Hokusai, you have shown me many things. Can you show me an answer?
Slowly, the old man raises his arm and points to his mountain. Then he lowers it and points to the mountain’s image.
I shake my head. It is an answer that is no answer. He shakes his head back at me and points again.
The clouds are massing high above Fuji, but that is no answer. I study them for a long while but can trace no interesting images within.
Then I drop my eyes. Below me, inverted, they take a different form. It is as if they depict the clash of two armed hosts. I watch in fascination as they flow together, the forces from my right gradually rolling over and submerging those to my left. Yet in so doing, those from my right are diminished.
Conflict? That is the message? And both sides lose things they do not wish to lose? Tell me something I do not already know, old man.
He continues to stare. I follow his gaze again, upward. Now I see a dragon, diving into Fuji’s cone.
I look below once again. No armies remain, only carnage; and here the dragon’s tail becomes a dying warrior’s arm holding a sword.
I close my eyes and reach for it. A sword of smoke for a man of fire.
13. Mt. Fuji from Koishikawa in Edo
Snow, on the roofs of houses, on evergreens, on Fuji—just beginning to melt in places, it seems. A windowful of women—geishas, I would say—looking out at it, one of them pointing at three dark birds high in the pale sky. My closest view of Fuji to that in the print is unfortunately snowless, geishaless, and sunny.
Details . . .
Both are interesting, and superimposition is one of the major forces of aesthetics. I cannot help but think of the hot-spring geisha Komako in Snow Country–Yasunari Kawabata’s novel of loneliness and wasted, fading beauty—which I have always felt to be the great anti-love story of Japan. This print brings the entire tale to mind for me. The denial of love. Kit was no Shimamura, for he did want me, but only on his own highly specialized terms, terms that must remain unacceptable to me. Selfishness or selflessness? It is not important . . .
And the birds at which the geisha points. . . ? “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird?” To the point. We could never agree on values.
The Two Corbies? And throw in Ted Hughes’s pugnacious Crow? Perhaps so, but I won’t draw straws. An illusion for every allusion, and where’s yesterday’s snow?
I lean upon my staff and study my mountain. I wish to make it to as many of my stations as possible before ordering the confrontation. Is that not fair? Twenty-four ways of looking at Mt. Fuji. It struck me that it would be good to take one thing in life and regard it from many viewpoints, as a focus for my being, and perhaps as a penance for alternatives missed.
Kit, I am coming, as you once asked of me, but by my own route and for my own reasons. I wish that I did not have to, but you have deprived me of a real choice in this matter. Therefore, my action is not truly my own, but yours. I am become then your own hand turned against you, representative of a kind of cosmic aikido.
I make my way through town after dark, choosing only dark streets where the businesses are shut down. That way I am safe. When I must enter town I always find a protected spot for the day and do my traveling on these streets at night.
I find a small restaurant on the corner of such a one and I take my dinner there. It is a noisy place but the food is good. I also take my medicine, and a little sake.
Afterward, I indulge in the luxury of walking rather than take a taxi. I’ve a long way to go, but the night is clear and star-filled and the air is pleasant.
I walk for the better part of ten minutes, listening to the sounds of traffic, music from some distant radio or tape deck, a cry from another street, the wind passing high above me and rubbing its rough fur upon the sides of buildings.
Then I feel a sudden ionization in the air.
Nothing ahead. I turn, spinning my staff into a guard position.
An epigon with a six-legged canine body and a head like a giant fiery flower emerges from a doorway and sidles along the building’s front in my direction.
I follow its progress with my staff, feinting as soon as it is near enough. I strike, unfortunately with the wrong tip, as it comes on. My hair begins to rise as I spin out of its way, cutting, retreating, turning, then striking again. This time the metal tip passes into that floral head.
I had turned on the batteries before I commenced my attack. The charge creates an imbalance. The epigon retreats, head ballooning. I follow and strike again, this time mid-body. It swells even larger, then collapses in a shower of sparks. But I am already turning away and striking again, for I had become aware of the approach of another even as I was dealing with the first.
This one advances in kangaroolike bounds. I brush it by with my staff, but its long bulbous tail strikes me as it passes. I recoil involuntarily from the shock I receive, my reflexes spinning the staff before me as I retreat. It turns quickly and rears then. This one is a quadruped, and its raised forelimbs are fountains of fire. Its faceful of eyes blazes and hurts to look upon.
It drops back onto its haunches then springs again.
I roll beneath it and attack as it descends. But I miss, and it turns to attack again even as I continue thrusting. It springs and I turn aside, striking upward. It seems that I connect, but I cannot be certain.
It lands quite near me, raising its forelimbs. But this time it does not spring. It simply falls forward, hind feet making a rapid shuffling movement the while, the legs seeming to adjust their lengths to accommodate a more perfect flow.
As it comes on, I catch it square in the midsection with the proper end of my staff. It keeps coming, or falling, even as it flares and begins to disintegrate. Its touch stiffens me for a moment, and I feel the flow of its charge down my shoulder and across my breast. I watch it come apart in a final photoflash instant and be gone.
I turn quickly again but there is no third emerging from the doorway. None overhead either. There is a car coming up the street, slowing, however. No matter. The terminal’s potential must be exhausted for the moment, though I am puzzled by the consideration of how long it must have been building to produce the two I just dispatched. It is best that I be away quickly now.
As I resume my progress, though, a voice calls to me from the car, which has now drawn up beside me:
“Madam, a moment please.”
It is a police car, and the young man who has addressed me wears a uniform and a very strange expression.
“Yes, officer?” I reply.
“I saw you just a few moments ago,” he says. “What were you doing?”
I laugh.
“It is such a fine evening,” I say then, “and the street was deserted. I thought I would do a kata with my bo.”
“I thought at first that something was attacking you, that I saw something . . .”
“I am alone,” I say, “as you can see.”
He opens the door and climbs out. He flicks on a flashlight and shines its beam across the sidewalk, into the doorway.
“Were you setting off fireworks?”
“No.”
“There were some sparkles and flashes.”
“You must be mistaken.”