Shike, p.82
Shike, page 82
Tell them you won't do it, Shike Jebu, Moko urged silently. Why risk death for something that isn't even an honour? Why give up your life for the sake of these madmen? But then he remembered that Shike Jebu, whom he admired above all other men, was himself one of the madmen.
"I will go on," said Jebu in a strong voice.
"At certain times in each person's life, an all-important decision must be made," said Taitaro. "Such a decision will determine the entire course of one's own future and may affect countless other lives as well. We call these decisions life-problems. Monk Jebu, we know that you are facing a life-problem now, which you must solve to settle your own destiny as well as those of others. To be admitted to the circle of teachers, you are required to answer two questions. Eirst, what is this life-problem you are facing now? Second, what will you do about it? Your answers must show these assembled teachers and abbots of the Order that you have attained a level of insight that qualifies you to be a teacher. You are given all this night. You will be questioned just before sunrise."
The old monk turned away from the altar where Jebu lay bound and naked with the gleaming steel spear pointing at his heart, and took his place in the front row of white robes. The booming of the stick against the hollow log began again, and the monks raised a chant in some strange, long-lost language. The temple reverberated with their deep droning.
Moko wondered, are we actually going to sit here until dawn? He recalled, from what he had learned in China about heavenly bodies, that this particular night of the Eifth Month was the shortest night of the year. Of course, he wanted the shike to have all the time in the world to find the right answer to old Taitaro's strange questions, but this stone floor was going to be awfully hard by morning. It was painfully hard now. The incomprehensible chanting went on and on, and Moko lost all track of time. He found himself nodding off to sleep. He heard the rustling of robes about him and looked up to see that many of the monks were pacing around the temple. Some of them were conversing in low tones and others were even leaving the building. How could they just stroll about and chat when a man lay bound to that altar stone in peril of death? Those who remained in their places kept up that devilish chant.
After a time, feeling a little ashamed of turning his back on the shike, but realizing that his simply suffering through the night or falling asleep in the temple would do Shike Jebu no good, Moko stood up and shuffled outside. It was a relief, after the sweet incense, to breathe unscented night air and to watch fireflies twinkling like earthbound stars.
"What do you make of this, Moko-san?" said a voice beside him. Moko started and turned. It was Abbot Taitaro.
His bewilderment and indignation bubbled to his lips. "Holiness, forgive me, but this seems like utter lunacy. I know you love your son. I was with you in the mountains of Oshu when you nearly died yourself, struggling to keep him alive. How can you encourage him to risk his life just so the other Zinja can call him teacher, when it doesn't seem to mean anything as far as I can make out?" A suspicion suddenly dawned in his mind. "Or, isn't he really risking his life at all? You wouldn't let him, be stabbed by that spear, would you?"
"Oh, yes," said Taitaro. "If his answer lacks true insight, I myself will cut the rope with a stroke of my sword, and the spear will fall and kill him."
"Why, holiness? What drives you to this?"
"The belief that only a certain kind of life is worth living." "I don't know what that means, holiness."
"Do not seek to understand everything about an Order whose lifelong members do not always understand it, Moko-san."
"But why kill a man for failing to answer a question?"
"Eor Jebu the problem might lie, not in knowing the correct answer, but in admitting that he knows it." Moko felt Taitaro's hand give his a light, friendly pat, and then the old abbot was gone.
With a twinge of fear Moko remembered Jebu's first plaintive words, which only he had heard, on waking up at the Black Bear Temple. Now he understood the test the Zinja had imposed on Jebu. They were offering what he had wished for. Peace. All he had to do was give an answer that would cause the spear to fall. Moko prayed that Shike Jebu would want to live.
Moko went back into the temple and took his place among the seated monks. In spite of his anxiety, the chanting and the incense and the booming of the hollow log lulled him, and he allowed himself to drift into sleep. There was. nothing he could do for Shike Jebu except be here. Now he was on a ship, racing over bright blue ocean waves, leaving the Sunrise Land far behind. He was being carried to the sea coast of Persia. His ship plunged like a wild horse, without sail or oar to propel it. The bow smashed upon great, green, transparent rocks like giant emeralds. The Persians were naked women, and they lived in circular towers of polished white stone without doors and rode about on the backs of giant birds. Brandishing sabres, long legs flashing in the sunlight, they came running down to the shore. They surrounded him and raised their swords. They were going to cut him to pieces and feed him to their great birds. He screamed in terror, "Help! Help!"
A comforting hand shook his shoulder gently. The echo of his screams still reverberated in the incense-heavy air of the temple. Monks were staring at him. His face burnt with shame and he bowed his head to hide his embarrassment. They honoured me by inviting me to their ceremony, and I fell asleep and disturbed it, he thought. I have disgraced Shike Jebu. If I were of noble blood I would commit seppuku, but I am not even worthy to do that.
Taitaro's thin voice cut into his agony. "The time has come for you to speak, Monk Jebu."
There was a long silence. With a chill Moko thought, he's not going to answer. That would be the shike's way. He would not wish to answer the question incorrectly. He would rather let his silence announce that he had chosen death. Moko stared down at Jebu's naked form stretched out on the altar stone, silently imploring the shike to speak. Beyond the altar, seen through the open end of the temple, the sky was growing light. The skeleton of the great torii and the cone of Euji were black silhouettes against an indigo sky.
"Just now I heard a cry for help." Jebu's voice was loud enough to hear but easy, casual, as if he were conversing with a few friends. "Earlier today I heard another cry for help. I refused it. The Order taught me when I was a child never to expect anything but pain in life. I am now almost fifty years old. I have loved, and love has brought me torment and loss. I have seen the woman I loved married to my enemy. I have had to kill the man I loved with my own hands. Death brought him peace. I held out my arms and fell into the embrace of death, and I awoke later and found that even death had abandoned me.
"I am not obliged to fight any more, but the woman who leads this country, the woman I formerly loved, has sent for me. This is the life-problem you question me about, Eather. I know there is no correct solution. If I die on this altar, it is correct. If I remain in this temple and refuse to leave, it is correct. If I go to Kamakura to help the lady who sent for me, it is also correct. I have made my decision. It is the right choice for me because I have made it." He paused a moment. "I will be a teacher, but not in a Zinja monastery. I will go to Kamakura."
A blinding glow appeared beyond Jebu, above the tip of Mount Euji, almost as if the volcano were exploding. It was the edge of the rising sun. Moko held his breath as Taitaro strode forward, sword upraised. He wanted to scream, but his throat was constricted by terror. Taitaro's sword flashed down, cutting the ropes that held Jebu to the stone table. Moko's scream came out as a sigh of relief. The old abbot backed away from Jebu, sheathing his sword, and knelt.
"In this decision, the Self is manifested," he said in a barely audible voice. Slowly he bent forward until his forehead was pressed to the floor. Row by row the other monks did the same. Moko bowed too, rejoicing, realizing that not only was Master Jebu's life saved, but he was going to return with him to Kamakura to help Lady Taniko fight the invaders. Eor a long time Moko kept his head down, while his heart danced with joy. He heard movement around him and looked up at last. The sun had risen fully and looked like a red disk balanced on the black point of Euji-san. The torii framed sun and mountain perfectly. The man who had lain bound on the altar all night was now standing, his arms outstretched in a kind of benediction. Moko realized that the temple and the torii had been placed to provide, at the dawn of the longest day of the year, this view of the sun centred over Euji, and that it was no accident that this ceremony had been held on this particular night.
Taitaro helped Jebu don a long grey robe. "The robe of a teacher is the grey of emptiness," he said.
"At the heart of knowledge is the Void," the monks chorused.
Taitoro placed a white rope tied in a complex knot around Jebu's neck and said, "The universe is bound by one cord tied with one knot."
"The cord is the Self, and it binds the Self," the monks chanted.
Now another monk stepped forward and handed Jebu a thick book bound between wooden covers. "Take The Zinja Manual," said Tai-taro. "It holds that part of our wisdom that can be written down. Read it daily and impart its treasures to those who are worthy."
The monks chanted, "Insight is a flame that turns written words to ashes."
"Let us welcome our new teacher into the Order," said Taitaro, and to Moko's amazement the monks threw away all decorum as they scrambled to their feet, laughing and shouting, hurrying forward to crowd around Jebu, to cheer and embrace him. Moko had never seen behaviour like this among monks. But the exhilaration of the moment swept him along, and in a moment he, too, was in the clamouring circle around Jebu.
When Jebu saw him, he reached out with a smile and took Moko by the shoulder. "Here is the one who brought my life-problem to me."
Moko ducked his head, embarrassed. "Please, shike, I don't want to be stared at."
Taitaro said, "Those made use of by great destiny are often humble people."
Moko turned to Taitaro. "Did destiny have a hand in this, holiness? Or might things have gone otherwise?" He wanted to believe that the shike had never been in real danger, but he also wanted to believe there was a good reason for his fear.
"Tonight's test might well have had a different outcome," Taitaro said. "I could not have predicted how Jebu would choose. But I see a great pattern in these events, a pattern of destiny, if you will. I will tell you about it as we travel to Kamakura."
"Then you're coming with us, holiness? How marvellous!"
"I will go some of the way with you," said Taitaro with a smile. Jebu turned and stared intently at the old abbot.
"Shike," Moko said, "are you not glad now that you made this decision?"
Jebu kept his eyes on Taitaro. "I do not expect to be glad about it, Moko. No matter what path we choose, it leads in the end to sorrow. And on this road, sorrow may come out to meet us."
It suddenly occurred to Moko to wonder whether the shike had ever known a moment of unalloyed joy. Moko found himself aware of an emotion that made him acutely uncomfortable. It was disgraceful for one so humble to feel pity for one so exalted.
Chapter Ten
Hundreds of banners of the Shima family bearing the clan crest fluttered in the breeze from the great ocean all along the seemingly endless line of samurai snaking down the Tokaido. In the centre of the procession a silver palanquin bobbed, preceded and followed by officers on horseback with golden-horned helmets that gleamed in the light of the setting sun. A cousin of Regent Munetoki was travelling to Heian Kyo to occupy the Rokuhara and represent the Bakufu at the capital.
Three men on foot, travel boxes strapped to their backs, stood on the landward side of the road to let the parade pass. Two were bearded Zinja monks in long grey robes, the third a short, cross-eyed man in a handsome brocaded scarlet jacket and trousers. Behind the travellers a broad plain divided into rice paddies stretched to the distant mountains. In the nearest paddy a row of peasants standing in water up to their shins transplanted rice sprouts to the beds where they would grow to maturity. Ignoring the gorgeous procession of the Shogunal deputy, they were racing against the setting of the sun to get all their plants into the earth before dark. In just the way that the foot soldiers tramped down the road to the beat of drums, the backs and conical straw hats of the peasants rose and fell in unison as they pushed the tender roots of the rice plants into the mud to the age-old chant of "Yattoko totcha, untoku na!"
"Those peasants are lucky not to get a whipping or worse for failing to bow to that great lord," Moko whispered.
"The great lord ought to get down from his palanquin and bow to them," said Taitaro. "There is more nobility in planting a rice field than there is in leading an army. The lives of these peasants are tales of misery that have never been written. They and their children eat wild roots so they can pay their tax of rice. Millions of them labour to feed the thousands of warriors and rulers who consider themselves so important. The peasants are truly the nation."
He pointed to a high, forest-covered hill some distance up the road, overlooking the sea. "With this army in the way we will get no further before sunset. That hill seems as good a place as any to spend the night."
Jebu was in no hurry to get to Kamakura. He was sure he was more serene now than he would be when they arrived. By the time they had climbed the hill and enjoyed the soup and rice he cooked over a small fire, the rumble of the army had faded into the south, the peasants had gone home from the rice paddies, the stars were appearing over the boundless ocean to the east. The seaward side of the hill on which they were sitting was a sheer cliff, dropping straight down to a jumble of spray-wet rocks. The rhythmic boom of the waves was soothing, reminding Jebu of the peasants' chant.
The lines in Taitaro's face were deeply etched by firelight. "Jebu," he said, "tonight I want to tell you and our good Moko here a few things. Einal things. Please bring forth the Jewel of Life and Death."
The same sense of foreboding Jebu had felt three days ago, on the morning of his initiation, gripped him now. Several times Taitaro had seemed to be hinting at some serious illness. Yet, aside from looking very old-Jebu was not sure of Taitaro's age-the abbot seemed in good health. Jebu took the Jewel out of a hidden pocket in the sleeve of his new robe and held it up.
"Let your mind drift and your body relax," said Taitaro. "Let sleep overtake you. The Jewel is an instrument like a mirror, that reflects another world. In that world dwells a kami, a great spirit. In contemplating the Jewel, one can at times become one with this kami."
I felt I had become one with a kami, thought Jebu, when I stood on that cliff in Oshu, protecting Yukio from the Mongols. Now the Tree of Life appeared in the tracery on the Jewel, expanded, entered into his eyes and seemed to be growing in his mind. A complex tracery of drooping branches formed a structure around him.
"Listen to me, Jebu, but do not hear me," the old abbot went on in a soft voice that seemed to grow out of the muffled roar of the breakers. "Sink into the world of the Jewel. Go where I send you."
Jebu saw Moko's wide eyes, staring through the branches of the Tree, full of concern, the crossed brown pupils reflecting the fire. Then Moko was transformed into a fur-clad giant with green eyes and a red moustache that drooped past the corners of his mouth. Jebu had seen this giant once before in a vision and had not known him. Now he knew that the red hair and light-coloured eyes were the stamp of the Borchikoun, that strain of Mongol men and women from which his own father, Jemuga the Cunning, had sprung. And this was Genghis Khan, founder of the Golden Eamily, grandfather of Kublai Khan, he who had sent Arghun in pursuit of his father and himself. The giant smiled his merciless smile and extended his vast arm. They were on top of a mountain, standing with their feet buried in snow. Below, in all directions, Jebu could see the countries and people of the world as clearly as if he were on a high hill looking down at peasants in a rice paddy.
As he had seen once before, armies of men on horseback, doll-sized from this height, galloped over the Great Wall and rampaged through China, burning cities, slaughtering the masses of troops sent against them. As the horsemen completed their conquests they seemed to change. Their arms and armour became more elegant, and they were joined by hundreds of thousands of Chinese infantrymen, as well as contingents of special troops with fire-spitting hua pao, great siege machines, and elephants. The conquering army was now many times larger than it had been. The troops piled up at the edge of the sea. They boarded Chinese junks and crossed the barrier of water to the Sunrise Land. Jebu wept and cried out helplessly as he saw the samurai overwhelmed, first Kyushu taken, then the Home Provinces. The Mongols burned Heian Kyo, put all its people to the sword, and drove the Emperor into the east, just as the Takashi and their Emperor had once been driven into the west. The last stand was at Kamakura. Jebu watched in agony as Taniko herself stood on the battlements of the Shogun's castle, shooting arrows into the waves of invaders. When it was hopeless she turned and threw herself into the flames consuming the stronghold.
The leader of the conquerors, Arghun Baghadur, turned his craggy face towards the mountain where Jebu stood and held out his arms, offering up his triumph. Looking up, Jebu saw that the giant beside him was now his old master, Kublai Khan.
Now the defeated people of the Sunrise Land began to work for the Mongols. New cities appeared on the ruins of the old. Ships were built, sailing ships after the Chinese manner but bigger and more seaworthy. They set out from the ports of the Sunrise Land, and from China and Korea. With hua pao mounted on their decks, they were able to demolish enemy fleets from a great distance, just as Mongol horsemen destroyed enemy armies with clouds of arrows. The huge new vessels transported the Great Khan's armies to the shores of the islands and jungle kingdoms to the south. Where mountains or jungles impeded the onslaught of the Mongol cavalry, the Great Khan sent forth troops adept at other styles of fighting, experienced with other kinds of terrain. A new generation of samurai now fought under the banners of the Great Khan, devastating his enemies. The flotillas turned westwards, attacking and conquering lands and peoples of whom Jebu had only vaguely heard.
