Yōko said, “The Langs are lucky, aren’t they? No matter how much they might have searched in Kyoto, they’d never have found a splendid, quiet garden like this.”
“A while ago, I mentioned my late husband, but he wasn’t really my husband,” Sawamura Chiyono said, addressing Tetsuyuki. “I won’t mention his name, but the man who built this house had a wife and children in Tokyo . . . not to put too fine a point on it, but I was his mistress. For about the last three years of his life he hardly ever went back to Tokyo, and just spent all his time here.”
“I see . . .” was Tetsuyuki’s only response as he listened to the old woman.
“And so when he died, there was real trouble. After all, this much land and this mansion were involved. His family in Tokyo insisted that they should of course inherit it, and took the matter to court, but his will clearly stated that the land and house in Shūgakuin were to be left to me. But acquiring this much presented other problems. The inheritance taxes came to a staggering amount, and I even considered just turning it over to his family. However, a friend reminded me that if it became impossible to manage the place, I could always just sell it.”
Suddenly changing the topic, she added in a lowered voice, “It’s really wonderful that a couple who have been together so long as that can go on a trip abroad.” She looked back and forth at Tetsuyuki and Yōko and smiled. When Tetsuyuki pulled the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, the envelope from Mr. Lang came out with it. Feeling it again, it somehow seemed even thicker.
“Mr. Lang promised he’d give me a hundred dollars, but this envelope is way too thick.” Yōko looked at it and said, “Maybe it’s ten ten-dollar bills.” Tetsuyuki broke the seal and looked inside. There were far more than ten, each one a crisp hundred-dollar bill.
“What can this mean?” Tetsuyuki placed the contents of the envelope on the table and, glancing at Yōko and the old woman, counted the money. “It’s more than two thousand dollars.”
Yōko looked again inside the envelope and found a sheet of thin paper, folded in four, covered with small writing in German.
“Mr. Lang handed you the wrong envelope with this in it.”
Tetsuyuki thought it impossible that he could mistake an envelope containing more than twenty hundred-dollar bills for a thin one with only one. He glanced at Sawamura Chiyono, who was looking at the wad of bills with the same suspicious look on her face, and their eyes met. After looking at each other for some time, Tetsuyuki hurriedly stood up. Simultaneously the sound of the old woman’s call for the maid rang throughout the quiet mansion.
Tetsuyuki ran down the long hallway on its well-polished floorboards and dashed out onto the garden path without even putting on his shoes. The grass of the low-cut lawn stabbed the soles of his feet as he ran over the gently sloping green hillock with all the speed he could muster. Startled wild birds flew up in a frenzy, rising into the skies with their cries congealing into a mass of sound. The tea hut by the southeastern pond came into view. The pond was softly gleaming, casting reflections that looked like yellow clouds on the walls and small shōji windows of the hut. Before reaching the hut, he stumbled and fell over, taking a hard hit to his abdomen.
“Mr. Lang!” he called in a loud voice and, opening the sliding door of the hut, dived into the four-and-a-half-mat room. A gentle light from two windows of differing sizes above the entrance and from the low window above the floor on the north side flooded the simple, east-facing room. Sitting side by side with their legs stretched out, the German couple turned their pallid faces toward Tetsuyuki and hurriedly stuffed into their pockets something they had been holding in their hands.
“What were you intending to do? If you want to look at the garden, then you ought to open the windows. What was it that you just hid in your pockets?”
Tetsuyuki’s Japanese was of course unintelligible to them, but they were both silent as they fixed their strangely serene gaze upon him. Gone were their former smiles, the blood appeared to be drained from their cheeks, and they were as listless as invalids who had given up all hope. Their blue eyes trembled somewhat as they stared at him. He thrust his open hands in front of them as if to demand that they surrender what was in their pockets, but they did not make the slightest move, and only continued to stare intently at him.
At length he heard footsteps running toward the hut: Yōko and the middle-aged maid who had shown the couple there. As soon as the maid ascertained that they were all right, she dashed off back toward the mansion. Yōko assumed a formal sitting position by the low window on the north side and said to Tetsuyuki, “Why don’t you sit down too?” He opened all three of the hut’s windows. Supported by the young maid and with the help of her cane, Sawamura Chiyono was descending the grassy knoll. Behind them was the middle-aged maid with the envelope in hand.
“As soon as I came into the hut, the two of them quickly hid something in their pockets. I’ve told them to hand over whatever it was.”
Sawamura Chiyono silently placed the envelope containing more than two thousand dollars before the Langs.
“It’s too bad we can’t communicate at a time like this,” she muttered to no one in particular, and then addressed the young maid. “Have Mr. Kumai come. If he’s not at home, call him at his office. He said he would be at his office Sunday to tie up some loose ends.” Then, as the maid was about to leave, she added, “Explain the circumstances briefly, and request that he come right away. Don’t dawdle, be off, quickly!” she commanded in a sharp tone of voice. Then she beckoned for the middle-aged maid.
“It’s been a long time since we made tea here. Build a fire, and bring that red raku tea bowl. It’s in the cupboard in my room.”
After the two maids had gone, Sawamura Chiyono went before the tokonoma and picked up an incense burner.
“Kumai is the nephew of the late master of this place. He’s on his own now, and runs a small trading company, but before that he worked for a commercial firm in Germany for seven years, so he’ll have no trouble conversing with these two.”
“I’m sorry to have put you to such trouble.”
Sawamura Chiyono responded to Yōko’s dejected utterance with a smile. “There’s no need for you to apologize.” She drew herself up to a rigid pose and fixed her eyes silently on the Langs. Then she added, “There is no one here who needs to apologize.”
The middle-aged maid brought live coals and a kettle filled with water.
“Let’s burn just a bit of incense.” At this suggestion of Sawamura Chiyono’s, Tetsuyuki closed the windows and urged the Langs to face the kettle. They meekly complied.
“I received this incense as a gift a long time ago. It’s a highly prized variety known as Mandarin Orange Blossom.”
Seated to administer the tea ceremony, Sawamura Chiyono straightened her back and for a long time looked at the kettle. Tetsuyuki knew nothing about tea, but he sensed that the ceremony that was about to be performed would not be her attempt to soften the hearts of the Langs, nor would it be a means to convey how she felt to people from an alien land.
The slight scent of Mandarin Orange Blossom wafted through the room. Tetsuyuki felt certain that what the couple had been holding in their hands was poison, and that if he had arrived even a few minutes later, they would already have taken it. With a start, his eyes darted around the room. He was seized by the thought that even in this room Kin was nailed fast to a pillar. Sawamura Chiyono drew the red tea bowl up beside her and took a tea caddy out of a bag. Only Yōko had learned the ceremony; the other three were unfamiliar with the proper manners, and clumsily drank the warm, green, frothy liquid.
When they were finished, Sawamura Chiyono said drily, “How dreary! I’ve never experienced a more cheerless tea ceremony. It will no doubt make death seem very attractive, won’t it?” Then, heaving a sigh, she added, “These two were not able to die here, but they will no doubt carry out their plan someplace else. This was a farewell tea ceremony.”
“Why do you think so?” Tets
uyuki asked, but Sawamura Chiyono did not reply. Tetsuyuki handed to the Langs the envelope, which had been left lying on the tatami. Mr. Lang took out one of the bills and placed it on Tetsuyuki’s lap. The young maid’s voice came from outside.
“Mr. Kumai is here.”
“Please show him in.”
A short, round-faced man of forty-four or forty-five whose bearing revealed that he was a “mover and shaker” assumed a formal sitting posture in the entrance to the tea hut. Sawamura Chiyono handed him the slip of paper covered with small German writing, which she had not put back into the envelope but had instead stuffed into her obi. While Mr. Kumai was running his eyes over the note, Mr. and Mrs. Lang looked at each other nervously, then suddenly turned toward the four Japanese with a determined look on their faces.
“Let me tell you exactly what it says.” Mr. Kumai spoke in a measured voice, dropping his eyes to the note.
“‘I, Friedrich Lang, and my wife, Bebel Lang, apologize for creating such trouble for the kindhearted Japanese people whose names we do not even know. Please inform the person noted below of our deaths. He is our son. Please use this money for the cremation of our remains. If it appears that our son will not come to Japan, then we humbly request that you send our ashes to the address below. According to the laws of your country, an autopsy may be required, but we attest herewith that death was caused by potassium cyanide, administered by our own hands. It was by our own mutual agreement that we took this poison. Our determination to die followed many long conversations. We agreed that we wanted to die in a quiet, incomparably beautiful place somewhere in the Far East, and accordingly sold our home and its furnishings, along with our automobile and some jewelry. This yielded a rather large sum, but we gave a third of it to two friends who were in need of money, donated another third of it to our church, and used the remainder for our travel expenses. The $2,500 in the envelope is all that is left of our money. Please use it to dispose of our corpses. Once again, we sincerely apologize for creating such trouble for kindhearted Japanese people whom we do not even know. May God bless them with eternal happiness.’”
After listening to the end, Sawamura Chiyono—erect with her chest thrown out, her shoulders and the hairline above her collar projecting a vigor that belied her more than eighty years—stared silently at the kettle in front of her for what seemed an eternity. Suddenly she smiled. It was a smile that at first glance could be taken as one of a gentle and compassionate elderly person, but to Tetsuyuki it appeared as the reverse side of an incomparably ominous and cruel maliciousness. He shuddered as he waited for the words to issue from her mouth.
“They’ve already died. The two of them have achieved their desire here in my tea hut. Tell them so.”
Kumai conveyed her words in German to the Langs. For a while, they were lost in thought, and seemed not to have understood what she meant.
“I think that tea is a ritual for gazing on life and death. Tea may also be the same as the God you both believe in. Tea is also a religion. While in the tearoom, both host and guest are dead. When they leave the tearoom, they are alive. And so, when you leave here, you must live whether you like it or not.”
The Langs listened intently to Kumai’s fluent German. It was difficult to tell whether the elderly Western couple comprehended the meaning of Sawamura Chiyono’s words, but Mr. Lang occasionally nodded as he listened.
“Let’s go back to the house. Mr. Kumai, get them to talk in more detail about their circumstances. Just as people might suddenly want to die, so might they also suddenly want to live.”
With Sawamura Chiyono’s unsteady steps supported on both sides by Tetsuyuki and Yōko, the three of them left the tea hut. Wild birds came circling back and were chirping here and there on the lawn. Around the stone lantern the deep scarlet leaves of the momiji were falling, illumined by sunlight filtering through the trees. When they came to the highest elevation in the garden, Sawamura Chiyono muttered, “Shall we bask in the sun?” and, sitting on the grass, rubbed the foot that was aching. Then, as the three of them looked at the tea hut, she said, “I met that man about fifty years ago, at a tea gathering.”
“By ‘that man,’ do you mean your husband?”
She tittered slightly at Yōko’s question. “Not my husband, my patron. I was thirty-two at the time. He lavished money on wonderful tea utensils for me, all very famous pieces: pots, tea bowls, tea ladles, kettles . . . The studded kettle that I just now used was one of those. But he didn’t know a thing about tea. Oh, he had a lot of knowledge of Sen no Rikyū and the tea masters of that age but . . . I’ve never seen anyone less adept at tea itself. He used to talk as if anyone who has had the slightest dealings with tea will of course wonder why Sen no Rikyū took his own life, as if anyone who doesn’t talk about such things couldn’t have a real love for the art. He was like that, and so was I. There were various theories: that it was a disguised reproach to Hideyoshi, or that it was intended as a challenge to him . . . But recently—or rather, about two years ago—I finally came to understand.”
Her strange faint smile reappeared in Tetsuyuki’s mind. He didn’t know the first thing about tea. Regarding Sen no Rikyū, he knew only the facts that he was a tea master during the age of Hideyoshi, and that he committed suicide, yet he found himself wanting to hear what she had come to understand about Rikyū’s death. But she only gazed silently with narrowed eyes at the shimmering pond. As Tetsuyuki was about to open his mouth, Yōko asked, “Why did Rikyū die?”
At that, Sawamura Chiyono began to talk. “Do you suppose that Rikyū was afraid of a poor peasant upstart like Hideyoshi, no matter how much power the latter had in the realm? He must have regarded Hideyoshi with disdain. One morning about two years ago, I woke up at a dreadfully early hour and for some reason wanted to make tea. The maids were still asleep, so I had no choice but to make the fire myself in the tea hut. I’ve forgotten which utensils were there except for the tea bowl: the same red raku—from the sixteenth century—that I used just now. Sitting in the formal position in the tea hut before dawn, I stared inside that bowl and wondered: for sixty years from the time I was twenty I had studied tea, and what had I seen in it? At that moment, the tea suddenly appeared as green poison. Or, perhaps rather than poison, it appeared as death itself. There was death, and I was living right beside it. Together with that thought it occurred to me that Rikyū must have realized the same thing. Within the tea bowl is death, and one drinks it and has one’s guests drink it. There is no way a tea master like Rikyū with his long experience could not have understood that; that is, the secret of death. After all, at some point or other tea had definitely become a religion for him.”
With that Sawamura Chiyono broke off and was lost in thought. She continued in a quiet tone.
“But that must have been something he couldn’t talk about. So perhaps there was no way for Rikyū to verify the secret of death he had come to comprehend except by dying himself. That was the only means he had to bring his art of tea to perfection. Hideyoshi’s command that he commit seppuku was merely a convenient excuse for him. He didn’t care about the countless military commanders who had drunk his tea and then gone out to die in battle. Rikyū died as a testament of something that approximated his own inexplicable realization of what death is. I’m certain that must be why. That winter morning before dawn two years ago, when I saw death inside that red tea bowl, I earnestly thought so. That’s why I take naps in the tea hut. That way, I come to understand more fully. When I’m asleep, that’s death. When I’m awake, that’s life. But both are my same self. Life and death, life and death, life and death . . . By dying, Rikyū attempted to ascertain that . . .”
As if embarrassed that she had forgotten herself and been carried away by her impassioned speech, she glanced at Tetsuyuki and Yōko and laughed. Her laugh made the tea hut where the Langs were together with Mr. Kumai seem like an elegant, roofed tomb.
Tetsuyuki recalled his strange dream in which he had turned into a lizard, dying
and being reborn again and again over hundreds of years. That dream was strongly connected to Sawamura Chiyono’s reasoning, which could be taken either as erudition or as self-righteousness. It occurred to him that it was time to bring to a conclusion this caring for Kin, which had already turned into a daily routine.
He noticed that the branches of the hackberry and sweet acorn trees surrounding the garden were waving, each time scattering their leaves. Next spring, on a day when vernal warmth filled heaven and earth, he would pull the nail out. If he did it now, Kin would be unable to withstand the cold with a fresh wound, and would likely die.
The door of the tea hut opened and the Langs emerged along with Kumai.
“What time is it now?” Sawamura Chiyono asked.
“Almost twelve.”
“I went ahead and ordered some Kyoto cuisine from a restaurant. They should be delivering it about now. Perfect! The boxed lunches from that place have suitable portions, and are very good. They should be just right for Mr. and Mrs. Lang.”
She stood up, brushing bits of grass from her kimono. The Langs stood next to each other, looking out over the surface of the pond. Kumai walked up the slope and handed to Sawamura Chiyono two small white paper packages.
“It’s potassium cyanide.”
“I’m surprised you got them to hand it over.”
“I told them that, if they were so inclined, there are any number of ways to die, but that I could not let them leave the tea hut with that in their possession,” Kumai explained as they walked toward the house.
“Did you ask about the reason?”
“They have one son, an attorney in Munich. They bought a house in a town about a hundred kilometers away and began their retirement living on a pension. Mrs. Lang said that their son’s wife hates her, and Mr. Lang said that his son hates him. Even though they live only a hundred kilometers away, these two years their son has not come to see them once. They just take care of matters by phone. I’m sure they each have their own excuses, but I couldn’t very well probe further, so I quit asking.”
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