Luck

A coarse bamboo blind hung over the entrance, so that even from inside the workshop one could see the state of the street outside quite well.

The road leading up to Kiyomizu had been crowded for some time now. A monk carrying a gong passed by. A woman in formal travel dress passed by. After her, and rather unusually, came a wickerwork ox-cart drawn by a yellow ox. All of them appeared through the sparse reed slats of the blind, from right and from left, and no sooner had they come into view than they were gone. Amid all that movement, the only thing unchanged was the color of the earth in the narrow road, where the afternoon sun warmly toasted the spring.

Watching this stream of people from inside the workshop without any particular purpose, a young samurai suddenly seemed to think of something and called out to his master, the potter.

"As usual, there seem to be a great many people going to pray to the Kannon."

"Indeed there are."

Perhaps because his attention was on his work, the potter answered a little irritably. But he was an old man with small eyes, an upturned nose, and something faintly comical about him; there was not the slightest malice in either his face or his manner. He was wearing what seemed to be a hemp robe. With his limp crumpled eboshi cap on his head, he looked like one of the figures from the picture scrolls of Bishop Toba, which were so admired these days.

"Maybe I ought to start making daily visits myself. When a man can't get ahead like this, life becomes unbearable."

"You jest, sir."

"Not at all. If it meant being granted good luck, I'd be devout too. Daily visits, a retreat at the temple, whatever it took, it'd be cheap enough. In the end it's just a matter of doing a bit of business with the gods and Buddhas."

The young samurai, speaking in the breezy, showy tone natural to his age, licked his lower lip and looked restlessly around the workshop. It was a shabby little thatched hut built against a bamboo grove, so cramped inside that it almost stopped up one's nose. Yet while the street beyond the blind whirled with ceaseless motion, here every jar and flask, their reddish earthen surfaces breathing in the gentle spring breeze, seemed to have sat in silence just so for a hundred years. Apparently even the swallows would not build a nest on the ridgebeam of this house. ...

Since the old man did not answer, the young samurai continued.

"An old fellow like you must have seen and heard all sorts of things by now. Tell me, then. Does the Kannon really grant people good fortune?"

"Indeed she does. In old times, at least, I have heard there were such cases from time to time."

"What sort of cases?"

"Well, I could hardly explain it all in a word. Still, I doubt such stories would be especially amusing to a gentleman like yourself."

"Poor old man, you don't know me. I'm a fellow with at least a little piety in him. If I were really to be granted luck, then tomorrow even..."

"Piety, is it? Or a merchant's instinct?"

The old man smiled, the wrinkles gathering at the corners of his eyes. The clay he had been kneading had finally taken the shape of a jar, and he seemed a good deal more at ease.

"Matters like the intentions of gods and Buddhas are not so easily understood when one is as young as you, sir."

"Of course I don't understand them. That's why I'm asking you."

"No, no, it is not simply a question of whether gods and Buddhas grant fortune or do not grant it. It is a question of whether the fortune they grant is good or bad."

"But once you've been granted it, don't you know? Whether it's good fortune or bad?"

"That, too, may be a little difficult for someone like you to understand."

"It seems to me your reasoning is even harder to understand than good luck and bad."

The sun must have begun to slope westward. Compared with earlier, the shadows falling across the road had grown slightly longer. Drawing those long shadows behind them, two peddler women with buckets balanced on their heads passed across the blind. One held in her hand a spray of cherry blossoms, no doubt meant as a souvenir for the inn.

"Even that woman over at the western market, the one selling spun hemp..."

"Which is exactly why I've been wanting to hear your story."

For a while the two were silent. The young samurai, plucking at the beard on his chin with his fingernail, gazed vacantly out at the road. What gleamed white like shell fragments must have been cherry blossoms spilled from that branch a moment ago.

"Won't you tell it, old man?"

At last the young samurai spoke in a sleepy voice.

"Then, with your permission, I shall tell you one. Though it is only the usual sort of old tale."

With that preface, the old potter slowly began. He began in a leisurely tone that only a man with no need to care whether the days were long or short could manage.

"It must have been thirty or forty years ago now. That woman, when she was still a girl, once made a vow at Kannon of Kiyomizu. She prayed that she might live her whole life in comfort. At the time, you see, after being orphaned by the death of her only mother, she was in such circumstances that even day-to-day living was difficult. So her making such a prayer was not at all unreasonable.

"Her dead mother had originally been a medium at Shirushu Shrine, and for a time she had done very well indeed. But after rumors spread that she employed fox spirits, people stopped coming almost altogether. She was a large old woman, with pale pockmarks and a moist freshness strangely at odds with her age. With looks like that, let alone foxes, even a man might have..."

"I'd rather hear about the daughter than the mother."

"Ah yes, my apologies. Since her mother died, the daughter had only her own thin arms to rely on; however much she worked, she could not make a living of it. So beautiful and clever as she was, when she went to make her retreat at the temple she was embarrassed because her clothes were in rags."

"Oh? Was she really that pretty?"

"Indeed she was. In temper and in looks, I may be partial, but I thought she would have been no disgrace wherever she was sent."

"A pity it was long ago."

The young samurai tugged lightly at the cuff of his faded indigo suikan robe and said this. The old man let a laugh escape through his nose and went on in the same unhurried way. In the bamboo grove behind them, warblers were singing busily.

"During a retreat of twenty-one days, on the night her vow was to be fulfilled, she happened to have a dream. Among the others praying in the same hall there was a hunchbacked monk, and he was droning on and on, chanting something like a dharani. Perhaps that stuck in her mind. Even as she began to drift into sleep, his voice would not leave her ears. It felt exactly as though an earthworm were crying beneath the veranda. Then somehow that voice turned into human speech and she heard: 'On the road home from here, a man will speak to you. Hear what he says.' So she said.

"Startled, she woke up, and the monk was still absorbed in his chanting. But no matter how intently she listened, she could not make out what he was saying. Then, as she happened to glance across, she saw the face of Kannon in the dim light of the shrine lamp. It was the same solemn, exquisite face she was used to worshiping, yet as she looked at it she strangely felt, once again, that someone was saying near her ear, 'Hear what that man says.' So the girl became utterly convinced it was a divine message from Kannon.

"Well then."

"Late that night, after leaving the temple and starting down the long slope toward Gojo, just as foretold a man came up from behind and seized her. It was one of those warm early-spring nights, but unfortunately it was dark, and she could not see the man's face, much less what he was wearing. As she struggled to pull free, her hand touched his moustache. A fine thing indeed, for such a moment to fall on the very night her vow was fulfilled.

"On top of that, when she asked his name he would not give it. When she asked where he was from, he would not say. He only kept saying she must do as he said, and, embracing her tightly, dragged her northward down the road at the foot of the hill. There was no one about at that hour, so there was nothing for it. She could neither weep nor cry out."

"I see. And then?"

"In the end he took her into the pagoda at Yasaka Temple, and there she spent the night. But as for what happened there, surely there is no need for an old man like me to explain it in detail."

The old man smiled again, the wrinkles gathering at the corners of his eyes. The shadows on the road had grown longer still. Perhaps because of a breeze that passed without seeming to blow, the cherry blossoms scattered here and there had gradually drifted this way, and now lay spilling white dots among the stones below the eaves.

"No joking."

As if remembering himself, the young samurai plucked again at his chin beard.

"Is that the end of it, then?"

"If that were all, there would be no reason to tell the story at all."

Still handling the jar, the old man continued. "When dawn came, the man said that what had happened was surely a bond from a former life, and asked her to become husband and wife with him."

"I see."

"Had there been no divine message in the dream, it might have been otherwise. But since the girl believed she was following Kannon's will, she finally nodded her head. After they performed a mere formal cup-sharing ceremony, he brought out from the back of the pagoda, for immediate use, ten bolts of figured silk and ten bolts of plain silk. That much, perhaps, would be a little difficult even for you, sir, to imitate."

The young samurai only grinned and said nothing. The warblers, too, had fallen silent.

"Before long the man said he would return by evening, and, leaving the girl there alone to keep house, hurried off somewhere. After he left, the loneliness was even worse. However clever she was, in such a situation she must have felt frightened. To distract herself she casually went to look at the back of the pagoda, and what should she see? Not just the silks, but caskets beyond count filled with valuables such as jewels and gold dust. Even so resolute a girl could not help clutching her breast at that.

"Depending on what the goods were, of course, but a man who possessed such treasure was beyond doubt either a brigand or a thief. Once she thought that, her earlier loneliness gave way to fear, and she felt she could not remain there another moment. If things went badly and she fell into the hands of the authorities, who could tell what might happen to her?

"So she hurried back toward the entrance, meaning to look for a way to escape, when someone called to her in a hoarse voice from behind the caskets. She had thought there was no one there, so you can imagine how frightened she was. Looking over, she saw something crouched among sacks of gold dust, round and squat, neither quite human nor quite sea slug. It was a short, bent old nun of about sixty, with bad eyes, a wrinkled face, and a crooked back. And whether she sensed the girl's thoughts or not, she leaned forward on her knees and, in a coaxing, cat-soft voice quite out of keeping with her appearance, offered the greetings of a first meeting.

"The girl was in no state for polite conversation, of course. But fearing it would be dangerous if the old woman suspected she meant to flee, she unwillingly leaned an elbow on one of the caskets and began some empty small talk. From the way she spoke, it seemed this old nun had long served the man as cook or something of that sort. But whenever it came to the nature of his business, she would not say a word. Even that troubled the girl enough, and to make matters worse the nun was a little hard of hearing, so everything had to be said and repeated again and again. The girl was nearly driven to tears with impatience.

"That went on until around noon, I suppose. In the midst of chatting about this and that, about the cherry blossoms at Kiyomizu blooming or the bridge works at Gojo being finished, the old woman at last began to doze, whether from age or perhaps because the girl's answers had been so half-hearted. Watching for her chance, the girl listened to the old woman's breathing, then crawled softly to the entrance and opened the door a crack. Luckily there was no sign of anyone outside either.

"Had she run away just then, nothing more would have happened. But suddenly she remembered the figured silk and plain silk she had received that morning, and went back quietly to the caskets to fetch them. Then, by some mischance, she stumbled over one of the sacks of gold dust and her hand brushed the old nun's knee. That was the end of that. The nun started awake, and for a moment sat gaping in astonishment. Then she became like a madwoman and clung to the girl's legs. Half crying, she rattled on in a torrent. From the broken words that reached her ears, it seemed she was saying that if the girl escaped, she herself would be made to suffer terribly. But the girl was in a moment when staying there might cost her her life, so naturally she paid no attention. At last the two women came to grappling.

"They struck. They kicked. They threw sacks of gold dust. Even the rats nesting in the beams must have seemed in danger of being shaken down. Once matters came to that, the old woman's strength, driven by desperation, was nothing to laugh at. But youth is youth. Before long the girl, with the figured silk and plain silk tucked under one arm, slipped breathlessly out through the pagoda door. By then the nun was no longer able even to speak. Later I heard that her body was found lying face-up in a dim corner, a little blood from her nose, her head covered in spilled gold dust.

"After leaving Yasaka Temple, the girl, understandably unwilling to go through the busier parts of town, made for the house of an acquaintance around Gojo Kyogoku. This acquaintance, too, was a day-to-day pauper, but perhaps because the girl gave her one bolt of silk, she bustled about boiling water, cooking gruel, and taking care of her in various ways. At last the girl was able to draw a real sigh of relief."

"At last I can breathe easy too,"

the young samurai said, pulling the fan from his belt and snapping it open neatly as he looked at the evening sun outside the blind. Just now five or six common laborers had passed by laughing and shouting noisily through that sunset, and yet their shadows still remained stretched across the road. ...

"So that was really the end of it, then?"

"Ah, but," said the old man, shaking his head with great emphasis, "as she sat there in that acquaintance's house, the traffic outside suddenly grew noisy, and she heard people crying, 'Look there! Look there!' Since she had reason enough to feel guilty, her heart began pounding again. Had that thief come to take revenge? Or had the police come in pursuit of her? Once she thought of such things, she could hardly sit there calmly sipping her gruel.

"So she peered cautiously out through a crack in the door. There she saw five or six officers passing in a body, with an inspector among them, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers. Enclosed among them was a man bound with ropes, wearing a torn suikan and no eboshi cap, being dragged along. It seemed they had caught a thief and were now taking him to his dwelling to make an official search.

"And that thief, would you believe it, was the very same man who had spoken to her on the slope at Gojo the night before. When she saw him, tears rose somehow to her eyes. I heard this from the woman herself. It wasn't that she had fallen in love with him or anything of the sort. But when she saw him in bonds, all at once she pitied herself so deeply that she could not help crying. When I heard that, I truly thought to myself..."

"What, exactly?"

"That one must think carefully before making vows to Kannon."

"But old man, that woman was still able to go on somehow afterward, wasn't she?"

"Somehow? Why, she has long since come to want for nothing. She made capital of the money she got by selling the silks. In that, at least, Kannon did not fail to keep her promise."

"Then even after going through something like that, it turned out well enough, didn't it?"

The light outside had turned yellow with evening before they knew it. In it came the faint sound of the wind in the bamboo grove here and there. The traffic on the road, too, seemed for the moment to have died away.

"If she killed someone and became a thief's wife without having meant to, it couldn't be helped, could it?"

The young samurai tucked his fan into his belt and stood up. The old man too was washing his mud-smeared hands in a pail of water. Both of them somehow looked as though, in the waning spring light and in the thoughts of the other, they sensed something not wholly satisfying.

"Anyway, that woman was a lucky one."

"You jest, sir."

"Not at all. You think so too, don't you, old man?"

"As for me, I would want no such fortune whatever."

"Really? If it were me, I'd accept it without a second thought."

"Then you should worship Kannon devoutly."

"Yes, yes. Starting tomorrow, perhaps I'll make a retreat there myself."

(December, Taisho 5 [1916])