The Moonflower

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  When they reached the stone steps leading up to the main entrance, Jerome chose instead to take them around to the side.

  “The view is more unusual this way,” he said. “We’ll approach from the ravine below the temple walls.”

  He seemed interested and alive today, Marcia found to her joy. He was almost as vital and compelling as she remembered him from the old days, and she responded as eagerly as Laurie. Away from the dark Japanese villa she could be gay in the old way that had once appealed to Jerome and drawn him to her.

  As they rounded a walk that approached from the low side, the full glory of the cherry blossoms burst upon them in pink and white clouds of bloom. The hillside seemed alive with color and Marcia could understand why the Japanese made something of a cult of cherry blossom viewing. All over Japan this month, wherever the trees bloomed, people thronged into the open to savor their beauty with a conscious appreciation and satisfaction. The throngs were out at Kiyomizu today, with more kimonos than usual in evidence among the ladies, since the kimono was more fitting for the ceremony of flower viewing. Cameras were busy around every turn and the temple steps seemed to be a favorite spot for groups to gather and be photographed.

  Young Japanese women in trim blue uniforms led various tours about the temple grounds, and Marcia found it even more interesting to watch the people than to look at cherry blossoms and temples. Children were everywhere. To Laurie’s delight they came upon some dozen or more little girls squatting on the earth with paper laid out before them as they painted the scene in water colors. Most of the pictures were very good, since the Japanese learned to paint as quickly as they learned to write with a brush. Indeed, the two media were similar.

  Approaching the temple from the park that spread its walks and steps far below on this side, they had an impressive view. A great stone retaining wall, high as the wall of a castle, slanted upward, with the roofs of Kiyomizu rising in a cluster above the wall and spreading back along the hillside. Halfway to the rear the stone wall ended and a gigantic wooden platform supported the remaining buildings of the temple and held them in the air far above, on a level with those in front. The platform was supported by countless tree trunks, upended and tall as they had been in life, bound together by an open wooden cross structure. The Japanese, who had only wood to work with as an architectural medium, used it with imagination and never-ending beauty. The high platform overlooked the ravine, while steep, slanted roofs of ancient thatch rose in the background.

  Near the hillside they found a broad bank of steps rising steeply to the level of the temples above. They climbed through the pervading shimmer of cherry blossoms, until they too could stand with the throngs on the platform and look down into the ravine and out over the roofs of Kyoto. All around them was the murmur of Japanese voices, and the sound of the stream below, the “clear water” that gave Kiyomizu its name.

  “It’s so beautiful it hurts,” Laurie said softly and Marcia pressed her hand. Much of the beauty of this day and place was, for them, due to Jerome’s presence, to his almost affectionate mood.

  They circled the main temple buildings, climbed still higher beneath a stone torii and between two snarling stone dogs. Before a smaller building at the top level an elderly Japanese woman pulled the hempen bell rope and clapped her hands three times to attract the attention of the god. Then she bent her head in prayer with her palms together in the familiar gesture men of many faiths used when they prayed.

  Beyond they found a small garden, a pond with an island in the center and a bridge leading to it. A large turtle sunned himself lazily on a rock and hardly troubled to pull in his head as they went by. Jerome found a low wall where they could sit alone, withdrawn from the visiting throngs. Afternoon sunlight poured over the scene, shining on temple roofs and stone lanterns, setting the cherry blossoms ashine with glowing light.

  The moment seemed to brim with emotion and Marcia slipped her hand into Jerome’s, leaned gently against his arm. His fingers closed about her own, but when she looked up at him, she saw that he was watching Laurie.

  “Tell me,” he said to his daughter, “do you know why the samurai chose the cherry blossom for his emblem?”

  Laurie shook her head, and he went on, his tone light, casual, yet with an awareness behind it, as if he watched for something.

  “The cherry blossom falls at the peak of its beauty, instead of withering slowly like other flowers,” he said. “The old samurai, the warrior, considered it a more noble thing to meet death at the peak of his career, at the crest of his powers, instead of growing old with his glorious days behind him.”

  Marcia looked about at the foaming sea of blossoms, and mused out loud. “That’s all right for cherry blossoms and it sounds fine as a romantic tradition. But I hope the Japanese don’t hold with that belief now.”

  “They did during the war,” Jerome said. “There’s a Japanese proverb, ‘The cherry blossom is the best of flowers, the soldier is the best of men.’ It’s tradition to believe that like the cherry blossom, the soldier is born to die at his peak. Japanese soldiers were trained to die. Perhaps that’s one trouble with Ichiro Minato. He was trained to die and he didn’t die. Now I suppose he feels dishonored, as if he had no right to be alive. Marcia, has he ever bothered you in any way? Minato, I mean?”

  The sudden question surprised her. “He has never even spoken to me,” she said. Somehow she did not want to mention the times when Minato-san had stared at her so strangely.

  A blemish had fallen upon the day with this talk of death and soldiers. Marcia got up from the wall, hoping to turn the tide of Jerome’s thoughts by moving away to something new. But he touched her arm lightly, arresting her, and she turned to look into his face again. The Lucifer look was alive in his eyes and she sensed in him a rising pitch of intensity that suddenly frightened her. She wanted nothing to spoil this lovely day, nothing to break the sense of companionship shared with him.

  But he went on and she sensed a mockery in his voice she did not understand.

  “You think this is all very beautiful, don’t you?” he asked. “But let’s put it to a test. Close your eyes for a moment and shut it out. Close your eyes, Laurie.”

  Marcia did not close her eyes. She stared at her husband, her anxiety increasing. But Laurie shut her eyes obediently, and stood waiting, unguarded and eager for whatever surprise might come.

  “Can you hear the planes?” her father asked. “No—keep your eyes closed. They’re planes out of the war years, Laurie. Perhaps planes out of the future. Can you hear them now?”

  The excitement in Laurie matched his own as she responded to his make-believe. “Yes, I can hear them, Daddy. There are a lot of them coming. They’re flying over the mountains to Kyoto.”

  “Listen then! Listen and you can hear the ‘bombs away!’ They’re dropping now, straight as death. One hit and all Kiyomizu is gone—cherry blossoms and temples and human beings.”

  Shock brought Marcia alive. “Stop it!” she cried. “What are you doing?”

  But it was already done. Excitement gave way to horror in Laurie’s face. She opened her eyes and looked about her at a scene that had plainly changed before her vision, as if she saw smoking ruin, desolation and death.

  The suddenness with which the world of cherry blossoms had crashed about them sickened Marcia. The reversal of emotion was too sudden, too cruel. She put an arm about Laurie, seeking to erase the pain and bewilderment that suddenly gave her daughter’s face the look of a grown woman.

  “Don’t believe him—he’s only playing a game!” she cried, trying to keep her voice light with an amusement she could not feel. “No one has ever dropped a bomb on Kyoto, Laurie. No one wanted to destroy all this beauty and art. Kyoto is still old Japan.”

  Jerome paid no attention to her. “But it could happen, Laurie. It could happen any time. When you look at men you have to remember that. You have to remember what lies underneath. They can build beauty, but they can destroy it too. Don’t trust
so easily, Laurie. Don’t give your heart so readily.”

  There was a new destructiveness in him, Marcia saw in dismay, a hateful, ugly thing that not only reached out to destroy others, but which cut inwards as well, destroying himself.

  A hot tide of anger began to rise in Marcia. She must see him alone as quickly as possible and talk to him about the monstrous thing he had just done. Fortunately, Laurie was resilient and happy-natured. She would forget this moment shortly and be herself again. But could she, Laurie’s mother, forget it? She felt bruised and sick, for all her anger.

  Jerome seemed to read the indignation in her eyes and he smiled as if it pleased him, even though he pretended to apologize.

  “I’m sorry, my dear. Perhaps I should keep my little imaginings to myself. Come along and let’s enjoy the rest of the place. There’s a dragon I’d like you to meet, Laurie.”

  But the bloom had gone out of the day. Laurie walked soberly beside her father as they moved toward the front gate of the temple. A fiercely scaled dragon reared its head in a fountain, but Laurie, who would have delighted earlier in so magnificent a bronze dragon, watched solemnly and did not smile. Visitors to the temple paused beside the fountain to catch water in a wooden dipper and rinse their mouths and palms so that they might go symbolically cleansed and purified into the grounds of this Buddhist temple.

  “Let’s go home,” Laurie said finally, and this time she turned toward her mother. “My tummy feels shaky inside.”

  If there was anything Jerome did not enjoy it was the company of a sick child. He moved with alacrity to get them to the car and Marcia sat in the back seat, with Laurie’s head on her lap. By the time they reached home, the little girl felt better, but she wanted no more than milk toast and fruit for supper, and by way of precaution Marcia tucked her into bed after she had eaten. Laurie asked to sit up and look at her books, so Marcia fixed a light for her, and piled the books she requested on the table beside her bed. Then she went in search of Jerome.

  He was in his room and at her tap he called to her to come in. He seemed wryly amused at the sight of her, but he got up and drew a chair near the desk where he had been sitting.

  “You’re looking very much like a mother tonight,” he said. “A ready-to-do-battle mother. I’m not sure the look becomes you.”

  “This isn’t a joking matter,” she said steadily. “I’ve tried to make allowances because you don’t know very much about children. You haven’t been around any American children for years, and you certainly aren’t acquainted with your own daughter.”

  He sighed and tapped the papers on his desk. “If you don’t mind, I’m not in the mood tonight for a lecture on fatherhood.”

  From where she sat she could see the carved mask on the wall and she tried to keep her gaze away from it. The rolling eyes and sneering mouth seemed to jeer at her, and they distracted her from what she wanted to say.

  “You mustn’t do frightening things like that to Laurie,” she told him, stumbling a little over the words. “The most wonderful thing about her is her happy, confident nature. I don’t want anything to spoil that.”

  He flung aside the pencil he had picked up, and now his face was alive with dark vitality. “I can see that the child has need of a father. Women always believe children should be protected to the point of unfitting them for life. What do you think is going to happen to Laurie’s happy confidence, as you call it, when she finds out what is waiting for her away from your protection? You’re making a weakling of her.”

  “She’s only seven,” Marcia told him indignantly. “And it isn’t weak to be loving and warm. A child isn’t wise enough at seven to know what to do with the ugly things in life. If you continue what you started today, the result may be disastrous for her.”

  “Are you wise enough at your age to know what to do with the ugly side of life?” he asked sardonically. “Have you ever grown up?”

  Marcia stiffened. “It’s you who haven’t grown!” she cried heatedly. “It’s you who are running away from the work you ought to be doing. You haven’t been able to face what’s ugly in life and find the good in it too. But I won’t let you twist Laurie in the same way. I won’t let her be alone with you again unless you give me your word to avoid tormenting her as you did today.”

  He laughed out loud, as though her words delighted him. “And how will you manage that if I choose to see her alone? Our daughter, my dear, is already nine-tenths on my side, no matter what I say to her. So how would you stop me? Though of course you could take her home, if you wanted to do that.”

  Her eyes widened as she stared at him. “Do you mean you would use Laurie cold-bloodedly, just to force me to go home?”

  “I might,” he said coolly. “Anyway, you can think it over.”

  She turned from him and walked to the door.

  Outside in the dim hallway, she clasped her arms about herself to still her sudden shivering.

  From kitchen and dining room came a clatter of dishes. All was quiet in Laurie’s bedroom, but she could not go in there right now. She could not let Laurie see her face until she had found time to compose herself. Outside, the evening was still light. She caught up a jacket from the hall tree and let herself out the front door. She would walk for a while in the soft Japanese twilight, with only strangers to see her abroad—strangers who would not know how to read the trouble in a western face.

  She turned uphill past Nan’s house, following the narrow lane between bamboo fences, hurrying past Nan’s so she would not be seen. Nan Horner was a friend of Jerome’s and it was quite likely she would side with him.

  As she walked she began to cry softly, the tears streaking her cheeks. She could let them come; it did not matter now. Though when she went back to the house there must be no helpless tears.

  Some sort of small shrine blocked the way ahead. She saw a quiet, empty enclosure and moved toward it as to a haven where she could be completely alone until she had regained control of her emotions.

  13.

  The shrine was set in a triangular plot at a place where the lane forked off in a V. A stone fence all around enclosed it like a small island, and the entrance at the point of the V was marked by two freshly painted, bright vermilion torii—the sign of a Shinto shrine, as Marcia had learned by now. These gates were formed by two upright columns of wood, with crossbars overhead. On either side of a paved walk the enclosure had been thickly planted with trees and shrubs. Somewhere off to the left side she could hear the murmur of a stream, and the wind sighed in tall pines.

  The peace of the little shrine invited her and she stepped beneath the first torii, went between two stone lanterns and under the second vermilion gate. Ahead rose the small building of the shrine, set high on a concrete base, but in itself hardly larger than an oversized doll’s house. Overhead a sloping tiled roof sheltered the shrine from the rain, though it stood open on all sides, the green of shrubbery crowding close.

  As she followed the short, straight walk, she saw a trough of water on her left, with the usual wooden dipper waiting. Ahead, guarding the immediate approach to the shrine were two little stone foxes set on bases of field rocks cemented together, their heads turned as if to watch her, with alert ears cocked and pink tinted inside. The plumed tail of one curled high in a great brush behind him, the other’s tail was broken. White vases of greenery graced the altar, but there was no image here, as there would be at a Buddhist temple. A thick hempen bell rope, crimson and white, hung ready to summon the god, and there were two more small porcelain foxes facing the altar.

  She was glad she had found this shrine. She could stand here in the quiet, with only the drip of water in the trough and the sighing of the wind for company. She had run headlong from the house, from the frightening thing she had glimpsed in Jerome. If he meant to use Laurie against her in this cruel way, he would succeed in his purpose. She would have to take the child and go home.

  Was this the answer she had flown the Pacific for? Was her determination to sav
e their marriage a blind and foolish thing? The tears had dried on her cheeks, but the ache in her throat and in her heart went on.

  “How can I stop loving him?” she thought miserably. “How can I learn to hate him so I may be free of him?”

  That in itself was a disturbing thought. Never before had she wanted for even a moment to be free. Always she had believed that it was better to be Jerome’s wife and have whatever he chose to give, than to have the whole of any other man. But here in this quiet place she had suddenly glimpsed herself in a new light, glimpsed herself as a woman caught in the spell of an enchantment from which she must certainly fight free.

  The evening light was fading as the mountains cut off the sun and the little shrine grew cool and dusky. The two stone foxes, one with a cylinder in its mouth, the other a ball, stared at her curiously, as if wondering who she was and why she had come to this place. Stories of the fox god returned to her mind. The way of the fox, inhuman and wicked, was to take the guise of a human body and wreak evil in the world. But these little foxes seemed cheery beings who meant her no harm. She bowed to them politely and turned to go. As she did so, a shadow blocked the opening of the farthest torii.

  A figure stood there shrouded in dusk. She could see that it was a man, though she could not make out his face as she moved toward the entrance to the shrine. She supposed it was some worshiper come to pray. He did not enter, however, but remained near the gate, watching her. For the most part, as she knew, the streets of Japan were safe to any woman. But there did exist the outcasts, the beggars, the thieves, and it was growing darker by the moment. There was no other way out—she must walk past the figure quickly and hurry home.

  As she approached him, the man stepped full into her path, halting her, and now she saw his face. It was Ichiro Minato. Jerome’s warnings about him returned to her mind, far from reassuring now, when she must walk directly past him in the dusk. The lane beyond stretched empty of passersby. If he meant her any harm, there was no one to turn to for help.