I recognized it, every step, as we climbed down the narrow winding path to the village. Here were the houses, here the narrow streets not three feet wide, surely, down which no vehicle could pass, and scarcely two human beings. Down the worn stone steps we went to the sea, followed by twenty-nine children, exactly, for I counted them when we stopped at Toru’s house. There it was, too, the house just as I saw it in my book, and even Grandfather was there, a lively cheerful old face, peering at us over the wall. He was past his fishing days and his sons and grandsons now carried on. His wife was dead, he told us, and his daughter-in-law and granddaughter tended the house and dried and salted the fish and carried the water up from the well on the beach.
We sauntered about the village and with deep content, because it was so exactly right, the fishing nets drying on the shore, the houses nestled between the terraced hills, a small old cemetery on one of them. There was even a flight of stone steps which we could use as the entrance to Old Gentleman’s house on the mountain above. It was all impossibly true and right.
The hours had passed and it was time for luncheon. We ate at a restaurant famous for eel. There we climbed two flights of stairs to a big airy room where we ate broiled eel on rice and drank green tea and congratulated ourselves on our location for the film.
I feared to see our next location and I confessed my fear. It was to be the mansion of Old Gentleman, a scholar and a landlord, and could we find a family living in such a house who would be willing to lend it to us? There must be space and beauty and elegance, set in lovely gardens. I gave up hope privately and toyed with various makeshifts while we drove along a country road.
The impossible became the possible, however, as it does so often in Japan. The moment I saw the house from the road I knew it was Old Gentleman’s house, no matter who lived in it. I entered the gate and found myself in a lovely garden. There were no flowers, for Japanese gardens are seldom flower gardens. A path made of wide irregularly shaped stones led to the main entrance and on both sides evergreens, low shrubbery, ferns and orchids not in bloom, made a landscape. At the door a lady stood. She wore a handsome dark kimono and she bowed low. We bowed in return, to the best of our American ability, and I asked if I might see the rest of the garden. There was a pool, not large, but so designed that it presented the aspects of a lake. There was a bridge leading into a narrow path and a pavilion set among the trees. I saw everything from the point of view of Old Gentleman. It was exactly the sort of garden he would have, and I half expected to see him waiting in the house.
He did not appear, however. There was only the handsome lady who welcomed us into the house, and she led us from one room to another, each spacious and decorated with taste. The farmhouse was three hundred years old, but this was the landowner’s house and it was built only about forty years ago, to replace the older one. Old Gentleman, whoever he is, was a man of wealth and taste. These were his chosen pieces of furniture and the art objects in the tokonoma alcoves were his choices, too. Two of the rooms were furnished with carpets laid on top of the tatami and with chairs and tables, western style, but we ignored the modern aspects of Old Gentleman and stayed by his Japanese side.
Now the lady introduced us to her daughter, a young woman not half so pretty as the mother, and wearing western dress, which did not suit her. But she, too, was kind and I was touched and warmed to the heart when, after I had made my speech of appreciation, I heard them both protest that they considered it an honor to have their house used in my picture, and the lady said she would like some day to perform the tea ceremony for me. I accepted with thanks, and then she served tea in bowls so small that I knew the tea was precious before I tasted it. It was indeed the perfect tea, seldom set before westerners. I could not bear to drink it and have it gone, and yet it was so delicious, so far beyond any tea I usually taste, that I could not but sip it while I praised it. She was moved by my appreciation and brought in the small valuable teapot and poured thimblefuls of the elixir. It was of course the rare tea made from the first tender leaves of the tea plant in spring. An ounce of it costs an American dollar, which is much Japanese money. I am sure she did not serve it often even to Japanese guests. That she did so for us meant that she gave a gift. I received it as such.
And as we talked, I in English, she in Japanese, through an interpreter, she asked if she could record the conversation through an interpreter for her son, who is studying English. I said of course, and was amused to see concealed until now behind a couch a very modern tape recorder!
We said good-by at last, with many bows, promising to return soon, promising to be careful and break nothing in the house and spoil nothing in the garden. She was very gracious and begged me to leave the hotel and live with her, but I said I must stay with the company, thanking her all the same.
Now there remained the farmhouse and the empty beach to be seen. The beach could wait, for the day was darkening, but the farmhouse we must see. We drove past a village and between fields and road I recognized it. The farmhouse stood among terraces, itself built on a wide terrace, the road in front of it twenty feet above the rice paddy below. A wall of ancient brick ran across the front, but the wide wooden gate stood open and I walked into the world of my story book. Yes, this was the house, simple but spacious, wooden walls, rooms divided by shoji, a thatched roof so old that grass and flowers grew on it. Chickens, a goat, a little vegetable garden, some ornamental shrubbery, a few decorative rocks, a fine old-fashioned kitchen, a narrow veranda, a small pool for washing rice and vegetables, the farmer himself, a cheerful widower with a married daughter looking after him — it was exactly right. And, best of all, the farm family was friendly and eager to be helpful. When were we coming? Tomorrow? Good — good — the house was ours. Yes, they had electricity — and a pump in the kitchen, modern farm, the farmer said proudly. And he would be glad to have Americans see how he managed everything. Tea, please, before we left! It was night before he would let us go, and work began at seven o’clock the next day. Every hour of light is precious when a film is made on location.
The chickens, I noticed as I left, were of the most articulate variety. Only the darkness silenced them. Their dissonant cackling, their exclamations of excitement and outrage when we moved in the next day, were to be the background music of every scene we filmed at the farmhouse.
We were delayed, alas, and by rain — rain — rain. By the time we reached our hotel that night, the rain was falling. I had feared rain, always the hazard of filming on location, especially in the climate of southern Japan, where sea and mountain are close neighbors. If the wind blows from the sea the sky will clear; if from the land, it will rain. This I remembered from days long past, and while I lay in my Japanese bed listening to the rain and waiting for sleep, I pondered on the strange divisions of my life.
How incredible, above all, that for the whole first half of my life, I did not know he existed! When I was here before, where was he? And now when I am here again, where now is he? Between these two eras were twenty-five good years of life together, a gem set into eternity before and after. And the old question beset me again, as it besets every human being who has known death come too near. I set my teeth against the inexorability of death.