The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (20 page)

The woman covered her face with both hands and ran out of the room. As for Kashiwagi, he looked up at me as I stood there with a stupefied expression. He gave me a strangely childish smile and said: "Now's your chance. Run after her! Try to console her! Go on, quick!"

I do not know whether it was because I was impelled by the authority of Kashiwagi's command or because in my heart I felt some sympathy for the woman, but my legs instantly started to move and I chased the girl. I caught up with her a few houses away from the lodging-house. It was in a corner of Itakuramachi behind the Karasumaru streetcar shed. Under the cloudy night sky I could hear the rattle of a streetcar as it entered the shed, and the light purple sparks shaded off into the darkness. The woman hurried away from Itakuramachi towards the east and went up a back street. Without saying a word, I walked along beside her. She was crying. Before long she noticed that I was there and came close to me. Then, in a voice made even huskier than usual by her tears, she began to complain to me at great length about Kashiwagi's misdeeds.

How long she and I walked together through the streets that night! As she drummed Kashiwagi's misdeeds into my ears and told me of all the cloying sordidness of his behaviour towards her, the single word that I heard resounding in the night air was-"life." His cruelty, his little plots, his betrayals,
his heartlessness, his tricks for extorting money from women
-all this merely served to explain his subtle charm. The only thing in which I myself needed to believe was Kashiwagi's sincerity regarding his clubfeet.

After Tsurukawa's sudden death I had existed for a long time without touching life itself. Then finally I had been stimulated by touching a new form of life-a darker, yet less unhappy, life that involved constantly hurting other people as long as one lived. Kashiwagi's simple words: "There's more to killing than that!” came to life once more and captivated me. And what I also recalled at that moment was the prayer which I had uttered when I had climbed the mountain behind the temple at the end of the war and looked down at the multitudinous city lights: "Let the darkness that is in my heart become equal to the darkness of the night that surrounds those innumerable lights!”

The woman was not walking back to her house. Instead she wandered aimlessly through the back streets, where there were few passers-by and she could talk freely. When finally we arrived in front of the house where she lived by herself, I had no idea what part of the city we were in.

It was already half past ten. I wanted to return to the temple, but the woman persuaded me not to leave her and so I went into the house with her. She led the way and turned on the light.

"Have you ever cursed someone and wished he was dead?” she said abruptly.

"Yes,
”
I answered at once. Strangely enough, I had not thought about it until that moment, but now it was clear to me that I had been hoping for the death of the girl in the lodging-house, who had been a witness of my shame.

"It's a terrible thing," she said, collapsing on the straw-matted floor and placing herself in a sideways position. “I have too"

Her room was lit with a brilliance that was unusual in these days of power restriction. The bulb must have been about one hundred watts, three times as strong as that in Kashiwagi's room. For the first time I saw the woman's body clearly illuminated. Her Nagoya-style sash was a brilliant white, and the purple mist of the wisterian trellis that formed the pattern of her Yuzen kimono stood out clearly.

The top of the gate at the Nanzen Temple was separated from the Tenjuan guest room by a distance that only a bird could cover, but now I felt that during all these years I had gradually been moving across this distance and that now I was finally approaching the destination. Since that afternoon on the gate I had been chopping time into minute particles and now I was really approaching the meaning of that mysterious scene in the Tenjuan. It had to be like this, I thought. It was inevitable that this woman should have changed, just as the features of this earth are changed by the time that the light from a distant star has finally reached it. If at the time when I saw her from the gate of the Nanzen Temple she and I had been joined in anticipation of today's meeting, such changes as had taken place in her since then could be effaced; with only a few small alterations, things could be restored to their earlier state and the former
I
could come face to face with the former
she.

Thereupon I told her the story. I told it breathlessly and with constant stuttering. As I spoke, the green leaves once more began to glitter, and the angels and the fabulous Hóo bird that were painted on the ceiling of the temple sprang back to life. A fresh color came into the woman's cheeks and the former wild light in her eyes changed to an uncertain and confused expression.

"So that's what happened?" she said. "My goodness! So that's really what happened, is it? What a strange karma! Yes, that's what a strange karma means."

As she spoke, her eyes filled with tears of proud joy. She forgot her recent humiliation and instead cast herself back into memories. From one excitement she had moved directly into another excitement, and she became almost crazed. The bottom of her kimono with its wisteria pattern was in complete disorder.

"I don't have any milk now,
”
she said. "Oh, my poor little baby! No, I don't have any milk, but all the same I'll do for you now what I did that other time. Since you've loved me ever since then, I'll consider that you are the same as that man. So long as I can think that, I have nothing to be ashamed of. Yes, really, I'll do exactly what I did that time.”

She spoke as if she were handing down a great decision. Her action that followed seemed to come from an overflow of ecstasy,or else from an overflow of despair. I suppose that consciously it was ecstasy that drove her to that passionate deed, but that the real impelling force was the despair which Kashiwagi had given her, or at least a persistent after-taste of that despair.

Thus it was that she unfastened her sash-bustle before my eyes and untied the various cords. Then with a silky shriek the sash itself came undone, and, released from this constriction, the neck of her kimono opened up. I could vaguely make out the woman's white breasts. Putting her hand into her kimono she scooped out her left breast and held it out to me.

It would be untrue to say that I did not feel dizzy. I looked at her breast. I looked at it with minute care. Yet I remained in the role of witness. That mysterious white point which I had seen in the distance from above the temple gate had not been a material globe of flesh like this. The impression had been fermenting so long within me that the breast which I now saw seemed to be nothing but flesh, nothing but a material object. This flesh did not in itself have the power to appeal or to tempt. Exposed there in front of me, and completely cut off from life, it merely served as a proof of the dreariness of existence.

Still, I do not want to say anything untrue, and there is no doubt that at the sight of her white breast I was overcome by dizziness. The trouble was that I looked
too
carefully and too completely, so that what I saw went beyond the stage of being a woman's breast and was gradually transformed into a meaningless fragment.

It was then that the wonder occurred. After undergoing this painful process, the woman's breast finally struck me as beautiful. It became endowed with the sterile and frigid characteristics of beauty and, while the breast remained before me, it slowly shut itself up within the principle of its own self. Just as a rose closes itself up within the essential principle of a rose. Beauty arrives late for me. Other people perceive beauty quickly, and discover beauty and sensual desire at the same moment; for me it always comes far later. Now in an instant the woman's breast regained its connection with the whole, it surmounted the state of being mere flesh and became an unfeeling, immortal substance related to eternity.

I hope that I am making myself understood. The Golden Temple once more appeared before me. Or rather, I should say that the breast was transformed into the Golden Temple.

I recalled the night of the typhoon at the beginning of autumn when I had stood watch in the temple. Much as the building may have been exposed to the moonlight, a heavy, luxuriant darkness had settled over it and this darkness had penetrated into the nocturnal temple, into the shutters, into the wooden doors, under the roof with its peeling gold-foil. And this was only natural. For the Golden Temple itself was simply a nihility that had been designed and constructed with the most exquisite care. Just so, although the outside of this breast gave forth the bright radiance of flesh, the inside was filled with darkness. Its true substance consisted of the same heavy, luxuriant darkness.

I was certainly not intoxicated by my understanding. My understanding was trampled underfoot and scorned; naturally enough, life and sensual desire underwent the same process. But my deep feeling of ecstasy stayed with me and for a long time I sat as though paralyzed opposite the woman's naked breast.

I was sitting there when I met the woman's cold, scornful look. She put her breast back into the kimono. I told her that I must leave. She came to the entrance and closed the door after me noisily.

Until I returned to the temple, I remained in the midst of ecstasy. In my mind's eye I could sec the Golden Temple and the woman's breast coming and going one after the other. I was overcome with an impotent sense of joy.

Yet when the outline of the temple began to emerge through the dark pine forest, which was soughing in the wind, my spirits gradually cooled down, my feeling of impotence become predominant and my intoxication changed into hatred-a hatred for I knew not what.

“So once again I have been estranged from life!” I thought. "Why docs the Golden Temple try to protect me? Why docs it try to separate me from life without my asking it? Of course it may be that the temple is saving me from falling into hell. But by so doing, the Golden Temple is making me even more evil than those people who actually do fall into hell, it is making me into ‘the man who knows more about hell than anyone.' "

The main temple gate was black and quiet. In the side gate, the light, which was never extinguished until the morning bell, was shining dimly. I pushed the side gate. Inside I could hear the sound of the old, rusty iron chain as it pulled up the weight. The door opened. The gatekeeper had already gone to sleep. On the inner side of the gate there was a sign saying that the last person who returned after ten o'clock was responsible for locking the gate. Two of the wooden nameplates indicated that their owners were still not back. One of the plates was the Superior's; the other was the old gardener's.

As I walked towards the temple, I noticed a number of wooden boards about five yards long, which were being used for some reconstruction work. Even in the night one could sec the light grain of the wood. When I came closer,I saw that sawdust was scattered about the place like little yellow flowers; the fascinating smell of wood drifted through the darkness. Before entering the kitchen, I turned back and went to have a final look at the Golden Temple. I walked down the path towards it and gradually the building became visible. It was surrounded by the rustling of trees and stood there utterly motionless, yet wide awake, in the midst of the night. As though it were the guardian of the night itself. Although the residential part of the Rokuonji slept at night, I had never seen the Golden Temple sleep. This uninhabited structure was able to forget sleep. The darkness that dwelt within it was completely absolved from human laws.

Then in a tone that was almost like a curse I addressed the Golden Temple roughly for the first time in my life: “One day I shall surely rule you. Yes, one day I shall bring you under my sway, so that never again will you be able to get in my way."

My voice echoed hollowly in the night shadows of the Kyoko Pond.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A
TYPE
of cipher seemed to operate in my general experience of life. As in a corridor of mirrors, a single image is reflected again and again to an endless depth. Things that I had seen in the past were clearly reflected on those that I encountered for the first time, and I felt that I was being led by such resemblances into the inner recesses of the corridor, into some fathomless inner chamber. We do not collide with our destiny all of a sudden. The man who later in his life is to be executed is constantly-every time that he sees a telegraph pole on his way to work, every time that he passes a railway crossing-drawing an image in his mind of the execution site, and is becoming familiar with that image.

In my experience, therefore there was nothing in the nature of accumulation. There was no thickness of the kind that could form a mountain by piling one stratum upon another. I felt no intimacy with anything in the world except the Golden Temple; indeed, I was not even on intimate terms with my own past experiences. Yet one thing I knew was that among all these experiences certain small elements-elements that were not swallowed up in the dark sea of time.
elements that did not subside into meaningless and interminable repetition—would be linked together and would come to form a certain sihister and disagreeable picture.

Which, then, were these particular elements? I thought about it on and off. Yet these scattered, shining fragments of experience were even more lacking in order and meaning than the shining pieces of a broken beer bottle that one sees by the roadside. I was unable to believe that these fragments were the shattered pieces of what had in the past been shaped as a thing of perfect beauty. For, in their meaninglessness, in their complete lack of order, in their peculiar unsightliness, each of these discarded fragments still seemed to be dreaming of the future. Yes, mere fragments though they were, each lay there, fearlessly, uncannily, quietly, dreaming of the future! Of a future that would never be cured or restored, that could never be touched, of a truly unprecedented future!

Indistinct reflections of this type sometimes gave me a kind of lyrical excitement that I could not help finding unsuitable for myself. On such occasions, if by good chance there happened to be a moon, I would take my flute and play it next to the Golden Temple. I had now reached the point of being able to play Kashiwagi's tunc, the “Palace Carriage," without looking at the music. Music is like a dream. At the same time it is, on the contrary, like a more distinct form of consciousness than that of our normal waking hours. Which of the two really was music, I used to wonder? Music had the power at times to reverse these two contrary things. And sometimes I was easily able to embody myself, as it were, into the tune of the “Palace Carriage" that I was playing. My spirit was familiar with the joy of embodying itself in
music. For in my case, unlike that of Kashiwagi, music was truly a consolation.

Whenever I finished playing my flute, I used to wonder: “Why does the Golden Temple disregard this action of mine? Why does it not blame me or interfere with me when I embody myself like this into music? Never once has the temple disregarded me when I have tried to embody myself in the happiness and pleasures of life. On every such occasion it has been the fashion of the temple to block my effort instantly and to force me to return to myself. Why will the Golden Temple only permit intoxication and oblivion in the case of music?”

At these thoughts, the charm of the music would fade owing to the mere fact that the Golden Temple allowed me this particular pleasure. For inasmuch as the temple gave me its tacit approval, music, however closely it might resemble life, became an imaginary and spurious form of life; and, much as I might try to embody myself within it, that embodiment itself could only be something temporary.

I do not want to give the impression that I resigned myself and retired from the field as a result of my two setbacks with women and with life. Until the end of 1948 I had several more such opportunities, as well as Kashiwagi's guidance; and, nothing daunted, I set myself to the task. But the result was always the same.

Between the girl and myself, between life and myself, there invariably appeared the Golden Temple. Whereupon the thing that touched my hand as I tried to grasp it would instantly turn to ashes and the prospect before me would change into a desert.

Once when I was resting from some work in the field behind the kitchen, I happened to observe the manner in which a bee visited a small, yellow summer chrysanthemum. It came flying through the omnipresent light on its golden wings, then from among all the numerous chrysanthemums chose one flower and hovered in front of it. I tried to look at the flower through the bee's eyes. The chrysanthemum stood
there with its proper petals spread out, yellow and flawless. It was just as beautiful as a little Golden Temple and just as perfect as the temple; but it did not become transformed into the temple and remained in the state of being a single summer chrysanthemum. Yes, it continued to be a steadfast chrysanthemum, one flower, a single form without any metaphysical connotations. By thus observing the rules of its own existence, it emitted an abundant charm and became a suitable object for the
bee's
desire. What a mysterious thing it was to lurk there, breathing, as an object for that shapeless, flying, flowing, moving desire! Gradually the form becomes more rarefied, it looks as if it is going to crumble, it quivers and trembles. This is quite natural, for that proper form of the chrysanthemum has been fashioned in terms of the bee's desire and its very beauty has blossomed forth in anticipation of that desire. Now is the instant when the meaning of the flower's form is going to shine within life. The form itself is a molding of life, which flows constantly and which has no form; at the same time, the flight of formless life is the molding of all forms in this world.... Thus the bee thrust its way deep into the flower and, covered with pollen, sank into intoxication. The chrysanthemum, having welcomed the bee into its body, became itself like a luxurious, armor-clad, yellow bee, and I watched it shake itself violently as if at any moment it were going to fly away from its stem.

The light, and this act performed under the light, almost made me dizzy. Then; just as I left the bee's eyes and returned to my own eyes, it occurred to me that my eyes which had been gazing at this scene were exactly in the position of the eyes of the Golden Temple. Yes, this is how it was. In the same way that I had reverted from the bee's eyes to my own eyes, so at those instants when life approached me I abandoned my own eyes and made the eyes of the Golden Temple into mine. And it was precisely at such moments that the temple would intrude between me and life.

I returned to my eyes. In this vast, vague world of objects the bee and the summer chrysanthemum only remained to be
"put in order," as it were. The flying of the bee and the shaking of the flower did not differ in the slightest from the rustling of the wind. In this still, frozen world everything was on an equal footing, and that form which had emitted so powerful a charm was extinct. The chrysanthemum was
no longer beautiful because of its form, but because of that
vague name of “chrysanthemum” that we give it and because of the promise contained in that name. because I was not a bee, I was not tempted by the chrysanthemum and, because
I was not a chrysanthemum, no bee yearned after me. I had
been aware of a sense of fellowship with the flow of life and with all the forms in it, but now this feeling disappeared. The
world had been cast away into relativity and only time was moving. I do not want to labor my point. All I wish to say is that, when the eternal and absolute Golden Temple appeared and when my eyes changed into the temple's eyes, the world about me was transformed in the way that I have described, and that in this transformed world only the Golden Temple retained its form and possessed beauty, turning everything else back into dust. Ever since I trampled on the body of that prostitute in the temple garden, and especially since Tsurukawa's death, I had kept on repeating to myself the question: "Is evil nevertheless possible?”

One Saturday in January of 1948, I took advantage of having a free afternoon to visit a third-class cinema theater. After the film I walked through the Shinkyogoku by myself for the first time in ages. Among the crowds I suddenly found myself next to a very familiar face, but before I could remember who it was, the face was swallowed up in the sea of pedestrians and disappeared behind me.

The man had been wearing a felt hat, an elegant overcoat, and a scarf, and had been walking with a girl in a rust-vermilion coat, who was obviously a geisha. The man's pink, plump face, his air of baby-like cleanliness, so different from that of most middle-aged gentlemen, his lengthy nose-yes, all these were the distinguishing traits of the Superior, Father Dosen, and it was only the felt hat that had disguised them for a moment. Though I had nothing to feel ashamed of myself, my immediate reaction was fear that I might have been seen. For instantly I felt that I must avoid being a witness to my Superior's surreptitious expedition and thus becoming silently involved in a relationship of trust or mistrust with him.

Then a black dog walked through the crowds. He was a large, shaggy dog and was obviously used to walking in crowded places, for he picked his way skillfully between the feet of the women in their colorful coats and the men in their military uniforms, and occasionally stopped in front of a shop. I noticed the dog stopping to sniff outside a souvenir shop that had not altered since the time of Shogoin Yatsuhashi. Now for the first time I could see the dog's face in the light of the shop. One of his eyes had been crushed, and the blood and solidified mucus in the corner of the eye looked like a ruby. The uninjured eye was looking directly down at the ground. The shaggy hair on his back was conspicuously bunched together and had a hardened look.

I am not quite sure why this dog should have attracted my attention. Perhaps it was because, as this dog wandered about, he stubbornly carried within himself a world that was totally different from this bright, bustling street. The dog walked through a dark world that was dominated by a sense of smell. This world was superimposed on that of human streets, and in effect the lights of the city, the songs that come from gramophone records, and the sound of human laughter were all being threatened by persistent, dark smells. For the order of smell was more accurate, and the smell of urine that clung to the dogs damp feet was accurately connected with the faint, unpleasant odor that emanated from the internal organs of human beings.

It was extremely cold. A small group of young men, who looked like black-market operators, walked down the street, plucking at the New Year pine tree decorations, which were still standing outside some of the houses even though the holiday period had finished. They opened the palms of their leather gloves to see who had been able to collect most. One of the men had only a few leaves; another had an entire small pine branch. The young man laughed and disappeared from sight.

I found that I was following the dog. For a moment I thought that I had lost him, but he instantly reappeared. He turned into the road leading to Kawaramachi. I walked along after him and came to the road where the streetcars run. It was rather darker here than in Shinkyogoku. The dog disappeared. I stopped and looked in every direction for him. I went to the corner of the street and continued searehing for the dog. Just then a chauffeur-driven hired car with a glossy chassis stopped in front of me. The chauffeur opened the door and first of all a girl stepped in. I found myself looking at her. A man was about to get in after the girl, but, when he noticed me, he stood there rooted to the spot.

It was the Superior. I don't know by what chance it was that the Superior, who had passed me earlier on the street and who had made a detour with the girl, should have run into me again like this. Anyhow, there he was, and the coat of the girl who had entered the car was the rust-vermilion one that I remembered.

This time there was no avoiding him. But I was thoroughly upset by the encounter and I could not say a word. Before I could utter anything, stuttering sounds began to boil in my mouth. In the end my face assumed an expression that I had not intended. In fact, I did something that was entirely irrelevant to the situation: I burst out laughing at my Superior.

I cannot explain this laugh of mine. It was as if it had come from the outside and suddenly adhered to my mouth. But when the Superior saw me laughing, his look changed.

"You little fool!” he said. “Are you trying to follow me?”

Then he stepped into the car and slammed the door in my face. As the car drove away, I realized that the Superior had definitely noticed me when we had passed each other earlier in Shinkyogoku.