Black Lotus

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “I know a good way to pass the time,” Keisho-in said coyly.

  There was no mistaking her intention. Reiko drew her knees up to her chest in appalled, defensive haste. The old woman wanted her, just as she’d feared. What should she do?

  Lady Keisho-in moved closer. Her age-spotted hand stroked Reiko’s cheek. “Ah, you’re so lovely,” she said, sighing.

  Turning away from Keisho-in’s sour breath, Reiko stifled a cry of protest. “I can’t do this.” The words slipped out of her even though she knew the danger of spurning the shogun’s mother.

  “Why not?” Keisho-in asked. “There’s plenty of time before we reach the temple.” Then she drew back, and her gaze sharpened as she studied Reiko. “What you mean is you don’t desire me. You think I’m old and ugly.” Hurt and anger welled in her rheumy eyes. “I can see it on your face. You led me on so I would help you, and now you reject me.” She shouted out the window to their escorts: “Stop so I can throw out this sly little whore. Then take me home.”

  The procession halted. “Wait. Please,” Reiko entreated. Being stranded on the road was a minor inconvenience compared to the dire consequences facing her unless she placated Keisho-in.

  “I shall tell my son that you hurt my feelings. He’ll punish your husband for your cruelty.” With a dramatic gesture, Lady Keisho-in flung open the palanquin’s door. “Now get out!”

  Reiko envisioned Sano stripped of his position, livelihood, and honor—or executed. Dread filled her. “Forgive me, Honorable Lady, I didn’t mean to reject you,” she said.

  Keisho-in still looked peeved, but she shut the door.

  “It’s just that I’ve never been with a woman before,” Reiko said truthfully, thinking fast. “I’m too shy to do it here, where people might see or hear us. I would be too inhibited to pleasure you now.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Her humor restored, Keisho-in ordered their escorts to continue on to the temple. As the palanquin began moving, she settled back on her cushions. “We shall wait until later.”

  Reiko silently thanked the gods for the reprieve and hoped that later never came.

  Outside, the traffic noises increased as the procession reached the Zj district; shouts drifted from the marketplace. Soon the bearers set down the palanquin, opened the door to a view of the Black Lotus Temple gate, and helped the shogun’s mother out. Reiko followed. She and Keisho-in and their guards entered the temple precinct, where a group of priests came to meet them.

  “Welcome, Your Highness,” said a priest at the center of the group. It was Kumashiro. He frowned at Reiko, and the lizard-shaped scar on his head purpled with an influx of blood.

  “We want to see High Priest Anraku,” said Lady Keisho-in.

  Reiko saw a flicker of displeasure in Kumashiro’s gaze, then the knowledge that he couldn’t refuse the shogun’s mother. He said, “Of course, Your Highness. Please come with me.”

  At least her risky episode had gotten her this far, Reiko thought, resolving to make the interview worthwhile.

  Kumashiro led her and Keisho-in to a garden of dense, twisted pines behind the abbot’s residence. Reiko saw a thatched roof through the boughs. As they walked along a shaded path toward it, a suave male voice spoke: “A million thanks for gracing us with your presence, Most Honorable Mother of His Excellency the Shogun. Greetings, Lady Reiko.”

  Keisho-in said in surprise, “How does he know who it is without seeing us?”

  “But I did see you.” Amusement inflected the voice. “My knowledge comes from inner vision, not mere eyesight.”

  Probably the high priest employed spies to give him advance notice of visitors, Reiko speculated.

  The cool, damp air in the forest was scented with pine resin. A pavilion composed of a raised tatami platform and a roof supported on wooden posts appeared. In the center, a man with a shaved head sat cross-legged, hands upturned on his thighs. Clad in a white robe, he seemed to glow in the misty daylight.

  “Please join me,” Anraku said, nodding at two cushions that lay before him.

  Keisho-in scrambled up the steps of the pavilion, left her sandals on the bare wooden floor at the edge of the tatami, and knelt upon a cushion. Following, Reiko saw Kumashiro slip away through the trees. While Anraku performed the customary social ritual of offering refreshments, Reiko studied him.

  He was in his early thirties, broad-shouldered and muscular, yet slender. With his tawny golden skin, square jaw, high cheekbones, and finely sculpted nose and mouth, Anraku was a man of striking beauty. His left eye, darkly luminous, gazed upon Reiko with faint mirth, as though he perceived and enjoyed her surprise. The other eye was covered by a black cloth patch.

  His good looks hadn’t escaped the notice of Keisho-in. She patted her hair, simpering. Nuns appeared, bearing trays of tea and cakes, which they silently served. Keisho-in exclaimed to Anraku, “But you didn’t even call them!”

  “My followers have an extra sense that makes speech unnecessary because they anticipate my orders,” Anraku said.

  He addressed Keisho-in but looked at Reiko. She supposed that Kumashiro had sent the nuns, and she was eager to prove that the Black Lotus was evil, but she couldn’t help feeling Anraku’s potent, seductive charm.

  “Yesterday I had a vision that showed us here as we are now.” Anraku’s lips curved in a faint smile at Reiko. “So you wish to speak to me about Haru and the fire?”

  The abbess must have told him she’d asked for an audience, Reiko supposed. “Yes, I do.”

  Lady Keisho-in frowned at Reiko, clearly wanting the priest’s attention for herself. “Tell me,” she said to Anraku, “why do you wear that eye patch?”

  His sidelong glance at Reiko suggested that they had secrets to share after he humored the shogun’s mother. He said, “My right eye is blind.”

  “Oh, what a pity,” Keisho-in said.

  “Not at all,” Anraku said. “My partial blindness enables me to see things invisible to other people. It is a window on the future, a passage to the many worlds within the cosmos.”

  Keisho-in looked impressed. “How did it happen?”

  The luminosity of Anraku’s good eye darkened, as if he’d diverted light inward. “Many years ago, I was banished for wrongs that weak, jealous men falsely accused me of committing. I wandered the country alone, and wherever I went, I was reviled and persecuted. Hence, I fled the world.”

  Reiko remembered Minister Fugatami describing how Anraku had been expelled from a monastery because he’d usurped the priests’ authority, then become an itinerant monk who’d lived by cheating peasants. Certainly he’d deserved punishment, but Reiko remained silent, curious to hear how he accounted for the missing years of his life.

  “I climbed Mount Hiei,” Anraku said, referring to the sacred peak near the imperial capital. “I meant to seek guidance at Enryaku Temple.”

  In ancient times Enryaku had been a sanctuary for criminals because police weren’t allowed there, Reiko knew; fugitives might still find it a good place to hide.

  “Then a heavy mist descended upon the mountain. The world around me turned white and hazy. As I toiled upward, the path under my feet disappeared. I was cold, wet, exhausted, and knew not which way to go.” Anraku’s hushed words evoked the frightening experience of walking blind through the mist. Lady Keisho-in’s eyes were round with fascination. Even Reiko felt the power of his storytelling.

  “Suddenly I emerged into clear air in a woodland dell on the mountaintop. There were clouds filling the sky above me, and clouds hiding the land below. I looked around and saw a tiny cottage. An old man dressed in rags came out of the cottage and said, ‘I will shelter you for the night if you work for your keep.’

  “So I chopped wood, built a fire in the cottage, then cooked fish I caught in a stream. Night came, and I lay on the floor to sleep. At sunrise, I awoke to see the old man standing near me. Suddenly he was no longer old but ageless, and serenely beautiful. A brilliant light radiated from him. He was an incar
nation of the Buddha.”

  “Astonishing,” murmured Lady Keisho-in.

  A story told by many religious frauds, thought Reiko; but Anraku seemed to believe his own tale.

  “Then the Buddha became an old man again,” Anraku said. “I begged him to make me his disciple, and he agreed. Every day for eight years, I labored at housework, but he taught me nothing. Finally I grew frustrated. I said to the old man, ‘I’ve served you well, and now I demand a reward.’ But he just laughed as if he’d played a joke on me. Then there was a loud boom of thunder. White light streamed down through a crack in the sky and transformed the old man into the Buddha. He lifted his hand and said, ‘Here is the knowledge you desire.’”

  Anraku’s hand rose. “Out of the Buddha’s palm shot a bolt of lightning. It struck my eye. I fell, shouting in agony. As the pain burned deep into me, the Buddha said, ‘I designate you the Bodhisattva of Infinite Power. You will spread my teachings across the land and bring to mankind the blessing that I am giving you.’ Then he recited a text, and his voice etched the words into my memory. It was the Black Lotus Sutra. The secret path to enlightenment blazed before me like a river of stars.

  “When the pain stopped, the Buddha was gone. The cottage and clouds had disappeared. I could see across the land below the mountain, but only with my left eye. The right eye was burned shut. It gazed upon infinite dimensions throughout space and time. I saw things happening in distant places before I was born, and events far in the future.” Emotion trembled in Anraku’s voice. “I had a vision of the temple I would build here. I rose and walked down the mountain toward my destiny.”

  Though Reiko believed that the Buddha had many incarnations and some humans had supernatural powers, no one knew what had happened to Anraku during those eight years; he could invent any explanation he liked. He could also invent visions.

  “What is the secret of the Black Lotus Sutra?” Lady Keisho-in asked eagerly.

  Anraku gave her an apologetic smile. “Alas, it cannot be explained, only experienced by devotees of the sect.”

  “Well, then, I’ll join,” Keisho-in said with characteristic impulsiveness.

  Dismay chilled Reiko. “Perhaps it would be best to give the matter some serious thought first,” she said.

  “Thought is but an illusion that obscures destiny,” Anraku said, and his smile gently rebuked her. “If it is Her Highness’s fate to become one of us, then she shall.” To Keisho-in he said, “Let me examine your life for the truth.”

  Keisho-in leaned forward. Anraku gazed upon her intently, and Reiko had an eerie sense of his concentration radiating through the black eye patch like an invisible weapon toward Keisho-in. Reiko tasted dread. If Anraku harmed Keisho-in, it would be her fault.

  “You are a woman of humble origin whose beauty captivated a great lord,” Anraku said. “Your son rules with the aid of your wise counsel. You are devout and charitable, respected and loved. Inside you is a rare, extraordinary potential.”

  “Ah!” Lady Keisho-in gasped. “That’s me exactly!”

  He’d said nothing that he couldn’t have learned from public knowledge of her, and it wasn’t hard to guess that Keisho-in considered herself special, Reiko observed.

  Now Anraku turned the eerie, tactile gaze of his blind eye on Reiko. He said gravely, “There is a painful division in you. One side cleaves to a man; the other, to a girl of no kin to you. You are torn between love and honor. To choose one side is to sacrifice the other. You live in terror of choosing wrongly. You fear you’ve already compromised yourself beyond reparation.”

  Reiko stared in wordless shock. His subordinates would have told him that she was trying to help Haru, but how did he guess how she felt? The cool, rustling pine forest seemed suddenly astir with malignant forces and the pavilion a cage imprisoning Reiko. Did Anraku really have supernatural vision, or spies watching her? Both possibilities were alarming.

  “Your spirit is in serious peril unless you reconcile your dualities,” Anraku said. “The Black Lotus Sutra shows the way to spiritual unity. Honorable Lady Reiko, both you and Her Highness must join me.”

  “Oh, yes, let’s!” Keisho-in said.

  “I didn’t come here to discuss myself,” Reiko said, hiding her fright behind brusqueness. That Anraku could judge people so well made him dangerous, no matter how he did it. “I want to talk about the fire and murders. What do you know of them?”

  Anraku’s tranquil demeanor didn’t alter. “I know that things were not as they seem,” he said.

  “What does your vision show you?”

  Obviously recognizing her question as bait, Anraku smiled.

  “Where were you the night of the fire?” Reiko said.

  “At a shrine festival in Osaka.” That city was many days’ journey from Edo. Before Reiko could ask if anyone could confirm his presence there, Anraku added, “I was also in China.”

  Puzzled, Reiko said, “But the law forbids anyone to leave Japan, and even if you could, it’s impossible to be in two places at once.”

  Anraku’s expression disdained her logic. “I am bound by neither man’s laws nor nature’s. With the powers given me by the Buddha, my spirit can travel to many places simultaneously.”

  “Marvelous!” Lady Keisho-in said. “You must teach me how to do that.”

  “Where was your body while your spirit traveled?” Reiko said.

  “It lay in my chamber, guarded by my disciples.”

  At least this was an alibi Reiko could check, but she grew more uncertain about Anraku and fearful of him. Whether or not his magic powers were genuine, he had real influence over people. According to Hirata and Minister Fugatami, citizens had accused him of extortion, fraud, kidnapping, and violence. Was Anraku a sincere mystic who was unaware of what his followers did, or a madman responsible for the sect’s crimes?

  “What was your relationship with Commander Oyama?” Reiko asked.

  “He was a generous patron and valued disciple.”

  “With your powers, you must have known that he bequeathed twenty thousand koban to your sect.” Reiko hoped to trap Anraku into admitting that he’d had reason to kill Oyama.

  “Mere mortals can never know what I know,” Anraku said.

  Interpreting his complacent smile to mean that there was no physical proof one way or the other, Reiko said, “Then tell me what you know about the nurse Chie.”

  “She had a talent for healing and a wish to do good,” Anraku said.

  Reiko guessed that Anraku knew the murdered woman had been identified and that denials were pointless. He also knew better than to give any reason for wishing Chie or Oyama dead.

  “Have you any idea who the dead child was?” Reiko said.

  “None,” Anraku said.

  A shadow of emotion veiled his face, then receded before Reiko could interpret it, but she knew he’d lied. Still, even if he was a murderer, Anraku was a man of influence.

  “I wish to prove whether or not Haru committed the crimes,” she said. “What can you tell me of her character?”

  Throughout the interview Anraku had sat unnaturally still, but now he flexed his lithe body, as though easing cramped muscles. “Whatever trouble Haru may have caused in the past, my guidance had cured her of bad behavior.”

  This wasn’t exactly a testimonial to Haru’s innocence, but maybe his opinion would convince Sano, Reiko hoped.

  Lady Keisho-in stirred restlessly. “Enough of this unpleasant talk about murder,” she said. “When can I begin my indoctrination into the Black Lotus?”

  “Immediately, if you like.” An acquisitive gleam brightened Anraku’s single eye.

  Though Reiko wanted to question him regarding Pious Truth and his accusations against the sect, she had to get the shogun’s mother away from the temple. She said, “Honorable Lady, shouldn’t you consult Priest Ryuko first?”

  At the mention of her spiritual advisor and lover, Keisho-in hesitated, then said, “I suppose so.”

  “Then let’s
go back to Edo Castle.” Reiko hoped the priest would recognize Anraku as competition for his mistress’s favor and dissuade Keisho-in.

  “In the meantime, I’ll send a donation as a pledge of my good faith,” Keisho-in promised Anraku.

  “My sincere thanks.” Anraku bowed. “I look forward to your return.” As they made their farewells, he shot Reiko a smug glance, as if to say, Oppose me if you will, but I shall win in the end.

  During the walk through the precinct, Keisho-in gushed, “Isn’t Anraku wonderful? Like a living god. And he wants me!”

  Was he a god, or a charlatan who coveted a share of the Tokugawa power and fortune? “I think he’s dangerous,” Reiko said.

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” keisho-in scoffed.

  They reached their palanquin, and Reiko said, “Will you excuse me if I don’t go home with you? I have an errand.”

  “Very well,” Keisho-in said indifferently.

  At least Anraku had distracted her from sex between women, yet Reiko dreaded Sano discovering that she’d involved Keisho-in with the Black Lotus almost as much as she dreaded him finding out about her own close call. And as she ordered her guards to hire a palanquin to take her to Shinagawa, she feared how he would react when he learned she’d disobeyed his order to stay out of Minister Fugatami’s investigation.

  18

  What is real or not real?

  Do not try to see or understand.

  All phenomena exist and do not exist;

  Only the enlightened can distinguish truth from falsehood.

  —FROM THE BLACK LOTUS SUTRA

  “Honorable Father-in-law, we’ve come to see Haru,” said Sano. He and Hirata sat in Magistrate Ueda’s private office. The magistrate sat behind his desk, while a maid served tea. Sano said, “How is Haru doing?”

  “She’s behaved herself so far,” Magistrate Ueda said. He added contritely, “Forgive me if I’ve upset you by taking her in. I would not normally house a murder suspect, but this time I allowed myself to be persuaded against my better judgment.”