Kyōto women are renowned for their graceful feet and soft lips. Their skin is said to be beautiful, which Mizuhara certainly thought was true of Kikue’s.
Sitting across from the old preceptor, he found himself remembering Kikue’s soft lips.
Smooth and tender, those lips seemed to adhere to his. One touch had been enough to make him feel as though he were caressing her entire body.
But the teeth that had once bitten those lips had long since fallen out, replaced now by dentures.
Was it possible that her lips had lost their suppleness too?
“How are your teeth?” Mizuhara asked the preceptor all of a sudden.
“My teeth? Natives have strong teeth,” the old master declared, flashing Mizuhara a full set from amid his thick beard. “As robust as a native’s, as you can see! No, since the end of the war, it’s the buildings of the Daitokuji here that have fallen into disrepair. As decrepit as an old man’s teeth. In a decade’s time, no doubt they won’t even be a shadow of what they once were.”
The woman also complained that children lately were all but destroying the temple grounds. The damage caused when they played baseball was apparently the most serious by far.
“There’s a bird figure in the main gate, a national treasure from the Momoyama period, but one of those baseballs hit it so hard the wings snapped clean off. And now the head has gone missing too.”
“That’s terrible,” Mizuhara said.
“These après-guerre children are like raging bulls, always breaking this and that. They don’t listen to anyone. It’s madness to grant anyone this much freedom!”
It seemed somewhat discordant to hear the preceptor’s wife, dressed in a navy-colored cotton apron like a firewood peddler from Ōhara, use a word like après-guerre.
A small sports field had been constructed to the south to prevent the local children from playing baseball within the temple grounds, but the result had been that the wall of the nearby subtemple had suffered damage so horrific that the temple couldn’t afford the repairs. The balls, she said, often fell into the temple gardens; and each time the children scrambled up the walls to retrieve them, they would break the tiles in the process.
In the past, the preceptor explained, the precinct in front of the Daitokuji had been home to those who depended on the temple in one form or another for their livelihoods. Lately, however, displaced families had begun to move in, and their children didn’t have the same level of knowledge or respect for the ancient religious complex.
“Even automobiles have started pouring into the grounds. The monks find it convenient to drive right up to the door. There used to be a crosspiece below the gate to stop cars passing through, but they’ve gone and removed it.”
As the preceptor recounted the decay for which the temple seemed destined, he nonetheless retained the serene aspect of a mountain in spring.
Mizuhara felt an urge to speak to him of Kikue. “The way you talk about the temple, you almost sound like someone fondly remembering an old lover,” he almost said, but resisted the temptation.
Kikue’s hair wasn’t red, exactly, but her eyebrows seemed lighter than usual in color, as though lacking pigmentation. Perhaps that explained her pale complexion?
Then again, it could also be said that the faint tint of her eyebrows, her beautiful legs, her soft lips had all made it easier for Mizuhara to leave her.
In fact, those physical qualities had made her seem like a woman with a light, shallow personality, easy to put behind him.
Afterward, Mizuhara would occasionally take notice of other Kyōto women whose features resembled Kikue’s. But she had a distinctive way of speaking; while her lips and gums certainly didn’t protrude, she tended to reveal them when she spoke, a mannerism that accentuated the smoothness of her lips.
Those lips were a pale, luminous red. Mizuhara had often wondered whether Kikue and other Kyōto women wore a different type of lipstick from those in Tōkyō, but it seemed to be her lips themselves that were different. Both her gums and tongue were an unblemished peach-like color.
Whenever he saw another woman with a mouth like that, it was Kikue who came to mind; and while such a sight never failed to rekindle his sense of regret, it would fill him also with an overwhelming urge to reach out to her.
He wanted to tell the preceptor about her, but the chance had already passed him by. He turned his gaze to the shadows of the trees projected across the garden moss.
At that moment, the old master’s wife rose to her feet. “She’s here.”
Mizuhara’s heart clenched with emotion. Strangely, his sense of guilt was directed not at Kikue but at his late wife, Sumiko. He felt almost as though she were still alive, as though he had made the journey here to meet a lover in secret, behind her back. It was an unexpected, startling feeling.
Kikue greeted the preceptor first, before turning to Mizuhara. “Did I make you wait? Welcome back,” she said, still averting her eyes.
“Did you see the dogs? They must have given you a fright, no?” Mizuhara asked.
“It was a cat this time,” the preceptor’s wife said offhandedly. “But cats aren’t particularly sociable. It just snuck across the floor and slipped out.”
Kikue’s lips curled in a smile. “The dogs were watching from a distance.”
“I see.”
“Alas, this place has become an abode for cats and dogs,” the preceptor said in jest. “But it’s better than foxes and raccoon dogs!”
The old master stared blankly at Kikue, but he didn’t seem to remember her.
His wife, catching sight of Kikue’s unease, spoke up. “I was waiting for you to arrive before serving tea.” She turned to Mizuhara. “Shall I show you to the tearoom?”
“Please.” Mizuhara rose to his feet.
The woman led them to a room three tatami mats in size, the very room where the tea master Rikyū was said to have committed seppuku on the orders of the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
“Would you prepare the tea?” the woman asked Kikue. “It’s rather complicated, so I’ll leave everything you need laid out on a tray.”
“And the preceptor?” Mizuhara asked.
“He can’t move very well, so don’t mind him. I’ll leave everything here.” With that, the woman left.
Mizuhara listened to Kikue stirring the tea whisk in the dim light.
“I’ve missed you,” came a hushed voice. “All your telegram said was to come to the Jukōin. If you had let me know what time your train was coming, I would have gone to meet you at the station. Were you with someone?”
“Yes. I brought my daughters with me.”
“Oh!” Kikue looked up at him. “Are you here to see the cherry blossoms?”
“We arrived this morning. I slipped out while they were both asleep.”
“Don’t say that. How awful.” She turned the tea bowl slightly on her palm. Her hands were trembling.
Mizuhara picked up one of the candied soybeans that had come with the tea.
Kikue approached him on her knees. “If this wasn’t Rikyū’s own tearoom, I would break down in tears.”
Mizuhara glanced around the room. He could sense something approaching.
“I’m scared, being alone with you here. I could almost die.” Kikue sighed. “Do you remember when we came here on the commemoration of Rikyū’s death?”
“Yes. When was it again?”
“Years ago, on the twenty-eighth of March. You don’t remember, do you? You’re so unreliable.”
“Is that a crape myrtle?” Kikue asked, looking up at the tree on the right-hand side of the garden.
“It’s a sala tree,” the preceptor’s wife answered in a loud voice. “The leaves are different from those of a crape myrtle. And the branches are more impressive too.”
“So that’s a sala tree?”
“They say it withered when the Buddha passed away. That’s where it gets its white leaves. You can see it in pictures of Nirvana.”
“How auspicious.”
“The flowers are large and pure white in color. Seeing them fall evokes the opening to The Tale of the Heike: The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. They bloom, and then, in the evening, they fall.”
“You mean they bloom in the morning, and fall the same evening?” Mizuhara asked.
“Yes.” The woman sat down on the veranda outside the abbot’s quarters.
She must have come to see why the two of them hadn’t returned from the tearoom.
She had found them sitting on the veranda and opened the shōji screens so that they could admire the painted fusuma panels, before taking a seat at a distance.
Mizuhara sat at the edge of the garden. He had already seen the ornate panels and the stonework in the garden, so gave them only a cursory glance.
Kikue sat behind him.
“There’s another sala tree near the wall,” the woman said. “It’s descended from this one here, but it was born in Japan, not India. I wonder what kind of flowers it will have.”
“Hasn’t it bloomed yet?” Mizuhara asked, glancing toward the young tree.
The branches weren’t twisted, but straight, like those of a poplar.
“Not yet,” the woman responded before turning discreetly to Kikue. “Don’t dwell too much on worry. Life brings tears at times, joy at others.”
Kikue, taken by surprise, turned her head.
“However you look at it, the world is a harsh place. You won’t get anywhere if you’re always straining yourself. Please, take it easy.”
“You’re right. Thank you.”
“It’s nothing. Nothing at all. We all torment ourselves over matters of little import.”
“How true! But it’s not easy for someone like me to find enlightenment. Though I would like to drop by more often to listen to the old master’s teachings.”
“The preceptor only looks enlightened because he has nothing else to do. He’s reached an age where he’s free from work and desire. You’ll know what that feels like yourself if you live long enough.”
“It wouldn’t bode well if old folks still had violent passions!”
“Yes, yes. Money isn’t the only form of greed. Do you sometimes wonder why you were born a woman?”
“Well…”
“I thought as much,” the old master’s wife said abruptly before walking away.
Kikue stared at the corner of the veranda where the woman had been sitting until just a moment earlier. “She seemed so nice at first, but then it was like she was reproaching me. I felt so embarrassed. What did you tell her about me?”
“Nothing. Only that I was waiting for you.”
“I see. I wonder if she saw through me. I’m so haggard, and look how I’m dressed. But it can’t be helped. Who did you tell her you were meeting?”
Mizuhara found himself reluctant to confess that he had described her as a woman with whom he had parted ways.
“It was almost like she thought I was going to seduce you, like she was trying to warn me off. How ridiculous.” Kikue glanced toward him, forcing a smile.
Mizuhara didn’t feel tempted in the least.
She was simply a woman whom he had once known; no more, no less. The figure sitting before him had all but erased his mental image of the Kikue from his past.
To say that he was disillusioned would be an understatement.
Yet the current Kikue wasn’t entirely unlike her past self. Those clear brown eyes that used to shine when he embraced her had dulled slightly. Her mouth had changed faintly, its contours now somewhat looser. Perhaps her nipples, the same peach color as her lips, had likewise wizened. Yet she was still younger than her years. She wasn’t nearly as haggard as she claimed.
Mizuhara wondered whether the years had left them estranged.
It felt as though a wall of time now stood between the two of them, as though he were encountering here not Kikue but those very years that they had spent apart.
Had time brought everything to a resolution? Would time wear it all away?
They had severed their bonds cleanly, so he shouldn’t have felt any sense of disquiet at meeting her again like this. Nonetheless, he was struck by a feeling of cheerlessness, along with a sense of guilt.
He tried to warm his heart with fond memories of Kikue as she had been, of the intimacy they had once shared.
But unexpectedly, it was the image of his departed wife that rose before him, more alive than ever.
He wondered whether the loss of the much-closer intimacy that he had shared with Sumiko had caused him to grow apart from Kikue too.
He couldn’t be sure what she was thinking right now. Were her words truly spoken from the heart?
He felt an impatient desire to draw yet closer to her.
“My wife died last year,” he said all of a sudden.
“Oh my!” Kikue stared across at him in surprise, her eyes awash in sorrow. “I see…I wasn’t exactly sure why, but I thought you looked downhearted. I’m sorry for your loss.” Her troubled face looked like it was about to cry. “I was worried something was wrong. How terrible.”
“Of the mothers of my three daughters, only you still live.”
“Only the dregs, you mean? That has an awful ring to it. You mustn’t say such things.”
“When I’m gone, you’ll be the only woman left who remembers me.”
“Don’t scare me like that! What’s gotten into you? You must be terribly lonely.”
“I suppose I am.”
Kikue peered across at him.
“I’m not saying this because I want you to think better of me once I’m gone, but I should have taken better care of you. I’m sorry.”
“What are you saying? You should save those sentiments for your wife. You treated me very well. Not a day has gone past when you haven’t been on my mind.”
Mizuhara had tried to apologize to Kikue, but it was as she said; he felt as though those words had been directed to his late wife.
“Why did you want to see me again, now that your wife has passed on? You must tell me, or I won’t be able to rest. And what would your daughters think if they knew about all this?”
Mizuhara was at a loss for an answer.
“How terrible!” Kikue shook her head.
After a drawn-out silence, the two of them stood up.
“Perhaps we could take a look at Rikyū’s grave,” Mizuhara suggested when they reached the entrance.
“Ah. I’ll let you inside,” said the preceptor’s wife, bringing a key to open a wooden gate in the garden.
Standing in front of the gravestone, Kikue asked, “Have you built a resting place for your wife?”
“No, not yet.”
“I see. Did she ever visit Rikyū’s grave? I’ll pray to her here.” So saying, she placed her hands together and whispered, “Please forgive me.”
Kikue was a mystery to Mizuhara. He couldn’t discern where custom ended and true feeling began.
She may have been his woman once before, but now she was no doubt receiving the favor of another man.
Leaving the Jukōin, Mizuhara and Kikue made their way along a path leading to a small rise on the western edge of the temple complex. Farther along was the Kohōan, a hermitage constructed by the artist Kobori Enshū.
Mizuhara had walked the path leading westward from the Kohōan up to the Kōetsuji Temple in Takagamine once before.
He paused for a moment to contemplate the quiet shadows of the pines and bamboos now projected across the straight path.
A row of subtemples lined the northern side of the road.
“The old master looked rather strange, wouldn’t you say?” Kikue remarked.
“He considers himself a native. He said he was imitating an Ainu.”
“Is that so? Now that’s unusual.”
“His commemorative portrait will certainly be an interesting sight.”
“His what?”
“Zen monks often have paintings commissioned, portraits to pass on to their disciples. It’s an old tradition.”
“Oh? I’ll have to remember that. I’ve never seen someone with a beard plaited into three braids.”
“He’s an odd character, isn’t he?”
“Neglecting his appearance like that, letting his hair grow out so long…But I suppose it doesn’t look all bad. It does frame his face rather well.”
“He was rather handsome as a young monk. There was even talk that he might become the chief abbot of the Daitokuji, but instead he was swept away by the waves of this floating world.”
“I suppose those who taste life’s pleasures and pains in their youth do tend to mellow with age and find enlightenment. Don’t they say that earthly desires are the purest path to illumination?”
Mizuhara approached the gate leading into the Sōken’in, the mortuary subtemple built to commemorate the great warlord Oda Nobunaga.
“The camellias must be in bloom,” he said before stepping inside.
A large camellia tree, said to have been treasured by Nobunaga’s successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi, was flowering on the other side of a barley field.
The garden must have been turned into a field during the war. The great camellia was set off brilliantly by the swaying ears of unripened barley.
“It’s been fifteen years since we last came here. I was carrying Wakako in my arms,” Kikue said. “There was no one else in the garden then either. Wakako was so happy to see all the flowers. But I’m sure you’ve forgotten.”
“No, I remember.” For a moment, Mizuhara was caught by the impression that the great camellia before them was blooming in a far-off world.
“If only we could unwind the clock, go back to that moment,” Kikue remarked. “How wonderful to be as young as I was back then!”
“So it would only be me who aged? That would be a little awkward.”
“I wouldn’t mind. Age doesn’t mean all too much to men. It would be enough just for me to be young again.”
“That’s a rather selfish thing to say.”
“It’s you men who are selfish. Examine your own conscience. Of course, we women tend to become more complicated as we get older, but even so…”
“And you…” Mizuhara began, his voice becoming more formal in tone. “How have you been, since we last came here?”
“Thank you for your concern. Oh, I got by, somehow,” Kikue replied evasively. “It’s the human condition that we endure hardship. There’s no such thing as a perfect moment in time.”
Mizuhara no longer had any right to meddle in Kikue’s life. Nonetheless, he couldn’t help but suspect that, being in the courtesan trade, she must have had a difficult time supporting herself and her two daughters during and after the war.
“My wife was concerned about Wakako right up until she passed,” he said.
“Was she? How kind of her. But you’ll make me feel like I’ve done her wrong. I’ll have to pay my respects on the anniversary of her death.”
To Mizuhara, Kikue’s words seemed rather superficial.
“I’ve given Wakako a decent upbringing,” she said as though speaking about someone else’s child. “Although her elder sister has had to endure a lot for her sake.”
“How is she, by the way? Your eldest?”
“Yūko? She’s already made her debut.”
Her debut as a geisha, no doubt.
Mizuhara stepped away from the large camellia, leaving through the gate.
“Yūko has never had an easy life, not since she was a child. Maybe that’s why she’s always been rather cold. She doesn’t have much affection for her sister,” Kikue confided as they walked. “Wakako, though…she has a gentle spirit.”
“You should have brought her with you.”
“I wanted to, but I didn’t know whether you wanted to see her.”
“I suppose it would be somewhat awkward to proudly introduce myself as her father.”
“What are you saying? Do you think she’s forgotten how you pampered her as a child? When I told her I was going to see you, she followed me all the way out to the street with tears in her eyes.”
“I see.”
“Yūko gave birth to a baby girl last year. The father is a strange one. He’s still so young, and single too, yet he took the baby back to Tōkyō with him and plans to raise her by himself. Every now and then, he brings her back to Kyōto to see her mother. It’s a sight, I say, seeing him traveling by train with the child in his arms. He even offered to marry my Yūko. He’s too good for her. I tell her she’s been blessed, that her stubbornness will bring misfortune down on her head, but she won’t listen. It’s fine, I tell her, I won’t make Wakako work in her place. I’ll take care of Wakako, I tell her, because I love her father. But no matter what I say, Yūko is just too obstinate. Even when the father brings the child with him, she hesitates even to pick the poor thing up. Wakako is a much better babysitter. I feel so sorry for the child that I can’t stand it sometimes. I even tried to remind the father that the girl is the daughter of a geisha, that there’s no way of telling whether she’s even truly his, that he could very well abandon her if he so pleased. Besides, I raised two daughters all by myself, with no father to help me. But he wouldn’t listen either. I even told Wakako to take the child, to run off with her, that if she did that, he would have to give up and accept reality. But she wouldn’t.”
Mizuhara winced. Kikue probably didn’t mean to compare him with that commendable father, but her comments stung all the same.
He wondered whether this was the same man whom Asako had met during her train journey back from Kyōto around the New Year.
It was clear from this story that Kikue hadn’t had any other children after Wakako and that she truly cared for their daughter.
“It just so happens he brought the child again the day before yesterday. They’re off to see the Miyako Odori later today.”
“Oh? My daughters should be going too.”
“Is that so? What a coincidence,” Kikue seemed taken aback. “They might even bump into each other. What to do? Wakako will be with him, looking after the baby. She might meet your daughters.”
“She could at that.”
“Is that all you have to say? Well, I’m not happy. Not at all. Say they won’t recognize each other all you want, passing your own siblings by unawares would simply be too cruel. I’m sorry, but I hope Wakako doesn’t see them. I would much prefer she meet only with you.”
“That’s what I’ve been meaning to ask…” Mizuhara began. “I brought my other daughters with me hoping to introduce them to Wakako.”
“Is that so?” Kikue was strangely calm. “Because your wife passed away?”
Mizuhara felt a cold stab. “Not exactly. Last year, Asako came to Kyōto to look for her, without telling me or her elder sister.”
“Did she now? I had no idea,” Kikue startled, before adding coolly, “They do say that ignorance is to know Buddha. Although it would have been better if she hadn’t. I don’t want anyone coming after my daughter.”
“She didn’t come to probe. She did it out of an abundance of love, so much so that she didn’t even tell me. And she must also be grieving her mother.”
Kikue nodded. “I’m sorry. I’m a cynical woman. It’s all so unexpected. I’m not quite ready to accept it just yet.”
“I would like you to consider it, though.”
“Yes, well. Wakako is born of her mother and father,” Kikue said, coming out with a startling Buddhist expression. “But are you saying you want to take her away from me?”
“Not as such…”
“I see. Wakako has her own life, her own destiny. But I can assure you she hasn’t forgotten her father.”
“Oh? I’m blessed. I have three daughters born of different mothers, each of whom loves me in their own way.”
“Don’t let it get to your head. They’re women; they’ll get by.”
The two laughed, exchanging glances. Only then did they realize that they had been standing in the same place for some time.
The shadows cast by the bamboos nearby reached across their feet.
They passed through the gate leading into the Ryūshōji subtemple. Maples stretched out on either side of the path built from rectangular paving stones, their tender branches reaching out. The green glow was so bright that it was all but projected onto the ground.
Mizuhara had met the old monk of the Ryūshōji in Shanghai once during the war.
He was considerably younger than the preceptor of the Jukōin, and much more proper in appearance too. On this fresh encounter, he recounted to his guests his memories of China and explained how Zen had become a fashionable subject of inquiry in America.
Having been invited to try a homemade dish of bamboo shoots from the nearby grove, Mizuhara began to make his way to the tearoom.
“Ah, a black camellia,” he said, approaching a flower hanging from the wall.
“It’s a shame there are no good buds,” the old monk said behind them. “I found a branch this morning with a perfect bud, but when I came back to pick it, it was gone. I’ve circled the tree more times than I can count, but I can’t find it anywhere. It was in the corner of the garden, so I wouldn’t expect a flower thief to have taken it. Such a pity.”
The branches in the bamboo vase also had a few buds. Yet no doubt the old monk would have preferred to show Mizuhara that perfect black camellia. The buds were a darker shade of black than the flowers, though their color would fade in spring, the old monk explained. They were best at their darkest.
They were small, elegant flowers, their thick petals almost resembling the scales of a pinecone.
After leaving the Ryūshōji, they made their way to the tearoom at the Kōtōin subtemple, said to have been relocated from Rikyū’s private residence.
“Is that an aster among the white globeflowers?” Mizuhara asked, contemplating the flowers in the tokonoma alcove.
“Indeed it is,” the old monk answered.
The aster was similar in shape to a wild chrysanthemum.
“I suppose you don’t have raccoon dogs in Tōkyō?” the old monk remarked. “We have a den of them under the floorboards here.”
“Oh? How many?”
“Three, I should say. They often come out to play in the garden.”
Mizuhara stepped outside, spotting a wooden door at the back of the garden with a small hole cut into the bottom to allow the raccoon dogs to venture into the grove.
In the garden, he paid his respects at the grave of the feudal lord Hosokawa Yūsai.
“A stone lantern for a tomb. Rikyū’s grave was nice too. I envy them,” he said.
He walked around the stone lantern until he laid eyes on a chipped piece.
“I’d like to take a petal home with me,” Kikue said over his shoulder.
“From the camellia?” Mizuhara was carrying the flowering branch from the Ryūshōji.
“I’d like to show it to Wakako.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed, handing it to her.
“One petal is all I need,” Kikue protested, plucking just that from one of the corollas.
Mizuhara had asked the old monk whether he could take the branch, saying that he wanted to show it to his daughters.