“I believe you,” he answered hoarsely. “Your presence, you, a foreigner and a woman, that speaks for you. And I think I am afraid to disbelieve you.”
A laugh sobbed. “You will have time aplenty to make certain.”
“Time,” he mumbled. “Hundreds, thousands of years. And you a woman.”
Old fears awoke. Her hands fluttered before her. She forced herself to stand where she was. “I am a nun. I took vows to Amida Butsu—the Buddha.”
He nodded, against straining muscles. “How else could you travel freely?”
“I was not always safe,” she wrung out of her lips. “I have been violated in wild lands of this realm. Nor have I always been true. I have sometimes taken shelter with a man who offered it, and stayed with him till he died.”
“I’ll be kind,” he promised.
“I know. I asked ... of certain women here ... But what of those vows? I thought I had no choice before, but now—”
His laughter gusted louder than needful. “Ho! I release you from them.”
“Can you?”
“I am the Master, am I not? The people aren’t supposed to pray to me but I know they do, more than to their gods. i Nothing bad has come of it. Instead, we’ve had peace, lifetime after lifetime.”
“Did you ... foresee that?”
He shrugged. “No. Myself, I am—maybe a thousand and a half years old. I don’t remember just when I came here.”
The past took possession of him. He looked beyond her and the wall, he spoke low and rapidly:
“The years blur together, they become one, the dead are as real as the living and the living as unreal as the dead. For a while, long ago, I was mad, in a waking dream. Some monks took me in, and slowly, I’m not sure how, slowly I grew able to think again. Ah, I see that something like that .t happened to you too. Well, for me it still is often hard to be sure what I truly remember, and I forget much.
“I had found, like you, the safest thing was to be a footloose religious person. I only meant to stay here a few years, after they’d made me welcome. But tune went on and on, this was a snug den and foes feared to come, once word of me had drifted about, and what else, what better, was there? I’ve tried to do my people no harm. I think, they think I do them good.”
He shook himself, trod forward, caught both her hands. His were big, strong, but less hard than other men’s. She had heard that he lived off their labor, at most diverting himself with his ancient trade of blacksmith. “But who are you, Li? What are you?”
In sudden weariness, she sighed. “I have borne many names, Okura, Asagao, Yukiko—names did not matter among us, they changed as our positions changed, and we might use a different nickname for every friend. I was an attendant at a court that became a shadow. When no more pretense of being mortal was possible, and I feared to proclaim what I was, I turned nun and begged my way from shrine to shrine, place to place.”
“It was easier for me,” he admitted, “but I too found I’d better keep moving, and stay clear of anybody powerful who might want me to linger. Until I found this haven. How did you come to leave ... Nippon, you call that land?”
“I was forever hoping to find someone like me, an end to the loneliness, the—meaninglessness; for I had tried to find meaning in the Buddha, and no enlightenment ever came. Well, the news reached us that the Mongols—they who had conquered China and tried to invade us, but the Divine Wind wrecked their ships—they had been driven out. The Chinese were sailing far and wide, also to us. This land is ... our motherland in spirit, the mother of civilization.” She saw puzzlement, and recalled that he was of lowly birth and had lived withdrawn since before she came into the world. “We knew of many holy sites in China. I thought, as well, there if anywhere would be other ... immortals. So I took passage as a pilgrim, the captain gained merit by carrying me, and on these shores I set off afoot... I did not then know how vast the country is.”
“Have you never wished to go home?”
“What is home? Besides, the Chinese have stopped sailing. They have destroyed all their great ships. It is forbidden on pain of death to leave the Empire. You had not heard?”
“We’re free of overlords here. Welcome, welcome.” His tone deepened, strengthened. He let go her hands and once more laid arms about her waist, but now the clasp was strong and his breath turned musky. “You’ve found me, we’re together, you, my wife! I waited and waited, prayed, offered, cast spells, till at last I gave up hope. Then you came. Li!” His mouth sought hers.
She turned her cheek, protested faintly, no, this was too fast, unseemly. He paid no heed. It was not an assault, but it was an overwhelming. She surrendered as she might have surrendered to a storm or a dream. While he had her, she tried to bring her thoughts under control. Afterward he was drowsy and gentle for a while, then wildly merry.
3
Winter struck with blinding snow on wind that rampaged among the houses and stretched fingers through every crack around door or shutter. The calm that followed was so cold that silence seemed to ring, with stars uncountable above a white hardness that gave back their glitter. Folk went into the weather no more than they needed, to tend their livestock and get fuel. At home they crouched over tiny hearth-fires or slept the hours away within heaped sheepskins.
Li felt sick. She always did in the mornings during the first part of a pregnancy. That she had become fruitful was no surprise, as often as Tu Shan lay with her. Nor did she regret it. He meant well, and bit by bit, without letting him know what happened, she schooled him in what pleased her, until sometimes she too flew off into joy and came back down to lie happily wearied in the warmth and odor of him. And this child they had gotten together might also be ageless.
Still, she wished she could exult over it as he did. On her best days she was free of forebodings, no more. If only she had something to do. At least in Heian-kyo there had been color, music, the round of ceremonies, the often vicious but oftener titillating intrigues. At least on the road there had been changing landscape, changing people, unsureness, small victories over trouble or danger or despair. Here she could, if she liked, weave the same cloths, cook the same meals, sweep the same floors, empty the same muck buckets—though the disciples expected to do the menial tasks— and swap the same and the same words with women whose minds ranged as far as next year’s kitchen gardening.
Their men took interest in a little more than that, some of them, though not much more. However, they felt ill at ease with her. They knew her for the chosen of the Master and accorded her respect, in a clumsy fashion. Yet they also knew her for a woman; and she was soon taken for granted, sacred but a part of everyday life, like Tu Shan; and women did not sit in the councils of men. Li gathered that this was no great loss to her.
One day of that winter stood forth in memory, an island at the middle of an abyss that swallowed all the rest. The door swung open on dazzlingly sunlit, blue-shadowed drifts. A wave of chill poured through. Tu Shan’s bulk blotted the light. He entered and closed the door. Gloom clapped down again. “Hoo!” he whinnied, stamping the snow off his boots. “Cold enough to freeze a fire solid and the anvil with it.” She must have heard him say that a hundred times, and a few other favorite expressions.
Li looked up from the mat on which she knelt. Bright spots danced before her. They were due to reflection off the brass chest, which the disciples worshipfully kept polished. She had been staring at it for—an hour? two hours?—while sunken in the half-doze that was her retreat from these empty months.
A thought smote. The suddenness of it made her catch her breath. Next she wondered why it had not occurred to her before, then supposed that was because the newness of this life had driven everything else out of her mind until the life went stale, and she was saying: “Horseshoe,” the pet name she had given him, “I have never looked in yonder box.”
His mouth was open, he had been about to speak. He left it hanging thus for a moment before he replied slowly, “Why, uh, those are the books. And, uh,
scrolls, yes, scrolls. The holy writings.”
Eagerness thrilled through her. “May I see them?”
“They’re not for, uh, ordinary eyes.”
She rose and told him fiercely, “I too am immortal. Have you forgotten?”
“Oh, no, no.” He waved his hands, a vague gesture. “But you’re a woman. You can’t read them.”
Li’s mind leaped back across centuries. Ladies of the court in Heian-kyo were literate in the vernacular but seldom in Chinese.’That was the classical language, which only men could properly comprehend. Nevertheless she had contrived to study the writing, and sometimes in China had found a chance, a span of rest in a tranquil place, to refresh that knowledge. Moreover, these texts were most likely Buddhist; that faith had intermingled here with Taoism and primitive animism. She would recognize passages.
“I can,” she said.
He gaped. “You can?” He shook his head. “Well, the gods have singled you out... Yes, look at them if you want. But handle them carefully. They’re quite old.”
Joyful, she went to the chest and opened it. At first she saw it only full of shadow. She fetched the lamp and held it above. Wan light nickered and fell.
The chest gaped across rot, mildew, and fungus.
She moaned. Barely did she keep from letting hot grease spill onto the corruption. With her free hand she groped, caught hold of something, lifted a gray tatter up to view.
Tu Shan bent over. “Well, well,” he muttered. “Water must have gotten in. How sad.”
She dropped the shred, replaced the lamp, rose to confront him. “When did you last look into that box?” she demanded most quietly.
His glance shifted elsewhere. “I don’t know. No reason to.”
“You never read the sacred texts? You have them perfectly by heart?”
“They were gifts from pilgrims. What are they to me?” He summoned bluster. “I don’t need writings. I am the Master. That’s enough.”
“You cannot read or write,” she said.
“They, well, they suppose I can, and— What harm? What harm, I ask you?” He turned on her. “Stop nagging me. Go. Go into the other rooms. Leave me be.”
Pity overcame her. He was, after all, so vulnerable—a simple man, a common man, whom karma or the gods or the demons or blind accident had made ageless for no know-able reason. With peasant shrewdness he had survived. He had acquired the sonorous phrases that a saint should utter. And he had not abused his position here; he was a god-figure that required little and returned much, assurance, protection, oneness. But the unchanging cycle of season after season after season, world without end, had dulled his wits and even, she saw, sapped his courage.
“I’m sorry,” she said, laying a hand on his. “I meant no reproach. I’ll tell nobody, of course. I’ll clean this out and from now on take care of such things for you—for us.”
“Thank you,” he replied uncomfortably. “Still, well, I meant to tell you you’ll have to stay in the back rooms till nightfall.”
“A woman is coming to you,” she said in a voice as leaden as the knowledge.
“They expect it.” His own voice loudened. “So it’s been since—since the beginning. What else was there for me? I can’t suddenly withhold my blessing from their households. Can I?”
“And she’s young and pretty.”
“Well, when they aren’t, I’ve been kind to them anyhow.” He forced indignation. “Who are you to call me faithless? How many men have you been with in your time, and you a nun?”
“I said nothing against you.” She turned around. “Very well, I go.” She felt his relief like radiance at her back.
The four disciples huddled together in one room of their quarters, blurs of darkness by lamplight, and played a game with slicks tossed on the floor. They sprang to their feet when Li entered, bowed awkwardly, stood in abashed silence. They knew quite well why she was here, but could not think what to say.
How young they were, she thought. And how handsome Wan, at least, was. She imagined his body on hers, lithe, hot, delirious.
Perhaps later. There would be boundless later. She smiled at them. “The Master wants me to rehearse you in the Diamond Sutra,” she told them.
4
It was raining when the village buried the first child of the Master and the Lady, They had hoped for sunshine but the wizard and the tiny corpse both told them they could not auspiciously wait longer than they had done. Spring that year had come late. Its bleakness and damp stretched on into the summer. They slipped through to the lungs of the girl-child, who gasped for a few days before she lay still. Oh, very still, when she cried and sucked and snuggled no more.
With Tu Shan, Li watched the wizard lower the coffin into a hole where water sloshed. The disciples stood close, the rest of the people in a rough ring. Beyond them she saw mists, shadowy hints of hillside, grandeur dissolved in this formless gray that tapped on her face and dripped off her hat and weighted her hair. Wet wool stank. Her breasts ached with milk.
The wizard rose, took up the rattle tucked under his rope belt, and shook it as he pranced around the grave screaming. Thus he warded off evil spirits. The disciples and those few others who had prayer wheels spun them. Everybody swayed to and fro. The chant sounded as raw as the air, “—honored ancestors, great souls, Honored ancestors, great souls—“ over and over, rite of a heathendom that the Tao and the Buddha had barely touched.
Tu Shan raised his arms and intoned words more fitting, but blurred and mechanical. He had spoken them too often. Li hardly noticed. She likewise had known too many deaths. She could not at the moment count the number of infants she had borne and lost. Seven, eight, a dozen? It hurt more to watch children grow old. But farewell, daughter of mine. May you not be lonely and afraid, wherever you have gone.
What Li felt now was the final hard freezing of resolution within herself.
Things ended. Folk mumbled words and went back to their work. The wizard remained. His task was to fill the grave. At her back, through his ongoing quavery song, Li heard clods fall on the coffin.
The disciples sought their parents’ homes for the nonce. Li and Tu Shan entered an empty house. He left the door ajar for light. Coals aglow on the hearth had somewhat wanned the room. He shucked his coat and tossed it on the bed. A sigh gusted from him. “Well,” he said. “That’s done.”
After a span, into her silence: “The poor wee girl. But it happens. Better luck next tune, eh? And maybe a son.”
She tensed. “There will be no next time, here,” she answered.
“What?” He lumbered around to stand before her. His arms dangled at his sides.
She met his stare full on. “I will not stay,” she told him. “You should leave with me.”
“Are you crazed?” Fear crossed the usually firm countenance. “Has a demon gotten into you?”
She shook her head. “Only an understanding, and it has been growing for months. This is simply no life for us.”
“It’s peaceful. It’s happy.”
“So you see it, because you’ve lain in it so long. I say it is stagnant and squalid.” She spoke calmly, the least bit sadly. “At first, yes, after my wanderings, I believed I had come to a sanctuary. Tu Shan,”—she would not give him his endearment name until he yielded, if ever he did—“I have learned what you should have seen an age ago. Earth holds no sanctuaries for anyone, anywhere.”
Amazement made his anger faint. “You want back to your palaces and monkey courtiers, eh?”
“No. That was another trap. I want ... freedom ... to be, to become whatever I am able to. Whatever we are able to.”
“They need me here!”
She must first put down scorn. If she showed hers for these half-animals, she could well lose him. And, true, in his liking for them, his concern and compassion, he was better than she was. Second she must muster all the will at her command. If she surrendered and abided, she would likewise slowly become one with the hillfolk. That might aid her toward self
lessness, toward ultimate release from the Wheel; but she would give up every imaginable attainment that this life held. What escape, except through random violence, did she have from it?
“They lived much the same before you,” she said. “They will do so after you. And with or without you, it cannot be for always. The Han people press westward. I have seen them clearing forest and breaking earth. Someday they will take these lands.”
He fell into bewilderment. “Where can we go? Would you be a beggar again?”
“If need be, but then only for a short while. Tu Shan, a whole world lies beyond this horizon.”
“We kn-know nothing about it.”
“I know something.” Through the ice of her resolve shone a strengthening fire. “Foreign ships touch the shores of China. Barbarians thrust inward. I have heard about mighty stirrings to the south, on the far side of the mountains.”
“You told me ... it’s forbidden to leave the Empire—”
“Ha, what does that mean to us? What watchmen stand on those paths we can find? I tell you, if we cannot seize the opportunities that beckon everywhere around, we do not deserve our lives.”
“If we become famous, they ... would notice we don’t grow old—”
“We can cope with that. Change rushes through the world unbridled. The Empire can no more stay forever locked into itself than this village can. We’ll find advantages to take. Perhaps just setting money out at interest for a long time. We’ll see. My years have been harder than yours. I know how full of secret places chaos is. Yes, we may well go under, we may perish, but until then we will have been wholly alive!”
He stood dazed. She knew she would need months wherein to prevail, if indeed she could. Well, she had the patience of centuries to draw upon, when there was something for which to work.
Clouds thinned, light broke through, the rain in the doorway gleamed like flying arrows.
The Boat of a Million Years Page 21