Short Story: Dream

Short Story: Dream

I wrote this. No one else did. But I am not the author. Let me explain.

After Pearl Harbour, I was in the second year of a programme in mining engineering at a College in the mid west and volunteered, along with many of my classmates, to join the US Air force. I served in the Pacific as a bomber pilot, taking part in a number of the firestorm raids on Tokyo and other cities. It was a relief when the war ended, to save the Japanese from the kind of punishment we were dishing out, unopposed.

At the end of the hostilities, having decided to make a career in the Air Force, I was posted to occupied Japan itself. I was a young major and sent to a small communications station outside Kyoto, with little or no duties that made demands, a smattering of Japanese, a modest command of American personnel and all of the benefits of the commissary, the currency and Japanese servants.

It was my first experience of the country that did not involve shattered cities and maimed and cowed people. Kyoto and the surrounding areas were untouched by the bombing out of an unusual compassion and understanding for its place in Japanese culture.

The post itself was situated in the hills above Kyoto, an area heavily wooded with forests and streams and pathways that seemed to be etched through the rocks and boulders of the terrain. I had taken to the habit of solitary walks around the base, varying my path as the mood took me.

One evening, just as the light was fading, I clambered over some rocks and saw, spread out in the valley beneath me, a Japanese house surrounded by a large and well tended garden.

My first thought was that this might be a tea-house but it was too self-contained in its position, too unsigned to be that. Just as I reached the conclusion that it might be the estate of some daimyo, I heard a noise behind me. I turned to see an old man dressed in traditional clothing with a woven hat and a bundle from which he had apparently been eating. A staff was propped up against a rock beside him.

After some greetings and the usual bowing and smiling exchanges, and having run out of vocabulary, I gestured back at the house. ‘Good!’ I said. ‘Beautiful.’ He looked from me to the house and, after a pause, back to me again. And, in the space of that glance and return, this tale was told. I know it is his, I merely repeat it here for you. I have no idea how he communicated it to me. As he walked away from me, never looking back, I took my notebook and wrote it down.

She was young then, I a few years older.

I first saw her when, as a raw apprentice,

I swept blossoms from the paths.

She ran past me, laughing, scattering my work.

The petals were the same colour as her dress

and her hair gleamed like lacquer.

Her father was my liege lord, I his vassal.

I watched her, tending her and my garden.

Her small court gathered under the trees, or by the stream.

I saw her learn, heard her poems and music,

Her paintings were my manual.

The many times we met,

I knew that she thanked me for my work.

When she came of age, many suitors courted.

The formalities were long and tedious,

her replies caused great mirth among the servants.

Carrying with me a fear that she would leave,

I leaned often on the hoe.

There were weeds in the beds.

One day I found her by the chrysanthemums.

She seemed amused, a little surprised. Seeing

a broken stem among the flowers,

she touched my shoulder,

nodded once or twice and,

smiling, walked away.

The head gardener died and her father some months later.

She asked me to make a memorial place.

I built it where I had seen them talk and meditate.

The rocks and mosses we moved from places

I knew they loved. The hue of the stones matched

the colour of his kimono. The spring sang

on the bamboo notes of a favourite song.

Some trees I had planted, in the prime of fruit,

drew me to notice, as she spoke of the fineness

of the water peaches, that her hair grew silver.

The suitors had ceased to plead.

Her obis were no longer cherry but magnolia.

The estate worked well, as before,

but men gave more honour to their wives.

The court had gone, of course, save one or two.

They composed still, sang and played.

Her paintings showed me what I had done

and what I needed to do.

She was the soil, I sowed.

As her work became revered, fewer people visited.

Those who did came with piety.

One Autumn, as I instructed a pupil

in sweeping a pathway, she kicked over

the small pile of leaves we had made.

When she looked back over her shoulder

we were children again.

The boy never understood why I laughed.

The garden had grown strong. And, as gardens do,

challenged he who mastered it.

She rebuked me for too light a crop of apples.

I had not cut hard enough in the Spring.

The trees had been left to grow taller.

The view from the fall showed them

over the rest of the orchard.

Some time later she gave me a painting, showing the effect.

She instructed me to move from my house.

I lived close to her rooms, opposite her enclosed courtyard.

Seated by the pool I could hear her sing in the evenings,

though she never entertained there,

always in the formal areas.

The maids said she seldom played at these times.

After tending a garden for many years,

the seasons disappear. Time is apportioned to so many

things. With her this was true.

A rhythm descended on our days.

Each place has its music and it was this:

She loved the garden and I the gardening.

At dusk the long shadows showed the bend of my back

and the straightness of the rake.

I rested in the shade of the trees I had planted.

Now she made slow progress across the grounds.

Her thick fingers no longer plucked the strings.

The evening air was still and I felt her near.

As I smoothed the stones into calm patterns

The head of her household approached.

I heard the rustle of his new silk.

‘She is ill and bade me tell you that all you do

gives her pleasure. You must toil the harder.’

It was no burden.

I knew which came from her and which from him.

When she was dying she sent for me. I had

never been to the house before. Through the

hushed hall the servants moved quietly to her rooms.

But for one black crone, feared in the market place,

we were alone. Her eyes shone

and the lilies I had cut were by her bed.

She made me sit; the crone stood to make me leave

but was frozen by a look and sat again.

Though I knew her, I never grew easy

with how directly she regarded me.

‘Do you know why I never married?’ She asked.

‘It was this garden, I could never move from it.’

In Eternity, for us all, one time that is perfect exists.

It was this.