The Carp-Faced Boy and Other Tales

The Spider Sweeper-2

One day while Jin and Kumo-harai were picking devil’s tongue to dry for the abbot’s tea, several young women approached. After much giggling, they asked him to describe the fabled Shimada chignon they’d heard so much about. One woman let down her hair and asked boldly if he thought he could show them how it was made. It was at that moment that Kumo-harai felt an emotion he’d never had before. He removed the basket from his hip and spent the rest of the day alone by the river. By nightfall he was no longer angry but terrified in a way he’d never been before.

The next day the two worked side by side as usual and Kumo-harai tried to pretend that nothing inside him had changed. But what was once comfortable was now awkward, and he could find nothing to talk about. Even Jin seemed to be more distant than usual. After the evening meal, Jin built a small fire behind the graveyard to keep off the chill and used his walking stick to knock the branches of the chestnut tree. The two gathered and roasted the prickly treats in silence.

“Those are the temples you’ve visited,” Kumo-harai said, pointing to characters burned into the thick staff. There were stylized characters nearly impossible to read all up and down the hard wood.

“All of them so far,” Jin said, turning it in his hands to show his friend. “I’ve still got five more stops.”

“Five more,” Kumo-harai repeated, he leaned over and ran his finger down the impressions until he reached the last one. Yamaoku Temple. His temple. It was a small stamp. They weren’t one of the sixty-six holy sites. They hardly ever had traveling monks visit; most carried on until they reached the city.

Jin kicked up a sharp rock and examined it. He took the stick and under the last stamp began to carve something in the empty space.

Kumo-harai used the end of his broom to poke the fire.

“Your next stop is Mishima,” Kumo-harai said.

“Yes.”

Kumo-harai turned and faced his friend. Nights were coming more quickly and already the air was a rich indigo. Jin’s profile was lit orange and red from the fire. Even his black hair, pulled away from his face and tied back, looked as if it had been splashed with paint or sunlight. He stopped carving and threw the rock aside. He blew on the wood.

“You have to leave,” Kumo-harai said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” Jin answered. “But I’ll return before autumn next year.”

“That’s a long time.”

“Not so long.” Jin gazed into the darkening forest. The moon, not quite full, was still low and large rising over the tree line. The night insects chirred. “I’ll be back in time for spider season. I’ll be here to help.”

Kumo-harai smiled. From inside the temple the last bell of the evening tolled, slow silver reverberations washing over them. The monks could be heard shuffling barefoot across the straw-matted floors to their rooms. Their prayers were finished for the day. Jin handed Kumo-harai his walking stick turning it so he could see the newly made inscription.

Kumo-harai. He’d carved his name.

“You’re the gentlest soul I’ve ever met,” Jin said. “Someone who greets the birds by the names he’s given them, who whispers appreciation to bath water before he throws it out, and who sees the world as it should be, not as it is.” Jin held out his hands and examined them in the firelight. They were old man’s hands. “You made me battle myself. You confused me.” He finally turned to meet Kumo-harai’s stare. “And I could very well end my journey here. Stay here. Forever.”

Kumo-harai felt his breath hitch in his chest. He wanted to cry out. The bell’s ringing faded, split, and then shattered into a beautiful chorus of crickets erupting from the forest. The sound crested the mountains and fell away; it went on and on. It was just for them.

The last paper door in the temple slid shut across its wooden track. Jin reached out and took Kumo-harai’s hand. He stood and led him to the grassy patch behind the storage house where there the moonlight fell and the night-blooming jasmine ran up the back of the stone building.

Jin was still asleep when Kumo-harai left to fetch water and start the morning fires. When he returned he found the graveyard wet with morning dew and a heavy mist. The same as it was every day but different. The spiders had been busy and even in the faint morning light their webs glistened in long jewel-lined threads from gravestone to gravestone. Standing near a mossy lantern was Jin. He was dressed in his traveling clothes. Kumo-harai felt the strength leave his legs, but the dark man was there to hold him up and kiss him one last time hard on the mouth.

Afterward, Jin announced his departure and the abbot hastily arranged for a pilgrimage ceremony to be performed.

The monks lit a large fire and fed it with damp grasses and handfuls of fragrant herbs. A constant rhythm was beaten on taiko drums, bells were rung, and deep-voiced trance-inducing tones were chanted. Jin knelt before the abbot, head bowed, receiving the blessing. Before long the townspeople were making their way up the mountain to wish their new friend a safe journey. Kumo-harai hid in the plumes of cedar- and sage-scented smoke, allowing them to sting and water his eyes.

When the ceremony ended, Jin was presented with a bundle of food and fresh water for his journey. The children looped several dandelion necklaces around his neck and played little tunes on the stems. Kumo-harai remained apart from the crowd. He wanted to run to him, to beg him to stay. Jin said goodbye to each person in turn. When he was finished he went to Kumo-harai.

“I forgot to return this,” Jin said, pressing something into the palm of his hand. Kumo-harai squeezed the object tightly, and with his other hand held Jin’s wrist.

“Thank you,” he said, bowing low.

Jin returned the bow and speaking in a low voice said, “If I don’t leave now I’ll never go. It was a promise I made on my parents’ grave, my sisters’ grave. I have to—”

“I know,” Kumo-harai said, slipping his hand up Jin’s sleeve, holding his forearm for a long moment before he pulled away.

While Jin was putting on his sedge hat and tying it around his chin, Kumo-harai opened his palm to find a tiny Buddha carved out of pink coral. He knew its story. It had belonged to Jin’s mother.

Kumo-harai, thinking he’d see him again, watched the broad back of his lover walk away.

Kumo-harai waited as the soothsayer examined the sticks on the straw-matted floor.

“Yes, yes, that’s what it is,” she said. “His spirit is visiting you.”

Kumo-harai was almost ready to believe her prediction when one of the monks from the temple flung open the door and prostrated himself on the dirt floor.

“The abbot said I’d find you here,” he said. He was out of breath. “I have news.”

Kumo-harai made his hands into fists and closed his eyes.

“There were bandits on the road,” the monk said. “Jin was alone.” The young monk couldn’t even look Kumo-harai in the eyes. “He was murdered.”

“But he was a traveling mendicant,” Kumo-harai said. “He had nothing of value…”

He reached up to touch the collar of his robe, running his finger along the outline of the small Buddha he’d sewn there three nights ago. He wondered, if Jin had not given it to him, could he have used it to buy his own life?

When Kumo-harai woke the next morning, he could hardly remember being carried back to the temple and laid in his drafty room, a wooden pillow pushed up under his neck, a futon pulled to his chest. He was alone.

Down the hallway he could hear chanting and drumming and the crackle of the morning fire. A very faint light came from behind the paper shoji. He had overslept and someone had performed his morning chores for him. He hurried into the graveyard. It was the fourth morning since the ghost first appeared and Kumo-harai prayed he was not too late to see him again.

“Kumo-harai.”

The ghost was waiting. It turned its back and strode across the yard toward the storehouse, the first and last place they’d been together.

This time Kumo-harai followed his lover, wiping away tears with the back of his long sleeve until he reached the heavy storehouse door. Collapsing against the splintering wood he wept.

“Kumo-harai,” the voice was coming from inside of the building. He pushed himself up and pulled at the handle. The door opened.

It was dark inside, the morning sun lighting only a long rectangle on the clay floor. The smell of earth and the sour odor of vinegared daikon filled Kumo-harai’s head. He stepped inside. He squinted trying to find Jin’s ghost in the dark corners of the room. But it had vanished again.

“What are you doing there?!”

Kumo-harai jumped. He hadn’t heard anyone approaching.

“I…”

“Did you see him again?” The abbot opened up his arms and Kumo-harai went to him.

It was there in that embrace, the abbot gently leading the young man from the storehouse, that Kumo-harai turned for one last glance into the room and saw what he was meant to see.

There, hastily shoved into a corner, was a bundle of clothes. Traveling clothes, a large cone-shaped hat ripped nearly in half, and a traveling staff. These were not the style of clothes the monks used when they did their own travels. These were layman’s clothes, mendicant’s clothes. Kumo-harai pushed himself free of the abbot and ran over to the pile. He buried his face in them and knew. These were Jin’s belongings. And they were covered in blood.

With the sun in his eyes he looked back up at the abbot. “How did you get these?” For a moment Kumo-harai still believed that bandits had killed his lover.

The fox-eyed man, a large black figure in the doorway, folded his arms across his chest and said nothing.

“You did this?” Kumo-harai held the walking stick, the top splintered. Jin had put up a fight. But who knows how many were sent after him. “There were no bandits. It was you?”

Still the monk stood silent.

“Why? He had nothing of value. He was good man,” Kumo-harai, his voice cracking with grief, realizing just now this wasn’t about riches. “He’d gone. He was already gone.”

“He was a risk,” the older man said.

“What do you—”

“I had him followed into the city. Just to be sure,” the abbot said.

Kumo-harai rubbed his thumb along the last carving in the staff; the one Jin had made that night by the fire—his name. He pushed himself up and approached the abbot. He stopped an arm’s length away. “Why?”

“You were mine. You were always meant to be mine,” the abbot said, looking straight into the young man’s eyes. “Jin should have stayed gone.”

“Stayed gone?” Kumo-harai thought he was going to be sick. “You mean he was coming back?” He tightened his grip on the walking stick.

“Yes.”

“For me?”

“Yes.” The abbot spit on the floor, raised his mashed dumpling nose in contempt.

The edges of Kumo-harai’s vision disappeared in smudged ink. He saw nothing but the monster in front of him. He raised the stick and screamed. The abbot backed out into the graveyard tripping on his robes. Kumo-harai waited for him to stand before he advanced again.

To his right the temple stood, doors pushed open. Lines of straight-backed monks droned sutras and sleepy prayers. The hollow wooden drum clacked a steady beat. A golden bell. The men were used to the occasional day when the head monk slept in or had business elsewhere. They were single-minded in their meditations or resolute in their betrayal—either way, not a single man lifted his eyes to witness the crying out and pleading of their master going on below.

The last vision Kumo-harai ever saw of Jin was over the abbot’s shoulder. He was standing under the persimmon tree, bare-chested and smiling.

Kumo-harai knew exactly what he needed to do. Step by step, the jagged end of the walking stick thrust into the fat of the old man’s throat, he led the abbot through the graveyard down to the tree line until he had his back pressed against the twisted trunk of the persimmon tree. The old monk tried to make excuses, he wept. But Kumo-harai wasn’t swayed. And for the first time he could remember, he wasn’t afraid.

“If you kill me, you’ll forever suffer in one of Buddha’s hells, roasting over a sulfur fire, your belly split and boiling,” the abbot warned, shaking his fist, trying to look intimidating. “You’ll never be with Jin again.”

“Oh, you will not die by my hand,” Kumo-harai said. “I have no desire to meet you in hell.”

A brief expression of hope passed across the fox-eyed man’s face. He smiled an awful, sharp-toothed smile. He ran one hand over his shaven head and clucked his tongue. Such a shaming sound. Such a confident sound. Kumo-harai would enjoy putting an end to that.