A few songs to her were sung, of her endless kindness, and the bounty of the heavenly rice fields that graced the land. Voices rose up, like the curl of incense at Amaratsu’s side.
After the songs, the abbot announced that it was time to meditate. The divine serenity of the Buddha could be felt through Amaratsu’s example. Sixty heads bowed down. Fifty-nine minds went still, enfolding on themselves, reaching towards within.
One mind was restless. A thousand and one thoughts coursed through Ryuichi’s brain. His mind was a babbling brook. Behind the closed lids of his eyes, he saw the floor he’d swept all week, and the mats he’d shaken out. His legs began to ache, and he worried that they had fallen asleep. His tiredness began to get the better of him. I could meditate better if I were lying down.
No. He must still his mind. It must be free of mindless chatter. Ryuichi tried to focus on Nothing. But Nothing eluded him, so on the screen of his mind, images appeared. Beautifully shaped kanji on fields of paper. The distant mountains wreathed in scarves of gold, mauve and lavender clouds—surely the most wonderful kimono there ever was. And, eventually, a white bird sailed amongst the embroidery. The bird in his mind landed gracefully beneath a cherry tree. Petals fell in snow showers, obscuring the bird. After the storm, the gauze cleared, and standing in the midst was a human face. There was a youth, with skin of pale gold, and hair the color of nothing. His hair, even the hair on his eyebrows and his pubes was transparent, like ice. The youth’s long arms opened, beckoning him.
A scream broke the meditation. Sixty minds broke free of stillness. Ryuichi opened his eyes, jerked into reality. He heard a low rumble of chatter, as he saw the monks talking, and standing up. A group of the monks were looking in one direction: at the feet of the bodhisattva. There was a blur of movement, as something small and white dashed back and forth.
Ryuichi gasped, thinking that it was the swan, returned. But then he noticed the curl of a tail, and the nude, shriveled face surrounded by snowy fur. A monkey had gotten into the temple. The temple was near the foothills of the mountains; this was hardly the first time a stray monkey had wandered into the compound before. There was a story of a monkey that had entered the dormitory and wreaked havoc twenty years earlier, before he’d come to the monastery. The congregation watched dumbfounded as the creature galloped up and down the stage in agitated lines.
Someone giggled, when the initial shock died down. The sound disturbed the monkey, and it screeched in frustration. It hopped on the altar with its flickering candles and bowls of scented water, upsetting them with much crashing and banging.
Yukio burst from side stage, brandishing a broom. He chased the monkey around the stage and eventually into the audience. Groups of laughing and frightened monks parted like waves, to allow the figures to continue their chase. Some of the monks began exiting the temple.
The monkey darted under retreating legs and hopped on startled shoulders, the man with the broom in hot pursuit.
Ryuichi took in this scenario will dulled amusement. See, strange things happen to everybody, he thought. Eventually, the monkey made its way back to the stage. Yukio got in some good swipes, before the monkey scampered up the statue. Yukio cursed, and swatted at the monkey. Unfortunately, his reach was just shy of hitting the monkey. It settled comfortably on Amaratsu’s crown.
Yukio began hopping like a one-legged heron, and cursing with combinations of words that would shame a nightsoil man.
Ryuichi laughed.
“What are you laughing at?” Yukio spun, and held the broom menacingly, as if he wanted to hit him. The monkey screeched, sharing his outrage.
Ryuichi got a hold of himself, and placed his hands out in a peaceful gesture. “I—”
Yukio pounced like a leopard. “You think you can do better, eh? You were so successful with that swan!”
Father Iido stepped forward, “Now, Yukio, just calm down—”
“I will not calm down! This—mooncalf is laughing at me. I am only trying to save this temple from an animal befouling it, and I am laughed at.”
The abbot clapped his hands. “Yukio! Stop this at once.”
Yukio sighed dramatically, dropping the broom. He stalked off the stage.
Father Iido sneered at the groundskeeper, then turned to Ryuichi. He beckoned him forward. “Brother Ryuichi, it is true that you were laughing at Yukio.”
Ryuichi bowed his head, studied his slippers and the floor around them. “I am sorry for that.”
“You may look up. Good. Now, I want the two of you to work together to resolve this situation.”
Yukio glared at him. “Yes, Father Iido.”
The abbot moved away from the stage, and cleared the lingering monks out of the temple. The monkey watched the proceedings with confusion, yellow eyes darting back and forth between speakers. As the last of the congregation shuffled outside, both men moved towards the stage together. The monkey perked up, and scuttled back towards the fan of golden rays on the statue’s head. Yukio picked up his bristle-crowned weapon.
“There’s another broom in the closet to the side,” said Yukio. His eyes were on the monkey. The monkey tracked his movements.
Ryuichi turned, heading toward the closet. Then, he stopped. Inspiration struck him, like the poem had, as swift and sudden as lightening. “Put down your broom, Yukio,” he said.
“Why? Are you crazy?”
“Let me try something.”
The monkey was a living cloud of fur, floating above the ancient sun goddess. In a way, he belonged there, as one of her children.
“Go get some food. We can entice him.”
Yukio gave a disgusted grunt. “Food? Why waste it on such vermin as him?”
“Yukio, please.”
The groundskeeper left out of the temple, muttering under his breath. Ryuichi turned to creature, lodged like a snowball with eyes in the glorious crown.
He spoke to it, feeling vaguely silly. But then again, it had worked with the swan, hadn’t it?
“Now, you don’t want to stay here, do you?”
The monkey sat up, appearing to listen to him.
“I did not think so. It is quite boring. And besides, I cannot keep Yukio from you forever.”
The monkey blinked in response.
“That’s right. He’s a sour old man. If you come down, I promise to give you something to eat.”
The monkey seemed to consider it, taking on the pose of a wizened thinker, tail curled around its feet.
“At the very least, leave the statue of Amaratsu alone. Guess who will have to clean her up? The same person who has been polishing her all week!”
The monkey screeched and suddenly leapt from the crown of golden rays. Instinctively, Ryuichi opened his arms, and caught the creature. He heard a sharp intake of breath in the direction of the temple entrance.
“How in—” Yukio stopped speaking.
Ryuichi didn’t answer. He carried his furry burden slowly to the temple entrance. From the periphery of his sight, he caught glimpses of the monkey’s strange becalmed golden eyes. The soft fur warmed his cheek and tickled his nose. A scent of wildness wafted up, of glacial lakes, and pine trees, and the faint whiff of dung and urine. He felt a tiny heart beating against his chest. It was an eternity of careful steps. Ryuichi felt something stir in his breast. Awe? The supine figure against him exuded a trust that was absolute, almost human, as if he were carrying an infant. He felt the graceful eye of the supernatural on him. This was not normal; neither had the appearance of the swan been normal. He passed the opened-jawed Yukio, and stepped on the porch. The monkey pulled away from him a little, to survey its surroundings. He caught a glint from the golden eyes. Eyes as golden as skin in a storm of petals and snow, fur pale against indigo night, some of it dyed that color, as if it were transparent.
“You may leave now. Yukio! Do you have anything for our guest to eat?”
Yukio had become a stupid statue, holding a bowl of something in his hands. He stirred to life, lik
e a marionette. “Put the bowl on the ground, like that. Good.” Ryuichi addressed the monkey. “Now, you may leave, but please enjoy some sweet rice before you return.”
The monkey calmly jumped from his arms, and inspected the bowl. Yukio jumped back hysterically like a startled mouse. The monkey scooped some rice into its mouth, and looked to Ryuichi, as if awaiting further instruction.
“Go on, now. Go. Before Yukio comes to his senses.”
A tiny paw was raised, as if in farewell. Ryuichi bent down. The monkey patted him on the face. Its paw was cool and textured, like icy leather. Then it bounded off into the night garden, over the low stonewall, heading toward the mountain.
Where he’d been touched was cool, as if he’d been kissed. The coolness spread out like ripples, starting from the point where he had been bitten by the swan.
- - -
The night was a restless one. Ryuichi felt every slat of wood beneath his body, and every thread of the blanket above him. He heard the snoring and rustling of his slumbering roommates, and the faint crackle of the brazier acutely. He could discern the fine gradients of light and dark in the room when he opened his eyes. His heart glowed with embers like a brazier. There was a delicious tension in the air, the shimmering pause before the explosive bouquet of the Emperor’s fireworks display, or the displaced air after a woman’s fan was snapped shut. There was no way he could sleep.
What will be next? A heron at the dinner table? A white fox at the well? He was being haunted by something. Scrutinized by something, for what purpose he couldn’t tell. He, who was studious and practical, had caught the eye of something supernatural. His grandmother’s tales of the yosei who shadowed mankind, performed acts of great kindness and mischief and occasional evil came to his mind. He’d been marked. What could he do to be rid of them? His grandmother was long dead; he felt regret that he hadn’t really paid attention to her wisdom. She believed in the old ways, before the mainlanders bought their religion to the islands. “How is ‘enlightenment’ going to save us from the natural world? The sun, the earth and sea all depend on us, on our worship. We are the children of the kami.”
Suddenly, when he was in the path of a sword strike, she didn’t seem like such a silly woman.
Oh, he was terrified. But Ryuichi was thrilled as well. His childish sense of adventure was engaged. During his long training at the monastery, he’d never had the visions that others had. The long prayer sessions were tiring, and didn’t lead him any closer to enlightenment than, say, his calligraphy and drawing sessions did.
These thoughts swam in his head, as the rafters above him blurred into fuzzy shades of blue and gray.
His grandmother had a special garden on the grounds that surrounded the house where he was bought up. She tended herbs, a few flowers, and a cherry tree. A bench sat beneath the cherry tree, which would explode with fluffy white clouds of petals for two weeks in the spring. When he was young, he loved this garden, with its beautiful flowers and its small statue to Uzume, the kami of joy. The stone goddess laughed at him as he played at his grandmother’s feet. It was this inclination for dreamy idleness that marked him for the monastery, he supposed, rather than the more war-like route his elder brothers followed.
Ryuichi now sat on this bench now, beneath the cherry tree. However, there were subtle differences in the vista that made him realize that this was not exactly his grandmother’s garden. For one thing, his childhood home was missing. Instead, this garden was an oasis in midst of a forest of towering black pine. The small, chuckling goddess was missing as well. Through the trees, he noticed that sky was a nude pearl color that never occurred in nature. It was like a translucent shield of rice paper, through which muted tones of lavender and blue could be perceived.
“So, I am dreaming,” said Ryuichi aloud.
He felt, rather than saw the arrival of the expected guest. It was a whisper on water, or a stir of the wind, that suggested his appearance. The shimmering youth.
“So you are,” the youth said in a voice like a reed flute singing words instead of notes, “and yet, you are not.”
The youth was underneath the cherry tree, nearly as tall as it was. His skin was as golden as ripe pears. He was as finely muscled as any young samurai. His hair drifted in an unfelt breeze, invisible filaments, like the whiskers of carp.
When Ryuichi did not reply, the youth continued: “I met you in your world. I only thought it fair that you get see mine.”
“I see.”
“Are you frightened? Please, there is no reason to fear. You must have many questions.”
Ryuichi could not look at him directly. It was disturbing. His face, while human, had strange aspects of the both the bird and the snow monkey—in the expressions, in its narrowness. It seemed to move, like ripples in a pond. And, the youth was nude. “Indeed, I do. I saved you the first time. Why did you come back?”
“Need you ask, my Ryuichi? When I first laid eyes on you, I fell in love. Your beauty was so bewitching that I lost my sense of balance and fell into the water. You deigned to save me, and I felt your warm hands on my body, and heard your beautiful voice. Surely, you noticed when I kissed you?”
“Is that what that was? I thought you were attacking me”
The yosei seemed not to hear that; he continued on in his callow way: “I craved your touch, I wanted to hold you, to hear your voice. So I had to return.”
Ryuichi glanced at him now. His willowy limbs were too long to be really human, he decided. He moved with a sprightly grace, like an epicene noble.
“You caused quite an upset at the temple.”
The youth stopped his pacing, and kneeling in front of Ryuichi, he contorted his impossibly long limbs until he was face level with him. “You are not mad with me, are you?”
Ryuichi found himself staring into gold eyes, with no whites or pupils. It was like looking into the sun.
“Not really.”
The youth leapt up. He clapped his hands happily, and danced around the cherry tree. Pale blossoms drifted down onto his hair. Ryuichi noticed that he was no longer so tall; he’d adjusted his proportions.
“I was really more annoyed.”
That stopped his frolicking.
“So, you are mad at me!” Ryuichi turned toward him, looking at his not-human face. There was just the slightest shifting of muscle, an undoing of flesh as it became fur or feathers. His translucent hair was both or neither. Ryuichi looked away. It was hypnotic. It made him sick.
He felt the yosei behind him. A swathe of shadow fell across his lap. But the shadow was insubstantial: a whisper in water…
Ryuichi looked up. Through his shifting face, he saw the structure of bone, and the coursing of blood.
The yosei spoke, after a silence: “I should have listened to my sister. ‘It never works out, between our kind and mortals,’ she warned me long ago. ‘Creatures of flesh and blood that are finite and have decay built in the very bones of their being: we can only bring pain and confusion to them.’ I did not listen to her; she had been a fox among foxkind for a long time. I thought her brains were addled by that experience.”
When the yosei’s voice trailed off, his head bowed in sadness or shame, Ryuichi felt compelled to talk. “Your sister sounds like a wise woman—er, fox. Listen,” he stood, “I am honored to be—admired by you. Really, I am. But you see, not only am I human and mortal, I am also a monk, who has dedicated his life to the way of the gods and the Buddha. Liaisons of any sort are looked down upon.”
When the youth looked up, his pale, blurry face was streaked with tears. Even they sparkled, like liquid diamonds. “Am I never to have you, my Ryuichi?” His flute-like voice was deeper in timbre, as if it were a flute played under water. The sight of the tear-streaked avian-simian face was too much for Ryuichi. Before he knew what he was doing, he stepped forward and brushed the glistening streaks away. They were cold to the touch, like ice. The flesh was soft, like feathers. Improbably, it began snowing. Petals fell from the tree,
and he embraced the youth who wrapped him in suddenly longer limbs. It was like drowning in a sea of feathers, or petals, or snow. Sudden kisses burned the snow away, and caresses returned the chill. Wind on white wings painted by the silver moon; Ryuichi soared. The thin ether of desire burned his lungs. Then, he fell, hurtled toward the earth, crashing into a bed of luxuriant fur.
The impact was intense. He awoke, with a groan that vibrated in his eardrums. Ryuichi awoke to this: blurred rafters, threadbare blanket, cold room. This stinking flesh. No amount of kneeling and mumbling and singing could bring him closer to the divine.
Hideo was the first up: “Brother Ryuichi, what’s wrong?”
“He had a nightmare about the monkey chasing him,” said another monk, clearly annoyed.
Ryuichi found that he couldn’t talk. He really didn’t want to, either. He just wanted to be left alone. He’d been in the air, a spirit soaring above it all. And now, he was here, with obnoxious and small-minded monks, chained to the cold earth. When he didn’t speak, the others gradually settled back down to sleep. Ryuichi became acutely aware that his small clothes were soaked through. They began to itch. A black wave of shame engulfed him.
- - -
“What are you looking at?”
Father Iido had crept up behind him. Ryuichi scanned the horizon from his seat on the rock, watching the clouds roll in. The sunset was truly spectacular: pagodas of orange, crimson and cream, a bold slash of color where the sun liquefied, like a rotting fruit. It meant nothing to him. He was looking at nothing; he was only waiting. What costume would his yosei wear next, during his next visit?
“Ryuichi, I asked you a question.” The abbot’s voice was like a bee, buzzing in his ear.
“I am sorry, I did not hear you.”
Last night, Ryuichi had slipped away from his bed, which was just as well. Sleep had been impossible for the last two weeks. He had stood on the bridge one night, in the late winter chill, waiting. He heard the gurgling river beneath him. He saw the dark clouds and the fingernail moon above him. He waited for hours. What good was a river that you could only look at? Surely, with the yosei, he could swim in its dark waters, plumb its depths. And vastness of the sky, with the etched stars hidden behind the secretive clouds, its mystery would be revealed to him, only if…
Sea Swallow Me and Other Stories Page 16