In the following spring, there came into that ancient teahouse a hardworking sake merchant’s spendthrift son. His father had engaged him to a gentle girl who was adept at spinning hemp cloth. One night during the Chrysanthemum Festival a little streetwalker in a striped cotton shift led him past chanting and torchlights, around three shrines, and thus to her pillow-room behind the reed fence, where they spent a fine half-hour, after which, happily kissing her hand, he departed, and then, perceiving that only a few copper coins remained to him, he turned around and gave them to the prostitute, who stopped washing herself just long enough to take them, giggled at his silliness, then showed him out again. Not daring to face his father, who would likely beat him, this improvident fellow, whose name was Shozo, began searching for a place to sleep; and wandering past those same crackling torches, which cast ashes into his hair, he spied the youngish Mr. Kanze in a carplike costume — scaly flames and white shell-scales below his waist, white openwork lace above — gliding forward as if the stage were moving beneath him; I swear he was three-dimensional against the suddenly two-dimensional trees; and sparks rushed up into the summer darkness behind him, while the flame-light colored his white mask to ivory and yellow and back again. The windblown pinetops resembled the swaying and pulsing of Kannon’s spider-arms. And when that ivory mask appeared to change expression, what could it mean? Shozo had never wondered this before.
The next time that he could steal money from his father, he attended “Yuya,” which Mr. Umewaka the elder happened to be performing. So it was that Shozo presently won a side view of a lovely female Noh mask in play, so that he could swim into the black gash between its beauty and the flabby bulge of an old man’s throat; and because Kannon had led him here, to him above other men was it now given to achieve true love of woman, which is to say that his heart’s flower would never wither on mere account of a woman’s ageing.
His weary father dispatched him with a fine two-handled keg of sake in order to seal a certain betrothal. Shozo misdirected the porter and sold the keg. With these proceeds he attended Kabuki plays all afternoon, then found one of those high-ranking courtesans for whom the weightiest silver coin is not enough.
The next time his father threw him out of the house, he departed well provided with coin, which he purposed to squander in a geisha house. Kannon appeared to him in the guise of an old friend who often borrowed from him and never repaid. Among Shozo’s virtues was generosity, or at least a sort of consistency: Just as he expected forgiveness from his father no matter what he had done (an expectation ever more often disappointed), so he helped anyone unconditionally. When his friend now approached him, Shozo thought, without resentment or even regret: I won’t be hiring a geisha after all. — And he smilingly greeted the man.
Shozo, said Kannon, I’ve come into some money, so I can finally pay back every sen I owe you. Here it is, with thanks.
And the astonished young man received a heavy purse. Being an experienced traveller in our floating world, he quickly recovered himself, laughed and said: Come help me spend it.
No, I don’t deserve that. If I were you, I’d go to that teahouse in Gion where the Cherry Tree Ghost appears. The blossoms will soon be falling, you know! I’m off to pick one for myself, if you know what I mean.
And his friend hastened away.
So that is what Shozo did, and that is how he met the Cherry Tree Ghost. It was the first of her seven days. People were already streaming to the Eastern Hills to view the flowers.
When from the side he saw her snow-white cheek through the curtain of cherry-blossom strings which issued from her hairpin, he remembered Mr. Kanze’s Noh mask, and loved her because she was more than he could understand. Or perhaps he loved her only for her willow eyebrows. In any event, he longed to disorder her hair on a pillow. How should he proceed? He could hardly hope to persuade her with the maxim that life is brief.
The Cherry Tree Ghost rotated slowly toward him, smiling. Never suspecting that each perfect movement now came as wearisomely to her as do all their drudgeries to those poor girls who burn seaweed for salt, he began to learn the way that the little downward point of hair at the forehead rendered her face heartshaped.
That year the cherry blossoms at Kiyomizu Temple were especially fine. But he did not go there. The Cherry Tree Ghost danced for two nights — and then Shozo’s money was finished… and after the fifth night an early rainy wind came down from the mountains, so that the blossoms began to fall. Shozo’s desire followed her, leaving him alone.
As for her, she scarcely thought to see him again. But as soon as April’s cherry trees flowered in Kyoto, he was waiting for her at the teahouse, this time with money earned honestly. He had even begun to please his father. But his filial piety was not excessive. Longing to see that supermortal geisha’s black hair spread out on his hemp pillow, he had broken off his engagement; to him the admonitions of his parents were as tree-cricket songs. He craved to marry the Cherry Tree Ghost. As soon as she read his face, she commenced to suffer.
Old Mr. Kanze had lately died. When she danced, his son watched knowingly. The house was satisfied; money came in, and all the geishas bowed one by one to their Eldest Sister. Meanwhile Kannon guaranteed that Shozo’s purse was full. And so seven nights spent themselves. In the floating world one rarely gets a keepsake, a bone-hard residuum. Flowers fall. Desperate to comprehend what captivated him, the young man stared owl-eyed, dreading to cheat himself with a single blink. — A maiko explained: The first thing we learn is manners: how to enter a room, how to smile, how to talk. — Then Shozo understood that the Cherry Tree Ghost’s perfection came from experience. — Having lately studied The Tale of the Heike and the Threefold Lotus Sutra, he now knew many allusions, and even the Noh actors who patronized Yukiko’s teahouse had begun to find him less impossible. On the fourth night he had a maiko convey to her a poem he had calligraphed on blue paper, with a willow twig attached:
What will become of me?
Flitting dream who ever returns
to this fading world of ours,
when will you perfume my sleep?
The Cherry Tree Ghost smiled as if she were proud of him, although her smile might also have been sad or mocking. While the maiko knelt waiting, she painted this reply:
Where you will be
and what you might dream
when next the cherry flowers
the cherry does not know.
The maiko glided back to Shozo, bearing this verse on a tray. Shozo’s eyes would not leave the Cherry Tree Ghost, who, well knowing that certain matters must not be discussed, and that in life as in breath the pause is important, vanished easily away in a shower of fragrant white tears, her tiny dark mouth verging on a smile, in order to go happily; before another incense stick could be lit she had become leaves, roots and wood again, on that high hill overlooking Jade River and the meadows.
That year flowered, then fluttered forever off the tree. Because Shozo rarely made mistakes in business, he made profit with small effort. He attended performances of the Kanze School, and when the actors glided before him upon the Noh stage, he seemed to be viewing summer from the edge of Kiyomizu Temple, gazing down into the green and yellow-green treetops, the emerald-lobed clouds of trees swimming above the curvily tapered gable roofs; within that darkness lived a treasury of ghosts, beauties and golden secrets. What world was this, and how could he increase his understanding? Slowly Mr. Kanze (who was already near as old as his father had been) turned back onto the rainbow bridge, gazed down, staggered, froze, then raised his staff. What did it mean? Shozo imagined that every motion of his Cherry Tree Ghost must hide a meaning. How could he approach her until he learned it? With all his heart he prayed in the wooden darknesses of shrines.