Shōgun полностью

“Dozo, Anjin-san.” The cook was offering him fresh tea, trying to keep the misery off his face. The little girl had been his favorite daughter.

“Domo,” Blackthorne replied. “Sumimasen.” I’m sorry.

“Arigato, Anjin-san. Karma, neh?”

Blackthorne nodded, accepted the tea, and pretended not to notice the cook’s grief, lest he shame him. Later a samurai came up the hill bringing word from Toranaga that Blackthorne and Fujiko were to sleep in the fortress until the house was rebuilt. Two palanquins arrived. Blackthorne lifted her gently into one of them and sent her with maids. He dismissed his own palanquin, telling her he’d follow soon.

The rain began but he paid it no heed. He sat on a stone in the garden that had given him so much pleasure. Now it was a shambles. The little bridge was broken, the pond shattered, and the streamlet had vanished.

“Never mind,” he said to no one. “The rocks aren’t dead.”

Ueki-ya had told him that a garden must be settled around its rocks, that without them a garden is empty, merely a place of growing.

One of the rocks was jagged and ordinary but Ueki-ya had planted it so that if you looked at it long and hard near sunset, the reddish glow glinting off the veins and crystal buried within, you could see a whole range of mountains with lingering valleys and deep lakes and, far off, a greening horizon, night gathering there.

Blackthorne touched the rock. “I name you Ueki-ya-sama,” he said. This pleased him and he knew that if Ueki-ya were alive, the old man would have been very pleased also. Even though he’s dead, perhaps he’ll know, Blackthorne told himself, perhaps his kami is here now. Shintoists believed that when they died they became a kami. . . .

“What is a kami, Mariko-san?”

“Kami is inexplicable, Anjin-san. It is like a spirit but not, like a soul but not. Perhaps it is the insubstantial essence of a thing or person . . . you should know a human becomes a kami after death but a tree or rock or plant or painting is equally a kami. Kami are venerated, never worshiped. They exist between heaven and earth and visit this Land of the Gods or leave it, all at the same time.”

“And Shinto? What’s Shinto?”

“Ah, that is inexplicable too, so sorry. It’s like a religion, but isn’t. At first it even had no name—we only called it Shinto, the Way of the Kami, a thousand years ago, to distinguish it from Butsudo, the Way of Buddha. But though it’s indefinable Shinto is the essence of Japan and the Japanese, and though it possesses neither theology nor godhead nor faith nor system of ethics, it is our justification for existence. Shinto is a nature cult of myths and legends in which no one believes wholeheartedly, yet everyone venerates totally. A person is Shinto in the same way he is born Japanese.”

“Are you Shinto too—as well as Christian?”

“Oh yes, oh very yes, of course. . . .”

Blackthorne touched the stone again. “Please, kami of Ueki-ya, please stay in my garden.”

Then, careless of the rain, he let his eyes take him into the rock, past the lush valleys and serene lake and to the greening horizon, darkness gathering there.

His ears told him to come back. He looked up. Omi was watching him, squatting patiently on his haunches. It was still raining and Omi wore a newly pressed kimono under his rice-straw raincoat, and a wide, conical bamboo hat. His hair was freshly shampooed.

“Karma, Anjin-san,” he said, motioning at the smoldering ruins.

“Hai. Ikaga desu ka?” Blackthorne wiped the rain off his face.

“Yoi.” Omi pointed up at his house. “Watakushi no yuya wa hakaisarete imasen ostukai ni narimasen-ka?” My bath wasn’t damaged. Would you care to use it?

“Ah so desu! Domo, Omi-san, hai, domo.” Gratefully Blackthorne followed Omi up the winding path, into his courtyard. Servants and village artisans under Mura’s supervision were already hammering and sawing and repairing. The central posts were already back in place and the roof almost resettled.