An island had once occupied the center of the lake, while a waterfall poured into it from the maple-covered mountain. Honda had once crossed over to it by boat with Kiyoaki and from there had recognized the figure of Satoko clad in a light-blue kimono. Kiyoaki had been in the flower of his youth, and Honda too had still been young, much more so indeed than he remembered. There something had commenced and something had ended. But no traces remained.

The Matsugae estate had been restored by the ruthless, impartially destructive bombing. The contours of the land had changed, but across the desolate expanse Honda could still single out the location of the pond, the shrine, the main house, the Western-style wing, and the driveway in front of the porch. The outlines of the Matsugae house that he had frequented were clearly etched in his memory.

But under the billowing evening clouds the innumerable shriveled zinc fragments, broken slates, shredded trees, melted gla.s.s, burned clapboard, or the exposed chimneys of fireplaces standing lonely like skeletons, doors squashed into lozenge shapes-all were dyed a deep, rusty red. Collapsed and prostrate on the ground, their wild shapes that defied norms seemed like strange nettles sprouting from the land. The eeriness was further heightened by the evening sun which added to everything a distinctive shadow.

The sky was the vermilion of silk kimono lining with tufts of cloud scattered about. The color had penetrated to their very core, and their raveled edges radiated like golden threads. He had never seen such a sinister sky.

Suddenly he discerned in the vast ruin the figure of a woman sitting on a garden stone which had survived. The back of her somewhat shiny trousers made from lavender silk kimono material was transformed to lie-de-vin by the evening sun. Her black gleaming hair done in a Western style was wet, and her huddled figure appeared tormented. She seemed to be crying, but her shoulders were not shaken by sobs; she seemed to be suffering too, but her back gave no indication of anguish. She sat hunched up as though petrified. Her motionlessness lasted too long for someone merely lost in thought. Honda judged from the l.u.s.ter of her hair that she was probably middle-aged, perhaps the owner of one of the houses that had stood there, or possibly a relative.

He realized he should have to offer a.s.sistance if she had been overcome by some indisposition. As he drew closer, he saw a black handbag and cane which she had placed beside the stone on which she was sitting.

Honda put his hand on her shoulder and shook it discreetly. He half feared that if he used any strength the form would collapse into ashes.

The woman looked obliquely up at him. The face frightened Honda. From the gap that showed at the unnatural hairline he realized that the black hair was a wig. The harsh vermilion of her lipstick stood out against the powder which had been thickly applied to cover the wrinkles and the hollows of her eyes; it was drawn on in the old-fashioned court style, a peaked upper lip and a tiny lower one. He recognized the face of Tadeshina beneath this indescribably aged mask.

"You're Mrs. Tadeshina, aren't you?" said Honda without thinking.

"Who could you be?" said Tadeshina. "A moment, please," she added, hurriedly taking her gla.s.ses from her breast. He could see the Tadeshina of former days in her sly attempt to gain time by opening the sides and putting them over her ears. Under the pretext that she needed her gla.s.ses to see, she hurriedly tried to place him.

But the ruse was not successful. Even with the gla.s.ses, the old woman saw only a stranger standing before her. For the first time uneasiness and an old aristocratic prejudice-a mild chilliness she had learned to simulate so skillfully over the years-appeared on her face. This time she spoke with stiff formality.

"You must excuse me. I have quite lost my memory of late. I really have no idea . . ."

"I'm Honda. Thirty years ago I was a cla.s.smate of Kiyoaki Matsugae's at the Peers School, and I used to come to the house all the time."

"Oh, Mr. Honda! How good it is to see you! I don't know how to apologize . . . I'm sorry not to have recognized you. Yes, Mr. Honda, indeed. You look just as you did in your younger days. Oh, what a . . ."

Tadeshina hurriedly put a sleeve to her eyes. Her tears in former days had always been suspicious, but now the makeup under her eyes immediately soaked them up like a whitewashed wall in the rain, and a generous supply overflowed almost mechanically from her bleary eyes. Such tears, as abundant as an overturned tub of water, totally unrelated to either joy or sorrow, were much more believable than those of thirty years ago.

Nevertheless, her senility was preposterous. On her skin, hidden under the thick white powder, Honda could see the moss of decrepitude that covered her entire body, and yet he sensed her extraordinary mind still working diligently like a watch ticking away in the pocket of a dead man.

"It's good you're looking so well. How old are you now?" asked Honda.

"I'm ninety-four this year. I'm a little hard of hearing, but other than that I have my health and no ailments; my legs are strong, and I manage to get around alone with a cane. My nephew's family are looking after me, and they don't like to let me go out alone. But I don't really care when or where I die, so I like to get out as much as possible while I still can. I'm not at all afraid of the air raids. If I'm hit by a bomb or incinerated I'll die without any pain and without causing anybody any trouble. You may not believe it, but I feel envious of the bodies lying by the roadside these days. When I heard that the Shibuya area had been burned in the bombardment the other day, I simply had to see the site of the Matsugae estate. I slipped out of my nephew's house. What would the Marquis and the Marchioness say if they were alive to see this state of affairs! They were fortunate enough to die before experiencing any of this misery."

"Fortunately my house hasn't been burned yet, but I feel the same way about my mother. I'm glad she died while j.a.pan was still winning."

"Oh dear! Your mother's gone too . . . I am terribly sorry to hear that, I had no idea . . ."

Tadeshina had not forgotten the emotionless, gracious civilities of her former days.

"What's become of the Ayakuras?"

After putting the question, Honda immediately regretted it. As he had expected, the old woman hesitated noticeably. However, whenever she showed any visible sign of emotion, it was usually lacking in sincerity and simply for exhibition.

"Yes, after Miss Satoko entered the orders, I left the Ayakura family, and since then I've only attended Lord Ayakura's funeral. The Viscountess, I believe, is still alive, but after his lordship pa.s.sed away she sold the house in Tokyo and went to relatives in Shishigatani in Kyoto. Her daughter . . ."

Honda felt a quivering in his heart and asked involuntarily: "Do you ever see Miss Satoko?"

"Yes, I've seen her three times in all after the funeral. She's always so kind to me when I visit her. She even invites me to spend the night at the temple. So sweet and gracious . . ."

Tadeshina took off her clouded gla.s.ses, quickly removed a coa.r.s.e tissue from her sleeve and held it over her eyes for some time. When she took it away there was a dark ring where the powder had come off.

"Miss Satoko's well then?" said Honda again.

"She is, indeed. And-how shall I say?-she's more beautiful, more pure than ever, and her beauty becomes more serene as she grows older. Please visit her some time, Mr. Honda. Do, she'll be so pleased to see you."

Honda abruptly recalled that midnight drive from Kamakura to Tokyo alone with Satoko.

She was another man's woman, but she had been almost oppressively feminine then.

She had already had a foreboding of things to come ultimately and had expressed her readiness in preparing for them. Honda recalled, as vividly as though it had happened yesterday, that thrilling moment just before dawn when her profile had been framed by the car window with the foliage in the background flying past.

When he came back to reality, Tadeshina's face had lost its pretense of deference and she was scrutinizing him. Wrinkles like the lines in tie-dyed silk surrounded her bowshaped lips, but now at either side her mouth was slightly pulled up in the semblance of a smile. Suddenly, in the two eyes-old wells in patches of snow-the pupils moved horizontally with a suggestion of the old coquetry.

"You were in love with her, weren't you? I knew it."

Honda flinched, more at the vestiges of Tadeshina's coquetry than from displeasure at such a conjecture after so many years. To change the subject, he turned his thoughts to the gifts he had received from his client. It occurred to him that he might share a portion with her: a couple of eggs and a little chicken.

Tadeshina expressed her guileless joy and appreciation just as he had expected she would.

"Oh, my, eggs! How unusual to see eggs these days! I feel as if I haven't seen one for years! Heavens, eggs!"

The meandering, complex thanks that followed made Honda realize that the old woman must be given scarcely any decent food. He was further surprised when she again took out the egg that she had put away in her shopping bag. Holding it up against the fading twilight sky, she said: "Rather than taking this home-you must excuse my poor manners-I would rather just eat it here . . ."

As the old woman spoke, she looked regretfully at the egg against the darkening sky. It smoldered in her trembling old fingers as the fading light touched its delicate, cold sh.e.l.l.

For some time Tadeshina caressed the egg in her hand. The noise in the area had abated, and only the faint sound of her dry skin rubbing against it was audible.

Honda ignored her search for a sharp corner against which to crack the sh.e.l.l. He was reluctant to help her in an action which was somehow objectionable. Tadeshina broke the egg unexpectedly skillfully on the edge of the stone on which she was sitting. Carefully bringing it to her mouth in order to lose none of its content, she gradually lifted her face and poured it between her gleaming dentures gaping at the evening sky. The l.u.s.trous roundness of the yolk pa.s.sing her lips was fleetingly visible, and her throat emitted an extremely healthy swallowing sound.

"My, this is the first nourishing food I've had in a long, long time. I feel revived. I feel as though the beauty of my youth has come back. You might not believe it, Mr. Honda, but I was a famous beauty in my day."

Her tone had suddenly become frank.

There is a time of day immediately before dusk when the outline of every object becomes sharply delineated. It was just that moment. The lacerated edges of wooden beams in the wreckage, the freshness of the rents in the shredded trees, and the curled zinc sheets with their puddles of rain water-everything appeared almost unpleasantly vivid. In the extreme west only a horizontal line of scarlet was to be seen in the sky between two or three towering black burnedout buildings. Flecks of scarlet were also visible through the windows of the ruined structures. It was as if someone had turned on a red light in a deserted and uninhabited house.

"How can I thank you? You have always been such a tenderhearted man, and you are still so kind. I have nothing to give you, but at least . . ."

Like a blind woman, Tadeshina hunted through her bag. Before Honda could stop her, she had taken out a volume bound in the j.a.panese style and thrust it into his hand.

"At least I want to give you this book. I have always treasured it and carried it with me. It is an efficacious sutra given me by a priest to ward off harm and illness. I am so happy to have run into you and to have been able to talk about bygone times. You'll probably be going out on air-raid days, and there are bad fevers about. But if you carry this sutra with you, you are sure to avoid any disaster. I should like you to keep it as a token of my appreciation."

Honda held the book up reverently to show his thanks and looked at the t.i.tle on the cover. It was barely legible in the evening light.

Mahamayurividyarajni, "Sutra of the Great Golden Peac.o.c.k Wisdom King."

22.

EVER SINCE THAT DAY, Honda could scarcely contain his desire to see Satoko, but he knew that the urge came in part from Tadeshina's remark that she was still beautiful. He was deathly afraid of seeing a "ruin of beauty" like the ruins of the city.

But the war situation was deteriorating daily, and it was difficult to obtain train tickets unless one had connections in the Army, and a pleasure trip was out of the question.

As the days pa.s.sed, Honda opened the Peac.o.c.k King Sutra that Tadeshina had given him. He had never had the opportunity of reading any Esoteric Buddhist sutras before.

The opening pa.s.sages gave explanations and rules for use in small, almost illegible print.

To begin with, the Peac.o.c.k Wisdom King occupied the sixth position from the southern end of the Susiddhi Court in the Womb Mandala. As he is attributed the power of begetting all Buddhas, he is also called the "Peac.o.c.k King, Begetter of All Buddhas."

When he consulted the Buddhist doc.u.ments he had so far collected, Honda found that the deity had clearly originated in Hindu shakti worship. Since shakti rites were directed toward Kali, wife of Shiva, or toward Durga, the statue of the bloodthirsty G.o.ddess he had seen at the Kalighat in Calcutta was indeed the archetype of the Peac.o.c.k Wisdom King.

When he discovered this, the sutra that had come into his possession by accident suddenly became of interest to him. Along with the use of dharani and mantra in Esoteric Buddhist rites, the old deities of Hinduism had invaded the world of Buddhism by resorting to all sorts of transformations.

Originally the Sutra of the Peac.o.c.k Wisdom King was believed to have been an incantation spoken by the Buddha, and it was supposed to ward off snakes or cure poisoning from their bites.

According to the Peac.o.c.k Sutra: When one Kissho, who had not been long ordained, was preparing kindling for the monks' bath, a black snake came out from under a strange tree and bit his right toe. He fainted and fell to the ground, his eyes turned up, and he foamed at the mouth. Ananda went to where the Buddha was and said: "How can he be cured?" Where-upon the Buddha answered, saying: "If you hold the Sutra of the Incantation of the Great Tathagata Peac.o.c.k Wisdom King, clasp the monk Kissho in your arms, and make the proper hand signs as you chant the mantra, the poison will be harmless. Neither sword nor cane will be able to inflict injury. It will fend off all calamities."

Not only snake poison, but all fevers, all wounds, all pain and suffering were reputed abolished by this sutra. Simply chanting it was sufficient, and the mere thought of the Peac.o.c.k Wisdom King did away with all fear, enemies, and calamities. Therefore, during the Heian period, only the Elder of the Toji and the Abbot of the Ninna Temple in the Imperial line were permitted to perform the Esoteric Buddhist rites of this sutra. During such ceremonies, fervent prayers were offered against all possible situations, from natural calamities to pestilence and childbirth.

The Peac.o.c.k Wisdom King in the ill.u.s.tration was a gorgeous and sumptuous figure as though the personification of the peac.o.c.k itself, so different from the b.l.o.o.d.y image of Kali, his prototype, with her protruding tongue and her necklace of severed heads.

His magic formula was said to imitate the cry of the peac.o.c.k-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-and the mantra, ma yu kitsu ra tei sha ka, meant "Peac.o.c.k fulfillment." Even the special hand gesture, which was called the "sign of the Buddha Begetter, the Peac.o.c.k Wisdom King," and which was made by joining the two hands back to back, the two thumbs and the two little fingers pressed together, was both a description and imitation of the peac.o.c.k's majesty. The gesture represented the shape of the peac.o.c.k, the little fingers being the tail and the thumbs the head, and the rest of the fingers the feathers. The way the middle six fingers moved as the incantation was chanted depicted a peac.o.c.k dancing.

A blue Indian sky trailed behind the Wisdom King on his golden peac.o.c.k mount. A tropical sky with its impressive clouds, its afternoon ennui, and its evening breezes, all necessary for spinning a gorgeous and colorful illusion.

The golden peac.o.c.k was seen from the front, standing firmly on its two legs. It had opened its wings and was carrying the Wisdom King on its back, guarding him by spreading its magnificent fan tail which stood in place of a halo. The king was sitting in the lotus position on a white lotus flower placed on the back of the peac.o.c.k. Of the king's four arms, the first on the right held an open lotus; the second, the peach-shaped fruit of karma; the first hand on the left was held over the heart, its upturned palm supporting the fruit of good fortune; and the second, a peac.o.c.k tail of thirty-five feathers.

The Wisdom King posed with compa.s.sionate countenance, and his body was extremely fair. The skin visible under silk gauze was enhanced by such magnificent jewelry as the crown on his head, the necklace around his neck, the earrings hanging from his ears, and the bracelets at his wrists. A cool weariness lingered on the heavy lids of the half-open eyes as though the deity had just awakened from an afternoon nap. Imparting boundless mercy and saving people without number might produce in one an emotion similar to the idle sleepiness that Honda had discovered in the bright, vast expanses of India.

In contrast to this absolutely white and serene image, the extended feathers of the peac.o.c.k that acted as a halo were dazzlingly polychrome. Of the plumage of all birds, that of the peac.o.c.k was closest in hue to the evening clouds. Like an Esoteric Buddhist mandala that rearranges a chaotic universe into an orderly one, the feathers presented the methodical organization of the riotous disorder of color seen in the evening clouds, their amorphousness, and the play of light upon them, in a geometric and patterned brocade. Gold, green, indigo, purple, brown-such dusky brilliance, however, indicated the end of the evening glow when the disk of the setting sun itself was no longer visible.

The tail feathers lacked only scarlet. If there were such a bird as a scarlet peac.o.c.k, and if the Peac.o.c.k Wisdom King had been seated upon it, tail fully open, he would be none other than the G.o.ddess Kali herself.

Honda believed that such a peac.o.c.k must have appeared in the evening clouds in the sky above the ruins where he had encountered Tadeshina.

PART 2.

23.

"YOU'VE PLANTED some beautiful cypresses," said Honda's new neighbor. "It used to be so barren and treeless here."

Keiko Hisamatsu was an imposing woman.

She was close to fifty, but her face, rumored to have undergone plastic surgery, retained an overly taut, shiny youthfulness. She was one of those exceptional j.a.panese who could speak informally to either Prime Minister Yoshida or to General MacArthur; she had long since divorced her husband. At the moment she had a lover, a young American officer in the Occupation Forces who worked at the camp at the foot of Mount Fuji. She had repaired her long-neglected villa at Ninooka in Gotemba and would occasionally come for a rendezvous or, as she said, "to write leisurely answers to long-neglected letters." Her villa stood next to Honda's.

In the spring of 1952, Honda celebrated his fifty-seventh birthday. For the first time in his life, he had acquired a villa. Guests had been invited from Tokyo for the opening that was to take place on the morrow. He himself had come a day early to oversee preparations and had invited his neighbor Keiko to inspect the garden that measured something more than an acre.

"I've been looking forward to the completion of your house as if it were my own," said Keiko, walking over the dead, frost-wet lawn, lifting her thin high-heeled shoes step by step like a waterfowl. "This gra.s.s was planted last year. How well it has taken. You set up the garden first and then took your time with the house. Only a true lover of gardens could do that."

"I had no place to stay, so I commuted from Gotemba to lay it out," replied Honda, looking like some Parisian concierge in his heavy, slightly raveled cardigan with a silk scarf wrapped around his neck against the cold.

Honda felt a certain discomfort with women like Keiko, who had lived a life of leisure. It was as though his pettiness were being seen through-the meanness of working and studying through life and now at the onset of old age suddenly trying to learn how to relax.

His being here, the proprietor of a villa, had been made possible by an antiquated section of a little-known law issued under the Imperial Seal on April 18,1899, and ent.i.tled "Concerning the return of nationally owned lands, forests, and fields."

In July of 1873, a land-reform decree was issued, and government officials had gone from village to village attempting to ascertain the ownership of various holdings. Fearing they would be taxed, owners denied possession of certain tracts, and thus a great number of private holdings and commonages had become unattached and had been transferred to the government.

Much later, in view of the clamorous voices of regret and resentment, a law was pa.s.sed in 1899, the second article of which stated that applicants for the return of land were required to prove previous ownership by producing at least one of seven records. One was called a "state doc.u.ment." And the sixth article of the code stated that all pertinent legal action would come under the jurisdiction of the Court of Administrative Litigation.

Many such suits were inst.i.tuted in the 1890s, but the Court of Administrative Litigation permitted only one hearing, with no opportunity for appeal. And since there was no provision for supervision of the legal process, everything was done in a most leisurely fashion.

In any village in which communal lands had been confiscated because of a thoughtless lie, the Oaza, or administrative division, became the plaintiff in administrative litigation. Even if the village had been amalgamated into a township, the Oaza could claim possession and remain as an "owner district."

In the case of a certain village in the district of Miharu in f.u.kushima Prefecture, a suit was inst.i.tuted in 1900, in which the government and the plaintiff went about the business most leisurely. Over a period of fifty years, the defendant had changed from Minister of Agriculture and Commerce to Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, and, one by one, successive lawyers in charge of the litigation had died, only to be succeeded by others. In 1940, a delegate from the district of the plaintiff village came to Tokyo to see Honda, who was already a well-known lawyer, and deposited the hopeless case in his hands.

The fifty-year deadlock was broken by the defeat of j.a.pan in the war.

According to the new const.i.tution executed in 1947, special courts were eliminated and the Court of Administrative Litigation was abolished. All administrative cases in process were transferred to the Tokyo High Court and treated as civil suits. As a result, Honda won the case without difficulty. It was nothing more than pure luck-being at the right place at the right time.

In accordance with the agreement which had been handed down through the years, Honda received as his fee for winning the case one third of all lands returned to the village. He had the choice of accepting this real estate or of converting it into cash at the going rate. He chose the latter. Thus he came into the sum of thirty-six million yen.

This event changed the very roots of Honda's life. During the war he had gradually grown bored with a lawyer's lot, and while retaining the widely respected name of the Honda Law Offices, he left all work to his younger partners and put in only an occasional appearance. His social life changed and so did his thinking. He could not take his good fortune seriously, coming so suddenly as he had into possession of close to forty million yen, nor could he be serious about the times that had made such a miracle possible. Therefore he decided to take the whole thing casually.

He considered dismantling and rebuilding his residence in Hongo, which would have been much better off burned in the raids, but he was already too disillusioned with the city to construct anything new there and expect it to last forever. Anyway, it would be burned to the ground in the next war.

His wife Rie preferred to sell the property and perhaps live in an apartment rather than to continue on in the big old house by themselves. But Honda took the pretext of her sickliness for building a villa in a remote, spa.r.s.ely populated spot where she could rest.

The couple went to see some land in the Sengokuhara area in Hakone with an introduction from an acquaintance, but when they heard of the excessive dampness in the region they were frightened off. Guided by the chauffeur of the hired car, they drove over Hakone Pa.s.s and explored the summer resort area of Ninooka in the Gotemba section that had been developed some forty years before. There were many villas belonging to former dignitaries. But after the war, they had closed their gates to avoid the American Occupation Forces near the Fuji Maneuvering Terrain and the inevitable women who followed them. Honda was told that in an area west of the villa district there was some barren land that had once belonged to the government but that had been turned over without charge to the farmers of the region as a result of the land reform. One could make a good buy there.

The entire area at the foot of Mount Hakone was not covered by the volcanic lava as was that around Fuji. But it was barren land unfit for growing anything except perhaps cypresses. The farmers did not know what to do with it. Honda was delighted with one property where pampas gra.s.s and sagebrush covered a slope that gently descended to a valley stream. Mount Fuji was clearly visible.

Upon inquiry he found the price to be very reasonable and therefore did not follow Rie's suggestion to give the matter further thought. He made an immediate down payment for a parcel of a little over four acres.