The lost place
Had Yugen left the shrine by way of the beach instead of taking the cobbled path he would never have made his discovery. Branches with broad, water-polished leaves overhung the path. He passed nerines and tiger lilies in bloom, saw a feral grapefruit tree with one lone yellow fruit on it.
The foliage was interrupted by a thick curtain of fishing net draped over bamboo. Above the netting was a pole with old green or blue pegs, secured upside down to the pole by cord. Beside it was a gate of some sort, camouf laged or unattended for so long that it was seeping into its surroundings. Nearby was a trolley, the sort that old women used, either trailing it behind them or pushing it in front, leaning on it for support, a utilitarian walking frame.
There was a blue plastic crate on the trolley, with rows of small slits on the sides and bottom to allow air or water to f low through. The wheels of the trolley were small and poignant, like a toy a child had outgrown, a scooter or a cart from another time. Little spokes curved out from the central hub like a cross-section of a nautilus or similar sea creature.
In the crate was a loosely folded tarpaulin, and on top a plastic mesh shopping basket. Poking out of it were handles, perhaps of a gardening tool—hedge clippers—with bright pink adhesive tape wound around them. The shopping basket was inside a looser, more f lexible net basket designed for marine use. A few strips of faded cloth hung over the edge of the blue crate.
Another net was draped over the handle of the trolley itself. It was a deep reddish brown, the colour of certain seaweeds. Faded red rods the size of pen-knives were woven through it. A dead leaf was caught in the net, blanched and still. Large f leshy vines grew over the trolley and trailed along the ground to a pair of blue rubber boots, fallen on their sides, one loosely over the other, the position of sleeping feet.
Yugen distinguished the mesh of a wire fence through the shroud of leaves. Slumped over one part of the fence was a wetsuit, old, almost threadbare, either from use or being out in the weather.
He knew where the cobbled path had brought him, it was all around, even in the transpiration of leaves. A pair of black fins, the nets, wetsuit, the trolley. This was the place of an old sea woman. Yugen had entered the remote territories of the vanishing.
A turquoise canvas bag was tied to the frame of a second trolley that leaned at an angle, as if a couple of its wheels were missing. Yugen couldn’t verify this unless he examined the trolley, but he did not want to touch or disturb anything.
Despite the appearance of refuse, of abandonment, there was a discernible orderliness, items stacked to take up as little space as possible, to be unobtrusive. Nothing infringed upon the cobblestones of the path.
The place felt inhabited by the unseen presences of the past. The day was quiet, not even the sound of birds rippled the stillness of the air. On the other side of the path, tied to a fence post, were three upright poles of bamboo which came together at the top like a tepee. Parallel to the fence was a line of bleached timber, old nails sticking out, their rust bleeding into the wood. For hanging seaweed.
The pathway led to the sea, in big steps descending like the vertebrae of an ancient backbone. It tapered off at water level, and was replaced by a black rock shelf.
Beyond the rocks and into the luminous haze, the horizon was faintly visible, a pencil line beneath a layer of wash.
On the ground near the tripod of bamboo poles lay a mound covered with a black tarpaulin, cord wrapped around it like a parcel, and weighted here and there around the edges with plastic bottles filled with water. Yugen turned his head to the side and peered in through a fold. Dried seaweed as black as the tarpaulin, streaked white with a residue of salt.
He went back to the camouf laged gate. On the high side of it was enough of a gap to see what lay beyond—a crude walkway, perhaps a bridge, leading into a clearing. It was made from planks of old wood so frail they wouldn’t hold anything heavier than a raccoon. The bridge had been fixed many times, a patchwork of repairs, with struts across each plank to prevent slipping.
Lush verdant plants threatened to overgrow the manmade structure. Small coral-coloured nerines spotted the greenery. Beneath the lowest point of the bridge was darkness, a depth under the planks, a small stream perhaps. The bridge rose up again into the lightness of the clearing.
Yugen took a few more steps back up the cobblestone path, trying for a better view. The clearing was, or had been, a garden of sorts—a framework of thin bamboo poles with the same fine red mesh netting thrown over it. There were trailing vines underneath, tomatoes or beans, he was too far away to tell.
Everything but a house was here. Yugen strained to see further in through the crowd of leaves, and thought he caught the shine of a metal roof, but it could equally have been the ref lection off water. Behind, where he had come from, the land rose up steeply.
He stepped down the vertebrae, towards the sea, trying to get another glimpse of what lay beyond the fence. He found another section of stream gurgling its way out of the foliage. It disappeared under the path.
Yugen stood on the edge of the land, on the verge of stepping stones that grew smaller the further into the distance they went, till finally they disappeared from view, submerged. The path led so naturally into the sea that he felt he could continue walking from one world into the other, pass from air into water.
The monk took the urn out of his backpack, held it up to show Soshin that he had found the place.
A sound, barely perceptible. A small rusty noise like the creaking of a gate. Yugen turned, looked back up the path. There was nothing but shadows.