The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series)

by J. Thomas Rimer

  “Are you ready to retire?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Sorry to inconvenience you.”

  “I’ll put him to bed first. Make yourself comfortable. You’re right out in the open here, but in the summer this bigger room will be better for you. We’ll sleep in the inner room, so you can get a good rest. Wait just a moment.” She stood and hurriedly stepped down onto the earthen floor. Because her movements were so vigorous, her black hair, which had been twisted into a bun, fell down over the nape of her neck.

  With one hand touching her hair and the other on the door, she looked outside and said to herself, “I must have dropped my comb in all the excitement.”

  She was obviously talking about when she had passed beneath the horse’s belly.

  23

  Here the monk paused his story. The night was still, and we could clearly distinguish slow, quiet steps in the hallway downstairs. It sounded like someone going to the bathroom. One of the rain shutters opened with a rattle; then came the sound of hands being washed. “The snow’s piling up,” came a voice. Most surely, it was the owner of the inn.

  “I guess the merchant from Wakasa found some other place to spend the night,” the monk said. “I hope he’s having sweet dreams.”

  “Please, finish your story. What happened next?” I urged Monk Shūchō to continue.

  Well, the night grew late, he resumed. As you can understand, no matter how tired a person gets, when you’re in an isolated cottage in the middle of mountains like that, it’s hard to fall asleep. Besides, I was bothered by something that kept me from dozing off. In fact, I was wide-awake. I kept blinking my eyes, but, as you might expect, by that time I was so exhausted that my mind had become clouded. All I could do was wait for dawn to brighten the night sky.

  At first I listened, out of habit, for the morning temple bells. Will they ring now? Are they about to ring? Surely enough time had passed since I had retired for the night. But then I realized there wouldn’t be any temples in a place as isolated as this, and suddenly I became uneasy.

  Then it happened. As they say, the night is as deep as a valley. As soon as I could no longer hear the sound of the idiot’s slovenly breathing, I sensed the presence of something outside.

  It sounded like the footsteps of an animal, one that hadn’t come from very far away. At first I tried to comfort myself, thinking that this was a place where there was no scarcity of monkeys and toads. But the thought did little to reassure me.

  A bit later, when it seemed the animal had stepped up to the front of the house, I heard the bleating of a sheep.

  My head was pointed in its direction, which meant that the beast must have been standing right beside my pillow! A bit later I heard the sound of beating bird’s wings just to my right, under the spot where the hydrangea was blooming.

  Then came the sound of another animal crying kii, kii on the rooftop. I guessed it was a flying squirrel or some such thing. Next a huge beast, as big as a hill, came so close I felt as though I were being crushed by it. It bellowed like a cow. Then came another two-legged creature that sounded as if it must have come running from far away with straw sandals on its feet. Now all kinds of creatures were circling and milling around the house. All together, there must have been twenty or thirty of them, snorting, beating their wings, some of them hissing. It was like a hellish scene from the Realm of Suffering Beasts. In the light of the moon, I could see the silhouettes of their ghastly figures cavorting and dancing in front of the house. Were these the evil spirits of the mountains and rivers?

  The leaves on the trees shuddered. I held my breath. From the room where the woman and the idiot were sleeping came a moan and then the sound of someone drawing a long breath. It was the woman, overcome by a nightmare.

  “We have a guest tonight,” she cried out.

  A few seconds passed before she spoke again, this time in a clear, sharp voice. “I said we have a guest.”

  I could hear the woman tossing in bed and a very quiet voice that said, “We have a guest.” Then followed more tossing.

  The beasts outside stirred, and the entire cottage began to shake back and forth. Frightened out of my senses, I began reciting a dharani.

  He who dares resist the heavens

  And vainly tries to block truth’s route,

  May his head be split in seven

  Like the young arjaka sprout!

  His sin is worse than patricide,

  His crushing doom without relief

  His scales and measures telling lies

  Like Devadatta, we despise

  Offenders of belief!

  I chanted the sacred prayer with heart and soul. And suddenly the whirlwind twisting in the trees blew away to the south, and everything became still. From the couple’s bed came not a sound.

  24

  The next day at noon, I ran into the old man who had gone off to sell the horse. I was standing by a waterfall not far from a village, and he was on his way back to the cottage. We came upon each other just when I had decided to give up my life as a monk, to go back to the mountain cottage and spend the rest of my days with the woman.

  To tell the truth, ever since I had left her earlier that morning, this single idea dominated my thoughts. No snakes spanned my path, and I encountered no leech-filled forests. Still, I realized that my pilgrimage was senseless, although the way might continue to be hard, bringing tribulation to my body and soul. My dreams of someday donning a purple surplice and living in a fine monastery meant nothing to me. And to be called a living Buddha by others and to be thronged with crowds of worshipers could only turn my stomach with the stench of humanity.

  You can understand why I haven’t given you all the details of my story, but after the woman put the idiot to sleep, she came back out to my room. She told me that rather than going back to a life of self-denial, I ought to stay by her side in the cottage by the river, there where the summer is cool and the winter mild. Had I given in to her for that reason alone, you’d probably say that I had been bewitched by her beauty. But in my own defense, let me say that I truly felt sorry for her. How would it be to live in that isolated mountain cottage as the idiot’s bed partner, not able to communicate, feeling you were slowly forgetting how to talk?

  That morning when we said good-bye in the dawning light, I was reluctant to leave her. She regretted never being able to see me again, spending the rest of her life in such a place. She also said that should I ever see white peach petals flowing upon a stream, however small, I would know that she had thrown herself into a river and was being torn apart bit by bit. She was dejected, but her kindness never failed. She told me to follow the river, that it would lead me to the next village. The water dancing and tumbling over a waterfall would be my sign that houses were nearby. Pointing out the road, she saw me off, walking along with me until her cottage had disappeared behind us.

  Although we would never walk hand in hand as husband and wife, I kept thinking I could still be her companion, there to comfort her morning and night. I would prepare the firewood and she would do the cooking. I would gather nuts and she would shell them. We would work together, I on the veranda and she inside. We would talk to each other, laugh together. The two of us would go to the river. She would take off her clothes and stand beside me. With her breath upon my back, she would envelop me in the warm, delicate fragrance of her petals. For that I would gladly lose my life!

  Staring at the waterfall, I tortured myself with these thoughts. Even now when I think back on it, I break out in a cold sweat. I was totally exhausted, both physically and spiritually. I had set off at a fast pace, and my legs had grown weary. Even if I was returning to the civilized world, I knew that the best I could expect was some old crone with bad breath offering me a cup of tea. I could care less about making it to the village, and so I sat down on a rock and looked over the edge at the waterfall. Afterward, I learned it was called the Husband and Wife Falls.

  A large jagged rock, like the gaping mouth of a black kille
r shark, stuck out from the cliff, dividing in two the quickly flowing stream that rushed down upon it. The water thundered and fell about fifteen yards, where it reformed, white against dark green, then flowed straight as an arrow toward the village downstream. The branch of the waterfall on the far side of the rock was about six feet wide and fell in an undisturbed ribbon. The one closest to me was narrower, about three feet across, caressing and entangling the huge shark rock in the middle. As it tumbled, the water shattered into a thousand jewels, breaking over a number of hidden rocks.

  25

  The smaller stream was crying to leap over the rock and cling to the larger flow, but the jutting stone separated them cleanly, preventing even a single drop from making it to the other side. The waterfall, thrown about and tormented, was weary and gaunt, its sound like sobbing or someone’s anguished cries. This was the sad yet gentle wife.

  The husband, by contrast, fell powerfully, pulverizing the rocks below and penetrating the earth. It pained me to see the two fall separately, divided by that rock. The brokenhearted wife was like a beautiful woman clinging to someone, sobbing and trembling. As I watched from the safety of the bank, I started to shake and my flesh began to dance. When I remembered how I had bathed with the woman in the headwaters of this stream, my imagination pictured her inside the falling water, now being swept under, now rising again, her skin disintegrating and scattering like flower petals amid a thousand unruly streams of water. I gasped at the sight, and immediately she was whole again—the same face, body, breasts, arms, and legs, rising and sinking, suddenly dismembered, then appearing again. Unable to bear the sight, I felt myself plunging headlong into the fall and taking the water into my embrace. Returning to my senses, I heard the earthshaking roar of the husband, calling to the mountain spirits and roaring on its way. With such strength, why wasn’t he trying to rescue her? I would save her! No matter what the cost.

  But then I thought that it would be better to go back to the cottage than to kill myself in the waterfall. My base desires had brought me to this point of indecision. As long as I could see her face and hear her voice, what did it matter if she and her idiot husband shared a bed? At least it would be better than enduring endless austerities and living out my days as a monk.

  I made up my mind to go back to her, but just as I stepped back from the rock, someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, Monk.”

  I had been caught at my weakest moment. Feeling small and ashamed, I looked up, expecting to see a messenger from Hell. What I saw instead was the old man I had met at the woman’s cottage.

  He must have sold the horse because he was alone. He had a small string of coins hanging from his shoulder and was carrying a carp. The fish had scales of brilliant gold and looked so fresh that it seemed alive. Is was about three feet long and dangled from a small straw cord threaded through its gills. Unable to think of a word to say, I could only look at the man while he stared into my eyes. Finally, he chuckled to himself. It wasn’t a normal laugh but a gruesome sort of snicker.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked me. “You should be used to this kind of heat, or did you stop for something else? You’re only twelve miles from where you were last night. If you’d been walking hard, you’d be in the village giving thanks to Jizō by now.

  “Or maybe you’ve been thinking about that woman. Your earthly passions are stirred, aren’t they? Don’t try to hide it. I may be a bleary-eyed old man, but I can still tell black from white. Any normal man wouldn’t still be human after a bath with her. Take your pick. Cow? Horse? Monkey? Toad? Bat? You’re lucky you’re not going to be flying or hopping around for the rest of your life. When you came up from the river and hadn’t been turned into some other animal, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Lucky you! I guess your faith saved you.

  “Remember the horse I led off last night? You said you met a medicine peddler from Toyama on your way to the cottage, right? Well, he’s what I’m talking about. The woman had that lecher turned into a horse long before you showed up. I took him to the auction and cashed him in. With the money I bought this carp. Oh, she loves fish! She’ll eat this one tonight! Tell me. Who do you think she is, anyway?”

  “Yes. Who was she?” I interrupted the monk.

  26

  Monk Shūchō nodded. “Listen to this,” he murmured. “It must have been my fate. Remember the farmer I met at the crossroads, where I took that trail into the haunted forest? Remember how he told me that a doctor once had his house there where the water was flowing over the road? Well, it turns out that the woman was his daughter.”

  In the high mountains of Hida, where life is always the same and nothing strange ever happens, something extraordinary occurred. To this country doctor was born a daughter who, from the moment of her birth, was as beautiful as a jewel.

  Her mother had fat cheeks, eyes that slanted down, a flat nose, and breasts of the most disgusting sort. How could she have such a beautiful daughter?

  People used to gossip, comparing their situation to ancient tales where a god desires someone’s daughter and shoots a white-feathered arrow into the roof of a house, or a nobleman who is hunting in the countryside sees a country maiden and demands her for his mistress.

  Her father, the doctor, was a vain, arrogant man with jutting cheekbones and a beard. During threshing season, farmers often get chaff in their eyes; and because infections and other diseases are common, he had gained some proficiency as an eye doctor. As an internist, though, he was an utter failure. And when it came to surgery, the best he could do was mix a little hair oil with water and apply it to the wound.

  But you know what they say about how some can believe in anything or anybody. Those of his patients whose days were not already numbered eventually recovered; and as there were no other quacks around, her father’s practice flourished.

  When his daughter came to be sixteen or seventeen, the bloom of her youth, the people in the area came to believe that she was Yakushi, healer of souls, and that she had been born into the doctor’s family in order to provide help to the needy. And provide she did. Both men and women came pleading for her healing touch.

  It all began when she started showing interest in her father’s patients. “So your hands hurt? Let me see.” She pressed the soft palm of her hand to the fingers of a young man named Jisaku—he was the first one—and his rheumatism was cured completely. She stroked the belly of another patient who had drunk tainted water, and his stomachache went away. At first it was the young men who benefited from her healing powers, but then the older men started going to her, too, and later women. Even if they weren’t cured completely, the pain was always less than before. When someone had a boil to be lanced, they screamed and kicked as the doctor cut with his rusty knife. But if his daughter pressed her chest up against their backs and held their shoulders, they could bear the pain.

  Now, near the grove where the doctor had his house there was an old loquat tree, and in the tree, a swarm of bees had built a frighteningly huge hive. One day, a young man named Kumazō, the doctor’s apprentice, found it. His duties were mixing medicine, cleaning the house, taking care of the garden, and transporting the doctor by rickshaw to the homes of patients living nearby. He was twenty-four or twenty-five at the time and had stolen some syrup from the doctor’s medical supplies. Knowing the doctor was tightfisted and would scold him if he ever found out, Kumazō hid his own jar of the syrup on a shelf with his clothes and, whenever he had a few minutes of spare time, would satisfy his sweet tooth by secretly sipping from it.

  Kumazō found the bees’ hive as he was working in the yard and came over to the veranda to ask the doctor’s daughter if she wanted to see something interesting. “Pardon me for asking, but if you could hold my hand, I’ll reach into a bees’ hive and grab some honeycomb. Wherever you touch me won’t get hurt even if the bees sting. I could try driving ’em away with a broom, but they’d scatter and get all over me. It’d be sudden death.” She hesitated but smiled and let him take her hand.
He led her to the hive, where the bees were making a horrifying drone. In went his left hand. And out it came unharmed, even with seven or eight bees on it, some fanning their wings, some moving their legs, others crawling between his fingers.

  Well, after that incident, her fame spread like a spider’s web. People began saying that if she touched you, even a bullet would cause no pain. And it was from about that time that she herself became aware of her power. When she went off to live in the mountains with the idiot, her powers grew even more wondrous. As she grew older, she became able to summon the most astounding magical powers at will. In the beginning, she needed to press her body against you. Then it was a touch of her foot or a caress of the fingertips. Finally, she didn’t need to make physical contact at all. With a puff of her breath, she could turn a lost traveler into the animal of her choice.

  The old man drew my attention to the creatures I had seen around the cottage—the monkey, the toad, the bats, rabbits, and snakes. All of them were men who had bathed in the river with her! When I heard that, I was overwhelmed with memories of the woman and the toad, of her being embraced by the monkey and attacked by the bat, and of the evil spirits of the forest and mountains that circled the cottage that night.

  And the idiot? The old man told me about him, too. At a time when the daughter’s fame had spread throughout the region, he had come to her father as a patient. He was still a child, accompanied by his father—a brusque, taciturn man—and by his long-haired older brother, who carried him down the mountain on his back. The boy had a bad abscess on his leg, and they had brought him to the doctor’s house for treatment.

  At first they stayed in a room in the doctor’s house, but the boy’s leg turned out to be more serious than originally thought. They would have to draw his blood, and, particularly because the boy was so young, they would need to build up his strength before anything could be done. For the time being, the doctor prescribed that he eat three eggs a day. And to put his father’s mind at ease, a plaster was put over the infection.