Apples and Pears

by Guy Davenport

  The Bay of Spezia, mulberry groves, sheds where the silkworms fatten, but here, the sun in golden sheets and slats on the floor, young Revely’s study was all Archimedes and Sicily, or a tabletop by Holbein with instruments in brass and walnut, calipers, rules, maps, calculations in silverpoint and red ink. Under a map in French colors, slate blues and provincial yellows, poppy reds, cabbage greens, a sepia line from Genua across the Lunae Portus to Pisa, there sat in harmonic disarray a wooden bowl of quicksilver (a cup of Tuscan moonlight, a dish for gnomes to sip down in the iron roots of mountains where the earthquake demons swill lava and munch gold), cogged wheels, a screw propeller, drawings of frigates, steamboats, a machinery of gears and levers colored blue and yellow, lighthouses with cyclopean lamps, plans of harbors and moorings, a heap of rosin, a china cup full of ink, a half-burnt match, a box of watercolors, a block of ivory, a volume of Laplace, a book of conic sections, spherics, logarithms, Saunderson’s Algebra, Simms’ Trigonometry, and most beautiful of all this Archimagian gear, the newly unpacked theodolite, tilted in its fine calibrations, gleaming index and glass.

  When we parted, the painter Kaemon gave me drawings of Matsushima and Shiogama and two pairs of sandals of straw with iris-purple straps. I walk in iris blossoms, it seems, so rich the blue of my sandal laces. He also gave me drawings to guide my way along the Narrow Road to the Deep North. At Ichikawa I found the tall inscribed stone of Tsubo-no-ishibumi. The characters were legible through lichen and moss. Taga Castle was built on this site the first year of Jinki by order of General Ono-no-Azumabito, Governor of the Far North by decree of the Emperor, rebuilt in the sixth year of Tempyohoji by Emi-no-Asakari, Governor General of the Provinces East and North. This stone is 965 years old. Mountains break and fall, rivers shift their beds, highways grow up in grass, rocks sink into the earth, trees wither with age, and yet this stone has stood from ancient times. I wept to see it, and knelt before its presence, very happy and very sad. We went on across the Noda-no-tamagawa River to the pine forest of Sue-no-matsuyama, where there is a temple and graveyard that gave me melancholy thoughts of the death that must end all our lives, whatever be our love of the world.

  I could imagine the inside: spiderwebs and dog droppings, the inevitable Mason jar and flattened crump of overalls that one always found in abandoned buildings, a newspaper gone brown and some enigma of a utensil that turned out to be the handle of a meat grinder or meal sifter or mangle gearing. I anticipated rills of ancient flour in the seams of sills, the flat smell of mildewed wheat, the quick smell of wet brick. Mill? she said. Her smile was strangely goofy. She took me by the sleeve. What mill? Then I stood dumb and cold. There was no mill. Ahead of us was the edge of a wood, nothing more. The dusk thickened as we looked at each other in the rain. We went on, stubbornly. We knew better than to follow a blazed trail by dark. We hoped that the campsite with shelter marked on the map was just on the other side of the wood before us. It was not yet wholly dark. Were it not a rainy day, we might plausibly have an hour’s half-light yet: plenty of time to nip through the wood, get to the shelter, and be dry for the night. You say you saw an old mill? Underfoot there were rocks and roots again. We longed for the easy tread of the logging road.

  We came to Shiogama just as the curfew bell was tolling, the darkening sky completely cloudless, the island of Magaki-gashima already but a shadow in a sea that was white with moonlight. We could hear the fishermen counting their take. How lonely it is to enter a town at dusk! We heard a blind singer chanting the rustic folksongs of the north. Next day, we worshiped at the Myojin Shrine of Shiogama, a handsome building. The way to it is paved, the fence around it is painted vermilion. It pleased me that the powers of the gods are so honored here in the Deep North, and I made a sincere obeisance at the altar. An ancient lantern burns near the altar to keep alive the memory of Izumi-no-Saburo, that gallant warrior of five hundred years ago. In the afternoon we took a boat to Matsushima, two miles out. Everyone knows that these are the most beautiful islands in all Japan. I would add that they rival Tungting Hu in Hunan and Si Hu in Chekiang. These islands are our China. Every pine branch is perfect. They have the grace of women walking, and so perfectly are the islands placed that Heaven’s serenity is apparent everywhere.

  Ezra Pound came down the salita through the olive grove, white mane jouncing as he stepped his cane with precision stride by long stride. He wore a cream sports jacket, a blue shirt with open collar, pleated white slacks, brown socks, and espadrilles. The speckled bony fingers of his left hand pinched a panama by the brim. The way was strewn with hard green olives torn from their branches by a storm the week before. Shocking waste, Miss Rudge said, and yet it seems to happen year after year, and somehow there’s always an olive crop, isn’t there, Ezra? Then, over her shoulder, she asked me if I knew the Spanish for romance. Ezra wants to know, and can’t remember. As in medieval romance? I ask, startled. Romanthé, I think. Novela would be a later word. Relato, perhaps. Ezra, she called ahead, would that be right? No! he said, a quiver of doubt in his voice. Romancero, I said, is a word Mr. Pound himself has used of Spanish balladry. Romancero, Ezra? Miss Rudge said cheerfully. Single file was the rule on the salita. He always went first, up or down, steep and rough as it was. Not the word, he said, without looking back.

  Ojima, though called an island, is a narrow strip of land. Ungo, the Shinto priest, lived here in his retirement. We were shown the rock where he liked to sit for hours. We saw small houses among the pines, blue smoke from their chimneys, the red moon rising beyond them. My room at the inn overlooked the bay and the islands. A great wind howled, and clouds scudded at a gallop across the moon; nevertheless, I kept my windows open, for I had that wonderful feeling that only travelers know: that this was a different world from any I had known before. Different winds, a different moon, an alien sea. Sora, too, felt the peculiarity of the place and the moment, and wrote: Flute-tongued cuckoo, you must long for the heron’s wings of silver to fly from island to island at Matsushima. So fine was my emotion that I could not sleep. I got out my notebook and read again the poems my friends gave me when I set out, about these islands: a poem by Sodo in Chinese, a waka by Dr. Hara Anteki, haiku by the samurai Dakushi and Sampu. Being at Matsushima made the poems much richer, and the poems made Matsushima a finer experience.

  We juggled in debate whether we should doss down then and there in leaf-muck and boulder rubble, or, heartened by the thin light we found in clearings, suppose that the failure of the day was more raindusk than the beginning of night, and push on. We found at least an arm of the lake on the map in a quarter of an hour. It was a spillway which we had to cross on a footlog. Rabbitfoot, I said, and don’t look down. We got across more in dismay at the unfairness of a footlog to deal with in failing light and drizzle than with any skill with footlogs. What a miserable mean thing to do, she said, putting a blithering log to balance across with both of us winded and wet and you seeing hotels. The rain had settled in to stay. We had fair going for a while and then we came upon swamp. There was no question of camping in water that came over our shoe tops. I broke out a flashlight, she held onto my pack so as not to get lost from me, and we nosed our way through ferns and huckleberries, sinking up to our shins in mud. I think I’m scared, she said. Of what? Nothing in particular. Of everything. I’m scared, I said, if for no other reason than that I don’t know where we are.

  We set out for Hiraizumi on the twelfth, our immediate plans being to visit the Aneha Pine and Odae Bridge. Our way was along a woodcutter’s path in the mountains, as lonely and quiet a trail as I have ever trod. By some inattention to my instructions I lost my way and came instead to Ishinomaki, a port in a bay where we saw a hundred ships. The air was thick with smoke from chimneys. What a busy place! They seemed to know nothing of putting up foot travelers, or of the art of looking at scenery. So we had to make do with shoddy quarters for the night. We left next day by a road that went I knew not whither. It took us past a ford on the Sode, the meadows of Obuchi, and the
grasslands of Mano. We followed the river and came at last to Hiraizumi, having wandered a good twenty miles out of our way. We looked with melancholy on the ruins of the Fujiwara estate, now so many rice paddies. We found Yasuhira’s abandoned house to the north of the Koromo-ga-seki Gate. Though the grandeur of the Fujiwara lasted three generations only, their achievements will be remembered forever, and looking on the ruins of their castles and lands I wept that such glory has come to nothing, and covered my face with my hat.

  In July I saw several cuckoos skimming over a large pond; and found, after some observation, that they were feeding on the libellulae, or dragonflies, some of which they caught as they settled on the weeds, and some as they were on the wing. Notwithstanding what Linnaeus says, I cannot be induced to believe that they are birds of prey. A countryman told me that he had found a young fern-owl in the nest of a small bird on the ground; and that it was fed by the little bird. I went to see this extraordinary phenomenon, and found that it was a young cuckoo hatched in the nest of a titlark; it was become vastly too big for its nest. The dupe of a dam appeared at a distance, hovering about with meat in its mouth, and expressing the greatest solicitude. Ray remarks, that birds of the gallinae order, as cocks and hens, partridges and pheasants, are pulveratrices, such as dust themselves, using that method of cleansing their feathers, and ridding themselves of their vermin. As far as I can observe, many birds that wash themselves would never dust; but here I find myself mistaken; for common house sparrows are great pulveratrices, being frequently seen groveling and wallowing in dusty roads; and yet they are great washers. Does not the skylark dust?

  Tall grass grows over the dreams of an ancient aristocracy. Look there! Did I not see Yoshitsune’s servant Kanefusa in the white blur of the unohana flowers? But not all was gone. The temples remain, with their statues and tombs and sutras. Dry in the rains of May, the Hikari Do keeps its gold and gloom for a thousand years. We reached Cape Ogoru next day, and the little island of Mizu in the river. Onward, we came to the Dewa border, where the guards questioned us so long and so suspiciously (they rarely see foot travelers even in the best of weather) that we got a late start. Dusk caught us on the mountain road and we had to stay the night with a tollkeeper, and were lucky to find even this hut in so desolate a place. Fleas and lice bit us, and all night a horse pissed beside my mat. The tollkeeper said that many mountains lay between us and Dewa. I was most surely apt to get lost and perish. He knew a stout young man who would consent to be our guide, a strapping fellow with a sword and oak staff. He was indeed necessary: the way was an overgrown wilderness. Black clouds just above our heads darkened the thick underwood of bamboo.

  Where we are, she said, is slogging our way by flashlight through a New England swamp up to our butts in goo and I’m so tired I could give up and howl. The important thing to understand, I said, is that we aren’t on the trail. We were, I think, she said, when we got off into this. We couldn’t be far off it. Off the trail, she said in something of a snit, is off the trail. And there’s something wrong with my knees. They’re shaking. We’re probably walking into the lake that stupid log back there went over an outlet of. I turned and gave her as thorough an inspection as I could under the circumstances. She was dead tired, she was wet, and her knees did indeed shake. Lovely knees, but they were cold and splashed with mud. I slipped her pack off and fitted it across my chest, accoutred front and back like a paratrooper. We went on, the flashlight beam finding nothing ahead but bushes in water, a swamp of ferns. There was a rudimentary trail, it seemed. At least someone had put down logs in the more succulent places. It is the trail, I insisted. A yelp from behind, a disgusted and slowly articulated Jiminy! and while I was helping her up, sobs. Don’t cry, Sweetheart! It rolled. The motherless log rolled when I stepped on it.

  In Obanazawa I visited the merchant poet Seifu, who had often stopped on business trips to see me in Edo. He was full of sympathy for our hard way across the mountains, and made up for it with splendid hospitality. Sora was entranced by the silkworm nurseries, and wrote: Come out, toad, and let me see you: I hear your got-a-duck got-a-duck under the silkworm house. And: The silkworm workers are dressed like ancient gods. We climbed to the quiet temple of Ryushakuji, famous for being in so remote and peaceful a site. The late afternoon sun was still on it, and on the great rocks around it, when we arrived, and shone golden in the oaks and pines that have stood there for hundreds of years. The very ground seemed to be eternity, a velvet of moss. I felt the holiness of the place in my bones; my spirit partook of it with each bow that I made to the shrines in the silent rocks. Silence as whole as time. The only sound is crickets. Our next plan was to go down the Mogami River by boat, and while we were waiting for one to take us, the local poets at Oishida sought me out and asked me to show them how to make linked verses, of which they had heard but did not know the technique. With great pleasure I made a whole book for them.

  Could she stand? She thought so. It hurt, but she could stand. I shone the flashlight as far as I could ahead. Treetops! Treetops ahead, Samwise. Higher ground, don’t you think that means? She limped frighteningly. We sloshed on. I could tell how miserable she was from her silence. We were slowly getting onto firmer ground. I studied her again by flashlight. She was a very tired girl with a sprained ankle or the nearest thing to it. I was getting my second wind, and put it to good use by heaving her onto my hip. She held to my neck, kissing my ear in gratitude. By coupling my hands under her behind, I could carry her to high ground if it was near enough. We reached forest, with roots to slip on and rocks to stumble over. The flashlight found a reasonably level place. I cleared trash from it while she held the light. We spread our tarpaulin, unrolled and zipped together the sleeping bags. It was our pride that we were hiking without a tent, though at that moment we longed for one. We undressed in the rain, stuffing our damp clothes into our packs. At least they wouldn’t get any wetter. We slipped naked into the sleeping bag. Too tired to shiver, she said. She got dried peaches and apples from her pack, and we chewed them, lying on our elbows, looking out into the dark.

  The Mogami River flows down from the mountains through Yamagata Province, with many treacherous rapids along the way, and enters the sea at Sakata. We went down the river in a farmer’s old-timey rice boat, our hearts in our mouths. We saw Shiraito-no-take, the Silver-Stringed Waterfall, half-hidden by thick bamboo, and the temple of Sennindo. Because the river was high and rough, I wrote: On all the rains of May in one river, I tossed along down the swift Mogami. I was glad to get ashore. On the third of June we climbed Haguro Mountain and were granted an audience with Egaku the high priest, who treated us with civility and put us up in a cabin. Next day, in the Great Hall with the high priest, I wrote: This valley is sacred. The sweet wind smells of snow. On the fifth we saw the Gongen Shrine, of uncertain date. It may be the shrine Fujiwara-no-Tokihira in the Rites and Ceremonies says is on Mount Sato in Dewa, confusing the Chinese for Sato and Kuro, Haguro being a variant of Kuro. Here they teach Total Meditation as the Tendai sect understands it, and the Freedom of the Spirit and Enlightenment, teaching as pure as moonlight and as sweet as a single lantern in pitch dark.

  He and Bruni, the watercolor painter, you know, they were the closest of friends, used to argue God something terrible. He was an atheist, Tatlin, and Bruni was a very Russian believer. It terrified me as a child. Tatlin would take us to swim in the river in the spring, and he wore no icon around his neck and didn’t cross himself before diving in. He was wonderful with children, a grown-up who knew how to play with us without condescending, but with other people he was self-centered, vain about his singing voice. Pasternak, now, had no way with children at all. He didn’t even see them. Tatlin made his own lute, a replica of a traditional Slavic lute such as blind singers had, strolling from village to village. Especially in the south. What did Tatlin look like? O, he was lanky, as you say, skinny. He had slate-grey eyes, very jolly eyes that had a way of going dead and silvery when he fell into a brown study. His hai
r was, how shall I put it, a grey blond. When he sang the blind singers’ songs he made his eyes look blind, rolled back, unseeing. The voice was between baritone and bass. He was not educated, you know. He lived in the bell tower of a monastery.

  On Haguro Mountain there are hundreds of small houses where priests meditate in strictest discipline, and will meditate, to keep this place holy, as long as there are people on the earth. On the eighth we climbed Mount Gassan. I had a paper rope around my shoulders, and a shawl of white cotton on my head. For eight miles we strove upward, through the clouds, which were like a fog around us, over rocks slick with ice, through snow. When we came to the top, in full sunlight, I was out of breath and frozen. How glorious the sight! We spent the night there, on beds of leaves. On the way down next day we came to the smithy where Gassan used to make his famous swords, tempering them in the cold mountain stream. His swords were made of his devotion to his craft and of the divine power latent in the mountain. Near here I saw a late-blooming cherry in the snow. I cannot speak of all I saw, but this cherry will stand for all, determined as it was, however late, however unseasonable, to bring its beauty into the world. Egaku, when I returned, asked me to make poems of my pilgrimage to this sacred mountain.