Jan Havlasa

“ The Painter of Camellias thanked the woman for having forgiven him his perfidy and for saving him from shame . . . Tsubaki-San uncovered her face, and her smile was no longer sad but happy. She begged him to forgive her if she had disgraced his name by her crime; but the Painter of Camellias shook his head, »I am the one who, brought disgrace on my name,« he replied so that all could hear, »and I am the one who committed a crime. For there is no shame more criminal and no crime more shameful than when an artist is untrue to himself and is led astray by the lure of fame. ”

“ And then when on a branch of the old pine the newly arrived cicada lifted her rejoicing, charming voice in song, a still more wonderful thing happened. As if in answer to this voice, the two strings in the shrine, upon which the metal mirror was fastened, reverberated like from out of a dream, delicately and dreamily, but unmistakably. It was as if the gods had spoken; and the solitary man for the first time in his life almost understood how one feels when one is happy.
For several weeks both semi were his companions and the friends of the old pine ”

“ It was the summer cicada which the Japanese call minminzemi and whose voice, the humble folk say, sounds like the chanting of a bonze in temple services. In Japan from spring till fall nature is full of the penetrating and often unspeakably sweet sounds of various species of cicadas or semi; this cicada however, which lying on its back and twirling around in a circle, buzzed on the hot temple-steps, filled the heart of the melancholy pilgrom with pity and sorrow. ”

“ Involuntarily the ronin extended his left hand; but at that instant his smile congealed on his face. For in the bonze’s countenance there came to pass a terrifying change, rapidly and still dilatorily, violently and still of its own accord. Whose were those sticky features? Whose that suave and penetrating look? Whose that smile? And recognizing his greatest enemy, who had put his wife and children to death, the knight errant summoned all the strength of his soul to supress the desire to jump up and kill this wretch. ”

“ For naturally Masushige was of the elect. It might be said simply that Masushige never ceased loving O-Take; on the contrary, his love increased till it became the desire of a man for a woman, and O-Take’s inaccessibility excited him to the paroxysms of a morbid imagination and irritated senses; but the young engineer took pains to transpose his Masushige into as extraordinary a key as possible. He made out of the natural desire of a love- smitten youth a mystic affair, the symbol of the eternal, something of the Faust tragedy. ”

“ In truth I would not have been surprised if suddenly on the path around the lake there had appeared proportionately tiny folk in kimonos, with microscopic smiles on their faces.
“You never showed me anything more exquisite, Mr. Kumamoto”, I cried in sincere enthusiasm. “There is not a single thing in your tokoniwa that is not a treasure of art. If your garden were a thousand times as large, it would be a thousand times less charming” I looked out of the window into the narrow and somewhat dirty little street, resounding with a hundred different sounds. ”

“ And therefore I remained a ronin, though I could have returned into the service of my daimyo. What kind of a life could I have led in a country where everything reminded me only of my lost family, my lost happiness? My hartred would have grown, but I wished to subdue and overcome it. That is why I am a ronin. I wish to walk away and think down my hatred. I see a great deal of suffering and many wrongs in the world, and wherever I can, I help sufferers and avenge wrongs like a man. I see also much good and kindness, and with each little bit my hatred grows smaller. ”

“ Suddenly the strings resounded in the shrine of the temple which he had carved for his garden; they sighed a response just as they had done when the newly-arrived cicada had lifted its song in the Garden of Desire . . . For a moment the lone man was struck motionless with wonder, and he felt as if his heart must burst with a great gladness, with unendurable happiness. ”

“ The countenance of the ronin, which life had furrowed with many wrinkles, was like a forest tarn: calm, but no one could tell what lay concealed on the bottom of his soul. »It is sinful even to entertain evil and hateful thoughts,« he continued in a moment, gazing vacantly ahead of him, »for we never know how far our hatred may reach and of what it is capable. It is not wise to be careless regarding thoughts. If they are thought persistently and strongly, they become embodied; and it takes a long time for any Thought to die. ”

“ An old Japanese proverb says that a woman’s mirror is her soul. We have many peculiar traditions about mirrors. For example, a mirror is supposed to feel all the joys and sorrows of its mistress, becoming bright and dull. Another legend relates of the mirrors of two women jealous of each other: in the deep of the night the mirrors engaged in a combat so fierce that both broke, along with the hearts of their sleeping owners. You understand, then, how a woman of occult powers like O-Take could send her first lover her soul in the mirror into which she had once gazed at her image. ”

“ He was an artist who, creating his own world, did not vex himself with those to whom this world remained foreign; but there were many who, heard the spring breezes rustle in the bamboo shoots he painted on sliding-doors, who unbarred their souls to the charm of his white plum-blossoms, who comprehended that the mist rising above his lakeshores fringed with irises rose also above the beauty of their own native country, which was overlooked by the disciples of the Koreans and the Chinese. ”

“ Hardly had she opened it when one of the gods put a mirror before her eyes, and she, bewitched by her own beauty, followed, the mirror out in front of the cave. The earth was again immersed in sunlight . . .« He silenced himself, as if half his soul were somewhere else than at the ruins of this temple, and then he added hurriedly: »The suzu, having the form of a bamboo shoot, seemed to grow from out of the white hand of her who was as slender and beautiful even as a bamboo shoot . ”

“ And it seemed to him that the strings in the little temple had responded not only to the song of the newly acquired semi, but also to the secret voice of his heart . . . to that voice of whose existence only the gods knew. But when one morning the song of the cicadas did not greet the rising sun, the solitary man felt how gradually his body was growing cold till he thought that his martyred heart would stop its beating. ”

“ Then even the dullest became aware that they did not exist for her as an audience, that she was not even conscious of this world, but that she really was dancing in the dusky eternity of space in front of the cave in which the refractory Sun-Goddess had hidden herself. Only some, gifted with instinctive insight, felt that in her exaltation there was something disquieting, which after each festival persecuted them in their subconsciousness, even in the privacy of their thoughts and conceptions. ”

“ He, who had never cared for the praise or the censure of the world, now boasted of the amazement which he imagined he would arouse with the work he had in mind, with The Hall of Camellias in the Emperor’s palace, and she smiled with a wilting smile in which there were more tears than in the most desperate weeping, more pain than in a breaking heart. ”

“ The villagers, however, do not like this shorter route because it is necessary to cross the river on a plank from beneath which one can hear the Phantom Washerwoman count her pieces of laundry and break into weeping when she finds one missing. Of a sunny day it seems that it is only the currents bubbling and gurgling and breaking on the boulders: but if the day be cloudy, at twilight, or especially of a night, no one can question the reality of the voice counting the washed clothes and in the end bursting into desperate lamentation. ”

“ He wished his brush to picture the hidden soul of things, their mysterious life, their longings and dreams, and as the months went by, he understood ever more clearly that one human life was insufficient for the mastery of so much as he had attempted in the beginning, and he blessed the day that had brought him disfavour and expelled him into this country, where he had awoken to his former blindness. ”

“ At last when he was already contemplating suicide, so as to escape ridicule and dishonor for the work in which he had failed, when danger threatened that the grievous decline of his genius would be exposed and that he would be thrown into an abyss of humiliation, in comparison with which exile had been a happy fate, the Painter of Camellias was actually saved by her for whom he longed as an artist and as a man, and whom he mutely implored for help. ”

“ He was dead and sucked dry by the Goblin Spider. Thus it was and not otherwise. We thought that after the abbot’s death the specter would desert the temple; but it stayed on, and its hatred was shifted on to us, to our village . . . Great is the harm it does us, and many the ways in which we have tried to get rid of it . . . All in vain. Our youths have gone against it, and more than one ronin. But nobody who dares to pass the night in the temple ever comes out alive and sound. Many came to harm even in broad dalylight in the temple or on its grounds. ”

“ Burning passionate words flowed from her lips, but her appearance preserved the chastity that so much excited and drove to despair those who had understood that O-Take was created for the love of men and not of gods . . . And before they parted, the goddess of love really allowed herself to be persuaded to come out of her cave, their world was flooded with a magnificent glow, and embracing him. O-Take whispered threats that filled him with wild delight. »You must never love any one but me,« she breathed, sighing with pleasure »only me and always me. ”

“ All at once it seemed to him that the tokoniwa had been a dream and that this was reality; but in that case he would be a great artist, and great artists are always beautiful because from out of their eyes there shines the creative power of gods. His chest broadened, his stature grew in height. He went up the path to the temple that was his work, feeling sure something had come into his life that would change it completely. ”

“ There was no need for a higher fence for the Garden of Fulfilled Desire, for its dimensions were no greater than twelve inches by twenty, the hillock towered some eight inches, the temple was something over four inches high, the stone lantern by the grave about two inches, the clumps of bamboo were all sizes between three and five and a half inches, and the centenarian pine barely overtopped the moss-grown roof of the temple. ”

“ Of course, the Japanese art of gardening contributes substantially to the possibility of this enchanting illusion with its dwarfed trees. One often sees maples, pines and other trees even a hundred years old and still only a foot or so high, though with branches perfectly developed and with a gnarled trunk which at first glance betrays its venerable age. ”

“ When my father grew up and it was brought home to him that he would have to go through life without a companion, because he was so unsightly, he made this garden, which you see here in my room, of the sunbaked, formless earth of the tokoniwa. And he dedicated it to the gods with the humble entreaty that they take pity on his miserable loneliness . . . You see there in the corner Thousand-handed Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy, and near the lake Benten, the Goddess of Luck, and other deities. Why, however, my father put only the metal mirror into the shrine, I do not know. ”

“ Satiated with the world and its illusions, he shaved his head and entered a Budhistic monastery so that secluded from the tumult of life he could end his life in memories of her whom he loved, whom his love had called into being and his treachery had condemned to death. ”

“ There was the haunted temple; and he was preparing to lead the conversation from the Phantom Washerwoman to the Goblin Spider and to another way over the hill through a wild bamboo thicket around a deserted monastery and down immediately into the middle of the village. He had had everything planned so nicelly, but the ronin spoiled it all for him with this moralizing. The crippled old man sighed likewise, but from the depths of a fresh disappointment, which was reflected in his physiognomy and voice. ”

“ A special mission was sent out into the remote mountainous country, which according to the intentions of the court intriguers was to have closed over the exile like water over a stone; but these schemes failed, his art triumphed, and in the intoxication of the moment the Painter of Camellias consented to go to the court to thank the emperor for his favor and to paint for him a large and beautiful picture in several panels on the sliding-screens of the new ceremonial hall in the imperial palace. Vainly the charming eyes of Tsubaki-San wept with tearless sadness and mute presentiment ”

“ The faithful from far and wide made pilgrimages to the temple, but especially those who either were persecuted by an Iki-ryó or were being consumed by their own secret hatred. It was said that nobody ever returned from this pilgrimage without consolation, and many were enlightened on the dark ways of life. For by the grace of the gods it was given them to understand that, like all things, intentions, and feelings, also hatred is but an illusion, a hideous illusion, however, murderous and selfdestroying. ”

“ I have seen hundreds of temples all over Japan, but nobody ever offered to show me a Garden of Fulfilled Desire. Fulfilled desires usually disappoint; but I feel that neither your garden nor its story will disappoint me. ”