Runaway Horses Read online

  Honda moved forward beneath the falls. But the water struck the upper part of his body with such clubbing force that he hastily drew back. Young Iinuma, laughing pleasantly, came up beside him, raised both hands high to demonstrate how to break the force of the falling water, and plunged himself beneath it. He stood there for a few moments, catching the violently tumbling water upon his palms and outspread fingers as if bearing a heavy flower basket aloft. Then he turned to Honda and smiled.

  Honda was about to follow his example, when he happened to glance at young Iinuma’s left side. There, back from the nipple, at a place ordinarily hidden by the arm, he clearly saw a cluster of three small moles.

  A shiver ran through Honda. He stared at the gallant features of the boy who looked back laughingly from beneath the falls, brows contracted against the water, eyes blinking.

  Honda remembered Kiyoaki’s dying words: “I’ll see you again. I know it. Beneath the falls.”

  6

  ONLY THE VOICES of the frogs of Sarusawa Pond were audible in his quiet room at the Hotel Nara, as Honda, the legal documents untouched on the desk in front of him, passed a sleepless night lost in thought.

  He had left Omiwa Shrine toward evening, he recalled, and had encountered a cart laden with lilies just as his car was passing flooded rice paddies ablaze with the scarlet glow of the setting sun. The wild lilies piled high upon the cart and held in place with sacred rope were a faint pink, as if they had been cut just at the flush of dawn. Two students with white headbands over their school caps were pushing the cart, and another was pulling it. A white-robed priest walked ahead, holding a purification wand hung with paper pendants. The student pulling the cart was young Iinuma, and as soon as he noticed Honda in the car, he stopped and raised his cap in greeting. His companions followed suit.

  Ever since he made his incredible discovery beneath the falls, Honda had been unable to regain his equanimity. He had barely acknowledged the various courtesies that the priests of the shrine had shown him afterwards. And then when he had again come upon the three students, their offering of lilies and their white headbands brilliant in the sunset glow mirrored upon the surface of the rice paddies, he became still more abstracted. The young man left behind in the dust raised by the speeding auto, much as his features and his complexion differed, was assuredly in his essential being no one but Kiyoaki.

  Once Honda was left to himself at the hotel, he was beset by the thought that from that day on, his world would be drastically changed. He went down to the dining room at once, but ate his dinner as if in a daze. He went back to his room. The sheets on the freshly made bed were folded back to form a lustrous white triangle. Like the pages of a book lying wide open, they gleamed in the faint light of a table lamp.

  He turned on all the lights, trying in vain to keep mystery at a distance. The miraculous had invaded his own ordered world, and he had no idea what might happen in the future. Furthermore, though he had seen the marvel of reincarnation with his own eyes, it was a secret he could never reveal. If he were to speak of it to someone, he would immediately be thought insane, and the rumor would pass from mouth to mouth that he was no longer qualified to be a judge.

  Still, mystery had a rationality of its own. Just as Kiyoaki had said eighteen years before (“I’ll see you again. I know it. Beneath the falls.”) Honda had indeed met beneath a waterfall a young man whose side was marked with the same pattern of three moles. He was reminded of what he had read about the four successive existences in the books on Buddhism that he had studied after Kiyoaki’s death, following the teachings of the Abbess of Gesshu. Since young Iinuma was eighteen years old, his age as Kiyoaki reincarnated fitted precisely.

  These four existences, marking the progression of every sentient being, were conception, life, death, and then an intermediate period of existence, a state midway between the previous life and the reincarnation to come. At its shortest this lasted seven days, and it could extend for as long as seventy-seven. Honda did not, of course, know the date of Iinuma’s birth, but it was altogether possible that it fell somewhere within the period of from seven to seventy-seven days after Kiyoaki’s death in the early spring of 1914, the third year of the Taisho era.

  In this intermediate state, according to Buddhist lore, one existed, not as a merely spiritual being, but in the form of a fully sentient young child of five or six. Now, however, all the ordinary powers were marvelously heightened. The eye and ear became incredibly keen. One heard the most distant sounds, one saw the most hidden objects, one was immediately present wherever one wished to be. The childlike figures thus gifted, though invisible both to men and to beasts, could be seen hovering in the air by the rare clairvoyant who had attained sufficient purity.

  These invisible children nourished themselves on the fragrance of burning incense as they went about their rapid journeys through the air. Hence this intermediate state was also known as “seeking fragrance,” after the divinities called Gandharva in Sanskrit.

  In the course of his far-ranging flights, such a child would come upon the overwhelming sight of his future father and mother in the very act of copulating. A male child would be fascinated by the shameless disarray of his future mother’s body, and yet, though he burned with resentment toward the man who was to be his father, no sooner had this man made his impure ejaculation than the child would be seized with a passionate joy as though the act were his own, and give up his free existence to take life up within the woman’s womb. This instant was the next stage of existence.

  Such was the Buddhist explanation. Honda, of course, had once looked upon it as a mere fairy tale. And now all at once it had come to his mind. The process, he thought, was certainly what mystery should be: something that arbitrarily made its appearance, independent of the wishes of any man. A dangerous gift. Like a shimmering sphere of changing colors, it came plunging into the midst of the cold but well-regulated structure of order and reason. Its colors, indeed, changed according to principle, but a principle that was entirely different from human reason. Hence the sphere had to be somehow hidden from human eyes.

  Whether Honda was willing to acknowledge it or not, mystery had already irrevocably altered his outlook. He could not escape it. Perhaps the best course was to find an ally, someone to share the secret. There was young Iinuma himself for one. And then, too, there was the boy’s father. But what assurance had he that either one was aware of the presence of mystery? It might well be that Shigeyuki Iinuma, who must have had occasion to see Kiyoaki naked, realized that the mark on his son’s side strikingly resembled the one that his young master had borne. Even so, he might wish to conceal it. How could Honda question father and son about such a matter? Would not the very act of questioning them be ill-advised? Even if they were aware of the presence of mystery, would they be willing to share their secret? If they refused, the mystery might weigh heavily on him for the rest of his life.

  Once more Honda felt racing through him the keen excitement that Kiyoaki had brought to his youth. Though Honda had never yearned to exchange lives with anyone, the brief beauty of Kiyoaki’s life, like delicate blossoms on a branch, seemed joined to his own, the tree that for those few years had provided the needed support. And thus Kiyoaki’s life gave meaning to Honda’s, having flowered with a beauty that Honda’s itself would never attain. Could this happen again? What was the meaning of Kiyoaki’s reincarnation?

  Beset though he was by the riddles that surrounded him, Honda nonetheless felt joy stirring deep within him like a subterranean spring. Kiyoaki was alive once more! The tree cut down in its youth had sprung up once more. Eighteen years ago both he and Kiyoaki had been young. Now Honda’s youth was gone, but his friend’s shone with undiminished brilliance.

  Young Iinuma might lack Kiyoaki’s beauty, but he compensated for that with the manly force that Kiyoaki had lacked. Though Honda could not be certain from so brief an acquaintance, it seemed to him that young Iinuma, in place of Kiyoaki’s arrogance, possessed simplicity and for
titude, qualities hardly apparent in Kiyoaki. The two were as different as light and shadow, but they shared one characteristic: both of them strikingly personified youth.

  When Honda thought about those years he had spent with Kiyoaki, he felt mingled grief and nostalgia, but now also an unexpected rush of hope. He would have to pay a price for the excitement that was building within him, but he was ready to do so without regret, no matter how severe the consequences for his once unswerving commitment to reason.

  And then how strange a turn of fate that he made the incredible discovery of Kiyoaki’s rebirth in Nara, a place so intimately involved with Honda’s last memories of his friend!

  “I’ll wait until morning,” Honda thought, “but there’s something I should do before going to Izagawa Shrine. I’ll have my driver rush me to Obitoké for an early morning visit to the convent. I’ll apologize to Satoko for not having come to see her in the years since Kiyoaki’s death, and then I’ll tell her about his reincarnation, even if she won’t believe it. She should be the first to know. Now she’s the Abbess of Gesshu, after the death of the former Abbess, and I’ve heard that she is greatly revered. Probably the years have touched her only lightly, and I’ll be able to see that beautiful face of hers lit up by pure joy.”

  For a time Honda felt a youthful impulsiveness. Finally, however, he prudently decided to suppress that hasty notion.

  “No, I shouldn’t do it,” he told himself. “After all, she didn’t even attend his funeral. She made her decision to turn her back on the world, and I have no right to disturb her. No matter how often Kiyoaki was reborn, it would not concern her—it would always be something that happened in the world of deceitful illusion which she has abandoned. No matter how unmistakable the proof, she would turn coldly away. For me it may be a miracle, but miracles no longer exist for Satoko in the world in which she now lives. It won’t do to let myself be carried away by excitement over this. I’ll not go to see her. If this strange reincarnation is the work of providence, I needn’t rush to see her. Some occasion will arise for her to meet him. It’s better that I wait and let events mature in their own way.”

  After pondering all this, Honda found sleep still more remote. The warmth of his pillow and spread became oppressive, and he gave up all hope of a pleasant night’s rest.

  The window was beginning to whiten. In the pane of glass enclosed by a frame carved in Momoyama style, the reflection of Honda’s night lamp shimmered like a dawn moon. Against the faint light of the sky he could already make out the five-storied pagoda of Kofuku Temple rising up beyond a grove of trees encircling a pond. Only the three top stories and the spire thrusting itself upward into the dawn were visible. As he gazed at the pagoda, hardly more than a shadow in a corner of the gray sky, Honda felt as if he had awakened only to fall into another dream, like a man who thinks that he has escaped from one kind of irrationality only to find himself in the midst of another, even more persuasive. Thus did the pagoda affect him—the subtle curvature of those three upper roofs—as if it were the image of a many-layered dream. A smoky mist seemed to be rising from the topmost roof to swirl through the nine rings circling the spire and up past the flame-shaped device at its peak, finally to fade into the dawn sky. Even as he was watching this happen, Honda had no assurance that he was in fact awake. For all he knew, he might be in the midst of another dream, a dream so vivid that not even the keenest perception could distinguish it from reality.

  The song of the birds became louder. Suddenly the thought struck him that it was not just a matter of Kiyoaki’s returning to life. Had not Honda himself risen from death? From the death manifested by a chilled spirit, by a rigorous order like a file jammed with thousands of entries, by the tedious refrain, “Youth is gone”?

  Perhaps it was exactly because his own life had once been so far encroached upon by Kiyoaki’s life, so deeply buried with it, that life was now being restored to Honda too, just as the first rays of dawn brighten one branch of a tree and then the next.

  At this point Honda felt a curious relief, and at last, as if falling into a light faint, succumbed to sleep.

  7

  HONDA AWOKE with a start, realizing that he had forgotten to ask to be called, and by the time he arrived at Izagawa Shrine the solemn ritual of the Saigusa Festival had already begun. Bending forward, he made his way through the hushed crowd to the seat reserved for him beneath the canopy. He sat down quietly, without even looking around, and fastened his gaze on the ceremony before him.

  Izagawa Shrine was in Nara itself, not far from the railway station. To the rear of the shrine precincts stood three sanctuaries. The center sanctuary enshrined the goddess Himetataraisuzu, and, to either side, as though to protect her, were her goddess mother and her father, the latter the principal deity of Omiwa Shrine. A scarlet railing encircled the three small, beautifully fashioned structures, which were linked together by white screening partitions decorated with paintings of pines and bamboos done in rich turquoise and gold.

  Each sanctuary was fronted with three stone steps which were swept clean of impurity. And then to reach the sanctuary door itself, one had to ascend ten wooden steps. The white paper pendants that hung from the sacred rope at the eaves seemed to stand out like fragments of pure ivory against the scarlet railing and the yellow and gold-flecked bracketing in the dark shadow of the roof.

  Fresh mats had been spread upon the stone steps for today’s ritual. The gravel of the courtyard had been raked into a neat pattern. To the front of the precincts was the scarlet-pillared outer hall of the shrine, an open gallery in which priests and shrine musicians were sitting on either side. Through this gallery the worshippers would observe the ceremonies.

  A priest had already begun the purification ritual, and the three small bells attached to the base of a large sacred branch tinkled as he waved it over the bowed heads of the crowd. After the prayer ended, the chief priest of Omiwa Shrine, bearing a gold key hung with a crimson cord, advanced toward the center sanctuary and knelt upon the wooden steps, the back of his white robe half in sunlight and half in shadow. As he was kneeling, the assistant priests at his side twice chanted a long, drawn-out “Oh!” The chief priest then climbed the steps, inserted the key into the lock of the sanctuary doors, and reverently drew them open. The dark purple Sacred Mirror flashed from within. The stringed instruments were sounding a repeated tremolo of almost ludicrous intensity.

  The assistant priests spread fresh mats before the sanctuary. Then, together with the chief priest himself, they bore oblations covered with oak leaves to a table of bark-covered wood hung with white paper pendants. And now began the most beautiful part of the Saigusa Festival.

  The next offerings would be a cask filled with white saké and an earthen jar filled with black saké, both of them beautifully adorned. The cask was of plain wood and the jar was unglazed, but both were entirely covered with lilies, like two sheaves of flowers. Thus the body of the cask was completely wrapped around with the tough green stems of lilies, bound by fresh white hempen cord. Since their stems formed such a tight sheath, the flowers and leaves and buds were thrust all together in a promiscuous tangle. The greenish red buds had a rustic vigor, and there was a trace of green left even in the fully opened flowers, whose petals were streaked with a delicate pink. Their inner surfaces were dusted with red, and the tips of their petals, bent back in utter disarray, were translucent in the sunlight. Huddled together in such a mass, the lilies stood with drooping heads.

  The most beautiful of the three thousand wild lilies brought by young Iinuma and his companions had been selected to adorn the cask and the jar, but the rest were also brilliantly in evidence, arranged in vases before the sanctuaries. Lilies were everywhere. The breeze carried the scent of lilies. The theme of lilies was persistent and inescapable, as though lilies had come to express the very essence of life. Now the priests advanced with the cask and the earthen jar. White-robed, with black ceremonial headgear, they solemnly held these offerings aloft, and the
bound lilies trembled in beauty over their heads. The bud of one especially long-stemmed lily seemed as pale as a tense young man on the verge of fainting.

  The wail of the flutes filled the air. The drums throbbed. Placed before a dark stone wall, the lilies seemed to flush crimson. The priests crouched down beside the cask and the jar, parted the stems of the lilies, and dipped out saké. Other priests approached to receive it in their plain wood flasks, and then raised them in oblation before each of the three shrines. This ritual, with its musical accompaniment, seemed quite in the spirit of a cheerful banquet of the gods. Within the doorway of the sanctuary the noon shadows evoked a vaguely growing sense of divine intoxication.

  Meanwhile a group of miko, four beautiful young girls, had begun the Cedar Dance in the outer hall. Their heads were bound with cedar leaves, and their black hair was braided with red and white paper fastened with gold thread. Over pale crimson hakama, they wore gossamer robes of pure white with a silver pattern of rice leaves. The five robes worn beneath the white outer one revealed themselves at the neckline in an alternating white and red pattern.

  The young girls made their appearance in the midst of lilies, lilies standing upright, petals wide open, amber-colored stamens out-thrust. And each of these miko, too, held a bunch of lilies in her hand. As the musicians played, the girls formed a square facing inward and began to dance, their upraised lilies starting to shake with fearful abandon. The dance progressed, the lilies now elegantly rising, now dipping to come together, now separating once more. Again and again, like the passes of a keen sword blade, a graceful edge of whiteness cut through the air. As they were thus whipped about, the lilies gradually wilted, cruelly handled, it seemed, for all the quiet elegance of the music and the dance.