Shike by Robert J. Shea (the reading list txt) 📕

Twilight deepened to evening. A crescent moon, yellow as a boar’s tusk, rose above the monastery gate, taking Moko’s breath away. He wished he could see the moon rising behind Euji-san. That would be a spectacle. Amazing how a moment of beauty made a man forget he was frightened. No wonder the samurai devoted themselves to painting and poetry.

His fear returned when a hooded monk came up to the veranda and beckoned. A procession of abbots and teachers, heads and faces shadowed, was slowly ascending the narrow stone steps. They carried no torches. The crescent moon gave faint but sufficient light. Moko’s escort led him to a line of Zinja in grey robes who made room for him. They began to climb the steps.

When he entered the temple, Moko was struck by its simplicity. It was a bare room with a polished floor of dark stone, and walls and ceiling of roughhewn wood. A rectangular stone block served as the altar. The floor descended towards the altar in a series of shallow steps, each broad enough to accommodate a row of seated monks. The rear of the temple, beyond the altar, was open to the night. Out there were the great torii and Mount Euji, but it was too dark to see either. With slow, monotonous rhythm, a monk with a heavy stick was striking a hollow log suspended from the central roof beam, sending resonant booms through the temple.

The emptiness of the place seemed utterly strange to Moko. All the Buddhist temples he had seen were adorned with gold, crowded with statues painted in dazzling colours. Shinto temples, bare as they were, were palatial in comparison to this. Only Eisen’s meditation hall was as plain, and even that had a statue of Daruma, the founder of Zen, for trainees to contemplate. The Pearl Temple was nearly filled when Moko entered. The white robes sat in front, grey robes in the rear. Moko sank down near the rear and waited. The hollow booming continued, and behind him he could hear the shuffling of sandalled feet as the rest of the monks entered the temple.

Abruptly, there was silence. Abbot Taitaro and Shik�� Jebu came from behind the altar. The shik�� was naked. His body, all bone and stringy muscle, was pocked and criss-crossed with scars. Nakedness in a temple? That startled Moko, reminding him of the rumour about unseemly Zinja practices. Taitaro wore his white abbot’s robe.

Eather and son faced the assembled Zinja. Taitaro began a long incantation that Moko found impossible to follow. The old abbot called upon the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth and various forces of nature to witness and bless what they did this night. The invocation was partly sung, partly spoken in a weird high-pitched keen, and it went on for a long time. Taitaro’s voice in recent years had lost resonance and was frail and ready,

At last the old abbot said, “Monk Jebu, most deeply do we regret that we must call you from your life of action in the outermost circle of our Order. Are you willing to teach others even though this may deprive you of the opportunity for greater attainments?”

Jebu’s voice was clear and firm, a startling contrast to the feeble voice of his father. “It is time for me to try what I can accomplish in a different circle of the Order.” Moko sensed that both Taitaro and Jebu were reciting lines from an ancient ritual. The aroma of incense filled his nostrils, a scent different from any he had ever smelled, somewhere between cedar and ch’ai. He felt himself relaxing.

“Once before, the Order asked you to undergo an ordeal that might end in your death,” Taitaro said. “This is required of you again.” “I am willing.”

Taitaro raised an arm. “Let him be bound and threatened.”

Threatened? That gave Moko a little start. He watched with growing horror as two monks in grey came forward and laid Jebu on his back on the altar and tied his arms and legs with ropes to iron rings in the stone. Then, standing on the altar, one of the monks attached a long, heavy spear to a rope coming down from the roof beam, so that the point was directly above Jebu’s chest. Should the spear fall, it would pierce his heart. This is madness, thought Moko. Had the shik�� come through the ordeal of Oshu only to be killed by his own people? He wanted to cry out against this folly, but fear paralysed his tongue.

“You may refuse this trial now,” said Taitaro. “If you elect to go on, it will be as when you were first initiated into the Order. You will either prove yourself adequate, or you will cease to exist.”

Tell them you won’t do it, Shik�� Jebu, Moko urged silently. Why risk death for something that isn’t even an honour? Why give up your life for the sake of these madmen? But then he remembered that Shik�� Jebu, whom he admired above all other men, was himself one of the madmen.

“I will go on,” said Jebu in a strong voice.

“At certain times in each person’s life, an all-important decision must be made,” said Taitaro. “Such a decision will determine the entire course of one’s own future and may affect countless other lives as well. We call these decisions life-problems. Monk Jebu, we know that you are facing a life-problem now, which you must solve to settle your own destiny as well as those of others. To be admitted to the circle of teachers, you are required to answer two questions. Eirst, what is this life-problem you are facing now? Second, what will you do about it? Your answers must show these assembled teachers and abbots of the Order that you have attained a level of insight that qualifies you to be a teacher. You are given all this night. You will be questioned just before sunrise.”

The old monk turned away from the altar where Jebu lay bound and naked with the gleaming steel spear pointing at his heart, and took his place in the front row of white robes. The booming of the stick against the hollow log began again, and the monks raised a chant in some strange, long-lost language. The temple reverberated with their deep droning.

Moko wondered, are we actually going to sit here until dawn? He recalled, from what he had learned in China about heavenly bodies, that this particular night of the Eifth Month was the shortest night of the year. Of course, he wanted the shik�� to have all the time in the world to find the right answer to old Taitaro’s strange questions, but this stone floor was going to be awfully hard by morning. It was painfully hard now. The incomprehensible chanting went on and on, and Moko lost all track of time. He found himself nodding off to sleep. He heard the rustling of robes about him and looked up to see that many of the monks were pacing around the temple. Some of them were conversing in low tones and others were even leaving the building. How could they just stroll about and chat when a man lay bound to that altar stone in peril of death? Those who remained in their places kept up that devilish chant.

After a time, feeling a little ashamed of turning his back on the shik��, but realizing that his simply suffering through the night or falling asleep in the temple would do Shik�� Jebu no good, Moko stood up and shuffled outside. It was a relief, after the sweet incense, to breathe unscented night air and to watch fireflies twinkling like earthbound stars.

“What do you make of this, Mokosan?” said a voice beside him. Moko started and turned. It was Abbot Taitaro.

His bewilderment and indignation bubbled to his lips. “Holiness, forgive me, but this seems like utter lunacy. I know you love your son. I was with you in the mountains of Oshu when you nearly died yourself, struggling to keep him alive. How can you encourage him to risk his life just so the other Zinja can call him teacher, when it doesn’t seem to mean anything as far as I can make out?” A suspicion suddenly dawned in his mind. “Or, isn’t he really risking his life at all? You wouldn’t let him, be stabbed by that spear, would you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Taitaro. “If his answer lacks true insight, I myself will cut the rope with a stroke of my sword, and the spear will fall and kill him.”

“Why, holiness? What drives you to this?”

“The belief that only a certain kind of life is worth living.” “I don’t know what that means, holiness.”

“Do not seek to understand everything about an Order whose lifelong members do not always understand it, Mokosan.”

“But why kill a man for failing to answer a question?”

“Eor Jebu the problem might lie, not in knowing the correct answer, but in admitting that he knows it.” Moko felt Taitaro’s hand give his a light, friendly pat, and then the old abbot was gone.

With a twinge of fear Moko remembered Jebu’s first plaintive words, which only he had heard, on waking up at the Black Bear Temple. Now he understood the test the Zinja had imposed on Jebu. They were offering what he had wished for. Peace. All he had to do was give an answer that would cause the spear to fall. Moko prayed that Shik�� Jebu would want to live.

Moko went back into the temple and took his place among the seated monks. In spite of his anxiety, the chanting and the incense and the booming of the hollow log lulled him, and he allowed himself to drift into sleep. There was. nothing he could do for Shik�� Jebu except be here. Now he was on a ship, racing over bright blue ocean waves, leaving the Sunrise Land far behind. He was being carried to the sea coast of Persia. His ship plunged like a wild horse, without sail or oar to propel it. The bow smashed upon great, green, transparent rocks like giant emeralds. The Persians were naked women, and they lived in circular towers of polished white stone without doors and rode about on the backs of giant birds. Brandishing sabres, long legs flashing in the sunlight, they came running down to the shore. They surrounded him and raised their swords. They were going to cut him to pieces and feed him to their great birds. He screamed in terror, “Help! Help!”

A comforting hand shook his shoulder gently. The echo of his screams still reverberated in the incense-heavy air of the temple. Monks were staring at him. His face burnt with shame and he bowed his head to hide his embarrassment. They honoured me by inviting me to their ceremony, and I fell asleep and disturbed it, he thought. I have disgraced Shik�� Jebu. If I were of noble blood I would commit seppuku, but I am not even worthy to do that.

Taitaro’s thin voice cut into his agony. “The time has come for you to speak, Monk Jebu.”

There was a long silence. With a chill Moko thought, he’s not going to answer. That would be the shik��‘s way. He would not wish to answer the question incorrectly. He would rather let his silence announce that he had chosen death. Moko stared down at Jebu’s naked form stretched out on the altar stone, silently imploring the shik�� to speak. Beyond the altar, seen through the open end of the temple, the sky was growing light. The skeleton of the great torii and the cone of Euji were black silhouettes against an indigo sky.

“Just now I heard a cry for help.” Jebu’s voice was loud enough to hear but easy, casual, as