The Waning Moon
For joasakura who made Pipang's satchel, writing kit and notebook
Pipang opened the door
of his little cottage and walked in. A small oil lamp burned on the table where
Laofang had left the evening's cold collation. Pipang put his satchel down, lit
a spill and kindled the moon lamp by the window. Mellow white light filled the
room. He went out to the waterfall to wash his hands and rinse his mouth.
Returning, he took his notebook and pencase from the bag and laid them by; sat
down and picked up his chopsticks and began to eat.
He had the beginnings of
a good poem there. His thoughts returned to the view that had inspired it: a
white three-quarter moon shining in a cloudless sky, the leaves of the
cryptomeria silver on the still night air, the mountainside turned into a
pewter landscape.
Unmoving rock rises up tier
on tier
The changing moon low in the
summer sky.
Shadows pool darkly in the
silent valley
Not even a leaf stirs on this
windless night.
And for the next verse... He
put his bowl aside and reached for the notebook. The inkstone in his case was
still damp. He added a few drops of water, dipped his brush, and looked at the
opening quatrain. Time went by, unnoticed. Then he wrote-
This day as well I hoped for
news of you
But no visitor was waiting at
my gate
Flowers fall noiseless in the
evening garden
I go into my empty house and
close the door.
His shoulders slumped. He
looked away, eyes on nothing as he listened to the distant thunder of his
waterfall. After a while he dipped his brush again.
All night the leaves went
shuu-shuu in the wind
The waterfall was heavy with
storm rain.
We two lay talking through
the midnight hours
Sharing one bed, beneath a single
cover.
The rushing of water from the
cliff behind the house; the rustling of the acacia close to the bedroom window;
the voice beside him, not loud at all, but clearer than any sound else.
Other men had come to his
house to spend the day with him in pleasant walks and conversation and verse.
He loved his friends and cherished their frequent letters and less frequent
visits. They filled his life with ideas and verse; they gave him a view of a
larger world than his own, the ordinary world of men that he might never enter.
But because of that he'd never shared a bed with any of them, even for sleep.
This was his first experience of night time conversation between friends,
somehow more intimate because the other was only a dark shadow to the eyes, a
voice to the ears, a hotness of body and hands and tongue...
Pipang drew a deep
breath. The heat of Goushou pressing against him, the dry warmth of his palms
on Pipang's legs or back. Fire burned throughout Goushou's body, warm and
comforting as the kitchen oven on a winter evening--
A man from the southern seas
comes knocking at my gate
How will my little fire keep
him from the cold?
Sunlight comes bursting
through the trees about my garden
Oh sun, be gentle to these
pale western flowers.
--and brightness shone about
Goushou, brilliant as the sun above his southern ocean. Hard to look at for
long but filling the world with unexpected colour. Like the colours of
Goushou's moods as well, candle flames flickering in a draft, never settled for
long- merry or angry, tender or dejected- red and blue, yellow and apple-green
and black. All new to his experience, all precious because they were Goushou:
Jewels of the king shine
in the sunlight
Jade beads strung
together sound as he moves
War trumpets bray as the
king takes to the heavens
His armies fly behind
him, glistening in gold.
Pipang looked up from
the grand old-style lines to the white-washed walls of his little cottage.
Incredible to think that the King of the Southern Ocean had sat here on many an
afternoon, drinking tea, making linked verses, and gossiping about the
personages of the continents and oceans. Like any ordinary man; but he wasn't
an ordinary man. Not in his rank, not in himself. Pipang had seen with his own
eyes the world that the king thought of as everyday, which to him came straight
out of legend. So many people in such fine clothes; so much luxury in meals and
furnishings; so much ceremony even in the small routines of the day; and so
many high affairs that the king had neglected to spend time with himself.
The strangeness and
splendour delighted and overwhelmed him in equal measure. The palace had seemed
the physical embodiment of the newness and terror of the love he was experiencing
within it-- the happiness of those exercises he'd thought himself forever
barred from and the annihilation of self that came in their wake. Dizzy,
dazzled, scarcely knowing who he was any more, he hadn't been able to think at
all during those five days at the Southern Ocean. Only when he came home to the
life of before had he begun to see clearly again:
Jewels of a king belong not
in a cottage
Jade beads have no place in
woodlands and waste
Why should the trumpet sound
near my waterfall-
A mountain hermit cannot wear
armour made of gold.
He read the lines again. Then
he poured water into the little bowl and began to wash his brush. He would
write no more that night.
He'd been happily resigned to
doing without that part of life that occupied so much of other men's thought.
His life held its own completeness and content- his home, his poetry, his
friends both near and far. He was uniquely qualified to be the confidante of
others. Men, often high-placed men, discussed with him matters they would tell
no one else, because he had no ties, no prejudices, and no desires of his own.
No desires.
I was entire once. Like an
inkstone: polished, complete, an aid to composition. I assisted other men in
making the chronicle of their lives, for I had no life of my own to chronicle. It
was easy to do without when I didn't know the thing I was foregoing. But now I
am broken with my longing, and useless as a broken inkstone is.
He looked miserably about him
at the familiarity of his house. Well-kept and homely, but for the first time
in his life it felt empty. No one was here to smile at him and take his hand, no
one to draw him close and call him 'dear friend.' He gave an unthinking moan,
startling himself with the noise. The not-here-ness of Goushou was a wound that
bled the strength from him. It hurt; it hurt and he had no idea how to make the
hurting stop. He wanted only to take to the skies- to wing over the wooded western
continent and the sandy southern until he came to the palace in the southern
ocean where his happiness lived. Like a child running to its nursemaid for
comfort. I am a man, and Goushou-sama has other charges than myself. He
gave a shivering sigh and stood up. Change, wash, go to bed- find at least the
oblivion of sleep if there was nothing else to be had.
There was a step in the room.
"Young sir?"
"Laofang. I'm sorry, I
didn't mean to wake you--"
"You are in pain. Where
does it hurt?" The old man came up and felt his forehead. Pipang turned
wet eyes to him.
"My heart," he
said, trying to smile.
"Ah, poor child. Such is
the way of love. Come, let me put you to bed. You will do better there than
here."
He let Laofang lead him to
the bedroom, undress and wash him in tepid water, and wrap him in his sleeping
robe. Laofang opened the bedclothes for him and said, "Wait but a moment.
I will go fetch a fire for the chafing dish."
Pipang blinked.
"Why?"
Laofang blinked back at him.
"Why, because--" He waved a vague hand at Pipang.
Pipang said,
"Goushou-sama is not here." His voice wavered whether he would or no.
"What need have I for- for--" and found it better not to continue.
"Yet surely Goushou-sama
has taught you the hand forms?"
"Yes, but he's not here."
The tears overflowed his eyes, completing his misery. "Do not torment me
with reminders of him. I will sleep and hope for peace in the morning."
"But my dear- you know
the hand forms are also for when a man is alone?"
"What?"
"You didn't know? Did
you never do it yourself-- before--?"
"No," Pipang said,
surprised. "I was never in love before."
Laofang frowned in puzzlement.
"Pleasure is for two to
share," Pipang explained.
"But when there's no one
to share it with, the body still has its desires."
Pipang thought about that for
a minute. "Then I must bear those desires. The forms are a part of love,
and not the same thing as making water."
Laofang sighed unhappily.
"There are others who love you too, though differently from Goushou-sama,
and we do not like to see you unhappy."
"Oh," Pipang said
with a pang. "I am sorry, little father. I do not slight your love; it has
supported me throughout my life. Be easy- I cannot be unhappy when I think of
your care for me." Laofang continued to look sad. He'd never understood
the way Pipang saw the world but that hadn't hindered his devotion. He'd
insisted on companying Pipang when he left his parents' house, though it meant
leaving his own friends behind. That was love indeed, and to be prized.
"Come, stay the night with me. I will be the easier for your
company."
Laofang looked shocked.
Pipang smiled as he got into bed.
"Why do you hesitate?
Were we in my mother's house this would be a matter of course."
"How--?"
"Come, you are still my
chamber servant as well as everything else. Your place is here if you
wish."
The old man nodded then, evidently finding sense in that. He put
the lights out and came in on the other side. Pipang settled himself down and
cuddled up against Laofang.
"Oh," he said. It
was like being with Goushou-sama: the warmth of another, the feeling of safety.
The need to have arms about him and hands on him-- He gave a little grunt of
pain.
"There there,"
Laofang said, patting him awkwardly. "It's not so bad."
"No." He took
breath. "It's good to have you near." After a moment he added,
"Little father, I never knew what I was taking you from when I brought you
to this hermitage, away from the others of our kind. I am sorry. Perhaps you
had a friend it was hard to part from..."
Laofang smiled. "No,
nothing like that."
"Yet you know the ways
of love..."
Laofang was silent a moment.
"I was never one to catch a woman's eye, and I never danced the Great
Dance. There were one or two I companioned with in my youth, and it was well
enough, but... All things have their season. These things pass and other
pleasures take their place."
"Like what?"
"Ahh... making music while
I watch the sky change, that is nice; and listening to the mountain at night,
and growing things in the earth. That I always loved."
"Ahh," Pipang said
miserably, "Poetry, and walking about my hill, and making tea. They were
enough once, but now..."
"You know, young sir, I
always thought you one born old. You seemed never to have a young man's
temperament. But maybe you were just a hundred year cicada, that waits
underground an age before it springs forth into the light."
"Maybe. But now I am in
the sun and I burn."
Laofang made vague rumbling
noises in his mouth. "Young sir," he said at last, "I am no
chamber servant as you know. I have tended you from time to time because there
is only myself to do it, and I'm sure you find me rough enough."
"Not at all!"
Pipang protested. "You are kind and gentle, and that is all I wish for in
those near me."
"Ahh, thank you, my
dear. But, well, if I was a chamber servant indeed--" he hemmed a bit
more, "and if things at home had been as they ought- well, I would have
helped in your earliest training. Perhaps- maybe it is not your wish- but if
you didn't mind..."
"Oh." Pipang felt
himself blushing. "It's true, Goushou-sama has begun the habituation
exercises with me." And true also that except for Goushou, Laofang was the
only one he could even think of doing those things with. "We might- we
might try the Ring or the Moon's Aureole
perhaps." He gave an unthinking glance at Laofang's hands, and the other
chuckled.
"No
garden dragon lets his talons grow until he gets too old for work."
"Ahh," Pipang said, smiling
self-consciously. "Well, that is good." He got the oil flask that
Goushou had given him out of the bedside commode while Laofang fetched a towel
from the linen chest. Pipang took a deep breath and turned to his belly. There
was a blunt nudging at his entrance-- a little intrusive hardness inside him.
So small but so unignorable-- Pipang's eyesight swam as it always did and his
breath grew short. All of him became focussed on that one- that hard- the
thing-- Tremors pulsed through him, belly and groin, and his insides exploded.
But the litle hardness was still there, moving in miniscule circles, and
everything began all over again. His body took on a will of its own and Pipang
no longer existed. At some point in the cycle of arousal and release he lost
hold of consciousness entirely and slid bonelessly into a contented darkness.
He woke after dawn next
day to the sounds and smells of Laofang cooking breakfast in the back court,
and sunlight dappling the wall of his room. There was sunlight in his heart as
well for no reason he could name. He went outside for the usual morning
rituals.
"Good morning,
young sir."
"Good morning,
Laofang. You should have slept in- I kept you up late last night."
"Ahh, it's no matter. I
wake at dawn these days, whether or no. I'll nap in the afternoon."
Pipang relieved himself in
the rockside midden, washed afterwards from the bowls by the waterfall, and
returned to the house. The teapot and cup sat on the table by his still open
notebook, and the jasmine scent of tea filled the air. Pipang sat down, poured,
and took a sip while he read over last night's poems. Then he reached for his
inkstone and waterflask, ground the ink and mixed it, and picked up his brush.
There was a small space under the first poem.
Unmoving rock rises up tier
on tier
The changing moon low in the
summer sky.
Shadows pool darkly in the
silent valley
Not even a leaf stirs on this
windless night.
And there in tiny script he
wrote the answering quatrain:
I walk the path that leads me
to my gate
My steps are sure upon the
unseen way.
Absent the sun that makes the
whole world splendid,
The waning moon's pale rays
are light enough.
mjj
April-June 06