The two
gardeners resumed their work. Above them the sky scraping crowns of trees
sporadically broke into temperate waves of motion, before settling once more
into their preordained shapes. Eventually it was Shigoto who broke the silence
between them.
“Have you ever
been to a tea ceremony, Kamaboku san? I mean a proper tea ceremony, with guests
and everything.” Shigoto asked.
“No, now you
don’t really think the likes of me would be invited do you, eh?’ He chuckled at
the very thought of the possibility. “ No, they will all be fine men who come.
Men of good standing and fine manners. They would not want the likes of me, a
simple clumsy gardener there. No, I have had tea with Sensei, though. A few
times, Sensei does not mind, he loves his tea and will drink with anyone.”
“I know. I go
sometimes to study Tea with Sensei, I enjoy it,” said Shigoto.
“That’s good,
drinking tea in that way is something that gentlemen do. Sensei likes you, you
know. I can see it in him. He will teach you what ever you ask. Sensei knows a
lot of things, you know, he is a cultivated man is Maguro Sensei. You can trust
old Kamaboku’s eyes on that one, Shigoto.”
“He came from
Kyoto didn’t he? He told me that one time.” Shigoto sensed the conversation
heading into areas of great interest to him.
“Yes, so they
say, a Zen priest and all. Fancy that. Makes you wonder sometimes how we end up
as we do, doesn’t it? There he was, a priest in the capital, at some big
monastery or temple the one moment, and then Lord Saeko brings him to Mikura to
be Head gardener. Hey, Shigoto, do you think that I will end up in a temple in
Kyoto sometime, eh? An inexpensive geisha house would do, I dare say.” With
that Kamaboku rocked back in laughter at his own humour so much that he
over-balanced and landed on his back, among the desiccating weeds and seedlings
they had so recently torn from their fragile hold to the soil. When he had
recovered his poise sufficiently he asked Shigoto, “You ever think of those
sorts of things?”
“No, not really.
Have you been to different places in Japan, Kamaboku san?”
“Oh no, you must
be joking. When would the likes of me get the chance to travel? Not that I
would even if I had the chance. Though I have ventured all over this island.
When I was an apprentice, in the time before Maguro Sensei, we would travel all
over the island collecting plants for the garden. Hikishio Sensei, the Head
Gardener then, was especially keen on that. Sometimes we would be away for days
at a time, sleeping out in the open, rain, sun, and frost, whatever. We would
collect trees and plants from the wild, from nearly every part of Mikura.
Sometimes we had to go backwards and forwards many times to bring back things
we found, even send word to the farmers to come and help gather things in, and
bring it back to Hirame. What wonderful times those were. I was about your age,
I suppose, when I went the first time. Could not believe how big this island
was myself.”
“You brought
back trees for the gardens?”
“How do you
suppose these things got here in the first place? They did not just spring out
of the ground by magic, you know. Sometimes rocks too, then we would have to
send for oxen and timber sledges to drag the pieces back. One time Lord Saeko,
when he was younger, was out with his falcon hunting, and he saw a stone he
wanted brought back. It took us a week to get it here. But we did it. It’s on
the shore of the lake now.”
“A week? To
bring one stone back?” Said Shigoto incredulously.
“Sure. It’s the
tall, square looking one, with red markings on one side. The colour is supposed
to bring good luck, wealth, that sort of thing. There are no really good trees
left on Mikura, not one’s you can get at anyway. Sometimes the farmers bring
trees in, but all the best ones have probably gone by now. We had the last of
those, they are all here in the gardens now. You look next time, I mean really
look at what is about, and think how all these things got where they are. The
gardeners of Hirame have been building this garden since… well, a long time
anyway.”
Kamaboku had
settled on the ground his legs now drawn up under him in a comfortable manner.
His weeding tool lying idle at his side.
“Oh we travelled
all over this place in those times, you know. There is on the other side of the
mountains, a place where the earth looks as is has been ripped apart. Imagine
that, it looks as if a giant being came along and tore at the earth with his
bare hands, bursting it open like flesh slashed open by a sword. You are
walking along one minute, and then the ground just drops away, straight down.”
He motioned with his hand, the fingers plummeting downwards. “Down, where? Who
knows? What’s down there? Well … There is a stream that falls in to it at one
end, you can hear the water running, but you cannot see it. We tried to enter
the gorge from below, but the passage became blocked with huge boulders and
there was no way through. The sides are all bare rock, but in the cracks there
are trees and other plants that grow there from seed. Because the roots cannot
run, the plants stay small, and have twisted shapes from growing out towards
the light. Some of the best pines in the gardens came from there. But those
trees came at a price, they were hard to get at you know.”
“How do you
mean?” Shigoto encouraged his companion to elaborate.
Kamaboku looked
across at Shigoto a moment before continuing. “ There are the bones of someone
in that gorge to this day, unless the foxes have carried them away and buried
them by now.” He paused, as if to invite the inevitable question.
“Bones, whose
bones?”
“There was one
tree Hikishio Sensei was especially keen to get at. A pine, a real beauty, may
be seventy, eighty years old, older perhaps, who knows. The branches were short
and stubby, and shaped like perfect clouds. You would not have had to do a
single piece of pruning to it. Not like these,” he gesticulated at the trees in
the ground about them. “It was the sort of thing that you dream of finding, and
may be you do, but only once or twice in your life. The trouble was it was
growing in a crack in the rock face, there were no ledges nearby, and the rock
fell straight down to it, and below there was nothing, a sheer drop. There was
no way to climb down to it. It was near the waterfall, so there was always a
mist, you can imagine how slippery that rock face was. The only way to get at
it was to lower someone down on a rope, while they tried to dig the tree with
as much root as possible out of that crack. Hell of a job, just like hanging
off the end of a rope in a rainstorm. Sometimes you would have to hack away at
the rock first to get at the tree roots, they would be so wedged in there. We
had done it before, going down a rock face on ropes, I had done it myself, got
some decent stuff that way. I had no fear in those days, climb anything, go
anywhere, I was young then. Bit older than you but not much probably. We would
be paid a bonus too when we managed to bring good trees back.”
“Did you get the
pine then?” Shigoto was eager to get to the climax, and could vividly picture
Kamaboku hanging perilously over a yawning chasm.
“ I did not go
down, someone else did. Then the rope snapped.” Kamaboku paused in his
narrative.
“The rope broke?
Did you get the tree though? Is it here in the garden still?” Shigoto was impatient to get to the
climax of the story.
“The rope
broke.” Kamaboku quietly repeated.
“The tree is probably still there. A bit older now no doubt, but still
there.”
“What happened
to the gardener?”
“Still there as
well, I guess. As I say, unless the foxes have stolen his bones.”
“Who was it, the
gardener, I mean?”
“Oh, just
someone I knew. That’s all, just someone I once knew very well.” He spoke in a quiet wistful, far-away
tone. A gust of wind caught the trees above their heads again, and the crowns
swayed and rocked drunkenly for a moment. “Hey, we should get moving, Sensei
wanted us to meet him at the Shikiami-an teahouse didn’t he? We can leave the
tools here, we’ll be coming back.”
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