The end of the line
Yugen walked up the steps from the platform, past the fishing-net display decorated with shells.
The end of the line; end of the land as well. It had disappeared into the sea, leaving only the high points—islands and a peninsula—visible. Here people described mountains as solidified waves. The bay looked the way mountains did on misty mornings, their bluish heads above a basin of mist the colour of a dove’s breast. If the sea were to evaporate like mist, the valleys in the sea would be visible and the lie of the land revealed. Though the sea was water, it looked altogether more solid than mist. Creatures lived in it, which the transience of mist did not allow. All around the bay the land rose up steep and green. Roosting in the greenery were hotels, perched like herons in treetops, at the best vantage points for spotting prey.
To exit the station there was an escalator or a f light of stairs. The most singular thing Yugen had noticed about the world so far was choice. At the monastery he was a particle travelling along a path of routine free of choices. In his meditation he did not choose one thought or another. They lapped around him and eventually, tiring of his equanimity, moved on or melted away. But—stairs or escalator, when both seemed of equal value, when both led to the same destination?
Yugen looked up to the hovering of small birds near the ceiling of the portico—swallows, swifts, he wasn’t sure. Dark, almost black bodies with white underbellies, beautiful forked tails, spreading the stripy webbing between the prongs of the tail when the bird was in f light. Their wings f luttered as fast as hummingbirds, their tiny cheeps reverberating in this space. They settled on the ledges of high windows.
He took the stairs.
At the end of the street was a ferry, and a couple of men leaning against a railing, chatting. They straightened when they saw the monk, a potential customer perhaps. Yugen nodded but kept going. The ferrymen resumed their stance, voices lower now. One made a comment and the others laughed.
Yugen wondered if they were talking about him. Even at a distance, along an arm of the U-shaped bay, he could still hear their voices. Then came the barking of a lone dog, the keening of a seabird, the slap of water against the small fishing boats, the sound of an outboard motor.
It was not like the forest where, if you listened, the air was full of tiny sounds all of the time. There you couldn’t tell when one left off and the next started. Here each sound was distinct and separate, amplified by the water, each cutting through the quiet stillness, the moist salty air, like scissors through silk.
The sea had a tang to it, an almost vegetative pungency, cucumber in brine, which relaxed open the nostrils. It came into Yugen’s nose all at once, unlike mountain air that was best breathed thinly, as if through a straw, letting it warm in the corridors of the nostrils before entering the body proper. He could taste the sea at the back of his throat. Was it something specific or the composition of several things?
Yugen found a path leading down to the water’s edge. He passed an open shed where a woman sat on a crate, making net bags or baskets. She wore a pink apron over a striped shirt, beige trousers and pink gumboots. On her forearms were clear plastic sleeve protectors. She had a strong pleasant face, and hair that was cut short. He nodded a greeting but she appeared not to have seen him.
The monk made his way to a pile of shell-encrusted tyres. They were old and perishing, collapsing when he sat on them. He was so close to the edge he could see the muddy bottom of the bay, the discarded oyster shells embedded in it.
On the train down here Yugen had discovered that the sea was more widespread than his initial view of it had suggested. It curved into bays and inlets, around islands, then expanded out to the horizon. The abbot had not specified a time to be back at the monastery, Yugen did not have to rush. He could explore a little more before choosing. What would be best for Soshin—a quiet little inlet like this or the unfettered ocean?
How could the monk make such an important decision when he had difficulty choosing between escalators and stairs?
He held his mindfulness on parallel planes, alert to the discussion going on in his head, aware of the old rubber tyre on which he sat, the presence of Soshin’s urn in his backpack.
He let go of these sensations and focused on his surroundings.
Rafts made of thick bamboo poles extended into the bay. The poles that once stood tall and green in forests had found their way to the sea, to this protected little pocket of it, just as the monk had. His heart expanded, grateful for the company of bamboo.
On one of the rafts was a small hut. Three women, in gumboots, aprons and brimmed hats tied under the chin, were cleaning oysters, scraping seaweed and barnacles from the shells with forked instruments that looked like small garden tools. The scraping resembled the raspy croaky call of a seabird.
On another raft a man was lowering a net bag back into the water. Yugen imagined the many baskets hanging silently, invisibly, below the waterline.
It came on him like soft rain—he was in a pearl farm.
He felt a shadow pass over him and looked up to see a young man dressed in smart office clothes.
‘Excuse me, sir. This is private property.’
The women scraping the shells, the man with the net bags, carried on working. They seemed oblivious to the monk’s presence yet someone must have told the young man. The woman in the shed?
‘I am so sorry,’ said Yugen. ‘I did not realise.’
The young man then returned the apology, as if it were all his fault. The monk rose to his feet. Standing in front of the shed was an older man in a suit. The monk extended his apologies to him. The older man accepted with a brief nod of his head.
Yugen left by the same winding path and returned to the train station, this time choosing the escalator.
He was examining the display of nets and shells when he realised that on the other side of the station was another way out.