Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482) (61 page)

Fulfilling my promise, I now poured out sake in my teacher's honor, and there at once he stood, taller than a cryptomeria tree. His forehead was too high to be visible, but when an oval of darkness grew more opaque I understood that he had opened his mouth.

Praying for everything I had seen and known to be saved, I flew up past the stone lamps, up the wet lichened wall of black stone cubes, to the vermilion façade inset with brass-framed phoenixes and dragons. The old
man's jaws closed around me with a click. Now I could be happy, in the place where pictures are made.

And so I had entered my old camera, or his, which was magnified—or, more likely, I myself had shrunk, after the fashion of old things. The vast metal plate had clicked shut behind me; I remembered that. My fears departed, my longings now shut out, I thought to guard my unfinished dreams. I found myself in the rubescent light of an antique darkroom, whose trays of hyposulphite and boiling selenium gave off those choking sulphurous and briny stenches I loved so well, here in the place where no voice is heard. Within the reel where the fresh film canister would have been seated, I presently discovered a spiral staircase which led me to a round chamber where some high-shouldered daguerreotypist with his back turned toward me was fuming mercury, the silvered plate already tilted to the proper angle. Since he had not observed me, I quietly redescended. The stinging vapors of the selenium now attacked my eyes and nostrils. Passing them by as rapidly as possible, I met with a tray of running water, a still tray of hypo clearing agent in which several sheets of paper floated face down, two trays of fresh-smelling fixer, a vinegary tray of stop bath, which of all my chemicals I used to find most unpleasant to mix, then a tray of developer evidently of the warmtone type, for its exhalations made me nauseous and itchy at once; in the red light, the latter liquid appeared tarry, evidently from precipitated silver; it must have received several sheets of photographic paper already. At last I reached the takeup reel, and, instructed by symmetry, easily discovered the other staircase which took me, as of course it would, to my old enlarger, whose timer was singing away the seconds while the incandescent bulb glowed white, projecting upon the wall above and behind it crooked rays like the legs of a shining spider whose head was the bulb itself. Musing over the easel, where the light cast down the negative's image upon the paper, stood that same tall, high-shouldered gentleman who had been and perhaps still was fuming mercury in the other tower; he now turned toward me, with an agility I found unwholesome even before I saw his face, which was as featureless as the paper's latent image. So was he infinitude or utter negation? Just then the timer flicked off and the chamber went dark. Sensing, although I could hear nothing, that he must be bending
toward me, as if to get his long pale hands about my neck, I rushed down the stairs, not knowing whether he were an inch behind or had returned to withdraw the exposed sheet of paper, which in any event he would momentarily be carrying down to the chemical baths, because this is how we photographers bear our messages from this world to the world which will come; and indeed, just as I reached the door at the base of the tower, although I had heard no footfall behind me, I felt breath on the back of my neck. The horror I experienced then, when I comprehended that his mouth could be no more than a handspan away, and that his arms perhaps already drew in about me, ought to have stupefied me, in which case I could have been developed and pickled just like the kneeling geisha, but somehow I was able to throw myself down the last step and roll into the sticky, poisonous concretions beneath the long shelf-sink of trays. Now in the rubescent darkroom atmosphere I could see his tall, slender legs, white as a crane's. His semiskeletonized majesty was as coherent and inevitable, if not as visible, as the sheen of brass chrysanthemum bolts marching in double rows up the black wood of a drum tower. He was as immense as a cedar. Although I supposed that he would promptly bend down and reach for me, he hesitated, perhaps for fear of exposing his fingers to chemical contamination, and therefore staining his prints. And very possibly he held that sheet of lightstruck paper in one hand. If he slipped it into the developer tray, I would gain five and a half to seven and a half minutes while it traveled from bath to bath, each station of which he must rock like a baby. If he set it down anywhere else, it might be ruined by some unseen chemical. While he pondered, I crawled as swiftly and silently as I could toward the other end of my camera, burning my palms and knees in puddles of ferricyanide bleach. My gorge rose and my eyes watered, but my heart pounded for fear of him who (or was it his twin?) now knelt down ahead of me, fishing for me with his long arms. Reversing course, I spied his double likewise hunting me—no shelter within this dark world! Nothing remained to me but to crawl out between those pallid twins, who straightened at once, as I could see all too well in the ruby light, and began to stride toward me with the delicate rapidity of spiders. Fortunately, I now reached what my hands remembered, for I had loved this camera so well that its workings nearly matched those of my own nerves and bones; here was the cam
which used to come into play when I pressed the shutter release. Even as my two enemies commenced to strangle me, I rotated it ninety degrees, then pulled, so that the great spring-loaded mirror whirled beneath us as the lens opened and let in moonlight. I glimpsed my own desperate face, silvered down by the lunar rays. Clutching at their own eyeless, noseless faces, which were already blackening with the reliable rapidity of unfixed silver halides, the demons froze, and then, far too late, sought to preserve themselves by dunking their heads into the two hyposulphite baths. Reopening the lens again, reassured by my orbiting flash of face, I this time employed the moonshine to discover the inner catch on the camera back, during which instant my enemies, all the more discommoded by this second exposure to light, trembled hopelessly, while fixer ran down their legs; and pitilessly I pressed the catch, which swung the camera back utterly open.

Although it was worse than foolish of me, for their hearing must have been unimpaired, and they could have trapped me between them in that corner, I skipped around them to peek at the photograph just ripening in the developer, and now, like those monsters, commencing to darken into ruin, and I saw a beautiful picture of mine which I had never printed—the face of the woman I loved. Too late!— As I remember this now, the taste of selenium rises in my gorge, and my eyes begin to sting.

Flying out of the old man's mouth, growing as I fell, I glimpsed the two demons, who were already smaller than a pair of chopsticks, staring blindly into each other's ruined faces, as if they recognized that they were or were not the same. I thought: Was it not lonely enough without this?

Grinning like the iron-crowned demon of Kibune Shrine, the old man now bent over me, and placed his Leica around my neck. No one visits him anymore, and so I say to myself: How sad!

The names of those two demons who hunted me I never learned, but upon opening the old man's camera I found in place of film a tiny scroll in characters of pure gold within sky-blue windows, like certain copies of the Lotus Sutra. I unrolled and viewed it frame by frame, weighting down each rectangle with my ten-power loupe. I seem to remember reading it long ago, in the Imperial Anthology of the Ten Excellent Silver Zones.

Now you have seen my true shape;

there is no difference between us, you and I;

for we both dwell in darkness, in order to devour the light.

My ashes abandoned by my smoke,

I am one and the other, the same,

two empty things which never will share a grave.

Down this road we go, we go;

delusion's road, where we go between death and life,

here where we pluck tender images out of light;

here we toil out our lives, gathering moonlight out of jade.

All is vain, even escaping from vanity.

My only hope, blind death, kills the eyes on my face;

but each eye remembers the other

and new pictures bloom up for the plucking,

so that I can never rest, never rest.

I have vanished into the dark, to gather light with you.

You are my brother; I am your smoke.

This is of all teachings the most excellent.

In every grain of silver is a palace of practice

where every being is enlightened for thirty-three million eons.

Here is the dwelling place where all is seen and nothing is known,

the place of those removed from this world,

who offer this world their love.

Sometimes I wish I might never desire the beautiful things which dead eyes can no longer see. But who would I be, if that were so? Sometimes I wish to be awakened from sad dreams, but not from this one. Until I have saved everything, I refuse to rest. Then I'll show you how a man should die! I'll vanish into the dark, and rise forever above the pines,
nevermore to see! But not yet, not yet; nor will I pray to lose my delusion. When I finally leave this world in funeral-smoke, may all I have seen remain.

The waitress who had served us sake in that seventeenth-floor restaurant was there every day; she was wrinkled and yellow and her back ached. Was it she or I who had forgotten to be alive? Bowing, clapping my hands twice, I prayed: Please let me save you from death.— She nodded, smiling bravely. So I raised the old man's Leica, although there was no film in it. As soon as I gazed through the viewfinder, I found that she was a rain-jeweled branch of pear flowers, unchanged from long before. After this she bowed and said: We have met, so we must part.

How shall I bear this pain? Still I see her; now she has passed away.

If cherry blossoms were never in this world, how serene our hearts come spring!

Ariwara no Narihira,
bef
. 880

Yukiko's dark little mouth was a plum in the newfallen snow of her face, and her eyelashes were as rich as caterpillars. Even her Elder Sisters, who were very strict, confessed that when this young woman opened a sliding door, following each of the prescribed motions, the effect became perfect. At the Kamo River Dance, even amidst an explosion of geishas in white flower parasols, all of them as stunning as cherry blossoms, it was she who stood out; and had I ever seen her myself, I would have painted her image upon my camera's polished mirror, making copies in paper and silver. When a man looked up her sleeve while she poured sake, and won a glimpse of her crimson undersleeve, he could not look away; and once two tipsy Kabuki actors fought over her sandal, while her scarlet-lipped white face watched from the doorway until the Elder Sisters summoned help. When a closed palanquin carried her from place to place, people would follow in hopes of glimpsing her perfect hand. Whatever Yukiko was, had or did, years after her disappearance Noh actors continued to discuss the way her white-powdered face used to become ivory when she leaned forward in torchlight, pouring sake for them, the golden maple leaves on her jet-black kimono flickering like stars, the rice spirit streaming in an arch of silver from the mouth of the wooden bottle. The Elder Sisters gave it out that she had made an advantageous marriage in a far-off country. Of course most of them were angry and hurt, while the rest feared that some demonhearted suitor had made away with her.

It happened when she turned twenty. There were pink cherry blooms and wet white tulip-cups of magnolia beneath the grey clouds. Ever nearer drew the night when she must
change her collar
,
*
as they say in the flower-and-willow world.

The ancient poets teach that veiled beauty is the profoundest type. Much as autumn foliage barely seen through mist outranks the untrammelled scarlet of the leaves themselves, thus a geisha's beauty to a
maiko
's. As for Yukiko, she preferred to continue as she was, so day and night she prayed to Kannon, goddess of mercy: Preserve me from the hollow chests, yellow teeth, bad breath and grey hair of my Elder Sisters! Don't turn me into smoke and dirt like them! Let me wear all the colors until I die—

It was February, so she wore a daffodil hairpin. Then it was March. Presently came April. Directed by her Elder Sisters, for the first time she did up her hair in the
sakko
style and blackened her teeth, because it was her final month as a
maiko
. Again and again she stopped by Yasaka Shrine, praying to Kannon. Her heart resembled a red tassel trembling against a round mirror. To shorten her obi, and hide her hair beneath the
katsura
wig, to put on lower clogs and a plain white collar, to know that the older she became, the plainer her kimono, this might be the fate of others; but she felt so sorry for herself that she wept in secret—not much, because that would have spoiled her lovely eyes. Her red collar was already almost obscured by swirls of silver thread when she prayed to Kannon, bowing and clapping two times.

Again she prayed, and in the darkness eight-armed Kannon appeared, stiff and tall, clasping two forearms at her heart, with her other wrists upraised, her other arms outstretched. It must have been
because the girl paid threefold reverence to the Three Buddhist Treasures and twofold reverence to the Shinto gods that Kannon took pity on her. Sad and a little stern, darkskinned, in a robe of tarnished gold, the goddess bowed her wide-eyed face toward the girl, promising to preserve her beauty over a long span of years. Yukiko would become a cherry tree, and every spring she would come into flower. Only then would she become again a
maiko
. Thus for but a handful of each year's days would she incarnate the lovely being who she now was. Her month would last a decade; her year, a century and more. At other times she would be a cherry tree.

The goddess warned her: What you wish for may not be for the best.
You will be trapped in many births and deaths. The sadness you experience will be your retribution.

The girl bowed meekly, her eyes closed as if she were remembering the first song of the cuckoo; and Kannon was touched.

Are you satisfied? asked the goddess.

Yukiko nodded. At once joy overcame her.

When she first reappeared to her Elder Sisters they screamed. It had been several springs; they all looked older, and two new
maiko
s had been taken on by the house. The Emperor had been exiled, they said. Bowing to each, clapping her hands (which made even less noise than before), she requested forgiveness, and promised to return each time the cherry blossoms opened, for so long as they should wish. And because she was rare in several qualities, and cost them nothing, they accepted her; she proved good for business. So the sake flowed sweetly out from her sleeves, and the highest-ranking musicians came to pluck the strings of the shamisen whenever she danced, and even jaded rich men could never drink enough of her. At first the other geishas hated this new Yukiko, for even the way she stamped her feet could not be imitated, no matter how brilliantly they danced, and never mind that their wardrobes entailed kimonos of lavender with golden cherry flowers, and pale pink cherry blossoms upon night-blue, and more others than I could ever tell, while she wore always the same yellow kimono with the pink and white blooms, wrapping herself in layers of farewell, smiling with her perfectly blackened teeth, bowing with perfect grace. When the two
maiko
s and Yukiko danced the Miyako Odori, Taeko wore pink and Sachiko wore blue, while Yukiko wore yellow, of course; cherry blossoms were on their kimonos and on their scarlet obis, and cherry-blossom hairpins adorned their hair. Taeko and Sachiko were beautiful, Yukiko was the one whom they all watched. Who can compete with the moon? The woman who tries is mad, and geishas need to be businesswomen. Therefore they made their peace with this willow-eyebrowed girl, who readily advanced their names to men who desired other company, as sooner or later most men did, since only for six days or seven could one see Yukiko, to whom her Elder Sisters
now spitefully referred as the Cherry Tree Ghost, a name which hurt her because she believed herself to be alive.

On this subject something will now be said. No one in this floating world has more discerning eyes than an old geisha, and as the cherry-springs continued to spend themselves one upon the other, the Elder Sisters watched Yukiko with small alert smiles, inclining their heads whenever she bowed down before them.— Younger Sister, they'd say, there's a stray hair on your neck. Please let me fix it for you.— Or: Dear Younger Sister, isn't that a loose thread on your sleeve? Please hold still.— And with this or that pretense, they looked her over close up, while she softly thanked them, knowing quite well that all was in place. It lay in their interest as jealous human beings to see her age, so that they could comfort one another with smiling assurance that she too must die. Spring fluttered down upon spring, with winter in between, and while the wrinkles of the Elder Sisters lengthened, and their chins began to multiply, they discontentedly agreed that no flaw yet appeared on Yukiko's face. But there was one Elder Sister whose eyes were sharpest of all, and among the many fields in which she hunted was Yukiko's collar, once scarlet, now nearly silver; and after half a century she thought to spy another silver thread. After all, even Elder Sisters make mistakes. Some observant Noh actors agreed that her movements were becoming more fluid, her sleeves slowly clapping and parting like the pulsations of anemones; but this signified nothing more sinister than her increasing mastery. Even behind drawn shutters, in that upstairs room lit only with candle-flames, and the simplest painted screen behind her, she appeared to be dancing in a sky of blossoms.

So there were men who claimed to love her, and as her Elder Sisters aged and died, other geishas learned to dance at her side, and new young men grew up to admire her. She had scarcely known anyone else. Her parents, who had sold her to the teahouse on her third birthday, were since ascended in cremation-smoke; likewise her brother, who had never visited her; now her brother's children followed the same road; so that her antecedents might as well have been the faded square vermilion seal of Hojo Ujiyasu, whose lines resemble a labyrinth. Perhaps Kannon weighed this when she considered Yukiko's prayer. What had the girl ever received but
loneliness, humiliation, merciless practice and principled punishment, all of which produced in her the determined longing to embody grace? Had she
changed her collar
and grown old with the rest of them, she might have won allies, dependents, starstruck clients and perhaps even friends of a sort, although the sorrow which I have sometimes seen in the eyes of older women in that world makes me suspect that a strictly governed childhood can never be remedied. So Yukiko had abandoned nobody! None knew who she was, for she was a tree on the other side of Jade River, on a hill nearly as far away as Rainy Mountain; there she stood dreaming while the earth froze around her skirts, and her arms were as wrinkled and withered as her unremembered grandmother's.

When whitish-pink cherry blossoms began to swell in the whitish-grey sky, then Yukiko remembered who she was, and drew in her arms. Next, her mind itself burst into flower. Finding herself once more in the back room of the teahouse, with the round mirror before her and her wig on its stand, she brushed the white
shironuri
on her face. They learned to set that room aside for her on the night after the first cherry flower fell at Kiyomizu Temple.

What she was sufficed her at first—all the more as others died. (This speaks more poorly of them than of her.) How many women would decline to be beautiful forever, or even nearly forever? Although they came precisely to forget the iron-and-autumn world, after too much sake her clients might mention famines, rebellions and executions, and she gave thanks to Kannon that such matters could no longer touch her. Rice was cheaper or dearer,
maiko
s' costumes unfailingly splendid; that was all. The geishas called her Eldest Sister. Her wrists bloomed slowly up, and she crossed her brilliant sleeves, singing “Black Hair.” She seemed beyond change. But she had been given only until the blossoms fell, so that still her hours resembled those swirls of silver thread advancing around her neck, soon to meet beneath her shoulders and drown the scarlet forever. Thus each spring she
changed her collar,
becoming again a cherry tree in the lonely hills.

Presently she commenced to wonder whether she had been created merely to make others happy, not to be complete in and of herself. She
danced just as her bygone Elder Sisters had taught her, not altering a single motion, and the quietly carousing old Noh actors who came here each spring compared her to sunshine at midnight, to a bare peak looming high over a snowy range, to snow in a silver bowl. Sometimes she called for a closed palanquin, and was carried to Yasaka Shrine to pray alone. The house paid for this; that was all she cost; her younger sisters shared her fees among them, saving for old age. Where she hid herself from spring to spring she never said; and if, as some people believe, secrecy in and of itself becomes truth, then her vanishings were preciously inexplicable lessons. By now the Noh actors were certain of her ghosthood. A goddess appeared singularly, whereas these regular apparitions of hers implied some form of unfreedom. So they called her to dance for them in that upstairs room, behind closed shutters, while an old woman sang and plucked the shamisen, and sometimes a young
maiko
beat the drum. Drinking in sad joy, the actors admired and pitied her.

The Inoue School expresses nothing in the face, everything in the movement. This too is a Noh actor's way. Mr. Kanze and Mr. Umewaka, present incarnations of those two great acting families, discussed with nearly unheard of approval her fixed gaze's projection of thoughtful sadness, her slow turnings and the way her wide sleeves hung down like wings. She filled their sake cups, and they smiled—for they could be cheerful enough when their masks came off. Another incense stick burned to nothing. On the following night Mr. Kanze was performing “Yuya,” incarnating the sweetly dancing young girl, and he raised his wrinkled hand in front of his masked face, then turned, the lovely mask smiling and smiling; he seemed to move faster than Yukiko, and presently his head tilted down lower and lower, so that Yuya's mouth smiled upward in increasing sadness; and her wig of horsehair glistened. The cherry blossoms had already fallen—a matter of greater interest than the recent hunger-riots. After he had withdrawn behind the rainbow curtain and the apprentices carried away his mask and costume, he went out to an eel restaurant with Mr. Umewaka; where, having discussed the carelessness of choruses, the ignorance of certain members of the public and other such eternal matters, they drank sake, then more sake, upon which Mr. Kanze said: Our Cherry Ghost nears the end of her spring at last.

Oh, do you think so?

Did your father ever speak about her?

Not in my hearing, unfortunately. He preferred me not to be instructed by any geisha, however talented.

Of course, of course. When she danced the Yuya Dance for us the other night, it struck me as less fresh than ten years ago. And once my father told me that while her motions were nearly perfect, she had not yet mastered it. You know the second lowering of the fan—

Yes. She has certainly mastered that. In fact, I saw no error in her dancing at all, and as you know, dear friend, I'm very critical.

As I know too well, dear friend! Well, next spring let's bring our sons, so that when they're old they may begin to notice something.

My son's unready, unfortunately. He's ungifted, quite a shame to me—