(EXCERPT FROM "ZEN MOUNTAIN")
“You think you understand women, but you don’t.”
“Well, you might be right there. And, well, I guess men say
stuff, too, you know stuff you wouldn’t say if a woman was right there. So,
wait, so like what were they saying about me?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Do you want to tell me?”
“They laugh at you.”
“What? I never saw anyone laughing, except at my jokes, and
even then, it was, you know, hand cupped over mouth, you know, as a show of
respect.”
“Maybe they don’t want to bare their teeth?”
“Is that what it is?”
“They talk behind your back.”
“Like what?”
“Think about it. Why they call you that name?”
“Um, because…”
“You don’t know? Isn’t Collin your name? Isn’t ‘love’ your
game?”
He knew full well what she was talking about, and while he couldn’t
help but crack a knowing smile--guilty as charged—he avoided going into
details. It disconcerted him to think that eager, willing recipients of the
ultimate intimacy might talk about him one way to his face, and another way
behind his back, especially after a bout of love-making in bed. Or on the desk.
Or the closet, or the park.
Living in the moment, finding love in the moment was lovely,
but it didn’t seem quite as lovely the day after, did it?
...
“Oh, Jian-jian.”
“Con-ling…”
“So much I want to say…”
“Shhh!” she
chided, reminding him they were not alone. “Sometimes you talk too much!”
“How about I let my hands to the talking?” he cooed
provocatively.
She opened the palm of her free hand mock smacked him in
slow motion to the merriment of the monks trailing them a few steps behind.
They continue to press forward. The forest path widened as
the terrain flattened out, and they could walk shoulder to shoulder now. They
pattered happily along the soft leafy path under the dew dropped canopy of
early morning.
“Hey, how about we run away together?” he asked, but she
didn’t pick up on the hopelessness hiding behind his jestful manner.
“Run away? Where?”
“Anywhere with you.”
“Oh, Collin. I wish so, but, but I can’t.”
"Can’t what?”
“Can’t change things…”
“What things?”
"Things. Thing are the way they are..."
“Things? Are things only the way they are? Don’t things
change? What about ‘All things are subject to change?’”
“Change is not always good.”
“So what do you want?”
“I don’t know.”
“You really don’t know?”
“Oh, here we are.”
They reached a break in the trees where a narrow, paved road
ran through the forest. There was a grassy area by the side of the road and a
simple bus stop consisting of a bench and a sign with a printed timetable. Jianhong
immediately sat down, resting her feet. Collin turned to the two monks in tow
to check the time, but neither of them carried phones or timepieces, as per
house rules.
“How are we supposed to know what time it is?” he cried out
in frustration.
“Are we late?”
They don’t seem worried.” she said, gesturing at the
chaperones.
“What do they care? They’re not taking the bus.”
Collin consulted the timetable. “Only one bus a day, and it
doesn’t even come every day,” he said, registering surprise. “Seeing as how
we’re in the middle of nowhere, I’m surprised there’s even one bus.”
“What times does it say?”
“Hey wait. It says 8:30 AM!”
“But didn’t abbot say ‘eight?’
“He did. He misled us, the old trickster. Rightfully so.
Because if it really had really come at eight we would have missed it.”
“But we still don’t know what time it is. Wait, my phone!”
Jianhong pulled a phone from her bag and powered it up. “The abbot made me turn
it off. It’ll tell the time in no time.”
“You had that phone the whole time? Shoulda told me.”
“Why?”
“Coulda made some calls. Oh well. So what time is it?”
“It’s fifteen after eight.”
There was no traffic in either direction and nothing could
be heard in the distance but the sounds of the forest. There was still a chill
in the air, but the sun, when not playing cat and mouse with the fleecy clouds
above, was a dependable source of warmth.
“Hmm. Maybe we should
make sure we got the day right too. It’s like Thursday, or Friday, right? If
it’s Thursday, there’s no bus.”
“It’s Friday, don’t you know what day it is?”
“It’s easy to lose track of time at the temple.”
“Well, worked three days this week, and arrived here on
Thursday, so I know.”
“I’m glad of it. Every day counts.”
The two monks hovered nearby, but no longer seemed
interested in monitoring the conversation of their charges.
“If they’re talking, we can talk real talk,” he said.
“We are talking.”
“You know what I mean.”
“So, you don’t miss
it?” she asked, slyly rising to the challenge of real talk.
“It? What’s it? Miss what?”
“You know…it starts with T.”
“Tokyo?”
“Close, but not quite.”
“Tea? As in tea caddies?”
“Close, but not right.”
“I give up.”
“Trum….”
“What?”
“Tram?”
“Trum? Tram?” he
put his tongue to his teeth, testing each word, out loud, trying to unlock her
meaning. “Oh. Ah, I get it. Are you trying to say...trim?
“It’s your word, not mine.”
“Trim ci-ty,
To-kee-yoo,” he intoned, as if summoning the lyric of a song. Trim City
indeed. Suddenly he was no longer in the forlorn hills of the forgotten
countryside but had somehow been transported to Tokyo, dropped on a busy street
in front of a busy station in the middle of the world's busiest city. He could
practically hear the roar of trains the hum of the crowd, the pull of unseen
panties.
“Trim, yeah, trim, triminy, trim-trim,”
he said in a playful undertone.
“So dishonest!”
“What?”
“Why don’t you just say what you mean?”
“What do I mean?”
“You mean female organ, am I right?”
“You mean pussy?”
“Whatever you call it.”
“No. It’s not the same, I mean, not exactly. It’s something,
it’s more like, I don’t know, it’s hard to say. Something like yin-yang, the
ineffable reciprocal essence of things.”
“What bullshit!”
“No, really.”
“You know what I mean and I know what you mean. You miss it,
admit it!”
“Yeah, okay, I admit it. It’s a sensual city.”
"Especially for dog."
“Dog? No. Dogs can dog-paddle. I was drowning in it, it’s
sea of temptation. I mean, it was everywhere. There was so much you could ride
it like riding a train.”
“You like trains…”
"Yeah, I like being on the move. The more I reflect on
it, it was the chase, not the trim. The chase was key to the charm."
"That's all?" Her eyebrows elevate in disbelief.
"Anyway, I haven’t been getting any, if that’s what
you’re getting at.”
“You got too much, isn’t that enough?”
"Enough is never enough…"
"See? You haven't changed!"
"No, really. It was all fine and good, you know, after
you got what you wanted, after you went the distance, after you got there and
got what you thought you wanted, but somehow, well, there's a kind of emptiness
in it. Not so much a letdown--it was uplifting while it lasted, diverting and
amusing and fun--but after all is done, and was done, it was, it was just a
hedge, a hedge against, I don’t know, loneliness?
“Wow. What a playboy-man!”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “Notice I'm talking in the past
tense?"
"You are?"
“I was.”
They both laugh.
“Being here in the hills,” he continued abstractedly, evading
eye contact but fully aware of her wide-eyed gaze. “Well, it's not easy. But I
guess it’s good for airing, for shaking off the city dust, guarding against desire.”
“Like last night?”
“Last night? No. That was ah, a
special case…because of you. You are a special someone.”
“Are you sure?”
The two monks idle over, bringing their romantic banter to
an abrupt halt. They explain that the
bus is almost here.
“How do they know? By osmosis?” But no sooner did he speak
than he too could detect the sound of a motor in the distance.
“Ah. What a
cloud-studded sky!” he said, changing the topic. “A sign of good things to
come."
"You!” Jianhong snapped. “Always dreaming."
"But we can learn from the elements. I like to think of
myself as a, a kind of, what should I call it, a sky farmer.”
“That’s so lazy!” she exclaimed. “Always in a cloud! Look at
the ground, and put your feet upon it; that should be your action plan.”
“Sometimes action achieves less than inaction. Do you think
spinning around and around on your daily commute, spinning the revolving door
of work really gets you closer to where you want go?”
"So, what do you want me do?" she asked as he sat
next to her on the bench. “I need a job.”
“I do, too.”
“You don’t like being a monk in the temple?”
“Well, it’s a path, not a profession. A way-station on the
way to the new, improved me. If you reduce the noise and clutter of the
material world, you can take better notice of the rise and fall of all things.”
“What things?”
“You know, sounds, cycles, big and small. It goes all the
way from the first single living, breathing oxygen-inhaling creature with a
mind of its own all the way to, the ah, the cosmic echoes of the Big Bang. The
chirping of birds and buzzing of bees and the silences in between are, like,
central to unlocking the secrets of the universe.”
“Wow!” she smiled.
“But sometimes I get distracted by things…” he said,
provocatively shifting his gaze to her nose to her neckline.
“You are fake monk,”
she cornered him. “Why your eyes light on fire when you look at my body?”
“Yep. Spontaneous combustion, I guess.”
“But how can you empty your mind of desirables? Do you
repeat that mantra when you meditate?”
“Sometimes. But I secretly find myself thinking of you.”
“Oh,” she moaned quietly. “I don’t know. I don't know if I
will be able to see you again.” A bittersweet smile crossed her lips. Her voice
was hesitant and tender but there was an air of finality to her whispers.
"It's only for a year."
"A year is forever."
“I wish I was getting on that bus with you.”
“No can do."
“I know, I know.” He sighed, trying to keep the rising
frustration from showing in his voice. “But like, what do you mean, about not seeing
me again?” he asked. Try as he might, he couldn't mask the plaintive
vulnerability in his voice.
“Oh, please. Don’t make it hard for me.”
“But I don’t understand…”
“Oh. Did I tell you? I’m going back to China."
"You are?"
"Only for a week. Can you believe it? I hope my parents
recognize me. They think I’m Japanese now…”
“You know, sometimes I think of going back to my country,
too.”
“You do? I always wondered about that.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t miss it before, but I miss it now.”
“I thought you liked Japan.”
“I do, I really do. What I don’t like is being in limbo,
neither here nor there.”
“But that's what you are--a gaijin.”
“Illegal alien is more like it. No papers, in trouble with the law. It's a
double whammy, and I have no choice but to sit it out until the statute
expires.”
“You are still under the Statue of Liber-tation?
“The what? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yes. The statute of
li-mi-ta-tions,” he gently corrected. “And according to that, I still have to
wait a year, and then, if I’m lucky, with a little help from Kamiuma, and ah,
Miki’s legal staff, I’ll be able to get papers and be legal, and at liberty
again.”
“If you weren’t a funga-tive,
what would you do now?
“If I wasn’t a what?”
“The one who runs away…”
“I’m not running, I’m sitting on a rock. And I'm just lost
between the cracks, not a criminal. Hey, Jian-jian, your English is slipping.”
“It is?”
“I guess your new boyfriend is not a native speaker like
me.”
“Who said I had a new boyfriend?” Her response is quick and
sharp, a little too quick and sharp.
“Do you?”
“Do you think I do?”
“I’m not sure what to think.”
“Then don’t think about it.”
“Okay, okay. I get it, I mean, I think I do." He
sighed, then looked up at the unsettled sky. The sun was hiding behind the
clouds again. "Life’s a lark, isn’t it?”
“What is your meaning?”
“Well. Let's just let it be.”
“Let what be?”
“Let it be, be the way it should be,” he said, quietly,
valiantly trying to piece together his shattered pride.
“One year, it's a long time to be in a temple.”
“Only ten more months.”
“When you come back to Tokyo, we can meet.”
“Meet? Great.”
“I can take you out for dinner,”
“Okay...”
“In Ginza.”
“Sounds good.”
“A nice fancy French place.”
“Well, merci beaucoup, in advance.”
“And we won’t just look at the menu, complain that it’s
overpriced and leave, like you did to me on our first date. This time we will
go in and really eat.”
“Okay, and I’ll try not to complain about the rip-off
prices.”
“Okay, and I’ll make sure they have real milk for your
coffee.”
The sound of an automotive engine groaning up an incline broke
the bucolic calm. At last the bus that plied the hills rounded the bend and
showed itself, slowing to a crawl as it drew up to the bus stop, gears grinding
to a halt when it was apparent there were people waiting. The door of the old,
beat-up bus popped open like a jack-in-the-box. The gruff but amiable driver
asked if it was just the two of them, holding two fingers in the air.
“Just one,” Jianhong answered in English before correcting
herself. “Hitori.”
“Bye-bye big boy,” she said, glancing back at Collin.
“Bye-bye happiness,” he answered, forcing a smile. He handed
her her bag.
She boarded the empty bus, paid her fare and took a seat in
the back. The bus driver consulted his wristwatch before putting the vehicle in
gear. Waving at Collin, Jianhong struggled to pry open the sliding window as
the bus jerked forward.
“Con-ling?” she called out through the crack.
“Yes?”
“Oh, nothing.”
The bus jerked forward again, gaining momentum.
“Con-ling?” She called sweetly, her eyes pleading for an
understanding that was more implicit and tender than she had words for.
“What?”
“You’re okay for a man.”
Vrooommm! The bus roared off before he
had a chance to think of a response, let alone thank her for the compliment of
a lifetime.
