Picking Bones from Ash (32 page)

The four of us made our way through the building, out a door, and across a wooden ramp connecting the house to a side entrance to the temple. The ramp was covered but otherwise exposed to the elements, and the wind and the snow blew in my face, so I was momentarily blinded. Akira took my elbow and hurried me across. Once we reached the other side, he held out two small white packets about the size of portable tissue packs. When Akira saw that I did not know what to do, he shook the little bags vigorously and handed them to me. They were warm to the touch.

“Like this.” He showed me the bottom of his foot where a white packet clung to his sock. “Muryojuji temple is very cold in winter,” he said to me gently as he knelt down and put one packet on each of my feet. “You must be careful.”

Masayoshi pushed open a door and flipped a switch on the inside wall.

Statues three times the size of a man sat on golden lotuses in full bloom. Others stomped on the backs of demons writhing in pain. The altar was
a forest of statues, wise faces deep in meditation while they slept. Now roused from rest by our presence, they seemed to come to life. They blinked, parted their lips, and hummed. I heard a low rumbling sound, almost like feedback from a speaker. There were phrases, murmured softly, as though all the objects in the room were practicing meditation. A snatch of prayer here and there, a syllable flying past me, like a bat winging its way through a cave. They were sounds I’d never experienced before.

Bishamonten, guardian of the north, shifted his weight onto one foot and his robes flared in a C shape following the curve of his hips. He hoisted a spear up with his left arm, and grimaced, daring the elements to attack. Over and over again he repeated this bit of drama. And though the howling wind pressed against the northern corner of the temple, pushing up against the sacred space with icy, ill-willed intentions, Bishamonten slew them all, over and over, so the peaceful meditators in the middle would maintain their serenity.

Guanyin, goddess of mercy, had a cool, clean expression, as though I were standing on the bottom of a pool of water and she had broken the surface to gaze down at me. She held a little jar in her left hand, and her long white robes dripped about her ankles. Yakushi Nyorai, Buddha of healing, held out a little container of medicine for me to sample.

The statues seemed intertwined like the gears of a spiritual machine designed to churn out wisdom. At the very center of this arrangement was a large wooden box, perhaps twelve feet high, with doors that would unfold like a cabinet. This was the box I had seen in the pamphlet that Ms. Shizuka had given to me in Tokyo. Akira explained that it was the temple’s central treasure, and only on view one day of the year.

The two men opened three smaller rectangular containers, each about three feet high. Masayoshi pulled a flashlight from his pocket and aimed the beam at the contents. All three were
kannons
. The middle box was from the Kamakura era and had the clean, dramatic lines of that period that I have always loved. This
kannon
tilted her hips, and though she only had two arms, her crown was adorned with twelve extra heads. The final box held a very early
kannon
. She had that childishly archaic expression that makes people mistakenly think that ancient people were afraid of far milder terrors than we are today.

Masayoshi stood in front of a fourth crate, similar in size to the others, whose doors remained closed.

“What’s in there?” I asked.

“It used to hold a
kannon
,” Akira replied. “But it disappeared a long time ago.”

I thought of the
kannon
now in the Stillness Center in San Francisco with Timothy Snowden. “I’ve always loved
kannon
, ever since I was a kid.”

“You know about
kannon
?” Masayoshi asked, through Akira.

“Well, yes,” I explained, nervously. “My father’s an art dealer. So am I.”

“You buy and sell statues? Who is interested in such a thing?”

“Wealthy people. Or just people who appreciate art. Buddhism is becoming more popular in the United States.”

I studied the men. Masayoshi and Tomohiro were dressed in priestly robes and so at first glance seemed to be of a kind. But now that my eyes had adjusted to them a bit, I saw that they were quite different. Where Masayoshi was grave and elegant, Tomohiro moved like a fighter, taking little jabs at the air. He tugged at his robes with an accusatory sharpness, as though they were being disobedient when they slipped. Akira’s hands, for all his relaxed elegance, also danced when he talked.

“Akira,” I said, “are you and Tomohiro brothers?”

The question hung in the air and the men all looked at each other. Finally Masayoshi spoke quietly and Akira translated. “Yes. Masayoshi is our father. Our mother, Yoko, is inside the house.”

“That makes you my family too, doesn’t it?” I asked.

The men were talking to each other again and Akira interrupted me. “Let us go inside and drink some tea to warm up.” With that, the strange chorus of men swept through the temple toward the exit. And I, the foreigner, once again had no choice but to follow.

Back in the house, Masayoshi Handa’s wife, Yoko, presented me with hot green tea and a tray of sweets. It was cold, she said, using Akira as a translator, and it was important that I eat enough sweets to keep me warm. She floated around the four of us like a small, generous spirit, doling out refreshments, every now and then interrupting our conversation with some point she considered salient. Did I eat red beans in America? Perhaps I’d like a piece of sponge cake instead? Would coffee be more to my liking? She rarely entertained foreigners, she said, blushing, and she was worried that I would go hungry. Finally she left the room and the men and I resumed our business.

“We understand,” Akira said to me after we’d gotten the pleasantries out of the way, “that you are looking for your mother.”

At last. I pulled an envelope out of my purse and slid it across the table.

“I’m trying to find out what happened to her. How she died. If she has any family.”

Masayoshi and Tomohiro looked at my birth certificate and several photos that I had received from Timothy before I had left. They turned these over and over, speaking softly and rapidly in Japanese, and I wished, not for the first time, that I could understand what was being said. While Masayoshi held one of the photos up to the light, Tomohiro muttered under his breath, and Masayoshi murmured over and over again. “Hmm. Hmm.”

“We would like to know,” Akira finally said to me, “how you got these photos.”

“From a friend of my mother’s. I guess they knew each other in Europe.” I paused. “He’s a Buddhist priest too.”

The men were impassive. “The picture of the statue?”

I hesitated. “I took that myself,” I said. “See.” I isolated another photo. “The name of your temple is stamped on the foot of this
kannon
.”

“But how did you find the statue?”

“My father recently sold it. He said he originally got it from my mother.”

“Hmm,” the men murmured.

“There’s also this.” I pulled out the small red box that had been hidden inside the
kannon
at the Stillness Center. “There’s a bone inside.”

The men exchanged glances as though each held a piece to a puzzle and together they might create a complete picture.

Akira said, “People sometimes come here and claim to be her friend or her relative. Of course, no one has come here with photos like this before.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The woman in your photo is Shinobu Kaneshiro.”

“I’m still not following.”

Akira said, “She is a
mangaka
. She draws
anime
and
manga
.”

“Manga?”

“Japanese cartoons.” Now he slid his own photo across the table for me to examine. I saw a woman wearing what looked like a fat pink skirt that must have been supported by a hoopskirt or petticoat of some kind,
and a short fur coat. She was also wearing bright pink rain boots, and a hat with a wide brim, like a sunbonnet, which was tied under her chin with a piece of white lace. Something had amused her, for she had pulled her hands out of her pockets and was in midclap, the white gloves flashing like little fireflies in the dusky light. “She’s very successful. Famous. You must understand that when someone comes here, they mostly ask for money. Or sometimes they want a special favor.”

“Wait. You said she is very successful.”

“Yes.”

“But I thought …” I glanced over at the red box with the piece of bone. “Isn’t that her in there?”

The men blinked. Tomohiro coughed a smile into his hand. Finally all three men began to laugh. And though the change in mood was a relief from the strained and secretive manner in which they had been treating me, I was also annoyed. “What’s so funny?” I asked. “Do you know it’s illegal to carry human remains on an airplane like I did? I mean, what if I was caught?”

“What makes you think this is your mother?”

“Because …” How to explain my reasoning? A ghost had spoken to me and I had assumed it was my mother asking me to unlock the secrets of her past. “Who else could it be?”

“Where did you find this bag?”

“It was inside the statue in that photo.”

After a moment, during which the men regained their composure and conferred with each other, Akira finally said, “That’s not her.” Then he said the words I needed to hear. “Your mother, Satomi, is alive, Rumi. She goes by the name Shinobu now, but we still call her Satomi.”

The air in the room swelled, crested, and broke like a heavy tide. I had to wait for a few moments to breathe again. When I spoke, my voice was very small. “François said that she died. When I was very young.”

“No,” Akira said. “She is here in Japan.” He continued speaking and I tried to listen, but my mind was busy trying to adapt to the new reality that my mother was still alive. “We have never had someone come from America before, although I have heard that she is starting to become well known even over there,” Akira was saying.

Masayoshi was holding up my birth certificate and Tomohiro was inspecting my passport.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I don’t understand what’s going on. Could
you … would someone please explain this to me? Because up until a few days ago, I had a completely different life. It wasn’t a life with any demons or snow festivals or a mother, even.”

“What would you like to know?” Akira asked me.

“Everything!” I was exasperated. “Are we family? Are you my family? Why did my mother leave me? Why did …” Tears pooled in my eyes. “Why did my father lie to me and tell me that she was dead?”

Akira gave me a sympathetic look. “Parents do strange things, sometimes,” he murmured, “even when they think they are protecting us.”

At that moment, Yoko burst back into the room and asked something related to refreshment. Masayoshi and Tomohiro scarcely acknowledged her, just grunting and shrugging as she spoke. Only Akira smiled and bowed his head gently. I felt awkward, wanting to answer her questions—and needing translation to do so—but I also felt that I should behave like everyone else.

Finally, Akira looked at me and asked, “Would you care to stay for dinner? You could stay the night here afterward. It is getting dark outside.”

Another night in a strange place
, I thought. “Thank you,” I said. “I don’t really have anywhere else to go.”

Yoko ordered
sushi
, which arrived in a series of stacked black lacquer boxes via a delivery van. Tomohiro plied us all with beer, and Akira translated, keeping the conversation light. I only half listened, trying instead to digest what had happened. There was so much information to absorb. My father, a liar. My mother, alive. These strangers, supposedly in possession of the key to it all.

“What do you want to do?” Akira finally asked.

“I want to see her.”

“Don’t you find it strange that after so many years she has not contacted you? Does that not worry you a little bit?”

To be honest, I had not even thought of this fact. The news that my mother had not died was still so fresh in my mind that I was motivated only by a desire to see her. “She must have had her reasons,” I finally said. I thought about the ghost and the strange little statue back in San Francisco. “It’s difficult to explain, exactly, but for the past couple of months I’ve had this feeling that something is not quite right in my life. I’ve been having … bad dreams. I think I’m supposed to find my mother. I think she can help me.”

“She might not want to,” Akira said.

“I still want to try. I still want the truth.”

There was a lull in the conversation, and after a pause Yoko began to ask me questions about America. She wanted to know about San Francisco and if I often saw movie stars, and Akira rolled his eyes and told her that she had confused Los Angeles with San Francisco. Yoko laughed and Tomohiro shook his head. Though I felt tension between them all, I also recognized the dynamics of a family. They were loyal to each other. Protective, even. I wished I could understand the private conversations they shared.

Presently, Akira said, “We can take you to her.” He raised his hand when he saw me tighten with excitement. “There is one condition.”

“Anything,” I said, assuming that I would have to pay for more attorneys, or part with the photos and my birth certificate for the time being.

“My father needs you to convince her to come see him.”

I blinked.

“She won’t see us,” Akira said. “She rarely sees anyone.”

“Why?”

Again there was a lag in information while the men discussed matters.

“Satomi,” Akira said, “I mean, your mother, has become strange. She’s very successful, but she has chosen to cut herself off from her family. It isn’t just you that she’s abandoned. She has abandoned us, too.”

“Then how do you know how to find her?”

“We know her attorney. And we know that she comes to the north every year during the snow festivals because she gets her inspiration from classic Japanese traditions. At least, that’s what she says in her interviews.”