by S. J. Parks
Mochizuki slowed a little before suddenly, just past a turn off, pulling on the handbrake. Cussing, he reached over to the back seat,fumbling for a carefully gift-wrapped package before he got out. The architect traipsed back to the bend, retracing his steps.
She watched him from the car, a lone figure on the road making towards the tree line, and then she saw the monk. He wore the black habit of the mendicant Buddha, his face hidden behind a wide-brimmed coolie hat. The hinge creaked as she stepped out; the dense bamboo canopy was already alive with the sound of cicadas. The novice cupped a begging bowl in his hands, submitting to fate and passing benefactors as his teachings required. He was part of the world and the world would sustain him. In silence he accepted the gift-wrapped parcel of food.
As Mochizuki returned to the car the monk stood quietly, a part of the track and a part of the trees and, as they drove away, he disappeared in a trail of billowing dust.
‘He is often there,’ he told her. ‘The Buddhist says inner purity is in devotion to his everyday duties, to the most basic of tasks; fasting the body to feed the mind or washing vestments with care. He savours every moment in his life, not just a selected few.’
She noted his bony artistic hands had a light hold on the wheel in the ruts.
‘There is no part of his existence where he does not seek to find his skin prickling in the knowledge that he is alive. You have to strive to become a part of it. You can’t take it for granted.’
She could add nothing and they continued, jolting up the uneven road.
Once they had parked he handed her the rolls of madori plans he had prepared for the meeting with the abbot, laying them carefully in her arms one by one. As he shut the boot the sound occupied the empty grounds announcing their arrival on heavy humid air.
Naomi’s senses sharpened. In the pulsating heat they made their way up to the white walls of the monastery, surrounded in green.
The architect wiped the sweat that was already accumulating on his brow and they walked without a word to the tune of cicadas shaking in the trees. At a brushwood-woven fence, a pebbled path cut through a very well-kept monochrome garden of moss and azalea. A shaft of sunlight broke through dense canopy of surrounding trees and fell on three garden rakes hanging from the eaves of one of the whitewashed outbuildings, their shadows stencilled on the wall.
The lines of the grey roof tiles fell carelessly across the halls of worship, living quarters, treasure house and bell tower.
You see –’ he followed her eyes ‘– we only see the parts of the group of buildings at any one time; in the east we don’t stand back with a perspective on the whole.’ This notion, he explained, predicated the lives of the monks. ‘The Rinzai sect have lived in the precincts for seven centuries.’ They were begun in 1256 and the construction, he explained, which was predominantly made of timber, had only taken two years to complete. ‘Now we will meet an old friend of mine.’ Then he leaned towards her confidentially and said with startling mischief, ‘I has seen his very arse,’ and he looked for her reaction after such serious philosophies.
What? He was testing her. She suspected he would be very capable of toying with her.
‘We have taken a Japanese bath together.’ He looked disappointed that she hadn’t risen to the bait.
They left the shade, and beyond the temple buildings they came to an open meadow where the ground fell away quite steeply. Young voices drifted up from tall grasses, heavy with seeds, but they could see no one.
‘Catch him, Catch him.’
‘Yasuki Baka-chan, idiot you missed him.’ An adult voice floated up from the ridge below.
Naomi followed him across the meadow, her long skirt spilling the dry seed heads She found herself wishing for a hat.
‘Okay, demon tongue, but where are your magical tricks when we want you to make a catch?’ they heard the hidden voice say.
Two slim boys of about nine or ten, shining with exertion, came into sight, running through waist-high grass, and disturbing clouds of insects in their path. Had they been scarering birds for a living their fields would lose no seed, displacing everything in their wake with their brown bony knees and sharp laughs.
They found the abbot on a brow below the ridge; a silhouetted figure bent, hands on knees in the manner of a baseball coach, giving encouragement, his bald head bared to the sun and the back of his neck lying in thick folds above the collar of his black habit.
‘Chotto mattete, Tako-chan, where’s your strategy? You’re running round like a fool. You couldn’t catch your brother at this rate and he’s a million times easier to see.’
Naomi had assumed that the two boys were playing catch with one another. They stopped in their tracks at this admonition from the voice beyond the field ridge. The chuckling stopped and the darting and dashing become a game of stealth for a time. It seemed, as they crept and pounced in the grass, that they had regained their lost concentration. The focus did not last and soon gave way to shrieks of excitement as one boy then the other cupped his hands and dived into the grass. Failing to secure a thing, they tired, and their game slowed.
As Mochizuki and Naomi approached, the abbot held his hand aloft to bid their patience as the game concluded.
At last Tako, the taller of the two, whispered, ‘Hold it’, with a seriousness that matched younger boy’s intensity Tako then lunged with the speed of a martial artist and placed his cupped hands on the kid’s shirt.
‘Arimasu! Arimasu!’ He scooped up his catch and ran beaming towards the abbot who had been watching them, hands on knees all the while. Tako’s run slowed, his legs raised high against the resistance of the sea of grass, the seedheads slowing his progress as they lashed against his shirt.
The abbot smiled benignly at Naomi as he produced from his sleeve and made ready a small two-storey bamboo cricket box. The base was fashioned in the shape of a gourd with tight vertical struts to imprison the insect. As the abbot held the gated box open, Tako held his breath and fed his insect into the jaws of the box.
‘But that’s not a cricket!’ the abbot protested as the boy released a butterfly into the confines of the box.
‘Go find me a singing cricket. This butterfly has no voice,’ he admonished
Mochizuki waited to hear him out and finally given leave to speak said, ‘We find you at play?’
‘You must catch one with Yasuku now,’ the abbot said, rubbing the second boy’s bare head as he relinquished the box.
They let the butterfly go. Naomi could see that its wings were no longer intact and she wondered how long it would last.
Chapter 41
The abbot finally turned to greet his guests.
‘Mochizuki, my friend, how are you?’ he asked, inclining his head and clapping him on the back warmly.
‘Inestimably better for seeing you Shakira.’ Mochizuki confessed he had also brought a presentation box of sembei rice crackers as a gift, but had given it away to the novice.
‘Hakuin is doing well here with us,’ the abbot said, naming the monk.
‘I covered him in dust.’ Mochizuki laughed as Shakira turned his attention towards Naomi.
‘Momotaro-kun. I want you to meet Naomi my new colleague.’
Naomi only understood her name in the exchange.
‘Hajimemashite dozo yoroshiku.’ She introduced herself in Japanese and bowed her head, which brought the abbot’s straw-sandalled feet into view.
Looking at his naked feet she caught an intimate glimpse of his beautifully manicured toes and finished, ‘Mr Momotaro-san.’
The abbot laughed and looked to Mochizuki to give an explanation.
‘This is his childhood name, his real name is Shakira,’ Mochizuki told her.
‘We called him “peach boy” because he won every fight in the yard, like in the kid’s story. He could lay anyone out. He still looks like that fruit, don’t you think so?’ Mochizuki framed his hands around the abbot’s bald head but she was reluctant to confirm the resemblance.
Shakira adjusted his glasses to look at her and Mochizuki, realising she would not understand their folktale, continued peremptorily, ‘An old woman finds a longed-for child embedded in a peach stone. He is supernaturally strong. A real fighter. Just like our abbot here. ’
And as he rubbed the crown of the abbot’s bald head, Naomi warmed to their boyish intimacy. It was just before noon and she was heating up on the exposed hillside. ‘We should take refreshment while we discuss the matters regarding the monastery buildings,’ the abbot informed them, as if reading her desire to get out of the sun.
While he was self-determined and poised, untroubled by the heat, another bead of sweat formed between her shoulder blades. She felt its passage across the curved muscle in her back until it rested like a tear to collect in a pool that dampened the cloth around her waistband. As they moved back under the trees the cicadas shook now like rattlesnakes.
They followed him up a pathway of steep and dank steps, some hewn from stone, some earthy and worn by footfalls. A damp, rank smell surfaced intermittently and Mochizuki turned often to check on Naomi’s progress. At the crest of the hill the grass was shorn to the width of a black habit and either side the long grass was studded with orange lilies. Through the trees from the monastery below came the muted call of a log beating on the ornately worked bell in the thatched tower.
The abbot stopped
‘There. There it is,’ he said, pointing out a small building through a cutting beside the lake below them. ‘The teahouse.’
It was enchanting. Her first thought was that she wanted to tell Miho about it. Outside the teahouse water was playing from the angled point of a bamboo shaft falling into a small, hewn, stone basin below. The stone was a perfect circle, with a square centre cut to form a basin. Squaring the circle she thought it resembled a sword hilt, and she traced the circumference with her hand, feeling for the roughly inscribed motto. Mochizuki translated it for her: ‘I learn only to be contented.’
She gave a vestigial sigh – of arrival.
Mochizuki continued, ‘Samurai warriors left their swords to become Buddhist monks and found the hardships of the Rinzai sect to their taste after their fighting days. The discipline was the same.
She watched the abbot wash at the bamboo pipe.
Mochizuki touched her hand gently to follow and bent to cup his hands under the flow, throwing water over his head and drinking. He ran his tanned hands through his silver-flecked hair. When she washed she started at the cold and becoming conscious of his stare, left her hands to cool the back of her neck, glancing to meet his eyes as he looked away.
Across a stone-chequered pathway they followed the monk’s lead and, once inside the teahouse, removed their shoes in the dirt entrance hall. In the gentle light she found it a haven. The highly polished step creaked as Shakira stepped up.
Naomi saw the deftness of one much practised in the art; he turned and sank to replace his shoes facing out from the hall in readiness for slipping into them whenever he might leave.
‘Wait for me here, my friends, and I will find refreshments,’ he said beckoning them to take a seat.
It felt comfortable now to be alone with the architect, she thought.
Two zabuton cushions lay prepared but Mochizuki took another from a pile behind the twisted tree trunk that supported the roof.
It had, he explained, as he slapped the trunk, been selected precisely for its character and suggested freedom of natural expression. ‘Like this,’ he said, as he pointed to a large hibachi stove chiselled from an old tree root and lined with lead. The root had been varnished to a high amber colour and allowed every knot a prominence which recorded its growth and trials. It was as if he had brought her to the centre of his own internal world and was sharing it with her.
They sat in silence. She was already getting used to his silences and found them easy. Cool air fell from the higher ground through the open sides of the building and they waited. It was as if she were kneeling at an important threshold. But it unsettled her to have allowed the thought to materialize.
After a heavy meeting in Japanese, the abbot left. From the round window, the terrace was edged with maples and weeping cherries, the lake was studded with rocks where terrapins sat basking in the sunlight. Mochizuki ran his hands over the sill and knocked at the eaves to check for rot. It was as if she was witness to a private performance. It seemed a criminal shame to demolish the structure. This perfect sanctuary.
Chapter 42
That night, while preparing supper, Naomi chose a small, hand-tooled, Japanese steel knife. They had been extremely sharp when she first bought the set from a pavement seller outside the fish market but she had found they had a tendency to spoil unless you covered them in vegetable oil after every use, which made cleaning them a chore.
She made a sharp incision and, retaining the roots to hold it in place, she sliced an onion. Josh was leafing through a illustrated hardback book on holiday destinations that Caroline had given them as a house-warming gift.
‘Good few days?’ Josh asked; he was already on holiday.
‘A drift-around-of-a-day really.’ Her eyes welled until she could hardly see the onion. ‘It was all so, so …’ and, lost for words, she settled on, ‘Zen.’
‘Is that good?’ he asked, still lingering over Balinese escapes.
He had always had a careless curiosity for how she spent her time; they lived such different working lives. Yesterday her passion for the ukiyo-e woodblock masters of the seventeenth century had consumed her, and now he suspected he could sense Zen taking over from the woodblock prints, as sure as he could smell fried onions drifting in through the louvred door to the kitchen. After a hard day’s trading he could find coming home to her enthusiasm tiring. It was like watching someone only ever inhaling. Some days you just had to let it out and relax. What once had amused him he could now find trying. Here was yet another interest and it wasn’t the first to arrive this week.
She added mince beef from the international supermarket, to the pan.
‘Sam is a good friend, and I’m grateful but I can’t add anything. I feel worse than useless and I don’t want to be a burden.’
He did not say what he felt like saying: ‘Didn’t you really want this job?’ Instead he turned a page. ‘You’ll look pretty,’ he consoled, keen not to encourage her neediness.
She ruffled his shirt and punched his shoulder. ‘The thing is …’ She wanted to tell him that she had lost herself at the temple. And she wanted to tell him that she had felt, beyond the torii gates, there existed a sense of calm, a separate universe from her or her problems. She’d found herself reduced to such small insignificance and she felt quite comfortable with it.
She peered into the frying pan, where the pink, veined onions had browned and caramelized, before marching through the swing doors ; though buoyed by the day she still had to work out how she fitted in, She laid the table as usual.
He was startled to find her standing before him in an apron, waving a knife at him. ‘Don’t come on to me with domestic violence please,’ he jestered.
She ignored him and, coming back to Mochizuki, pointed the weapon for emphasis.
‘The thing is … I guess you’re right. With his reputation Mochizuki can please himself which projects he wants to work on. And pick and choose. International architect. Can money be an object?’ It was as if she were swimming and gasping for air, she spoke so quickly. ‘You know, he is, in fact, very philosophical.’
‘I think we got a bit of that at the talk.’ It was a trial when she stated the obvious. ‘So how about we eat?’ he said, starving.
‘I have had so much time on my hands I am prepared to go “dan dan” … go gradually – the Japanese way,’ she concluded.
Now she plays philosopher, he thought.
The new element that she found in herself had brought a change in her and she couldn�
�t quite explain it to him.
She appeared to have gone ‘Girl Guide’ on him and Josh answered in the affirmative, without having a clue what she was talking about.
Chapter 43
Mochizuki and Naomi made several trips to the temple and each time she went he seemed at pains to let her know why it was so important to him; she believed he wanted her to understand how much the tradition, the old ways with wood meant to him .
The abbot had not reappeared but the novice Hakuin was often at the turn-off on the road begging for alms, and Mochizuki always brought something; lately he had asked her to hand it over. The monk was young and thin, and she began to feel in his gratitude that she had role, a bit part at the temple. They continued with their preparations for the rebuild, They spent a good deal of time measuring the original and photographing the component parts and Mochizuki was generous with his time.
‘This is nine shaku. That’s four and an half tatami mats.’
Brocade borders delineated the rush mats and she could easily see the layout. It was such a small building and yet, because it came with stipulations from the National Treasuries Office who had contributed to the funding, it became more of a responsibility … an important task.
‘It seems such a shame. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it. Why deconstruct it now?’
‘No.’ He looked at her seriously. ‘It is time to start afresh.’ His eyes narrowed.
‘This is about regeneration. See this.’ He went to a large beam of twisted wood spanning the opening to the recess. ‘In some buildings this could be rejected for lack of uniformity. But here it has been absorbed in the design.’ He ran his hand along the length respectfully, following the deeply curved underbelly of the gnarled wood, planed of its bark.
‘These branches can be stronger,’ he said, ‘because they have already shifted and moved, and when they are seasoned over time in this shape they can bring stability. They have been tested by the wind and can have greater strength.’ He had reached the end of the supporting beam and beckoned her with a nod to come over. ‘Look here.’