To the Spring Equinox and Beyond (11 page)

Thus, the image Keitaro had ever since his boyhood days of the compound of Kannon around the thirty-six-yard frontage of its main temple had always been enveloped in historically luring mysteries and dazzling colors. Since he had come to live in Tokyo, these strange illusions had inevitably been shattered, yet at times he would still drift back to fancy that under the roof of Kannon's temple one might find a stork's nest. Just some such vagary working latently in him had made him think Asakusa might hold what he wanted, involuntarily directing his steps there. But when he came out from the back of Lunar Park onto a street with a number of movie theaters, he was surprised by the congestion and felt this was hardly the place for diviners.

He thought, before leaving the area, that he would at least pass his palm over the head of the Pindola for luck, but he could not remember in which part of the grounds it was. He went up to the main temple and, after looking only at a great paper lantern dedicated by a fishmongers' guild and at a votive tablet of Yorimasa killing the chimera, left by the Gate of Thunder.

Keitaro was expecting to find a fortune-teller or two by the time he reached Asakusa Bridge. If he did, he would enter no matter what sort of fortune-teller it was. Or perhaps he might turn at the crossing just before the College of Technology and head toward Yanagibashi. He walked along as lightheartedly as if he were looking for a good place to eat.

As often happens when one is searching for something, Keitaro could not find a single fortune-teller on the broad street he was walking along, though on his usual walks no matter where he went he would see any number of shingles for divination. He reached Kuramae feeling somewhat disappointed, thinking that in this attempt too, as was typical with him, he might have to stop halfway without seeing it through to the end.

At last he caught sight of the kind of house he was looking for. He saw a thick oblong board of hardwood on which was written in two lines "Divination in Personal Matters," and under these characters were engraved in white the words "Fortune-telling with Bunsen Coins." Beneath these characters was a picture in red lacquer of a cayenne pepper. It was to this quaint sign that Keitaro's eyes were first drawn.

As he looked more closely, he realized that the house was part of an apothecary shop which had been partitioned off, the narrow part having a neat built-in section like a lean-to attached to it. Inside were rows of bags filled with powdered spices, showing that the owner not only told fortunes but, as indicated by the picture on the signboard, sold these condiments as well. Having made this observation, Keitaro peered into the lean-to, which looked rather like a shop specializing in bean-jam rice dumplings, and discovered a small elderly woman doing needlework.

Though there seemed to be no more to the living quarters than this narrow room, nothing could be seen of any fortune-teller. Keitaro thought he might be out, his wife taking care of the shop in his absence. But the construction of the shop suggested it was connected with the apothecary in back, so Keitaro could not conclude right then that the master was absent. He proceeded a few steps ahead and looked into the apothecary. He found no dried lampreys suspended there, nor any turtle shells exhibited. Nor did he see that old-fashioned anatomical model of the human body, the abdomen hollowed out to reveal its internal organs in various colors, each set on a shelf fixed into the torso. And of course there was no elderly bearded man inside bearing any resemblance to the retired priest at Ipponji Temple.

Keitaro retraced his steps to the entrance with its signboard and went inside under the short curtain hanging in front. The old woman stopped sewing, stared over her big glasses at him, and uttered only a single word: "Divination?"

"Yes," replied Keitaro. "Just a little thing I'd like to know. But the master's out, isn't he?"

"Come in," the old woman said, putting in a corner the silk material she had on her lap.

Keitaro went in. He found the room tidy though small, and certainly comfortable enough. The
tatami,
newly recovered, smelled of fresh rush. The woman poured boiling water from an iron kettle into a cup and set a spiced drink before her guest. Then from a shelf that had perhaps originally been made for holding a medicine cabinet, she took down a small desk covered with a cloth of plain wool and set it in front of Keitaro. Returning to her seat, she said, "I'm the one who tells fortunes."

Keitaro was jolted. He had not given the slightest thought to the possibility that this simple, homely woman who had been so intently engaged in sewing, her hair done up into a small chignon, her kimono with its black satin neckband worn under a plain striped
haori,
should be the predictor of his destiny. He wondered all the more when he saw neither rods nor divining blocks nor a magnifying glass on her desk. From a long slender bag that she had placed on the desk, she jingled out nine coins, the kind with a hole in the center. Keitaro could only guess that these were the
bunsen,
the word he had read on the shingle. But of course he could not imagine in what way those nine coins should be related to the invisible strings of fate manipulating him. So he remained silent, looking now at the patterns engraved on the coins, now at the bag from which they had been taken. The latter seemed to have been made from costume material for a Noh play or from some remnant of cloth for mounting a hanging scroll. Gold strings on it glittered here and there, but its original bright colors had faded entirely through time and use.

The old woman, whose fingers were white and delicate for her age, arranged the nine coins in rows of three. Suddenly she looked up at Keitaro and asked, "Do you want to know your future?"

"It wouldn't be bad knowing about my entire life. But I've got something that seems more important for me to decide now. So please tell only about that."

"I see," she said and then asked how old he was. She also made certain of the day and month of his birth. She began to count on her fingers as though she were mentally calculating something and then fell into a kind of reverie. Presently with her pretty fingers she arranged the coins. On the faces of some there was a wave pattern; others showed the character
bun.
Keitaro was staring at them as if he were seeing something deep in their order and arrangement.

The old woman remained silent for some time, her hands on her knees as she gazed at the old coins. Soon her expression indicated that she had settled on a clear point.

"You are now vacillating," she affirmed, looking directly at him.

He deliberately remained silent.

"You are undecided about continuing something or abandoning it. But that is to your disadvantage. Go forward, for even though it may seem unfavorable, it will turn out all right in the end." She paused, her lips closed as she threw another searching glance at him.

From the beginning he had been determined only to listen and say nothing. But her words aroused him, made him feel as if his own vague thoughts were suddenly being revealed in her voice, and he was involuntarily tempted to respond to the stimulus she had given him.

"If I go ahead, won't I make a mess of it?"

"Yes, you may. So behave as best you can, and take care not to be short-tempered."

This was not fortune-telling, Keitaro thought, but merely a piece of advice that common sense would teach anybody. But in her way of speaking he saw no affectation, so he proceeded to ask, "As to the question of going forward, which direction should I take?"

"That you ought to know quite well. All I'm saying is for you to go on a little further because it's better for you."

Since he had touched on the subject, he could not merely say, "Is that so?" and withdraw. "But I have two ways to go," he said, "and I'm asking which one I should take."

The old woman silently turned her gaze to the
bunsen
coins again and said in graver tones than before, "They're almost the same."

She picked up some pieces of thread that lay scattered where she had been sewing, and selecting from them two longer silk threads, one dark blue and the other red, she began to twist them neatly together. Keitaro did not pay much attention to what she was doing, thinking she was merely fingering them for want of something better to occupy herself with. She braided the threads elaborately into a single string five or six inches long and placed it on the coins.

"Look at this," she said. "When twisted together, two threads become one string, and the one string is made up of two threads, one bright red, the other dark blue, as you can see. Young men are apt to rush toward the bright one and blunder. But you are blessed, for your circumstances seem at least for the time being to be wound around each other quite harmoniously like this yarn here."

He found her comparison of the silk threads to his circumstances interesting, though he didn't know exactly why, but when she said he was blessed, he felt more amused than delighted. "Are you saying then," he asked in a tone which implied that he had swallowed her words, "that if I follow the sober way of the dark blue thread, the cheerful red one will turn up every now and then?"

"Yes," she replied. "It ought to."

From the very beginning Keitaro had not been in such straits as to have to depend solely as a last resort on the words of a soothsayer in deciding once and for all about which way to go. Yet he still felt something was lacking. If the words she had spoken had involved a world utterly foreign to his thought, he would not have been concerned about them in the least. But as they admitted an interpretation that made them applicable to his present situation, he felt detained by something in them.

"Don't you have anything else to tell me?"

"Well, something may happen to you one of these days."

"Something bad?"

"Not necessarily, but unless you're careful, you'll blunder, and if you do, it can never be undone."

Keitaro's curiosity was somewhat sharpened. "What kind of thing?"

"You can't know until it happens. But it doesn't seem as if it involves being robbed or drowned."

"So you can't tell me either how I can avoid making a blunder, can you?"

"It's possible to know. If you wish, I can try another divination."

Keitaro had no choice but to ask her to. Again the old woman's delicate fingers moved cleverly and reversed each of the
bunsen
coins on her desk. To Keitaro's eyes this arrangement was almost the same as the previous one, but it seemed to provide an important difference to her. In turning over each coin, she did not do it rapidly. After she had arranged the coins with great care, she said to Keitaro, "I understand almost all of it."

"What should I do?"

"What should you do? you say. In divination, great truths are only revealed in terms of the negative and positive principle, the yin and yang. The only thing you can do is consider the most practical way in a specific situation in terms of the general truth revealed. It is this: You have something which seems your own and at the same time another's, something long and short, something which goes out and comes in. The next time you have an emergency, be careful not to forget that something. It will carry you through."