Zen Attitude (20 page)

The door to the dojo was padlocked shut. Padlocked, when Akemi had promised she’d leave it open for me. I jiggled the lock uselessly a few times.

I’d have to return to the house. All the windows in the back were dark, and I recognized the long wall of sliding glass windows that led into the quiet room where Mrs. Mihori practiced the tea ceremony.

I removed my sneakers and stepped up on the wooden ledge running outside the window. Pressing on the window, I found that it slid open. I walked inside and, in the glow of moonlight, saw the room was empty except for a tea table, a pile of neatly stacked cushions, and a graceful
andon
lamp in the corner. I went to the corner where the lamp plugged in. Excellent, another socket. I plugged in my telephone.

As I turned, I caught a glimpse of movement and froze before realizing it was a reflection of my own body against some large, glass-covered portraits. My eyes were drawn back to the pictures of Mrs. Mihori’s parents on the Buddhist altar.

The woman had a downward cast to her gaze, and the man had a certain hardness around his mouth. Both wore plain black
kimono.
They were clearly of the old generation who had starved through the war but carried on into a more prosperous future. How would they feel knowing Nana was disliked by so many people in town and might be cast out one day along with her own child?

The house was absolutely still and dark; it was easy to imagine their spirits present. I reminded myself that Nana’s parents had not lived on the premises. It was disturbing, this affinity I felt for them. It was as if I’d seen them elsewhere. This sensation came to me occasionally when I was antiques shopping; it usually meant I had seen the piece before, and one or both had to be reproductions. This time was different.

I traveled backward in my memory until the pictures slipped into place. I had seen the two portraits in Denen-Chofu when I’d slowly paced through a room examining wood-block prints. Their expressions had seemed to reprimand me for snooping on Haru and Nomu Ideta, whom I now recognized for their true identity: Nana Mihori’s brother and sister.

There was no time to think. The television had been turned off, and I heard quick footsteps in the hallway outside the room.

I squeezed through the window and half fell into the garden. As I was pulling on my shoes a light snapped on, causing a herd of moths to rush inside. Someone made an irritated sound and headed for the window. I rolled under a bush and lay there listening to the person latch the window. A dark figure chased and swatted the moths, creating an eerie shadow dance of insect murder. At last the light was turned off, and I had the courage to gather myself together and leave. The cicadas’ chorus seemed to mock me as I plodded along the path to the teahouse, trying to make sense of what I’d learned.

Nana Mihori had used me. She wanted to own Nomu Ideta’s
tansu
but was unwilling, for some reason, to buy it directly. She had sent me on a wild-goose chase across Japan and made up the story about Mrs. Kita’s recommending Hita Fine Arts so that I wouldn’t suspect her.

I’d stepped out of my programmed role when I didn’t deliver. Had I ignored the metalwork on the
tansu
, all would have gone off seamlessly. Nana Mihori had not wanted a top-quality, Edo-period
tansu.
She simply wanted something her brother owned.

I tried to remember the specifics of my encounter with Mr. Sakai. When I’d first telephoned to ask what
tansu
he had in stock, he had mentioned a customer who had placed the
tansu
on hold. At the time I bought the
tansu
, I’d assumed the woman with the mole was that person. When she turned out to be his wife, I knew that couldn’t be true. It was more likely that the visitor who had placed a hold on the chest long enough for me to arrive at the store had come from the Mihori family.

I pulled my small datebook out of my backpack, trying to remember what Akemi had said about
tomobiki
, the scheduled day when a priest and his family were free to leave the temple grounds. Counting six days back from my arrival at the temple, I found the
kanji
symbol marking the priestly holiday on Wednesday—the same day that Nao Sakai had been killed in Jun Kuroi’s car.

Any one of the Mihoris could be involved. My spine prickled as I thought about how, during the wildest moments of Saturday night’s party, I had cleared everyone from the study except for mother and daughter. After the doctor had ultimately emerged from the room to answer the guests’ questions about Akemi’s health, Nana and Akemi had been alone in the room for at least ten minutes. Maybe Akemi’s stoned reaction had been as exaggerated as her weak performance in the Olympics.

When the prickling feeling on my back changed direction, I could tell it was for real. From underneath my T-shirt, I flicked out a nasty red ant. I didn’t even yelp. There were worse things to be afraid of now.

It was pitch dark when the alarm setting on my watch awoke me. Four
A
.
M
., which meant Zen meditation would be starting at the main hall in fifteen minutes. I rummaged through the clothes Akemi had lent me and came up with a pair of loose cotton pants that would be comfortable for sitting cross-legged. I pulled on a T-shirt and headed out in search of the public rest rooms, where I could clean up before entering the main Zen hall. The gray marble ladies’ washroom was spotlessly clean. Some guidebooks cited it as the best temple toilet in Kamakura.
If only it had a shower
, I thought as I hurried through a rough sponge bath.

Still damp, I crept through the dark toward the sound of gongs, and discovered a surprising number of people ready to worship. Some wore traditional dark Buddhist robes, while others wore loose-fitting athletic clothes, as I did. Most looked fairly mature; in Japan, Buddhism was more of an old-age passion than a New Age one.

I shadowed the only other foreigner, a European-looking woman in her thirties. We sat behind two rows of black-robed monks sitting in the lotus position. They appeared the picture of devotion, their eyes only half open, their legs crossed so that each ankle balanced easily on the thigh. I settled onto a hard, round cushion, hoping I would be able to stay in a half-lotus position for a reasonable amount of time.

Abbot Mihori was already seated on the floor, a beautiful old brass gong at his side. I expected he might recognize me but wasn’t too worried. After all, it was an open worship session. All were welcome.

The abbot hit the silvery-sounding bell smoothly and announced the first line of the religious
sutra
, a booming prayer. The worshipers added their voices to his, and the hall vibrated with sound. Did they all understand Pali, the ancient blend of Sanskrit and Japanese in which the
sutra
was written? I moved my mouth as everyone chanted, increasing speed or slowing according to the fervor with which a different priest hit a gong.

It was very beautiful, sitting in the dark room with only the gilded altar glowing brightly in the candlelight. But the half-lotus was harder than I’d imagined; after fifteen minutes, I felt as if screws were being driven into the sides of my thighs, and my toes were going slowly numb. When the prayers finally wound down and it was time to stand up and then prostrate ourselves in the direction of the altar, I thought it had never felt so good to move.

After the prostrations, we settled back down again in the darkness for
zazen
, the sitting meditation that was the hallmark of Zen Buddhism. Zen meditation was something I’d tried before without any success. But it didn’t matter if I did not float away—I’d come specifically to the main hall to think through what I’d learned the night before.

But silence was not to be had. After perhaps ten minutes, Abbot Mihori rose from his position near the altar to slowly pace through our ranks, holding a four-foot-long wooden paddle.

“Concentrate!” Abbot Mihori called out, sounding much blunter and ruder than I had ever imagined him. “Sit straight!”

Was he yelling directly at me? I suddenly realized my preoccupation with enduring the crossed-leg position had caused me to drift to the left. I righted myself, subtly adjusting my ankle to a less ambitious height.

I wasn’t the only person who was reprimanded. Abbot Mihori criticized the posture of my European companion, who showed no signs of comprehending Japanese, and he noted the lack of concentration shown by others. “Erase all thoughts from your mind!” he shouted at a woman in her seventies, who cowered so deeply her nose touched the floor.

When his stick began slapping against worshipers’ backs, I wanted to flee. Physical abuse was not what I’d come for. I concentrated furiously on the slow, smooth breathing the abbot wanted. Incredibly, I felt myself start to calm. I wasn’t in nirvana—who could be, with all that yelling?—but I was philosophical. Zen worship would be over in forty minutes, and the worst thing that could happen would be that I’d be hit. The blow would last less than a second. If I could survive a right cross from Hugh Glendinning, I could survive a crack on the back.

The sounds of the gong flowed through me, and my senses stirred at the thought that I was enacting rites that had traveled from India and China to Japan fourteen centuries ago. The black-robed monks in front had shunned the materialism of modern Japan for a harsh life dedicated to inward seeking. Could I do that? In a way, it was like leaving Roppongi Hills to do my own thing.

I felt a warning tap on my left shoulder and bowed, waiting for the real blow.

“Take your shoulder!” Abbot Mihori instructed brusquely. He hadn’t recognized me.

As I pulled my shoulder in the way the other worshipers had done, the discipline paddle crashed down on my back. It took a second for the pain to transmit to my brain; when it got there, it smarted fiercely. Now I understood that the abbot had asked me to guard my shoulder blade from being shattered. There was a humanity to this formalized violence.

We bowed to each other, completing the ritual. The feeling in my back had evolved into a pleasant sort of ache; I treasured it for taking my mind away from my thighs and feet.

As the pain faded, I thought about the unexpected toughness Abbot Mihori had shown. Priests were supposed to be stern. Zen enforcer was the role the abbot had to play, just as he had been a gracious host when Angus and I had talked with him outside the temple the previous Friday.

Nana Mihori also played roles I didn’t know about. Her exact connection to Nomu Ideta was something I wanted to understand. Maybe she had longed to acquire a family heirloom, but because she was a young, female sibling, she had not gotten the chance. If that was the case, I could offer her the
tansu
again.

The Zen family’s involvement seemed as clear as the sky growing lighter outside the arched temple windows. Still, something nagged at me. Two men dead, neither from natural causes.

I tried to picture Nana Mihori, slim and slight in her
kimono
, following Nao Sakai from Hakone to Tokyo and deftly strangling him in a few minutes. It seemed impossible, given that the woman didn’t drive a car—just like her husband. He had told me he needed Akemi to drive him to the hospital.

The connections between the Mihoris and the dead people were obvious; the motivation wasn’t. I sighed, then caught myself for breathing audibly and out of place.

When the Zen session finally ended, I wasn’t sure my legs would work anymore. I stumbled up to take my place in the line that was silently heading into the dining room. Here, each monk unwrapped the small cloth bundle he’d been carrying to reveal a set of three lacquer eating bowls. I was handed my own set of three along with the other visitors.

“Your first time?” the grandmother who’d been singled out for not concentrating whispered to me. When I nodded, she said, “They give us a complimentary bowl of rice gruel. I come three times a week for it.”

If she attended so often, maybe she knew Kazuhito. I asked quietly whether she had seen him, and I was disappointed when she shook her head. Perhaps, as the vice abbot, he was more concerned with business matters.

I settled down between the grandmother and the European woman, watching carefully as monks silently passed down the table a large wooden bucket containing the lumpy gray gruel, followed by a smaller one containing pickled
daikon
radish. When everyone was served, the head monk blessed the food and led us in the recitation of several
sutras.
We ate quickly, with no conversation allowed.

At meal’s end I felt not quite sated and slightly nervous, given the clean-up procedures I was observing. A monk slowly advanced along the table, pouring a meager splash of tea in everyone’s bowl, which was circulated vigorously with chopsticks. Many worshipers slurped heartily from their bowls of dishwater. I slopped my bowl’s remains into an empty ceramic urn that was making its way down the table. Then the empty bowls were dried on small cloths that everyone seemed to have brought from home. Like the Eastern European visitor, I handed my bowl back to a monk who I hoped would have an additional cleansing planned. Did the temple have a dishwasher? I thought about a terrible food-poisoning epidemic a few summers ago and shuddered.

My Zen experience over, I followed a line of monks down the temple steps, each one holding a huge straw hat. This meant they were leaving Horin-ji’s grounds to collect donations for the temple. The hats served many purposes, among them protecting shaved heads from the sun or rain, and also falling so low they prevented the monks from being able to see the people in front of them, thus maintaining a Zen state while they begged.

It was ironic to think how safe the monks were in the cloistered world of Horin-ji; the food hygiene and chronic pain from sitting in a lotus position were probably their biggest risks. But the temple duties looked hard. I watched a monk wearing a gray work costume digging hard in the soil under some hydrangea bushes, his back curved at a punishing angle. As I approached, he lifted himself gradually and turned, hands folding in the prayerful
gassho
greeting.