Segaki, page 4
But the soldier stayed. He stayed a week, whimpering and howling. And then it appeared he refused to leave. The other monks were terrified. Through Oio, Muchaku heard all about that. “Tell him he must leave,” he said. “We cannot have a soldier here.” He had heard the man was practising archery in the morning in the orchard. He had even heard the wobbling whine of the arrows, as they zoomed in to hit the target. And he had drawn back, obscurely angry.
The dog, too, had taken to following him with a downcast hungry look. He discouraged it as much as he could. Once he even picked it up and hurled it into the stream, as he had done once with a stupid monk, as a Koan. But the poor animal could not help being grateful to be there. It could not be shocked into submission.
If it was not the dog perpetually pattering after him, with its gaunt, liquid eyes, it was the monks staring at him. They felt, so Oio said, that if the soldier’s being here were known, others would come to capture him, and that would be the end of them.
The scenes at meals and at the pump were not now pleasant. One of the monks in particular, the scruffiest of the lot, a man who was tolerated only as a kitchen helper, had become impossible. He trembled all the time.
The monks had taken to talking among themselves and glancing at Muchaku, ready to fall silent when he came too close to them. And now this beggar stepped forward from among them. Oio would have pulled him back, but Muchaku motioned him to be still. He wanted to know what was going on.
The soldier, it appeared, wanted to learn the Zen rules of fighting. He would go only in exchange for that talisman, that was no talisman at all. He was a coward, too. He wanted to be safe while he inflicted danger on others. That was how his mind ran.
“Teach him, oh teacher,” implored the beggar monk,” and then he will go away and we will be safe again.”
Muchaku refused and got rid of the man. But everything was collapsing if even these men would fall to pieces for a little security to bind up their over-intellectual sheaves. Besides, there was nothing to teach except a discipline that took a lifetime. Did they not realize that? If they could not face death themselves, after years of training, were they here only in the hopes of learning a supposed secret that did not exist, and is that what his fifteen years of carefully tending them had come to?
It was too much. He sent them away. He could not even speak to Oio.
But he did not feel at ease. This little haven he had built was a haven no longer. It had become as irrational as the world. Perhaps it was too high up for most men to reason amiably. Thin air made them giddy. It did not make their giddiness any the less saddening. He lay on his mat, with one feeble lamp burning somewhere like a firefly, listening to the stealthy rustling paper movements of the ferns on the rocks below.
He must have been expecting something of the sort for he was not in the least surprised when it happened.
Suddenly the paper screen that closed the room behind him ran splitting out in all directions, and the soldier crashed through it, sword in hand. At least it must be the same soldier, but then all soldiers are the same soldier, otherwise they would be generals or else not soldiers at all. He had been weeping. His face was contorted with shame. For a second they looked at each other. Muchaku did not bother to rise.
The soldier held the sword at his throat. The little lamp finally found its metal and glinted off it tentatively, as though this were the first time it had ever reflected metal. It was rather beautiful.
Muchaku found at least that not all discipline had left him. He felt calm, very far away, rather exhilarated, and utterly detached. No doubt this was the event towards which he had been rushed willy-nilly, and he was relieved to find it so trivial.
“I do not want to die. Teach me how to kill, or you will die,” shouted the soldier, and his sword shook and trembled up and down, catching in Muchaku’s cotton robe and pulling the stuff awry.
“We will both die in either case,” said Muchaku. “You would have to study for years.” His eyes narrowed. “You are no real samurai.”
Something pattered into the room behind the soldier. It was the dog. The soldier gave a sob, cast the sword down, so it rattled and slithered over Muchaku, towards the floor, and stamped up and down in rage. “You have nothing to teach,” he screamed. “You are too learned!”
Muchaku winced. He could almost see Oio’s smile, if he had heard that. The soldier collapsed in a heap against a post of the room, and the dog came up to him and whined. At first the soldier did not see it. Then he grabbed it by the neck, whirled it yelping in the air, and cast it towards Muchaku. “Keep it,” he said. “Let it follow you everywhere, so I will know where to find you.” The dog flew through the air, over Muchaku, and out the window, tried to get its balance, failed, and after a breathless moment, there was a splash.
The soldier looked at the window with disbelief. He must have been very fond of that dog, to throw it away in the midst of a passion. He gulped, turned, and blundered out the door, leaving his sword behind him. Muchaku heard him thrashing about and then, endlessly after, a loud exclamation at the gate. After that there was only silence.
He lay there for a moment, and then getting up, he, too, went out through the garden panel and clambered painfully down the rocks towards the pool.
When Oio came to wake the abbot, five hours later, he found him curled up asleep, with the still wet and shivering dog clasped tight, and the sword lying fallen on the ground. The ruptured paper panel creaked and rustled. He stood there, looking down, without saying anything.
Muchaku stirred and awoke. He tried to push the dog away but it would not go. It would never go again.
“Has he gone?” asked Muchaku.
“Yes.” Oio looked disapproving. “You should have given him his lessons he wanted so much. He was very disturbed.”
Muchaku did not care for that. “There was nothing to teach.”
Oio shrugged. “Yes, but it would have made him happier for a while. Who knows?” Oio slipped noiselessly from the room, but Muchaku knew he had been rebuked, and rightly so. Oio was better than he. He had always known that. But he had never felt shy about knowing it before.
Two weeks went by.
He was in considerable anguish. He did not fit into himself any more and somehow the world he had made here did not want him any more. He loathed dogs, but he took good care of the dog. He had to humiliate himself somehow, and the dog was so grateful for the attention. But he did not deceive himself. Even in the dog’s eyes he was only second best. He felt shabby. And feeling shabby, he began to search around in memory for some time when he had not. He found himself thinking of his childhood, and his youth, and of his brother, whom he had not seen for sixteen years. His brother was older than he. He had never been able to ask him questions, and so he had found the answers here instead. But suddenly he had an enormous desire to see him. He would not dare to ask, he scarcely knew what to ask, the sort of doubt that was troubling him could not be phrased, but he might learn something by the sight of him.
He began to wander around the monastery as though he were a stranger. Its perfection was certainly annoying. It reduced these few left-over monks, somehow, to the status of palace maids, the ones left behind to take care of the silks, when the court is somewhere else.
For the court was somewhere else. As has been said, it was the Angrya season. In the summer the Zen monks take to the fields and wandering, a token that we are all outcasts on the earth, and that, no matter how exalted we may become, still, we must concern ourselves with planting yams and culling out the drowned green hairs of the rice plants.
He had never had a desire to leave before himself, but now he had. The monks were angry that he had sent the soldier away, they who had clamoured for him to do so. They seemed to feel that since he had gone away unsatisfied, he would come back for revenge to slay them all. It made them avoid the dog, and the dog could not understand that. It had been hurt enough already. Only Oio was kind to the dog.
They were not meditating now. They were filling in time. Their meditation postures were not relaxed. They looked crouched to run like rabbits from a sudden hunter. They skimped their prayers. And the musical patterns of the moving forest leaves seemed to mock the thuds and droning grunts of their own far from melodious voices. They stared after him as though he had betrayed them.
In other words, he knew perfectly well, it was not that he was running away, but that he did not belong here any more. His past had closed up behind him, and left him naked in the present, where he had no right to be.
He told only Oio, and somehow he felt that Oio understood.
The day he departed there was a light pattering rain, the sort of rain that brings the snails out, cast up on the plants like pebbles. Their glistening tracks flowed back and forth under the shrubs.
The dog went with him. That seemed to be understood. Monks in any event were supposed to travel with a dog, but he found its presence a worry, for when you acquire a dog, even the most beguiling of puppies, you are aware that you will also have to be there ten years later to bury it, and this dog was already mature. Yet there was never any question about the matter. It seemed settled between them.
At the gates of the monastery he hesitated. It was after all a little hard to see all this for the last time. But the monks did not know that. They thought he was going on Angrya, and to their minds that was bad enough, for he had left Oio in charge, and Oio was in some ways sterner than he. They stood around with an unweaned look, ripped from their accustomed breast, and scowled at their new nurse.
Oio seemed sad. The two men talked for a moment, and Muchaku knew that Oio knew why he was leaving. So for an instant they looked at each other wistfully, for it was the very first time they had been friends.
As was customary, the monks asked where the pilgrim was going, and he told them: “I am going to see my brother.” At that their faces lit up, for they thought that it was, as customarily, a Koan, which would give them something to be busy with for a while. He was content that they should think so. But only Oio came forward to touch him, to press a little bundle of curd cakes into his hand, and to say, “I hope you find your brother well”.
The unweaned found that reassuring, for they thought it was another part of the Koan, and that therefore nothing was changed, but Muchaku, who sensed what Oio meant not to say, was deeply touched.
He stepped through the monastery gate and set his feet on the path, with something like wonder. Others had left the monastery from time to time, but he had not seen the outside world for ten years.
It was fresh to him and astonishing. It made him feel wet as a newborn chick, and he blinked, scratching a little at the rough road, crossed by the determined silver highways of the snails.
He looked back once, and to his surprise, Oio was still there, and lifted a forlorn hand to wave. He bowed back, and then he turned and entered the black sullen turbine of the forest for himself. He was not aware at first that he was being followed. He had forgotten about forests, and thought it only the movement of a parallel deer.
2
But he realized it soon enough, from the absurd behaviour of the dog, and then he lost his temper and did a wrong thing, for which he was to be most sorry.
As he began to descend the hill, the presence also followed him. Soon he was in the midst of the mist. He had not been down in it for years, and it rattled him badly. It grew thicker and thinner, and more than one kind of thing seemed to move about in it. It turned everything into an illusion, until what he feared to find in front, as suddenly closed in behind, as the warm gusts of rain blew the fog and steam about.
Soon he lost even the sound of running water to guide him, the rain ceased with a final scurry over the leaves, and there was only a sullen, irregular drip, distributed in every direction around him.
That pursuit had now become sullen and plodding, but it was steady. And it made him angry. It was impertinent. Once he even thought he caught the glint of armour, and he knew very well who it was.
It was mid-afternoon by the time he reached level ground. The fog had shrunk back into the hollows, and there was a sun somewhere, to guess by the radiance of the mist. He came out into a fertile meadow that had something wrong with it. He moved around it cautiously through its skirting trees, with the presence ever behind him, and the dog had taken to making darting expeditions in opposite directions. It was clearly torn two ways, and looked at him, when it looked at him at all, reproachfully.
The valley closed in, he went through a belt of trees, found himself in another clearing, and there in the middle of it were the gutted ruins of the Lord of Noto’s castle. The dog was beginning to limp. He did not notice. He looked at the burnt timbers.
It was then he stepped into the band of soldiers. They were not gentle with him. It was because they did not believe he was a monk. This made him angrier with soldiers than ever. They had been able to loot and sack Noto, and they boasted of the slaughter, except for one son, who was missing.
It was then Muchaku struck his bargain. If they let him go, they could have the son. They loosened their grip on him at that. He was not frightened. He was angry. And that was what made what he did all the more wicked: that he did not do it deliberately and responsibly, but out of irritation. Behind him in the forest the sounds of that following presence were silent, but he could almost hear the watchfulness.
“He is behind me in the wood. The dog is his. It will lead you to him.” He urged the dog to follow its master. But with a peculiarly cunning glint in its eye, the dog cringed and would not go. It wrapped itself around his feet.
The soldiers watched the dog, were convinced, and then ran at double time towards the wood, lurching merrily, because they were drunk. A priest was good enough, but for the last Noto there would no doubt be a reward to whoever brought in the head.
But at the edge of the wood they stopped. Out of the wood came the enraged bellow of the young Lord of Noto. “Very well, old man,” he roared. “I know what you are now, and I know where you are going. But if they do not get me, then I will come to get you; and I will come for you, whether they get me or not.” The voice shattered the air. The light pines swayed, and there was a crashing sound in there, which the soldiers followed.
Muchaku was shaken, but there was nothing for him to do, now he had done this. He had struck his bargain. He went on his way. The dog gave a discouraged little sigh, a last glance behind it, and pattered after him.
He was contrite. Despite self-discipline he had done the wrong thing. But there was nothing to do but forget it, and to go on, determined not to do such a thing again. For the soldier he could not feel sorry. For the gallant indifference of the dog he could.
Some things, however, will not remain forgotten. It is only that they survive the period of their neglect by lying dormant for a while, like bulbs. Even a bad conscience knows when the time has come for it to push up shoots, when trouble thaws it out.
3
From Noto Province to Kamakura is a distance of some 430 kilometres, many of them mountainous, all of them hard to travel, even on foot, and certainly in the midst of anarchy and civil war, but Muchaku did not notice, he was so intent upon his errand, though he still did not know what that errand was.
It was true that the deeper woods disturbed him, but then what takes place in a forest does not entirely concern us. Besides, he had a certain essential innocence sufficient to protect him against anything but himself, and had turned his back on the world for so long, that naturally he now expected it to contain marvels.
With the first three weeks of that travelling we need not concern ourselves. Except that he reached some sort of agreement with the dog, and even began to understand it a little, and to rely upon it for affection, he passed through that troubled countryside almost unnoticed and entirely undisturbed. But shortly after catching a glimpse of the sacred imperturbable snow-capped mountain, and approaching as he was over the mountains of the north, he reached those great forests which lay between him and his destination. Here, it is true, there were pockets of peace, since his brother did not live at Kamakura itself, but forty miles away, in one of these, but here also the war had released unpleasant forces. It was not just soldiers and the banditry. Much of the area had an unwholesome reputation. It was now the middle of July, a month when one’s mind runs in somewhat thoughtful and hazardous channels, and it must be confessed that he hesitated for some time before entering the trees. He had only to rub the trunk of one, and dust came off on his fingers like the smelly powder of an old black bronze.
And the sacred imperturbable mountain soon disappeared from view. These woods were not like his own woods of Noto. They were a little tired. They had the abrupt damp coolness of a family crypt.
For the past few days the dog had been something of a nuisance. He had not been able to discipline it, for it was true, Muchaku realized ruefully, he was too learned, so he had nothing to teach. It was not pleased to be here. Sometimes he would wake up in the night to find it squirming towards him on its belly, with a glazed look in its eyes, and though it clearly did its best to be playful and to keep up an interest in things, there were times when it would unexpectedly vomit, surprised that such a thing could be done without first eating the right kind of grass.
He had given it no name. It was easier to come to terms with it if it had none, and besides he did not want to remind it of its master, an episode too painful to be left open by calling it anything. Yet he was deeply concerned about it. He now rapped it in a cotton quilt at night, and let it lick his face when it wanted to. After all, they had become friends. But though the dog seemed better, it did not seem happier, and it did not relax.
He and the dog had subsisted by begging from door to door with a lacquer bowl, even in those places which no longer had a door, and they had not gone hungry. But in the process he had seen a little more of the world than he would have wished, and this had left him apprehensive. There were fleeting shapes now, that no matter how closely he peered at them, never came any closer.
