by Ben Stevens
Abruptly, Hideshima moved around the low wooden table, so that there in front of my master she could now bow down with her head almost touching the tatami mat.
‘Thank you, Ennin-sensei – thank you...’ she breathed, her voice hoarse with repressed tears.
Gently, my master made her straighten her back, and then took one of her thin hands in his own as he stared compassionately at her.
‘Kukai, I wonder if you might go and order us some green tea?’ he said quietly.
I understood the real message being given.
‘Of course, master,’ I said, and I left the room, as my master began talking in a quiet, steady tone. Comforting the bereaved mother; giving her, through his carefully-chosen words, what consolation he could, now that he had at least avenged the death of her son.
Wabi-sabi
I have often criticized my so-called ‘servant’, Kukai, for sensationalizing those cases we have shared together. One has only to look at the titles he gives them – ‘The Picture of Death’, ‘The Black Death’, and most absurd of all ‘The Geisha and the Vampire’ – to see that Kukai is rather, shall we say, prone to the melodramatic.
Of course, on a few of those occasions I have dared voice my dissatisfaction, Kukai has rather curtly suggested that I might try to write an account of a case. This is, I fully concede, far harder than it first seems. I do not deny that Kukai has a certain ‘knack’ (for want of a better word), when it comes to describing at least some of what we have experienced during our several years together.
So despite his tendency towards melodrama, perhaps it is best that only Kukai should continue to describe those cases in which we sometimes find ourselves embroiled.
But still... I will relate a short story here; one that has always appealed to me ever since I first heard it, as a younger man. Readers seeking ‘adventure’ and ‘danger’ may well be disappointed (there is no violence here – not the slightest trace of murder or criminal activity); and yet it is strangely haunting...
Perhaps even – I hesitate to use the word – beautiful.
(As a footnote: I am aware that several of those stories, written by Kukai, have of late begun to be ‘known’ outside of Japan. For this reason, I feel that I should begin my tale by attempting to explain a concept that is, I am certain, uniquely Japanese...)
The Japanese aesthetic wabi-sabi has no easy translation. Like Zen, wabi-sabi is rather something that has to be experienced in one’s own mind; it is impossible to describe it exactly.
Put very crudely, however, wabi can be taken to mean loneliness. Especially that which comes from living among nature, far from human society. And sabi is beauty that comes with age, when an item or object shows signs of wear and repair – even decay. Thus an old tin pot is to be as valued as greatly as a china vase; a field of withered grass to be comparable in its beauty to a tall red rose.
Wabi-sabi was desired by Tadakuni Nishida, poet to a daimyo named Motoki. Nishida felt himself mentally atrophying within Motoki’s castle; a prisoner in a gilded cage, prostituting in return for his upkeep his talent for haiku and other, lesser forms of poetry like the lowest geisha prostituted her body.
Finally, with the daimyo’s permission, Nishida left the castle. He was at last free to wander where he liked and contemplate mujo, or the Buddhist concept of impermanence – the idea that everything, from the smallest bug to the very universe itself, is in a constant state of flux. With this in mind, thought Nishida as he freed himself from the bonds of castle life, what use was money and other, material items?
The wandering monk Kamo no Chomei had defined mujo perfectly, writing several centuries before: ‘Ceaselessly the river flows, and yet the water is never the same...’
For almost a year Nishida roamed free, sleeping in forests and fields, visiting villages and towns only to beg for food and alms. But finally there grew the desire to completely remove himself from all human society. And so he strove to find the loneliest mountain he could, there to build himself a small hut and spend the rest of his days meditating and practising chado – the art of making tea.
Finally he came across a mountain in Chiba prefecture that seemed perfect. Admittedly, the mountain had at its base one tiny village, but Nishida would have no reason to visit it. So using the crudest tools and his bare hands, he constructed a small hut made from bamboo halfway up the mountain slope.
Within this hut he built a tiny fire underneath an iron kettle, the hiss of the warming water accompanying the soft patter of the rain upon the roof. Nishida prepared his ocha using powdered green tea called matcha, first imported from China several hundred years before. With the absolute economy of movement that is in itself a practice of Zen Buddhism, Nishida made the tea and, kneeling down on the earthen floor, prepared to drink it.
‘Excuse me!’ came the sudden cry from outside.
Restraining a sign, Nishida put down his rough wooden cup and ventured outside into the drizzle. There stood a man dressed in rough farming clothes, behind him several other men and women. The man in front – somehow sensing that Nishida had (if not now then at least once) been a person of some importance – bowed low.
(Had Nishida chosen to introduce himself by name, the villagers would have known immediately who he was. His long poem about a carp that swims upstream to heaven was famous throughout the land. Nishida, however, hated it; he considered it his most pretentious work.)
‘Please forgive us,’ said the farmer, who was missing most of his teeth from the front of his mouth. ‘It is extremely rude of us to disturb you. We wished only to welcome you here.’
For all the pleasantries, Nishida realised that the villagers were suspicious. Why was he here and what did he want? They were a particularly isolated community, perhaps seeing no one from outside their village for the whole of their lives, and so they had a right to know. All of this was, however, concealed behind the necessary apologies as they gave the pretence of a greeting.
Nishida replied in equally polite, deferential tones, while at the same time making it clear that he did not wish to be disturbed again. The villagers could now rest easy, aware as they were that this man wished only to live in peaceful solitude within his hut.
Their minds at rest, the villagers departed.
It was shortly after this visit that Nishida’s eyes began to itch. At first it barely concerned him, but soon he was obliged to clean his eyes in a nearby mountain stream. The clean, icy-cold water that came from the very peak of the mountain assuaged the itching only temporarily, however. After a while they felt puffy and inflamed; and slowly Nishida lost his sight.
Each day the outside world became a little more hazy and blurred, and it was more difficult for Nishida to scavenge for berries, nuts and roots in the forest that grew up the mountain. Very well, he decided – when his sight finally was lost he would have to starve.
But he would not go without ocha. Ceaselessly he rehearsed the movements for preparing tea, keeping everything he needed in a set place and practicing with his eyes closed until it became second nature for him to make tea even without the sense of sight.
When at last the world became dark Nishida spent most of his time inside the hut. He had a little food, which he ate sparingly, making it last as long as possible. Otherwise he knelt in meditation, periodically using a flint and stone to light a small fire for his tea. He had a supply of dried ferns, grass and kindling for his small fires, which he built carefully using his sense of touch. Water came from the mountain stream, which Nishida was still able to find his way to and from.
On the seventh day after he became blind, Nishida ran out of food. He meditated on the feelings of hunger that followed, attempting first to isolate and then remove them from his body’s consciousness. But still he couldn’t help but weaken, so that on his third day without eating he dropped the chashaku or tea scoop made from bamboo while he was preparing ocha.
This was a disaster. Without the chashaku Nishida could not practice chado; he would not be abl
e to partake of its simple, yet soul-satisfying routine.
Trying to retain his inner calm Nishida felt on the floor, his fingers finding nothing but earth and bits of old wood. He could hear the kettle boiling furiously now but he ignored it, trying to find his tea scoop…
‘Here,’ said a voice right beside him, as the scoop was pressed into his right hand.
‘Thank you,’ replied Nishida – the first words he had spoken since his brief meeting with the villagers. He restrained showing his surprise that someone should be in his hut with him. Certainly he had heard no one enter, nor had he felt a presence before whoever it was had spoken.
‘Would you care for some tea?’ he asked the owner of the voice.
There came a slight, yet somehow infinitely mournful sigh.
‘That,’ said the voice, ‘is a pleasure denied me.’
Out of politeness, Nishida did not ask why. He tried to stifle his curiosity concerning his surprise visitor. He certainly did not think it was one of the villagers; they had understood that he wished to end his days alone.
A fellow hermit? Unlikely, given that by their very nature hermits desired solitude. It was hardly likely that one would actively seek out the company of another. A wanderer in need of some item? And yet no request had been made for money, food or clothing. Even the offer of ocha had been rejected.
Lastly, Nishida had to consider that maybe this man was a criminal, come to take whatever the blind hermit possessed. And yet Nishida had only the barest essentials; nothing more, really, than the ragged clothes he stood up in and his tea-making equipment. The most desperate of criminals would have fled in disgust by now – not stayed to assist Nishida in the finding of his chashaku.
All of a sudden, Nishida realized that his mysterious visitor had left. He did not hear whoever it was depart – the person seemed to be as soundless as the air – and yet somehow he knew that he was again alone in his hut. And so he made his tea, extinguished the fire, and then feeling weary settled down to sleep.
The owner of the voice was back the following day, however. Nishida had just returned from his blind walk to the stream and entered his hut when the voice greeted him:
‘Hello’.
Again, Nishida concealed his surprise and merely offered his mysterious guest a cup of ocha.
‘Alas, I cannot,’ sighed the voice.
At last Nishida felt that he could ask the obvious question:
‘May I ask who you are?’
‘Just someone who desired to see the great Nishida sensei,’ said the voice, using the poet’s honorific title.
And then the stranger had gone again, Nishida realized. This left the hermit free to meditate in peace, although when he tried sleep quickly stole upon him. He was fast weakening without food, only water and tea sustaining him. Soon this part of his existence would be finished, he thought wearily as he lay down.
And yet still he awoke early the following day, coughing in the chilly morning air as he went to the stream for water. His visitor was back again, thought Nishida as he re-entered his hut.
‘Hello,’ he said amiably.
‘Hello, Nishida sensei,’ replied the voice.
‘No tea for you today, I presume?’
‘No, thank you. But I would talk to you about a few matters.’
And talk they did; never had Nishida felt his considerable intellect being challenged so. The breadth of knowledge possessed by the owner of the voice was truly extraordinary. They spoke of Buddhism, Confucianism and the Kojiki, Japan’s earliest chronicle, which begins with the creation myth. They spoke of Izanagi and Izanami, the two deities who mated and produced many more kami or gods. They spoke of literature and plays, great moments from history and their thoughts concerning the future.
Finally, exhausted from thinking and speaking, Nishida fell silent. Who was this visitor, he pondered yet again. And why has he come here a third time to visit me?
‘You are the man I thought you were, Nishida sensei,’ said the voice at last, in that sighing tone that was curiously reminiscent of the wind.
Suddenly, Nishida was struck by a thought that was so startling he did not know whether to feel fearful or elated.
‘Oshaka-sama – Buddha?’ he whispered, beginning to bow from his kneeling position.
The sighing voice laughed just slightly.
‘Not Buddha,’ it said.
Then Nishida remembered that in Shinto, the religion that was in Japan from virtually the dawn of time, far before Buddhism, many things in nature – rocks, trees, the very mountains themselves – were often said to possess a kami or god. And this voice, which sounded so much like the wind and undoubtedly did not belong to a body…
‘Would you like to see what you desire, Nishida sensei?’ asked the voice. ‘Would you like to know what follows this existence? For I suspect that the time is now.’
‘Yes,’ croaked the ageing hermit, at once feeling impossibly weary. ‘The time is now.’
He sank to his side, and closed his sightless eyes. And then he found that he could again see, as his bamboo hut and the mountain itself fast disappeared below him.
‘Come with me,’ said the voice that was like the wind. ‘Across land and sea and time, come with me.’
With no effort at all Nishida followed the voice, as they headed west to that place that lies far beyond where the sun sets.
The Mad Dog Sickness
1
‘Please, Ennin-sensei, it is my master – he is sickening to death, but no doctor can say what is the matter with him!’
With these words – along with his sudden entry into the small room at an inn where my master and I were enjoying a little dinner – the burly samurai made his presence known.
‘Your master is lord Saji, the daimyo of this region, not long returned from a trip to China?’ returned my master, taking a leisurely sip of sake.
The samurai’s expression was agonized.
‘Yes, Ennin-sensei, that is correct. Now, please come!’
My master looked with mild curiosity at this panic-stricken warrior.
‘Forgive me, but it seems you don’t quite understand what it is I do. I...’
My master paused, suddenly appearing slightly baffled, and looked at me.
‘Exactly what is it you would say that I do, Kukai? You’re the one who writes these stories concerning our escapades together, after all...’
‘I would suggest, master, that what you do might best be described as... as ‘investigating the unusual and remarkable’,’ I replied hesitantly.
With something almost like a shrug, my master returned his attention to the samurai.
‘So you see,’ he said, ‘any ‘skills’ that I may lay claim to possessing are not in the field of medicine. Save for a few basic remedies, that is... What you appear to need is a physician more capable than the one who is currently attempting to treat lord Saji. I wish you luck in finding one.’
The samurai ignored entirely this attempted dismissal. He moved forward slightly, his eyes boring into my master’s.
‘Ennin-sensei,’ he began, his voice tight and barely controlled. ‘If anyone can discover exactly what the matter is with my master, it is you. So I must insist that you come with me, to the castle that is no great distance from here. Financially, at least, you can be assured that this trip will be well worth your while.’
‘Thank you,’ said my master, his voice now equally as tight. ‘But my fees are fixed – save for those cases when I choose to waive any form of payment entirely. I still believe that I can be of absolutely no assistance to lord Saji – but in my desire to avoid creating any sort of ‘scene’, I shall at least go with you to the castle. My servant Kukai here will of course accompany me.’
‘Thank you, Ennin-sensei,’ said the samurai, at once appearing (albeit only slightly) relieved. ‘There is a carriage outside this inn awaiting us.’
2
The daimyo named Saji lay in his private room at the castle on a large and opu
lent bed. Around this bed were stood several important-looking men, one of them obviously a doctor. He looked at my master with exhausted eyes –
‘I have tried every test I know,’ he began, his voice breathless and halting. He hardly seemed a well man himself, I reflected. ‘But there is nothing... I can see no cause for my lord’s sickness...’
‘How long has he been unconscious for?’ asked my master quickly, as a servant gently wiped his lord’s sweat-smeared brow. Saji was a large man, clearly once a formidable warrior although he was now aging. There was a patch over one eye, so that I wondered if he might have lost it in some previous battle. His other eye was closed as he slept, his breath coming out of his open mouth in great gasps, and making the air of the room itself foul with its poisonous stink.
Even in the midst of whatever this severe sickness was, however, the daimyo’s face retained a certain look of arrogance – indeed, of cruelty.
‘Not long,’ returned the doctor, who seemed a little uncertain in my master’s presence. He looked at the samurai who’d fetched us from the inn, as though seeking confirmation that he should continue.
The samurai nodded, and the doctor resumed –
‘He lapses in and out of consciousness. Sometimes he is almost lucid; then his body contorts and he cries out with pain. He is strangely afraid of water – ’
‘What?’ said my master immediately.
‘Of... water,’ repeated the doctor hesitantly. ‘So that he can barely look upon it, let alone drink it. And yet water is what he needs most, given the amount of sweating caused by this sickness.’
‘Lord Saji is recently returned from China, I believe,’ said my master.
‘The... samurai told you this?’ returned the doctor, at once appearing slightly sly.
‘No, I was already aware of it. How is not important,’ replied my master firmly. ‘What I wish to know is this – while abroad, was he scratched or bitten by any animal?’
‘No, not so far as I am aware,’ said the doctor, his voice now equally as firm. ‘And I should know, for I was with him that entire trip, which including sailing time – and we were fortunate with the winds and the tides, thus being able to cross the sea far quicker than is usual – lasted some three months.