Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

"In Buenos Aires, yes. And that's another thing. Naipaul called him a charlatan. What crap! Borges was twice the writer he is. How was he kind to you?"

"Naipaul had been at Oxford with my father. When I met him, I told him that—oh, I think we go around this upward path."

"Look at that bamboo on the hillside," I said. "It's the running, not the clumping, kind. Bluey green. I wonder what—?"

"I like that, 'bluey green.' This is a classic garden. I suppose monks lived in this villa. Oh, Naipaul remembered going for walks with my father. He was very touched. He remembered little details."

"Two lonely Indians in Oxford. Naipaul was depressive then. He constantly mentions that he was going to kill himself at Oxford. I see that as a kind of boasting."

"Anyway, my father and he hit it off, and—I guess this is the end of the path. Chatwin was a boaster. He was a few years ahead of me at the Dragon School in Oxford. Let's go back to the main road."

We found a path to another temple, no one around, just a great wooden structure with upright stones inscribed with lines from the sutras.

"I can't take Chatwin's books," Pico said. "They don't seem real to me."

"He tried to make his evasions a virtue, fictionalizing his travels," I said. "He laughed and invented places. He invented etymologies. He said the word 'Arab' meant 'dweller in tents.' But it doesn't. Look in an Arabic dictionary. The word means 'people who express themselves'—clear speakers. He also said that Robert Louis Stevenson was second rate. Ha!"

We walked farther into a park, to Chion-in Temple, Pico said. On the weathered porch, looking down on the city, he said, "I've spent the whole morning writing about how Kyoto lasted twelve hundred years. The Americans agreed not to bomb it in the war. Now it's being changed out of all recognition because of unchecked urban development."

"Right," I said. But my mind was elsewhere. "The thing that bothers me is that Chatwin never traveled alone."

"Jan does."

"So does Jonathan."

"But Redmond doesn't."

"Naipaul never did."

Monks were chanting inside the temple, a brazier was smoking with joss sticks, devotees were praying. The wooden porch was worn smooth and finely grained.

" Wabi-sabi" I said, tapping my toe on the wood.

"That's a really ambiguous expression. Almost meaningless."

"I thought it meant 'weathered and imperfect.'"

"Shall we walk down there? I stayed here when I first came to Japan. I went to that monastery—see the little building? I thought I'd stay a year and write about it. I lasted a week."

"I guess they had you—what? Kneeling, doing sitting positions and Zen meditation?"

"No, mopping floors, cleaning, scrubbing."

"That's the other big monastic discipline. The Aum Shinrikyo cult was full of moppers and sweepers."

"The oldest teahouse in Kyoto," Pico said. "Also the world's biggest carp. And down there at that temple, ladies of the night and geishas come to make offerings. We can go later. The geisha quarter is nearby. You know about this Jizu figure? Patron of children?"

"I think so. What about sex here, anyway? I saw streetwalkers at the back of my hotel."

"The women step out of the shadows and say kimochi. It happened to me recently."

"What are you supposed to do? Hey, look at this. The walkway between the buildings. I tried to make one of these in Hawaii."

"That's a teahouse at the far end."

"What does kimochi mean?"

"Comfort. 'You want comfort?' A euphemism for sex."

"Like 'comfort woman'—those Koreans they forced into prostitution."

"Right."

Pico was eating candy out of a bag. "Want an M-and-M?"

"Thanks. I saw a sign, 'Love Doll,' over a door in Wakkanai. I really regret that I didn't go in and see who was there."

"No, no. Don't go through the door. My feeling in Japan, seeing something like that, is you never know what you're getting yourself into."

We were strolling among azaleas, reddish purple blossoms, and passing through gateways of shaped junipers.

"You did the right thing, not opening that door," Pico said. "I've so often gone through the wrong door."

"I feel better now."

"You know what they say instead of 'I came'? They say, 'I went.'"

I pointed to the center of the garden. "What is the story with that little mound with the bushes on it?"

"Unfathomable Japan. Not like anywhere else. You can't even guess."

Circling the narrow streets, we passed through a high red gateway and came to Yasaka Pagoda, a Shinto shrine, animistic, venerating animals and the natural world of rocks and trees, where many paper offerings had been attached to the structure.

"Women come here if they want a child, or if they want an abortion, or if they've had a miscarriage. It's the Jizu figure again. They want to catch the spirit of the lost child. It's also frequented by geishas before their nightly gigs."

"There's one, in a kimono."

"No, she's too old," Pico said. "She's probably in charge of geishas. This is the spiritual center of the pleasure quarter, haunted by memories of melancholy love."