I inquired how to avoid suffering after my death, and he flittered about like an immense carp, smiling so widely that for an instant I took alarm and wondered if he meant to eat me. I asked if I were tiring him; I offered to run away, but he said it wouldn’t do any good.
What’s your aspiration? I wondered, and he told me it was to lick the sweat from a young girl’s leg just one more time — he had grown too uncertain of himself to aspire higher than that.
I tried to learn whether life without consciousness might be preferable to consciousness without life; but to calculate the answers he needed to count several secret variables simultaneously upon his misty fingers, and soon lost track of where he had started. Of course he could not inscribe the sand with anyone’s memorial stick, nor borrow pen and paper from me, being utterly permeable in relation to objects.
Well, then, you wouldn’t be able to lick anyone’s leg, I reminded him. My satisfaction, in which I could not help but bask, consisted of the fact that this ghost was dead and I alive. I was safer, more superior, less likely ever to be dead!
His eyes kept goggling. I asked if I would die soon. — Prune? the ghost echoed in bewilderment.
We continued to discuss the matter of suffering, and he suddenly cried out: But just now I can’t quite remember what suffering means. So sorry! How do you spell it?
S, u…
Beg your pardon? F?
S.
Are you quite sure?
He had forgotten just enough to make a conversation exasperating, but not enough for him to give up hope of communicating his thoughts, such as they were, and of listening to me, in an effort to remind himself of what life was, and perhaps even to escape, however momentarily, into some pretense of life of his own. And how I longed to escape from him! I would have done nearly anything to avoid becoming his younger brother. Unfortunately, it wasn’t up to me. As for him, was it his fault that he wasn’t alive? Many times I have seen old men go through the motions of picking up the young girls who would joyfully have let themselves be carried away in ancient days; it’s as if one needs to learn over and over the lesson of loss, and even then one hopes that since the rules altered before, they might change back again. But they never do, at least not for the better; and although I sought to be as patient as I could, I increasingly resembled the ignorant, bustling child who grows annoyed when its grandfather fails to accompany its lunges to and fro.
He wanted to know the current prices of everything. — How many golden ryo? he asked. How many silver kwan? — He imagined himself to be au courant, since he had not yet forgotten those two bygone coins.
Well, I finally said, I was thinking—
Are you always thinking? interrupted the ghost with extreme interest.
Yes.
Sometimes I don’t think about anything, the ghost confided.
And is that relaxing? Would you rather not think than think?
Is relaxing a pattern or a sound?
A pattern.
And what was it you were trying to ask me?
Never mind.
Oh, you forgot? That makes me feel better. I sometimes forget things also. Do you know why?
No.
I was hoping you could tell me why.
I’d wanted to learn to die, but instead was condemned to try unavailingly to teach a ghost to live. Did it follow that perhaps I could help him forget that he was dead if he in turn taught me to forget that I lived? No matter; I found myself ever less ambitious to ride to death in a palanquin shrine. I’d rather keep hold of my flesh, at least until rain falls in Tokyo and people run away with newspapers over their heads.
The ghost would not stop asking me questions. I finally said: Ask the grass. Ask why it lives.
What an intelligent idea! he said. He bent shyly down over a tuft, and I sneaked away. Perhaps I’d return to the cemetery where the third Shogun’s lieutenants dwelled. I’d dwell again in the shade of the tall cryptomerias. From the spreading cherry tree, there’d come a pale pink rain. Didn’t I possess places to go? Wasn’t I a fellow who once might have been slightly in the know?
But without the ghost I quickly remembered my helplessness in this alien environment and repented of my cruelty. I had lost myself among the crowds of tombstones. Bumping accidentally against them, I discovered myself hounded by marching ghosts in laced red corset-armor, their legs wound up in white like mummy-worms, their faces phosphorescent blotches of horror. They could not really strangle me, but their touches chilled me; my bones ached with cold. Ahead of me loomed an immense black whirling wheel — my death, no doubt. Well, well; it was going to be sooner! Somehow I reached the edge of the cemetery and leaped into the darkness. I fell and fell. When I came to earth, there was scarcely any pain, which made me wonder whether I had died.
Overhead hovered a familiar pallid, plump-cheeked shrine figure. The ghost had fluttered off to wait for me. He was very good at that.
What was I supposed to ask the grass? he inquired.
Ask which one of us is dead.
Dead? Is that spelled with an x or a z?
A z.
Just a moment. I’ll go find out. Actually, I was wondering the same thing.
He flew slowly away, but when he returned his flight was as long and straight as one of the bolts on a sanctuary door. He reported: The grass said just forget you’re dead and then you can go on. Let’s both do it.
Well…
But last time didn’t you say that it’s spelled with an x?
I demanded to know what he meant. The ghost sighed: Don’t you remember how often you’ve been here?
THE GHOST OF RAINY MOUNTAIN
To reach Rainy Mountain one must pass Dripping Pine, where after getting drenched with many silver drops one will hear a crow cry four times.
When Rainy Mountain is dry, even should the day be cloudy and windy, and the peak manage somehow to conceal itself within grey vapors, the mountain remains diminished by being seen, like our childhood homes which once sheltered and imprisoned us so grandly. At such hours paltriness afflicts its pines and cedars, and the spreads of blossoming cherry branches at its foot resemble nothing better than pallid scars in its dark jade flesh. Roofs, wires, aerials gash its lower reaches.
Above the gravel lot between two houses runs a mossy wall over the top of which flower mediocre shrubs beneath a yellow fence which halfway hides a wide pink cherry tree, and beyond that rise the foothills of Rainy Mountain. When the storm clouds begin to swarm, Rainy Mountain appears nearly sinister, while on sunny days the way from here to there is so ordinary that most people would rather entertain themselves at home. (To be sure, some wealthy, lonely man might extend himself so far as to to hire black-lacquered hair and a white-lacquered face in a cinnabar kimono whose metallic flowers shine like jewels; but that he can do in any teahouse by the river.) As for me, I preferred to go farther. Attached to the railroad station stands a small clean tourist office whose three-color map still delineates in a curving route of yellow dashes a self-guided promenade around the circumference of Rainy Mountain, but if you ask the stylish young woman about that, she will explain that two years ago a spring flood washed out the footbridge, which the prefectural authorities will have rebuilt by the beginning of next summer. She apologizes, then brightly recommends the geisha dances of the Three Fern School. There also happens to be a wonder-working Buddha (now retired), five minutes’ walk past the hospital. If you inquire as to whether Rainy Mountain is haunted, she will clap her hand over her giggling mouth. This happened to me, and I for one was charmed.