not in fear, not out of hostility, but in derision of his intent to kill. The teeming silence of the scarlet-leafed forest, of the bamboo thicket, of the rows of cedars—he felt it ridiculing him.
He climbed to where the cedars began. The very spaces between the trees were packed with a dark silence. There was no sign of life. He began to walk across the slope and found himself in a sparse, sunlit grove. Suddenly a pheasant burst into flight from under his feet. It was an explosive target that preempted his field of vision. This had to be the moment to “let go,” as the gatekeeper had instructed him. He raised the gun at once and fired.
The mingled yellows and reds of the leaves above his head were suffused with the glow of the setting sun. A heavy, flashing crown of green seemed to hang poised for an instant against a patch of melancholy evening sky. This hurled crown dissolved in a flapping of wings, its glory shattered. The violent beating seemed to churn the air into a thick, sticky liquid which immediately clung to the wings like birdlime and took its toll. The bird, all unaware, was suddenly no longer a bird. The struggle to keep its wings going caused it to veer off its intended course, and it plunged abruptly downward, disappearing among the trees. The spot was not far distant. Isao estimated that the bird had fallen into the thicket which he had passed earlier.
Intent upon that spot, he ignored the path as he rushed down out of the grove, holding the rifle under his arm, black smoke still seeping from its barrel. Thorns caught at the sleeves of his robe and tore them.
An underwater glow filled the bamboo thicket. He used the gun to thrust aside the vines that clutched at him. He stared intently at the ground, anxious lest the pheasant be lost amid the colors of the fallen bamboo leaves. At last he found it. Isao knelt down, and as he picked up the lifeless body of the bird, blood spurted from its breast and fell upon his white hakama.
The bird’s eyes were tight shut. The plumage that surrounded the closed eyes had the scarlet speckles of a toadstool. It was a somberly plump bird with a metallic sheen that seemed to turn soft feathers into armor, its color a rainbow against a black sky. As its head hung down over his arm, he noticed that the plumage of its bent body was less thick and the luster of a different sort.
The feathers about the head were a purple almost as deep as black grapes and they clustered as close as scales. From the breast to the belly, dark green feathers meshed as though to form a protective tunic that glinted in the fading light. It was down these dark green feathers that the blood was flowing from an unseen wound.
Judging the location of the wound, Isao inserted his finger. It encountered no resistance as he plunged it deep into the breast torn by the bullet, and when he drew it out, it was covered with a red wetness. How does it feel to slaughter? he asked himself, burning for an answer. The action, that instant of aiming the gun and pressing the trigger, had been a rapid flow of movement, with only the barest feeling of wanting to kill. That had amounted to even less than the wisp of black smoke that later trailed from the muzzle.
A bullet certainly substituted for an intent. He had not begun to climb the mountain with the thought of killing this pheasant, but the gun itself would not let such a dazzling opportunity pass. And so a small shedding of blood and a small death had instantly taken place, and there was this stilled pheasant lying across his arm, a matter in no way out of the ordinary.
As for righteousness and purity, these he coolly rejected like bones left upon a plate. His appetite was not for bones but for meat. He wanted this thing that was quick to decay, this thing that shone, this thing that was so soft. It was no more than a savor barely caught by the tongue. He had experienced this taste, and from it had come the almost numbing rapture that he now felt, and the repose of fulfillment. This was what engaged his senses.
Had the pheasant been transformed into the embodiment of evil? By no means. As Isao looked closer, he saw that tiny winged insects were moving in its feathers. And if it were left lying there, ants and maggots would certainly soon be swarming over it.
He was irritated at the bird’s tight-shut eyes. Like an arbitrary refusal, they seemed to shut him out coldly from something that he was desperately eager to know. But this thing that he wanted to know—Isao found himself unable to tell whether it was, after all, the
sensation of killing or that of his own death.
He picked the bird up roughly by the neck, and, using his gun to slash at the undergrowth, made his way with difficulty out of the thicket. He cut away one hanging vine laden with red berries which fell around his neck and draped itself, its fruit trembling, about his chest and shoulders. Since neither hand was free to dislodge it, Isao left it as it was.
He came down to the mulberry field and began to cross it on a path along one of its ridges. Lost in thought, he paid no attention to the profusion of red flowers that he was trampling underfoot.
Ahead stood a shattered cedar, its needles already half brown. At a right angle to this path, he had noted before, was the road he had come by, a broad road through open fields. He turned onto it.
Some distance ahead a white-clad group was approaching. Though he could not yet make out their faces, the pendanthung branches that each carried gave him an odd feeling. White robes in such a place had to indicate Master Kaido’s students, but Isao would not have expected his own comrades to come marching out solemnly in this manner led by another. The leader seemed older, and behind him walked one man dressed in a suit. Isao was startled when he saw at last that the man in the lead had the neat moustache of his father.
At that moment the sky above, still lit by the sunset glow, was suddenly filled with the cries of a vast flock of small birds that had appeared from the shelter of the mountain. The white-clad marchers seemed distracted by this, and halted briefly until the birds had passed over.
As the distance separating Isao and the group lessened, Honda somehow began to feel excluded from the tableau taking form in the fading light of the open fields. Gradually he veered off the road until he was separated from the column and threading his way through rice-drying racks. Some moment of extreme significance was drawing near. What it was he did not know. Isao’s figure was now clearly discernible. Honda saw upon his chest something that looked like a necklace of red crescent beads, apparently a kind of berry.