Autumn Bridge (64 page)

The ghostly, demonic sounds the children told him about were more than rumors. There were sounds, eerie and disturbing, but for him, who had lost everything and given up the world, they were only reminders of the inevitability of death and sorrow.

In the course of time, a gentle calm suffused Zengen. One day, he found himself at peace. Not that the sorrow had gone, or even diminished, for it had not. But a kind of acceptance had changed everything.

Answers were overrated. Once, he had thought questions had greater value. Now he knew questions were quite useless, too.

One day, a group of outsiders arrived. They had come, at the invitation of the Great Lord of Akaoka, to build a temple of their religion, for the worship of a Buddha-like being they called Jesus Christ. Zengen offered to let them use Mushindo for the purpose. Their holy day was Sunday. For Zengen, any day was the same as the next. The Christians — that is what they called themselves — declined, saying they would build their own temple. Before they could begin, a cholera epidemic struck them down, and all died but one. No one could pronounce his name, which sounded something like Jimbo. Somehow, in his illness, he learned the Japanese tongue. This was not unprecedented. Zengen knew of a shipwrecked fisherman who nearly drowned. He was rescued by Russian seamen, and was in a delirious fever for a month. When he came to, he spoke fluent Russian. Unexpected changes were sometimes brought about by the nearness of death.

“I wish to become your disciple,” Jimbo said.

“You cannot,” Zengen said. “I am not a holy man, I am only an ordinary man wearing a holy man’s robe. What can you learn from an empty suit of clothes?”

Jimbo’s eyes flashed with a sudden brightness of tears. He bowed and said, “Thank you, Reverend Abbot. I will meditate sincerely upon your words.”

In this manner, without desire or intention, Zengen became a teacher of the Way.

The old man sat in the posture of Zen meditation in the hut in the mountains two days away from Mushindo Monastery, where he had twice been abbot. Above him, through the sparse overlay of random branches that suggested a roof, the winter stars sparkled dimly. Mists drifted down toward the valley floor. He was in meditation posture, with his hands cupped in the Zen mudra, but he was not in fact meditating. He was dying, and, dying, had come out of meditation to find himself reflecting on how quickly his life had passed. There was no regret, only mild surprise.

Yesterday, he had been a Great Lord, with fierce samurai at his command, a loyal wife, two strong sons, a beautiful daughter, and laughing grandchildren. The day before that, he had been a frightened youth with his first set of full-size swords, sweating fearfully in his armor as his regiment attacked a desperate horde of starving peasants. And on the previous morning, he had been ten years old, kneeling at his father’s deathbed, swearing through tears that he would fulfill the ancient mission of their clan: the overthrow and destruction of the Tokugawa Shogun.

And now he was dying.

Who knows? Perhaps he was already dead, no more than a lingering spirit hanging above a corpse the way incense smoke sometimes hung in the motionless air of a quiet room. The first strong wind and his spirit would dissipate.

His breathing, if he was still breathing, was so attenuated it was unnoticeable.

He saw his hands.

They had wielded swords, caressed women, comforted children.

They had killed, forgiven, loved.

Now they were very still. If he wished, could he move them?

He didn’t wish, so he would never know—

Genji had prepared the speech he was to give at the Diet, though he knew he would die before he could deliver it. Today was the day he had envisioned long ago, the day of his assassination. For most of his life, he had known the time, place, and manner of his death. Had that knowledge been a blessing or a curse? A little of both, perhaps. It had sometimes made him complacent when he should have been attentive, and it had sometimes given him courage when he would otherwise have been paralyzed with fear.

Now his life was to end. Certainty had replaced every doubt except one. His grandfather, whose predictions had always come true, had told him he would have three visions in his life, and these three would suffice to guide him from beginning to end. Where was that third vision? Lord Kiyori had been a wily samurai of the old school. He might very well have lied about it to keep Genji alert. It seemed likely. There was little time left for a third vision. Even if it came, what good could it do?

Genji checked himself in the mirror. He looked ridiculous, with the mustache and beard of a French general, the morning coat of a British politician, and the face of a Japanese lord approaching the least attractive years of middle age. He recalled the way he looked that day so long ago when he had first met Emily Gibson. Then his hair had been in the complex array of the now extinct samurai. His face had been young, and beardless, and too obviously that of a man well satisfied with himself for no better reason than the fortunate circumstances of his noble birth.

Had he really been so arrogant?

Genji laughed.

Yes, he had, indeed, indeed.

He turned away from the mirror and—

Genji is three years old. He walks along the shores of White Stones Lake near White Stones Castle, the redoubt of his maternal grandfather, Lord Nao. He holds a small paper kite in his hands along with its anchoring string entwined around a stick. Upon its earthside face, the kite depicts a flock of sparrows in brilliant fantasy colors instead of in their drab reality.

A man is walking on one side of him, and a woman on the other. They are his mother and father.

Genji says, “White Stones Castle. White Stones Lake. White Stones Domain. Why is everything here called white stones when there aren’t any?”

His mother says, “Because white stones were the original treasure of my father’s domain. This lakeshore was famous for the white stones used in the game of
go
. They were preferred by connoisseurs over the best mother-of-pearl. It is said the great hero Yoshitsuné treasured his Shiroishi stones more than anything except honor, triumph in battle, and his lover.”

“So where are the stones?”

“The supply was unlike mother-of-pearl. One day there were no more.”

“Is that when Grandfather Nao planted his apple trees?”

“No, his ancestors did that generations ago. White Stones was the name of domain, lake, and castle long after the white stones were gone.”

“That’s confusing,” little Genji says, loosening his kite string and preparing to run. “The names should be changed.”

His father says, “A name is more than mere description. It is an emblem of constancy, no matter how different things become. Like your name. Genji.”

Genji sees a look pass between his parents. They smile together.

The envisioning Genji remembers that look. It used to make him uncomfortable because it excluded him. He sees now that the exclusion was not intentional, only a consequence of so completely including the two. There was room for no one else.

“I don’t like my name, either,” Genji says, and runs off down the beach to loft his kite.

His name, Genji, was the name of the famous princely hero in Lady Murasaki’s ancient novel. It was also an alternate name for the Minamoto clan of the great real-life hero Yoshitsuné, who won battles against impossible odds seven hundred years ago. Only a Minamoto could be Shogun. The present Shogun, a Tokugawa, claimed Minamoto descent. Genji had heard people whispering what a ridiculous and pretentious name Genji was to give to a son of a minor lord. What were they thinking? people said. That their little boy could ever be as handsome as the Shining Prince of legend? That he, a lowly Okumichi clansman, could be Shogun one day?

Now, as his three-year-old self runs down the beach with the kite bouncing flightlessly on the shore behind him, the fifty-eight-year-old Genji recalled why he has his name. His mother had married very young. She knew stories better than she knew life, and the story she loved best was Lady Murasaki’s. She wanted a Genji of her own, even if he was her son, and not her lover. It was a measure of his father’s love for her that he consented to the name, though it would multiply the ridicule he already received for being the son-in-law of the Lord of Apples. He must have had to stand against the furious opposition he surely received from both Lord Kiyori and Lord Nao. All that was in his name, and in the look his parents exchanged, along with the smile that belonged to only two.

The kite won’t loft. Genji is growing very frustrated. He is thinking about ripping it up and throwing it into the lake when he hears his father call to him.

“Run toward us, Genji, into the wind!”

As he starts to do as his father suggests, the boy Genji looks back at the kite as it catches the wind and begins to rise. The Genji inhabiting his former self wants to look toward his mother. If he is three, then she is pregnant with his sister, the one whose birth will kill them both. These are the last happy days together for his mother, his father, and little Genji. He wants to look at his mother. He remembers her as being very beautiful. But all little boys think their mothers are beautiful. He is three and he is fifty-eight and his mother is twenty and will not see twenty-one. The kite flies high in the sky above the shore of White Stones Lake.