Of Birds Crying by Minako Ōba

Author:Minako Ōba [Ōba, Minako]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cornell University East Asia Program
Published: 2011-04-18T17:00:00+00:00

12

Having slept almost till noon the following day Lynn Ann and Henry left for a walk in the woods in the late afternoon. Yurie let out a long sigh of relief.

They must have walked about half a mile or so into the mountains near the Jizō roadside shrine at Ike-no-tani because Lynn Ann came back with a peony-red shōjōbakama blossom in her hair, a flower plentiful in the area. On the way they had met an English-speaking foreigner, who told them that Ike-no-tani was famous for Chinese herbal arthritis remedies, Lynn Ann said. Several foreigners besides Karl lived in Hieidaira; the passerby they had spoken to was a Finn.

“We didn’t find any herbs for the liver, though,” she said disappointedly. Henry’s condition seemed always to be on her mind.

“We heard the water at the shrine’s really good and walked all the way to the cavern,” she continued. “Lately I’ve been thinking about what our ancestors must have known about the mysterious and elusive forces of the universe. My mind also keeps tossing up the image of a calcified black liver in which so many things have been bottled up for so long. You Japanese keep things to yourselves while Westerners get anxious unless we can talk about something that’s bothering us. Your way of doing things might strike one as rather uninspiring but it’s actually quite audacious.”

The tone of voice and the look on her face seemed to declare that it was her way of reaffirming the Asian blood that coursed through her veins. In fact, she displayed the fearlessness common among the Chinese whom Yurie had met in the States, an attitude reinforced by China’s long history. Yet Lynn Ann referred to herself as a “Westerner.”

“We Westerners are overconfident about our innate abilities. On the other hand you see nothing extraordinary about things made by humans. Isn’t that so?

“Instead of oils you use watered-down sumi-e ink for painting and watch it run haphazardly here and there. You know the ink fades, but you also know it can’t be erased no matter how much you try to wash it off. You seem to take it all in stride, yet you do so with a haughty conviction of superiority that says, Everything rots away in the end. The temple we’ve just visited, for instance—is it really a temple? It’s so nondescript that it could be mistaken for an ordinary house. By the way, the walk through the woods was wonderful. The trail seemed to go on and on forever. You say to yourself—if I keep on going a little further maybe I’ll see something—yet there’s nothing but trail. It was a strange and lonely path with a promise of something in store for you. We have plenty of natural beauty in America, but walking on a deserted road in the woods would be a dangerous proposition, tantamount to not having any natural beauty.”

“We don’t want to do any sightseeing, no crowds. We’ve come all this way to talk with you,” the two guests had said.

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