Autumn Bridge (17 page)

The Reverend Abbess had her doubts. Real traditions couldn’t be the ones imposed by the now discredited and overthrown regime of the Tokugawa Shoguns. For two and a half centuries, according to the new government, the Shoguns had frozen society in place, invented all manner of duplicitous fictions to maintain their control, and robbed, imprisoned, tortured, enslaved, exiled, murdered, and otherwise oppressed and terrorized all who opposed them, tactics the new government claimed to have completely eliminated. Of course, neither were all the forms and behaviors of that era to be thoughtlessly discarded, since some were true and revered traditions that had been carried over from the past and merely absorbed and used by the Shoguns. In addition to negotiating treaties, building an army and navy, confiscating the lands and wealth of the Tokugawa clan, and furiously writing new laws to satisfy the Western nations’ demand for reform, the new government was also determining what was traditional and what was not. In doing so, two phrases appeared with great regularity in official pronouncements.

For ages eternal—

From time immemorial—

The Reverend Abbess knew enough about lies to recognize words designed to conceal rather than illuminate. She suspected invention rather than preservation. How much easier it was to get compliance by citing ancient precedent rather than having to convince people to risk innovation. Nevertheless, she was grateful that in designating National Historic Sites, the government had included Mushindo Abbey. It had certainly helped build interest.

“Honored guests,” the Abbess said, “our deepest thanks to you for troubling to visit our isolated and simple temple.”

While Mushindo was simple, it was in fact no longer isolated. The new road between the Pacific Coast and the Sea of Japan passed through the valley below. It was actually fairly easy to reach this temple, though the required travel from urban centers did give the trip a feeling of pilgrimage absent when visiting one of the more famous temples in the cities. Given the mission of Mushindo, this was more of an advantage than a disadvantage. The Abbess therefore felt it did no harm to suggest isolation.

“The world outside changes rapidly and relentlessly. Here, we live as the world-leavers of Mushindo have lived for six hundred years, following the Way of the Buddha.”

Strictly speaking, Mushindo had not been continuously occupied for that entire time, but she considered that a technicality. Once a temple, always a temple.

“At the conclusion of your tour, you are most welcome to join the nuns for our midday meal if you so desire. It is a very simple meal of gruel, soy soup, and pickled vegetables.”

Indeed, it was a meal very like the meal most of those in attendance had eaten on a regular basis not so very long ago, when they were mostly peasants without rights, property, or family names. With swift change came short memories.

“You will be divided into two groups. One will first tour the interior of the temple, then the grounds. The other will follow the opposite order.” She bowed again. “Please enjoy your visit. If you have any questions, please ask freely.”

The Abbess waited while the guests left the meditation hall to begin their tour, then she rose and went to the separate area outside the eastern walls of the abbey. It was the only place at Mushindo where spiritual practice took place continuously, and it was the only place that was not part of the tour. The Abbess bowed respectfully at the gate before entering the caretaker’s compound.

As always at this time of day, he tended his garden. The Abbess thought of him privately as the Holy One — at first as a joke, later, to her own surprise, quite seriously. The Holy One was very predictable. He followed, without deviation and without fail, the schedule set by the outsider monk Jimbo more than twenty years ago.

Six hours of meditation before sunrise were followed by a bowl of gruel and a single pickled vegetable, his sole nutrition for the day. How a man so unusually big could survive on a meal so unusually small was a mystery. Nevertheless, he did. The rest of the morning he passed in the garden, where he was now, weeding, gently removing insects without harming them, sweeping up dead leaves and bowing to them as he added them to the compost heap, and picking vegetables for meals and storage. After two hours of midday meditation in his hut, the Holy One spent the afternoon cleaning the grounds in the rest of the abbey and making whatever repairs were needed to the buildings, walls, and walkways. Then, before his final evening ablutions, he went to the outer gate of the abbey and gave out candies and sweet cakes to the children of nearby Yamanaka Village, with whom he was a great favorite. They were, in all likelihood, astonished that someone so huge could be so patient and gentle.

He was patient and gentle with children because Jimbo had been patient and gentle with them, and he followed the example of Jimbo in all things. But Jimbo had not made candies or sweet cakes. The Holy One had learned the skill somehow during his weeks of wandering twenty years ago. That was before the Abbess became the Abbess, before he became the Holy One, before Mushindo became an abbey, and before the Great Lords of Western Japan overthrew the Tokugawa Shogun.

“Your garden is beautiful,” the Abbess said. She always conversed with him when she could, more out of habit than from any expectation that he would respond in a way other than he always did. “It is such a wonder that the vegetables and flowers can thrive when you are so careful not to harm the pests that feed on them.”

He looked up at her and smiled, or rather, smiled more broadly, because he almost always had a smile on his face. Then he spoke a word that was one of only two in his entire vocabulary.

“Kimi,” he said.

The village children watched from the surrounding woods. Their parents had warned them to stay away from the hundreds of the Shogun’s musketeers who had occupied Mushindo Monastery. This was prudent advice, since innocent people nearby tended to die when samurai fought each other, and a fight was obviously brewing. Kimi, of course, had no intention of missing the spectacular show that was sure to come. Although she was a girl and, at eight years old, far from the oldest of the group, her intelligence and energy made her the ringleader. Also, she was the only one Goro obeyed with any regularity. Goro, the son of the village idiot woman, was a giant. He never meant anyone any harm. But he was so big and so strong, he could inadvertently hurt people, and sometimes did. All the children noticed this happened only when Kimi was not around. Surely it was mere coincidence. But children, being as they are the most superstitious of all humans, believed she had a special pacifying effect on Goro. It was a reputation that would stick with her for the rest of her life.

Goro was much bigger than any other man in the village, and even bigger than the outsider who came to live in the monastery and who became a monk, a disciple of Old Abbot Zengen. Until the outsider came, Old Zengen was the only person who lived there. The outsider had a name no one could pronounce until he became Old Zengen’s disciple. Then he began to call himself Jimbo. That was easy to say. Even Goro, who had never spoken an intelligible word before, could say it, and did, all the time.

“Jimbo, Jimbo, Jimbo, Jimbo, Jimbo, Jimbo—”

“Oh, shut up, Goro,” the other children would say. “He knows who he is, and he surely knows you are here.”

“Jimbo, Jimbo, Jimbo—”

He would go on and on and on. Only Jimbo would not be bothered. Nothing bothered Jimbo. He was an outsider, but he was a true follower of Buddha’s Way.

“That’s enough, Goro,” Kimi would say. “Give the others a chance to talk, too.”

“Jimbo,” Goro would say, one last time, and fall silent. For a while at least.

Jimbo had been away in the mountains when the musketeers came, and he still had not returned when Lord Genji arrived.

It turned out that the Shogun’s force was waiting for Lord Genji. His small band of samurai was ambushed, surrounded, and trapped. Those seeking to reach the sanctuary of the monastery were blown up when gunpowder hidden there ignited. So many bullets were fired in their direction that their dead horses, which they used for cover, disintegrated into a single, massive ruin of butchered flesh. In the end, when the lord’s allies arrived and destroyed the enemy, the handful of survivors were drenched in the blood of animals and men from head to foot.

Jimbo did not return until several days after the battle, and when he did, none of the children recognized him. They saw an outsider dressed like the one who had been with Lord Genji, a man who had worn guns in his belt instead of swords and, raging like a demon from the worst hell realm, had killed many men with his guns, with swords he took from men he had turned into corpses, and with his bare, bloody hands.

The children ran away from him in fear. Except for Goro.

“Jimbo, Jimbo, Jimbo,” he said, and ran toward the outsider.

Kimi saw that Goro was right. This outsider was indeed Jimbo. He had discarded the Zen monk’s robes he donned when he became Old Zengen’s disciple and now wore the clothes he had worn when he first came to the village. He had a gun at his belt and held a long weapon with two big barrels in his hand.

“Why are you dressed like that?” Kimi asked.

“I have to do something I can’t do in the other clothes,” Jimbo said, looking at the ruins of the monastery. A few days later, they all learned what it was he had to do.

The other outsider came back, the demon who had been with Lord Genji. Kimi led the village children into the ruins of the meditation hall, where they hid. They watched the demon slowly slip inside the monastery walls, a gun in each hand. Jimbo stepped out of the shadows behind him, put a gun to the back of his head, and said something in English, which none of the children understood. Whatever Jimbo said, it was not the right incantation, because instead of disappearing or going away, the demon dove to one side and, twisting as he fell, fired both his guns at Jimbo. Jimbo fired, too, but only once, and too wide and too late. Just as he fired, the demon’s bullets hit him and knocked him to the ground. Then the demon stood over Jimbo and emptied both his guns into Jimbo’s face.

When the demon was gone, the children ran toward Jimbo. They all stopped when they saw what was left of him. Only Goro and Kimi went to his side. Goro collapsed beside Jimbo’s body and wailed and moaned. Kimi put her arms around Goro and tried to comfort them both.

“Don’t cry, Goro. This isn’t Jimbo anymore. He’s gone ahead to Sukhavati, the Pure Land. When we get there, he’ll greet us, and we won’t be afraid. Everything will be wonderful.”

Kimi wasn’t sure Goro would ever recover from the loss. But gradually, he did. He began to spend all his time in the ruins, clearing away debris, disposing of questionable fragments that might have been the charred remains of human beings, filling in the pit left by the huge explosion that had destroyed the meditation hall, raking the grounds, and collecting many of the hundreds of bullets that had been fired in the battle that had preceded Stark and Jimbo’s duel. With nothing better to do, the children imitated Goro, and before they realized what they were doing, they were helping him to rebuild Mushindo.

Soon he was again saying the one word he knew.

“Jimbo.”

But now he said it quietly, and only once at a time.

As the monastery reappeared from the ruins, so in a sense did Jimbo. Goro took to wearing his robes, and began following the monkly schedule Jimbo had followed. He rose in the darkest hour of morning, went to the abbot’s meditation hut, and remained there until sunrise. One day, when Kimi peeked in, she saw that he was sitting very still, his legs in the lotus posture of a real monk, his eyelids lowered as Jimbo’s had been when Jimbo had been deep in the
samadhi
of the Buddha. Of course, an idiot like Jimbo could not attain the perfect, blissful peace of the Enlightened One. He was not a real follower of the Way like Jimbo. But he was doing a very good job at pretending. And it kept him quiet and happy and harmless, so Kimi did nothing to discourage him.

One day, several harvests later, when Kimi was working in the village paddy with the rest of her family, a rich merchant arrived, accompanied by a band of samurai. These latter were not in the service of any lord, as were all proper samurai, but were of the masterless type known as “wave men,” because like waves on the surface of the ocean, they had no roots, belonged to no one, and were without purpose, but existed nevertheless and were capable of causing great turbulence and mayhem. During recent years, as the realm was troubled by internal dissension and outsider pressure, the decay of order had produced many such men.

How much time had passed between the battle, the duel, Jimbo’s death, and the arrival of this merchant, Kimi couldn’t say. Every season in a farming village was much like any other. She knew more than a few seasons had passed, because much of Mushindo Monastery had been rebuilt, and her own body had begun to change, developing the embarrassing beginnings of the characteristics that would eventually lead to pregnancy, childbirth, a demanding husband, squalling children, and all the rest. She could see her future opening up before her, as vivid as a saint’s mystical vision. Soon, she would be her own exhausted, prematurely aged mother, and someone else — one of her children to come — would be her brash and bratty self. This was the true meaning of reincarnation for the lowly. Perhaps Great Lords like Genji and beautiful geisha like Lady Heiko were reborn in new, exciting manifestations in exotic, distant lands. Peasants just came back as their parents and themselves, repeated what had already been done too many times before, and didn’t have to pass into another life to do it.