Her hair is up in the simple butterfly-wing ichogaeshi style, and below the sweep of hair a white neck is visible. It strikes me that the black satin weave of the obi at her waist would be only a facing.
CHAPTER 4
When I return, dazed, to my room, I see that it has indeed been beautiful y cleaned. The previous night’s events stil rather disturb me, so I open the cupboard just to check. Inside stands a smal chest, and from the top drawer a yuzen-dyed soft obi is half tumbled out, suggesting that someone has seized a piece of clothing in haste and quickly departed. The upper part of the obi is hidden from view beneath al uringly gaudy clothing. To one side is a smal pile of books. Topmost are a volume of the Zen master Hakuin’s sermons and the first volume of The Tales of Ise. 1
That apparition of the previous night may wel have been real.
Idly plumping myself down on a cushion, I discover that my sketchbook has been placed on the elegant imported-wood desk, careful y laid open with the pencil stil tucked between its pages. I pick it up, wondering how those poems I feverishly jotted down in the night wil read the next morning.
Beneath the poem
The maddened woman
setting the dewdrops trembling
on the aronia.
someone has added
The crow at dawn
setting the dewdrops trembling
on the aronia.
Because it is written in pencil, I can gain no clear sense of the writing style, but it looks too firm for a woman’s hand and too soft for a man’s. Here’s another surprise!
Looking at the next poem,
Shadow of blossoms
shadowed form of a woman
hazy on the ground.
I see that the person has added below it
Shadow of blossoms
shadowed form of a woman
doubled and overlaid.
Beneath
Inari’s fox god
has changed to a woman’s shape
under the hazed moon.
is written
Young Yoshitsune
has changed to a woman’s shape
under the hazed moon.2
I tilt my head in puzzlement as I read, at a loss to know whether the additions are intended as imitations, corrections, elegant poetic exchanges, foolishness, or mockery.
“Later,†she said, so perhaps she is about to appear with my breakfast. Once she’s here, I’l probably be able to make a little more sense of things. Happening to glance at my watch, I see it’s past eleven. How wel I slept! Given the lateness of the hour, I’d be better off making do with only lunch.
I slide the right-hand screen door open onto the balcony and look out, in search of echoes of last night’s scene. The tree that I judged to be an aronia is indeed so, but the garden is smal er than I thought. Five or six stepping-stones are buried in a carpet of green moss; it would feel very nice to walk there barefoot. To the left is a cliff face, part of the mountain beyond, with a red pine slanting out over the garden from between rocks.
Behind the aronia is a smal clump of bushes, and beyond a stand of tal bamboo, its ninety feet of green drenched in sunlight. The scene to the right is cut off by the roofline of the building, but judging from the lay of the land, it must slope gently down toward the bathhouse.
Casting my eyes farther, I see that the mountain slopes down to a hil , which in turn sinks to an area of flat land about four hundred yards wide.
This in turn dives below sea level, to emerge abruptly from the water about forty miles out, in the form of Mayajima, a smal island that I guess to be less than fifteen miles in circumference. Such is the geography of the Nakoi area. The hot spring inn is tucked in against the mountainside, its garden half-embracing the cliff face. The building is a two-storied one, but here at the back, owing to the slope, it becomes a single floor. If I dangled my feet from this balcony, my heels would brush the moss. It makes perfect sense that the previous evening I thought the place to be strangely devised, as I clambered in perplexity up and down its steep staircases.
Now I open the window to the left. Before me is a wide rock, natural y hol owed out in the middle; the reflection of a wild cherry tree lies steeping in the stil pool of water accumulated there from the recent spring rain. Two or three clumps of dwarf bamboo are elegantly positioned to soften the angle of the rock. Beyond stands a hedge of what looks like red-berried kuko bushes; the sound of occasional passing voices suggests that directly beyond the hedge lies the steep road that climbs from the beach to the hil . The gentle southward slope on the farther side of the road is planted with a grove of mandarin trees, and at the edge of the val ey another large stand of bamboo shines white in the sun. I have never realized til now that bamboo leaves give off a silver light when seen from a distance. A pine-clad mountainside rises above the bamboo grove, with five or six stone steps leading up between the pines’ red trunks, so clearly visible I feel I can reach out and touch them. There must be a temple there.
I next open the sliding door that leads off the corridor to my room and go out onto the porch beyond. The railing runs around four sides of an inner garden, and across it, in the direction from which I guess the sea would be visible, stands a second-floor room. From the railing, I can see that my own room is level with this second floor—a tasteful arrangement. Given that the bathing area is below ground level, I could be said to be ensconced in a room at the top of a three-tiered tower.
The building is a large one, but aside from the room opposite, and another that is level with my railing around to the right, almost every space that looks likely to be a guest room (I know nothing of the living area or kitchen) is closed up. There must be virtual y no guests here apart from myself.
The outer wooden shutters remain closed over the sealed rooms even during the day, but once opened, it seems they aren’t closed again even at night. Perhaps the front door is not locked at night either. It’s an ideal place for me to happen upon in my journey to savor artistic “nonemotion.â€
By now it’s nearly twelve, but there is stil no sign of my meal. I’m beginning to feel distinctly hungry, but I set about mental y identifying myself with the hermit poet in his words “vast empty mountains, no one to be seen,†and manage to induce a state in which I feel not the least regret at having to skimp a little.3 Drawing a picture feels like too much trouble just now, and as for coming up with a poem, my mind is already immersed in the poetic—to actual y compose something would be merely a waste of breath. Nor do I have any inclination to undo the box of two or three books that I’ve brought along, tied to my tripod, and read. I feel perfect happiness simply lol ing here on the balcony in the company of the shadow cast by the blossoms, my back toasting in the warm spring sunlight. To think would be to sink into error.
Movement seems perilous. I would cease even to breathe if I could. I want to live like this for a whole fortnight, motionless, like a plant rooted deep in the floor beneath me.
At last footsteps are heard coming along the corridor and climbing the stairs. Listening, I realize that two people are approaching. The footsteps stop before my room, then one person wordlessly retreats. The sliding door opens, and I guess it wil be the woman I saw earlier that morning, but in fact it’s the maid of the previous evening who enters. I register a touch of disappointment.
“I’m sorry this is so late.†She sets down the tray table containing my lunch. There is no explanation for the lack of breakfast. The tray contains a plate with a gril ed fish and a garnishment of greenery, and when I lift the lid of the bowl beside it, a red and white prawn is revealed nestling there in a bed of fresh fern shoots. I gaze into the bowl, savoring the colors.