From The Floating World
We live only for the moment, in which we admire the splendour of the moon-light,the snow, the cherry blossom and the colours of the maple-leaves. We enjoy the day, warmed by wine, without allowing the poverty that stares us in the face to restore our sobriety. In this drifting - like a pumpkin carried along by the current of a river - we do not allow ourselves to be discouraged for a moment. That is what is called the floating, fleeting world.”
Asai Ryoi: Tales Of The Floating World Of Pleasure, Kyoto 1661.
So. 4 Black Crows. My parents, bohemians and practitioners of Ukiyo, The Floating Way, named me that. In true style, I was named upon the whim, upon the moment, and for a joke as much as anything else. Father, so the family saga goes, was wine-drunk and in an opium haze when my yells announced the earth for me. Kissing my mother’s brow, he declared, “Now,
it must done in the native style...”
Thus saying, he plucked up the new-born and nameless me from mother’s arms and marched to the door. She would have smiled at him despite her labour, for she loved the very atoms of him. In her eyes he could do no wrong. He opened the door and went right out into the busy street, and me still womb-smeared with the juices that accompany a birth. There across the road, scratching and scavenging in the littered gutter for waste-scraps,hopped the four proverbial birds.
“Crows,” he announced over his shoulder to my mother, who watched him from the floor-bed. “Four Black Crows.” Then he took me back in, closed the door on the bustle of the street, and that was that. Such moments of providence, happen-chance, luck, fate and misfortune guide all our lives. Only the Ukiyo, inhabitants of New Yoshiwa, make a lifestyle of this, as far as I know, though fashions spread these days faster than an ink-blot upon fine paper.
For us born to be Ukiyo, only the moment is valid; only this now exists. For instance, even as I just brushed these fragments of memory down, the paper here was snatched up by a breeze in an unguarded moment as I scanned the cafe. I was up after it in a flash, but not before it had been tumbled away through the tables and into the open street, thus at the peril of wheels, hooves and puddles.
“Hey up, the poet chases his fleeting muse,” Rakan, the cafe proprietor, jeered to his counter cronies. They all guffawed with coarse laughter as I gathered the loosed sheet from the dust of the street. Down beyond the district bridge mountains shimmered, distant purple silhouettes through the yellow ghetto haze. The cherry trees astride the bridge exploded their blossom. The sun felt warm upon my arch of back. This sheet retrieved, I headed back to my table, unable to meet Rakan’s sneering eyes as I reclaimed this quiet corner. Weighting my papers with this very carving that I now seek to briefly write of, I took up my brush, and continued, writing this -
This story is a scrap of paper rolling away on the breeze. Cherry blossom snows upon the curve of wooden bridge.
Thus, you see, even the moment of misfortune is rewarded.
4 Crows - I long ago dropped the black as an ill-omen, and prefer the shape of the numeral to the word - seeks to decipher captured moments in this fist-sized ivory statue, which he here uses as his paperweight. Depicted is a scene from our poetic lore. A young woman pours a jar of water over a unfurled manuscript while three men and a fox look on. The figures are carved meticulously upon a flat base, and they appear to be outdoors. The men have brushes poking from their narrow jacket pockets, with manuscripts rolled under their arms - obviously they are scribes or poets. The fox wears a wide brimmed hat - it also has a brush, tucked away with one paw behind its back, thus immediately mischief is suggested. The fox has been writing on the unfurled manuscript, and the woman is washing its work away. This woman is slender, bud-faced, broad eyed, indicating great beauty. It is her I seek to record of here. On her back she bears a new born infant, and in minute detail, hanging from her broad belt, are two tiny, adult, human skulls. She is Ono Po, my wife, though I use this matrimonial term most loosely.
Ono Po Komachi, her whole respectful name. She was a poet as well as beautiful. I loved her. She was not just poetic, but one of the Rokkasen, that fabled class of mystical poets, and the only woman of the true nine.
Contradictory perhaps, where the moment is revered to the point of religion, the most respected people here in The Floating World are those who defy, defeat and transcend the moment through their creative urge. The poets, the artists, the carver of the miniature statue - and in particular the masters of these forms. Me, I am a hack - a musician of a poet, tinkling and plucking at my words. But Ono, her work was of a higher order. Though at times accused of plagiarism, as my carving suggests, she was indeed cleared of that, and I myself often witnessed her brush whispering across paper.
A little child is slung upon Ono’s back and two tiny skulls are attached to her broad belt in this carving which I commissioned from Kikimi, the master sculptor of such miniatures. And it is toward that child and those skulls that the course of my stream now flows; theft and murder, not plagiarism, these feeble waters now wash toward.
Not able to bear fruit herself - for as her secret kind are inclined to do, she had made numerous vows in return of her gift of verse, including that of chastity - she took to stealing when the urge of motherhood flowered in her. Momotara, she called the baby child we stole. She named him after the little folk tale, you know the one, where the peasants find the tiny infant in a peach stone and take it home with them as their own. I say ‘we stole’, for of course it is difficult to have a new baby without a husband, even in New Yoshiwa. There are rules and laws here also, intruding mainly from the world outside. And even without laws, there is always the morality of the physical heart.
Somewhat callously, now that I dwell back on it, Ono sought me out. I had already declared my love for her in a thousand throw-away verses. My poems dwelt not upon the dancers, singers, harlots or the cafe-girls, and when I vowed my heart to the Moon-Queen Of The Floating City, there were few here unable to read between the lines. So Ono came to me, knowing that I had insuppressible feelings for her. We were in this very cafe, for despite the ill-humour of the proprietor it is a place where poets meet to try out their new verse, or merely to sit and write in the quiet hours. She stood at my side and brushed her delicate hand lightly upon my blessed shoulder.
“4 Crows, I know that you love me. What do you say to that?”
“I have said so,” I said, looking down, trying to avoid the all-seeing blaze of her eyes. “I have written of it a hundred times. I make no denial of it, Ono Po.”
“Then I am yours. I will live with you, as a wife or concubine. But you know of the vows I have made. I can never lay with you. Not flesh to flesh. In every other way I will be your wife. But in return you must honour me with a great favour.”
I was staggered at this proposition, but checked my surprise and merely bowed reverentially.
“Ono, what you propose unleashes heaven in the garden of my heart, though my face does not announce this with apish grin or joyful laughter.”
“No, 4 Crows, you never were one for much laughter, and its your brooding darkness that attracts me.”
She called to the waiter for a jar of fine wine, then set herself beside me at the table.
“We have much to discuss here,” she said formally, then raised her voice, announcing to the whole cafe: “Everyone, me and 4 Crows are to be married.”
She turned the light of her eyes upon me, realising that perhaps she was being presumptuous. “Is it agreed?”
Dressed in a simple gown of pale blue silk, hair pinned in coils upon her exquisite head, she was beauty personified. My mind refused all logic or thought of consequence.
“With or without details of your requested favour, it is agreed. Paradise explodes stars beneath this still brow.”
“Hear that? 4 Crows and me are to be married,” she called to Rakan and his counter-crew. She had no fear of this cluster of drunkards, and they respected her, for she always spoke to them graciously, and as equals. They laughed and cheered and raised their glasses. Rakan made a lewd wink and called out, “The poet and his muse, sleeping and naked.”
Roars of laughter sprang up toward the paper ceiling. Ono, brash and lewd despite her genius and her chastity, yelled back, “Yes, even this poet cannot be a virgin forever. The blossom must fall and ripe cherries will swell to redden in the hot tease of sunshine.”
Here she winked gracefully at me alone, having already established that no communion of our flesh was to come of this. Thus, even at the onset, our moments were veiled with deceptions.
Now, with these brushstrokes, I must record that a child just interrupted my flow of verse. His parents eat in the back room - Sharaki, the strange printmaker, and Elu, his graceful, silent wife. Their boy came wandering between the tables, pausing to gaze in wonder at the swift flicking of my brushes. I always avoid children where ever possible, knowing that each one trails behind it a world of trouble. But this one, at that precocious, glorious age - five years old or so - persisted in his gazing. Eventually, unperturbed by my scowls and aloofness, he said: “What’s that you are writing?”
Much as I deplore them, I cannot ignore a child once our moments have collided.
“It’s a little story,” I said, without looking up from my work.
“What’s it about?”
Ah, children of penetrating questions! I ceased my brush and the moments slid over us. I looked at his face. He smiled, his eyes such moons-full of wonder. I had to think hard before him, for I did not actually know the answer to his question.
“It’s about The Floating World,” I said at last, which in a way was true. But he did not go away at that. His moons widened, and he had made my floating world his own.
“Is that where the world just... floats...?”
Here, remarkable little creature, amazing peeled ape, he swivelled his right hand as though screwing and rotating an imaginary globe that existed beneath the air of his cupped hand.
“That’s right. And all the houses are made of wood and paper, and they float like balloons; like little lanterns on sticks in winter. They are kites upon the wind. The chairs float. The tables float. And all the people just float between them.”
This posed absolutely no problem for the little fellow.
“Maybe they’re full of gas,” he said. “Or maybe they just all float on air that is really water...”
His gaze wandered inward as he peopled his new floating world with furniture and creatures.
“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll tell you what, shall I put you into the story?”
He nodded simply, amused, smiling.
“Well go away now, and come back in a while, and I’ll read the bit where you are.”
He spun and was away between the tables, meandering back toward the world of his feeding parents. As yet, he has not returned, though he sits there still beside Sharaki, possibly having completely forgotten our transaction.
I am now able to return back to the table there with Ono Po, where the waiter had just brought us wine, which was free - a present from Rakan to honour our announced engagement.
“Perhaps we should announce marriage every day,” said Ono, delighted with our first present.
“Yes, and in every cafe in town, until we can no longer speak the words for wine.”
She laughed and moved along the table, edging closer to me. My stomach churned and my heart leapt like a flock of startled birds - so close to now, the woman I had loved so much from the distance of a glimpse and through her verse.
“My husband has a quiet and gentle humour,” she whispered, teeth like pearls beneath the softness of her lips. Though not yet touching, the very warmth of her presence seeped through my thin clothing. My skin seemed to crackle with sparks. As though in Heaven, I felt that our very electric souls were merging. We meshed beyond the flesh and bone. I could barely contain myself from clasping her tightly in my arms. That this wondrous being was proposing to marry me, and was wholly serious in her intentions, seemed beyond belief. I expected the delicious joke to be over at any moment.
“We’ll live together as man and wife,” she said. “We can share the same bed, but my vows forbid me...”
I nodded quickly, interrupting, indicating that I understood fully the situation. I too was a poet. She had no need to explain.
“You can brush my hair out for me. I’ll wash your feet and massage your day-wearied body. We will shop together, and at night we will parade around the best cafes. We’ll do all the normal things that married people do.”
“But your position as poet...?” I was sincere in this - I did not want to damage her master-status. “Won’t the fact that you appear to have a husband, and appear to be sharing bliss of the flesh with him... your critics..?”
“Do not fret, my generous 4 Crows. I see how lucky I am - my quiet husband has a considerate nature.”
Her hand floated gently to rest on mine. My skin exploded with goosepimples, all my senses thrilling with vibrations. Her breath was soft upon my cheek as she continued.
“Those vows you speak of were made to the gods, not to the critics. The critics jump about and suck upon blood - fleas upon the dog! Our delightful marriage will only inflame them. They will slander my name and reputation. My poetry will be more popular than ever. Money and fame as such has no interest to me, but there is a delightful irony in knowing that by trying to destroy me, those very critics will ensure that you and I are secure forever from the financial perils of the world. They will cushion and cocoon us from hardship and hunger. They will sell ten thousand volumes of my poetry. And yours too.”
I bowed deferentially. I had the wit to know that I could never be a poet in the sense of this fabulous woman.
“This moon pales before the brightness of true sunshine,” I said, and was pleased to see that I made her smile.
“Don’t you worry about me and critics, 4 Crows. The fact is, my brushstrokes will record truth and beauty for all time, until the last star is extinguished. The voice of a critic is no more than a goat bleating on a hillside this very morning. Beside, we will not be married for ever. A year or so.”
This was devastation for me, and my eyes must have shown it.
“But I will still love and honour you, forever after. We’ll say a year.”
I shrugged, nodded. How could I refuse?
“A year of paradise in your presence - any man would endure a thousand years of torture for even a moment of that...”
My line, although actually true, brought laughter bubbling from her throat.
“4 Crows - it will be such fun with you. One year then, and by then we’ll have our child.”
“Hmm.” Though I nodded, I was now utterly confused. “A child?”
“Yes. A baby. Something my vows forbid. You see, 4 Crows, I am a poet, yet I am a woman also. There is such an urge within me... such an urge.”
Our faces were almost touching. She spoke quietly now, a conspiratorial whisper, her breath like silk upon my cheek.
“I long to have and hold my child. I am a woman, and as a river must run its course through rock and hillside, I must have my child to raise.”
The cafe around us erupted with sudden noise and confusion, the whole place suddenly in uproar. This was not at the declaration of the lovely poet to have her child, but at the intrusion of strangers from outside our island town. A bunch of drunken rhymers, young upstarts in bright silk clothing who considered themselves bohemians, had invaded the place, all out for a night of it from their synthetic towers of the Outer City. They had no respect for the cultured environment, and were jeering, mocking at Rakan and his bleary-eyed bar-flies. They over-ran the central area toward the little stage, and went announcing that they were to hold a ‘Ranting’. This raw form of poetry is much admired by us Ukiyo of New Yoshiwa, in essence capturing the verse as it is seared together in the particles and currents of the electric mind. In practice though, much of the verse created in this way is crude, inferior, lacking the fine polish of a written and crafted work. It suffices for the moment, but usually cannot place itself beyond the boundaries of its Time. For the purpose of entertainment however, we consider it a fine and valid form. True Poets like Ono would rarely venture into such a crude display of their craft, though actually only those who have been selected to swear the vows can produce anything of real merit at such a contest. This rhyming pack fully interrupted our conversation. Seeing that they were a crew with good money, and the inclination to spend it, Rakan allowed their take-over of his treasured cafe. He and his gargoyles settled themselves on their bar-stools, ready to drink plenty and enjoy the entertainment.
“A scribe,” the wild-bearded leader of this raggled-ranting band was bawling. “Jugs of wine and a scribe - that’s what we need. What kind of palace of poetry is this? No wine! No scribe!”
He was a great bull of a fellow, hair scraped back into a long pony-tail, his nose, ears, lips and eyebrows pierced with silver rings. His eyes had the passion of a mad-man, and no doubt when the moon was right he produced scatterings of fine verse. Those eyes met mine in observation.
“You, skinny little dark thing with the glasses on...”
He meant me and was pointing.
“You look like a writer. Will you scribe for us?”
I rose and bowed assent.
“I will willingly etch down the scorching utterances which burn forth this evening into the fabric of our world.”
“Ha ha!” he bellowed, striding over, clapping me on the back. “A poet too. And in such beautiful company. Will either of you compete with us?”
“No no,” I said, speaking for myself, “but I will scribe, if you can present me with paper and brushes, for I am bereft of both this evening.”
In an instant brushes, ink and paper were set on our table, along with another jug of wine, presented by the rhymers for my services. The childbearing conversation was thus jostled aside for that evening, and though our marriage had all but been arranged I knew even then that sinister darkness underlay my beloved’s intentions.
Just now the small boy at last returned to my table. His parents had finished their meal and were gathering up their street jackets.
“Mister, have you finished yet, mister?” he inquired with urgent politeness.
“Nearly. But now you are in it. Would you like me to read of you?”
He was thrilled with this bizarre idea that he now existed elsewhere other than his present little form. I read him out the faithfully recorded intrusion. His parents, who were familiar with the sight of me and knew I posed no threat to their child, stood by politely while I read out the short passage.
“You say my eyes are like moons,” the boy said after the end of his episode. He seemed solemn about this, as if slightly disturbed by the idea.
“Only as a comparison, to help paint a sketch of your essence.”
“And my grandmother used to say that - that my eyes were like shining little moons.”
This memory brought a faint smile to his face, a realisation that what his grandmother had once observed had been noticed by others. There was sadness tinged in the memory that sailed over his face, and I presumed that his grandmother had left this fleeting world. However, he bowed his thanks, then scampered across to his beaming mother. She smiled at me, waving jerkily as they threaded through the tables toward the street, so pleased, so pleased and happy with her little boy. And now they are gone, and I can return once more to my real tale here.
The theft of children, calculated and planned in detail, indicates a certain coldness of heart, an absence of empathy, that now I find almost impossible to even contemplate in Ono Po. She was the greatest of living poets. She sung and wrote with the breath and rhythm of the universe. She understood the peril of the butterfly, the transience of the blossom, the agony of the hunted doe. Yet days into our “arrangement” she was voicing plans for such hurt.
We had taken a timber and paper house together, near the high-backed bridge at the river mouth. The house was fragile and sparsely furnished in the minimal Ukiyo style. Our city now has many such temporary structures - adequate shelter against the wind and rain, but cheap to build, easy to replace in the event of the hurricanes or earthquakes that we are so prone to here. Ono had resources, and our house was not tiny. We had the luxury of a room each for our work, one for receiving guests, and a large inner space for a sleeping chamber. Here as we lay on our huge bed, Ono unfolded her intentions. I had spent a night of heaven beside my slumbering goddess, listening to her soft breathing, watching her golden face emerge as she slept through dawn. She revealed now a side of her I had never glimpsed before - it was as though she had a heart filled with winter. She told me that in return for our year of paradise, I was to seek out a new-born infant from the industrial ghettos beyond the City. This selected child I was to steal away within days of its birth. The parents, she insisted then, had to be poor, not of the Ukiyo class, and ideally already with numerous other children burdening their unfortunate lives. Even though this was planned within the privacy of our bed I felt an uneasiness, as though we were being observed though the translucent walls, or our very thoughts were filtering into the minds of passers by in the street outside. I picked over my words carefully.
“Why not purchase the child?” I suggested. “We could buy you a baby out in the secret market place.”
Such purchases are not uncommon for childless couples of some wealth, and there is an obvious mutual benefit. But Ono shook her head and leaned it solemnly upon my shoulder.
“No, no, dear husband, it would not be appropriate. I must have my child.”
Though she emphasised the word, I could not see how any stolen baby could be considered her own.
“I will be seen to be with child,” she explained simply. “It will blossom within me; neighbours and midwives will watch me swell and ripen. You will be the concerned husband, protective of his wife, anxious yet enthusiastic, optimistic...”
And so my beloved poet painted out the picture before me, and it came to be that we were living out a drama that I could never have written so well. We performed the man and the wife, though we did not undergo the complex family negotiations or commit to ceremonial, social marriage. I doted on her. I brushed out her shining, blue-black hair, a hundred strokes at a time; I washed her back with pumice stone and sponges when she bathed; I administered the relaxing massage, my lips tracing from earlobe to earlobe across the silk of her pulsating throat. Despite both our many temptations she somehow survived her vows, though I do believe she came to love, and lust for me as a man, as well as to have some respect for my own work as a poet.
Our routine changed somewhat. We wrote less often in the cafes, and more in the working rooms of our ‘lantern’ house. We would spend hours coiled together in the fruit orchards above the town, sitting entwined amidst the rows of plum trees. From our vantage point we would observe the texture of the ocean; the interplay of light between the harbour wall and the water; softened sunlight illuminating the blossom like a galaxy of lanterns; the movement of a boat sail, or a gull’s wings, or a pair of dancing butterflies. Our Moments were inseparable. I saw and felt all that Ono saw and felt, and later in solitude we could write about this, each in our different, unique way.
Two months into my bliss we announced at Rakan’s cafe, where we still went to drink wine and eat fish, that we were expecting our child. This was a well rehearsed moment, and was well greeted by our associates. We saw the critics there gloat smiles as they hurriedly scratched down the details of our announcement. Although these verminous hacks had never managed to damn Ono with plagiarism they could now broadcast to the world her breaking of those vows she had publicly appeared to cherish so much. Hypocrisy, they would say, is the worst crime of a true poet. Not just the authenticity of her verse, but her very integrity would now be in question. But of this ill-blossoming, Ono seemed not to care. Her own poetry would live forever - she knew that. She had carved out patterns and rhythms of such exquisite quality that they were placed beyond the perishable confines of our ethereal Time. So it was, without any vows actually broken, great controversy surrounded my beloved Ono and her published verse. People snapped up her books, and the illustrated wall prints of her work were sold out before the press was even dry. The district theatres which put on her dramatic works were packed full, night after night. Sheet, book or scrap of paper, if it bore Ono Po’s name it sold in thousands throughout the city. Many even bought my work to see how we compared, the publishers and print makers seeking me out with commissions after so many years of blatantly ignoring my efforts.
We were far down the road of child-thieving by this time. It had become something of an obsession with Ono, much in the same way, I suppose, as had the desire to construct the perfect verse. As the months progressed, more folds of clothing were padded beneath her gown when we walked in the street or sat in the cafes. We were still very much the new young lovers, sharing kisses and tender touches in public places, going everywhere together, hand in hand, never seen one without the other. To me, of course, this was joy and heaven, but time loomed like a dark stain above my paradise.
After five months or so of her pregnancy, Ono announced to the world that we would be moving away from the city. We would depart from the safe cocoon of New Yoshiwa and leave The Floating World behind a while, ensuring that our child could be brought forth in the refined air and calm atmosphere of the northern mountains. This again seemed an impulsive decision around a table of poets at Rakan’s place. Of course though, it was a calculated move. The mask of pregnancy was becoming difficult for us to sustain. Thus even our planned departure seemed completely acceptable to the gathered practitioners of The Floating Way.
Through her influence with city officials and ministers in the capital, Ono obtained travel permits which would enable us to travel north into the mountains, and even to some of the islands beyond our mainland. To me this seemed extravagant, as we only needed to travel a day or so to find our child. When I pressed Ono on this, all she would say was that our plan had slightly changed. Only when we had crossed the main bridge out of the town and were well on our way north did she elaborate. A child from the industrial ghettos would no longer do, she informed me. With a wave of her hand back down over the horizon of the city she said, “And surely you, my secretive husband, can see that.”
The towers and spire-chimneys of the great industrial flat-lands spewed forth a thousand plumes of smokes and gasses into a sickly sky. The sea beyond was a smudge of grey through the yellow haze. To be born beneath that canopy of poisons, I realised, could not be best start to a healthy life in this brief and perishable world. Sickness would have seeped into the very bones and growth of its blossoming life.
“My child will be a healthy mountain baby,” Ono explained, seeing that I had understood her reasoning. Nothing more was said on the matter, and like a docile pack-animal I meekly trailed her up the mountain path.
After three days hiking we hired a travel shack in the mountains. Nobody knew us round there. The nearest town was a quarter of a day away, and the farmers we dealt with were a friendly lot. Though the solitude was delicious and the walks spectacular, we both grew restless with the place. We were city folk who had grown to need bustle and movement in our busy days, and despite our intentions we grew uneasy with the space and the quiet. We resided there two weeks, then moved on. My hand here itches to paint wondrous scenes of nature that we witnessed while travelling the “Pilgrim” route which winds perilously through those northern mountains. We busied daily at our note and sketch books, capturing the essence of a thousand views and verses to be set down in full, we hoped, at a later date. The glowing hues and textures of those views still flicker even now within my mind. But none of that - no scenery now, for I have been sitting here a long time in Rakan’s cafe, and must now try to draw this tale’s flow to a satisfactory close.
We took another shack, this time on the edge of a town, stayed here another month, then moved on again. We changed our clothing into the garb of the local day-folk- blacks and greys instead of the colours of the city, which looked too bright and garish out there, and drew us ill-wanted attention. Our sham of the pregnancy was unnecessary, for we were completely unknown now in our wanderings. We were strangers passing through; two ghosts drifting the mountain paths, floating through nameless ramshackle towns and wisps of villages. We never spoke outside ourselves, except when booking rooms at an inn or negotiating a week’s rent for a travel shack from some farmer.
At about the time Ono’s period of pregnancy should have fruited to full term, our route brought us eastward, back toward the coast. In the holy town of Sennah, where thousands make the perilous pilgrimage to wander amongst the ancient temple ruins there, we stopped and for the first time consulted a map. We were just up river from the fishing port of Sendi. We had heard that this was a busy little place, with boats of all sizes sailing in and out daily, spanning out across the islands and to the southern cities. It would be an easy place to slip away unnoticed from.
At Sennah we searched out a disreputable looking inn, and there we booked a night-room. As we brushed down the bed and checked the room corners for scorpions, Ono casually told me that this once holy town was where we would find our child.
“But these are not the ghettos,” I protested, naturally uneasy about thieving a new born child in a small town. “People care about their children here. In a place like this a baby will be missed. We will be discovered. Chased. They’ll hang us from the tree tops!”
“Never-the-less, the moment is upon us.” Ono’s face shimmered with strange calm, like lake water at twilight. Her eyes glowed. A serene smile snaked upon her lips. The moon that night would be full, and I believe the madness of the genius poet was upon her. There could be no changing her mind, I saw that, and so sipped upon my wine, dulling my dread and fear of the day to come.
That black day, like any of the tourists and pilgrims booked in there, we wandered the markets and cafes of the town. We avoided contact and made sure that we did not engage in conversations in the cafes. We were like two secret agents in those melodramatic espionage shows, exchanging raised eyebrows as pram-pushing women passed by; hissing each other whenever we spotted a plump baby; trailing handsome young couples with baby carriages through the busy streets. All that day we kept our eyes upon new mothers or young couples with small children. Some of these we followed discretely, tracking them right to their homes. This sinister game was enjoyable, despite my fears, and there is something inwardly delicious about trailing an unsuspecting family through a busy labyrinth of streets and across market places, always keeping a distance but taking great care not to lose track of the quarry. Not for the last time that dreadful day did I enjoy the thrill of the trail that must be familiar to any good hunter.
“This is the one,” Ono declared, late that afternoon. We had followed a happy looking couple with a bright yellow pram to their home in a village outside the main town. I had my reservations.
“But these seem wealthy people, not peasants. Look at their home. Well made, good wood.”
“4 Crows, you have many doubts, I know. But our time together now is short, so please, do not blemish it with your futile worries.”
We talked in earnest as we skirted their village and edged back along a pine wood, heading back down toward the river.
“Ono, I love you more than my life itself, and you know that now. Let’s quit this foolishness. You are great amongst poets. I have grown wiser in your blessed company this last year. A child is not for you - it will only distract you from the real creations of your destiny. Our game is a folly and will lead only into dark times and heartaches. Please, let us go home now.”
She smiled, serenity and bitterness, winter sunshine, frost in the grass.
“The moment is now, 4 Crows. Do not make this worse for me than it already is, if you love me as your words insist you do. This is the house. These are the people. That is the baby. Tonight you must do as any true husband would do, and get your beloved wife with child.”
At a riverside inn we stopped for a meal of spiced meats and red wine. With soothing words and sighs and smiles, she smoothed my furrowed brow, easily persuading me back to the task.
That evening we lay on the shabby bed and for the last time, as twilight thickened to purple, exchanged the sweet kisses and caresses of a loving couple. At midnight, I slid from the window of our hired room and entered the world of silvery moonlight. My clothing was black silk - the trousers and short jacket of the assassin. Beneath a leering moon my footsteps whispered through the snaking streets and alleyways of that old town of temples. It was a good walk, for I skirted the centre where the inns and cafes would still be busy with people chasing their fleeting pleasures. A black shadow in moonlight, eventually I slithered along the outer walls of that home to which we had trailed the couple that afternoon.
There is a power in murder. Performed correctly, like any true art, it is a liberating and empowering act. Not the casual, brute murder of the drunken brawl or the suddenly infuriated husband who throttles his wife and repents ever after - there is no beauty or transcendence in that. But in the planned, calculated killing there is exhilaration and uplifting joy. There is pleasure in the initial urge; in the conception; in the meticulous planning and in the beauty of the act. Then, of course, there is the sustaining thrill of the afterglow. What composer will not recognise this creative pattern? Which poet or artist will deny the same process in one of their own successful works? The slaying urge is naturally recognised by the modern hunter - the person who chooses to pursue the beast or game, not through the desire or necessity to eat meat, but because of the addictive beauty of the pleasurable process. This hunting of the animal quarry is merely the subjugation of the murderous urge - a creative, humanitarian channeling of the killer’s true energies.
These words I came across penned in the margin of one of Ono’s failed attempts at “mountain verse”. The rough poetry, little more than doggerel, was scribbled through and scored over with black crosses, but these lines she had left intact, as though intending to come back to them for further work. The impulse described there, I must admit I am aware of, though through meditation rather than through practice. What honest, moon-gaping, wine-fuddled Ukiyo has not sat around a cafe table in New Yoshiwa confessing to the urge to kill? To truly possess control of the moment, such urges must be followed without hesitation. But of course we are civilized also, and our practice is governed by one unwritten rule - the act of your pleasure should never inflict unwanted suffering upon a fellow creature. Of course, there have been cases of Ukiyo pursuing through their murderous urge, only to confess their crime to the authorities within days, the desire to confess and to repent being another normal human emotion which controls the moment. There is great addictive pleasure in confession, in acknowledging and claiming guilt. I have meditated upon the subject, as I say, but the words I quote above were strictly Ono’s. When I questioned her about them - we were a week back here by then - she insisted that they were from an unpublished manuscript, a volume of darker poetry she called The Murderer’s Verse; work which she insisted preceded our child-snatching expedition to the north. Shadows prowled in her eyes as she spoke of this volume, and for the first time in our brief relationship I realised that my beloved poet was an accomplished liar.
I had predicted correctly - a tiny child meant doom for Ono’s true work in verse. She wrote little upon her return, scribbling in frantic fits and starts between feeds and nursing, and I live with the guilt of realising that I partook in the destruction of one of the genius poets of this Age. That it was me who took the child, I confess here. I brush it down. I, 4 Black Crows, son of Kunamasi the painter and Kameki the respected songsteress, both acclaimed practitioners of Ukiyo, of the New Yoshiwa district of this greatest of cities, took a week old infant from the house of its mother and father in the temple town of Sennah. By my third cup of this establishment’s best plum wine, I confess it here on paper, but must add also that the theft of the child is the only part I played in that affair.
Such was my skill in the black silk that night, neither husband nor wife stirred when I slid into the gloom of their bedroom. The mother, a slender bird-like creature of delicate beauty, slept within a hand’s width of the infant’s crib. Exhausted by the new life - for this baby was their first, despite Ono’s initial intentions - the mother was in unguarded oblivion. The child, still in his swaddling and his blankets, was slid into my black bag and placed neatly over my shoulder. I was back out of the window within seconds. My heart rampaged, pulsing painfully at the audacious deed, and at the dreadful consequences of being captured. My movements now were instinctive. I fled to the cover of the nearby pine woods I had edged with Ono that afternoon. As I approached the welcoming darkness, a figure stepped out from the shadows before me. In shock, I almost dropped the bag of sleeping infant.
“Husband,” the shape hissed. It was Ono. She had followed me, no doubt to see if I was true to my word after my earlier wavering. Beneath the moon and slatted shadows of the pines her face loomed, shining with madness. Her beauty was shrunken to a glow of animal ferocity set deep within her jewelled eyes.
“This way...” she whispered, motioning me into the cover of the trees.
“Give me the child.”
This I did gladly. Our travel bags were set there on the forest floor, and I saw that she was ready to flee into the night without returning to the lodging house. She opened the black bag and peeped at the bud-face of the infant. After some clucking and sighing she reached into her jacket, took out a stiletto bladed assassin knife, and this cruel weapon she handed to me.
“Now return and finish the job. Then follow this path down to the river.”
I stood there staring at the silver blade, completely baffled. A soft wind mourned through the valley’s pines, surrounding my silence. Somewhere ahead water flashed like lightning between the forest trees.
“Finish the job?” I murmured at last.
“Yes, of course,” she hissed. “How can you think to let them live?”
The awfulness of what she was suggesting was even more shocking than my taking of the child. My floating mind and any enjoyment of this world disintegrated there, in that moment. All love died there. Black clouds floated over to extinguish the silver of the moon. A whole world of joy and beauty came cascading around me in brittle, black shards.
“But no...” I stuttered, too appalled for fluent words. “No. We have the child. Let’s go now. There can be no need...”
“Their suffering,” she seethed, as if astonished at my lack of consideration. “Are you not a true Ukiyo? Do you not consider the fruits of all moments? Have you not thought of how every single moment of theirs from now will be framed with torment and suffering?”
“But this is madness...”
“What pleasure, sweet husband, can be left to them now?”
The infant began to stir, bleating up a whimper. Impatiently, she snatched back the knife and thrust the bundle of child to me.
“Take my baby. I see that I must play out the crow, and you be the donkey. Take the bags and the child down the path. Careful though - it’s a steep way to the water. There are small boats. Wait for me there...”
I called after her, pleading in my uttering of her name, but she was away across the open land, back toward that little house.
My life! My ephemeral life! The beauty and transience. All had become a place of madness and darkness. I had followed my beloved Ono Komachi, my delightful goddess, to this. Destruction.
We stole a boat and were in the port of Sendhi before dawn. As daylight shimmered up across the ocean Ono slipped something over the side of the boat. Something solid fell with a sharp plop into the silty waters. I could not even look at her, and never did ask about the assassin’s knife. We were apart now - separated. I sensed that her skin would be corpse-cold to my touch, but I could not even bring myself to brush my fingers over her arm. In that little stolen boat she became the doting mother, warming her child against the cold breeze of dawn, clucking and coo-cooing, feeding him goat’s milk, for she of course had nothing to offer from her breast.
Perhaps Ono would have silenced my potential of suffering too in that dark riverside wood, had she not needed someone to control the boat, and to deal with the practicalities of getting her and the child back to our city. I carried the bags; I bought our food and the goat’s milk; I booked our midmorning passage for the great southern port of Ise. For several weeks we port-hopped, thus confusing any pursuers who followed our cruel trail. On land we stayed a night here, a night there, but our time was mainly spent in ocean passage, weaving a tangle of tales to our fellow passengers, giving ourselves false pasts, false departures, false destinations. The oceans then were of the black, wintry kind, foam-flecked, making us passengers sick and anxious to avoid each other’s company. Of faces, lodgings, meetings and conversations I remember nothing - the doting figure of Ono, the image of her embracing her new beloved child - they are all that is burned upon my mind of this time. Port after port, cheap, dreary lodgings, until at last, utterly confident that we could not have been tailed, Ono allowed us to return to New Yoshiwa.
We returned here by boat as a married couple, now with child, and no one back here surprised to see us otherwise. We were soon settled back in our little lantern house, moving again in the same circles. Our friends suspected nothing amiss, and uttered up the usual baby tittle-tattle. Oh, he has his father’s nose, poor thing. But what beautiful eyes, just like his mother’s. And he’s so big already - what have you been feeding him on? Oh, such a pretty little name... just like you two to call him that!
I endured such prattling with my fixed, sickly smile, for indeed, as my friends commented, I had shrivelled somewhat, and looked far from happy in my new role as father and husband. Every night, to tell the truth, I feared for my life. I lay awake twitching, my bed now a separate one from Ono’s. I listened for the whisper of footsteps, for the soft hiss of the falling blade. But she, with her heart of winter, she had worse than death in store for me. Last month, three months beyond our allocated year, Ono Po left our paper home, taking the child to the area of her mother’s family, a town called Ussa, far south from here. Now she no longer writes poetry, and before she left said that she doubts whether the inclination to brush verse would ever return. Perhaps even worse, if ever she should feel the urge swelling within her, she would resist and thwart it, defying creativity with mundane tasks and house-chores. Nothing but shopping lists would be penned by her now, she told me. I was weeping as she said these things, and she laughed at my emotion as she packed the baby’s things.
I dwell here still in New Yoshiwa, consoled until now by friends and my streamings of night-poetry. These days, it is impossible for me to practise the way of the Ukiyo. Time lies heavy within me now. With every moment that grinds past I am crushed by the hurtling thought of my last approaching one. Thus, I brush down the final touches here. The urge to tell this tale came upon me just an hour ago, at this very table, and now my paper-weight holds down a good length of paper. The blue shadows on the street lengthen. Soon evening’s lanterns will glow. The dancing girls, the painters and theatre actors now begin their ritual parade, preening up this long street of cafes, the men strutting like bright cockerels, elegant women gliding along like silk-clad swans toward the city bridge. The smokers’ corner of this cafe is already busy - the soft bubbling of water pipes mutters across the air. For me, it is time to be on my way. I will lock myself one final time within the solitude of my work room. My carving - that paper-weight I designed and commissioned - I will take away. These papers I will leave here on the table, held down by Rakan’s blue-glass wine jar which casts its colour over the snow white paper. One more time, true to the Ukiyo way, I will allow the happen-chance take its course. The wind may take these black-scratched leaves. Rakan or one of his wild cronies there may pick them up and read them aloud to entertain the bar with 4 Crow’s feeble verses. Whatever, now the ink dries. My brush strokes die. I have given up staring into the moon.
This story is a scrap of paper rolling away...
Page(s) 40-61
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