Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (58 page)

Semp
stood up then and walked over to the large altar. The four of us were still standing in a line. Semp
lit three sticks of incense and handed one to each of the men. “You don’t need one,” he said to me. “You’ve held a lot of incense lately.”

Then Semp
transformed into a priest. He dropped the boyish, amused expression he had while playing with the vacuum cleaner. He stood up straighter, and his voice dropped in pitch till it took on the burnished, cavernous quality that I so loved. “
Namu nyorai ongu
. . . ,” he began. I looked at the men. They were standing very straight too.

Semp
cut the air in front of us three times, his silk robe hissing
as his arm sliced the air. Then he came behind us and touched our backs and our spines, as though to release some invisible being that might have taken up residence inside.

It was over very quickly, and Semp
relaxed and smiled at us again, the corners of his eyes crinkling up. “Remember,” he said. “If you can’t sleep, try the lion pose and face north. That’s what the Buddha did. It might be that you need to release something in your body to the north.” The lion pose referred to sleeping with the right side down, with the heart farthest away from the floor. It was so called because this was how a lion slept. Semp
said there was ample research to show that if you slept with your heart away from the floor, it was easier for the body to wake up. Lions slept like this so they could wake up instantly and escape from any predators.

“I thought you aren’t supposed to face north when you sleep,” I asked.

“I said if you
can’t
sleep, you should face the north,” Semp
responded. “That will encourage whatever spirit is bothering you to continue on its way. Cut the air three times like I taught you, do the lion pose, and then face north.”

Semp
wanted to treat everyone to dinner. He knew a place run by one of his
danka
, and he offered to take us there. It took a few minutes for Semp
to change back into his relaxed priest’s clothing. Then I met him by the parking lot, and we got into his car. At the bottom of the hill we could see the little figures of the crew members earnestly demonstrating the exorcism for Okisa. Endo had his notebook out and was consulting it. Okisa was nodding earnestly. Semp
laughed. “Boys are always boys, Marie,” he said. The crew looked up when they heard the car engine, and then scampered into the van. Semp
laughed again, then pulled up next to the van and waited until the crew was ready to follow us to dinner.

Two months later, when the documentary ran on television, I had an email from Endo. He told me that his film editor had been
comfortable during the editing process. She hadn’t gotten so much as a headache. The scenes of Sai no Kawara had scared her, but ultimately she didn’t see any ghosts on the film. Later that summer, Semp
would be traveling to T
ky
for a Buddhist priests’ convention, and he offered to meet with the film editor and give her a complete exorcism so she might never be plagued by ghosts again.