Shike, page 84
"We will build a pyre for him here and scatter his ashes in the sea," he said. And in time an empty urn would move into its place in some Zinja monastery.
Now Jebu made himself go up to the top of the cliff and see his father's dead face. It was like that of a porcelain monk. Taitaro's eyes were lightly closed, his head was sunk on his chest, his hands were clasped together in his lap. Jebu lovingly touched his father's shoulder, and Taitaro's body started to slump forward. Moko and Jebu lifted the body, light as a doll's, and carried it back a little way from the edge of the cliff.
They plunged together in silence into the forested slope leading up from the Tokaido Road. Moko, as always, was carrying with him his box of carpenter's tools, his Instruments of the Way. Even though he now wore a samurai sword, he never went without the tools of his original trade. Each of them took a saw and began cutting down small trees. By noon they had made a waist-high platform of crossed tree trunks and bamboo poles, the spaces between them filled with pine boughs. They laid Taitaro's body on it and built a thick canopy of poles and branches over it, peaked like the roof of a shrine.
At the hour of the ape the sun was in the western sky, and they were ready. Moko lit a branch with flint and tinder and handed it to Jebu. Jebu walked around the pyre and in five places set fire to the boughs at its base. Swiftly the flames, almost invisible in the bright sunlight, curled up around the wood and met in a peak above it. It had been a dry summer, and the pyre burned with a fierce hissing, sending up thick white smoke. The wind had shifted during the day and now blew from the land towards the sea. The smoke stretched out in a long white plume over the waves. Jebu and Moko stood back from the shimmering air around the fire.
"The smoke reminds me of his beard," said Moko sadly. He was calmer now, having emptied himself for the time being of tears for the old abbot.
Jebu slowly recited aloud a prayer he had been taught long ago, the Prayer to a Dead Zinja. "Death is not the enemy of life. Life is the mountain, death is the valley. As the snowflake that falls on the mountaintop is carried at last to the river, so your self has at last rejoined the Eternal Self. I congratulate you, Brother, on a life well lived. You have seen all the arrows fly, you have seen all the swords fall. You will remember nothing and you at last will be forgotten. But in remembering the Self, we remember you. The Self never forgets." Eor the first time Jebu realized that this prayer, like other Zinja prayers for the dead, was not addressed to the one who, after all, had ceased to exist, but to the one who spoke the prayer.
"Homage to Amida Buddha," Moko declared, as if both prayers were part of the same ritual.
It was late afternoon by the time the fire had burnt down to the blackened rock. Moko, weeping again, used his Instruments of the Way to perform the final office of pulverizing the skull and remaining pieces of bone. Then, with pine branches, they swept the ashes from the cliff edge. The wind caught them and carried them down to the sea.
Jebu stood looking out over the ocean as Taitaro had only this morning, feeling on his back both the warmth of the setting sun and the cool wind blowing from the west. Long shadows purpled the waters below. The wind reminded him of the battle of Shimonoseki Strait. Yukio and Taitaro, the two men dearest to him, both gone. They had melted back into wind, fire, earth and water, of which all things are composed. Yet it was impossible not to think that their spirits were somehow still intact, that Yukio and Taitaro could still watch and love the Sacred Islands and could, as Taitaro had said, return at need.
He looked down at the ocean and thought, we appear, run our course, and vanish again, like waves, while the ocean remains. How sad we are, wishing we could go on forever. Some people manage to attain a spirit of accepting death, but others are cut off before they even have time to do that. The young samurai try to learn acceptance by comparing themselves to cherry blossoms. The life of a blossom is only a day, but it is complete. Atsue, I think, must have known that kind of acceptance. But Yukio, young as he was, lived fully. He did the greatest deeds possible, and wanted to die when the time finally came. And my father Taitaro-if ever I have seen a life ended in the fullness of days, it was his. Men like Yukio and Taitaro are not blossoms, they are golden fruit, falling in ripeness. If it were not that all partings are sorrowful I could almost say that the death of my father was a happy occasion, as I know he wanted it to be. Teach the samurai, he said. I must teach them what is best and truest in the way of the samurai, their own way. We do not have to win wars, we have only to achieve insight and liberation. I must help them understand this.
He heard heavy feet pushing through the woods below. He looked down and saw movement and the flash of metal among the pines. Armed men. Uneasily, Moko moved to stand next to him. A few moments later three samurai of the lowest rank, foot soldiers armed with spears, emerged from the forest. Their bearing was respectful when they saw they were dealing with a monk and a man who appeared to be a well-dressed samurai, albeit not of very military bearing.
"What's happening here, shike?" one of them asked. "We saw your fire a long way off. It was too big to be just an ordinary campfire."
"My father, Abbot Taitaro of the Order of Zinja, died here this morning," said Jebu. "We have been performing funeral rites for him."
The samurai frowned. "Things aren't done that way any more, shike. You don't just dispose of your dead in the wilderness. You're expected to report a death to the proper authorities." He turned to his comrades. "We'd better take them to the general."
Moko spoke up grandly. "The highest authorities of all require our immediate presence in Kamakura. You'll regret it if you delay us."
Though he was not samurai by birth and had never drawn the sword that hung at his belt, he knew he outranked these three.
"General Miura will sort things out, sir," said the samurai, forcing himself to be polite. "Please come with us."
Taking a last look at the spot where Taitaro had died, Jebu shouldered his travel box and started down the hillside. Moko pointed out his own box to one of the warriors.
"I have had to make this journey without servants, but there is no reason for me to carry luggage when there is one of lower rank to do it for me. Since you force me to go out of my way, you may carry my box." The samurai Moko singled out responded with a murderous look, but after a gesture from his superior he reluctantly strapped Moko's box to his back.
A small company of foot soldiers and cavalry was lined up on the road at the base of the hill. Moko and Jebu were led to their splendidly dressed general, a black-bearded man who sat on a brown and white horse. Over his armour he wore a light blue cape bearing a white disk, the badge of the Miura family.
"You're the two I've been sent to fetch," said General Miura Zumiyoshi when they identified themselves. He spoke in the accents of an eastern warrior. "What were you doing starting fires up there in the hills? Surely you know that's dangerous in dry weather like this."
Jebu explained the funeral pyre and apologized for not having followed proper procedures. "We monks are not always aware of new regulations. The world passes us by."
"I'd believe that if you weren't a Zinja." Zumiyoshi laughed, his teeth flashing white in his beard. "In any case, shike, my sympathies. I know what it is to lose a father."
"If there's nothing else the honoured general wishes, we should be getting on our way," said Jebu. "We are expected in Kamakura."
"Indeed you are," said Zumiyoshi. "And I've come to speed you on your way. Be good enough to mount the horses we've provided. We'll travel by torchlight. I'm to take you at once to her ladyship, the AmaShogun."
Chapter Eleven
From the pillow book of Shima Taniko:
The Ama-Shogun. I both like and dislike that nickname. To be thought of as Supreme Commander of the samurai even though I am a woman-what woman has ever achieved so much? There have been Empresses who ruled alone, but they inherited the title, and they ruled so badly that no woman will ever be permitted to occupy the throne again. So the historians say. Of course, the historians are all men.
How well I and my family rule will soon be tested. The people and the samurai are strong enough, and the gods are surely on our side. What it comes down to is whether we, who happen to be leading the country now, can lead well during this coming invasion. It is hard to believe, but there are moments when I miss Hideyori's cleverness in matters of state.
Our agents in China and Korea report that the southern Sung capital, Linan, has surrendered to the Mongols without a struggle, and the child who is Son of Heaven has knocked his head on the floor in homage to Kublai and has been carried off into captivity. I'm glad Linan surrendered. It would have been a horror beyond imagining if that magnificent city had been destroyed and its millions slain.
But some Chinese fight on. The war party has crowned the younger brother of the captured Emperor, and they still occupy the coastal provinces. They have a huge navy. The longer they hold out, the more time we will have to prepare for our own ordeal. A naval war between the Mongols and the Chinese will destroy many ships Kublai could use against us.
But, the Nun Shogun? I am far from being a nun. I know that now more than ever, as I tremble with anticipation at seeing Jebu again. He must come. I have sent Moko after him to the Zinja Pearl Temple, and I sent Zumiyoshi with troops and horses after Moko. Jebu may be here at any moment. Here. At last, after all these years, with all barriers between us gone. My love for him has arisen like the phoenix and soars in the heavens.
Someone knocks at the door of my chamber. Perhaps Jebu is in the castle even now. I feel all the eagerness I should have felt, but did not, on either of my wedding nights.
-Fifth Month, twenty-fifth day
YEAR OF THE RAT
It was late in the evening when she received them in her personal audience chamber, the Lilac Hall. She wondered if anyone had told Jebu that name and if so, whether it would mean anything to him. As etiquette required, she sat on the dais behind a screen. It was a warm night. She had ordered the shoji panel on the east side of the room opened, permitting a glimpse of the moon floating among the branches of pine trees, as if caught by them. A double row of councillors in red and green kimonos lined the length of the room, seated under the murals of lilac bushes that gave the hall its name. Even though no one could see her except the one lady-in-waiting who relayed her signals to the servants, she had dressed with care in a white silk outer jacket printed with the red Shima crest, shades of green showing at her neck, sleeves and hem. In her hair was her mother-of-pearl butterfly, the lucky ornament that had gone with her to China and back. She needed luck tonight, she thought, feeling a hollow in her stomach. She signalled to the lady-in-waiting that she was ready.
Miura entered first, his helmet tucked under his arm. Then came Moko in his rich robes. Her eyes leaped to the tall figure beyond them. Her first sight of him struck her like a physical blow, and she gasped. He looked splendid in his long robe. The skin of his hands and face was a rich dark brown against the grey cotton. He dropped to his knees beside the others, and all three pressed their foreheads to the polished wood floor. Jebu sat back, eyes cast down, hands folded in his lap, waiting. One advantage of a screen, Taniko thought, was that she could avidly drink in the sight of him and no one need know. Her heart was hammering furiously in her chest, like a prisoner trying to escape. He was so near, for the first time in over ten years. Other than that strange, brief glimpse of him at the Hachiman shrine, this was her first look at him in all that time. There were many more wrinkles around his eyes, whose grey she could not see because he kept them determinedly fixed on the floor. His white hair was parted in the middle and fanned out stiffly to his shoulders, giving him the look of a lion in a painting. The ends of his moustache hung down to his white beard. Anyone looking at him would see a fierce-looking middle-aged monk, but to her the young man she had met the day she began her first journey down the Tokaido was clearly visible.
She spoke at last, first thanking General Miura and Moko for bringing Jebu safely and quickly to Kamakura. Moko's eyes flickered nervously back and forth between Jebu and the screen behind which she was sitting.
At last it was time to address Jebu. The mere thought of saying his name aloud intimidated her. She hoped there would be no quaver in her voice.
"My most profound gratitude to you, Master Jebu, for your willingness to leave the peace of your temple. You must find this military capital a noisy, discordant place after the quiet of monastic life."
Now, for the first time, he lifted his eyes, and again she felt as though she had been struck by a club. He was looking straight through her screen, as if he could see into her eyes, even though she knew he couldn't. She almost felt like fainting, as she had at the Hachiman shrine. The eyes were impenetrable as granite. There was not a trace of feeling in them. They saw into her and told her nothing-and thereby told her everything. Oh no, she thought. The hollow in the pit of her stomach turned to a sinking iron ball. The joyless grey eyes told her that he was not happy to be here, that he hadn't wanted to come to her, that he hated her.
He spoke now, thinly masked disdain curling his beard and moustache back from his teeth. "My lady, a summons from one as exalted and powerful as you honours this lowly monk." The voice was hoarser than she remembered it, but softer. The sound of it made her shiver.
"I cannot seem to find peace anywhere in this world, and I am more used to the ringing of steel on steel than the chiming of temple bells. Eor every night that I have slept in a monastery, I've spent a hundred nights on the ground. As for this capital of yours, it is a strong, fierce city, worthy of samurai. Of all its edifices, the grandest is this residence of yours, my lady, the Shogun's castle. The Shima family mansion, where I left you long ago, before I joined Lord Yukio to fight at his side during the War of the Dragons, was an admirable palace. But this castle dwarfs it utterly. My lady has risen far in this world."
He had never forgiven her for being ambitious. The other men in the room were all staring at Jebu. He had committed an offence by mentioning Yukio, whose reputation was still under a cloud here in Kamakura. She was sure it was Jebu's way of reminding them that he had fought for Yukio to the end and did not regret it.
"My lady, we're worn out from travelling such a great distance in such a short time," Moko stammered. "We have not eaten all day. Might it not be better to meet again when we're fresh?"
Dear Moko was trying to protect Jebu by blaming his discourtesy on fatigue. It made her want to laugh in spite of her sorrow.
"Don't be absurd, Moko. We've only begun this conversation," she said.
"My apologies, Lady Taniko," said Jebu, still staring steadily at her screen. "Of course the name of Muratomo no Yukio should never be mentioned in this castle." That implied she had approved of Yukio's persecution and death. She could not answer the accusation in front of her councillors, because that would require her to criticize Hideyori, whom she was obliged as a respectable widow to defend. But she could not let the charge go unanswered.
"I accept your apology, Monk Jebu," she said in the pleasantest tone she could muster. "Your loyalty to your friend and lord of so many years is 'commendable." She chose her next words carefully. "The dispute between my lord Hideyori, the late Shogun, and his brother Lieutenant Yukio, was a great sorrow to me, and I never understood the reason for it. Now that both are gone, let the quarrel be buried with my husband's ashes at the Hachiman shrine, where karma took him from me. Let both lords be remembered only as two of the greatest heroes of the Muratomo clan. With the passing of time we forget the reasons for our bloody quarrels. We remember with respect all the great warriors of the Sunrise Land, even the mighty ones of the Takashi family, as well as those who slew them. If only all our heroes were alive today we would not have to fear the most terrible enemy our nation has ever known." There, she thought, that message was clear enough: I, too, sympathized with Yukio. See, I publicly call him lieutenant, the title Hideyori forbade. Let us forget all past grievances. I do not blame you for the deaths of Hideyori or Kiyosi or Atsue. I need your help.
Jebu smiled, a smile without humour or kindness. "I quite agree, my lady. Yesterday's enemy, today's friend." Meaning, You are no better than all the other samurai, with their ever-shifting loyalties. The answer bitterly disappointed Taniko. She had hoped to have his love to sustain her. Instead, if she wanted him near her, she would have to live with his contempt. She felt as if an earthquake had split the ground open and she were falling into the fissure. This situation was impossible. They must come to terms of some kind, even if he could no longer love her. She realized that she owed him much for the years of suffering she had inflicted on him by sending him away after he confessed to killing Kiyosi, and that she should be patient now. She could endure his scorn for a little while. Perhaps if they talked alone, she could make a peace of sorts with him.
"The Zinja honours the samurai by quoting an old saying of ours," she said. "I am hoping that Zinja and samurai knowledge combined will help us to win this war. I would like to discuss this further with Shike Jebu. I will not hold the rest of you." With formal salutations to Moko, Zumiyoshi, her councillors and most of her court women, she cleared the Lilac Hall. Eor appearances' sake she remained behind her screen and kept an elderly lady-in-waiting, whose discretion she trusted, sitting at a corner of the dais.
"Come closer, Jebu," she said. "Now that we are alone there is no need for you to sit so far away." He rose fluidly, halved the distance between them and dropped to his knees again. No man moves so gracefully, she thought. He made the samurai look like waddling ducks. Her hunger for him was actually physically painful. She could not take her eyes off his long brown hands.
"What does my lady require of me?" he asked in that hoarse, soft voice that made her spine tingle.
