The Arrow Garden by Andrew J King

Author:Andrew J King
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781916398658
Publisher: Aderyn Press

She can hear raised voices in another room. Tadasu. Trying to restrain himself, but … angry. His mother. Outrage, offence, exasperation in her tone, changing to resentful remonstration. The Grandmother’s voice is thinner and quieter, but she is the one who is not ruled by her emotions. Calm. Analytical. A voice of authority that does not need to assert itself.

Mie stares unseeing at the book she has been reading. What has just happened? And why is she afraid, though she hears no mention of her name, that it is about her? Has her fate been decided in her absence? In another room in this house of empty mats and dusty screens, while she sits reading an idly chosen book about – she flips to the title page – Buddhism and the Legal Profession, written in … 1924?

She puts down the book and slips out to take yet another walk, as slowly as she can manage this time, around the garden. Little scenes and landscapes devised long ago, by someone who knew nothing of her feelings. And yet, her mind is quieted somewhat. Where did it go, that sense of purpose, of freedom to act, that she had discovered in the mountain village? That too seems a tale of long ago. But it had been hers. What is she doing here, among these people who seem so equivocal in their welcome?

She turns a corner, the furthest from the house. A fence of decaying reed-bundles, a small stand of arrow bamboo, and a view of the pond. The bamboo stirs softly. She stops, suddenly afraid to take another step.

Shades of ash, breathtaking in their subtlety, as pure and sad as snow. The garden has become a photograph of itself. A print in soft tones of silver grey. An emulsion refined out of the very bones of the city itself.

Can it really have been as perfect as she remembers it? A beauty absolute in its shutter-frozen horror. Staring at it, she had known that the present had become, in a single night, the past. A lost world, as irrecoverable and as irrevocable, as the world imaged in a photograph.

It has been a long time since she has cried. The heat sears her cheeks, then chills them as the rivulets cool.

‘So many people.’

The old woman is standing nearby. Still as a statue. Out of the corner of the eye, her clothes appear formal, dark and plain. Mie turns to look and sees that the woman’s kimono and obi are shot silks and muted brocades that swirl and shimmer like unquiet waters.

‘So many tears. I sometimes think this pond must be filled with them. Every time it rains…’

The voice trails off into silence. Mie puts a hand up to her face, hesitates to wipe her western fine wool sleeve across it, like some ancient poet dressed in the wrong outfit. Tadasu’s grandmother reaches into the breast of her kimono and offers her a handkerchief. An arm is slipped through hers. Unsure of who is guiding whom, she finds herself led into a little hidden arbour with a stone seat.

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