Night Boat

by Alan Spence

  The endpoint of desire was its own cessation. For a brief moment there was no desire. Then the whole cycle began again, neverending.

  What now?

  I walked on, through the coldest winter. I carried my brush and inkstone in my old canvas bag. I made verses in my head, wrote them down when I could.

  Not the other shore but this one,

  Battered, battered by endless waves.

  Useless this lifelong struggle.

  Useless standing here, useless to move on.

  I descended, not into hell but into bleakness, a place of desolation and emptiness, a dreariness of spirit. I still wore my monk’s robe, but I was between two worlds, belonging to neither, estranged from both.

  I had heard tell of a master named Bao Rojin who lived in the south of Mino province. He was famed for his teaching of calligraphy and verse. His knowledge of the Chinese poets, especially from the T’ang dynasty, was said to be unparalleled. These were the very poets I wanted to emulate – Li Po, Han Yiu, Tu Fu – and I was anxious to meet this master Bao. But he also had a reputation as hard and ruthless, intolerant of fools. He was said to be brutal with his students, whatever their rank or background. He would cut them down, challenge every assumption, every opinion, leave them shaken to the core. He was known as the Wild Horse of Mino.

  In the spring I found out a few monks were planning to go and visit him as part of a pilgrimage, and I arranged to travel with them. There were thirteen of us in all, making our way along the Tokaido. Throughout the group there was a sense of anticipation, but trepidation too at the prospect of encountering the formidable Bao face to face. There was banter and back-chat among the monks, who recounted tales they had heard.

  This Bao is six feet tall, and just as wide.

  When he roars, the birds for miles around take flight.

  The beasts run for cover.

  He wields a staff as tall as himself.

  He uses it to knock sense into his students.

  I heard he knocked a few unconscious.

  Broke their bones.

  I heard one student died.

  I couldn’t help myself, I added my tuppenceworth.

  I heard he actually, physically, bit someone’s head off and spat it into a ditch.

  A few of the others laughed at that, but one or two of them looked at me sideways, wondering what kind of madman they had in their midst.

  If I’d thought our old temple was run-down and poverty-stricken, it was palatial compared to Zuiun-ji where Bao lived. Zuiun-ji was a few miles from Ogaki Castle, well back from the road at the end of a dirt track, on the edge of a tiny village. Remote and ramshackle, it looked as if it might collapse into the dust at any moment. We arrived towards evening and the monk who greeted us said we were welcome to stay, but we would have to provide our own food, even our own firewood. They could offer a roof over our heads, nothing more, except for the teaching of master Bao, which was priceless.

  I’d brought a few coins with me, a meagre amount I’d begged to pay my way. Each of us chipped in, gave what he could, and we made a donation towards our keep. We were given a small bowl of rice apiece, cold water to wash it down, and shown to our quarters, a rickety outhouse with torn, patched shoji screen walls, the tatami mats on the floor worn and frayed to almost nothing. Master Bao, we were told, would see us in the morning.

  At nightfall we stretched out as best we could on the hard floor, huddled in our travelling clothes, our packs beneath our heads.

  This is hellish, said one monk.

  Hell would be better, said another. At least it would be warm.

  To travel all that way, said a third. For this.

  This Bao better be good.

  He will be, I said. I’m sure of it.

  And I was. I felt it in my bones as I lay back, looking up at the stars through a ragged hole in the roof.

  I slept little, woke as usual at the hour of the ox. I heard a scratching, a scrabbling in the corner, the noise of a mouse or a rat. I sat up and the noise stopped. The room was full of the stink of the monks, the sleeping bodies, like so many animals crammed in a stall. One or two of them snored, grunted. The one next to me shouted out in his sleep Have mercy!

  I laughed at that, got up and made my way carefully to the screen door, eased it open and stepped outside.

  The night air was sharp and cold. I breathed it in. A pale half-moon was just visible through a smear of cloud.

  I was startled by a gruff voice behind me.

  Moon viewing?

  The man was not tall but gave an impression of power, solid strength, like a warrior or a wrestler. I couldn’t see him clearly in the half-light, but I knew by his bearing it must be Bao.

  Wrong time, he said. Wrong season.

  I said nothing.

  Cat got your tongue? he said.

  No, I said.

  A man of silence, then. You think you understand Zen?

  No, I said. I mean, yes. I mean.

  Ha! he said. A man who knows his own mind!

  I’m here to learn, I said, the words sounding pathetic even as I spoke them.

  Well then, he said. Take it from me. Wrong time, wrong season. And who ever heard of moon viewing without some sake?

  True, I said.

  He laughed.

  Of course it is! Now, why are you prowling around in the middle of the night? Seeking enlightenment or just feeling troubled?

  Maybe both, I said.

  Both equally useless, he said. Now what’s your name?

  Ekaku, I said, and I bowed low.

  Ekaku, he repeated, and gave a slight nod in return. Well, Wise Crane, I am Bao Rojin, the master of this magnificent temple, this heaven-on-earth.

  Yes, I said, and I bowed even lower.

  And it’s me you’ve come here to see, you and your cronies?

  Yes.

  Well, who knows? Perhaps I’ll be able to knock some sense into you. Or knock some sense out of you.

  Once more I bowed and he turned to go, stopped.

  Do you know the poetry of Li Po?

  A little.

  Drinking under the moon, he said, and he recited.

  Out among the flowers with my jug of wine,

  Drinking alone, I raise my cup to the moon.

  The moon, myself, my shadow, make three.

  The verse thrilled me, but before I could tell him, he was gone, with a grunt and a wave of the hand. But I felt his teaching had begun.

  Next morning, we each had more water, another bowl of rice, this time flavoured with a little pickled plum. The monks were grumbling.

  What possessed us to come here?

  If we don’t freeze to death we’ll starve.

  The first poem I write will be my own epitaph.

  Suddenly Bao was standing in the doorway, filling the space. He looked even more solid and formidable. His voice boomed out.

  So you think you’re ready to write your death-verse?

  The monk who’d spoken grovelled and bowed low.

  I’ll give you a death-verse, said Bao. It was written by Mumon Gensen three hundred years ago.

  The wheel of life rolls on.

  Every day is the right day.

  Reciting a poem at your death

  Is adding frost to snow.

  The monk stayed down, his head pressed to the floor.

  When you’ve learned to live, said Bao, then you’re ready to die. He fixed his gaze on me, fierce.

  What do you think, Wise Crane?

  I was caught off guard, mind numbed. Adding frost to snow.

  Well? said Bao.

  I . . .

  Ha! Eloquent as ever.

  He turned and was gone, and the monks were staring at me.

  You know him?

  Only since this morning.

  So what was that about?

  Eloquent as ever! said the monk who had grovelled, now standing up, composing himself.

  Incredibly, I was sensing resentment, just because the master had a
ddressed me, left me flummoxed and dumbstruck.

  I . . .

  Bao appeared again in the doorway.

  Still in full flow? he said. So, have you lot come here to learn, or to sit around eating rice and drinking water?

  This time we followed him out the door and across to a little courtyard beside the zendo. He sat on the ground and indicated we should do the same, form a half-circle in front of him.

  Every poem you write, he said, could be your death-verse. Every day could be your last. This was what Basho taught his followers. Have you read Basho?

  Nobody spoke.

  He’s only ten years dead, Bao continued. So his poetry may not have reached you in the spiritual backwaters of Edo or Kyoto or Kamakura. Whereas here, in the very heart of the civilised world . . .

  He gestured with a sweep of the hand, took in the shabby, dilapidated buildings.

  Or you might say, here in the middle of nowhere . . .

  He paused.

  . . . great poets are valued.

  He fixed each of us, in turn, with his gaze as he spoke.

  And now that I have told you the name of Basho, you must read his poems, as you must read Li Po, and Tu Fu and the other immortals. Then you must forget them, and write. Basho himself said, Learn of the willow from the willow, learn of the pine from the pine. Poetry is what is happening here, right now, in this moment.

  A dog barked. I could smell wood smoke. A crow flapped onto the roof.

  Now, said Bao. Let us begin with zazen.

  The monk who had spoken before made to stand up.

  And where are you going? said Bao.

  I thought we were going into the zendo, said the monk, to meditate.

  Here, said Bao. Sit.

  The monk apologised, sat back down again on the hard ground.

  Back straight, said Bao. Mind empty. Here.

  We sat, and time passed. I moved beyond numbness and ache to a kind of dogged acceptance of numbness and ache, and time passing.

  Finally Bao opened his eyes and spoke again.

  Since Basho is our master for today, he said, I shall tell you one more of his poems. This one was his actual death-verse, the last words he wrote, three days before he died at the age of fifty.

  He took in a slow, deep breath, intoned the poem with great reverence, as if chanting a sutra.

  Sick on a journey –

  my dreams go wandering

  across a withered moor.

  He opened his eyes, looked out at us.

  If you ever in your lives write one poem as fine as that, he said, you may feel your existence has not been entirely worthless.

  He got to his feet, the session over, dismissed us with another wave of the hand.

  I was unsettled, felt two things simultaneously, a kind of quiet exhilaration centred in my chest and a niggling irritation around the navel.

  As we started to move away, Bao spoke to me directly.

  Wise Crane, he said. Can you give us a haiku?

  Once again he had caught me off guard. But I concentrated, came out with three lines.

  Sitting doing nothing

  hearing the old crow caw –

  where is the poetry in this?

  He glared at me.

  It’s full of arrogance, he said. And it stinks of Zen. And where is the poetry in that?

  I couldn’t answer.

  But, he said. But. It’s a beginning.

  He chuckled.

  The old crow!

  He threw back his head and laughed.

  I like it!

  The next day Bao repeated the same pattern, and the next, and the next. He didn’t dwell on technicalities, the arid study of verse-forms for their own sake. Instead he would just recite a poem, let it do its work. Learn of the poem from the poem. He identified completely with what he read. He was Li Po, intoxicated under the moon, or Tu Fu, pensive in the morning rain, or Basho, setting out on his last journey. Direct seeing, said Bao. Enter into the life of things.

  After that first morning, he didn’t single me out again. Every day he challenged someone else to write a haiku, or a tanka, or a poem in the Chinese style, and every day his comments were cutting, dismissive.

  Effete, he said. Pallid. Worthy of some third-rate concubine in the emperor’s court.

  Too elaborate, he said. Finger-pointing-at-the-moon. If the finger wears fancy jewelled rings, that’s all you see, you don’t look at the moon at all.

  Too arid. Too intellectual. No heart.

  Too abstract. There’s no poetry without things.

  Infantile. A four-year-old could write better poetry.

  Hell, I could shit better poetry.

  When he taught us calligraphy it was the same. We sat in zazen, then he carefully unrolled a scroll, prepared his inkstone with a little water, dipped a thick brush in the mix, all the time asking us to watch and learn. Without hesitation, with a few quick strokes, he made the syllable for Mu, nothing. Then he asked each of us to do the same, and again his criticisms were withering.

  Too controlled, he said. Tight arsed. Constipated.

  Too formless, he said. Might as well be pigeon-droppings spattered on the page.

  When he looked at my effort, he grunted.

  Not good, he said. Not bad. That’s something, I suppose. Something and nothing. Something in nothing!

  He laughed at what we assumed was some esoteric joke. As he moved away he chuckled again, turned and shouted back at us.

  Mu!

  It continued for a few days. He would recite a poem, trail the words down a scroll and always his calligraphy had the same effortless grace. Then without stopping, as a kind of continuation, with a few deft strokes of the brush he would illustrate the poem, draw a bird on a branch, a spray of blossom, an old poet looking at the moon.

  We tried again, but apart from the occasional word of encouragement, his comments continued to be scathing. The other monks grew dispirited. They griped and complained about Bao and his harsh words, about the miserable state of the place, about the starvation rations, the bugs and rats. They decided to leave.

  For all the severity of his methods, I knew Bao was a great teacher and I would travel far before finding another even approaching his calibre. I told the other monks I would not be leaving with them. I would stay and take my chances with Bao.

  Next morning I watched them go, a silent straggled line of black-clad figures, heading out of the temple and down through the village. Again I heard Bao’s voice, behind me.

  So, Ekaku, he said, Wise Crane. The other birds are flying away!

  I decided to stay, I said.

  Fine, said Bao. Let’s see if we can make a poet of you.

  The place felt empty without my travelling companions. Because of the poverty of the place, the austerity, there were only a few resident monks. One of them was a young man called Onbazan, a few years older than me. He seemed to be Bao’s close disciple and was a fine poet in his own right.

  Bao would never tell you this himself, he said, but he thinks highly of you. Otherwise he would have driven you away with the rest and said good riddance.

  For a few days the weather was good – clear blue skies, no rain or mist. Bao took himself off into town, to Ogaki.

  When it’s clear like this, said Onbazan, the villagers call it a Bao sky, because they see him heading into Ogaki, to enjoy himself.

  Enjoy himself?

  Onbazan laughed.

  Don’t ask!

  While Bao was away, Onbazan worked with me on linked verse. We decided to write a hundred lines between us, alternating. We gave ourselves a time limit – two sticks of incense. It was something he had learned from Bao – we would finish the poem in the time it took the sticks to burn down, a little over an hour.

  Onbazan wrote the first line.

  Two sticks of incense, a hundred lines of verse.

  An hour later I wrote the last line.

  The incense stick burns down – a heap of ash, the fragrance.

>   Onbazan nodded his approval.

  There are good and bad lines, he said. But we got there. That last line is perfect, a little gem of a haiku in its own right.

  Bao was in good humour when he returned in the evening, more relaxed than I’d seen him. It was clear he’d had a flask or three of sake.

  Linked verse, he said. This is good. The important thing is, the connection from poem to poem should be subtle, not too obvious. It’s like sitting next to a woman, when you’re not so close that you’re touching, but close enough to smell her perfume.

  I was startled by the image, by the sensuality of it, and by Bao grinning at me. Then Onbazan pointed out my last line, about the ash burning down. Bao read it out loud.

  A good death-verse, he said. Keep it up your sleeve till the time comes.

  The incense stick burns down –

  a heap of ash,

  the fragrance.

  Over the next month there were a few clear days, under a Bao sky, and the master would head off into Ogaki. At first I took Onbazan’s advice and didn’t ask. But then my curiosity got the better of me, and I pestered him to tell me.

  Very well, he said at last. Master Bao has a friend in Ogaki, a nun by the name of Jukei.

  I stared at him.

  Do you mean . . . ?

  Yes, he said. It’s all unspoken, but yes. Definitely yes.

  My face must have registered shock, amusement, confusion all at once.

  Onbazan laughed.

  Way of the world, he said.

  Later I sat down with my ink and brushes, a blank scroll, and tried to empty my mind. Once again the image that came to me was my beloved Mount Fuji, rising out of the mist above Hara. With the ink thin, the strokes fluid, I sketched the familiar shape in three swift lines. Then I sat and looked at it, took it in. That poem I loved came back to me.