Segaki, page 11
He was left alone in the hall, with only the sound of the rain. Once more he heard that wail, anguished, but this time close to him.
Whatever it was was beside him. He did not scream. With some courage he held up the lantern, so it fell across the face of the maid. She was without her veil, and her face was hideous, wrinkled, distorted with pain, grief, and anger, her teeth yellow and her eyes twisted buttons.
“Priest you may be, but you are no Buddha,” she snapped. “You have no manners. She was only trying to please you, it is rude of you not to be pleased. She had only this one chance, and for her it has been very long to wait. Almost too long. You are not a good man, whatever your brother says.” Her breath was foul, and she spoke sharply, with no grammar for their relative stations. He felt slapped by a hand without flesh. “Get up.” He got up. “You must follow her. She must not be left alone. Not yet.”
She tugged at him, whining, and he flinched away. She laughed then. Her flesh was cold and slimy.
“Oh a priest. One of the castrated ones,” she said. “Go. Go.” She shoved him towards the open panel. And then, her grip left him, and she was gone. Perhaps she could see in the dark. He stood there, badly rattled, sure the room was now empty. Then he blundered across the terrace, out into the rain.
The rain, which had looked so gentle, beat down on him brutally. It wet his clothes in an instant, and he could see nothing. Behind him he heard harsh laughter.
He stumbled through the garden. The long heavy kimono clung to his body like soft slobbery leeches, heavy between his shoulder blades, binding his movements. The rain roared down on his head. He ripped off his kimono and stood there in his loin cloth, shuddering, naked and helpless, no longer protected from himself by his clothes. The rain on his exposed shoulders was now a repeated acupuncture.
He pushed his way through the shrubs, stumbling on the slippery moss, and the branches lashed and scratched his flesh, ripping across his nipples. He did not notice. He felt maddened and contrite.
There was no sound but the rain and his own stertorous breathing. The rain was icy, but also sticky, yet he did not feel cold, even though his nipples were stiff with cold.
He found her where his body had directed him to run, at that pool motionless as a depthless tarn, inhabited only by a water-snake. She was standing up to her ankles in the water, on which her obi already floated, staring at nothing.
The bushes behind him lashed necklaces of spray. She turned, saw him, and advanced up to her knees in the water, with a gasp of expectation. He plunged in after her and tried to coax her back to shore. She said nothing, but pounded him rapidly with her flurried fists. It was exciting. He could not even see her face, but knew she was both sorrowing and furious to be interrupted. Then inevitably something rose within him. He had forgotten that it had the power to do so. They were both slippery, and as he caught at her robe, it ripped, with the tired, shocked sound of very old fabric. She stopped pounding him and went limp. Half carrying her and half pulling her, he reached the shore, almost lost his footing, and then found the bank. Beyond them the obi drifted off under the rain.
She still did not speak and her body was frigid. Pulling her by the wrist, the victim of his own excitement, he hurried back through the garden. Ahead of them a light shone, and then went out, even as others came on. Picking her up he carried her into the hall. There were now lamps lit along a corridor, and down this, unthinkingly, he hurried. The corridor had a musty smell. His feet made damp footprints behind him, and he dripped, they both dripped, on the mats, she even more than he, her robes trailing down.
The maid waited ahead of them, holding a lamp. Seeing him, she led the way, the light streaming out around her hunched black body, her sandals padding domestically against the tatami, which here and there were frayed and worn. She led him deeper into darkness, until he thought he could hold his burden no longer, and then her lamp disappeared. But from an open door ahead came a soft subdued glow.
He turned in there, aware only of a sudden warmth, unlike that of any other room of the house which he had seen. It was plainly Lady Furikake’s quarters, as though she could only survive in this close, humid temperature.
Dead or alive, or whatever she was, she was shivering, perhaps from shock, perhaps from cold. He called for the maid but received no answer. The only sound, apart from the rain outside, was the chalky hiss of the charcoal pellets in the kotatsu sunk in the floor.
Something had to be done. He took her clothes off. She weighed almost nothing. He rolled her about, as he removed them, careful not to look too closely at the first skin he had ever seen that excited him, perhaps because it was so taut and non-commital. He did not dare to touch it. He pulled out one of the two quilts neatly folded beside the kotatsu and put it over both her and the stove. Then through the cloth he gently felt her body. Her eyes were still closed. Her breathing was hasty but shallow. The dim light flickered over her face, in patterns like those of cloud shadows undulating across a field. Her little bare feet curled up like squash flowers. Dead she might be, but he found himself afraid that she might die.
He got up to examine the room. Its only ornament was a low dish containing three irises, one of which was intentionally withered and brown. The symbolism was exact.
There was too much elegance here. Everything was etiolated. But people tend to forget that when it is not mere fashionable caution, elegance is at once a moral viewpoint, an ethical structure, and a metaphysical necessity. He was swept along by something unfamiliar to him, simply because instinctively he seemed to understand it, even though it altered him, until he watched himself doing things he had not known he could do. Know it or not, he was caught up in that clean imitation of youth that is younger and more fastidious than any real youth could ever be. It is pleasant, after all, to be vigorous, tight skinned, and forty, if one remembers that one is twenty at the same time.
His fingers were trembling. It was his body, now, that pointed out, a little humorously, certain defects in his mind. But even so, he did not realize that what he sensed she wanted, was only because unconsciously he now wanted it too. The walls were of sliding panels. Opening these, he discovered a wardrobe with chests, and opening these in turn, took out a neatly folded kimono, saffron and silver, at random. On top of it lay a few withered colourless flowers with powdery leaves, and the dust was heavy. He shook out the clothing and then laid it beside her quilt.
From outside there came a baying, like that of the ghost foxes, withdrawn and deliberately crazy, as though sound were a dangerous bright bobble on the end of a fishing-line. The sound was so clear that he could almost see the creature’s immaculate front paws, planted so firmly they trembled, on a little hummock, as it lifted its voice up. The sound was less a call than a reminder.
She stirred.
He panicked and glanced swiftly round the room. Against one wall was a light lacquer stand for clothes. This he pulled out and threw the second quilt over it.
The baying stopped and rose up again, even as she again stirred, and then broke off in a series of short, urgent barks. With each one, no doubt, the neat flame on its forehead fell and rose.
The second quilt had been scented. Shaking it out had released a firecracker odour in the room, which, enhanced by the heat of the stove, was slightly maddening. He sat down before the draped quilt with no desire to watch.
He could definitely hear her movements now. The foxes barked once more, but from a greater distance, and with more satisfaction. It was a sound like that of those unfortunate foxes who take rabies in the winter and run ravening everywhere, dodging something they cannot dodge, until they foam, contract, and die.
Abruptly the light went out. Spots danced before his eyes, as though someone had thrown oil into a pool, waited an instant, and then churned the water into utter darkness. The sliding panels were inlaid with shell and ivory. As his eyes adjusted, he caught the glimmer of false fire-light, meteor-light, glow-worm-light, as a pattern half settled into place, the phosphorescence of rotten wood, the cold light of a cat’s eyes, the iridescence of fish scales and fish bones, and the hard elusive glitter of a diamond, not white, but blue, to green, to yellow-red. Then the quilt slithered away from the kotatsu, through whose grid came the secretive coddling glow of sinking coals.
Once more he heard the rain, as that silk slithered towards him, and the cloth sank down to him, overwhelmed by its own weight, as though there were no one in it at all.
Yet he could sense an essential innocence, as fresh as the rain, but as resolute and irresolute by turns, for after all, innocent or not, the rain, though it can shift about in direction, knows there is only one way for it to fall, escapes to a pool if it has the force, in pioneer rivulets, but otherwise soaks the ground. He wanted to please her. He scarcely knew how to do so. He thought what he felt must be a kind of love, for the absence of something is less noticeable than the presence of something like it, and in the bustling crowd of sudden physical sensations, which all come pressing in at once, how should we miss a face with which we are not even familiar?
“Did the maid undress me?” she asked softly. Her voice was frightened.
He shook his head, forgetting she could not see the motion.
“Then you saw me.”
He reached out and touched her. Her robe was not even tied. He was surprised to touch cold, impersonal flesh, that yet was not so much impersonal as only correct against its will.
“No,” she whispered and drew away. Then a shadow half grew out of the darkness, and she began to let down her hair. It fell with the lazy customary swish of a curtain between two poles, a curtain someone has loosened in order to gain privacy.
There must be a cricket somewhere in the bedroom. It began to click. He gave in to his desires, or rather, his will gave in to them, out of surprise, since he had never felt any before, as though to say, well, if that is what you wish, why of course you may have it, why did not you tell me sooner.
That vow of chastity he had once taken, he saw, was not any sacrifice, but only a justification of what had been, in him, the absence of necessity. One must be like other men, in order to be unlike them. But because he had never been so, that had not occurred to him before.
She yielded with an indulgent gravity, that was somehow girlish, as though waters long lost in the depths of an exhausted well, supported life again by unexpectedly bubbling over. They began to roll on the floor.
“Oh, it is not true you are a priest,” she said. “You are too skilful and besides, you have the real smell of men.”
“What is that?”
She giggled. “I don’t know. Smells make you remember things you had forgotten so long ago.”
It was true. He was skilful. He did not quite know how, or even in what way. It was merely that he wanted to please, and therefore he did, but only because, since neither of them could be said to exist, since this could not be happening to him, then it was not necessary to prove that it was correctly done.
He vanished down an alley he had fled from over twenty years ago, he could see it clearly, with mud underfoot and venality over the wall of a small court, like a blossom tree, in that scene in the Monogatari in which Genji rides down a suburban alley, and is arrested by someone looking at him from behind a jalousie, but goes into the building opposite instead, simply because they have not met.
The texture of the rain was a less tarnished silver. Perhaps it was beginning to be dawn.
Abruptly she was solemn again, he could sense it. The pupils of her eyes, which had followed several of his glances, now looked at nothing. But he was too drowsy and warm to notice that. There was not even the yap of a fox, and the coals had almost died out. They lay together under the quilt.
Sometime later he was aware that she was getting up.
“Don’t go.”
“I am only going to make tea,” she said. “Tea now would be so delicate.”
He wanted her to come back. “You are so beautiful.”
She flushed and gave a sad, wayward smile, which he did not see. He only felt the smile, which slowly faded, as he again fell asleep. From somewhere under sleep, he heard the surreptitious click of a handle, no doubt against the porcelain of the pot. It had a creamy sound, and then, stirring luxuriously under the quilt, he really was unconscious.
He did not know what woke him, but somewhere at the back of his mind heard once more the tinkling of that intrusive bell. He awoke all over his body at once, like a browsing fish yanked out of the water on to the bank, where it clumsily flops in the searing air. Then he heard what had really wakened him, a curious furry continual bumping. He looked around and saw against one of the paper panels, though the doorway was still open, a plump bewildered butterfly. Light came through its wings, illuminating the glowing coloured spots of the pattern there.
He gazed at it, jumped up, caught its powdery wings between his thumb and forefinger, and cast it out the open panel. Then he looked around him. The room was cold. The fire had gone out, though the teapot stood there. She must have sat there for a long time, sipping the increasingly bitter tea, and watching him while he slept.
He called, but there was no answer, only an echo that died before it could reverberate far. He looked around him, confused and frightened, with an overwhelming sense of loss.
The quilt was gone from the stand. It had been neatly folded again. Draped over the poles now was a gentleman’s robe, with beneath it a pair of slippers. But the slippers were of an ancient style and the robe too was ancient, one of two hundred years ago, heavy and rich, in a style long outmoded. It was brittle to the touch and smelled of camphor. He put it on and shuddered. It was like wrapping the past around one’s waist. Then he stood there bandy-legged, really frightened now.
The room was incredibly rich, but also, he saw, patched and carefully repaired. The inlay on the panels was warped and here and there had faded away.
He went out into the corridor. It was just after dawn, though the sun was not yet perceptible. The lamps along the roof of the corridor still burned, but dimly. It was so quiet that he could hear them splutter, and even as he watched, they began to go out.
He hurried down the hall and came to the great room. It was damp and disused, and here and there plaster had fallen from the walls, or a pillar had split at the base. There was dust everywhere, and spider webs spread from roof tie to roof tie.
Everything seemed to wait and watch, motionless, yet somehow capable of motion. He looked around him, bewildered. Everything here was rare and beautiful and well cared for, but everything was also unnameably old.
He went to the garden. There were tears in his eyes. It could not all have been illusion. The garden was also soundless and watchful. Only a leaf or two, heavy on a long stalk, bowed down and then was still. The moss was grey with decay. He pushed angrily through the bushes to the pool.
He found it black, rippleless, and inexpressive. The obi scarf floated half in and half out of the water, and even as he watched, as though it were something he was not supposed to see, rolled, dipped, and vanished. It had never been.
He could not help it. He turned and fled.
He went through the hall, hurriedly, unaware of what he was wearing, trying to remember from which silent opening he had first emerged. The whole house seemed to tremble. He blundered down long corridors, turned a corner, and found himself in the entrance hall of the gilt Buddha. But the gold leaf had flaked from the Buddha’s face, its left index finger was broken, and the flowers on its offering-table were wilted and limp. He ran down the steps to the vast entrance court.
It was raked smooth. There was no sign of his entering footsteps to be seen. The building shook again. Here and there in that emptiness weeds sprouted up luxuriantly, an eave creaked, the trees had been denuded of their blossoms by the rain. Again he felt watched. The building seemed to shimmer in the hard dawn light, that was not really light at all, for the fog had risen and the whole dome of the sky was wadded with it, from whence it dripped, a dirty sodden poultice.
Behind him, unexpectedly, and yet expected, rose that withdrawn compressed wail. The ancient camphor of his garment was stifling. He fled across the courtyard, the wail following him, and out the gate, up the path among those trees, not daring to look back, for it seemed, too, that he heard a mocking, unsympathetic chuckle as the wail broke off.
6
He did not know how he stumbled across that plain with its tufted deserted hummocks, or even how long it took him to do so. He was beside himself. But at last he lurched through the gate of his brother’s house and leaned against its inner pillars.
The dog had been snuffling in the shrubbery. It saw him and bounded joyously forward. But some instinct made him preserve that robe, even though it seemed to stifle him. He beat the dog down, and it ran away disappointed and yelping. Then, changing its mind, it trotted sedately behind him, for it had clearly missed him so much that it did not care how he behaved, given he was there.
Yasumaro was pacing up and down the veranda, with vast agitation. When he saw his brother, he clattered down the steps, across the garden, and then helped him into the house. He seemed shocked to see the robe, but held his brother gently, guiding him and calling out for the girl to prepare something hot, as he led him up the veranda to his own room.
Muchaku was cut off from sympathy by exhaustion, fear, and a touch of fever, but managed to tumble his story out.
Yasumaro questioned him closely about what he had done, too closely, but seemed relieved.
“I would have killed you if you had not done so,” he said.
“Why did you send me?”
“I cannot tell you that. You must rest.”
“I cannot forget it. It hurts,” said Muchaku.
Yasumaro eyed him narrowly and seemed relieved when the girl came. Between them, they gave him something to eat and then put him to bed. They tried to undress him, but he would not allow them to remove his robe. Somehow it smelled of her fingers.
