Beauty and Sadness (18 page)

Keiko shrank behind him. “I can’t stand dogs. If a dog barks at you in the morning, you’ll have a bad day.” Even after the barking stopped she stayed there clinging lightly to his shoulder. “Taichiro, are you happy to be with me?”

“Of course.”

“I wonder if you’re as happy as I am.… I suppose not, really.”

As he was thinking how feminine she sounded, he had a sudden awareness of her fragrant breath on his neck. She seemed to be clinging a little closer to him, so close he could feel the soft warmth of her body. Now Keiko
belonged to him. There was nothing baffling about her.

“You didn’t realize how much I wanted to see you,” she said. “I thought we’d never meet again unless I went to Kamakura. It’s strange to be here together like this.”

“Very strange.”

“I mean, I feel as if we’ve been together all the time, because I’ve been thinking about you ever since that day we met. But you forgot about me, didn’t you? Until you happened to be coming to Kyoto.”

“It’s strange for you to say that.”

“Really? You remembered me now and then?”

“Not that it wasn’t painful.”

“But why?”

“It makes me think of your teacher, and of what my mother suffered. I was only a child but it’s all in my father’s novel, you know. The way she would drop a bowl and burst into tears, or carry me in her arms through the streets at night. She wouldn’t even notice that I was crying. She seemed to be getting deaf—in her early twenties!” Taichiro hesitated. “Anyway, that novel is still selling. It’s ironic, but the royalties have helped support our family for years. They paid for my education and my sister’s marriage.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I’m not complaining, but it does seem odd. I can’t help disliking a novel that shows my mother as a crazy, jealous woman. And yet whenever there’s a new printing she’s the one who stamps each copyright slip with the author’s seal. She’s just a middle-aged woman sitting there good-naturedly tapping away thousands of times
with the seal, so they can publish more copies of a book that tells how jealous she was.… Maybe it’s only an old memory—things are calm enough at home now. You might think people would look down on her, but instead they seem respectful.”

“After all she’s Mrs. Oki Toshio.”

“But then there’s your teacher, still unmarried.”

“There is.”

“I wonder how my parents feel about that. They seem to forget she ever existed. I hate to think I’ve been living on money from the sacrifice of a girl’s whole life.… And you tell me you want revenge for her.”

“Don’t.” Keiko leaned her cheek against his neck. “My revenge is finished. I’m just me.”

He turned and put his hands on her shoulders.

Her voice was barely audible. “Miss Ueno said I needn’t come back.”

“Why?”

“Because I was going to meet you.”

“You told her?”

“Of course.”

Taichiro was silent.

“She asked me not to. She said if I went I needn’t ever return.”

He let go of her shoulders. The traffic along the opposite bank had picked up, and there were new shades of green, light and dark, in the Eastern Hills.

“Shouldn’t I have told her?” she asked, peering into his face.

“It’s not that,” he said stiffly, and began to walk away.
“I seem to be taking revenge on Miss Ueno for my mother.”

Keiko followed close behind him. “I never dreamed of that kind of revenge. What a curious thing to say!”

“Shall we go? Or perhaps you ought to go home.”

“Don’t be cruel.”

“This time it’s my turn to spoil Miss Ueno’s life.”

“I’m sorry I talked about revenge last night. Forgive me.”

Taichiro hailed a taxi in front of the tea house, and Keiko got in with him. He remained silent as they drove across the city out to the Nisonin Temple in Saga.

Keiko was silent too, except for asking if she could open the window all the way. But she put her hand on his, fondling it gently with her index finger. Her smooth hand was a little damp.

The main gate of the Nisonin Temple was said to have been brought from Hideyoshi’s Fushimi Castle in the early seventeenth century. It had the imposing air of a great castle gate.

Keiko remarked that they seemed to be in for another hot day. “This is my first time here,” she said.

“I’ve done a little research on Fujiwara Teika,” Taichiro told her. As he climbed the stone steps to the gate he looked around and saw the hem of her kimono rippling as she followed nimbly after him. “We know Teika had a villa on Mt. Ogura called the ‘Pavilion of the Autumn Rain,’ but people claim three different sites for it. You can’t tell which it really was. There’s one on the hill behind us, another at a temple not far from here, and
then there’s the ‘Hermitage Away from the Hateful World.’ ”

“Miss Ueno took me there once.”

“Did she? So you’ve seen the well where they say Teika drew water for his inkstone when he was compiling his anthology of a hundred poets.”

“I don’t remember seeing that.”

“The water is famous—they call it ‘willow water.’ ”

“Did he really use it?”

“Teika was a genius, and all sorts of legends sprang up about him. He was the greatest medieval poet and man of letters.”

“Is his tomb here too?”

“No, it’s at Shokokuji. But there’s a little stone pagoda at the hermitage that is supposed to be a memorial of his cremation.” Keiko said no more. Apparently she knew almost nothing of Fujiwara Teika.

Earlier, as their car passed Hirosawa Pond, the view of the beautiful pine-covered hills reflected along the opposite shore had awakened his thoughts of the millennium of history and literature associated with the Saga region. Beyond the low, gently sloping profile of Mt. Ogura he could see Mt. Arashi.

With Keiko beside him, the past seemed all the more alive. He felt that he had indeed come to the ancient capital.

But was not Keiko’s impetuousness, the passionate intensity of the girl, softened for him by this setting? Taichiro looked at her.

Why are you staring at me so oddly?” She seemed a
little abashed, and stretched her hand out to block his gaze. He put his own hand lightly against hers.

“It
is
odd, being here with you.… It makes me wonder where I am.”

“I wonder too.” Keiko dug her nails into her fingers. “And I wonder who this is beside me.”

Dense shadows fell on the wide avenue leading up to the temple from the main gate. The avenue was lined with superb red pines interspersed with maples. Even the tips of the pine branches were still. Their trailing shadows played over Keiko’s face and her white kimono as she walked along. An occasional maple branch hung low enough to touch.

As they came to the end of the avenue they could see a roofed clay wall at the top of a flight of stone steps. There was the sound of falling water. They climbed the steps and went along the wall to the left. A stream of water was pouring from an opening in the base of the wall near a simple gate.

“It has very few visitors for such a well-known temple.” He paused beside her. “Today it seems deserted.”

Mt. Ogura lay before them. The copper-roofed main hall of the temple had a quiet dignity.

“See this fine old holly oak,” Taichiro said, walking toward it. “People call it the most famous tree in the Western Hills.” From top to bottom the oak thrust out gnarled branches, knotty with age, but it was thickly covered with young leaves. Its short branches seemed bursting with energy.

“I’ve always been fond of this old tree, but it’s years
since I looked at it like this.” He talked only of the oak tree, not at all of the temple.

As they came back past the Hall of the Goddess Benten he looked up a long, steep flight of stone steps. “Can you climb these in a kimono?” he asked.

Keiko smiled and shook her head. “Not very well.” Then she added: “Take my hand. After that you can carry me.”

“We’ll go slowly.”

“Is it up there?”

“Yes. Sanetaka’s tomb is at the top of the steps.”

“You came to Kyoto just to see that tomb. You didn’t come to meet me.”

“Exactly.” He grasped her hand, but released it. “I’ll go on alone. Wait for me here.”

“I can do it. You ought to know those steps won’t bother me. I don’t care
how
far we climb!” She took his hand and began going up with him.

Evidently the worn old steps were seldom used now; weeds and ferns sprouted at the foot of each step. Here and there yellow flowers bloomed.

“Is this it?” Keiko asked as they came to three little stone pagodas standing in a row at one side.

“A little higher,” said Taichiro, but he turned in among them. “Beautiful, aren’t they? These are the ‘Tombs of the Three Emperors’—they’re masterpieces of stonework. The one on this side and the five-ringed one in the middle are especially fine, I think.”

Keiko nodded, gazing at them.

“The stone has a lovely patina,” he went on.

“Are they medieval?”

“Yes, but the one with ten rings over there seems a little later than the others. They say it was a thirteenringed pagoda that lost its upper part.”

The grace and refinement of the little stone pagodas obviously appealed to Keiko’s artistic sense. She seemed to forget that she was standing hand in hand with him.

“None of the tombs of famous people around here can match them.”

At the very top of the stone steps they came to the modest Founder’s Shrine, which contained only a tall stone tablet inscribed with the achievements of the priest Tanku. Taichiro walked quickly past it to a row of tombstones along its right side. “Here we are. These belong to the Sanjonishi family. The one on the far right is Sanetaka’s, where it says ‘Lord Sanetaka, Former Chamberlain.’ ”

Keiko looked and saw a small gravestone, no more than knee-high, flanked by an even smaller stone marker bearing the name of Sanetaka. The two gravestones on its left also had slender markers, with the inscriptions “Lord Kineda, Former Minister of the Right” and “Lord Saneeda, Former Chamberlain.”

“Would high officials have such simple-looking monuments?” Keiko asked.

“That’s right. I like these plain little stones.”

Except for the accompanying name tablets, they were no different from the gravestones of the unknown persons buried at the Nembutsu Temple in Adashino. The stones here were also old, mossy, earth-stained, worn
out of shape by time. They were mute. Taichiro crouched beside Sanetaka’s gravestone as if he were trying to hear a distant, faint voice from the past. Drawn by his hand, Keiko crouched too.

“Rather appealing, isn’t it?” he said. “I’m doing research on Sanetaka. He lived to be eighty-two and kept a diary for over sixty years—it’s a great historical source for the sixteenth century. You often find him mentioned in the diaries of other court nobles and poets, too. It was a fascinating period, a time of cultural vitality in the midst of wars and political upheavals.”

“Is that why you’re fond of his tombstone?”

“I suppose so.”

“Have you been studying him for years?”

“Three years. No, it must be four or five by now.”

“And your inspiration comes from this tomb?”

“My inspiration? I don’t know—–” At that moment Keiko let herself topple against him. Still crouching, he rocked back on his heels to steady himself as her weight almost bore him over. Then she was lying across his lap looking up at him, her arms around his neck.

“Right in front of your precious tombstone.… Why don’t you give
me
some fond memories of it? This stone is where your heart is. That’s all it means.”

“All it means?” He echoed her words vacantly. “In time even tombstones change.”

“What are you saying?”

“It’s true there comes a time when a tombstone loses its meaning.”

“
What
?”

“You’re too close.” Now his lips were almost touching her ear.

“Don’t! You’re tickling.” Keiko rubbed her head against his chest and looked up at him out of the corners of her eyes. “You shouldn’t tickle me with your breath like that. I hate men who tease.”

“I’m not teasing.”

On the verge of laughter, he realized for the first time that his arms were around her, supporting her as she lay there across his lap. He was conscious of the weight of her body, and yet of a buoyant softness to it.

Keiko’s long kimono sleeves had slipped back, and her bare arms were still around his neck. Suddenly he was also conscious of the cool touch of her smooth, moist skin.

“Teasing your pretty ear, am I?” He tried to calm his breathing.

“I’m sensitive, there,” she whispered.

Her ears were tempting. Taichiro fingered them gently. She kept her eyes wide open and did not move.

“Like mysterious flowers,” he said, toying with her ears.

“Are they?”

“Can you hear anything?”

“Of course. Something like—–”

“Like what?”

“I wonder. Like a bee hovering in a flower … or maybe a butterfly.”

“It’s because I’m touching them.”

“Do you enjoy touching a woman’s ears?”

His hands froze.

“Do you?” she repeated softly.

“I’ve never seen such beautiful ones,” he said at last.

“I like to clean out people’s ears for them,” said Keiko. “Odd, isn’t it? I’ve become quite an expert. Shall I do it for you some time?”

Taichiro did not answer.

“There isn’t a breath of air,” she went on.

“No, only a sunlit world.”

“I’ll always remember being in your arms in front of an old tomb on a morning like this. It seems strange for a tomb to create a memory.”

“But they’re built for memories, aren’t they?”

“I’m sure
your
memory of this morning will soon vanish.” She made an effort to lift herself from his lap. “It’s too painful!”

“Why do you think I won’t remember?”

“It’s too painful for me, being like this!”

As she tried to free herself Taichiro held her closer. He brushed his lips against hers.

“No, no!”

He was startled by her fierce refusal. As if to hide her lips, she pressed her face tight against his chest. He ran his hand over her hair, around to her forehead, and tried to tilt back her face. She resisted.