Juliet is the Sun

By Gemma Nishiyama

Dedicated to the brave people fighting and resistingthe construction of oil pipelines and to people

working for renewable energy everywhere on ourplanet

Books and websites quoted in this novel:

All quotations from Shakespeare are from The Riverside Shakespeare, Houghton-Mifflin Company. Boston, MA. 1974 (Evans et al. eds.)

In Chapter 17, parts of the morality play Mankynde are shown in a fictionalized and simplified representation I created after reading this play. I quote some lines from this play which I accessed at NeCastro, Gerard. From Stage to Page - Medieval and Renaissance Drama. http://www.umm.maine.edu/faculty/necastro/drama. Date Visited: February 6, 2013.

In the conversation between Professor Yamaguchi and Viola in Chapter20, a few quotations from The Renaissance Drama of Knowledge by Hilary Gatti (London: Routledge), 1989, are used with permission from the publisher. Particularly I quote one paragraph from page 130 and I summarize part of an argument that Professor Gatti makes on pages 141-2 of her book and I quote the lines she quotes from Hamlet and Spaccio della bestia trionfante..

In Chapter 26, I quote all of Epops’ song from The Birds by Aristophanes. I accessed this public-domain play at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristophanes/birds.html on July 31, 2012.

In Chapter 31, I quote the opening lines from the ‘Explanatory Epistle’ on page 69 of The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (Spaccio della bestia trionfante (1584) by Giordano Bruno) (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press), translated by Arthur D. Imerti, 1964. (I have a subsequent edition published in 1992). The publisher kindly informedme that the brief passage I quote is covered under the “Fair Use”

provisions it has established.

Chapter 1Stand and unfold yourself

One morning, about nine, I returned home from walking our tiny

Yorkshire terrier and discovered an astonishing vision in the tatami

mat room, where the rumpled futons were still covering the floor. A

man in brown velvet pants, and strange thick wool stockings of grey,

with a frilled linen shirt that was perhaps off-white or yellowed

with age, stood beside the shoji doors.

I take an interest in hand-woven cloth. I like artful things which

take time and satisfy the eye and the touch, but cannot compete

commercially. So I knew at one glance that this man’s clothes were not

standard industrial ones: the style, the colors, the fabrics---all

were strangeness and irregularity. I wanted to scream, but hesitated:

I have a passion for natural dyes and could tell that his clothes were

not modern, not industrially made or colored. He sat cross-legged near

the paper sliding doors, and he looked, if I may summarize his

attitude, apologetic.

“I’m sorry if I startled you”, a low voice, a soft voice, and

gentle. He spoke English, and not with an American accent, but this

was not a surprise somehow. He did not seem to be Japanese although

his hair was dark and his beard was dark brown or black, like sable,

but silvered a bit. I noticed that he was not getting up to attack me.

He remained seated and I noticed an odd phenomenon then as I came

closer to him: his skin had a whitish-greenish glow, his face, his

hands, everywhere where you could see his skin, there was a faint but

bizarre and pearly luminescence. I wanted to scream again.

Usually I am a calmer person. But this odd meeting had unnerved

me, perhaps because I myself had recently fled from the prefecture

next to Fukushima. Was he an installation artist from the exclusion

zone, or an obscure activist on the run, strangely attired and wearing

the latest in nano-technologically derived make-up designed to glow

artificially? Perhaps his impromptu visit here, a prank no doubt being

recorded, was next to be uploaded on YouTube, then go viral, to be

viewed by millions. Did an Internet debacle await me?

But no. He sat calmly. There was no telltale laptop, blinking,

at the edge of the room. There seemed to be no wires or tiny cameras.

I noticed he was darkly handsome, a bit older than me, and he was

smiling, and the word “gentle” could not be avoided again in my brain

as I tried to summarize, for myself, my own impression of him: gentle

smile, gentle voice, gentle manner, gentle touch. For now his fingers

pressed lightly on my finger tips, his palm swept softly against mine.

In his handshake, I felt his touch to be cooler than the ordinary

temperature of a human body. I dared to look deeply into his brown

eyes, now that he had shown himself through gestures to be kind and

friendly, and here I sensed an odd warmth.

In Japan, we, I am happy to say, have many ghosts. They have not

been banished from the scene. Children know all the names of the

famous ghosts: Rokurokubi, a classically beautiful woman with an

infinitely and rapidly extending neck, whose head can therefore chase

you down a mountain as you flee; Noperabo, magically taking any

gender, any form of a body, but whose pale powdered face lacks eyes

and a nose, though she has a mouth, and Hitotsumekozo, a one-eyed

young monk. Local ghosts here in the Western part of Japan, such as

the samurai Chichibei, fatally tricked by a rival, or the fisherman

Oraemon who walks the rocky beach of Horiuki at night, are many and

their histories are handed around. I delight in all such stories, as

do most people I know here. So then why, why, was it that when I did

finally meet a real ghost, despite all my years of a really decent—

though haphazard--- education in ghosts and occult lore here in

Japan-----why, O why, did I fail so utterly to perceive the truth?

I sat down on the edge of my futon to make further acquaintance

with this strange man. What did he want? Surely it was time for

honesty and calm. All right then.

“Who are you?” I asked. I tried to ask it severely, and to

display my dominance and no-nonsense manner.

“Ah, yes! I thought you might ask that.” He said these words

sadly, looked mournful, somber, and cast his eyes down theatrically on

to the tatami mat where his stockinged legs crossed rather

athletically in front of him. He had the muscles of an actor or a

tennis player or a professional nurse, someone who walked or ran.

I felt annoyed.

“My name is Viola Matsumura”, I said, trying to sound calm and

patient, like a social worker who has suddenly come across a wandering

stranger in need of assistance, “is there anything I can do for you?

Any relative or friend I can call to help you? Can you speak Japanese?

Are you lost perhaps? Do you have a working mobile phone? Are you a

traveler in distress?”

The banal questions only seemed to deepen the stranger’s sad and

quiet demeanor. After a silent pause, he suddenly reached out and in

one graceful motion, brought my fingertips up to his cold lips, while

his eyes mysteriously burned, a compelling and passionate warmth

transferring rapidly into mine. The motions of his hands, and the

motions of his eyes formed two separate sophisticated, almost surreal,

planes of action, undoing me and strangely satisfying me at the same

time. I had never been kissed in such a way before, on my hands. It

seemed archaic, yet delightful! If only his skin and his lips were not

so cold!

“Pity me not, but do please listen to my story.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, in what I recognized now finally as my

real voice. I drew up my knees and clasped my hands around my legs.

Ah, dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair?

The phrase suddenly issued from nowhere, hung---or rather,

nestled----in crooks in the air, from somewhere yet nowhere all at

once, a bee sting, a pistol shot, then it was a swan feather floating

in flotsam of the denser sounds from all around us. A sound impossible

to deny, yet whose source was also impossible to find. It had not come

from the stranger’s lips. It was then that I began to understand that

the traveler was not from any country one could visit at will carrying

just a credit card, or, as I had so doltishly mentioned, a working mobile

phone. There was no one on this earth I could call to help

this….person….or whatever or whoever he was. There was no dimension

available to the living where I could turn to get an account of the

full and true nature of this man. For I had just then decided, though

by then I knew better, to call him a man.

At least until I find out what he really was.

I knew enough Shakespeare to have some idea of whose ghost this

was.

Chapter 2

And what should I do in Illyria?

I should have made it clear that I majored in English Literature

at Harvard College, twenty-three years ago. My two very favorite

classes were both on Shakespeare’s plays (Early and Late), and taught

by an inspiring professor named Margaret Greybard, with the liveliest,

most poignant, most skillful delivery of Shakespeare’s famous lines I

had ever heard. Sometimes I would close my eyes during lectures and

let her convincing voice, after all the voice of an authentic,

intuitive Shakespeare connoisseur, become a sort of heavenly music box

playing Shakespeare.

“And what should I do in Illyria?”

Professor Greybard was standing at her podium in Sanders Theater, a

huge lecture hall, but, listening to her evocative, ringing voice, I

saw only the wide sky of Illyria, the beach and the shipwrecked

heroine wearing a cape and the captain next to her. I saw the water,

the waves with white crests.

Everything.

Nice clothes, dates, good grades, and other things that college

students usually like were pallid and dreary compared to Shakespeare.

But, naturally not wishing to be thought totally bizarre, I kept this

personal feeling to myself.

This meeting with the ghost now seemed to be a fitting, elegant

chance to relive my long-subdued, long-forgotten undergraduate

passion.

“Swear by his sword.”

He was doing it again, magically zapping the air pockets all around me

with ghostly vocal sounds which didn’t seem to come from his lips. The

sound of the line, enhanced by the “s” sound of sword and swear, was

eerily all around, like the delicate pink petals of the cherry

blossoms now scattering outside in the cross currents of the wind

along the river near the old wooden rented house where I live, here and

everywhere.

hic et ubique

I wanted to calm him down, this ghost, my ghost now, or rather the

ghost of my dreams. Obviously, he was distraught, quoting lines from

his own plays out of all context, giving them a delivery which, while

not unpleasurable, was strange because it was not vocalized normally,

nor performed in any ordinary way. How does one understand what a

ghost is thinking? How does one know when a ghost is restless and

unsatisfied? There was no rattling of chains or moaning and other

things ;like that, as you might see some famous ghosts doing in novels

and films.

What ought I to call him? My dear William? Mr. Shakespeare? Will? Sir?

“Mr. Shakespeare”, I started, “Please----“

His face softened and the surreal glow surrounding his body

seemed to become rosier and picked up in its fervor a little as I

spoke. He suddenly seemed like a truly real ghost, and I wondered how

I could have ever made the mistake of thinking him human at the

beginning.

“Viola Matsumura. How do you do? Indeed, I am the poet William

Shakespeare”.

If a ghost comes to call on you, should you offer him some tea?

Should you apologize if your rumpled futons are not yet put away or

some unwashed clothes are scattered on the floor? Should you be

worried about impropriety-----sitting on a futon beside a strange man

in your bedroom, a man who is not your husband? Or rather, a strange

ghost who is not your husband.

What was he doing here?

Hamlet’s father returns as a ghost to tell Hamlet some

disquieting news. In A Christmas Carol, the ghost of Jacob Marley visits

Scrooge in order to beg him not to make the mistake of greed. Oraemon

walks his beach, Chichibei the samurai searches for his long-dead

rival. I now naturally wondered if there was an undelivered message or

an unresolved problem that was preventing this particular visiting

ghost from achieving eternal peace.

But when I looked up to ask him about this, he was gone. Only

brilliant sunlight fell on the patch of tatami mat where he had been

sitting. Beside me, the dog, Teru, had disobediently crawled onto a

futon, and was asleep. I was still dazed, but I chased him off and

started, paying hardly any attention at all, to fold up the futons and

sheets and put them away.

Chapter 3

No, indeed, sir; the Lady Olivia has no folly: she will keep no fool, sir, till she be married; and fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings; the husband's the bigger: I am indeed not her fool, but her corrupter of words

After this experience, for the next few days, I was expecting to

see the ghost again or rather, I was hoping to see him again. I was

a rather a lonely person, not divorced exactly, but honestly, I

could not say that my marriage was in good, or even in decent,

condition. I had an idea of it as a chronically ill patient in some

anonymous hospital, awaiting surgery that would probably fail. So I

suppose I can add, guiltily, that it was a relief that my husband

was far away, in Ibaraki Prefecture, which is just beside Fukushima

Prefecture. I had made the decision to leave after the nuclear

accident, of course because of health fears of radiation and

radioactive fallout, but if I examine my feelings more closely, and

if I am honest with myself, I can see that I also wanted to get away

from my husband and the feelings of ennui, condescension and

irritation we were feeling for each other and with each other.

Even were a ghost to show up in my life, if he would be kind and

supportive, friendly, witty, interesting, if he would divert and

amuse me-----I knew right away that I would be able to become

attached emotionally and passionately to such a being, and I somehow

knew that if it were Shakespeare’s ghost----Shakespeare being, of

course, someone I assumed to be a supremely wise being--- I needed

to have very little worry of being invited to dance in a graveyard,

and other horrible stories one reads in books.

If nothing else, I felt, perhaps, that I had nothing very much

to lose. My children, still in school, of course, rely on me. But they

are quite old enough now to go around by themselves. My parents, in

America, are elderly would not be very interested in the supernatural

adventures of their middle-aged expatriate daughter. My father had

always steadfastly explained to everyone that ghosts, gods, spirits,

and such do not exist, and simply cannot exist, by definition----but my

father has never lived here where I now live, nor seen what I have

seen. My few friends here in Tsubame were as busy as I was. Where

then, should I turn to find someone who can talk to me, make me laugh,

and listen to my stupid jokes? My husband was not interested in the

job, though he had been when we first met.

As a lowly English teacher and proofreader, I can make a small but

sufficient living anywhere. I didn’t need to be in Tokyo, as I had

explained many times to my husband. My job as an English teacher, I am

proud to say it, is a sort of modern, minimalistic variation of what

people in the Middle Ages in Europe called a “court jester”, or what

people in the Edo Period in Japan called a “geisha”: for a small

consideration, I entertain people for an hour at a time, with

conversation that is calculated to please, to engage, to divert, and

occasionally, I hope, to inspire. And in my job, where teaching

English is only, in my opinion, a pretext, it is helpful to follow at

all times the advice of King Lear’s Fool: “Nay, and thou canst not smile as the

wind sits, thou’lt catch cold shortly”.

It was not my fault that my husband wouldn’t follow me, his poor

Fool, into banishment and poverty on the mountainous heaths of Western

Japan: and, truthfully, I had made somewhat of a go of it. In fact,

ending up nearer the green mountains and close to a clean river had

made me relieved at last, instead of embarrassed, as I had been in the

Tokyo area, to be and to always have been, something close to a court

jester: foolish, simple and close to the ground, never serious about

and never committed to academia.

Lately I had been thinking that after the children grew up and

found their own lives, I would live alone forever, encased in a sort

of ice cube emotionally, but not unpleasantly so. There was my

teaching work, and then my hobbies, darning old socks, going to flea

markets, keeping pet cats, a simple existence. These had seemed enough

until now.

But now that a ghost, especially one of a luminous writer, had

turned up in my life, I started to get expectations of happiness, as

if the freezing ice cube I was encased in was melting. I reasoned,

calculatedly perhaps, that a friendship with a ghost cannot be counted

as infidelity. And probably a ghost would be able to maintain secrecy,

being able to dissolve skillfully into the air if a husband should

suddenly drop by inconveniently.

Of course, you cannot search for a ghost on the internet, or

locate a useful email address for one. Nor are ghosts to be found on

social media.

I would just have to wait.

Chapter 4

Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments…..

The impediments to a steady romantic or platonic relationship

with a ghost may be many. Indeed, I have mentioned some of them:

contacting the beloved one in the world beyond, getting over ones

understandable fears of the supernatural, the worry that one won’t be

able to “measure up” as a conversational partner if the ghost is a

famous superlative and popular genius, and so forth.

Yet I was to be pleasantly surprised in regard to impediments.

On Wednesdays I take the bus to a small junior college, where I

teach one class, in the next town. The bus ride takes 45 minutes. I

generally read a book or I sleep if I am tired, although I also love

to watch the mountains as a sort of musical scenery, jumbles of

haphazard little low green peaks, swooping down from the sky, or

rather plunked down by it, gifts from the generous nature gods, now

entirely homes for hawks, ravens, and other birds, whom indeed these

gods must have once resembled.

About one month after the first encounter with Shakespeare’s ghost,

I was on the bus on my way to this little college, and I was lightly

dozing off when I felt a subtle sort of pressure next to me on my

right arm and shoulder, as if someone were sitting down right next to

me, rather too closely. The strange thing was that the bus had not just stopped to let

anyone on!

The seats on this bus are generally sparsely populated, which is

to say that most people have cars these days, except other impractical

wanderers like me. There are usually five or so elderly passengers on

the bus besides me, in other words, there are plenty of seats and no

one need crowd anyone else or sit double to a seat.

So, in my lightly sleeping state, the question of who had

mysteriously taken the seat next to mine rapidly framed itself, and I

awoke to see, with joy and relief, the handsome sable-bearded stranger

wearing the same clothes as last time, only this time he wore shoes,

what I assumed were proper Elizabethan shoes, a bit pointy, dignified

brown leather-heeled things. I couldn’t contain my pleasure at seeing

him again, and the bus was nearly empty anyway.

“Hello!” I cried happily, forgetting even that he was a ghost, “I

have been so looking forward to seeing you!” I said, without thinking.

“Yes.” A smile, and my hand was briefly kissed by his stone-cold

lips. A small gold hoop of an earring flashed beneath his grey-

streaked dark hair, which was almost longer than mine, and worn loose.

Up close now, I could notice details such as a fine-worked linen

collar, totally outdated. His skin was rough, sallow, and not entirely

clean. I wondered what he would smell like if I leaned closer……the

earth of his earthly grave? This was a thought that somehow,

fascinatingly, did not repel me. Or would he smell like an ordinary

living man, slightly sweaty and soap-scented? Or would he have some

ancient refined Elizabethan cologne sprinkled about him, faded into

perpetuity, musty damask, lavender, gardenia, forget-me-nots?

He must have read my thoughts.

“Not flowers, not earth…..that is…to say…..why not... judge for

yourself.” His slow voice carried, deeply and boldly. Was this a

challenge? If so, I was not afraid, though I hesitated a little.

He looked slightly amused at my embarrassment, and he leaned in

closer to me, and I closed my eyes and inhaling deeply, I felt a

breezy coolness and smelled mountains, sky, the wind, the ocean, all

wild nature in one, salty, piney woods, feathers, sea spray, shells

and driftwood, black sand, white sand, and then one surprising word, a

word I had barely heard of, wandered all by itself into my brain:

Thessaly.

“Thessaly”, I said without thinking, softly, a murmur, a reaction,

a musical sound only. I had never been there, barely even heard of it.

Wasn’t it somewhere in Greece?

“Very good”, he turned his face, the glance of his bright dark eyes

aiming into mine, “indeed.”

We sat together in a peaceful silence for a while, and I tried to

arrange my life in my head with this new dimension now, a ghost added

in. When two people meet and form a bond, the mortality of each one,

also shared by the other one, will sculpt a natural and classic, if

sad, denouement for their relationship. But if one of the pair is an

immortal ghost, then what sort of future was to be expected for the

relationship? For the sake of our bond, should I perhaps be prepared

to become a ghost as well? And if so, how and when exactly? Certainly

I would have to wait until the children were independent.

“No, no”, said Shakespeare’s ghost, reading my mind again, “not

at all. That is not the thing I aim to accomplish at all. Such an

ending for you would be completely contrary to my purposes.”

I was mortified to have had my mind read again!

“Well, what exactly are your purposes, then?” I asked a little

coldly. I had been privately planning a sort of ultimate sacrifice of

myself, while he had actually caught me at it and then turned down the

offer. A relationship with a ghost brings many strange new topologies

and contours in the landscape of a mind!

Instead of answering, the ghost, (by now I was thinking of him

as my ghost), reached his hand into the little pocket of his dark green

woven vest. He drew out something small, black and smoking. I noted

that it had a fiery orange core, like a tiny glowing eye. It gave off

an acrid smell. Yet his hands didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact

that the object was on fire.

“Burning things are forbidden on the bus!” I exclaimed in panic,

“this is dangerous! You could cause an explosion----an accident!”

“Ah, but, no, there is no possibility of an explosion. You see,

this object is not real. It is all done with imagery, suggestion,

mirrors.”

I really didn’t understand, but I didn’t want to seem stupid so I

took comfort in the fact that none of the other passengers (there were

three elderly women and one young businessman) or the bus driver

seemed to notice us or the smoking object.

“Yes, you are right. The others are not aware of us. They think

they see us, but they don’t really notice and can’t notice what I have

planned to hide from them. They see what they want to see, or rather

what I want them to see, in other words, only that. All done through

conjuring tricks.”

“The mirrors again, I suppose, your special imagery, and so forth.”

“Yes,” said the ghost, “that is exactly right. Imagery. A new

unobtrusive kind that you didn’t study at college. Although it might

have been better if you had. But, you see, this is exactly the sort of

imagery that hasn’t yet been noted by the conventional scholars in

your field.”

“Oh”, was all I could manage to say by now. I didn’t want to seem

like an unaccomplished fool, so I didn’t point out to him that I

wasn’t really working in the field of English Literature. That I was

neither a conventional scholar nor an unconventional one because I was

only an English conversation teacher. As far as erudite Shakespeare

scholarship was concerned, I was more like an enthusiast or a fan,

watching the action as if watching a tennis match. I sometimes read

scholarly essays, and marveled at the fascinating theories and amazing

turns of phrase, but I could never have begun to write a publishable

academic treatise myself.

“Well,” said the ghost mysteriously, “what do you think it is?”

I said I thought it looked a bit like a charcoal briquette, the

sort of thing my father, a fan of steak dinners, used to heap up and

set fire to in barbecues back in the suburbs of Connecticut when I was

growing up.

The ghost smiled thinly, sat up straighter, held up the burning

object animatedly and exclaimed---or rather declaimed, and in a rather

pious way, I thought----

“and all eyes else dead coals! Fear thou no wife: I’ll have no wife, Paulina!”

“From, um, Cymbeline?”, I asked, hesitantly. I knew it was one of the

romances, but which one?

“The Winter’s Tale, Act five, scene one!”

“Of course! I was always mixing those two up!” This was not

actually true; I was only trying to annoy him a bit. I peered at him

closely. Do ghosts like to be teased, I wondered? Or rather, can they

understand---and accept--- the earthly and foolish humor of us

mortals?

I noticed his dark eyes focusing on me again, in a way that was not

unpleasant. Something had been exchanged between us, but more

importantly, something, a very interesting gift, had been given to me.

I wanted next very badly to ask him what sort of conclusions I was to

draw from his performance of his own lines on the bus that afternoon.

But when I next looked up, he was gone, and I saw only the clear glass

of the bus window, and outside the occluded and depressing mish-mash

of mostly vacant gray cement buildings of the run-down little town,

called Otoshi, outside. Here too, among the cement, was the train

station, the last stop for this bus, and I needed to take the 1:11

bound for Hofu. The small college was only two stops down on the

Sanyo-Honsen Line. But how was I to keep my mind on teaching when I

was now completely enthralled with a ghost, a new literary mystery, a

freeing friendship, and vague hopes that my life, hardly a success up

until now, would not be without interest and pleasure?

The bus driver was saying, “Okyaku-sama, o-kyaku-sama, shuuten desu!”,

telling me with a little impatience that we had reached the end of the

line. With all the impressions of that afternoon still very vivid, I

wandered up the aisle, paid the fare, and made my way into the

station.

Chapter 5

Sampson: Gregory, on my word, we’ll not carry coals. Gregory: No, for then we should be colliers.

For a few weeks I waited patiently for the ghost to return and

explain his brief performance from The Winter’s Tale on the bus. Very often

my hopes would be raised as I entered a room in my old house, and I

would look about the unlit corners around my little house in hopes

that the ghost would be standing quietly or sitting, perhaps reading

one of the novels I have, or one of my children’s manga, or comic

books. The fact that their manga were written in Japanese would, I

somehow knew, be no barrier to the understanding of a magical ghost

with universal powers. But each time, I was disappointed. The room was

always empty.

I found myself always, in idle moments, replaying in my mind the

ghost’s “eyes like dead coals” performance I had witnessed on the bus.

Surely, it occurred to me, there must be some deeper significance here

that had missed. I also wondered if the fact that the ghost had

theatrically held up what appeared to be a burning coal must also be

important?

I checked an Internet site which lets you do word searches of any

word you wish in Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare uses the word coals 32

times in all his works. Sometimes it seemed to be a rather neutral

word as in The Merry Wives of Windsor, when Mistress Quickly says, “Go, and

we’ll have a posset for’t soon at night, i’ faith, at the latter end

of a sea coal fire”. Once, in Coriolanus, the sarcastic, biting, and

anachronistic reference was to the economic and political side of

coal:

Why so you have made good work!A pair of tribunes that have wrack’d for RomeTo make coals cheap! A noble memory.

Overall, Shakespeare’s use of the word “coals” gave two interesting and

subtle impressions. First of all, there seemed to be something sinister

about the majority of its associations. In Shakespeare, the word “coal”

is repeatedly placed near words that express ideas of death, war, destruction,

treachery and filth:

From 2 King Henry VI:

O war, thou son of hellWhom angry heavens do make their minister,Throw in the frozen bosoms of our partHot coals of vengeance!

From King John:

Your breath first kindled the dead coal of warsBetween this chastis’d kingdom and myself…

From The Rape of Lucrece:

His honor, his affairs, his friends, his state,Neglected all, with swift intent he goesTo quench the coal which in his liver glows. ……………

“The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire,And unperceiv’d fly with the filth away…………………………

And dying eyes gleam’d forth their ashy lights,Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights

From Richard II:

And some will mourn in ashes, some coal-black,For the deposing of a rightful king.

From Titus Andronicus:

Yet I think we are not brought so lowThat between us we can kill a flyThat comes in likeness of a coal-black Moor.

But the lines that finally became the focus of my attention were the

two opening lines from Romeo and Juliet:

Sampson: Gregory, on my word, we’ll not carry coals.Gregory: No, for then we should be colliers.

I found myself dwelling on these lines more than the more blatantly

negative images of coal in the other plays, partly because here in

Romeo and Juliet, coal was not used as an artistic image to convey color

or heat or agony or rage, but almost as a real thing and therefore the

ghost’s use of a “real” piece of coal as a prop on the bus seemed to

echo this “real” quality of the coal more than in the other lines

which mentioned coal.

Moreover, ‘Gregory, upon my word, we’ll not carry coals’, had a special place as

the first lines of the play. I had always had the impression that the opening

lines of Shakespeare’s plays are key clues to the themes of his plays.

Perhaps it was the opening lines of Hamlet: ‘Who’s there?’/’Nay, answer me, stand

and unfold yourself’, that seem to promise to show us the playwright

himself, in a play about making plays, which had always made me think

so.

My big, huge, and enormous problem was that Romeo and Juliet

contained no further references to coal at all.

What was I to do?

Chapter 6

But room, fairy! here comes Oberon

I awoke in the middle of the night a few days later. A strange

sound, like a cough or someone crying or gasping, interspersed with

the sounds of wailing, was coming from the tiny dining room, which is

only three or four meters away from my bedroom. I was not afraid at

all, since I did not think that an intruder would choose my dining

room for such activities. Rather, I found myself instantly feeling joy

at the chance that my ghost was here again. I pulled my old gray

cable-knit cardigan over my pajamas and slid open the door, in a few

steps crossed the tatami mat hallway, and came to the threshold of the

dining room.

The dining room resembled a bar in the late evening, with low

lighting and fanciful plumes of black smoke making the air seem thick.

And standing behind the small low table the children and I use for our

meals was the ghost I had been waiting for. He was wearing something

new over his clothes, a short black silk cape, and he had a thin black

band of cloth tied around his forehead. His face looked different,

perhaps because the glow of his ghostly skin was hidden under stage

makeup that gave him a powdery pallor. His mouth was at once redder

and browner than usual and I noticed also it was colored by theatrical

makeup, applied thickly and emphasizing, like a tragic mask, a sad

expression, a slight crescent reversed, points down.

He dramatically pointed at the floor next to me when he saw me, and

his hands were also covered with this whitish stage makeup, which

appeared more chalky, opaque and clay-like than what I had noticed on

modern stages. I looked down and there was an interesting red velvet

cushion on the floor, with silver tassles and artful embroidery work

in the shape of lilies. Apparently I was to sit on it. I promptly sat,

but not without first running my hand over the cushion: as a

passionate textile amateur I was intrigued by the archaic, non-

industrial and uneven texture of the velvet. However, the blackish

smoke was worse down here at floor-level. I coughed a bit. Not

cigarette smoke, something thicker with more of a bite, something

almost sticky and with a sharp and abrasive flavor. It was also

familiar, but I could not place it, not then.

The phantom all of a sudden tightened every ghostly muscle in his

body. Like a cat in preparation for a pounce, his entire posture

shifted, naturally and quickly, legs, arms, back, feet, hands: all at

once, in a smooth professional flow. His right hand flew up to his

forehead, a sparrow being victimized in a gale came to mind, and then

he groaned theatrically: “O, O!” I immediately and with great

excitement thought I recognized these as the famous O-groans from

Othello, the ones I had read so much about in academic journals and

books. Now perhaps here, in the most perfect and ultimate realization

of an English major’s fantasies, I was to see them performed live by

the artist’s ghost himself!

So I was expecting him next to say, “Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulfer! O

Desdemon! dead, Desdemon! dead!”, but I was mistaken: it was not the lines

from Othello which he intended to perform for me. I knew this as soon as

he started the monologue, softly crying out in a clear and smooth but

tormented intonation, “Seems, madam? nay, it is, I know not ‘seems’”. He paused to

peer down at me, a sweeping but calculated glance, the sharp eyes of

the stage professional. Or was he expecting me to play Gertrude? But

no, he continued, in perfect dramatic form, his pace slow yet melodic,

alive and sensitive to the needs of every syllable:

“’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,Nor customary suits of solemn black,Nor windy suspiration of forc’d breath,Nor the fruitful river in the eye,Nor the dejected havior of the visage,Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,For they are the actions that a man might play,

But I have that within that passes show,These but the trappings and the suits of woe.”

He was suddenly silent, and he looked at me to note my reaction, but

his pose retained an artful tension. I applauded and he relaxed a in a

graceful bow. He sat down at the little table and I noticed little

black cloudy spots of something dirty on his clothing, while his

makeup seemed to have a layer of soot. I tried to wave the smoke away

from us, because now I was coughing, and my eyes were watering.

Suddenly I noticed two pewter mugs on the table. Had they been

there all along? Had they materialized from nowhere? The thought that

there may be, in a realistic sense, no such place as “nowhere” as far

as a ghost is concerned crossed my mind. The ghost gently pushed one

mug toward me.

“What is it?”

“A sort of wine made of honey called mead.”

I took a sip and it was sweet and slightly spiced. I started to feel

nervous. I started speaking too quickly and too much.

“Mmmmm, quite good. I have always loved sweet things. And ever

since reading Beowulf in graduate school, I have so been longing to try

mead, but I have been unable to find it anywhere!”, I cried in

enthusiasm, “and to see you perform the famous ‘seems, Madam?’ monologue

from Hamlet is simply a culmination of everything I have ever dreamed

of!” I paused awkwardly, for I was very embarrassed that despite my

efforts to gracefully ignore the smoke, I was choking and gagging. I

hesitantly requested, “I’m terribly sorry……but can’t you do something

about this smoke?”

The ghost gave a grimace, a flummoxed mime’s gesture of

helplessness.

“No”, he said.

“Well, never mind,” I said, struggling to be cheerful, and

waving away curls of sooty smoke as they approached my nose, “please

don’t worry about it. We will enjoy the delicious mead anyway. I

remember reading once that Claude Levi-Strauss cites the invention of

mead as one marker in the passage from nature to culture-----.” I had

to stop myself suddenly. Although Shakespeare had freely used

anachronisms in his plays, I was not sure that I could take similar

liberties. This was hardly a play, but real life. Conversing with a

ghost was such a fraught experience!

But the ghost didn’t look bewildered at all.

“Ah, yes, I did once hear that.” Shakespeare’s ghost seemed not

particularly interested in pursuing the topic further. But his answer

intrigued me very much! Had Shakespeare actually been managing to keep

abreast of all the intellectual developments down here on earth for the last four

hundred years?

And if so, how?

He suddenly seemed to be once again in his usual good humor.

Shakespeare’s ghost smiled quizzically at me and stood up. He seemed

about to start another performance. I sat rapt. Which monologue would

he choose? Would he take requests? My all-time favorite was ‘to-morrow

and to-morrow and to-morrow’ from Macbeth. If only the smoke would go away,

then how much more I would enjoy it. As it was now, I was afraid of

coughing and interrupting the performance.

He widened his eyes and whispered, “And still your fingers on your lips I pray!”

He sounded like a spy, transmitting an exciting and precious secret in

code.

I wanted to ask more questions and discover more information. I was

deciding how to ask, in the most tactful way, about which books he had

read, which writers and thinkers and critics he preferred, and which

ones he thought were wide of the mark. Much more to the point, though,

I wanted to know which ones amused him the most, which ideas he found

folly, which theories were the ones he found most wild, and whose

rhetoric was the most delightful, clever, and fashionable. I was

desperate to know!

If only he would stay!

However, he tiptoed softly backwards. When he reached the wall

behind his back, his body completely dissolved in a magical display of

fine-grained rainbow-colored light particles. The wall closed smoothly

around these tiny beams of light, and I was once again alone. In the

air, the smoke was thankfully gone, but a sour sooty smell remained

and on the table I saw a light layer of soot that somehow looked

familiar, as well the two empty mead cups. Through the window I saw an

inkling of dawn-colored sky, the dark and moody shapes of the leafy

cherry trees beside the river.

I remembered having seen this kind of soot before and smelling the

same sort of smoke, and suddenly I knew exactly what kind of smoke I

had been smelling.

Chapter 7

Swallows have built In Cleopatra's sails their nests: the augurers Say they know not, they cannot tell; look grimly, And dare not speak their knowledge.

The town of Tsubame (the word means “barn swallow” in Japanese) has

a single train track running through it. The train line---the

Yamaguchi Line---is one of the smallest in Japan. Trains share the

single track, so that trains that are going in opposite directions

(Northeast to the Japan Sea or Southwest to the Japan Inland Sea) must

wait for each other at the few stations that have a double-track

waiting loop. Much of the track passes through mountains and the

scenery is quite beautiful.

One special feature of the Yamaguchi Line is the “SL”, or Steam

Locomotive, an antique black cast iron steam engine, over 100 years

old, that only runs in the summer, once a day in each direction. It is

mainly for tourists. The engine has a whistle that can be heard for

several kilometers, and it has an enormous iron coal tender, loaded

with coal. Engineers dressed in light blue overalls and round caps

ride the coal tender and shovel coal into the boiler. The smoke that

is emitted from the top of the engine is fearsomely dark, sooty and

unfiltered; unfurling, it swirls in the mountain air and forms puffy

black scoops in a line as the train heaves noisily along. If you are

riding on the train as a passenger in one of the antique, refurbished

cars, and if your window is open, and if the train then enters a

tunnel through the mountains, you can even taste the smoke as it blows

inside, a heavy and bitter ashy flavor, not very pleasant, not as

sharp as tobacco smoke, but more sickly and much more voluminous. Your

eyes will start to tingle and tear. Your nose will wrinkle, attempting

in vain to avoid the smoke and the soot that is already settling in a

fine gray film on your white sun hat. You will then decide to close

your window.

The smoke that night in the dining room had this same smell, the

same consistency and flavor that I remembered from the emissions of

the steam locomotive. Shakespeare’s ghost was once again, as he had in

the “eyes like dead coals” speech, pointing out coal or coal smoke to

me. But why? Why was he so fascinated by coal, such a dreary, dirty

thing?

Chapter 8

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,And make me travel forth without my cloak?To let base clouds o’ertake me on my way,Hiding thy brav’ry in their rotten smoke?

Three nights later, after teaching English conversation classes all

afternoon to classes of schoolchildren, I was pleased to go to bed a

bit earlier than usual. Kaoru and Zenji were tired, too, and we had

all tumbled onto our futons shortly after 10.

In my dream that night, I was flying through the air. A young man

dressed in black tights, short leather boots, and a green tunic was

flying beside me. All sorts of strange things may happen in a dream

and seem perfectly normal. I was not surprised when he grinned and

said, “Hello. I’m Puck!”

I was not surprised to be flying through the air either.

“Hello”, I said, “I’m Viola.”

“Yeah, I know!”

I had to laugh. He reminded me of an impish college student. He was

handsome, cool and insouciant. He had a certain vitality, an earring,

long hands, black hair in a pony tail. The ponytail blew in the

breeze. We just flew naturally, quickly and without effort, with our

arms stretched lazily in front of us. I was wearing a long blue cotton

nightgown, and I was very pleased with the way it fluttered around my

bare feet.

We were soaring over the sea. It looked ashy-green, Having grown

up near the Atlantic Ocean, I could recognize that this active,

splashy ocean was the same one. The Pacific Ocean, the ocean of my

home now, is blue and grey. It has quite a different spirit, huge,

mysterious, dark, quieter.

“It’s so green! Is it the Atlantic?”, I shouted over the wind.

“Yes.”

I saw a ship below us, but it was not a modern one, with a smokestack.

It had three masts and sails. The sailors were dressed strangely.

In one of my four part-time jobs, I proofread marketing proposals,

scenarios, storyboards, and scripts for videos destined for YouTube,

at four yen per word. Now, seeing this ship, I guessed at once that

they were generating digital content with a new advertising concept:

film at sea on an old ship. People are desperate for fresh and

authentic digital content these days and will endure discomfort to

come up with something original..

Perhaps a commercial for men’s cologne? Or rum? A brand of boots?

Lipstick? An espresso maker?

“I think they’re filming an ad video down there!”, I shouted to

Puck.

Puck smiled thoughtfully at me.

We approached land, and missing were all the things you would

expect to see on a continent these days. No huge factories, no

warehouses, no highways, no port with cranes and giant cement piers.

No interchanges or bridges or electricity poles and wires. Mostly, we

just saw green forests and fields, villages and rivers curving through

valleys.

I supposed it must be a strange little undeveloped country, but where?

Perhaps this was Patagonia? I had heard it was undeveloped. Or could

it be Costa Rica?

We kept flying and soon we were near settlements of small

houses. Further in the distance I saw a small city, but there were no

tall buildings. Instead, there were domes, turrets, rows of little

stone and wood houses. On the roofs, there were many chimneys and

black and grey smoke was blowing into the sky. We flew lower, and I

saw horses, cobblestone streets, and people dressed archaically, the

women in long skirts, the men in tights and tunics. No one seemed

able to see us at all.

My mind, in its dream-like state, processed the scene and arrived

at a conclusion very matter-of-factly. Had I been awake, I would have

been panicked about getting back to Tsubame in one piece.

I had managed to travel back in time, and now, most oddly, I was in

London in the late 1500s or so.

In dreams, things that would be frightening in real life can just

seem normal, even routine.

We flew over a large park and arrived at a beautiful castle, which

was definitely not Buckingham Palace. It had turrets and battlements.

It had square areas inside with little green courtyards and stone

paths, It looked just like the sort of castle that I used to often

draw when I was a child.

“Is it Windsor Castle?”, I asked. It was the only other castle I

had ever heard of in England.

“No, Whitehall”, replied Puck.

“Whitehall Castle? I’ve never heard of it!”, I said, “are you sure

there is such a place?”

Puck laughed, “was such a place, you mean!”

We circled around a few of the stone turrets that had festive gold

and red banners fluttering on them. “Those mean she’s home!”, said

Puck to me. He considered which window was the best one to enter.

How did I know that he was considering entering the palace?

In dreams we just know things.

Finally one window seemed correct. It stood open and first Puck

alighted on the window sill and jumped down onto the floor, and then

it was my turn. He put his hand up to help me, and I jumped down.

A fierce, pallid-looking woman with red hair and a pinched nose and

swathed in black velvet and lace was pacing up and down on the stone

floor.

“Your Majesty”, said a man in red tights, looking somber and

apologetic, “we regret to say that we cannot do anything about the

sea-coal smoke from local industries in Westminster at present. The

Ministers will hold a meeting with some of the business officials to

discuss the matter next week.”

“I have tried to be patient, but I do not like the smell of that

smoke! I can even taste it if I am eating and it comes in the through

window!”

“Your Majesty, wood is too expensive. Sea-coal is what most people

can afford now. The forests are far away and they are becoming

depleted.”

“Then what is to be done?”

A man who was seated at a desk was recording the conversation.

“Can they see us?” I asked Puck in a whisper. Somehow, maybe

because it was a dream, I was sure that we were invisible.

“Neither hear us, nor see us. It is most convenient”, said Puck

loudly, with another smile. He walked over to the courtier and stood

very close to him. The courtier was telling Queen Elizabeth I that

some noblemen were trying some experiments to make balls from straw

and coal that would possibly make the smoke less sulfurous, acrid and

objectionable.

The Queen looked skeptical. “I don’t know if that idea will work.

In any case, let us depart from the city for a while. The noisome

smells in London drive us away. Please begin the preparations for the

next Progress at once.”

“Come on”, said Puck to me. He waved “good-bye” at them all

theatrically.

We went through the huge doorway and down the stairs. Soon we were

outside. My feet were bare, but somehow I couldn’t feel the ground

properly, and I noticed that we were skimming along like spirits. It

was almost like flying, but much lower to the ground. If anyone passed

in front of us, we passed right through them. It was exciting to

experience the feeling of being a ghost. In this way we passed quickly

through the palace gates.

The London air did have a smell of smoke. All around us were little

workshops and houses. All of them had chimneys and many of the

chimneys were blowing smoke into the air. The sky was not blue, but

smoggy. We came to a large building and stopped. Puck went inside and

I followed him. It seemed to be a government office with official

guards and nicely-dressed men. Many men were standing in front of a

large desk.

“It is quite insupportable!” A thin man in brown, in his 50s,

was gesturing with his hands in frustration,

“But we have recently rebuilt the chimney to make it taller,

actually precisely in order to clear your roof”, said a plump, double-

chinned man in a dark red jacket.

“Nevertheless, the sea-coal smoke from your brewery blows into our

windows and courtyard. My wife and I are coughing, our fruit trees,

our lilies, our roses and lavender are withering from all the smoke.”

The official behind the desk had been listening while also

completing some work in a ledger. He put his quill pen down and

cleared his throat.

“Can you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that your problems are

caused by this brewer’s sea-coal fires, and not the smoke blowing

about in general in the city?”

“But his chimney is so close! The other sea-coal smoke everywhere

doesn’t help, that is true enough.”

“Now, do you have the measurements certifying the distance from the

chimney of his brewery to the edge of your house?”

Puck looked at me.

“Let’s go”, he said with a little smile.

A few minutes later we were outside again.

It was the afternoon, and a chilly spring day.

We flew lightly through the streets. I was enjoying this

interesting dream, but my pleasure became intense as we neared a large

round wooden building on the other side of the Thames River. A black

flag was flying from a little turret that stuck out from the thatched

roof of a structure that seemed to be on a building inside the

roofless round building.

People were streaming into the theater all around us.

Women were selling apples from baskets. There were stalls with

beer.

“A play?”, I asked, “is it one that he wrote?”

“Of course! The black flag means it’s tragedy.”

I started to worry. What if it was a difficult one? I had not been

able to manage to get all the way through Coriolanus and Timon of Athens in

Professor Greybard’s class. I had tried, but the gloom had defeated

me. I had always preferred the comedies.

“Is it Hamlet?” I asked, fearing the length but looking forward to

the prospect of seeing the definitive Shakespearean play, what I thought of

as his signature work. If this happy time-travel dream could occur

only once, then Hamlet would be my choice, if a comedy was not possible.

“Sorry, no”, said Puck, as we headed inside, “it’s Romeo and Juliet.”

I felt relieved. I had seen the all the Romeo and Juliet movies, the

recent ones and the older ones, about eight times each. I had

memorized many lines and read the play more than four or five times.

Romeo and Juliet was not hard. It was Shakespeare’s most popular play.

Chapter 10

Juliet: Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,Towards Phoebus’ lodging; such a waggoner As Phaeton would whip you to the west,And bring in cloudy night immediately.

Years ago, growing up in suburban Connecticut, I had enjoyed a

magazine for girls called Teen Beauty. Teen Beauty had stylish fun clothes,

of course, but it also had interesting articles and pop psychology

quizzes. One article was called “How to Tell If Your Boyfriend is the

Wrong One”. And one sure way to tell if he was the wrong one for you,

according to Teen Beauty, was if he never wanted to meet your friends or

spend time with your family for celebrations or holidays. This type

was sure to want you alone with him only, be rude to your family,

slight your friends, and eventually you would wake up to reality and

leave him.

Now I was lying in bed, and thinking about the performance of Romeo and

Juliet I had seen at the Globe, and for some strange reason, this Teen

Beauty article, something I had read decades ago, kept annoyingly

invading my thoughts.

O.K. I decided to let my mind freely wander; I would let my thoughts go

where they would, naturally, the little stream of water gurgling and

gushing in splashes downhill could go where it wanted. How would Romeo

have scored on the “How to Tell If Your Boyfriend is Wrong for You” quiz, anyway?

Suddenly, with a start, I realized something.

Romeo and Juliet, when they were together, were never to be seen or heard talking to others!

Others, especially the Nurse, might be nearby, or calling to them,

but the interaction with others was not really functional. There was a

sealed-up, hermetic quality to their scenes. They conducted their

dialogue always in private. Why?

Was Romeo a “bad boyfriend”? (This was ridiculous)

Or was there another reason for the way their scenes were so isolated and separated from all

the other scenes?

I got out of my futon and wrote down their scenes in a list:

I. Romeo and Juliet meet at a party

II. The Balcony Scene

III. The wedding with Friar Lawrence

IV. The Farewell Scene

V. The Tomb Scene

I was stuck there. How to proceed? I let my mind ramble freely back

to the performance. Thinking back to the smoke I had seen over the

Globe Theater, I remembered something odd about Romeo’s words when he

was in love with Rosalind at the start of the play.

I opened my Riverside Shakespeare, a legacy from Professor Graybard’s

wonderful class, to the first act of Romeo and Juliet.

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighsBeing purg’d, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes,Being vex’d, a sea nourish’d with loving tears,What is it else? A madness most discreet,A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.

“Smoke,” “choking gall” and “the fume of sighs” all were in Act I,

scene i, and all used to describe Romeo’s disappointed love for

Rosaline. In the same Act, other characters also reinforce the idea by

describing Romeo (only in this scene, where he lingers under Rosaline’s

influence) in similar dark imagery: Romeo, “makes himself an artificial

night”, an image that recalled for me the coal-blackened London sky.

Images of darkness are numerous and overwhelming: Romeo “steals

himself…away from light”, “locks fair daylight out”, his humor is

“black and portendous” and “he is like a bud, bit with an envious worm”

who cannot “dedicate himself to the sun”. All in Act One. And who saves

him from his dire, unproductive love for this dark, smoky and

emotionally cold woman who is never given any lines to speak, who is

essentially banished from the text?

Shakespeare’s idea, the perfection of the puzzle, and the answer to

the riddle found an answer in a line I knew well, now that I had

learned to engage it from the starry infinite sky.

Juliet is the Sun!

Why did my thoughts return always to the sky?

The actors had shouted their lines above the din of apple sellers

and the crowds. And without electricity and microphones, some words

were particularly distinct and clear: the words at the ends of the

lines, for example.

Juliet is the sun.

And now that I saw in the secret play who Juliet was, and who

Rosalind was, then I also knew, of course, who Romeo was. What had

Friar Lawrence said to him? I leafed through the play until I came to

the lines I remembered from the performance at the Globe.

“Romeo, come forth, come forth thy fearful manAffliction is enamor’d of thy parts,And thou art wedded to calamity”

Romeo was us, Mankind.

That was why the scenes with the lovers were separated and conducted in private.

Man met the Sun, and worshipped it. Then, Man became separated from

the Sun with Christianity, which banned direct nature worship. That is

why Juliet is on the balcony.

Man left the Sun, then. Romeo leaves Juliet in the morning. The age

of agriculture is giving way to the age of coal and industrialization.

Now I knew why Shakespeare’s ghost was emphasizing coal and coal smoke.

One day, it seemed, Man would go in search of the Sun again. That

was the tomb scene. It did not look like an easy process..

What did it all mean?

Affliction and calamity! A tomb!

I was pretty scared,

I heard a slight cough behind me. There he was. He smiled, my

ghost. He looked haggard and exhausted, even for a real ghost. His

skin looked more translucent than usual, his eyes bore shadows, his

hair had an unkempt appearance. His shirt was untucked, his cuffs

undone.

“William!” I cried, instantly forgetting all about Mankind’s

plight, our Afflictions and Calamities, and my own ones too, “whatever

is the matter? You look terrible!”

“Ah, my dear Viola, will you not now agree with me that the truest

poetry is the most feigning?”

“That I am beginning to understand,” I said, “But why do you look

as though you had not slept well? Actually, you have never told me,

but do ghosts need to sleep?”

“Perhaps I have not been taking the proper rest I should have, that

all spirits should have. I have been anxious a bit while you traveled

through the ether with Puck. He is sometimes careless, or too quick.

What would you see, learn, and do: I had an idea and I gave him

instructions, yet I was bound to wonder if you both could manage this

journey. And then, truthfully, I have been quite worried that you

might draw the wrong conclusions and become depressed or despairing.

I’m afraid this has already happened, in fact.”

“The wrong conclusions? Whatever might those be? I don’t know what

you mean.” I said, my voice coming out in a funny hollow pitch. I was

desperately trying to sound as though I had no idea what he was

talking about. I didn’t want him to think me stupid or naive!

This Ghost could see through any lie, though, it was no use for me

to try to hide my alarm. He started laughing at me. Then he deviously

aimed one of his famous lines at me, mocking my attempts to play act.

“How is it that the clouds still hang on you?”

The ghost ignored his own witticism, then answered himself in a silly

playful parrot’s voice, at once making my heart turn over inside my

chest when the name of our star came up.

“Not so, my lord, I am too much in the sun”, he said.

He knew I knew! Now his voice was ragged, pointed, and full of

emotion. Was he some sort of a villain after all? What a strange

being, so giddy, so raw, a kind of monster and an angel all at once. I

could hardly comprehend it or match his wits and his unbounded range

with my ordinary and plodding human-sized mind. Now I, too, was being

victimized by the antic genius Prince Hamlet, or rather by the ghost

of his alter-ego. Another English major’s fantasy at last come true,

or perhaps, rather, an English major’s nightmare.

I was so shaken that I couldn’t speak.

“Viola! Do you not admit that you feel a bit worried about the ending

of Romeo and Juliet? I really can’t help you until you admit your fears to

yourself and discuss them openly. With me, that is.”

“Good heavens! “, I exclaimed, “You sound like a modern

psychotherapist!”

“Friends, Romans, Countrymen! Lend me your ears! I come to bury Caesar, not to praise

him!”, the ghost declaimed this speech kneeling a bit, and swaying, one

arm spread out like a politician’s.

I saw that there was no hope for me to hide. I feared he was going

crazy. The longer I waited, the more that I tried to pretend that I

wasn’t worried, the more antic and unbearable became the disposition

of this Ghost.

I sighed. Then I began to try to make him understand my feelings. I

wasn’t good with feelings. I was a person who would rather be quiet

and in a corner alone with my fears. Or Google them later.

“Yes”, I said, forced to speak, “I will admit that Romeo’s suicide

looks very frightening to me, now that I know who he is really.”

The Ghost looked calmer, and pleased.

“Let’s go back to the beginning. Tell me exactly what you’ve found

in the play”, he said. I picked up my Riverside and opened it to Romeo

and Juliet. I would need to quote evidence,

“ I think I’ve found an interesting History of Mankind in the play.

Man meets the Sun. This is where Romeo and Juliet use the language of

worship---you know, palmers, saints, prayers, faith, religious terms. I

noticed, by the way, that Benvolio calls the sun “the worshipp’d sun”

in Act One. That was very clever of you to slip that in early.”

“Thank you. Very good. And then?”

“And then the balcony scene is the golden age of agriculture, with

Juliet above, she talks of her bounty as boundless as the sea, does she not?

And doesn’t Romeo compare her to a bright angel, a winged messenger of heaven

who bestrides the puffing clouds and sails upon the bosom of the air?” Here I was

sounding like a lawyer reading from a document while presenting

evidence in a court. How terribly unromantic these words of love could

also be! I felt like Portia.

“She is no longer a god, is she?” I asked.

“No, she is not. Christianity has arrived. Nature religions are

gone, at least from Europe.”

“That is what I thought” I said.

I went on, dryly, scanning Romeo’s early lines in Act 2 for

other evidence, “Note the white-upturned wondering eyes of mortals, the brightness of

her cheek, the airy region stream so bright, her eyes in heaven, etcetera, and so forth.

And you even have Romeo mischievously divulge her identity when he

says ‘Juliet is the sun’. It was very clever of you, indeed downright devious,

the way you managed that.”

“Thank you” he said, looking pleased.

“We have all thought it was simply a metaphor for centuries on end!

Whole libraries of books have been written on that metaphor without

anyone guessing that what you really meant was the sun is Juliet.”

I was suddenly feeling like an odd literary version a detective in

a whodunnit who explains the hidden machinery involved in a strange

escapade perpetrated by a mastermind. But this mystery had straddled

centuries and as a detective, I had done nothing..... but encounter a

restless spirit and a work of art.

“Yes, I am well aware of that. And then?” said the Renaissance

mastermind.

“And then Romeo leaves her----that is to say, the Sun--- after the

wedding. He is sent into exile from her. He says ‘I must be gone and live or

stay and die’. Once people had started burning coal and become more and

more dependent on it, there was no going back without economic

suffering. That was understandably unacceptable, unthinkable, of course,

so England grew more and more and then later became an Empire, using

its energetic power to reach out and influence people. Hundreds of

years of history spanning many continents go along with it.”

“Yes, and after that?”

“Well, after England became an Empire, then after about 200 years

it ceded its “Number One” status to a bigger country that had much

more coal and something else related to it, too, another fossil fuel,

called oil, which you may have heard of, since you seem to be up on all

the news.”

“No, I don’t mean what came after the British Empire. I mean after

the Farewell Scene.”

“Wait, but Shakespeare, um…I mean you….knew that eventual fossil

fuel depletion meant that Romeo, that is…Man, would be back to using

the Sun again. So Juliet says, ‘O, by this count I shall be much in years ere I again

behold my Romeo!’ That was a very brilliant line. I can see you’re quite

a master at allegory. Ingenious. I must offer my congratulations. I

can see that you are not afraid to work with a large canvas.”

I hoped he would pick up my sarcastic tone. I was quite upset with

his trickery, his knavery!

“Thank you. And?”

“Well, Then there is the horrible tomb scene. Ghastly, really. The

sun shines as brightly as ever, that is to say that Juliet, the sun,

is quite alive. But the connection between Man and the sun, the solar

economic connection that brought Man all sorts of things, is gone,

thanks to coal, which changed the land and everything. So Romeo can’t

reestablish this economic connection, and he dies. I suppose you mean

some sort of collapse, though of course, the process, I mean----- the

return to the sun, could take thousands of years.” I added, “I want to

like you, what I know of you as a ghost, or a spirit or a phantom, but

after understanding this scene, I find you too severe and ruthless in

your judgment of humanity. I think your famous antic disposition might

have gotten the better of you and you became a dictator and a bitter

ruler over a world of words that you conjured up in your poetic

dreamer’s mind. But your world is not my world, nor my children’s

world. And here I reject your dark vision!”

Unexpectedly, the ghost looked really pleased at this.

“The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo!” he said, smiling,

“However, my intentions in the tomb scene are slightly different than

your conclusions. I don’t mean that economic issues don’t matter, of

course, but your view is limited. And you have forgotten one very

important scene between the lovers. Look, Viola, look at this.”

Behind the Ghost, on the tatami mat, there had somehow materialized

a large soft robe made of dark-brown wool. Maybe because I love old

textiles so much, I felt at once more hopeful and cheerful when I saw

it. Thanks to all my interest in fabrics and dyes, I knew it was old,

hand-woven, not knitted, similarly I knew at once that it was real

sheep wool by the way the light caught on it. The Ghost pulled it on

then drew the cowl over his head, and stood up to tie the sash. He now

looked exactly like someone whose name I knew so very well by now. But

who? In a small rush, I caught the allusion, and I had to smile.

“Friar Lawrence!” I exclaimed.

“The grey-ey’d morn smiles on the frowning night, check’ring the eastern clouds with streaks

of light….”, the Ghost chuckled mystically and looked pleased with

himself.. His acting skills were perfection.

“Ah, You mean to tell me that I forgot to mention the scene where

you…that is I mean to say, Friar Lawrence, marries Romeo and Juliet.”

“For by your leaves, you shall not stay alone till Holy Church incorporate two in one.” The

Ghost brought his hands together.

I understood suddenly.

“Ah! You are Friar Lawrence! It is you who is always working to

bring them together. You write a letter to Romeo to tell him about the

true state of Juliet---that she is alive! You also promised Romeo

something about…wait a minute…” I leafed through the play and found

the lines, “here it is. These are Friar Lawrence’s words exactly,

after Romeo moans about ‘O, thou wilt speak again of banishment’:

I’ll give thee armor to keep off that wordAdversity’s sweet milk, philosophy,To comfort thee though thou art banished. “

The Ghost looked happier now, and I was feeling better. Perhaps

Shakespeare, this ambitious ghost, was trying to help us through the

whole thing with his cosmic hand holding our real ones? To understand

such a message was a huge task, spanning centuries, or rather

millennia, encumbering a whole planet, and enormous but not

inexhaustible fossil fuel resources.

It must have been our fate all along to use them!

A fate not all good nor all bad. Uneven, bumpy, though. Difficult. A

struggle.

He had known…..

“My dear Viola, with Romeo’s death, and the return to the Sun,

which could, by the way, take centuries or even thousands of years,

and happen very slowly, I don’t mean at all that Mankind dies. I only

mean that people may change.”

The Ghost continued. “I wrote in a little dialogue----maybe you

remember it?---- that explains the idea that Mankind finds a new path

as the Sun becomes more and more important again. That is why Romeo

says

I dreamt my lady came and found me dead—

Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave to think!—

And breath’d such life with kisses on my lips

That I reviv’d and was an emperor.

I said that I hadn’t noticed that small piece of dialogue before.

It is usually cut from films of the play. I was quite relieved to see

it. The transition process could go on for centuries and possibly much

longer than that; I really had no idea about how much fuel was left

out there sitting inside the earth. It wasn’t my concern. But weren’t

people talking about wind and solar power these days too?

“Viola, I must go now. I am, as you noted, quite tired. But I am no

longer worried and anxious about you or what you may be thinking of

me.” This time he chose a new way to disappear. Pulling closer to his

body the friar’s robe, everything gradually brightened around him,

including the air near him. Then slowly, the outlines of his shape

dissolved, he became a sparkling point of light which got smaller and

smaller until it disappeared.

I still had so many questions.

One thing was for sure, though. I made up my mind to absolutely never

tell a soul about this. Probably no one would believe me if I did. The

secret play in Romeo and Juliet was a brilliant idea of his; the whole

concept was like an amazing Renaissance puzzle box!!---- but it would be

better to have it remain a complete secret. I would not be the one to

divulge the truth.

Chapter 11Then God be blest, it is the blessed sun,But sun it is not, when you say it is not,

And the moon changes even as your mind.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that there is no universal

truth in Shakespeare’s works. I had read enough books on Shakespeare and

his plays to gather that simple and fundamental fact; every English

major on the entire planet both knew and accepted this basic elementary

idea. It was a given, a starting point for all scholars of his work. No

matter what else they disagreed about, which was plenty!---- they all

started from the same basic premise: there was no coherent truth in his

work.

Secret plays, hidden meanings, true intentions---there had certainly

never been any indication of such phenomena in Shakespeare! Millions of

high school classes, college classes and graduate seminars had been

conducted for hundreds of years by thousands of certified literature

professionals without any mention, or knowledge, of a “secret play” in

Romeo and Juliet or any other of Shakespeare’s plays. What I had found,

with the help of the ghost, was so radical that there was possibly no

room for its emergence; it would upend scholarship and accepted bodies

of knowledge too much. The tomb scene, despite the Ghost’s more benign

explanation, one which I definitely preferred, was also part of a

message that, because it was yet to come, made it a prophecy of sorts,

not necessarily a welcome one, there was no denying it. File away the

secret play as the

Idea that Dare Not Speak its Name!

Bury the secret in a dark cave and leave it there.

Maybe in a thousand years, someone could find it and read it and see if Shakespeare had

been “right”.

A return to the sun! How crazy was that?!

And what was I to do with this information?

Should I try to write it up in a scholarly article?

No!

Instead of trying to write about this bizarre and unexpected

finding---- an undertaking of utter folly---- I thought instead of

privately satisfying my desire for knowledge. As a child who loved to

read books and who had grown up during the Cold War, with all of its

elements of mystery, I had always had two very different, seemingly

irreconcilable, jobs I dreamed of doing: English Literature professor

and international spy.

I was now just an obscure and impoverished expatriate English

language teacher; but finally, I saw that now here was my chance to

combine the different duties of an English professor and international

spy into a perfect, secret and scholarly holistic inquiry. No danger

attended this kind of work, unlike conventional spying. Nor would it

matter to me that the Cold War had ended decades earlier.

I thought maybe I should investigate Shakespeare’s other plays for

similar types of secret structures. If this secret play about the sun in

Romeo and Juliet was truly so important then it was very likely I would

find this secret in his other plays as well. I was an English major, so

deciphering themes, imagery, and subtle structures should be something

within my capabilities, after all. And if I ran into problems, I

guessed---and I hoped---that my supernatural friend would show up to

guide me.

Nevertheless, I was longing to tell someone. This kind of secret was

just too big to keep completely to myself. I mentally listed some

people I knew, then rehearsed the conversations I could expect. With

quite dismal results.

Mom, guess what, I have found out about a secret play in Romeo and Juliet. It is

about the Sun and Mankind.

How wonderful for you, dear. I am very pleased that you are doing well. You always did

like Shakespeare, I remember. What was the name of that professor at Harvard whom you

admired so much?

No, not my mother!

Daddy, I have some news. I have found a secret play in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and

Juliet. It is about the Sun and Man. The sun is a source of everything good, wood, fish,

wheat, strawberries, rope, roofing material, boats, and all, what we call energy today, Daddy.

Well, Shakespeare knew all about it, not in our current scientific terms, but he knew. And that is

what he was writing about. He did it all in allegorical form!

Viola, that sounds very interesting. Energy, you say? Ah, well, who knows if people

back then understood about energy? Highly unlikely. Modern science has thankfully freed

people in so many ways from their backwardness and ignorance. Shakespeare could not

possibly have understood about energy. Claiming such a thing simply strains credulity.

No, not my father either. What I had to say would just annoy him. And

because it would annoy him, it would also annoy my mother.

One year before, I had bought a very cute little dustpan made of tree

bark that made cleaning such a pleasure, and also in response to the

agonies of Fukushima, I was trying to use less electricity by using a

broom instead of a vacuum cleaner. Now as I swept up some dust on the

tatami mats with a broom and the little wooden dustpan, I debated

whether I should tell the children. Kaoru and Zenji would not understand

the significance of the secret solar play. Did they even understand who

Shakespeare was? Like so many modern children, they spent time on the

Internet watching favorite music groups or comedy shows, but definitely

not Shakespeare’s plays. Energy and how it delivers food, clothes,

warmth, paper, or books---or the Internet for that matter---was also not

particularly interesting to them, or perhaps rather they took it for

granted, as I had also.

That left one person, someone I hesitated to call, but who in some

ways I still felt strangely connected to. That someone was my husband. I

wondered where exactly we stood these days with each other. We had

fought a lot, it is true. And I had even left, but not primarily because

of him. Now things were agreeably peaceful, but maybe that was only

because we no longer lived together. I collected the dust, tipped it

into a garbage bag, and then made a cup of coffee. I knew I would need

the strength of every drop of caffeine to help me engage in conversation

with my spouse of 20 years. Often, when we talked about any topic, no

matter how straightforward and dull, it turned into either a big or a

little battle.

Now I had a topic that was obscure, strange, and unexpected. I wondered

how he would take my news.

Chapter 12

Madam, an hour before the worshipp’d sun,Peer’d forth the golden window of the eastA troubled mind drove me to walk abroad,Where, underneath the grove of sycamoreThat westward rooteth from this city side,So early walking did I see your son.

I reached Kazuo in his office in one of the huge modern, glass-and-

cement buildings that lined the campus of Kurumachi University, whose

academic ranking was eighth in Japan. Kurumachi University was a

national university, built in the 1960s and 1970s during the days of

heady growth that had spilled over from Tokyo, about 30 kilometers

south-west, but their construction budget was enormous and the campus

was always being rebuilt and expanded. Kurumachi City was a planned

city, with strong connections, through the construction industry in

particular, to the National Government, and known, in a self-promotional

way, as “Kurumachi Science City”. It was full of huge and sprawling

anonymous buildings housing national research centers of every kind:

materials science, animal science, astronomy, environment, weather and

more.

The funny, quirky little piece of historical information that many

residents of Kurumachi City knew was that Kurumachi had been designed

and planned, back in 1964, to copy the infrastructure of Irvine,

California. Japanese city planners had visited Irvine and been impressed

with the huge and modern multi-lane feeder roads and modernistic

highways, and had copied the automobile-centric outlook when they

planned Kurumachi. But when Kazuo and I had moved there, from Tsubame,

nine years before the 2011 earthquake, we hadn’t bothered to buy a car.

We rode the buses and we bicycled on the bike paths, which were

extensive and safe. But in all my time in Kurumachi, that advanced and

planned city, part of me had always felt like Heidi, secretly mourning

the mountains and the little green town of Tsubame, with its tiny roads,

clean rivers, and delicious drinking water. When Kurumachi became

radioactive, and with Kazuo, even before that, growing more and more

stressed out from his job and impatient with my dreamy ways, Tsubame had

beckoned like a friendly woodland spirit, who would enfold me in his

arms and stand me on his forested shoulders, where I would sing with

pleasure again.

How do jet pilots feel upon bailing out of a plane that they feel is

no longer safe to fly? Now I thought, after landing back in Tsubame, and

slowly rebuilding my life, that I knew how, at least, to open a

parachute and crash down safely.

It was lunch time, and I knew he usually bought a sandwich at one of

the many university cafeterias and ate it at his desk.

“Hi, It’s me.”

A Pause. Nothing. Quiet. Our familiar abyss?

“Hello.”

“How’s it going?”

“O.K. Busy. How are the kids?”

“Fine. Kaoru is busy with kendo. Zenji likes soccer and his friends.

And those two panda mice he has, the ones he is always renaming.“

Pause. More silence. You didn’t call me up to talk about panda mice.

“Listen” I said, “something a bit strange has happened.”

How should I explain this? If I mention a ghost, he’ll think I’m crazy.

“What?”

“Well, I had a sudden, weird……umm….. insight into one of Shakespeare’s

plays, Romeo and Juliet. It looks like there is a mysterious core of a

drama, a cosmic drama, playing out the interaction between the Sun and

Man. Juliet is really the Sun. Shakespeare seems to have been aware of

the idea of energy as a source of everything we need.” I explained a bit

about the four scenes that delineate Man’s interaction with the sun: The

Meeting of Man and the Sun; the Age of Agriculture; the fossil fuel-

induced Exile from the Sun; and the Return to the Sun.

“Really? That sounds kind of like a ‘Missing Sun’ myth or something.“

Kazuo sounded interested now.

“A what?”, I asked. I should explain here that my husband is an

historian of religion, especially the Japanese religions of Buddhism and

Shinto. He specializes in symbolism, myths, and ceremonies. It had never

occurred to me that the Juliet-is-the-Sun figure had any mythical

dimensions. Now I was glad I had called my husband. I saw that I needed

a professional to help me.

“In a missing sun myth, the story of the sun god or sun goddess’s

disappearance lies at the center of the story. When the sun goes missing

can be read as an allegory for solar events such as eclipses, night,

shorter or longer days of the warmer or colder seasons, and so forth. In

ancient Egyptian mythology, Ra, the sun god, and his solar barge, travel

through the underworld every night. In Norse mythology, Sol, the sun

goddess, is eaten by the wolf Skoll. And, of course, I think you have

heard about Amaterasu, right?”

My husband had once told me about the Shinto Sun Goddess named

Amaterasu. In the earliest sacred Japanese myth, the Kojiki from the 8th

century, she hides in a cave and without her presence, an endless night

ensues. She bars the door and those outside, who need her, are

understandably miserable without her warmth and light, but someone has a

mirror or a shiny stone and gently pries open the door and holds this

makeshift mirror up to her bright golden face. She sees how beautiful

she is and then she comes out of the cave and everyone celebrates with

dancing and singing.

“Umm”, I said, “sounds close, but I’m not sure. This missing sun myth

in Romeo and Juliet tells about our modern era. It’s a twist on an old

theme. Not eclipses, winter, nor night this time. Fossil fuels pull us

away from the sun, temporarily it seems. “

Kazuo asked, “Are there any gods or sun gods mentioned in the play?

I’ve never read any Shakespeare.”

“Actually Shakespeare does mention ‘the worshipp’d sun’, and he

mentions Titan’s fiery wheels…and Apollo….but I’m not sure Juliet is a

god. Although, hmmm”, I was now thinking fast, “ the Nurse does say ‘God

forbid!’ as if she is chattering to herself when she calls Juliet onto

the stage the first time. ……Oh my God,” I exclaimed, “Juliet may be a

sort of god! That would have been pretty much heretical for the time.”

Another Idea That Dare Not Speak Its Name!

“Well, not so fast”, said my husband, ever the cautious academic.

“Assuming you are right about the secret play, Shakespeare might have

just been showing some sort of, uh, sensitivity to his subject, you know,

awareness of history and background and such. Where we’ve been.

Contextualization. Part of the discourse. You mentioned Apollo, the

Greek sun god. But it doesn’t mean that Shakespeare worshipped Apollo,

obviously.”

“I see”, I said, feeling as though I would have a lot to ask the

ghost about when I saw him again, if I saw him again.

What did Shakespeare know and think and when did he know it and think it?

“How did you come up with that, anyway?” asked Kazuo.

“Umm, well, that’s a good question. You see, actually…..”

I reached for a quick lie, not including ghosts!--- that would sound

truthful.

“I had some time to read Shakespeare again, and in the back of my

mind, I was thinking about coal and oil and images of them in stories

and I noticed that the first two lines of Romeo and Juliet were rather

peculiar, about coal; they seemed so out of place and jarring. They were

tiny details, trifles that no one had wondered about before. I wondered

why he put them there. In such a prime position.”

Thankfully, the lie unfurled smoothly out of my brain as if by magic,

with no effort on my part to construct a contorted story to hide the

ghost’s contribution.

“Coal? Oil? What made them so interesting all of a sudden? Usually

people don’t think about coal and oil, especially in relation to works of

literature. Fossil fuels are oily, sort of dirty substances….I only hear

my colleagues wailing about gasoline prices lately, and so on…..”

I was thinking fast again.

Fukushima.

Images of cranes, trucks squirting thousands of tons of water, long

rows of emergency vehicles, cement mixers, all of them heavily dependent

on oil, all of them in the foreground of every shot of Fukushima

Daiichi. Didn’t they need oil and coal, its stony relative, to get the

energy to build nuclear reactors and mine uranium too?

Gregory, upon my word, we’ll not carry coals!

Of course, we had carried coals, and a whole bunch of other valuable things too, out of the

ground. And who could possibly blame us? We had good intentions, always,

even when we built things like Fukushima Daiichi. But, of course, there

was an old saying about that.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

And if any place on earth looked like hell, it was the mangled,

tangled, highly radioactive ruins of Fukushima Daiichi, still emitting

millions of bequerels of radioactive substances every day.

Romeo: I thought all for the best.

“Well”, I said, “probably, it was because of Fukushima in the back of

my mind somewhere. And yes, Fukushima did start me off thinking about

the sun more. Fukushima Daiichi, with all of its heavy cement and

metal---you know, people need machines to move those things---- seems

like it is partly related to the use of oil and coal, and mass

industrialization in general. Maybe that’s why I thought of it….. Hey,

here I am, a nuclear refugee, after all.”

Over the phone line, I heard him become silent and freeze up.

Always back to Fukushima Daiichi.

It was the event where our long-frayed relationship had finally

become a schism, my husband abandoned and isolated. Our so-called nuclear

family. Or a postmodern variation, maybe by now a lonely one.

I’m sorry, part of me wanted to say, but the words would not come.

Friends were still there, others I knew. Why had I taken the plunge to

leave when others were willing to live with the risk?

Because I had missed the green mountains of Tsubame, where we had

lived for five years together before my husband had gotten the job at a

more prestigious Kurumachi University. I loved ancient Tsubame with its

archaic tiny twisting streets, its old wooden houses and shops, its

rivers, rice fields and birds. You could walk out of your house and soon

you would find yourself dreaming along the path next to a river, no car

necessary. Being away for 10 years had only made me love this town more.

I only had succeeded in irritating him even more.

“So, Viola, what is your point? What do you want me to do about your

idea? Literature isn’t really my field, as you well know. I think you

are calling the wrong person. If you want to tell me about the kids,

fine, otherwise, I’m busy. I’ve got a class in 20 minutes.”

Obviously the topic of the nuclear reactor and its ongoing troubles

or what lay elementally and energetically and historically behind it,

was not a welcome one to my spouse. Whenever he says my name like that

with the word “so” in front so, Viola, I know he is annoyed.

Well, obviously, Viola! Duh! Why should it be welcome?

“Well, first of all, I just wanted to tell someone. It’s fascinating,

don’t you think? I chose you to tell, O.K.? We’re still married after

all.” Now I was being defensive, and I was worried that things in this

conversation were starting to vaguely deteriorate.

“So you mean you want to write this up as, what, as a scholarly

article? Do you think you manage that? You haven’t written any papers

since when?---um, graduate school, and that was 20 years ago, right? I

did advise you to try to write something academic, when you were

teaching here, as I recall, many, many times. You always said you had

better things to do, but you could have had a solid and serious career by

now. What do you want to do with this anyway? Where do you want to go

with this?”

He was right, depressingly right. What did I want anyway? I had imagined that

he would be impressed but instead he was---with some grounds---reminding

me of my obvious shortcomings as a scholar: I had a very short attention

span, I had never followed any academic theorists or conventional

scholarly practices, nor did I have any interest in doing so. I was a

dilettante, an amateur, a mere gnat whistling and humming in the sun on

the elephant’s back, the elephant being Academia, Stability,

Learnedness, Standard Procedure, Convention, Importance, Critical

Practice, Excellent Grammar and Perfect Footnotes. Solid and serious

An irreverent Court Jester of Academic Prose resided in my head

despite every honest effort I made to evict him.

When I did read scholarly articles, I admit that to amuse this

monstrous little clown, I rather heretically collected some of the words

and phrases I encountered as though I were collecting colorful exotic

fish in an aquarium: under the rubric of, problems attendant on, discursive formations,

embedded in semantic webs, gloss, situate his work, a negotiation of changing meanings,

implicated in ongoing social processes, and my very favorite, valorizes.

In idle moments, perhaps while I was waiting at a bus stop or washing

dishes, I brought them out to dance and perform for my own amusement,

adding in or substituting prosaic words like tulips, carrots, dinner, cat litter and

socks: socks embedded in semantic webs, discursive formations of carrots, valorizes dinner,

problems attendant on cat litter, under the rubric of tulips.

Oh, God, why could I not be serious?

(And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down before them.)

Yes, indeed!

Why could I not learn to play the academic writing game too? Surely,

but surely, it was a both a routine drill and an economic venture like

any other job, accounting, auto mechanics, or operating a nail salon or

a hamburger restaurant…..just a bit more difficult, a bit more of an

intellectual rush. It was still just selling something that would fit

into a specialized market.

But it was not for me.

The serious academic words and ideas had lives and loves and fancies

of their own, no doubt, but they were, like fish in a tank,

tantalizingly remote, vocabulary that seemed off limits to a person like

me who was too regrettably focused too much on what was real, and what I

could taste and touch and feel. I needed weather, real weather, the rain

or the wind or the sun on my face, buttercups underfoot, or asphalt,

mud, or gravel even, but it had to be real.

The universe of academia, so attractive, so exotic, so glamorous and

appealing in its own brainy, literate and digressive way, could never be

my world.

Even just for money, I just could not do it.

I was a geisha, a jester, a fool!

I had lately realized that I was wearing my own special invisible cap

and bells, all the more powerful because they were invisible and

therefore impossible to remove. Jingling through the streets, with rings on

my fingers and bells on my toes, I was dancing my own special idiosyncratic jig

that amused people----and they paid me to talk, joke, and expound on any

little thing during “English lessons” in an entertaining way---- but

this talent, or whatever it was, would never make me a published and

respected scholar.

“No, not an academic paper”, I said firmly. “I can’t write one of

those.” I was still the same, stubborn, recalcitrant. We, Kazuo and

Viola, were opposites. Opposites, despite what you may have heard, do

not always attract.

“Then, let me ask you again, what actually do you want to do with

this. Are you baka? You don’t even know where you want to go with this?”

Kazuo sounded even more impatient and irritated. Baka is the Japanese

word for “fool”, and I was very familiar with its sting. I was always

making him annoyed with my vagueness and my unserious, languid,

unfocused approach to life. In his world, projects were undertaken

seriously and with purpose. There were important things like Funding,

Meetings, Symposia, Grant Proposals and Plenary Speakers. His list of

publications ran ten pages long.

“I don’t know yet. I’ll think about it, O.K.? It’s just an idea right

now. I don’t have to, as you put it, do anything with it, right?”

There was a pause. We were both glad to be living apart, I realized.

Our conversations always ended unhappily. Then, unexpectedly, Kazuo’s

voice got brighter.

“Hey, Viola, because of some M.A. exams in the Area Studies

Department, I won’t have to teach classes on Thursday, then Friday is a

holiday, so how about I go and visit you and the kids. It’s Zenji’s

birthday on Saturday.”

“O.K., of course, come if you want to”, I tried to sound pleasant and

polite, when I was feeling rather resentful still, “And you can see the

fireflies. They’re out now on the river. They’re beautiful.”

There were no more fireflies in Kurumachi.

Chapter 13

Rosalind: They say you are a melancholy fellowJaques: I am so; I do love it better than laughing.

Fireflies-----here in Tsubame their lights glow pale green, tiny

beams fading slowly to reappear again in their mystical signals of “off”

and “on”, a language, a dance, or both at once, signals and motions

unknowable beyond the narrow velvet universe of their dark riverbank.

They have lights, it is true, but they are nowhere plugged in, as they

sail through the air. I had learned to admire them for that.

People come to the riverside to study, informally, the language of

the fireflies. Crowds appear at night, the smell of sake wafts in the

air, couples murmur on the little footbridges, children address the

fireflies directly with a hypnotic, trancelike song supposed to draw the

insects closer, since it tells the story of bitter water that is ‘over

there’ versus the sweet water that is ‘here’:

Hoi, hoi, hotaru, hoiAchi no mizu wa nigai zo, kochi no mizu wa amai zo

Later, there is laughing, shouting, talking as people flooding out

from the local bars stop by to observe the esoteric communications of

the fireflies, but the observations are never analyzed, lost amid

laughter, touch, and song.

In Tsubame, at the beginning of June, for two evenings, we have a

well-known Hotaru Matsuri ------ “Firefly Festival”--------on a green near

the river, a few stalls sell bananas dipped in chocolate sauce, yaki soba

(fried noodles), tako yaki (octopus fritters), broiled squid, balloons and

popcorn. In a nearby local community center, pottery from Hagi is sold

at a tenth of its usual price. The clay in Hagi is sandy and rough, from

the piney mountains along the shore of the cold Japan Sea, and the famed

pottery is commensurately sandy and rough too, painted with a milky,

rice-based glaze. I looked forward to the discount sale, these Hagi yaki

dishes had slight imperfections that were either unnoticeable or added

charm.

Living right next to the river, Zenji, Kaoru and I visited the hotaru

every evening. Walking Teru, we loitered on the footbridges; I even,

perhaps unconventionally, made wishes on the little lights. Zenji caught

the bugs in his hands and let them go again. Since returning to Tsubame,

our lives had followed the seasons more closely, and we sometimes, day

or night, spent entire minutes watching the river tumbling along under

the footbridges. Slow and satisfying, with nothing much accomplished by

the time the sun set over the mountains, life in Tsubame was perfect I

thought.

Kazuo arrived on Saturday afternoon, the first night of the Hotaru

Matsuri.

He drank a cup of tea, then, energized, investigated My Housekeeping.

According to him, there is dust everywhere. Why are Seiji’s books and

toys arranged so badly in a heap on the shelf? Why are the cats not in

their cage? Can’t I clean the sink a bit better than that?

Ahh. So sorry, but I am not here. I am invisible!

Expertly, I fade away, or fly away, into the margins of the very

marginal tiny house---Kaoru has mentioned insects flying around her room

recently that look suspiciously like termites ----, which would be the

farthest away space on the south side of the kitchen.

The ogre stumbles around after me. Where is his cell-phone charger?

What are the newspapers doing there in a pile without a string tied

around them? What have I been doing, anyway all this time? Do I not know

where the brooms are? Why does Zenji read only comic books? Why is Kaoru

not studying?

But I digress.

Kazuo has two sides; a professional one that a professor, any normal

and reasonable and modern professor may have.

The other side, more private, is the side which burns hotly with a

flame of fear and shame.

Fear of living in a house that has a speck of dirt, fear that

everyone else has educated children and only yours are not going to get

into college, fear that your wife is not good at cleaning, or worse,

doesn’t care that much. The house should be perfect, the apron always

clean and fresh, the housewife must be on duty, the children are

studying sums and equations. Or else they are practicing the piano.

Kazuo was not like this when I married him. But somehow, having

children has persuaded him to be quite fearful, nearly all the time,

elementally and profoundly so, about appearances and convention. It is

like a disease of some sort, ravaging him. The disease seemed to have

started when we moved to Kurumachi, but I think, looking back, that it

was incipient all the while that he was unhappily teaching at Tsubame

University, which is number 51 in the academic rankings in Japan, and

therefore, as he always said, Not Good Enough.

Yet I fear, judging by the beautiful cars, fancier outfits, and

expensive lifestyles of people in their 50s and 60s, people ten years

older than Kazuo and me, that the fancy mold he aspires to was firmer

and more intact before his time. Maybe that is one reason it is so

attractive to him. Because of the bursting of the economic bubble in

Japan in 1990, just as we came of age, our generation aspires to an

ideal that we cannot quite manage, however fast we run, to attain. Women

must work now, and cars are smaller. And nuclear refugees such as I must

work quite hard and I have no car even, and no financial possibility to

buy one even if I could drive. And driving, moreover, is a skill I have

long-ago forgotten. The recent happy and attractive suburban material

ideal has become, for my generation, a twisted grimacing sneering visage

in a fun-house mirror whose very presence but cruelly mocks the seeker,

the aspirant, the acolyte, my own Kazuo.

Deny thy father and refuse thy name….

Impossible.

Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love….

Hah!

Romeo! humors! madman! passion! lover!

(silence……)

Kazuo, Kazuo, tonight there is a festival.

I saw them setting up the stalls just now coming here, do you not

think I know why? Do you think I am so baka?

Chapter 14

Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish,A vapor sometime like a bear or lion,A tower’d citadel, a pendant rock,

A forked mountain, or blue promontoryWith trees upon ‘t that nod unto the world,And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs,They are black vesper’s pageants.

Kaoru left to wander the narrow, lantern-lit streets with Chika-chan

and Tamami-chan. Zenji and Kazuo decided to go down to the area set up

with food stalls and buy some yaki soba.

Left thankfully on my own, I drifted over to the community center

where, outside, a long table was set up with the discounted and donated

imperfect Hagiyaki pottery, and I rummaged around, one of a large crowd

there. Soon I had selected two creamy-toned rice bowls and a light brown

tea mug, quite large.

Under a striped awning in the small parking lot, a small brass band

played Supai-no-dai-sakusen (“The Spy’s Big Strategy”). The musicians were

mostly middle-aged men and a few women, and the conductor had out-of-

fashion 1970s sideburns, which you will sometimes see on men in Tsubame,

a town that has stayed in the past in many ways. This festival to

celebrate the fireflies is rather eclectic and new, and not a

traditional Japanese festival, where there would be drums and a

procession of men carrying an omikoshi from the shrine.

I had intended to go home, but instead I turned right at the river

and found myself on a road leading up to the mountains. Something about

the twilight, the milky translucent color of the sky, the trees on the

nearby mountainside, like pointed castle towers enclosing secrets, and

the dark-green ribbons of green hedges after I had crossed Route 9,

something with its own natural force made me continue my way.

After all, Kazuo was responsible for the children. I was free!

I was walking against the crowd, still along the river, and soon no

more crowds were around me. I was nearer to a Buddhist temple, Ensei-ji,

locally famous, and soon I reached it, with its five-storied tower built

in 1524, 40 years before Shakespeare was born, all of unpainted wood,

and constructed with no nails. The gates are always open, but I was not

attracted to the park-like scene within, nor the fancy shining altars in

there, today.

I rounded a curve in the road, the edge of the mountain came sweeping

down, like a large hand in greeting, and I walked a path that made a

hair-pin turn, somehow feeling vaguely that my destination lay up in

this mountain. I started climbing the slope of the mountain along a

path, There was a low and simple bamboo fence here, and the path

alongside was well-worn. I had been here many times before. After a few

more hair-pin turns, there was a flat area, a small ledge on the

mountain, like a circle, with trees all around and a bench on two.

By now it was almost quite dark, the sky was the purest deepest blue,

but not yet black. The flat clearing where I stood was empty, no people

except for me. What was I to do here? I took a seat on a bench and I

found a wrapped caramel in my sweater pocket and I ate it slowly.

Usually I have to rush somewhere: a shop, the next lesson, home to see

the children and cook dinner for them. Now I could enjoy the feeling of

being unnecessary. I could do yukkuri, be at my ease, and no one would

need me or miss me for an hour or two. In a way, I had temporarily

ceased to exist. I opened my little purple cell phone. I had acquired a

cell phone after moving to Tsubame to keep in touch with Kazuo, and I

had found that reading the news on it was addictive, perhaps not always

in a good way.

My cell phone was spookily dark, however. Nothing I tried could make

it work. Hadn’t I just charged it that morning?

And then I heard the sound of drums and a flute, very faint and far-

off, and singing.

I turned around toward the sound and in the twilight, I saw a man

coming through the trees, down a steep path that led further up the

mountain. His skin was glowing ever so faintly, just enough for me to be

sure.

“Hello!”, I called out, knowing why I had felt drawn to the mountain

now. He had managed to carry out some sort of magic attracting trick

through the air, on me, pulling me here for some reason.

Drums and singing? And a forest setting? Perhaps I was to see a

performance of my favorite Shakespeare comedy, As You Like It. Rosalind,

clad in men’s clothes, who mysteriously calls so often on Jove and

Jupiter, and has taken the name of his page, Ganymede, seemed to be, of

all of Shakespeare’s brave and wonderful heroines, the most independent

and the boldest. Many times I had conjured up her image in my mind when

I was feeling worried, fearful, or uncertain.

What would Rosalind do?

She was confident. She opened her mouth first, without shyness-----

Do you hear, forester?------and rambled on wittily and people listened. A college

classroom can be a hostile place: there are students, almost all of

them, in some classes, who have signed up for the class just because it

is required, and have no wish to be there. I have been faced with

glowering frowns, rows of them, as the semester started. And at these

times, I have often put to work the thought: What would Rosalind do?

“Would you like to meet a clownish fool?” the ghost now asked me, in

a quiet voice that suited the softness of night breeze.

“A clownish fool?” I asked, trying to sound confident, “Why? Do you

know any around here? I hope you don’t mean me!”

The ghost smiled and took my hand in his cold one. He led me to the

steep dark path that led up the side of the mountain. I had never been

up this path before. In the dark, I hesitated.

“It will be all right, you know.” he said gently. He started first

and pulled me along. I found that when I held his hand, my feet moved

smoothly and safely over the unseen rocks and broken sticks, and around

the branches nearby. Where were we going? Up and up, and I didn’t feel

tired. I felt lighter and as though I were being pulled or pushed by

many hands, not just his. Some creatures with an elemental upward force

were helping, but they seemed invisible.

A magician….most profound in his art, and yet not damnable.

The singing and drumming grew louder.

“Are we to see a performance?” I asked, feeling very hopeful.

“Something more like a party.”

“Ah.” I felt disappointed because, actually, I don’t really like

parties. I never know what to say at parties. I am at my best when I am

performing for money before an audience, which is to say, in my case,

the students in any classroom where I am teaching. Moreover, and though

this is trivial, perhaps, one reason I live in Japan is because the

people here generally never give parties or go to them. There is a long

and rich history of paying professionals for live entertainment,

jugglers, geisha, storytellers, flutists, dancers and so forth, and, as a

lately somewhat itinerant entertainer of the less obvious kind, which is to

say an English conversation teacher, this suited me infinitely.

The ghost laughed. I supposed, glumly, that he was reading my mind

again. Secrets were impossible when your very mind was to be exposed;

was this magical process like ghostly hacking, my thoughts, like files,

being downloaded into the air between us?

He laughed harder.

“My way is to conjure you, and I’ll begin with the women…..” , he said in that soft

voice of his, almost humming, pulling my hand still while turning to

glance at me in the moonlight. Or could ghosts see in the dark?

Ahh well. Now I didn’t mind so much anymore; after all, a party

organized by Shakespeare’s Ghost was sure to be very different from an

ordinary party.

Begin with the women? Conjure you?

What did that mean? Were conjuring tricks to be performed? Were there

to be only women there?

Or did he mean me?

Chapter 15

Heigh ho! Peter Quince, Flute the bellows-maker, Snout the tinker! Starveling! God’s my life, stol’n hence, and leftme asleep! I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass, if he go about t’ expound this dream.Methought I was----there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had----but man is but a patch’d fool if he will offer to say what methought I had…..

After 15 more minutes of walking up the rather steep path, we arrived

at a small flat piece of land, a natural feature of the mountainside. It

was set against the mountainside, and ringed with trees. The moonlight

was bright, but there were also five or six torches burning brightly in

special holders. All magical---even the moonlight?

The oddest collection of beings I had ever seen was assembled in the

circle of light. The ghost let go of my hand.

“These are spirits, and among them you may see the clownish fools I

was telling you about.”

My first thought was amusing, even to me, because it was so

unexpected: I wish Zenji could see this. Zenji loves Rokurokubi, Hitomekozo, and

Noperabo, and here they were, fully visible, alive, and dancing, a

strange, ghostly swaying type of dance. Rokurokubi, her neck only

extended a bit, was wearing a empire-waist red velvet dress, and had her

long black hair swept up in a severe bun, while Noperabo had a green

silk kimono. Her pale powdered face, with only a red mouth, looked

somehow amusing, instead of dreadful, merely a doll who was incomplete.

Hitotsumekozou, the one-eyed monk ghost was wearing a monk’s clothes:

black cotton short robe and white cotton pants, and bare feet. But he

was not only dancing, I saw that he had a wooden top, which he wound

with a string and then spun around on a flat rock at times.

Then I noticed another strange creature: a stout man with the head of

a donkey, with flowers entwined around his long furry ears. He was

dancing too, but it was a capering, jumping sort of circular jig, with

hops and skips, and claps. His dancing partner was a deeply bright red

colored, wooden-sort of looking thin and stick-like man I recognized as

a Tengu, a long-nosed Japanese folk spirit, known as a “heavenly dog”,

whose wooden statues are sometimes guarding temples. The Tengu’s dance

was stiff but stylish and modern, his silhouette, with the magnificent

nose almost half a meter long, and a simple blue cotton yukata and

sandals, seemed to fit his serious, stern demeanor. He had wings on his

back, with feathers.

Near a tree a man in green knee-length pants and a white tunic

watched, laughed, and called out in a hoarse voice, a fool, a fool! I met a fool i’

the forest! A motley fool. A miserable world! As I do live by food, I met a fool, who laid him down,

and basked in the sun……!

The Sun!

Suddenly I was more alert. Surely this was all part of the conjuring.

Where was this speech from? I couldn’t place it. I knew this speech,

butfrom where?

This man had a handkerchief that he took out now and wiped his eyes,

he was crying—or maybe he was laughing--- and he got up and started to

sing in a ravaged voice;

Who doth ambition shunAnd loves to live i’ the sun,Seeking the food he eats,And pleased with what he gets,Come hither, come hither, come hither!Here shall he see no enemy But winter and rough weather.

I now finally recognized both the speech and the song as being from As

You Like It.

“Possibly……could it be……the famous melancholic Jaques?”, I asked the

ghost at my side.

“I think you are right.”

Jaques started singing the second verse of the song, and this time, the

ghost beside me joined in the singing, throwing his arms out

theatrically and letting his voice carry through the trees:

If it do come to passThat any man turn ass,Leaving his wealth and easeA stubborn will to please,Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame!Here shall he seeGross fools as he, and if he will come to me.

The ghost finished the verse and looked at me expectantly, hesitantly. I

live in a country with a famously difficult language and, as a

foreigner, I have had this experience many times: someone says something

to you that you only partly understand, then he or she looks at you,

waiting to see: did you get it?

“Very good”, I said slowly, and then something inside my head went

crash, or exploded; a stubborn Will to please……any man turn ass…..Will, Will. Will.

The Will of the Sonnets!

A stubborn Will to please!

He was one of them. Shakespeare was one of them. Underneath his brilliant courtly wit,

Shakespeare was a merry fool, a champion of the sun, a clown, a court jester, like that merry

fellow with the ass’s head over there, who could only be…….Bottom the Weaver!!

That interesting little recommendation he had slipped in there in the

pun, “leaving his wealth and ease.……. a stubborn Will to please” was clearly something

that would find him zero admirers. It was yet another Idea that Dare Not Speak

Its Name.

Wealth and ease was what we all liked. Me included.

London in Shakespeare’s time was an increasingly urban world that

relied more and more on coal as its main fuel. A world of wealth and ease.

Rural places were being enclosed for sheep farming and other crops

that could be used to make money for the land-owners. The people who had

lived off the land were sent away, to drift, beg, or go to the cities.

And loves to live i’ the sun?

That wasn’t an option available to most of us now anymore.

Without oil or coal, life was full of hardships that most people, me

included, would find unbearable. Yet it had once been the norm.

A miserable world?

Whose world, now, was he calling miserable?

I have always been able to see right through hypocrisy, no matter how

cleverly it is disguised.

“You didn’t exactly shun ambition, though did you?” I said severely to

the ghost.

“Well, no, I suppose not.”

“And you must have burned a few coals, or more than a few in your

time”, I said accusingly, “meaning that you hardly, as you so comically

put it, lived i’ the sun either.” I found that I was upset, and my tone was

irate.

“Sometimes, yes, I did burn coals for fuel. We all did. We had to.

That was all we could afford.”

“Then you can hardly make any honest claims to be the voice of a solar

energy advocate.”

The ghost looked sad. “Now you know how agonizing it all was for me,”

he said simply. “I had to try to champion something that couldn’t be

saved, and even while I was already well separated from it. So many of

us players and performers were in the same position, and we couldn’t go

back to our villages. Things, in an economic sense, had already gone too

far. I thought I would just adopt the outlook in my art, looking down

the road, far, far ahead. I guessed it would be a very, very long

time..”

“I see” I said coldly, “I cannot say I am sure of your sincerity.

Sometimes I see what you have done as merely taunting everyone.”

That wasn’t strictly what I thought. His strange visits were helping

me, at least, to feel less alone, less bitter about my sad marriage and

my impoverished life as a nuclear refugee. Fukushima was a giant human

failure, and ondanka ----Climate Change----was another. But if even

Shakespeare had been tormented by all the difficult decisions and

choices that people were faced with when they encountered fossil fuels,

maybe then, just that he stood solidly with us in our suffering was

enough to be of some small use?

Maybe that was why Jaques was so melancholy, though he was aligned

with the sun, which somehow brought out the foolish, the jesterish and

the lighthearted in people.

A miserable world? Perhaps, but at least we were not alone.

Bottom the Weaver came dancing near me. The Ghost beckoned him over

and he stopped while the Ghost whispered something in his ear. Bottom

smiled, nodded, then cleared his throat and called out, “Ahem!”

Noperabo, Rokurokubi and Jacques came near to listen, then Bottom raised

one hand bombastically in the classic style of a Roman orator and

declaimed slowly:

The raaaa---ging rocksAnd shiv--vvvering shocksShall breeeeak the locksOf priiiison gatesAnd Phibbus’ carShall shiiiine from far,And maaake and marrrr The foolish Fates.

Rokurokubi snaked and bobbed her long neck and her head mischievously

around the audience in time with the rolling “r’s”. Everyone clapped

when Bottom gave a deep bow at the end. The Ghost looked at me

expectantly. The light from the torches gave his face hollows and black

shadows, and made him seem ethereal.

I said “It’s from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ‘a part to tear a cat in, to make all split’.

That’s all I remember. Bottom is hamming it up, trying to show how he

can play a tyrant, is I think what the point of the speech is.”

“And how about the fellow named Phibbus he mentioned?”

“Of course I know, that is Phoebus Apollo, the Greek God of the Sun.

He had a golden chariot -----that would be the sun-----and pulled it

across the sky.”

“Phibbus’ car…...shall shine from far”, the Ghost said softly. By now the

torches were burning low and the moon, risen higher, cast a fainter,

colder sheen on his face. He looked tired. I suppose it was all taking

longer to explain to me than he had thought. I am not always quick to

catch someone’s intended meaning. But this time, at least, his aim had

not missed its mark.

Juliet herself, I knew, had mimed holding the reins of that same

famous golden chariot many times, on stage.

Gallop apace, you fiery steeds, towards Phoebus’ lodging.

Juliet is the sun.

But Juliet wasn’t the only sun. Bottom was another one. Jaques too.

There were likely other sun figures in other plays. This theme seemed

to span all his work. Whoever had it been----who was the brilliant creature who

had said-----who had simply decided one day---that there was no coherence in

Shakespeare?

There was. Simply it was a secret, or else, perhaps, it was positively

and cognitively inaccessible to a world running on coal and oil.

The Idea that May Not Speak Its Name.

Mention the sun and no one will think twice about it; it seems like a

convenient trope----the sun is always present in the sky---- to hang any

speech on, to tear a cat, to make all split. But sometimes, if a Shakespearean

character mentioned the sun or made a speech about the sun, I now

understood that it might subtly indicate a special status of that

character: that character was the sun. It was a shocking and cosmic idea

for an English major, any English major, to have to encounter.

I wasn’t ready for this!

“I see”, I said, feeling a little dizzy, “Bottom is the sun in his

play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Jaques is the sun in his play, As You Like It.

Juliet is the sun in Romeo and Juliet. That’s the easy one. You give it away

when you wrote Juliet is the sun!”

“Yes.”

Now I wanted to know more.

“Is there only one sun figure in each play?”

“Yes. Because the Earth has only one sun, our sun.”

A local habitation and a name.

All of this information was most exciting. “Can you please tell me

more about all of this, what you have done and how you managed it all?

As you may know, I was an English major back in college---I even went to

graduate school, although, sadly and regrettably, only for one year---

and I think, as a trained , umm, err, semi-professional in the field, I will

be able to understand you, even if you use rather technical words to

explain.”

“Another time,” he said with a small and mysterious smile.

For some odd reason, this Ghost wouldn’t tell me his secrets directly, but

rather he enacted them; he performed them……..

My way is to conjure you…….

The singing and dancing continued. Bottom waltzed past again, this

time loudly singing a silly song about ‘the finch the sparrow and the lark’. Next,

a creature I recognized as a Kappa, a Japanese river spirit, emerged

from a small brook behind a tree. He was dripping wet, with a dish full

of cucumbers on his head, and in his webbed hand he also held a

cucumber, the favorite food of Kappas. He started to merrily crunch it

while singing and dancing a soggy jig; suddenly he threw a cucumber to

Bottom the Weaver, who caught it as he danced and sang near the Kappa

and held it up and made it into a horn on his head.

Next to a tree, an old woman I hadn’t noticed before, in long brown

skirts and a wide veiled headpiece clapped her hands merrily at this

sight. Who was she? The tree branches swayed and the leaves shook and

whispered.

Shake, quoth the dove-house, they seemed to say.

I had to laugh as I realized the answer.

Of course! Another clown figure! This old woman was not the sun figure

of Romeo and Juliet, (that was Juliet, of course)----- but the clown

figures would usually be aligned with or close to the sun figures----

and, as Juliet’s Nurse, she was Juliet’s confidant and companion. I was

thrilled to be catching onto the secret ‘architecture’ , or ‘geography’,

which seemed to underlay the structures of the plays. I knew there was

so much more to learn, of course, but now, I had a start. The forest

itself tonight was giving me answers.

….tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Then, suddenly, behind the melancholic Jaques, in the darkness, I

caught sight of a strange figure, a man, I thought, who was dressed in a

monk’s dark brown cowl and robe. I had almost missed him in the

darkness. His face was facing away from the light of the torch, so his

features were quite obscured. Which character of Shakespeare’s could he

be? I wondered. He looked alone, in contrast to all the others, who were

all engaged in the reveling in their peculiar ways. He stood next to a

tree. Was he looking at the sky or was that only a trick of the

torchlight? His demeanor was lonely, and a mysterious sadness seemed to

possess him.

Who was he?

Chapter 16

Rosse: Ha, good father,Thou seest the heavens, as troubled with man’s act,Threatens his bloody stage. By th’ clock ‘tis day,And yet dark night strangles the traveling lamp.Is’t night’s predominance, or the day’s shame,That darkness does the face of earth entomb,When living light should kiss it?Old Man: ‘Tis unnatural,Even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last,A falcon, tow’ring in her pride of place,Was by a mousing owl kill’d.

The ghost took my hand in his cold hands after a few more minutes had

passed. “Come”, he said, “I’ll bring you back down the mountain.”

“I don’t want to leave”, I said honestly. This world of dreams,

shadows, spirits, and conjured illusions was much more fascinating than

my real life. But then I noticed with surprise something crashing

noisily through the tree branches above us, and I looked up to see the

Tengu flying away, flapping his wings. Folklore held that Tengus could

fly, and now I saw it was true. And when I looked back at the clearing,

no one was left, and the torches had been extinguished; except for the

distant orb of a moon above, all would have been dark.

The performance was over. Picking up my canvas bag that held the

discount hagiyaki, I followed my host to the path that led down the

mountain.

I was still curious, and now I saw my chance.

“By the way, who was the downcast man in the monk’s robe and cowl,

whose face was obscured in the shadows?” I asked as we started down the

path.

“A friend, and a friendly spirit.”

“Was he in your plays or was he someone else entirely?”

“Both, entirely.”

“I see”, I said, though I didn’t see at all, “Did he have a name?”

“Ahh, yes, quite a name. Back in our day, yes, his name was well known.

Though not everyone agreed with him, most unfortunately for him. But I

did. I knew he was right.”

“Will you tell me who he is?”

Instead of answering my question, the ghost let go of my hand, and

veering gracefully to one side, he magically stepped through the trunk

of the tree to his left. The tree closed over his form and he was gone.

No longer surprised by his strange comings and goings, I realized that I

had nearly arrived at the place where he had come to get me earlier.

And from there it would be an easy walk along well-worn paths; then I’d

be off the mountain and headed home.

I had more questions than ever now. Knowing about the secret play

about Man and the Sun in Romeo and Juliet had only made me more eager to

learn about other hidden structures in the other plays. I couldn’t wait

for the ghost to contact me again and give me more clues and ideas

through his conjuring acts.

However, I doubted that the ghost would try to appear when Kazuo was

around. Kazuo is not a relaxed person; he is always worried, about dust,

about Kaoru’s grades, about everyone eating enough vegetables in the

morning, and other trivial things which he elevates into matter for

dramatic complaining, and I imagined that the ghost would find his

presence to be tiresome. If Kazuo stayed a while, would I be able to

meet the ghost? I felt crimped and vexed. On the other hand, Kazuo, a

serious scholar with a lot of knowledge, might be able to help me with

some of the myths, folklore, and historical background of the

Renaissance. I decided to quiz him as much as possible, and hope that

the ghost would appear anyway, while Kazuo was out eating at one of his

beloved ramen noodle shops or taking Zenji to see an anime movie.

It was with this general plan in mind that I opened the door to our

little house---at slightly after 11-- with a happy smile.

Kazuo and Kaoru were drinking green tea and reading at the table.

Zenji was already asleep.

“Where were you?” they both asked.

“Oh, well, umm…… actually a friend asked me to go for a walk near the

mountain beside Ensei-ji.”

“A friend? Who?”, asked Kaoru.

“Umm, another…….teacher I met recently.”

I disappeared into the kitchen and tried to make an end of this

unwelcome line of inquiry by busily stacking dishes, putting laundry

into the tiny washing machine there, and washing my new hagiyaki.

The diversionary tactic worked, and when Kazuo came in to get more

tea water, I started talking about the new dishes so he wouldn’t try to

ask me any more questions about the mountain.

“Very nice”, he said.

“Only 300 yen altogether.”

“Great prices.”

“Yes. A few minor flaws here and there, but who cares?”

Kazuo frowned. Would he make some sort of critical comment about my

cheap taste, initiating a new round of hostilities?

Now in the silence between us, I was wondering how to start

questioning Kazuo about some of the things I had seen that night. I

decided that Shakespeare must have had a secret reason for showing ne

the Japanese youkai , or spirits, and the characters from his plays

together. Afer all, why had he come to Japan, in the first place? Surely

there were other introverted middle-aged former English-major

Shakespeare fans all over the world whom he could have chosen

to….conjure; but this evening’s revels had made me think that probably

the biggest reason he had chosen me was simply because…….. I live in

Japan.

“By the way,” I said airily, pretending that I was trying to avoid an

argument about the discount dishes, “I was wondering about Tengus

tonight. Is it true that Tengus can fly?”

In his passion to reveal his knowledge, Kazuo forgot to criticize me.

“That is what they say. Although their name comes from the Chinese

for “Heavenly dog”, scholars believe that in folklore, they were

actually some sort of bird-----probably a kite, or another bird of

prey----and earliest Japanese depictions of Tengus show them with beaks,

wings, and feathers and other avian features.”

“And those beaks are why they have long noses now!”

“Exactly. The long nose was a way to humanize the bird’s beak. Their

long nose is now practically their most famous, even their defining,

feature.”

Birds? Where had I heard about birds recently? I frowned in thought.

A shadow of a thought flitted past and was gone!

Kazuo continued, “And some Japanese scholars make the claim that Garuda

is one of the major strands in the ancient origins of Tengu.”

“Garuda?”

“The Hindi deity who takes the form of an eagle. Garuda is

traditionally the mount of Vishnu, the supreme god in India. Garuda is

also the brother of Aruna, the charioteer of the Surya, the Hindi sun

god, and sometimes also depicted as the god of the dawning sun, or part

of Surya.”

The sun! Again!

“The Hindi sun god?” I could hardly contain my excitement.

“Yes, and, naturally, since Garuda takes the form of an eagle, and

the Egyptian sun God Ra was depicted as a falcon, some scholars see

Garuda, with his associations with the solar deity Aruna, as derived, at

least in part, from Ra.”

“So it all seems to go back to Ra?” I asked. “Then, maybe myths can

make journeys together with people, a kind of oral network connecting

people through time and space. But travelers and generations alter and

change the myths over time to fit their local scene and traditions and

needs.”

“Something like that.”

“Ra. Garuda. Tengu. In a line,” I said, “moving East, across Asia,

centuries ago.” My mind tried to comprehend the passages of people and

eons. Adapting, changing, and mixing with what was there already to make

something not completely new, myths traveled in the minds of the

travelers, who rode on camels, horses and walked on foot. People laden

with bags and wooden boxes, trunks, and cloth bundles, and their own

important stories: their gods, their folk spirits. Over rivers,

mountains, streams, oceans, fields. The stories and songs always

followed guided, inspired, and knitted people together mysteriously and

fundamentally. Millennia before the Internet had managed to link

everything electronically and in complex detail, humans had accomplished

something similar, but on a simpler scale, with only their voices and

imaginations, and powered only by the sun. Under the same sky, the same

stars, the moon, the sun, and the Milky Way, they had known and proven

that they were connected.

Ra. Garuda. Tengu…all birds..

A funny shadow with an ass’s head danced a jig through my mind.

…..The finch, the sparrow and the lark!

Suddenly I remembered the reference to birds I had recently heard! It

was Bottom the Weaver who had been singing a song about birds in the

forest! Was this also connected?

“Thanks!” I said to Kazuo, meaning it. He looked at me strangely. I

didn’t care; I felt radiant with my realization. Shakespeare, yet

another fellow traveler, had been deliberately using old myths and

ancient powerful symbols like birds in fascinating new ways. My niesse?

says Romeo to Juliet, then calls her My nestling hawk:

Hist, Romeo, hist! O, for a falc’ners voice, To lure this tassel-gentle back again!

Wasn’t a hawk related to a falcon? Was Shakespeare comparing Juliet

to Ra? Once again, I was worried about the references to gods in Romeo

and Juliet. What had been the playwright’s intentions with falcons?

Later, after everyone was asleep, I carried my Riverside Shakespeare into

the tiny dining room and looked through Bottom’s speeches and songs. It

was not hard to find the one he had been singing, in Act III, scene 1,

just after his transformation into an ass.

The woosel cock so black of hue,With orange-tawny bill,The throstle with his note so true,The wren with little quill,The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,The plain-song cuckoo grey,Whose note full many a man doth markAnd dares not answer nay.

Birds. They could soar up into the sky while we earthbound humans

could not. They could approach the heavens, embrace the whole wide

horizon with one swoop, and hover magically in the air. No wonder

earlier humans had identified them with the gods. Birds saw everything

from above and traversed all regions of the earth: sky, water, and land.

The finch, the sparrow and the lark.

Was Bottom, associated with the sun, then some sort of god, too,

then? I badly wanted to ask the ghost more questions.

With this mystery puzzling me, I was forgetful and dreamy over the

next few days while Kazuo was visiting. I spent some time reading A

Midsummer Night’s Dream, trying to figure out what Shakespeare had been up

to. Yet my distracted state of mind suited me. I could listen to my

students, mostly bored housewives or young people planning to go abroad,

at the English language school more patiently. When Kazuo complained

about things in the house, I merely looked at him quizzically as if he

were speaking a language I no longer understood. One morning, I had just

noticed something interesting in the passage before Bottom’s song about

birds. It was a line spoken by Peter Quince, the carpenter who organizes

and directs the other rustic players, and while it didn’t mention god

directly, it seemed religious in a way. The line had firmly taken over

my imagination, so that when Kazuo grumbled about his socks not being

washed, I found myself responding, with a little laugh, “Bless thee, Kazuo,

bless thee! Thou art translated!” This line disarmed Kazuo, and, laughing, he left

me alone---- had Shakespeare infused the line with magical powers to

ward off even husbands?

On the day that Kazuo was to leave to go back to Kurumachi, I came

home from a morning of teaching English to four men at an electronics

company that was moving their operations to Malaysia. Kazuo was looking

tired and lying on a futon in the bedroom. The children were playing

with Zenji’s panda mice on the floor.

“My bus is in 15 minutes,“ he said, “I’m just having a rest after

lunch. We went over to the Chinese restaurant.”

“Well, then,” I said, “have a good trip.”

I realized that the plans I had for in-depth discussions about birds,

gods, and the sun that I had been intending to have with Kazuo had gone

unrealized. Except for the first night, when he had explained about Ra,

Garuda, and the Tengu, we had talked little about anything at all, with

our silences being more comfortable, however, than the fights we used to

have. Definitely Kazuo, who used to be such a fighter, had been a bit

“translated” by my dreamy focus on my new passion, my secret studies. Or

was it I who had been changed?

But sometimes, when I feel that the time is about to run out, I am

able to finally act. Now was such a time. The question relating to the

lonely figure formed itself spontaneously, like a wind blowing open a

door. I had never studied much about the sun, or the history of man’s

studies of the sun. I had heard of Copernicus, of course, and Galileo. I

only knew about them very vaguely.

There was no time, now, to hesitate or to add an explanatory story.

In my mind, I could see the lonely friar in his cloak in the darkness

beside a tree on the mountain beside Ensei-ji.

“Listen,” I said, “before you go, I was wondering if there were any

religious figures interested in studying the sun in Europe in the late

1500s.”

Luckily, Kazuo is used to my off-beat questions, and he likes to show

off his knowledge.

“Sure there were. But most of the people interested in the sun were

natural scientists”, he said, getting up, recovered, and putting his

wallet and keys into the pocket of his slacks.

“Like Copernicus and Galileo, right? No, not them “, I said, musing,

“I’m thinking of a priest or monk or a friar, someone who wore a hooded

robe, who was enrolled in a religious order, even.”

Kazuo glanced at his cell phone and zipped shut the case of his notebook

computer.

“Well, in that case, the most important one was definitely Giordano

Bruno. A Dominican Friar. Executed, around 1600, I believe, on the

orders of the Roman Inquisition.”

“Oh my god, no!” I blurted out, surprising even myself. Why did I feel

such a powerful sense of shock? I had never heard of Giordano Bruno

until this moment. Now the news of his execution had suddenly opened a

hole in the ground of my emotions and I had fallen down into the

darkness there, without knowing or understanding very much. But some

intuition told me to trust this sorrow………and that I would someday know

more.

Kazuo, lifting his jacket off a hook near the door, glanced at me

wonderingly.

“Yes,” he said, “of course, he was burned alive at the stake. It was

pretty common.”

I didn’t want to know more yet. If I were to hear, or read the

details of Bruno’s execution, I would cry for him and for my ghost, who

had called him both a friend and a character in one of his plays. Which

one? A tragedy? Where was Giordano Bruno hiding, obscured in the forest of the plays, the pages

and pages of my battered old Riverside….how would I ever find him? And, by finding him, could I

help him?

Kazuo was putting on his shoes.

I shook myself free of my gloomy thoughts about the dead. I needed to

say good-bye properly.

Life is also and always its own kind of necessary performance art.

The kids called out, “Ja ne!” and I slipped on my sandals and followed

Kazuo out the door, through the tiny garden, and to the little road that

runs along the river. When he turned up this road to the larger road

which had a bus stop along it, I stopped.

In Japan, people take a minimalistic approach to public displays of

affection, and, after 16 years here, I had become completely used to

this way of going about farewells. He turned and our eyes met and held,

for a fraction of an instant, poised in this space and time. Then, was

it a smile, or only a wry lift of the brows that I caught so fleetingly

on his face?

Away he walked, quickly as always.

A few minutes later, my cell phone buzzed. Kazuo and I usually

converse in English, but we always text each other in Japanese: it’s

much faster to type syllables than letters. Kazuo had one question: nan

de Buruno no koto kyomi ga aru? Why was I interested in Bruno?

I typed back, ato de oshiete ageru, demo, tabun Shaykusupeeah no koto ga kankei aru!

I’ll tell you later, but maybe there he has a connection to

Shakespeare!

Chapter 17O mickle is the powerful grace that liesIn plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities;For nought so vile that on the earth doth liveBut to the earth some special good doth give:Nor aught so good but, strain’d from that fair use,Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse,

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,And vice sometime by action dignified.(enter Romeo)Within the infant rind of this small flowerPoison hath residence and medicine power:For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.Two such opposed kings encamp them stillIn man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;And where the worser is predominant,Full soon the canker death eats up that plant. (II.3.15-30))

“It’s about these people, they all get tricked one by one by Zantaru,

a monster. Zantaru turns them into orange smoke, then they disappear, and

when they reappear they are on an island.” Kaoru had watched a sci-fi

movie at her friend, Ayaka’s, house, that day, and was telling us about

it over dinner.

“Where is this island?” I asked, cracking a raw egg into Zenji’s

rice bowl. Zenji loved raw eggs while Kaoru and I never ate them raw.

“It’s in the Pacific Ocean. That’s where Zantaru lives and rules

over a small town. Zantaru looks like a huge green melon, but he has a

digital display where people read his wishes and commands.”

“Oh, that sounds wonderful”, I said.

“Shima de nani yaru?”, asked Zenji. What do they do on the island?

“The people have to fight space aliens and pirates to earn a chance

to go back home to Osaka. The town has a lot of people who are time

travelers, mainly from the Edo Era. Some are nice but not all of them.

One of them has a pet sea monster that looks just like the inside of a

hard-boiled egg, Except for his whiskers.”

“That’s great” I said.

Impressed, Zenji paused to look at Kaoru. Anyone who fought space aliens,

or even just talked about fighting them, was deeply interesting.

“And I suppose all of these---space alien fighters, or people, are in

high school or college?” I asked. Japanese popular movies were often

targeting teenagers, a market with pocket money to spare.

“Well, Mama, yes, of course they all go to the same high school in

Osaka. It’s based on a manga, that’ s why. Mainly it focuses on this boy

named Junpei, he’s a sophomore and he’s into basketball, but his friends

all have to go to the island too with him. Including Yukari-chan, who is

sort of his girlfriend. She plays the piano like a professional. She can

only eat food if it has strawberries in it.”

Manga , comic books with a vast popularity in Japan, were part of

the culture of the young. I had read a few and they shared certain

qualities: episodic, and with a youthful hero or heroine who was

basically clueless, but determined and cheerful. The most compelling

characters often arrived from the world of the supernatural----to

confound, to enlighten, to assist, or simply to charm-----the clueless

hero or heroine of the manga.

In this case, the supernatural figure was Zantaru, the digital melon.

“I see.” What I saw was that Zantaru was someone I hoped never to

meet.

I looked at Kaoru, and wondered if I should now describe my encounter

with the spirits in the forest, or about explain about Shakespeare’s

ghost? Maybe I could tell her about my own time-traveling adventure? But,

then I thought, No.

People, so quick to accept the supernatural in a story or a movie or a

comic book, are much less willing to think the supernatural may be real

in life.

But how about nihon youkai , Japanese spirits, like Kappa, Tengu,

Rokurokubi, Noperabo, and others? They almost seemed to have another

status, not like Zantara, belonging only to a story. There was no single

author who could say that he or she had created the youkai.

Like myths, or fairytales, youkai had deep and obscure roots, and

generations of people had known them, and the youkai lived on, in a demi-

world, half-way between real and fictional. I had accessed that world,

with the help of the ghost, who seemed to want to conjure up strange

visions to explain his intentions. It isn’t exaggerating to say that I

had moved, partly, into this new world of visions and conjuring. My old

life seemed no longer all that I had imagined. It seemed as if, until

now, I hadn’t fully understood all the invisible dimensions that were

involved in the universe.

Zantaru’s bizarre island suddenly seemed less strange and impossible

after all.

The rainy season had started and the hotaru had one by one disappeared,

and now we had gushing rain sometimes and overcast skies and humidity at

other times.

That evening after the children had fallen asleep, I was still awake

doing some freelance editing work on a YouTube ad for perfume.. The sound

of the pouring rain outside felt refreshing and I had opened some windows

with relief to gather in the coolness of the water falling.

I went into the kitchen for another cup of tea and when I returned to

the dining room on my way back to my computer, the ghost was sitting at

the table. He was humming, and he had a scroll of paper in his hands. It

was tied with a green velvet ribbon, and at once I assumed it was

Elizabethan stuff, and therefore, pre-industrial velvet. I was curious to

touch it.

“May I have a look at the beautiful ribbon?” I asked, sitting down.

Outside the rain started to taper off.

“Please”, he said, untying it and handing it to me. It was soft and

the green color was pale. Dyes, based on plants, must have been much

weaker and more natural then, I realized. Having examined it, I started

to be curious about the paper he was holding. It also looked old, roughly

cut and thick and irregular in texture. He unrolled it on the table and I

saw an intricate hand drawing of a building. It seemed to be the sort of

old structure---a pub--- that was typical for England. There was a sign

“The George and Dragon”, on the front. The windows were panes, the roof

low, the walls supported by Tudor-style beams.

“What a beautiful old drawing,” I said. “Have you been there?”

“Yes”, he said. The ghost put his pale cold hand on the drawing and

pressed it firmly. Then he pulled his hand up slowly, and, magically, the

old pub came along too, raised into three dimensions. Yet, there was a

curious luminous transparency about the structure.

“It’s a hologram!”, I exclaimed happily. I felt the familiar feeling

of magic and fantasy commencing anew. How I loved this feeling!

“Oh, I have long dreamed of seeing a hologram performance!” I felt

quite euphoric.

Suddenly smaller holograms in the form of people were materializing in

the hologram, all dressed in the kinds of clothes that you would expect

to see in 16th century England. A courtyard to the side of the pub, framed

with trees, filled up with a few benches where the hologram people sat,

some holding large mugs of hologram ale. Some people sat at a table and

servants carried trays and dishes of roast fowls and bread.

Suddenly from behind the trees I saw 5 or 6 players, all men,

dressed more colorfully than the others. Some carried banners and one had

a flute, another a trumpet. They nimbly snaked through the crowd and made

their way to a small area that I saw now was a small raised platform.

They mounted the platform and an announcement was made, the banners were

waved, the trumpet sounded.

“Which play will they perform?” I asked.

“It’s called Mankynde. That’s the old spelling, with a “y” in the

middle and an “e” on the end.”

“Ah, yes, of course”, I said, trying to sound like I had heard of it,

when I hadn’t.

I was making an effort to place this drama into some sort of

historical context, but my education in the literature of this era,

probably about 1500 or so, had been limited to a single undergraduate

survey course. One name came to mind only. Someone called “Everyman”,

torn between Virtue and Vice. But “Mankynde” sounded like it might be

similar.

“It must be a morality play”, I said.

“We called them morality interludes also”, said the ghost.

The performance started. I could not understand all of the language

since it was quite archaic, and the English dialect the actors spoke was

unfamiliar to me. Still, the story was not hard to follow at all. A man,

named “Mankynde” was attempting to do some agricultural work in his

field. The hologram actor had a spade and mimed the action of digging.

Three actors emerged from behind the crowd and, making jokes and singing

songs, they noisily elbowed their way to the stage.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Their names are Myscheff, Nought, and Now-a-days, the Vices.”

The Vices started taunting Mankynde, trying to take his spade away and

hide it, distracting him from his work, and offering him sips out of a

flask of wine. They told jokes which were so broadly conveyed by obscene

body language, gestures and sounds, that the fact that I didn’t quite

catch the exact words was, unfortunately, no barrier to understanding

them. They drunkenly invited Mankynde, who was doing his best to ignore

them, to do a jig with them and, then, when Nought suddenly stuck out his

backside and pretended to break wind, Now-a-Days shouted epithets and

then cuffed him broadly on the head. They play-acted a noisy brawl, with

lots of loud insults and rude jokes, while Myscheff cheered them on. The

audience, following, cheered loudly too. Looking distraught, Mankynde

gave up on his labors, threw down his shovel and, dropping a bag of corn

in his haste, ran off the stage. The scene broke up with the actors

removing their hats and bowing low. Then the Vices went into the audience

holding their hats out.

“What are they doing now?” I asked.

“Collecting money, of course, or nuts, apples, trinkets, whatever they

can get”, said the ghost with a smile. “Players also need to eat, and

theater tickets and the box office hadn’t yet been invented. The actors

can collect much more if they take advantage of the audience’s mood right

now rather than waiting until the end.”

After five minutes or so, when the audience was quiet again, Myscheff

went back onto the stage alone and addressed the audience directly.

Myscheff looked to be bringing terrible news, something dreadful was on

its way; Myscheff was all worked up, and gone was his merry mood of the

last scene. I caught one alarming phrase that rang out slowly, “his ABO-

MIN-A-BULL PRESAUNCE!”. He bent over the audience, as if sharing in their

dread, and widening his eyes, seemed to confirm everyone’s worst fears.

There was not a sound, the audience was under his spell. But Myscheff

carefully broke the spell for a moment, doffed his hat and asked Nought,

waiting near the stage to pass it around for another collection of money.

The hat was handed around again; it seemed as if the audience was being

urged to pay up in order to see this “abominable” character. Then

Myscheff exited the stage, wide eyes and a finger on his lips, and the

trumpet sounded again.

The players cleverly waited a few minutes for the tension to mount

while the audience waited, impatiently, for what I assumed was the

climax. Then suddenly, a large man wearing goat’s horns on his head, and

with a tail made of a long piece of leather, leaped athletically onto the

stage. He had fancy tall black boots, a gold earring, a tailored jacket

of red, and a knee-length black cape that he swished around in a manic

way. His hair was wildly curly. He strode about on the stage, addressing

the audience directly and confidentially, with knowing winks and funny

leers. This time, I caught some of his speech:

…..for me keep nowur yowur silence!Not a word, I charge yow, pain of all pains!A pretty game shall be showed yow, or ye go hence!

“I suppose, dressed like that, he can only be the Devil?” I asked the ghost.

“Technically correct, although his name is more particular-----did

you catch it?---it’s Tytivillus. Now watch.”

Indeed, I watched spell-bound as Tytivillus theatrically picked up

the spade of Mankynde and also the bag of corn that Mankynde had

dropped, and, tiptoeing dramatically, hid them behind a wooden box on

the stage . Then Tytivillus exited, with a broad, knowing wink, and

pressing his index finger to his lips, implying that the audience was to

participate in the conspiracy to deprive poor Mankynde of his

belongings.

Naturally, immediately after this set-up, Mankynde returned to an

empty stage.

Alone on the stage, Mankynde looked all the more worried and lost.

Where was his spade? Where was his corn, the fruits of all his work? He

made a comically pathetic attempt to look for them. A few members of the

audience called out taunts, to laughter. I saw that Myscheff, Nought and

Now-a-Days were now mingling with the audience and encouraging people to

ridicule Mankynde. The Vices slowly worked their way up to the raised

platform and jumped on with glee and merriment. In Mankynde’s dejected

condition, there was a totally new dynamic at work, and he was now

unable to resist the temptations of the Vices. Myscheff, Nought, and

Now-a-Days offered him a swig from their bottle and he accepted. He

danced a jig with them and tentatively laughed at their lewd jokes and

obscene gestures.

I must have looked dismayed at these increasingly stupid and immoral

antics, because the ghost smiled. “Wait”, he said, “all is not lost.”

Indeed, a new character had entered, and once again, in only a

moment, the dynamic changed entirely. This player wore a long white robe

and moved with a slow dignity. He had long loose curly brown tresses,

wore an ostentatious wooden cross as a necklace, and held his hands

together in prayer while staring piously up at the sky.

“Who is he?” I asked, “A priest?”

“No”, said the ghost, “he is Mercy, the Virtue.”

Nought and Now-a-Days shrank away from this authoritative figure

named Mercy, and cowered at the edge of the stage, but Myscheff used his

supple body language to convey a bravado that was not wholehearted. It

was clear that Mercy was used to wielding great power. With a

contemptuous toss of his long curls, Mercy accosted Myscheff and quizzed

him directly, “Why come ye hither brother? Ye were not desired.”

Myscheff then gave a surprising speech I had trouble understanding,

with lots of references to corn, chaff, threshing, bread, horses, and

baking.

Mercy cut in before Myscheff could finish, “A-voyde, good brother! Ye

ben culpable o interrupte thus my talking delectable!”

Myscheff responded insolently, “Sir, I have neither horse nor saddle,

therefore I may not ride.”

But Mercy was not for a moment put off by this excuse, saying, “Hie

you forth on foot, brother, in God’s name!” He pointed majestically off

stage with a motion that properly showed off the sleeve of the white

robe.

Myscheff now sprang forward athletically and shouted a cheerful

challenge: “I say, sir, I am come hither to make yow game!”

The audience was silent, now, spellbound by the two verbally sparring

while the moral fate of hapless Mankynde, who stood in the middle,

remained at risk. But Mercy would not give up. No matter how many times

Mycheff twisted his words or tried to ridicule him, Mercy calmly faced

him down, then, finally, Mercy ordered him to bring back the bag of corn

and the spade. Little by little, Myscheff lost his wit and his power. He

sputtered, fell silent, and then, deflated, went slinking off the stage

grumbling and muttering. Exuding fear and repentance, Nought and Now-a-

Days brought back the spade and the bag of corn, and handed them over to

Mercy before fleeing off stage after Myscheff. Finally Mercy made a

final solemn and pious victory speech and put the corn and spade

ceremoniously into the hands of Mankynde, who knelt down, kissed the hem

of Mercy’s robe, and promised devoutly to always follow the virtuous

path in the future. The audience cheered.

Before the audience’s attention could be lost, however, three

festively dressed musicians, including the player who had the flute,

gathered on stage and started playing quite a fast tune. All the

remaining players, now no longer wearing horns or a tail, or the white

robe and cross, gathered on the stage and danced smoothly and

gracefully, true professionals. Once again the hat was passed around and

the audience tossed in coins, or in some cases, apples.

Then the hologram scene suddenly disappeared, like the beam of a

flashlight going out, and before I had time to applaud, the ghost was

gone, the drawing was gone, and I was left alone, holding a piece of a

velvet ribbon of an unusual light green color. It was the first tangible

gift I had received from the ghost, and I knew I would wear it in my

hair.

Chapter 18

Polonius: Good madam, stay awaile. I will be faithful. {reads theletter}“Doubt thou the stars are fire,Doubt that the sun doth move,Doubt truth to be a liar,But never doubt I love

Ever since Kazuo had told me about Giordano Bruno, I had started

researching about Bruno’s scientific ideas on heliocentrism. I had

felt that, with the line “Juliet is the sun” indicating the

importance of the sun for mankind, I had a new, more scientific,

perspective on William Shakespeare, the playwright who had written

that famous line and wanted to talk about our human material need for

the sun. However, I was determined to keep anything of substance

that I found on the whole Bruno-Shakespeare connection totally

hidden. Primarily, this was due to the fact that I was being, step

by step, enlightened by a ghost. There is no way that one can

convincingly write, in the footnotes of an otherwise groundbreaking

scholarly article, “the ghost said this on such-and-such a date”, or

“information related in a private conversation with Shakespeare’s

ghost.”.

The Internet had naturally been the first place I had looked for

information on Bruno, and what I had found there was straightforward

and clear. He had been born in the village of Nola, near Naples,

Italy, in 1548. He had entered the Dominican monastery in Naples in

1565, but, after becoming an ordained priest, he had fled to Geneva

in 1576 after hearing that an indictment was being prepared against

him for reading books on philosophy which the senior Dominican

priests disapproved of. Thereafter, he seems to have led a life of

hardship, wandering and scholarship: he had received his doctorate

in Toulouse before going to Paris in 1581, followed by a sojourn in

England, including London and Oxford, in 1583. In 1586, he traveled

to Wittenberg and lectured at the university there, followed by

Prague and Frankfurt, and then on receiving an invitation from a

Venetian nobleman named Mocenigo, Bruno had returned to Italy. It

was implied, but not proven, that Mocenigo had laid a trap for

Bruno: the Roman Inquisition wanted to try him for his heretical

ideas in the many books he had written and published. Bruno’s trial

lasted eight years; he was transferred from Venice to a prison in

Rome and then on February 17, 1600, he was led to a public square,

the Campo del Fiore, in Rome, and burned at the stake, after having

a nail driven through his tongue, the penalty for heresy.

Bruno’s scientific ideas were interesting and so stunning and

advanced for his day, that I wondered why my high school teachers

had never discussed him. I wrote a short list of the ideas of

Bruno’s that I found most interesting. My list looked like this:

1. Bruno was the first to claim that there was no heavenly

“quintessence”, a separate totally different kind of matter,

radically separate in qualities from matter on earth.

2. Bruno claimed that the sun was a star.

3. Bruno said that the sun was in the center of our solar system

and that life on earth relied on the heat and light of

the sun.

4. He claimed that the universe was infinite and that there were

no heavenly spheres, or separate regions, which were a sort of lid

or wall, behind which the Christian God and the angels were

supposed to sit.

5. He saw the universe as one infinite whole, the earth as a

tiny part of it, not at the center.

In Bruno’s ideas, I saw the whole strategy of Shakespeare:

Romeo and Juliet was understandable as a thematic whole---- mankind

getting basic energetic support from the sun for life, with a

small detour ‘away from the sun’ to use fossil fuels for a certain

finite amount of time-----once you looked beyond the isolated

parts and examined the play as a whole.

My problem was how to connect the plays of Shakespeare with the

ideas of Giordano Bruno in a more detailed way. There were little

hints, such as the line Romeo says to himself when he secretly

goes back to the Capulet’s house:

Romeo: Can I go forward when my heart is here? Turn back, dull earth, and find thy center out.

Shakespeare was talking about the new science of the solar

system, but so sparingly, so lightly, that it was difficult to

penetrate through to this science, which was just in its infancy

in Europe at the time. Combing through the play, I found another

example of Juliet, as a baby, whose actions can also be read, in

code, as the movement of the sun:

“Yea,” quoth he, “dost thou fall upon thy face?Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit,Wilt thou not, Jule?”

Even these words, reported by Juliet’s nurse’s in Act 1, seem to

have been able to convey an aspect of the sun: it has a “face” and

it “falls backward” as the afternoon progresses.

A few days later, I happened to be in the shotengai of Tsubame.

The shotengai is a long old-style “marketplace”, a double row of

shops, with a long walkway between them, and a roof of cloudy

glass overhead. Each shop is slightly different, owned

individually, and has a residence on the second floor, where the

shop keeper may reside. The shotengai in Tsubame is over fifty years

old, and it winds along and takes 30 minutes to walk in its

entirety, through the middle of the town. About one-fifth of the

shops are vacant now, since the heyday of the shotengai has long

passed, but many still struggle on, and some are even doing quite

well. The shotengai was built before the era of the automobile, so

there was no parking originally, although a few small lots are now

to be found scattered here and there behind buildings. This lack

of organized automobile parking gives it quite a different feeling

from an ordinary mall, and now that many young people here in

Japan cannot afford cars, its haphazard design and central

location seems almost prescient. Bicycles are everywhere, of

course, and have been from its start. That is why it suits me so

well. I have a black Miyata 3-speed that I am very fond of, but no

car at all.

I was walking my Miyata, on my way home. Owing to the naturally

hilly topography of Tsubame, the wide path down the middle of the

shotengai is a sakamichi, a slope. If I have a heavy basket of

groceries, it is easier to walk up this slope than it is to ride.

I was near the eyeglass shop “Shiraishi”, which also sells

clocks and watches, and has pink interior walls and big glass

windows, hefty doses of polished glass wherever you happen to

look. Up ahead, I saw an old Buddhist monk, bald, with a straw hat

and a black silk prayer robe, and white hakama pants, walking

rather slowly down the middle of the shotengai, coming towards me.

He was ringing a little bell and carrying a dish for alms. From

the women’s clothes shop, “Sonoya”,that sells casual, slightly

expensive cotton outfits, emerged a thin middle-aged woman in a

stylish green cardigan and plaid skirt. She bowed, dropped some

coins in the monk’s dish and paused; he also bowed and said a

prayer in her direction, over some beads he carried in his palm.

I also wanted to donate money to the temple through this monk. I

had hopes that the prayer he would bestow on me would bring me

good fortune. I needed some help with my life in every way:

financially, I was poor; in love, Kazuo and I had all but formally

separated; in my literary quest to link Bruno and Shakespeare, I

was puzzled and stymied, an obscure and impoverished independent

scholar with no credentials.

I calculated that I did have time to put my bicycle to one side,

take out my money, and make a beeline for the monk as he would

pass me. But then a sudden shyness made me wait. Doing that would

make me look as though I were in desperate need of a prayer. The

woman in the stylish green cardigan had strolled out of her shop

casually to seek her prayer; my own dash from parked bicycle to

passing monk would make me look like a person nearing the end of

all her resources, and, why advertise the sad fact? What if I were

seen by someone I know dashing across the path for a prayer? How

would such behavior look?

But what was this? Here swerved the monk towards me. Into view came

the smaller details of his straw hat, a black band around his chin

that was a strap to keep the hat on his bald head. His black silk

robe, sewed with geometrical designs to reflect the varying shapes

in the universe, was a bit translucent, showing a white robe

underneath. I noticed his clean-shaven chin, his Adam’s apple, and

on his feet, I noted his straw sandals, purely made of straw and

nothing else, bound up to his ankles. For thousands of years, this

fashion had been unchanging, and now here, today, I could see it

so close! I felt a thrill, a sense of gratitude, and then

something unexpected happened. The monk was holding a piece of

ordinary white paper, that was folded up. And he reached out his

hand and put the paper in my hand. I was so surprised that I did

not have time to react, to try to return it (which would have not

been polite), or even to thank him (which would have been polite).

I stood there, amazed, as he bowed and said a prayer in my

direction and then turned and walked away. Hastily opening my bag,

I got out my purse, thrust the paper down into the bag, kicked

down the kickstand of the bicycle, and ran to the monk’s

retreating form while opening the purse. No longer did I care what

anyone around me thought, or what impression I was giving. I took

out two or three coins and threw them into the bowl of the monk,

who bowed again and said a short prayer one more time. Then he

walked away.

Musing, I returned to my bicycle. I took out the paper,

unfolded it, and read it. There was a name and a cell phone

number, both written with an ink brush, shuji style: 山山 山山 山山 山 山 山山山０００

山山山一

I translated the Japanese into romaji:

Yamaguchi Michiko sensei ０５０－０４２３－１５６ 4

A sensei?

What sort of teacher was she? And what would I say if I called

her? “Hello, I was given your phone number by a Buddhist monk whom

I had never met before.” Then what should I say after that?“

……Nice weather we’re having?

I looked at the number again. Something looked familiar about

it. Suddenly I realized!

The last eight numbers of the phone number were William

Shakespeare’s birthday!

April 23, 1564.

Chapter 19

Thunder and lightening. Enter three WITCHES

1. Witch: When shall we three meet again?In thunder, lightening, or in rain?2. Witch: When the hurly-burly’s done,When the battle’s lost and won.3. Witch: That will be ere the set of sun.

…………………………………………………..

1. Witch: Speak.

2. Witch: Demand.3. Witch: We’ll answer.

Should I dial the number?

Some people turn to Tarot cards, they visit a fortune teller, or

else they roll dice when they want to get a clue to the best

course of a future action. For me, my favorite way of divination

was to open to a random page of one of my books. I liked using

Tsurezuregusa, called in English, Essays in Idleness, by a Buddhist monk

named Yoshida Kenko in the 14th century, but I did not have it on

hand. Tsurezuregusa I borrowed from the library often, but I did not

own it. I could have turned to my Riverside. Yet, since the issue at

hand was about Shakespeare, I felt that it was not an unbiased player.

My problem of the moment was not just whether or not to call,

but also what to say to Professor Yamaguchi when I would call her.

I had found out on the internet that she was a Professor of

Renaissance Philosophy at Tsubame University.

I wanted a book to give me an idea of what to say as well as

whether to actually go ahead.

I looked around my room for a book to use for divination. Wuthering

Heights? The DaVinci Code?

No….

A large coffee-table book about Kabuki theater caught my eye. I

had been reading it and enjoying the amazing plot summaries. Surely

my own story was just as strange. My problem seemed, to me, kabuki-

esque: theatrical in that I needed a good story to tell this

professor. Also I would have to become a bit of an actor to tell it

convincingly.

I clutched the large book and opened it dramatically, like a

wizard casting a spell. My eye fell on a photograph from the play

Sagi Musume, where an onnagata, an actor who plays woman’s roles, is

dressed in a white kimono. Her hair is long and disheveled and she

plays alone on the stage. I read the photo caption:

The scene shows a heron, in the shape of a young maiden turning into a spirit and returning to the sky. The hair falls loose, showing that the actor plays a supernatural role.

The caption seemed to be not entirely auspicious for me. It was

basically a variation on a “mad scene” (such scenes are central to

Kabuki and lots of Kabuki plays contain them). The heroine, who is

really a heron, hovers between this world and the spirit world,

discoursing at length with both. Her performance will end with her

theatrical collapse on stage, a pose, no doubt, but hardly

promising.

Oh dear.

Never mind!

I was also discoursing with the spirit world. One ghost and now

a strange monk.

Luckily, unlike poor Sagi Musume, no one knew about my ghostly

adventures.

So I had that going for me!

I was conducting it all in utter secrecy. And the message I was

no doubt getting was: keep it up! All is going well!

The message coming to me through the book was: go for it!

My interview with Professor Yamaguchi was to be conducted in a

playful, free, and sportive spirit, like a dance on a stage. After

all, Professor Yamaguchi, or any of us, is sure to be a performer

or actor of a kind, are we not?

Not just me, then, you see.

I decided that my efforts to get to the bottom of the

Shakespeare-Bruno question, like my own love for literature or my

feelings of love for my husband, would have to be uncertain,

incomplete, defined by absences as much by presences, by

misunderstandings as much by understandings: piecemeal from the

start. I would conduct it all in the spirit of Sagi Musume, like a

dance, or a performance, tentatively feeling my way forward on my

own makeshift stage.

The events surrounding Bruno had taken place over 400 years

before. My resources, the money I could spend on books or

acquiring materials and the time I could invest, were laughable,

risible, miniscule.

Therefore, in a paradox that I couldn’t explain, with low

expectations and few resources, I felt all the more grateful for

the chance to start. My endeavor was, from the start, a dream, an

illusion, theatricality, my own strange Kabuki play; perhaps I had

imagined all my conversations with the ghost. My career, or rather

I could say, my lowly jobs, didn’t depend on this idea, nor did my

reputation. I was free: no funding also meant no strings, no

deadlines, no politics, and no party lines.

. My quest to find a link between the plays of William

Shakespeare and the ideas of Giordano Bruno was one that I felt

earnestly needed attention in this world. Even though I was no

scholar or professor, I would have to do my best to find out why

the ghost had led me up the mountain near Enseiji Temple and let

me see the lonely and sad spirit of Giordano Bruno.

I reached for the phone and dialed William Shakespeare’s

birthday.

Chapter 20

Benedick: That I neither feel how she should be lov’d, nor know how she should be worthy, is the opinion that fire cannot melt out of me; I will die in it at the stake.Don Pedro: Thou wast ever an obstinate heretic in the despite of beauty.

Japanese universities, almost all built in a rush and cheaply

between 1955 and 1975, by and large look the same: the buildings are

long cement shoe boxes placed long end down, usually three stories

high. Because of the similarities in the appearances of the

buildings, it can be hard to find the one you are looking for. They

are numbered A-2, A-3, and so on. Sometimes, for some logical reason

of the designers, the B series might be half a kilometer a way,

while the C-series could be just to the left of the As.

Professor Yamaguchi had explained that her building, D-3, was

perpendicular to the library, which was beside the cafeteria,

which was beside A-1. I easily found the cafeteria; it had an

outdoor eating area, with aluminum tables scattered randomly

around a small cement plaza. Scouting around diagonally to this

plaza, I could find the library, which was small, and then around

the back, I saw the letter D and the number 3 on a stumpy cement

building rising among a few huge pine trees. Walking around the

perimeter of this building brought me to a non-descript metal

door, propped open with a chair so the breeze could blow through.

I found the stairs and soon I was knocking on the door of office

#205.

“Hai, douzo!” came a woman’s voice from inside.

“Konnichiwa,” I said, opening the door. “Yamaguchi-sensei desu ka?”

“Hai, sou desu. Matsumura-san desuka? Hajimemashite.”

“Hajimemashite,” I said, starting to feel nervous. All the walls of

her office had bookshelves filled with books.

Professor Yamaguchi rose to welcome me, and then offered me a

chair opposite her desk. She was 10 years older than me, in her

mid-fifties, slim, with short black-and-gray hair. She wore a

simple white cotton blouse and an orange and blue batik skirt that

looked like it was from Indonesia.

I had told Professor Yamaguchi on the phone that I had plans to

do some research on the William Shakespeare-Giordano Bruno

connection. I had vaguely mentioned an idea I had to apply to

graduate school. I had explained that my plan was to write a

research article on the topic and try to get it published, and

then use it as the springboard for my graduate application. “I’m

more of a specialist on Renaissance thought than literature, so I

don’t know how much I can help you,” she had said, “but I have

some time available on Tuesday morning. And I’m a great fan of

Shakespeare’s plays.”

“I know,” I had said, thinking of the cell phone number.

Now, as I sat down, I asked her about the number.

“It’s strange”, she said, “I did not choose that number. I

noticed it later after I had had the cell phone for a week or so.

I thought it was funny.”

“Yes”, I said, “someone gave me your number and I guess he

thought you could help me.”

“Someone I know?” she asked.

“Well, I don’t know his name. It’s complicated, really. He is

actually a monk. I think he might have just picked up on the idea

I have, and thought of your name…..” I left the story vague and

incomplete.

Professor Yamaguchi looked at me wonderingly, but I couldn’t give

her anymore information. The silence grew, and I hurried to change

the topic, to the relief of both of us.

“You have been to Italy?” I asked. The Tsubame University

website posted the c.vs of faculty members, and I had seen that

Professor Yamaguchi had earned a Ph.D. at the University of Rome.

“Roma. I spent eight years there”, she said, smiling, “and it was

a wonderful place to study Renaissance Philosophy. I became very

interested in Giordano Bruno, and I sometimes visited the Campo di Fiori

where Bruno was burned at the stake on February 17, 1600. Every year

on that day, people bring flowers and other tributes there and put

them next to a statue of him that was erected in the late 1800s.”

“I’m interested in researching any connections between Bruno and

Shakespeare”, I said. I had already told her this, but every

conversation needs a jumping-off point.

“Ah, yes, a very thorny topic. In Rome, I knew a professor of

philosophy named Hilary Gatti, who was actually from England, and

who wrote an article on the similarities that she saw between

Bruno’s ideas in his book The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, and Hamlet.

She published it in 1989, while I was there. But since then, almost

three decades ago, no scholar has addressed the topic at all. It is

a blind alley, with no way in and no way out. Shakespeare didn’t

make any overt references to Bruno, or leave any letters in which he

mentioned Bruno, and that is probably the main problem.

I had seen vague references to the Gatti book online. Long out of

print, it was almost impossible to buy used, and, of course, not

within my tight budget.

“Do you have the Gatti book?”, I asked hopefully, “The, umm…Drama

of Something.”

Professor Yamaguchi smiled. “The Renaissance Drama of Knowledge. Yes,

I have it, I am very happy to say.” She got up from her chair and

pulled out a book from the top shelf of the bookcase to her left.

Opening it, she glanced through the pages.

“The biggest point, according to Gatti, is that both writers see

a reform of language taking place eventually. Let me see, umm,

here…..’Hamlet’s chosen form of revenge can thus be seen in

Brunian terms as a questioning of false words, a pitting of truer

words against the able but treacherous words of his Uncle, the

pedantic linguistic formulas of Polonius, the transparent falsity

of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the parroting of Osric; for the

distortions of their world were seen by Both Bruno and Shakespeare

as intimately related to distortions in the field of

language.’….that’s from page one-hundred and thirty.”

“The field of language?”, I said, trying to sound less ignorant

than I felt. But then I remembered Shakespeare’s words that had

already changed in meaning for me.

Juliet is the sun.

The line was not just a metaphor for Juliet’s beauty. It was a

new cosmic identity for the character and a new relationship with

Romeo spelled out.

Gatti had been right!

I didn’t know all the details yet, of course.

“I sort of see it.”, I said, feeling my way through, “Actually

I’m interested in the sun, in Bruno’s heliocentrism. I’m wondering

if his new view of the solar system, new in his day, that is,

might be connected-----in some way----to the famous line Juliet is the

sun from Romeo and Juliet”, I said.

I decided to explain about the allegory about the History of Man

and the Sun. It seemed like I simply could not avoid telling her

what I had learned. I told her about how the scenes between the

lovers made a new secret cosmic play.

Professor Yamaguchi looked startled after my explanation, and

then she smiled. “That’s a fascinating idea, and a radical one---

it’s original and I’ve never heard it before, and you may be onto

something with it. But, anyway, Gatti’s article only covers Hamlet.”

I must have looked disappointed. But Professor Yamaguchi

continued.

“In a nutshell, Gatti finds many similarities. Many little ones,

that is, but no big ones, no over-arching ones, like what you may

be implying with that famous line and Bruno’s heliocentrism. She

even admits that she doesn’t. Of course, she is not a scholar of

Shakespeare, but an expert on Giordano Bruno.”

Professor Yamaguchi looked thoughtful for a moment, then sat

back in her chair and brought Gatit’s book up, near her chest, all

the while turning the pages fast. She was getting comfortable, and

I wondered if I was in for an impromptu lecture! Suddenly, she

found the page she had been looking for, and she continued,

“As far as I’m concerned, her biggest and most compelling find

is the description Hamlet gives Polonius of the book he is

reading. As Gatti notes, it is a distinct echo of a key passage in

Lo Spaacio.”

“Lo Spaccio?” I said.

“I’m sorry, I was using the Italian title of The Expulsion of the

Triumphant Beast, which is Lo spaccio della bestia trionfante.”

That title, The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, I remembered seeing it

online. It was unforgettable. And strange!

“That title seems totally absurd. The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast.

I have never heard anything so weird, “I said,. “It sounds like

it’s about an elephant on the loose.”

Professor Yamaguchi laughed. “Well”, she said, “listen closely.

Because the passage I’m going to read you from Lo Spaccio is one of

the key ones to understanding its meaning. And at the same time,

and this is no coincidence, I am sure, that it is the very one that

Hamlet seems to be quoting in a brief way. First, I will read the

quote from Hamlet. Do you remember when Polonius asks Hamlet what he

is reading in Act II?”

“Ummm, “I said, “vaguely.”.

“Hamlet says ‘words, words, words’. And Gatti makes a reasonable case

that this line echoes another Bruno work, Il Candelaio, which has a

pedant named Manfurio who uses words, well, pedantically. As

Polonius does too. Manfurio says, ‘literae, syllabae, diction et oratio, partes

propinquae et remotae’ when a character named Ottaviano asks him ‘what

is the matter of your verses?’ Professor Yamaguchi was consulting

the Gatti book a little, but it seemed as though she had memorized

most of this.

“And Gatti sees the Manfurio pedant as a forerunner to the

pedant in Lo Spaccio named Polinnio, whom she claims is the namesake

of Polonius. Polonius uses the same phrase, ‘what is the matter?’,

when he asks Hamlet what the book Hamlet is reading is about.”

“Wow”, was all I could say.

“Bruno hated pedants. And we know Polonius is killed off, after

being shown to be an idiot, in Hamlet. Anyway, here, now, is the

part of Lo Spaccio, I mean The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, that Gatti

believes is paraphrased by Shakespeare in Hamlet. Ready?”

“Okay, “ I said.

“Well, first I had better explain what is going on here in Lo

Spaccio,” said Professor Yamaguchi, pausing and putting the book

down, “Jupiter, the main character, is the king of the gods, but he

is getting old, with a bunch of typical health symptoms of aging.

Scholars of Bruno debate what this decrepitude means”

“What does it mean?”

“Some see it as a sign of Giordano Bruno pointing to the moral

and physical decrepitude of the society then. But Gatti thinks it was

more universal, and based on Bruno’s ideas about flux and

transitions, also taken up in Hamlet, when Hamlet picks up Yorick’s

skull and reminisces about Yorick being alive, the king’s jester, who

had been able to make anyone laugh, so full of life. I agree with

Gatti.”

Alas poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest…..

“Think about it”, Professor Yamaguchi went on, “the king of the

gods, Jupiter himself, has reached the point where he is nearing

death. To say that something like a god could die, was to imply that

anything, any religion or any belief, any idea, was also vulnerable

to impermanence and to what Gatti calles “vicissitude”, changes in

circumstances. Scientists take the idea of change for granted, now;

we have come, in fact, to expect constant change. However, in the

Renaissance, the Catholic Church wanted to claim an exclusive island

of permanence and immutability for itself. That was heaven, the

place of the quintessence, beyond the last “sphere” in the sky. God

and his angels reigned there, without change, without death,

forever. There was no death possible there. Bruno said the idea was

ridiculous for many reasons.”

I was glad that her explanation of Bruno’s position on the

spheres matched my own research. I jumped in, “Bruno said the

universe was infinite, that there were no spheres, which is to say,

there was no limit in the sky beyond which everything changed

elementally. And everyone, following Aristotle, used the term

‘quintessence’ for the matter beyond the spheres. Bruno said that

was all wrong.”

“The church was bothered by Bruno’s cosmic ideas, too. But what

they hated even more was the way he used those ideas

systematically to form his own conclusions, conclusions which

contradicted their teachings, and therefore their power,”

Professor Yamaguchi added.

“I see”, I said, “but actually, and I know it’s obvious,

Jupiter was not the god of the Catholic Church. He was in the

Roman Pantheon, and that story was already well over. Why would

the Church care about the decrepitude of Jupiter?”

“Well, exactly! Doesn’t that, in a way, only prove Bruno’s point

about impermanence even more clearly? Bruno ingeniously used the

material he had available to say what he wanted to say. And in the

end, after his death sentence was handed down, Lo Spaccio was the

only book mentioned by name at the summation of his trial. It

expresses his heretical ideas more forcefully than any other of

his works, although all of them were put on the Index librorum

prohibitorum.”

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space---

were it not that I have bad dreams

“The Index of what?”

“The Index librorum prohibitorum was the Catholic Church’s list of

banned books….but I digress, Viola. Let me, instead, read the

passages for you, side by side.“ Professor Yamaguchi picked up the

book and looked down to find the passage.

“Now, first, here is Jupiter in Lo Spaccio…..

’Look, my body is wrinkling and my brain is getting damper; I’ve started to get arthritis and my teeth are going: my flesh gets darker and my hair is going grey; myeyelids are going slack and my sight gets fainter; my breath comes less easily and my cough gets stronger; my hams grow weaker and I walk less securely.”

“Pretty depressing!” I said.

“And here is Hamlet telling Polonius about ‘the matter’ of his

book….

’For the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plumtree gum, and that they have a plentifullack of wit, together with most weak hams’.”

Professor Yamaguchi looked up from her desk. “There you have

it”, she said, “the most fabulous, striking, and startling

similarity, and as far as I know, only one recent scholar has

discussed it, even just a little. No one really knows what to do

with it, or what Shakespeare intended, I suppose. Maybe your

research will make the connections clearer!”

“Thank you, I certainly hope so” I said.

“Well, was this any help for your essay?” she asked, adding,

“I’m sorry, but there is a faculty meeting in 15 minutes, so this

will have to be enough for now. If you want to chat again, just

give me a call.”

“Thanks”, I said, smiling, “it was a huge help. Hilary Gatti is

an amazing scholar and you’re very lucky to have a copy of her

wonderful book!”

Chapter 21

But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading

I rushed home to check the passage from Hamlet again. But,

hanging up my keys and putting my bag away, I noticed that Kaoru

and Zenji were hungry. They were tired, and fighting over issues

of comic books in the dining room. The weather was already quite

hot, with the start of summer vacation just a little more than a

week away. The rainy season was over. Instead of the usual rice,

served hot, I suggested cold noodles. Yes, they agreed with

alacrity.

Now, again, I rushed, this time to fill a pot with water, put it

on the burner to boil, and slice up some cucumbers for a yogurt

salad. I had a little time now! Dashing into the next room, I picked up my

Riverside Shakespeare, flipped it open to Act II of Hamlet and searched

through for the scene that echoes Lo Spaccio. Yes, here was Gertrude

saying, “But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading”.

A great comic line.

I had to smile, I skimmed farther down, getting into it, and

then:

“Mama!”, shouted Kaoru, “The water’s boiling!”

“Coming!” I shouted.

Lifting up the huge tome, I lugged it through the dining room,

still open to Act II, then into the kitchen. I put it down, still

open, on the tiny washing machine in the corner of the kitchen. I

put a clean spoon on the page to mark it.

But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading

Kaoru was right. The water was boiling. Soon I had put the

noodles in.

“Do you really need meat tonight?” I went to the doorway.

“What do we have?”

“Bacon. Pork chops.”

“Pork chops!” said Kaoru.

“Bacon!”, said Zenji.

“OK!” I said, not even feigning enthusiasm. Actually, I hardly

ever eat meat; I like animals to be alive, not on a plate. There

is also something that seems curiously indigestible, heavy and

stringy about meat. Also, it is said in Japan that meat-eaters

have a different smell, exuding from their skin, from those who

stick to fish and vegetables. But my children love meat. I opened

the freezer and took out the packages. The pork chops I could

grill in the little drawer for grilling. The bacon I would have to

fry. I sighed, but, like the tree falling unobserved in the

forest, no one was there to record my reluctance.

Soon the bacon was in a frying pan, and the pork chops were in

the grill. But it is an interesting fact that a frying pan takes

time to heat. I turned my attention back to Hamlet, conveniently on

top of the nearby washing machine. Reading the passage, I could

note Hamlet’s words to Polonius in better detail.

Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plumtree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams; all which, sir, though I most powerfullyand potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.

Slanders? To me that word was a coded reference to the heretical

nature of Lo Spaccio.

“Mama!” Kaoru lamented close by, “the noodles are getting

overcooked!”

She had come into the kitchen to get a glass of milk. I rushed

to the pot and turned off the gas, drained the noodles, and ran

cold water over them.

“They’re fine,” I said, hoping it was true.

(But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.)

“Kaoru, Zenji! Come and get your own noodles!”

I doled out the cold noodles in bowls and gave them a bottle of

tsuyu, a soy-sauce-based fish broth, to pour on the noodles.

“And here are some tomatoes!” I said, putting a plate on the

table.

Back in the kitchen, I turned over the pork chops, and then put

the bacon on a plate and put it on the table. Fighting commenced

over it. Kaoru, bigger and stronger, gathered multiple pieces in

her chopsticks at once. She shot Zenji a victorious smirk. Zenji

shouted, “no fair!”. Fists were drawn, legs lashed out to kick.

“Stop!” I said, using a voice other than my own. Usually for

chiding children, and purely for my own amusement, I select the

voice of a drag queen, or I try to come as close as possible to

that effect, a diva over-acting. My children both usually ignore

me and do what they want anyway.

“No! Stopp! Stopp!” I wailed, enjoying the theatrical experience of

it all, and wishing I had a feather boa, pink or emerald green, to

toss around my shoulders. I also enjoy, for scolding, a strong

basic New York accent, Brooklyn or Queens. I had found that

whether I used my real voice for scolding or the voice of a New

York drag queen, it made no difference in the length the fighting

would last. Therefore I chose the more interesting accent. Luckily

I had grown up one hour away from New York City and I could still

do a passable imitation of the basic dialect, delightful in its

own way. It was one of the things, like burritos, that I missed

about the States.

“Mama, what about the pork chops? They smell ready!”

“Hai, hai!, mo sugu de goziamasu!”

They probably were ready….but…..

But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading

“I’ll bring them in a second!” I called, and turned my attention

back to Hamlet. Besides “Slanders, sir”, there was another

interesting segment of dialogue:

all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe

Shakespeare was avowing his faith and confidence in Bruno!

yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down

Did this mean that Shakespeare thought that Bruno had taken too

huge a risk in his way of going about expressing his ideas?

for yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.

Here I knew not what to think. The drag queen from New York was

finally stumped.

The children were still eating. I left my book, found a leftover

bowl of rice in the refrigerator, and served the pork chops. Then

I poured myself a glass of plum wine, and went to join them.

I left Hamlet on the washing machine.

Chapter 22

I with Morning’s love have oft made sport,And like a forester, the groves may treadEven till the Eastern gate, all fiery red,Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.

July 7 is Tanabata, a Japanese festival that celebrates the day,

once a year, when two star-gods from Chinese mythology, married

lovers, can meet. Orihime was a princess who was a skilled weaver

(ori means weaving); she married Hikoboshi, the cow herder and

their passion was so complete that they neglected their duties to

weave and herd cows. Orihime’s father, Tentei, became angry and

separated them on opposite sides of the Milky Way, but when

Orihime became despondent and begged Tentei to let her meet

Hikoboshi again, he relented and let them come together once a

year, every summer. Orihime is the star known in the West as Vega

and Hikoboshi is the star called Altair. Do these two stars

actually pass close to each other in the night sky then? It may be

true.

Decorations on Tanabata are bamboo branches with colored strips

of paper. You write a wish on a piece of paper, your yearning

echoing the yearning the lovers felt for each other, and hang it

on a branch, hoping for your wish to come true.

The night of Tanabata, I had a strange dream. I found myself

alone in the clearing on the mountain above Ensei-ji. There was a

full moon, and I was dressed in a dark blue indigo-dyed yukata, a

long cotton kimono, open, with no obi, sash. Startled to find myself

thus exposed, I pulled the yukata closed around my body. Shivering

a bit, I was looking for the path to descend the mountain when I

noticed my feet were bare. The ground was cold and hard with

stones and twigs, so I sat down on a large flat stone nearby, and

wondered what to do next. Suddenly a small crowd of about 20

people emerged from the trees, all wearing golden masks and long

robes. One man caught my attention; his walk seemed familiar, I

had seen him before. But who were they?

I wondered if a ghostly party was again about to be held. The

people came closer to me and stopped in a circle around me. The

man I had noticed came near to me and sat down beside me on the

stone. He took off his golden mask and I could see it was my

husband Kazuo.

“Kazuo!” I exclaimed. I was surprised to see him. I was

expecting him to berate me for dressing so strangely and

lasciviously outside. I felt myself preparing an explanation;

these clothes were not my choice!

“Viola,” he said, “hello”.

He sat down beside me on the stone. I started to giggle

nervously, but he picked up my hand and held it.

“Viola,” he said, “you know, we’ve often made love in our house,

in our bedroom, at night or in the morning, after the children

left for school.”

“It’s true,” I said.

“We have always enjoyed it, don’t you think so?”

“Usually,” I said, “um….yes, it is almost always very pleasant.”

“So now, tonight, if you don’t mind, do you think we could do

what we have done so many times before, but now here, as a

ceremony?”

“A ceremony?” I gasped, “you mean in front of all these people?”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s called hieros gamos, or sacred marriage.”

“Why ever for?” I asked, “What a strange idea! Is it something

related to your research?”

“Not mine, actually,” he said, “yours.”

“What do you know about my research?” I was startled, and I must

also admit that I was feeling annoyed. I had tried to hide all of

what I had learned.

“I know very little, so don’t worry. I am also, you see, in a

dream, just as you are. I was suddenly summoned here, just as you

were. And briefed vaguely on the way up the mountain by this,

er…….man, or should I say spirit? And he didn’t tell me any of

your secrets, so don’t get all worked up, Viola.”

I looked, and sure enough, there was the ghost. He removed his

golden mask and came near us. He was looking rather anxious and

apologetic.

“What is this all about?” I asked.

“Viola, there’s a ceremony, called hieros gamos.”

“So I have heard”, I said very coldly.

“It lies at the core of comedy, it’s why comedies traditionally

end with a wedding. A wedding is the best way of preserving the

old idea of a hieros gamos. It goes back to Ancient Greece,

agricultural festivals and fertility rites. Theater started as

festival, ceremony, ritual. I explore the theme often in my

plays.”

“That is supremely excellent”, I said, “Congratulations on your

thematic material! Now you have explained, and I am most gratified

to hear about our methodology, so now I’ll be returning home,

thank you”.

“Wait! Now that you know, don’t you think it sounds pleasant?

And wouldn’t you like to try? It’s the union of opposites, male

and female, a god and a mortal, a priestess and a supplicant.”

“No, I certainly wouldn’t like to. Sorry.”

Kazuo looked down, and turned toward the ghost apologetically.

“I told you it would be impossible”, he said, “she is really

quite a shy person. She’s not really religious. You probably just

put her off by mentioning all that stuff about priests and

priestesses, gods and goddesses..”

“I see,” said the ghost.

I was very irritated by this point.

“I may not be conventionally religious”, I said, “but I like to

think that I am spiritual.”

“You’ll have to think of another way to convince her”, said

Kazuo.

“No,“ I said, interrupting them firmly. Just because Kazuo is a

Historian of Religion, and my husband, he seemed to believe that

he could speak for me on this issue. “That will not make any

difference at all.”

The people---or spirits--- wearing the masks and robes, turned

to each other, murmuring in surprise, and drifting away from us,

started down the mountain. The ghost bowed low and kissed my

fingertips gently before he too turned around and walked away.

Kazuo and I were left alone on the mountain. He sat down next to

me, holding his golden mask. A breeze opened my yukata a little.

His yukata was stirred open, suggestively above his knees, by the

next breeze. After all, I realized, the moonlight was very

romantic!

“Why did you tell him that I’m shy?” I asked, “you know I’m

always proposing that we make love outside somewhere. I always say

how nice it would be to try it under the full moon. You are rather

the shy one, terrified of being seen.”

“What you say is true,” said my husband, “Of course, I knew it

was all a lie. I was just trying to help you get out of performing

hieros gamos.”

“You are very kind”, I said

Chapter 23

Oberon: Sound music {Louder music} Come, myqueen, take hands with me, and rock the groundwhereon these sleepers be.

Summer vacation began, and suddenly the children were home all

day. Kazuo texted me to tell me he was flying down from Haneda

Airport the next day. I became quite apprehensive about his visit.

Ever since the farcical hieros gamos night on the mountain above

Enseij-ji, I had been wondering how much, if at all, the ghost had

involved Kazuo in this adventure. Even if Kazuo had been brought

to the mountain only in a dream, it meant that he might remember

something later, and tie this together with my earlier questions

about sun myths and sun gods. On the other hand, my husband might

remember nothing.

Two days later, in the afternoon, we were finally alone. Kaoru

had gone shopping with her friends, and Zenji had walked down the

road to kick his soccer ball around a little in a park near the

library. Kazuo eyed me longingly and threw a futon down on the

tatami. I hesitated, “Zenji might be back any minute.”

“So, then we’d better hurry up!”

So romantic!

Afterwards, I rolled over on my stomach and leaned up on my

elbows. I couldn’t resist asking the question that had been on my

mind constantly.

“Have you had any interesting dreams recently, uh….dear?” I

asked, a little emphatically.

Something flickered in his eyes.

“Don’t you think you better get dressed before Zenji returns?”

“O.K. It’s easy to get dressed”, I said, putting on my shirt and

skirt.

I sat on the futon in my favorite pose, arms clasped under my

knees, and I tried again. ”But now, tell me, and don’t avoid my

question, how about any dreams you have had, perhaps any with me in

them?”

He was ready now, and combative.“Hah! I knew you would ask about

that! You go first. Have you had any dreams with me in them?”

“But I asked you first!” I said.

“O.K.”, said my husband, sitting up and pulling on his

undershirt, “Chotto matte, I will tell you. But I think, from your

question, that we both have.”

“On the mountain above Ensei-ji”, I said softly, “there was a

full moon that night.”

“Some ghosts asked us to perform hieros gamos. Was that in your

dream, too?”

“Yes, but we didn’t, we wouldn’t do anything like that.”

“I think the unwilling one was you, not me, actually.”

“You mean you wanted to? But you are always the one pulling all

the curtains, telling me to be quiet. You’re always terrified that

someone might figure out we were having sex, and now you tell me

that you wanted to perform hieros gamos?” I was incredulous.

“Sex in public is totally different from hieros gamos, which is a

sacred ceremony. It would have been quite an opportunity for not

just me, but….for us….. to learn something new. It’s a ceremony I

have read about, a way to unite the spirit with the body, I think.

But I wouldn’t want to have had to persuade you or overcome your

real feelings. Hieros gamos has to be performed only by two willing

partners. ”

“You should have told me that you wanted to,” I said, “I’m not

saying I would have thought about it differently, but I might

have.”

Suddenly I wasn’t so sure what my ‘real feelings’ were anymore.

“Well, don’t worry about it, you know, we might get another

chance”. He grinned at me.

Yes, naturally. No doubt it was to be a common routine.

Another time when we were spirited away in our dreams from two entirely different

regions of Japan, brought to a moonlit mountain in Tsubame by ghosts wearing golden

masks, asked to join an erotic ceremony of the body meant to unite archetypal opposites.

“Kazuo?” I said, “Do you remember the ghost who you said

explained the ceremony to you, the one who you said, talked to you

on your way up the mountain?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know his name? Did he tell you?”

“Yes. He said he was the ghost of William Shakespeare. But you

can’t believe everything a ghost tells you, can you? Especially

one you meet in a dream.”

“Sou desu ne”, I said. Whatever my husband knew, he wasn’t going

to say much more about that night.

“Viola, I’ll do whatever I can to help you. This is certainly a

strange adventure, but it doesn’t seem like it’s dangerous. I

study religion, so for me, it’s not so weird. Spirits, ceremonies,

and so forth, I’m really interested. It’s long been a fantasy of

mine to experience something like this. It’s like something you

might read in a book.”

That was good to know. He was keeping an open mind.

“I barely know what is going on myself,” I said. “Sometimes this

ghost comes here and performs a scene from a play, or shows me

something strange or new. That’s all.

I told Kazuo about the performances I had seen, the hot coal,

the morality interlude, the smoky monologue from Hamlet, the dance

on the mountain on the night of the Firefly Festival. “And all he

says, by way of explanation, ‘my way is to conjure you’. It’s a line from

the epilogue of As You Like It.” I wanted to add, Kazuo, I’m becoming

obsessed with this ghost and his story! But I stopped myself. My husband might

think I was losing myself too much.

“You’re sure that it’s not just all in your imagination?”

“Was the dream about hieros gamos all in your imagination?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Kazu, I somehow can’t help but feel that this is somehow

connected to Japan in some way too. Not the Japanese State, but to

the culture of the land, the presence of spirits here, the

presence of a sun goddess, ghosts, spirits, folk culture. I still

haven’t figured it all out, but I think I’ll need your help. You

know much more than I do about all of these.”

And that was how we left it. It was really up to the ghost, if

and when he returned, to explain further.

We were only foolish mortals.

Chapter 24

Full many a glorious morning have I seen,Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,Kissing with golden face the meadows green,Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy….

We had to wait almost two weeks before the ghost contacted us

again. Luckily, the time didn’t have the sense of a long boring

waiting period. Now that Kazuo and I had mysteriously and oddly,

partially, at least, repaired our relationship through a shared

dream of a farcical and failed hieros gamos on the mountain, our

days were spent enjoyably, once or twice taking the bus to the

beach at Hagi with Kaoru and Zenji. I enjoyed long and ridiculous

debates with Kazuo about how to fold up futons, how often to dust

off books, and who needed to do stretching exercises more, he or

I.

Finally, I gave up trying to avoid stretching exercises. I

arranged myself on the tatami mat and started bending at the waist

down toward my legs.

Kazuo smiled victoriously and I threw the book of stretching

exercises at his stomach.

“You do a few!”, I suggested.

“Ha ha! Later! “

“Usau-tsuki!” Liar.

“I’m taking Zenji out to eat ramen at Edokin.”

The minute they left, I got up and picked up a large paper

shopping bag I keep in a closet. Inside the bag were all of my

sewing projects. There was a folded-up dark blue yukata, a cotton

kimono, that was too short for me to wear as a yukata. A student,

Haruko Noguchi, had given it to me as a present after I had told

her that I liked real indigo. But if I cut the lower part off in a

straight line and sewed the ends together, I could turn it into a

skirt. The best part of the whole plan was that since the material

was dyed with natural indigo, I would be getting a free skirt made

of natural indigo cloth. Playfully, I held up the material to see

the light from the window through it, investigating the way I

could change my view of the world to one announced through fine

and soft dark blue threads. And then through the indigo-dyed

cloth, I saw a man’s shape materialize. This time I did not

scream. I knew exactly who it was.

“I should have known you would be here soon!” I cried happily,

smiling, and pulling the fabric down into a bunch on my lap.

“Indigo dyed cloth has a faint smell, have you noticed?” he

asked, my ghost.

“Yes, I have noticed it,” I said, “a good smell. The dye is

fermented, so I think the smell in the cloth is left from that

perhaps. It smells like a salty ocean breeze”

“In London, it came from India, where the indigo plants grew and

the dye was fermented and dried, and it was very expensive.”

“Here in Japan, it was pretty common and farmers wore indigo-

dyed cotton pants to work in the field. Ninjas usually wore

sappanwood-dyed cotton, which is gray, but sometimes they wore

indigo because, dark blue or gray hides someone better in

moonlight than black does. And samurais wore it. Samurai blue. But

now it’s expensive, used for decorative noren curtains and shawls

for women. The farmers all wear polyester now.”

“A pity”, he paused. His eyes searched for my gaze and held it.

He paused, searching for the right words. My heart started to beat

faster. I didn’t want to be scolded or criticized by Shakespeare’s ghost! I began to

fear that what had started out as something so interesting, so

private and so fulfilling, was now just becoming another place

where I had failed to live up to everyone’s expectations. Another

project where I hadn’t measured up.

“Viola, you need to understand something. It’s related to that

night on the mountain.”

“The night I was supposed to perform hieros gamos,” I said. My

voice got higher and faster, “I’m sorry, but I just wasn’t ready.

Maybe another time. Kazuo admitted to me that he was actually

quite keen on the idea. It was only me, I just couldn’t, I don’t

really understand what it’s all about…if…..if I read a few books

on the subject, then I’m utterly convinced that maybe next time…”

“Viola, it is all right, and there is no problem. You haven’t

failed any test or made any mistakes. That’s all I wanted to say”,

he said, gently putting two ice-cold fingers on my cheeks. I was

relieved that he would not upbraid me after all and I stopped

chattering nervously. I made up my mind to be more adventurous and

brave, no matter what strange thing he might request.

Yet, I was surprised by his next words.

“Would you play Puck? And I’ll be Oberon. Okay?”

My eyes widened.

“I didn’t know people….that is to say, um, spirits….from the

Elizabethan era knew the modern colloquial term ‘okay’”, I said,

finding myself with something else now to be nervous about, “but I

will play Puck to your Oberon, sure. Do I need a costume?”

“Ghosts can keep up with the evolution of language, as well as

understand any language and speak any language we wish. There are

no barriers for us. But as for a costume, why not wear the indigo

yukata you have got right there?”

I was excited to perform alongside the ghost of William

Shakespeare, but, almost equally, I had a, well,….Puckish….desire

to challenge and tease him. Could he really speak and understand

Japanese, as well as keep up with the evolution of language? I had

been wondering ever since Kazuo had implied as much on the

mountain in our shared dream.

“Kore de ii?” I asked casually in Japanese, slipping it over my

shoulders.

“Hai, choudo ii desuyo. Suteki desu.” He was smiling. It was clear that he

was fluent at Nihongo.

More to the point, there was another issue……

“Can a middle-aged woman really play Puck?” I asked.

“Why not? It’s often a clever idea to try something new. “

“It’s true” I said, “when people put on dramatic performances of

your works, they often change the age or gender of one the

characters, or they change the setting or the time. It seems that

your works are particularly adaptable and seem to allow for this

better than anyone else’s, in fact. They have a certain universal

quality. But I suppose you have heard that an infinity of times.”

The ghost looked modestly appreciative.

He smiled mysteriously.

I looked down. When the yukata wasn’t folded and tied up with an

obi, it wasn’t too small, and, untied, it hung like a robe loosely

over my summer skirt and T-shirt. I supposed I looked a bit like a

casually-attired apprentice wizard who happened to be a woman in

her mid-forties. An eccentric choice for a Puck, perhaps, though,

I reflected, ‘Robin Goodfellow’ could be the name of either a man

or a woman.

Usually Puck is cast as a young man, a typical mischief-maker, a

folkish fairy with strong, fast legs, wearing tights, and a

feather cap, who runs all over the stage and bewilders the

Athenians. I supposed a Puck cast as a woman in her 40s would use

an image of another sort of fairy, a spirit like Osakabe, who in

legend is a fox who sometimes takes the form of a woman, not

always a young woman, and is said to live on the top floor of

Himeji-jo, the castle in Himeji in Hyogo. Once a year, she appears

to tell the fortune of a lucky person who seeks her out.

“Have you heard of Osakabe?” I asked now.

“Yes, I’ve met Osakabe a few times. A very interesting spirit

who can tell what will happen in the future, actually with great

accuracy. Most ghosts actually cannot do that, despite what you

may have heard to the contrary.”

I wasn’t surprised to hear that he had met her, so I went on,

“She’s said to be actually a fox in disguise, and foxes, as you

probably know, are great mischief makers in Japanese folklore,

always disguising themselves and leading people astray on paths,

playing tricks, using funny voices; actually, they’re just like

Puck.”

“You do very well to note the similarities.”

“Imagine me, then, in a costume with fox ears and a fox nose”, I

said, “and twelve layers of colorful silk kimonos, junihitoe. And

long, long hair, loose. Appearing and disappearing, changing form,

I--- Osakabe or Robin Goodfellow---- move quickly in the shadows

and no one can be sure where I am, like Puck in the forest outside

Athens.”

“Excellent ! You have the soul of an innovative director!”

I had to laugh.

“I suppose we won’t perform much, only a few lines, there being

only the two of us?” I asked, secretly longing for a large

audience and many lines.

But the front door slid open, and I heard Kazuo and Zenji taking

off their shoes and taking a step up into the house. The husuma,

paper and lacquer wood door, slid open and they stood together,

staring at us.

Kazuo realized immediately who it was, having already met the

ghost, and he nodded politely and said, “ahh, doomoo, konichiwa”, as if

one of our elderly neighbors had stopped by for a visit.

Zenji gave the ghost a glance, then looked at me, obviously

wondering why I was wearing a long yukata over my summer clothes.

“We’re going to perform a play!” I said brightly.

“Wouldn’t you like to go to the park and play soccer?” Kazuo

quickly asked Zenji. I could tell what he was thinking: Mom has a

ghostly visitor and they are going to perform. Let’s get out of here!

A cat casually uses a paw to stop a moth from flying away, and

now I said brightly, “Oh, let him stay and watch. It’s

Shakespeare, after all. Very educational.”

“Konnichiwa”, said Zenji to the ghost.

“This is Zenji”, I said to the ghost, “and this is..,,umm…

William-san”, I said to Zenji.

“Konnichiwa”, said the ghost. He smiled kindly. Luckily he was

standing in a shadowy part of the room and it was hard to tell

that his skin was glowing ever so faintly. He looked almost

ordinary, despite his archaic clothes.

“It’s not very long, right?” I asked, “so can he stay?”

“It’s not very long. Of course he can stay. .Right, now we’ll

need the play. You have it, I believe?”

“Here”, I said, lifting up my old brown Riverside from a pile of

books I kept stashed in the tokonoma, the decorative alcove with a

raised floor. I flipped to the correct page, 222, near the

beginning. It was very heavy, with almost 2,000 pages altogether.

“Now then, let me see,“ said Shakespeare’s ghost, closing his

pallid eyelids and trying to remember his own words. He pressed a

pale forefinger to his chin. “Perhaps, yes, Act Three, Scene Two,

near the end. Puck says, ‘My fairy lord, this must be done in haste’.”

I looked through the play, but the huge tome was heavy, even

balanced on my arm, and it wobbled and almost fell. Kazuo and

Zenji had been sitting on the tatami, waiting for us to start

performing, but Kazuo got up and took the book from my hands,

holding it up so I could read the lines more easily.

“Thank you,” I said. I noticed the speech of Puck’s where I was

supposed to start. “Here it is!”, I cried, my voice a squeak.

“Calm down”, Kazuo hissed, giving the ghost an apologetic glance

on my behalf.

“I am TOTALLY calm!”, I said.

Zenji rolled his eyes. Why were grown-ups more childish than

real children sometimes?

“Okay, shall I begin?” I asked.

“Please.”

“My fairy lord,” I read, using an earnest tone, “this must be done with haste,

For Night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger,At whose approach, ghosts, wand’ring here and there….”

I paused, unable to continue without glancing at the real ghost

standing in his archaically stockinged feet a few meters away from

me. The ghost gave me a strange wisp of a smile, acknowledging my

pause with a slight, comic bow. I gathered myself together and

started reading again.

“um, wandring here and there”, I repeated, troop home to churchyards. Damn spirits all,That in crossways and floods have burial,Already to their wormy beds have gone.For fear lest day should look their shames upon….”

I was reading slowly, but here I stopped to look at Zenji, whose

eyes were brightly opened wide in pleasure. Beyond all his

expectations, this Shakespeare performance was, thus far, a

fascinating exposition of ghosts, wormy graves and horror. I knew

he was expecting me to start talking about vampires and zombies

next, and was sorry, almost, when I had to read the real words….

“They willfully themselves exile from lightAnd must, for aye, consort with black-brow’d Night.”

It was Oberon’s turn next, and Kazuo brought the heavy book over

to the ghost, who promptly took it from him, closed it shut, and

gently handed it back, saying, “Domoo, dakedo, ii desu.”

Thanks, but I’m fine like this, without.

And that proved to be the case. He did not need to read the

lines he had written so long ago. He glanced warmly at his “Puck’,

as if to show that he was responding to the speech I had just made

with no interruption. He lifted one arm, slightly, but with a

flourish, addressing himself to me, but half turned to his

audience, Kazuo, who was now sitting down again, and Zenji, and

said,

“But we are spirits of another sort.I with Morning’s love have oft made sport,And like a forester, the groves may treadEven till the Eastern gate, all fiery red,Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.”

Zenji looked bored now, but Kazuo seemed to be thoughtfully

considering the meaning of the lines, which the ghost had read

slowly with great feeling and passion. My husband glanced at me,

but I was very worried about missing my next cue, for now the book

was lying closed on the floor! The performance would have to be

interrupted again!

“Omoshirokatta!”, said Zenji., “Mom, can I go to the park and play

soccer?”.

The magical and theatrical atmosphere was dissolving and the

ordinary world was coming back into focus, completely against my

will.

“Isn’t there more to perform now?”, I asked the ghost, hoping

that there was more.

“Another time,” he said, looking wan. Perhaps the emotional

performance had drained his strength. “Domoo, minna san, thanks to

you all.” He bowed graciously.

I was worried that he would give Zenji a shock by dissolving in

a cloud through a shoji door. But he didn’t. He walked to the front

entrance, stepped smoothly down, and slid open the door. Turning

to bow slightly, he closed the door silently behind him.

“Mom,” asked Zenji in a puzzled tone a few minutes later “where

were his shoes? He didn’t put any shoes on when he left

.”

Chapter 25

My father nam’d me Autolycus, who being, as I am, litter’d under Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsider’d trifles.

The heat of summer was just peaking as August began and cicadas

sang in the cherry trees beside the river. A few days later, O-Bon,

the three-day festival of the ancestor’s spirits, began. At O-Bon,

the spirits of the dead people in one’s family will return and

commune with the living,who are supposed to lay out offerings of

food for them in front of the graves and on the Buddhist altars,

butsudan. Many Japanese people visit their family’s country

relatives, especially grandparents, who have stayed in their

villages near the temples and graveyards in the countryside. But

Kazuo’s family lived in Tokyo and they stayed put there. Kazuo was

still staying with us.

I had idly speculated whether or not my ghost would make an

appearance, a kind of little cameo, or something, to mark the

ghostly festival of O-Bon. I thought that he would appear, surely,

to communicate. But the first two days passed without a visit. I

decided my speculations were idle, and in the late afternoon, as

the heat started to wane, I took up a needle and thread and a

sheet with holes in it that needed to be patched.

I was pinning some squares of old material from a green plaid

shirt that Zenji had outgrown to cover the hole in one beige

sheet. Kaoru, in the next room, was studying English by struggling

through The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Suddenly, she called out from

through the lacquer husuma doors, “Mom, what does o-b-s-e-r-v-a-t-

i-o-n spell?”

“Observation. You know, watching something.”

“And, what does ‘founded on’ mean?”

“Based on or grounded on”

“O.K. and what about the word, t-r-i-f-l-e-s?”

“Trifles are tiny things, details. Do you get it now?”

“I think so.”

I heard her closing the book with an energetic snap.

“Mo sukoshi yonde, benkyo shinasai!”, said Kazuo, calling from the next

room, where he was sitting at the computer. Read more! Study!

“Kore kara Shiori-chan to asobu!” I’m off to play with Shiori-chan.

Her cellphone had been busily pinging away for the past hour,

and no wonder, I thought. She had been making plans to go out with

Shiori-chan. A few minutes later, she emerged from her room, asked

me for a few hundred yen, grabbed her bicycle key, and left.

I settled back on the floor again with the sheet. Sewing large

items was time-consuming, but working to pay for things we

couldn’t afford, like new sheets, was now not really an option:

almost all of my income went to food, rent and utilities. Kazuo

helped us with money, but he had a mortgage to pay on a house we

had bought seven years ago in Kurumachi, which was in the

expensive Tokyo area, just as the real estate market was peaking.

Not only had house prices gone into even further decline after the

global financial crisis of 2008, but. now, after the Fukushima

nuclear accident, because of radioactive fallout such as cesium-

137, houses all the way down from Fukushima Prefecture to Tokyo

had lost more of their value.

A few meters away from me, Zenji spread out a paper game board

and set up stacks of Pokemon cards around it. He started making

them fight each other, a mysterious process. I had seen him do

this many times, and I had come to the conclusion that the figures

on the cards were mere symbols of the real fantastic Pokemon

animals. The real ones fought in another zone, one that was purely

in his imagination.

From the next room, Kazuo called my name softly, but with an

urgency he only uses when something is important..

“Viola!”

“What?”

“Come over here. Look at this.”

I put down the patched-up sheet and stuck the needle in the

middle so I wouldn’t lose it.

He was watching YouTube. I glanced at the title of the video:

“Titania and Bottom’s Scene in the Forest”. Kazuo pulled the

cursor back to the start and the video began again.

On a small, badly-lit stage that may have been in a high school

or local community theater, a young actress with long curly brown

tresses, and wearing a cheap-looking white negligee was asleep

beside an installation of huge colorful paper flowers. Bottom, a

portly gentleman dressed in a pair of gray trousers and a striped

shirt, was already wearing the head of the ass, and had just

rejoined his associates, who were obviously shocked by his new

appearance, with all but one, the “director” of the amateur group,

Peter Quince, a tall, skinny, middle-aged man with red hair,

running away. Peter Quince paused to say, “Bless thee, Bottom!

Bless thee! Thou art translated!”, before running away himself.

Bottom looked around and found himself alone. He stroked his chin

sagely and addressed the audience with one finger in the air:

“I see their knavery. This is to make an ass of me, to fright me if they could, but I will not stir from this place, do what they can. I will walk up and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid.”

Skipping around, he sang a short nonsense song about “the woosel

cock” and “the throstle”, and I recognized it as the song about

birds I had heard before. Then “Titania” woke up. Seemingly

startled, she looked at Bottom and then uttered the famous comic

line: “what angel wakes me from my flow’ry bed?” The audience

laughed, and Bottom started singing again:

The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,The plain-song cuckoo gray,Whose note full many a man doth mark,And dares not answer nay-----

It was hard to catch the rest of the dialogue after that----

including my favorite line, the one where Titania says, “out of

this wood do not desire to go”, because the director had decided

that Bottom and Titania, though fully clothed, would conduct their

dialogue while arranged in a variety of erotic poses on the floor.

I knew that directors of A Midsummer Night’s Dream often tried to show

Bottom and Titania in sexually explicit poses.

“hieros gamos”, said Kazuo. “This play is about hieros gamos!”

“No it isn’t”, I said, “the stage directions don’t say anything

about sex. Titania says I will wind thee in my arms, nothing more. Though

directors are always showing them writhing on the floor together.

After all, the directions don’t say they don’t have sex.”

“Do you remember Oberon’s speech?”

“Of course.”

“Do you remember how it starts? I with the morning’s love have oft made

sport.”

“Are you saying those lines are sexual? You mean between him and

the morning sun?” I tried to get my mind around this idea even as

I found myself proposing it.

“Well, think about the image: eastern gate, all fiery red, opening on

Neptune, there is the oppositional male god, almost as if Oberon has

become a male god through the experience. Plus look at the words…

opening, fiery red, and the ending with the salt green streams. That would be a

sexual climax of the male variety. Hieros Gamos.”

I realized that his erotic interpretation was very convincing.

“Maybe you should have been a literature scholar after all”, I

said.

“Ha! Maybe there’s still time for that! I’m only 49.”

I read through the passage again, checking the erotic double

entrendres. I was all but oblivious to the sound of the doorbell

chime. Vaguely, I heard Zenji opening the door, saying a few

words, then closing the door.

“Mom.”

Zenji slid open the husuma door and extended his arm to me. I

saw he was clutching a slim light blue book I had never seen

before.

“Was it takkyubin?” I asked. Takkyubin is a package delivery

service. “Zenji, you know that you need to show me the box or

wrapping paper so I can see who sent it.”

“No, mom”, said Zenji. “It was that man who can here to do that

performance with you. This time he was wearing shoes. I checked.”

I was already jumping out of my chair and on my way to the front

door. I opened it as quickly as I could manage, slipped on flip-

flops, and tore down the path that led to the road and the river.

Scanning up and down the line of cherry trees, the noisy, taunting

cicadas seemed only to be oblivious to my sense of loss. I felt

that I had missed something important. The blue sky was empty, and

so was the road. Feeling alone, I strolled on a bit, and after a

few minutes, I started humming “Ue o muite arukou”, about someone

walking alone who is trying not to cry. There are four seasons in

the song. When it ended, I found I had recovered. The cicadas,

mirroring my feelings, now seemed with their urgent noise, to be

energetically encouraging me not to mind this playful visit from

the ghost I had so badly wanted to see.

The book!

Suddenly, I remembered the strange present, and rushed back to

the house. When I returned to the room, Kazuo was still sitting in

his chair in front of the computer and he was leafing through the

book.

“Here’s the title”, he said, showing me the title page inside.

It was a play, and I wasn’t surprised at that. But it wasn’t one

by William Shakespeare. I read:

The Birds

By Aristophanes

Chapter 26

Bottom (sings): The woosel cock so black of hue,With tawny-orange bill,The throstle with his note so true,The wren with little quill-----Titania (awakening): What angel wakes me from my flow’ry bed?Bottom (sings): The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,The plain-song cuckoo gray,Whose note full many a man doth mark,And dares not answer nay---

“Ever read The Birds?”

“Nope”, I said. Actually I had never read any ancient Greek

plays.

Kazuo handed the book to me and started searching online for a

summary of the classic Ancient Greek comedy.

“The Birds is set in Athens”,

“Just like A Midsummer Night’s Dream!” I said.

” In Aristophanes’ comedy, two characters, Euelpides and

Pithetaerus, set off together looking for a better place to live

than Athens. Along the way, they are surprised to meet a large

Hoopoe, a type of crested bird, named Epops who used to be a man

and who says, ‘I have been a man’”, Kazuo said, reading from the

screen.

“Like Bottom, he has been transformed into an animal”, I said.

“And it’s just his head, it seems, which is changed into an

animal’s head.”

“Epops, Pithetaeus, and Euelpides decide they will ‘found a

city’ in the air. Then Epops flies into a thicket to wake his

wife, a nightingale named Procne.”

I gasped, “Kazuo! Just as Bottom awakens Titania with his song!”

Kazuo did a new online search, “let’s have a look at the play,”

he said.

I looked through the book while Kazuo scrolled down through the

beginning of the play, hunting. We both found Epops’ song at about

the same time on our different media. I read the first part of the

song, which ends with Procne awakening off stage:

“Chase off sleep, dear companion. Let the sacred hymn gush from thy divine throat in melodious strains; roll forth in soft cadence…..right up to the throne of Zeus, where

Phoebus listens to you, Phoebus with his golden hair. And his ivory lyre responds to your plaintive accents; he gathers the choir of the gods and from their immortal lips pours forth a sacred chant of blessed voices.”

Kazuo hadn’t missed a word. “Apollo”, he said, looking excited.

“There is the sun again! What happens after Procne wakes up?”

I scanned the text. “Procne is not seen; instead, to show that she

awakens, the flute is played behind the scene, imitating the song of a nightingale.

Shakespeare seems to have turned that imitation of a nightingale into

Titania’s what angel wakes me from my flowery bed? Scholars assert that there

is no source for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but this may actually be it.”

“So we may have found a new source for the play!” Kazuo’s voice was low with

excitement. He is always a true scholar.

“It does seem so.“

I was worried.

“Insinuating that Apollo, a pagan sun god, may have inspired

Shakespeare is close to implying that he may have worshipped the sun

himself or countenanced sun worship!”, I continued. “ It’s a radical

idea that would surely be quickly rejected by all the major academic

journals if we tried to write it up.”

“Do you really think so?” asked Kazuo.

“It all hinges on the sun and the secret identity of Juliet as the

sun in the companion play, because that image then tells us to read

Bottom’s reference to Phibbus’ car as his own identification with the

sun. It may be quasi-religious. It’s certainly radical. This is one

secret that will never get told. I know enough about academia to know

that.”

“Don’t be too sure”, Kazuo said, shrugging, “times change anyway.

Or, how about trying to publish it in Japan? We still worship the sun

here, so it’s nothing new for us. ” He smiled, then frowned, paused,

and continued.

“But where is coal in this play? We can see the sun, but not its

opposite.”

“Wait”, I said, “you are going too fast. First, let’s look at the

second part of Epops’ song.”

I badly wanted to check the second stanza of Epops’ song!

I read the second and last stanza of Epops’ song, so long it left

me breathless:

“ Epopopoi popoi popopopoi popoi, here, here, quick, quick, quick, my comrades in the air; all you who pillage the fertile lands of the husbandmen, the numberless

tribes who gather and devour the barley seeds, the swift flying race that sings so sweetly. And you whose gentle twitter resounds through the fields with the little cry of tiotictiotiotiotiotiotio; and you who hop about the branches of the ivy in the gardens; the mountain birds, who feed on the wild olive-berries or the arbutus, hurry to come at my call, trioto, trioto, totobrix; you also, who snap up the sharp-stinging gnats in the marshy vales, and you who dwell in the fine plain of Marathon, all damp with dew, and you, the francolin with speckled wings; you too, the halcyons, who flit over the swelling waves of the sea, come hither to hear the tidings; let all the tribes of long-necked birds assemble here; know that a clever old man has come to us, bringing an entirely new idea and proposing great reforms. Let all come to the debate here, here, here, here. Torotorotorotorotix, kikkabau, kikkabau, torotorotorolililix.”

“Wow”, said Kazuo.

“It’s a list of birds, just like Bottom’s whole song in this

scene. I felt like a twittering bird myself while I was reading it

aloud. And”, I said, reading on, “it seems the invocation works because

tons of birds show up in The Birds.”

“A powerful summons which works immediately, is adapted, yet its

power is preserved by Shakespeare in that Titania awakens”, said Kazuo.

“I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

“Thank you”, said Kazuo, giving me a playfully scholarly look.

“Or we can say that Shakespeare has wished to disguise the role of

Bottom as a medium to call forth a Sun God, even while having Bottom do

just this”, Kazuo, the scholar of religion, had rephrased his

observation.

“But why?” I asked, “Why is the sun put in touch with Titania?”

“Is there anything the matter with her? Anything amiss?”

Vaguely I tried to remember the plot. Titania was fighting with Oberon. There

was a boy they both wanted. And the land had ceased to function.

“Yes, as a matter of fact…A long list, actually. Wait, I’ll get

my Riverside. I hate staring at screens!”

But Kazuo followed me into the next room instead and we both sat

down side by side on the tatami mat to examine the passage in Act II,

where Titantia says:

These are the forgeries of jealousyAnd never, since the middle-summer’s spring,Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,By paved fountain or by rushy brook,Or in the beached margent of the sea,To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,But with thy brawls thy hast disturbed our sport.Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,As in revenge, have suck’d up from the seaContagious fogs; which, falling in the land, Hath every pelting river made so proudThat they have overborne their continents.The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain,The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green cornHath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard.The fold stands empty in the drowned field,

And crows are fatted with the murrion flock,The nine men’s morris is filled up with mud,And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,For lack of tread, are undistinguishable.The human mortals want their winter here;No night is now with hymn or carol blest.Therefore the moon (the governess of floods),Pale in her anger, washes all the air,That rheumatic diseases do abound,And thorough this distemperature, we seeThe seasons alter: hoary-headed frostsFall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,And on old Hiem’s thin and icy crownAnd odorous chaplet of sweet summer budsIs, as in mockery, set; the spring, the summerThe chiding autumn, angry winter changeTheir wonted liveries; and the mazed world,By their increase, now knows not which is which.And this same progeny of evils comes From our debate, from our dissension;We are their parents, and original.

“This is so long! And so complicated”, said Kazuo.

“I think I can make the connections with coal,” I said.

I told Kazuo about the flying dream Puck had taken me on to see

various sights of London in the late 1500s. I had seen enough on that

trip to understand what Shakespeare was secretly getting at in

Titania’s speech.

Chapter 27

Here come the clusters.And is Aufidius with him? You are theyThat made the air unwholesome, when you castYour stinking greasy caps in hooting atCoriolanus’ exile. Now he’s coming,And not a hair upon a soldier’s headWhich will not prove a whip. As many coxcombsAs you threw caps up will he tumble down,And pay you for your voices. ‘Tis no matter;If he could burn us all into one coal,We have deserved it.

“First”, I said, “you should know that coal was delivered by sailing

ship to London. The coal was loaded in the north of England where the

mines were, and delivered to London: shipping it three hundred miles or

so from Newcastle to London cost less than carrying it even five miles

by land. The connection between water and ‘sea coal’ was therefore

vital. The geography was perfect.”

“O.K.”, said Kazuo, “but I still don’t see how that relates to

Titania’s speech.”

“The ‘contagious fogs’ that are ‘suck’d up by the sea’ are a

metaphorical way of describing the process of delivering sea coal by

sea, and remember that all coal was called ‘sea coal’ until the middle

1600s. Then, when it was burned it produced coal smoke, which is dark

and looks like a fog, particularly in a damp climate such as England’s.

“

“I see”, said Kazuo.

“Coal smoke was disliked and there were many complaints recorded

against businesses that used coal as fuel because of the smoke”, I

said, recalling the scene I had watched in London.”But, in general,

coal use and dependency increased over time. London grew, and by the

late 1500s, coal became a necessary cooking and heating fuel not just

for many businesses, but for households, starting with the poorer ones.

Wood was too expensive.”

“It’s true that coal smoke, unfiltered and burned in a chimney

without a scrubber, is hard to tolerate because of the sulphur”, said

Kazuo, “just look at the antique steam engine here in Tsubame.”.

“Exactly”, I said, “and these problems that resulted from coal

use are allegorically presented in Titania’s speech. For example, the

‘rheumatic diseases’ and also the ‘contagious fogs’ and

‘distemperature’ she mentions are a secretive reference to the ill

effects of coal soot and smoke on health. People were spitting blood,

coughing, and their eyes were watering. They coughed up black phlegm.

In Hamlet, Shakespeare also gave Hamlet watering eyes, black clothes,

and a cough to show him being plagued by coal. It’s Hermetic, however,

which means that the connection cannot be immediately understood. It’s

like a code. You can understand it if you know what to look for.”

Kazuo pointed to another one of Titania’s lines. “How about the

‘hoary-headed frosts (that) fall in the fresh lap of the rose’?”

“Well”, I said, “that’s probably an allegory for the blighting

effects of coal smoke on plants in London. Unfiltered coal smoke is

full of sulfur, or more specifically sulfur dioxide. The sulfer dioxide

heavily damaged cells in the leaves, giving them a water-soaked look.

When they dried, these areas look whitish”, or, more poetically, like a

‘frost’. And the lines “And on old Hiem’s thin and icy crown/ And

odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds/ Is, as in mockery, set; the

spring, the summer/ The chiding autumn, angry winter change” possibly

refer to the way that a more urban environment, such as Elizabethan

London compared to countryside, can produce earlier blooming of flowers

and warmer temperatures. “

“I guess you could call it the Climate Change of the Renaissance”, Kazuo

said.

I had to smile at his joke. Our fights had become infrequent, and

our relationship seemed to be healing with this common investigation.

“Coal consumption soared. And wood stopped being the major source of

fuel and coal became the major source of fuel for the whole of England

around this time.”

“Viola, wow! You should write this all up and submit it to an

academic journal! Titania’s woes have been explained at last!”

“Oh, please, I’m just an obscure nobody. No one would believe me and

anyway, the world is running on coal and oil. Which means, in a way,

that this is all sort of subversive. Sort of. So I would never get it

published. I’m not even sure I would want to publish it.”

“Well, you’ve convinced me, at least. So, what about ‘the quaint

mazes in the wanton green’?”

“Actually, I’m not sure about that part. Those are country games and

sports of pre-modern times. I don’t really understand why they are in

there”

Kazuo yawned. “Let’s try to figure it out later.”

Zenji was putting away the Pokemon cards.

It would be time to start cooking soon. For some strange reason,

that was almost always my job. Kazuo, embedded firmly in his generation

where the balance of power was heavily skewed in favor of men, was one

of those traditional Japanese husbands, so dreaded in some quarters, especially

among my many single female friends, coworkers and colleagues in this

country who had avoided marriage at all costs.

One day, I was determined to have Kazuo make dinner for me!!

Chapter 28

This is nothing, fool.

A few weeks later, as summer was coming to a close and the

children were getting ready to go back to school, I had another

strange dream. I was in a green field with tall green grass cut

into the shape of an enormous maze. I could peer over the edge of

the maze, but not enough to tell where the path would take me out.

The smell of fresh grass was strong and sharp. I was walking

quickly, not running, but this maze was indeed a huge field, and

no matter which way I turned, I could not find the way out.

Looking down at my body, I was surprised to see that I was dressed

all in dark-blue cotton indigo, the belted jacket and tight-

fitting simple pants of a ninja on the job. Touching my hair, I

was interested to notice it was bound up in a ninja’s traditional

cloth cap. I had always been fascinated by ninja, spies and secret

fighters who observed and used nature to apply Ninjutsu, the arts

of ninja, just when appropriate. Now, in my dream, I had become

one!

What luck!

I turned a corner and I was surprised to see an elderly man with

flowing white hair and a long robe standing in front of me. Wild

flowers decorated his beard and a gold crown sat lopsidedly on his

head. He ran his long pale fingers through his hair and started

shouting oddly at me, “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage,

blow! Your hurricanes spout till you have drench’d our steeples,

drown’d the cocks! You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires!.”

“Excuse me?” I said. But I knew this was King Lear.

He was quite mad.

I started to panic.

King Lear turned around and pointed vaguely at the ground,

shouting madly, “there’s hell, there’s darkness, there is the

sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption. Fie, fie,

fie! Pah pah!”

He was clearly very upset. I recognized the words as being from

the play bearing his name. I had seen the whole play performed in

college once, and had found it very sad and tragic indeed.

Despite his age, he looked stronger than me. I thought that

perhaps he could outrun me. Nevertheless, when he lunged at me and

started shouting “Howl, howl, howl! O you are men of stones!”, I

turned and started to run as fast as I could. I swerved and darted

through the maze and tried desperately to confuse him and lose

him, but he managed to follow me pretty well at a distance. I was

grateful for my ninja outfit. It was perfect for darting, turning,

and running.

I rounded a green corner and was shocked to see a tall and

handsome very strong-looking dark-skinned man dressed as a soldier

might have dressed four or five hundred years ago. He had a sword,

a breastplate, sandals made of rope of the sort that are now

fashionable again, except now they are for women, a beautiful red

velvet cape and a white silk shirt and very elegant knee-length

trousers that seemed to be made of leather. I had to marvel at the

textiles and fashions before me, as well as the utter style and

martial bearing of the man. I wondered if my strange nightmare was

changing into a wonderful dream. Probably, this brave-looking man,

who had one chic gold earring, would be able to defend me from

that horrid and nutty King Lear if I asked him nicely.

“Whip me, ye devils, from the possession of this heavenly

sight!”, he suddenly roared.

I recognized a line from the famous “O” groan monologue from

Othello. He seemed to be as agitated and upset as the other man.

This was definitely not how I wanted to see the monologue

performed, in a nightmare while the character raved crazily before

me. All my hopes of being rescued from the mad King Lear were

dashed. Othello continued,

“Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulphur! Wash me in steep-

down gulfs of liquid fire!”

Panting, King Lear caught up with us, and greeted Othello with a

mad but somehow strangely cheerful wave. I could see that there

was no point in reasoning with either of them. They were both

annoyed and upset to the point where discussion was meaningless.

My only recourse was to flee. They both looked at me, then at each

other. I broke into a run, and they started after me.

What had I done? Nothing!

I tried to turn corners as fast as I could see them, trying to

lose my pursuers.

All at once, in front of me, a ninja appeared, dressed as I was,

all in traditional dark blue indigo. His face was covered with a

ninja’s cloth mask but his eyes were visible. I recognized them as

the eyes of my favorite ghost.

“Viola! Come this way!”

I followed him as fast as I could, and he was amazingly fleet.

Dodging around corners, twisting suddenly to take an unexpected

turn, he held my hand firmly and I noticed, strangely, that his

hands were not cold at all in this special new dimension. They

were as warm as mine.

“We’re in the land of mu now. It can be a bit frightening. Hang

on. The world of nothingness is another place to make contact with

the spirit world. Fictional characters may also be found here if

one so desires it, or sometimes, actually, even if one does not.”

“I see,” I said, making efforts to keep up with the trim spirit

leading me forward through the paths cut in the tall grass. The

maze was enormous and never-ending. The field it was made of must

be the size of a continent, I decided. I would have definitely

been lost without some supernatural help.

Othello and King Lear were still following us, though not with

ease. They were still storming and declaiming, vying to outshout

the other.

“O! O! Desdemon dead!”

Well, at least I was finally getting to hear those famous O groans.

“Singe my white head! Strike flat the thick rotundity of the

world!”

Just great.

Despite my fear, I almost laughed. The situation was beyond

absurd.

Was this an English major’s dream or an English major’s nightmare?

A ninja, who was also a ghost, was leading me through a bizarre

maze while two tragic fictional heroes stormed after me,

performing their immortal lines.

Make that three!

Another king had joined them. Like Othello, he was outfitted for

battle in armor. He had a helmet and armor, and his visor was up

and framed by black curls. His face was visible, tormented and

haggard. I knew he was a king because he carried a standard with a

crown, a crown and the symbol of a lion standing on its hind legs

and displaying its power which I guessed might be the symbol of

Scotland. This king could only be Macbeth, with terribly red,

exhausted-looking eyes, and he was riding a large gray horse.

“The very stones prate of my whereabout, and take the present

horror from the time, which now suits with it”, he groaned coldly,

looking anguished.

There was something distant in his voice. I found it more

disturbing that the loud, irksome ravings of the other two.

“I am afraid to think what I have done; look on’t again I dare

not”, he added.

Macbeth seemed to be talking to himself. I almost felt sorry for

him. But then he charged forward at us and the ghost pulled my

hand and off we ran, away from the three characters who were so

agitated and aggressive, and unable to find any peace.

We two ninjas ran on, but the situation seemed difficult as the

horse was coming closer. King Lear and Othello were grasping the

tail of the horse while running behind, and Macbeth was whipping

the animal forward faster and faster.

“Maybe we should stop and see what they want”, I suggested, “I

mean to say, let’s talk to them. Dialogue. Negotiations.”

“Um, all right, if you say so.”

We stopped in our tracks and turned around.

“Please stop!”, I said, raising my hand. Then, whimsically, to

sound more convincing I added, “in the name of the king!”

Macbeth whipped the horse onward even faster forward toward us.

“They don’t want to talk”, said my guide. “They are too

infuriated and angry to discuss anything. Stuck in their

respective plays, they cannot move beyond their grief and despair.

The world of mu, of non-reality, or nothingness, if you will, as

you must see by now, is not a place of logic and reason. But it is

the only place for us all to meet. It’s either this or nothing, no

pun intended.”

Nothing was sounding pretty good at this point.

I heard the horse breathing hard and saw his immense nostrils

frothing.

Suddenly, Shakespeare reached out and, grasping my soft sleeve

of indigo cloth, pulled me quickly into the wall of the green

maze. The stalks of grass were quite thick and sharp and formed a

dense forested mass of vegetation. It was difficult to penetrate,

but our smooth, soft, and closely-fitting ninja clothes were

perfect for the task. I copied my guide as he bent his body

forward and angled it like a blade, while lowering his center of

gravity by bending his knees slightly. Smoothly he slipped through

the stalks. Following in the wake of his path and mimicking his

body posture, I found my own progress was much easier.

We came through and we were in yet another part of this enormous

maze, on another path. But I heard the sound of hooves hammering

the turf. Somewhere nearby, the haggard, dissatisfied threesome

was approaching. There was another path in front of us and,

running, we turned onto it and then I was surprised and dismayed

to see a new barrier: a large iron gate with spikes on top. It was

wrought in elegant and curious designs inlaid with red and white

colored glass. Looking more closely at the wrought iron designs, I

recognized that there were the outlines of chess pieces, some red,

and some white.

“The Red Queen, of course! How elegant! How marvelous! How

beautiful!” I exclaimed, pointing at an intricate, large, crowned

and skirted female figure near me, “And here is her knight, even

mounted on a red glass horse!”

The deep ruby-colored glass of the Red Queen’s face shone

smooth, smiling, and luminous. Wanting badly to touch the

beautiful glass, I reached out my hand gently.

“Oh! Please don’t touch her, she’s bad luck”, my guide said

quietly but rather urgently. I pulled my hand back quickly. The

sound of thundering hooves grew stronger.

Shakespeare, or rather his spirit, looked up at the top of the

gate, which was at least twice as tall as we were.

“Now for the hard part”, he said.

Chapter 29

Say “a day” without the “ever.” No, no, Orlando, men areApril when they woo, December when they wed; maidsare May when they are maids, but the sky changes whenthey are wives.

It is well-known that ninjas always carry a few small and simple

tools with them. My guide reached into his belted jacket and drew out a

long thin cord. Seeing these things, I felt annoyed. I hate climbing

fences, trees, and ladders, indeed, all sorts of items that are tall,

sharp, rough, slippery, or rickety. My arms are thin and not

particularly muscular. Also, I don’t like heights, and I have a horror

of rope-burn, scratches, bruises, and falling.

“Can’t we just go around? Through the grass?”, I asked, “like

before?”

“No. This fence extends all the way through this maze. If you look,

you’ll see it’s true.”

I peered into the masses of stalky vegetation, realizing now that it

was actually bamboo, not grass anymore, and I was shocked to see that

the fence, with its intricate designs of wrought-iron colored chess

pieces, had no end.

“Can we not, then, open this gate?” I asked desperately.

“Sorry, no key. Here, grab this end.”

Rather unenthusiastically I held onto a piece of rope while the

spirit threw the other end over the gate. It dangled down near us and he

tied it onto a piece of fence near a White Pawn and the Red King.

“Please hurry, since, as you can see, General Othello and the two

kings are now coming this way.”

More haggard and beaten-looking than ever, the three characters, now

all perched atop the sweating horse, appeared at the far end of the

path. I grasped the rope and pulled myself up, stepping on the filigreed

iron, but making sure to keep well away from the figure representing the

Red Queen. The task of climbing was not as difficult as I had feared

since I could use my legs, not just my rather spindly arms.

Soon we were over on the other side. The three men astride the horse

merely watched us, perhaps a little bitterly. The horse was breathing

hard, and the men looked exhausted, their eyes dull. Encumbered with

shields, armor or equipment, or old, like Lear, they did not even try to

follow us.

We slid down the rope on the other side and the sky changed, from

gray and blustery on the other side, to blue and clear. Here, the air

was soft and warm. We didn’t have to run any longer, since no one was

pursuing us.

Soon, we came to a place where the path widened and I heard the sound

of light laughter. Two young women dressed in jeans and peasant blouses

embroidered with flowers were sitting on the grass and eating sweet

potatoes and oranges. A bearded man, a bit older, was asleep nearby. He

wore a plain brown cotton tunic and cut-off jean shorts. A curious

thing, a round shiny golden crown, lay beside him.

One woman took a bite of a sweet potato. “Delicious!”, she exclaimed.

“Duncan! Wake up! Have one!”, said the other, peeling an orange and

nudging the sleeping figure with one free hand.

I could feel my brain making new calculations, trying to pick up on

the correspondences, the names, the possibility that they were also

Shakespearean characters. “Duncan” was the murdered king, I knew, from

Macbeth. I realized, triangulating, then these two women in this strange

maze in the land of mu might be from King Lear and Othello.

“The one eating a sweet potato is Cordelia, and the other one is

Desdemona”, my guide whispered, confirming my guess.

Duncan, the king, sat up and yawned.

My heart stood still as now, certain puzzling lines from the three

plays, lines that had always stumped me, now echoed in the bamboo forest

around me, sounding partly like the wind rustling the leaves and partly

like a folk singer’s voice unaccompanied by any instrument:

Here lay Duncan, his silver skin lac’d with his golden blood….…

Welcome hither! I have begun to plant thee, and will labor to make thee full of growing

O, never shall sun that morrow see!

You have seen sunshine and rain at once; her smiles and tears were like a better way…

There she shook the holy water from her heavenly eyes….

Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight?

By heaven, you do me wrong!

No, by this heavenly light!

Put out the light, and then put out the light.

If I quench thee, thy flaming minister….

These characters were associated with light, heaven, sunshine, and

gold..

Cordelia saw us and got up.

“Hello”, she called shyly. Desdemona and Duncan looked up and smiled.

Duncan had a harmonica in his pocket and he started playing jigs on it,

while Cordelia and Desdemona danced in a circle.

I could see that in this world of mu, just as on the other side of

the fence, normal conversation and logic, explanation and the language

of persuasion and reason indeed had no place. It was indeed a dream-like

world, fit only for a dream, which is only what it all was.

I wondered how to join in their group, or even if I should try.

My ninja guide drew a small bamboo flute, a shakuhachi, from his pocket

and started to play, accompanying Duncan.

Here, for some reason, too much talking seemed unnecessary.

Love, and be silent.

Music was, after all, better than words.

Cordelia and Desdemona began running through nearby paths of the

maze, emerging suddenly and disappearing, laughing and calling out to

each other. Duncan put his harmonica down and looked at me.

“Would you like to play in the maze as well?”, he asked kindly.

“Yes”, I said, lifting the ninja scarf off my head and freeing my

hair in the warm breeze. .

Soon all four of us were running through the maze, laughing, hiding,

calling out.

Duncan! Desdemona! Cordelia!

I heard my name as well, when one of them would call it. How did they

know me? I hadn’t yet introduced myself.

Viola!

It was delightful to be included in this group, just as delightful as

it had been awful to be pursued by the glum, dissatisfied, angst-ridden,

and bleary-eyed tragic heroes before. In the bamboo forest, now, we

found a small stream and cupped our hands to drink the clean and

delicious water.

Then the sound of the shakuhachi abruptly stopped and we heard

strident, demanding voices.

“It’s them!” said Desdemona, looking worried.

“I knew they would find us,” said Duncan sadly.

We went back to the clearing and some new figures, three woman and

one man, were to be seen, dressed in modern business attire. There were

two severe-looking women in gray suits with shiny leather briefcases

with the initials “G.L” and “R.L.” embossed in silver monograms,

respectively. There was a man in a well-cut suit with an expensive-

looking tie and new fashionable alligator shoes. The fourth one was a

woman wearing a long-sleeved black designer silk dress with spiky black

heels. Nearby, I spied a black sports car. They had probably arrived in

it.

“You’ll have to leave,” said one of the women holding a briefcase.

“As my sister, Goneril, says, this land is to be cleared and

developed.”, said the other.

“You must be gone! Do you hear! Take yourselves off! Everyone hates

you!” said the woman in the black dress said haughtily to Duncan,

sounding a bit as if she were on the verge of insanity. Momentarily, an

sounding sob escaped, like a serpent hissing, from her throat. Her three

companions stared at her edgy display of emotion with hatred.

In a threatening tone, the man turned to us and said, “We can only

be…err .. reasonable…. for so long. “ He held up a stack of official-

looking documents, “then we will have to resort to legal measures to

make you leave. And believe me, the law is on our side, not yours.”

“As my colleague, Iago, has intimated, we can bring this before a

court and get all your rights terminated instantly!”, said Goneril.

“Lady M.,” she asked, addressing the nutty-looking but most elegant

one, “have you brought the pen? These sun figures never have any pens

around. In fact, they never seem to have much at all around. Like pigs,

they live.”

Sun figures? Like Juliet, then.

“I have! I have! Of course I have! In its beautiful case!” hissed the

woman in black. She stretched out a pale hand, with long red nails, to

show us an expensive fountain pen. “Sign it! Sign it!”, she hissed.

The five of us just stood there stupidly; my brain had processed

these four new characters as Regan, Goneril, Iago and Lady Macbeth. Yet

we seemed to have no answers to their demands. Cordelia took the elegant

black pen and quickly signed the documents Iago held out for her.

“We can’t stay, so let’s go”, said Desdemona sadly, starting to pick

up the sweet potatoes and oranges and wrap them in a cotton

handkerchief.

“No you don’t get to keep those”, said Iago, “those are ours too now. Drop them

now and get lost. Go and make all the money thou canst! Put money in thy purse! Ha ha ha!”

Desdemona put the simple foods down on the grass and Lady Macbeth,

giggling a bit crazily, stepped over to put one of her designer stiletto

heels through a large sweet potato. Then she squashed it and started

laughing hysterically.

“Must she always get carried away?” said Regan, rolling her eyes.

“Well, I at least thought it was funny”, said Goneril harshly,

sneering at her sister.

I couldn’t think of anything to say at all. In this land of mu, there

was no logic and no reason. I was, like Alice, down a rabbit hole in

this dream. Things just happened and then they stopped.

Desdemona, Duncan and Cordelia walked off into the maze. Who knew

where they would go? In this land of mu, no doubt there were always

places and other dimensions to become lost and found in.

The professionals began rapidly making business calls on their cell

phones. They strutted up and down and busily gave directions, though not

to each other. Goneril also took a laptop computer out of her bag and

started typing away. They were not interested in us ninjas at all. I sat

listening to their smooth words. Not quite as melodious as music, their

conversations yet had a mesmerizing rhythm and a flow I could feel here

in the world of mu.

Let me speak to the architect at once, at once, I say!

Those numbers are just preliminary.

Five thousand square meters.

Suddenly Iago did a strange thing. His eyes started to become glowing

and almost red. Then he put his hand over the mouthpiece of his

cellphone, and, looking very angry, turned to us.

“Burn like the mines of sulphur!” he said loudly in an evil voice and

pointed at us.

“Is it a strange curse?”, I asked my ninja guide in a whisper.

“No, I wrote it. It’s line 329, scene three, act three of the play

Othello, actually. Do you like it? You must admit that his delivery, at

least, is effective. It might be a fine line for him to use in any

adversarial business negotiations, too, I imagine.”

“Yes, very true”, I said.

I remembered now in Othello how Iago keeps telling Roderigo, an empty

‘cipher’ character used as a sounding board: fill thy purse with money, go make

money, make all the money thou canst again and again in one scene.

Was this obsession with making money something to do with the

transition to a coal economy of Shakespeare’s time? Indeed, as I had

seen, everyone had needed to comply. No one could refuse.

My guide smiled at me as we walked off together. “Let us leave them,”

he said. “In this world of mu, their plans, also, are nothingness

itself. By the way, I have a small present for you.”

I took the tiny, round and shiny item he held out. It was a small

golden ring, a plain band.

I put it on next to my wedding band.

There may have been a potent spell in the ring. I felt the world

disappearing, myself being born again, emerging somewhere in a new

lighted place. I woke up and it was morning, and I was in my futon. I

looked at my hand and found the new ring. I took it off to examine it

and I found an inscription engraved on the outside:

Love me, and leave me not

Chapter 29

Give me that mattock and the wrenching iron.Hold, take this letter; early in the morningSee thou deliver it to my lord and father.Give me the light. Upon thy life, I charge thee,What e’er thou hearest or seest, stand all aloof,And do not interrupt me in my course.Why I descend into this bed of deathIs partly to behold my lady’s face,But chiefly to take thence from her dead fingerA precious ring----a ring that I must use In dear employment—therefore be gone.

I went to the computer and turned it on, and went to Open Source

Shakespeare, where all of Shakespeare’s works may be searched for

any words you like. I typed in “love me and never leave me” and one

result was returned: Gratanio’s lines in Act 5 of The Merchant of Venice.

About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring,That she did give me, whose posy wasFor all the world like cutler’s poetryUpon a knife, “love me and leave me not.”

I had been given, for some reason, Nerissa’s ring!

But why?

I went to get my Riverside Shakespeare to read The Merchant of Venice

further and see what the ring meant. I quietly carried the book out

of the room where Kazuo and Zenji were still sleeping on their

futons and brought it into the dining room. I made a pot of black

tea, poured a cup out into a mug and added a little bit of sugar.

Now I could attend to the play!

This was the first time I was trying decoding a play without the ghost!

Think!

What should I look for?

The sun?

Friars?

I felt it was very little to go on.

Then something strangely beautiful happened. A tiny golden light in

the shape of a ring appeared on the page! It danced around on the text

and settled finally on one the word “sunny” in the speech Bassanio

makes early on in the play when he describes Portia:

In Belmont is a lady richly leftAnd she is fair and, fairer than that word, Of wondrous virtues. Sometimes from her eyesI did receive fair speechless messages.Her name is Portia, nothing undervalued To Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia.Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth,For the four winds blow in from every coastRenowned suitors, and her sunny locksHang on her temples like a golden fleece,Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchis’ strond,And many Jasons come in quest of her.

The little magic ring was telling me that, in this play, Portia was the

sun! And I noticed that there were other words to conjure up the images

of a goddess from antiquity: temples, four winds, wide world. Portia

was the one to follow. I wrote down this down on a piece of paper.

The ring made of light jumped high into the air and hovered near my

cheek. I had to smile. It was more conjuring. Next, I was surprised

when the pages of the play turned magically and rapidly, as if blown by

the wind.

The pages stopped blowing forward near the end of the play. The ring

stopped at a small speech by Portia. She has defeated Shylock in court,

and is on her way back to Belmont, and she says to Nerissa:

So doth the greater glory dim the less:A substitute shines brightly as a kingUntil a king be by….

Did this mean that Portia was the “king”, a cosmic king, that is, the

sun, whose true power has been revealed, in comparison with Shylock’s,

to be much greater than his? I wrote down this question and the ring

jumped up again.

The pages of the play blew back to the famous courtroom scene in Act

4 where Portia starts off her most famous speech with the words “The

quality of mercy is not strained”. The ring hovered and danced over

many words in this speech: “awe”, “majesty”, “throned monarch”,

“kings”, “mightiest in the mightiest”, “God”, “power”. I wrote all of

these words and phrases down. The actors on the Elizabethan stage, I

had seen, had no microphone and just yelled their lines. Clearly

Portia, by yelling out words having to do with kings and power, was

going to become associated with kings and power, at least unconsciously

in the minds of the audience. It was a kind of theatrical magic.

The ring jumped up and hovered near me again, while the pages blew

again, back to Act 5.

Then the ring made of golden light descended and landed on a speech

where a messenger enters with news:

Messenger: Stephano is my name, and I bring wordMy mistress will before the break of dayBe here at Belmont. She doth stray about By holy crosses, where she kneels and praysFor happy wedlock hours.Lorenzo: Who comes with her?Messenger: None but a holy hermit and her maid.I pray you, is my master yet returned?

I realized that Portia is now seen in the mind’s eye of the theater

audience, to be praying, accompanied by a mysterious “holy hermit”! But

when Portia appears, accompanied by Nerissa, some 60 lines later, the

obscure religious figure has vanished.

Who was this mysterious hermit?

I guessed it must be another stand-in for Shakespeare himself!

Like Friar Lawrence, the anonymous hermit in The Merchant of Venice wants to

bring together Man and the Sun.

The “happy wedlock hours” were the union of the Sun (Portia) and

Mankind (Bassanio in the allegory).

I wrote it down.

I sighed. Shakespeare was starting to seem a little bit strange to me.

He was absolutely devoted to the sun. Was such single-mindedness

healthy?

The ring made of light jumped up again and the pages rustled. They

stopped at the lines which Shylock cries, although they are reported

onstage by Solanio, another empty ‘cipher’ character. The ring

danced over the following piece of text:

And jewels, two stones, two rich and precious stones,Stol’n by my daughter! Justice! Find the girl,She hath the stones upon her, and the ducats. (II.viii.20-22)

Stones?

Hadn’t Lear said something about “you are men of stones”?

Hadn’t Macbeth talked about the ‘very stones that prated of his whereabout’?

I understood that stones were the code word for coals. More

importantly, emotionally heightened utterances were more likely to

contain the extra, coded meaning: Macbeth on his way to commit murder,

Lear upon the realization that Cordelia is dead, Shylock in his agony.

Sulpher, the strongest component of coal smoke, was another code word

for coal. Lear and Othello both use the word when they have lost

control of their emotions.

As London and England had left the familiar old sun economy,

Shakespeare had expressed his own agony, in disguise, through of the

onstage cries of different characters.

I wondered why I should be the one to find out about it. It might be

better for it to remain hidden. I wasn’t active for solar energy or

involved with any cause. Why me?

The golden ring hovered again and the pages turned by magic. I was

now getting so used to magic that I was quite blasé about it and I

watched the pages while sipping my tea

The pages settled open in Act V, and where the ring made of golden

light settled, I read the same words by Gratiano I had previously

looked up on line:

About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring,That she did give me, whose posy wasFor all the world like cutler’s poetryUpon a knife, “love me and leave me not.”

If stones were coals, then might the golden rings, Portia’s and Nerissa’s represent the power of

the sun?

It was a kind of magic, the transmission of the power of the sun,

through words.

I started yawning, but the little gold ring danced up again, and

the pages spun forward to the beginning of the play. The ring settled

on the line where Salerio calls Antonio’s merchant ships ‘pageants of the

sea’. What? I wondered in my sleepiness, was Antonio, with his

ventures, another stand-in for Shakespeare, with his plays that were

ventures too?

I was too tired to think about it more. Shakespeare’s allegories were indeed complex

mechanisms!

It was all beyond me!

I had woken up too early. I noticed that the little golden ring

made of light was gone, and I closed the book and went back to my

futon to sleep a little more.

.

Chapter 30

Love, and be silent.

After an hour of restful sleep, I woke up and started recalling

the dream about being a ninja in a maze.

In the large maze, I had met three groups of characters, all from

the same three plays. Only the second group, the ones who

represented the sun, had enjoyed the maze as a game. The others, the

tragic heroes and the villains, had been unable to play or have any

fun there at all.

the mazed world now knows not which is which

I lay in bed wondering why on earth playing and playfulness would

be related to the sun.

The nine men’s morris is filled up with mud,And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,For lack of tread, are undistinguishable.The human mortals want their winter here;

Suddenly, remembering Goneril, Regan, Lady M. and Iago, so busy,

so serious, so intent, I understood.

Kazuo was awake by now.

“I now know why Titania was talking about the mazes being

undistinguishable!” I said with excitement, pulling his arm.

Kazuo yawned, “Ohayou”, he said sleepily. Good morning.

“Ohayou” I said, launching into my impromptu lecture. Kazuo

closed his eyes again, but I could see that he was awake.

”When coal became economically important, rural village life

became dysfunctional. Here Shakespeare describes the knock-on

effects of enclosing land, which was one indirect effect of coal

burning, since coal burning allowed greater concentrations of people

in cities, who could burn coal for fuel and did not need wood.

Playful country traditions, nine men’s morris or making mazes in

fields, have vanished with the old solar-based economy: also freely

singing is not appropriate in an urban place: “no night is now with

hymn or carol blest”.

Kazuo opened his eyes. “Makes sense, Viola”, he said. “The same

things happened here in Japan as modernization occurred. People

stopped playing and holding festivals and became terribly serious

about education, achievement, money, success. Every little town has

about 10 cram schools, every big city has hundreds of cram schools.

Filled with hundreds of children studying until late into the

evening, and expected to achieve and become professionals. Or else

their parents will be mortified. I used to be like that too, I

think.”

“I know, I know! I live here, remember?….So I wonder, who, then, is the

little changeling boy that Oberon and Titania are fighting over?”, I asked.

Kazuo was wide awake now. He lay back on his pillow, with his

arms under his head and looking up at the ceiling. “That’s easy, if

you think about it”, he said. “Shakespeare gave Bottom metaphorical

‘wings’ and let him soar up, along with his song and his

associations with the sun, and create a moment where magic will take

place and the negative forces expelled. When Titania wakes to say,

so comically, ‘What angel wakes me from my flow’ry bed?’, then,

actually, on the hidden level, it is true: Bottom is a winged angel

who, with her (she is now awake) will join the gods, the ones, like

Apollo, who are strictly associated with natural rituals and older

myths and who pre-date Christianity. He joins with her in love, and

she is cured, which is to say that she later hands over the “little

changeling boy”, the source of her argument with Oberon.”

“So who is he?”, I asked.

“He’s us, mankind. He’s living in luxurious circumstances, which

is to say using coal, and it’s driving Oberon crazy, who wants him

to be a kind of crazy nature worshipper like Oberon is.”

“Wow!”, was all I could manage to say.

If he had been alive today, Shakespeare might have been a radical

environmentalist.

Could I say such a thing? After all, it was such a totally different era. They hadn’t even

had electricity.

“But, “ Kazuo continued, “there’s no going over to Oberon’s side

until the sun gets together with the land, Mother Nature, or

Titania, in this case. And I suppose that would take many hundreds of

years of steadily using coal up and therefore expelling its influence slowly

through natural depletion. While the sun gets to be more and more

important for us human beings. It might be centuries, millennia,

from now, if you think about it. I have no idea how much coal is

left, of course. It would certainly be a dynamic process. And a very

lengthy one. And fascinating from the standpoint of human studies,

culture, religion, technology, everything.”

I breathed in. Now I saw it all. Two halves of the same one

unified thing.

A long, long time horizon. Much longer than a human lifespan.

“So, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is actually showing the same natural

process of fossil fuel depletion that is shown in Romeo and Juliet, but

from a comic side”, I said.

“Together, we figured the mystery out, Viola”, said Kazuo,

grinning and then leaning over and giving me a sudden congratulatory

kiss.

Lying back on my futon, I remembered the morality play I had seen

in hologram form months before. The main characters had been the

Vice, the Virtue and Everyman. Now, after my exciting dream in the

bamboo maze, I saw how Shakespeare had used the morality play form

to make a statement about man’s inescapable, though quite

interesting, position as a fossil-fuel user in the cosmos.

“And that’s not all”, I said. “There’s more to this fossil-fuel

angle. Lear, Macbeth and Othello all reject or do away with the sun

figures in their respective plays.”

“What?”

“I mean that the tragic hero is a collective idea of people as a

large group, the whole society, functioning as one. We have fire so

we can burn fuel, so we can burn fossil fuels too. It’s a path that

leads us little by little away from the sun economy. The sun

economy, Cordelia, Duncan, and Desdemona in their respective plays,

is therefore portrayed as being killed or rejected by the tragic

hero. He listens to the Vice, who goads him, flatters him, and

otherwise persuades him to do this. Regan and Goneril, Lady Macbeth,

and Iago all use their knowledge of humanity to get the hero to

listen to them. People might want complex, fancy, and elegant

things, symbolized by the way Lear prefers Goneril’s and Regan’s

speeches. Or people might be afraid of seeming unambitious and weak,

of being ridiculed, so they make an effort to get ahead, like

Macbeth. Or people might feel insecure in their success, jealous of

others, and feel that there was no limit to their needs and desires,

like Othello.”

“I see what you mean. Like when cars came to Japan. Everyone was

worried about others having them and looking modern and cool. No one

wanted to be left behind. At least that is what my father said.”

“Fossil fuels make everyone feel insecure. Someone else will get

the goodies and become the ruler or the company president. People

rush in to take what they can get; it’s completely natural to fear

that someone else would get an advantage.”

“I guess it’s the way we evolved, that’s all. Compete or lose.”

“Well, who could blame us? Planet Earth is often rather cold and

food is hard to come by. Well may we feel a bit insecure. It’s

natural.”

…..answer with thy uncover’d body this extremity of the skies.

For some reason, I remembered this line from King Lear, my favorite.

It made me suddenly remember the many Shinto Shrines I had seen, some

just little wooden shacks, open to the sky, the stars and the sun.

Shinto Shrines were a human attempt to appease the gods, connect

with them, channel them.

We have so little, please help us. ……

I had seen small offerings on the ledges of shrines: one or two

yen, a single-serving of sake, an orange, a cup of uncooked rice.

And in the process of appealing to the sky gods, the nature gods,

a curious thing had happened; the uncovered Shinto Shrines could

tell, in their silence, a bare, but necessary truth. Maybe they, and

their insistence on the sun, were why Shakespeare’s ghost tarried so

willingly in Tsubame. Tsubame had several old Shinto shrines.

In its basic mysteriousness, Shinto had no theology, no

scripture, no dogma.

Love, and be silent.

Shinto shrines often had little statues of foxes in and around

them, on ledges and on steps, because foxes, vexatious, devious,

tricky folk heroes, were a reminder of how things could look like

one thing and become another. A patch of sunlight, a storm, a

forest, a river…….they looked reliable, and like themselves only…..

…..but wait, and you will see that they have subtly changed and

become a bamboo flute, a bowl of rice, a square of cloth.

That was the magic.

Kazuo said, “And speaking of food, I’m getting hungry.”

Unaccommodated man.

“Hey, haven’t you ever heard of unaccommodated man?” I asked,

pretending to be annoyed.

“No.”

Kazuo, poor Kazuo, hadn’t yet read King Lear!

Chapter 31Now the melancholy god protect thee, and the tailormake thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind isa very opal. I would have men of such constancy put tosea, that their business might be everything and theirintent every where for that’s it that always makes agood voyage of nothing.

School was starting again after the summer break, and Kazuo left to

go back to Kurumachi. The mountains surrounding Tsubame turned moody

tones of red and orange. On a bicycle trip to a hardware store near the

Fushino River, I saw an orange persimmon and a black raven on a bare

branch sharply framed against the blue sky, and I knew fall had come.

That fall, I was very busy. The translation company I was

freelancing for as a proofreader sent me many scripts and storyboards

for commercials to check; I had to teach many eikaiwa classes, and I

started working one afternoon a week for an artisanal indigo-dyeing

workshop in Miyano run by a woman named Nagumo-san. Some of the buckets

and rolls of fabric needed two people to lift them, and I loved the

smell, the appearance and soft powdery touch of wet indigo dye.

When I had some spare time, I wrote the ideas about the relationship

between Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream down in a notebook. I

could now tie Romeo and Juliet together with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I

could see how a sun figure could function in a comedy and in a tragedy,

but I wanted to see what Professor Yamaguchi would say if I ran the

radical, but fascinating idea by her. One brilliant and sunny October

morning, when I had a little time, I put the notebook in a bag and took

a bus to Tsubame University, where I stopped in at Professor

Yamaguchi’s office during her office hours to see what she would say

about what Kazuo and I had found out. I was fortunate to find her

drinking tea at her desk and writing something on her computer. She

greeted me warmly.

When I had finished explaining the conclusions Kazuo and I had come

to about the plays, especially the religious aspect of Bottom as a sun

figure who “cures” Titania’s coal-related troubles, she clapped her

hands.

“Marvellous! Wow!“

I could not help but smile with relief. I had been quite worried that

our ideas, so different from the standard academic approaches in all the

major journals in the West, wouldn’t be accepted.

“To tell the truth”, she said, “I had always wondered about the

interaction of Bottom and Titania. It seems to me, now, as I consider it,

that Shakespeare has aimed to create a scene that comes near to

containing the power of an authentic and religious, agricultural

festival, necessarily and intrinsically bound up with the power of the

sun. The divine one, the “sun god”, is Bottom, and it is Titania, so in

need, who is placed in communication with him.”

“An agricultural festival?”, I asked.

Professor Yamaguchi grabbed a heavy red book off her shelf and

opened it.

“It’s a religious concept, “she said, starting to read, “‘An

agricultural festival is a time distinct from ordinary time. Man can communicate with the divine

during this time. The limitations of the present no longer matter. Different foods are eaten, and in

greater quantity; there are special clothes, and even sexual prohibitions and other restrictions

disappear. Emotions are meant to be expressed with freedom. The elites and rulers may be

parodied..…it is a time set in the time of myths and these myths give the present their sense of

time. Through this story, a path is open to all kinds of reform and the ideally perfect state.”

She put the book down. “So, Viola, your solar energy idea points to

the presence of an agricultural festival, which explains why Bottom,

usually at the very ‘bottom’ of the social ladder, is now given sublime

fairy food, and waited on, like a king, by the fairies. He wears an

ass’s head, recollecting older Fool figures; his song recollects the

Phallus, in that it ends by referring to cuckoo, which is to say the

cuckold, an obscene reference, and so on.”

I could see that I needed to study many more historical and cultural

references, ideas, and symbols, before I would ever be able to be a

scholar.

“More importantly”, said Professor Yamaguchi, “your ideas have

uncovered deep Hermetic techniques that seem to be used to stage a

profound religious moment that will be only vaguely sensed, not grasped

fully or directly, by the audience. Yet the fairy-magician Oberon has

basically set up the whole situation---a secret religious ritual ----

and Peter Quince, before exiting, has bestowed a religious consecration

upon the scene a few lines earlier: Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee! Thou art

translated.”

Professor Yamaguchi smiled. “I had always wondered about that line.

But thanks to your work, Viola, I can see its religious importance at

last.”

I didn’t tell her that I had once used it on my own husband. But I

did say,

“My husband Kazuo has been helping me with this interpretive work.”

She smiled. “That’s great!” She knew Kazuo. His office had been in

the next building before we had left Tsubame.

She looked down at her watch. “It’s lunch time, Viola, are you free

for lunch? There’s a university cafeteria nearby.”

I was very pleased to be invited.

The cafeteria was small, since Tsubame University is not very big.

We chose bowls of soba, buckwheat noodles, and I also was happy to find

small dishes of anin dofu, a silky white and sweet jelly served with

fruit syrup and canned fruit. I chose kaiso salad, too, from the

refrigerated shelves, and put the bowl on my tray.

When we had found an empty table, Professor Yamaguchi noticed my

salad.

“Do you like seaweed?” she asked.

“Actually I love it. It has a wonderful flavor. Japanese people

always ask me if I can eat seaweed, natto, or konnyaku, or koyadofu.

Actually, in my case I like all of them, especially konnyaku. But I eat

them a bit differently from the standard ways here.”

“How?”

“Well, I like konnyaku plain and raw, with a little wasabi on it,

instead of boiling it with fish broth. I eat natto straight, not on

rice. And I boil koyadofu with garlic and olive oil and zucchini, I guess

it’s kind of an Italian style, not with sweet fish broth and carrots as

is common here.”

Professor Yamaguchi laughed. “You are very eclectic, Viola! Not just

in your cooking, but also in your readings of Shakespeare, I see you

like doing a fusion thing between the East and West, and coming up with

something new. Omoshiroi.” Interesting.

I knew that that word, omoshiroi, made up of the two kanji 面面

supposedly originated when Amaterasu opened the door of her cave and

the shining light made all the faces, the 面 of the people outside, shine

white 面.

In this country, every good thing could be traced back to the sun.

“I had never thought of that,” I said, “And thank you. But I haven’t

written anything or produced anything concrete yet. And I’m pretty sure

I won’t. Besides, I think that fusion also can mean neither one thing

nor the other, hard to place, and hard to understand.”

“Well, but in my opinion, your ideas are interesting, simple, and

persuasive. And I can see that the ancient culture of Japan has played

a role in the way you have come to think about Shakespeare. I think

that’s fascinating. Because I know professors here, not just literature

professors, but even a chemistry professor, who have all of

Shakespeare’s collected works in Japanese and love his plays. There is

something universal about Shakespeare. Something that transcends

boundaries. And the sun, shining into every corner of the planet,

surely does unite us all. It’s the single star that powers our planet,

and without it none of us would be here. It is easy to forget that in

today’s digital, modern electronic age.”

“Yes, I suppose that particularly the sun as a central force, a

mythical figure, something to establish a relationship with: that’s an

idea I must have picked up here in Japan”, I said, deciding that I did

not need to mention the assistance of the ghost, “and here we have

Amaterasu, after all.”

“And not just Shinto, I think, is important for your ideas.”

“Oh, really? What do you mean?”, I asked.

“Well, how about Buddhism, or Bukkyo, as we call it here, the

teachings of the Buddha?”

“I don’t quite see how”, I said.

“Well, remember that passage from Hamlet about the book he is

reading, the ‘old men who have gray beards, their faces are wrinkled,

their eyes are purging plum-tree gum’, and so forth. Especially if we

connect it to Lo Spaccio and the passage on Jupiter, an aging god who is

dying of old age, isn’t it possible to see it as basically about the

passage of time and the way nothing, even a worldview, lasts and how

everything is impermanent? Now that is also one of the central ideas of

Buddhism.”

I had heard about impermanence in Buddhism many times. I had never

much thought about the concept. It seemed like just something people

automatically listed when they talked about Buddhism.

“Humans, “Professor Yamaguchi continued, “want to believe everything

is forever, any system they set, whether it’s a political party, a

dynasty, whatever. But Buddhism teaches us to try to let go of that

idea of permanence without too much pain and regret”, Professor

Yamaguchi waved her hand in the air and made a gentle swirl. She

laughed. “Of course, we never learn”, she said, “in some basic way we just

can’t. Every cell in our living bodies wants to continue living forever.

It’s biology! It’s natural! Fight on! Ganbare! And so we are caught!”

I laughed. “I think so…..I mean I think I understand. Things play

out, you mean. It’s a process. We are part of that in a dynamic, basic

and material way….um…actually, it’s kind of exciting, even pleasurable,

don’t you think? Because we are part of it so integrally. At one with

it.”

“Another Buddhist concept, as you probably know”, said Professor

Yamaguchi.

Caught between the intemperate sun and the cold rock that was our

planet, we were really doing our best, I guessed. I had come here to

Japan and learned this, learned to feel more sympathy for people, not

just those in Japan, than I had ever been able to before. Even for

Kazuo, the difficult, competitive husband I had left back in the area

where abnormal radiation levels were still being mapped on government

internet sites. Even for myself, a wanderer who never seemed to have a

home or really to want one.

But hadn’t I learned that I was always home?

“I know”, I said.

Shakespeare had used his observations of people in contact with coal

to make some broad observations that lit up brilliantly our strange,

difficult, yet exciting situation, a totally original balancing act

performed with energy and material in the world, no, in the whole

universe, and each one of us was engaged in it.

It was a literary secret that must never be told!

Because who would believe me?

No one except the Japanese!

They were the people whose broad and ancient cultural access to Shinto and Buddhism gave

them a head start in understanding the concepts of Giordano Bruno…..

The concepts Shakespeare had used and hidden very ingeniously!

Professor Yamaguchi laughed, “And yes, I guess it is exciting”, she

said, “if you put it that way.”

“It seems that Eastern religions are so broad and sweeping”, I said,

trying to sound scholarly and analytical, “there isn’t always that much

theology, but instead big, general, natural and cosmic ideas, like the

importance of the sun and the impermanence of life and everything

else.”

“The concepts were broad and universal enough to have been grasped

and embraced by Giordano Bruno, and I don’t mean particularly Buddhism

and Shinto, but related ideas in different forms, from the works of

many others, especially in ancient Greece”, said Professor Yamaguchi,

looking sad, “But he was terribly misunderstood for his broad and

universal kind of thinking.”

But here in the sunlit cafeteria, with its dusty, dated, 1980s

skylight and aluminum chairs and tables, there was nothing we could do

to save Giordano Bruno, over four hundred years after his fiery

execution. We were helpless, victims of the passage of time.

I said, “I always feel sad when I think of Bruno.”

“Yes, if he were alive today, he might be an excellent scholar

enjoying total academic freedom. Bruno was actively synthesizing ideas

from the ancients, some of which also made the journey eastward,

changing along the way, through India and China and to our shores in

Japan, millennia ago. It really is one world. Shakespeare could have

accessed ideas that ran deeply and widely and parallel to each other in

different cultures and parts of the world, taking on different names

and identities. Like mythical figures with new names and faces, for

example, but that resemble related ones in another area. The names of

the ideas were different, but the positions and central tenets had deep

commonalities.”

I knew that what she was suggesting was just speculation but

nevertheless, it sounded plausible.

People moved around and carried their ideas with them. Venice, in

particular, and Italy, in general, were places through which East-West

communications were most active and vibrant because of trading. Had

Italy inspired Shakespeare for this reason? He certainly had set many

of his best plays in Italy. He seemed to have had a fondness, too, for

Venice.

Silence fell over the table as it does so often whenever a meal is

finished. Professor Yamaguchi and I surveyed the empty dishes and

glasses. Together, we got up and brought the trays over to the metal

shelf. I put my jacket on.

“Thank you very much, for suggesting lunch, sensei”, I said, “I

enjoyed talking with you.”

“Come back and visit me again and let’s talk more someday”, she

said, “let me know how it goes with your ideas and your work. Tell me

about your plans for your idea.”

“Um”, I said, smiling and bowing slightly as we parted, “but the

thing is, I have no plans to do anything more with this at all. I’m

just not a scholar. It’s strictly for my own amusement.”

Chapter 32

The flame o’ th’ taperBows toward her, and would under-peep her lids,To see th’enclosed lights, now canopiedUnder these windows, white and azure-lac’dWith blue of heaven’s own tinct! But my design!To note the chamber, I will write all down.

Nagumo-san lived in a 300-year old wooden farmhouse with a large

doma, or room with an earthen floor. The doma was where she kept

all the fermenting pots and buckets for the indigo dye. We had to

pay attention to the date when fermentation began on a batch,

because the dye would soon go bad and then become unusable. Indigo

dye is delicate and unstable. She was in her late 50s and single,

and she always wore her hand-dyed creations: usually simple pants

and a belted jacket. She tied up her long black and gray hair with

interesting cotton indigo ribbons she wove herself from leftover

scraps of material and thread. I loved the way she dyed creative

designs, nightingales, chrysanthemums, a rabbit and a moon, into

the fabric. I spent hours learning the difficult techniques of

katazome, resist dyeing with stencils and rice paste, and once a

week, I stayed at the indigo dyeing workshop until the late

afternoon, when the sun started to disappear through the fragile-

looking old glass windows of the farmhouse in Miyahara. Sometimes I

brought Kaoru and Zenji to help too, so they could learn this

artful technique.

One day, in mid-December, Nagumo-san received a large rush order

for 50 noren from a shop in Kumamoto. We had to look hard for a

supplier who could sell us unbleached, un-dyed high-quality linen

noren in a hurry. I was on the computer and on the phone all day

finding a good supplier with enough in stock, and then, when the

noren arrived, they had to be dyed; the katazome designs were to be

simple but elegant, plum-tree flowers, cherry blossoms, a pheasant,

a pine tree, a dragonfly and a bamboo stalk. Nagumo-san asked me to

work two afternoons a week instead of just one for a while, and

since this meant more money, I was very grateful.

The Christmas season arrived, and the river outside was lined,

in piecemeal fashion, with Christmas lights. Collectively, it was

called iruminashon, or “illumination”. The lights were displayed by

the houses or little shops that wished to participate, on their own

trees or bushes. I supposed the electricity cost was at their own

expense, and was glad it was not at mine. But I enjoyed seeing the

lights, and I was a bit surprised when Zenji told me vehemently

while we were walking Teru one evening that the river would look

better without any lights along it at all, with just the moon and

the stars to illuminate it.

“Well, after all”, I said, “you are always the one who gets mad

in June when a car passes and you can’t see the natural lights of

the fireflies well for a few seconds.”.

“Yes”, he said, looking serious. “tondemonai”. Insupportable.

The young, at least if Zenji was any indication, seemed to be

becoming more radical than I could ever have imagined. Where was

the world headed? All of my friends in high school had loved cars

so much; and that was only 25 years ago! Luckily, I thought, I was

in my mid-forties; the young would fight every battle and change

what they thought necessary for their generation, and I would sit

peacefully, aging gracefully, in my little old wooden house.

Christmas in Japan was mainly celebrated by department stores,

as far as I could tell. There were a few decorations and some

generic American Christmas music was pumped through loudspeakers.

Zenji and Kaoru were old enough, and I was busy enough, that I

didn’t bother getting a little tree (I used to keep tiny real ones

in flowerpots) or buying presents. Still, on the 24th, I felt a warm

feeling, a rush of pleasure that just had to be, I concluded,

seasonal. Even the words Christmas Eve sounded special that day. All

the food shops presented large fried chicken legs in decorative

green paper boxes. It was most unfortunate that I had a

fantastically painful headache, transitioning to passing nausea, an

unpleasant syndrome due to exhaustion I sometimes get, but I

staggered out to the little grocery store near us where a 1970s

version of Frosty the Snowman was playing in an endless loop. I bought

one of the decorative little boxes of fried chicken, and how

pleased Kaorru and Zenji were when I returned home with it, plus a

package of strawberries. Collapsing on my futon, I fell asleep

while they played adventure games online and read manga.

Our Christmas was merry, after all.

Christmas isn’t a holiday in Japan, and Kurumachi University was

still in session until the 27th. On the 29th, Kazuo showed up to

celebrate O-Shogatsu, the New Year.

I hadn’t seen the ghost in a while. I had been busy, and did not

have much time to think about the supernatural adventures I had

been through. Without the ghost and his message to unite Kazuo and

me in a common enterprise, I felt worried that we would start to

argue again.

Once inside, Kazuo rummaged through his little suitcase and

brought out a book, black with stylized red curlicues that looked

like flames on the cover.

“A present”, he said, “although it is not wrapped.”

“Thank you”, I said, taking it. I read the title: The Expulsion of the

Triumphant Beast by Giordano Bruno.

“Wow!” I said, “Lo Spaccio della bestia trionfante! Thank you!”

“And have a look at Bruno’s opening words”, said Kazuo, “I put a

little paper there marking them. I think you will like them.”

I flipped to the indicated page, the very beginning passage of Lo

Spaccio, a section called “Explanatory Epistle” in this English

translation, and I read aloud;

“He is blind who does not see the sun, foolish who does not recognize it, ungrateful who is not thankful unto it, since so great is the light, so great the good, so great the benefit, through which it glows, through which it excels, through which it serves, the teacher of the senses, the father of substances, the author of life.”

“Or, as Shakespeare put it, Juliet is the sun”, said Kazuo.

“That’s the very power of poetry in a nutshell!”, I said. I felt

very happy.

“Now where is my tea, anyway?”, said Kazuo.

I did make the tea, but I brought Lo Spaccio into the kitchen with

me because without any delay, I wanted to find the interesting,

consequential passage where Jupiter comments on his crumbling

condition, his aging body. And, as everyone knows, water can

actually take quite a while to boil. Leaning comfortably against

the washing machine, I switched on the light and leafed through the

magical, once-forbidden pages of philosophy: not my field, but that

is just what made it all so tantalizing.

Shakespeare had read this book four hundred years ago and it had

changed his life.

Hamlet proves it.

.

Chapter 33

This is the air, that is the glorious sun,This pearl she gave me, I do feel’t and see ‘t.And though ‘tis wonder that enwraps me thus,Yet ‘tis not madness.

O-Misoka, or New Year’s Eve, has always been my favorite holiday.

It is not a day off, it is not a day with decorations, yet there is

something pulsing and vibrant, an urgency, a specialness, and a mood

of unfolding magnificence that needs no decorations to inspire it.

Back in the States, I used to love buying cheese and champagne on New

Year’s Eve. It was festive to stand in a long line in a Chicago deli

and enjoy the laughter and smiles of everyone else in the shop. Here

in Japan, I loved another food on O-Misoka: the tradition is to eat a

hot bowl of soba noodles in broth at around 10 pm. The dish is called

toshi-koshi soba, the noodles that will “take you over”. Not over the

hill, or over the moon, but simply over the magical stroke of

midnight.

At ten, Kazuo cooked toshi-koshi soba for us when I conveniently

failed to hear him telling me to do it.

“O-kaasan! It is time to make the toshi-koshi soba!”

“Hmmm? Chotto matte, ato de.” Stalling tactics. I was beginning to use

them effectively.

I hid a smile when I noticed him filling a pot with water.

Without a television, we were happily spared from having to watch

the slickly-produced programs featuring sentimental music acts from

the year. At midnight, Zenji was already asleep, but Kaoru, Kazuo and

I were drinking green tea at our little table. We heard the temple

bells from Enseiji tolling slowly as the year changed.

“Akemashite Omedetou!” Kazuo said.

“Akemashite Omedetou!”

“Akemashite Omedetou!”

We bowed gently and smiled, enjoying the fresh feeling of the

first minutes and seconds of a new year. With “Akemashite Omedetou”,

what you are doing is actually congratulating someone personally on

making it into the New Year, on just surviving. On just still being

alive. This greeting used to seem strange to me when I first arrived

in Japan. But after the Great Earthquake, devastating tsunami, and

nuclear accident, I had come to see that life was fragile and not to

be taken for granted.

Kaoru started yawning. “Nenasai”, said Kazuo to her. Go to bed. “Ashita

jiichan to baachan to asobu dakara.” Tomorrow we’ll see grandma and grandpa.

Jiichan and baachan were Kazuo’s elderly parents, who had kindly

taken the Shinkansen down to Tsubame for the holidays and were in a

hotel in the western section of Tsubame, where there were many onsen,

or hot spring spas. For lunch, we would be joining them for a New

Year’s feast at the hotel. “Ashita de wa nai”, said Kaoru, going up the

stairs, “Kyou!”. She wanted to have the last word, as any teenager wants

to, and she was right, it wasn’t tomorrow that we would see them, but

already today, New Year’s Day.

Kazuo and I stayed awake a little longer. I was reading Lo Spaccio,

although it was a bit over my head. Kazuo was reading his beloved

newspaper. I had refused to subscribe to it any longer for many

reasons, among them the poor condition of my finances and the fact

that often Japanese newspapers only seemed to echo the party line,

and I read the news online, but he had walked down to the train

station to buy it that day, and he was reading every square

centimeter of it, as usual.

Suddenly, outside, there was a tap on the window.

“Who could it be?” I asked.

“Let’s see.”

Kazuo slid open the window and the ghost of Shakespeare stood

there in the cold, smiling at us.

“Akemashite Omedetou”, he said.

He put one faintly glowing hand on the window sill and took a

leap, landing on the small table deftly. He stepped down gracefully

onto the floor.

“It has been a long time!” I said.

He smiled.

Kazuo offered him some tea.

“Arigatou. Itadakimasu.” I remembered all those months ago, when in this

very room, he had conjured up two glasses of mead. There had been all

that choking smoke and he had performed the thrilling ‘Seems, madam?

I know not seems’ monologue.

The ghost caught sight of my book. His smile widened,

“Ah! I see you are reading Lo Spaccio!”

“Yes, or trying to. It’s a bit difficult for me, actually”, I

said.

“May I have a look?”

“Please”, I said, putting the book into his ghostly hand.

He held it open with his right hand, furrowed his brow and hunched

his shoulders. His left hand exaggeratedly brushed his forehead as if

he were suffering emotional distress. Catching on to his performance

at once, I cried out in delight, “But look where sadly the poor wretch comes

reading!”

“Excellent”, said the ghost, “do you remember what happens after

Gertrude says that line?”

“Well, Polonius chats with Hamlet a while, and Hamlet is irritated

and abrasive with him; it is his antic disposition, full-on.”

“And then?”

I couldn’t remember. My own brow furrowed. I gave the ghost a

vacant look.

“I’m sorry”, I said, “but I can’t remember.”

Kazuo said, “Can we check the play in Viola’s book?”

“Please, by all means, go ahead.”

I hurried into the next room where I kept my books in little

stacks on the tokonoma.

“Here it is”, I said, flipping to Act II, scene 2 of Hamlet.

“Hamlet reads the part that may have come from Lo Spaccio, then along

come Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, the spies who are friends of

Hamlet’s from college. Then Polonius exits and Hamlet chats with

them, but he still has his antic disposition a bit and it is here

that he says that famous line that I love: O God, I could be bounded in a

nutshell, and count myself king of infinite space----were it not that I have bad dreams.”

Infinite space? I recognized it now as an idea that seemed to echo

Bruno’s idea of an infinite universe. Was it deliberate?

It had to be!

“And then what happens?” asked the ghost kindly.

“Hmmm. Well, they chat for a few more lines and then Hamlet does

his famous ‘man delights not me’ monologue.”

The ghost had put Lo Spaccio down by now. He stood up and by the way

he lifted his chin theatrically, I could see that he was about to

start a speech.

The ghost said softly to me, “Could you please read line 292?”

I looked down to find it.

“My lord, we were sent for”, I read.

Kazuo and I both sat still and watched as the ghost turned and

took short steps that demonstrated in his ghostly body language his

frustration and sense of futility.

He began,

“I will tell you why, so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery,

and your secrecy to the King and Queen moult no feather. I have of late—but wherefore I know not---lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a stale promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appeareth nothing tome but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors……”

“Wait a minute!”, I cried, interrupting him, “Vapors? Foul?

Pestilent? What? Are you secretly making a comment on horrible coal

smoke again? Here? In this famous, noble speech?”

Kazuo looked at me, “Do you mean that you don’t think he should be

doing that here?”

“Well, I mean, this speech is supposed to be so profound. Coal

smoke is so ordinary, a base and bitter substance!” I looked at the

ghost. “Sorry”, I said, “but I am surprised, or maybe I should say

that I am quite dismayed.”

Kazuo gazed back at me, a bit sharply. “Actually, coal and fossil

fuels have been incredible for people. And brought a lot of problems

too. Look at the smog in Beijing now, internationally famous. Look at

Climate Change. You have to understand, Viola, it’s not just about

the smoke, but also about the way we need fossil fuels and have come

to need them. It could be something deep that partly, at least,

defines us, determines us, and is, therefore actually us in a way. And

it is intimately tied to our use of fire, our competitiveness and our

evolution. Fire is basic for humans. For fire, we need fuel. So I’m

persuaded by his argument. If this is about coal smoke, it can still

be profound.”

I gave him a tiny, bitter, metallic smile. Kazuo, a student of the

social sciences, could say what he liked about fire and mankind, but

he would never be a literature scholar. Scholars of literature want

more than just coal smoke to be the answer!

We want the passionate, the ethereal, the sublime!

I said nothing, but vowed secretly and vehemently, now for the

umpteenth time, never to reveal this strange idea to anyone: How

would professors and professionals in the literary world take it?

They would be devastated and crushed, as I was, or they more likely

would laugh.

Fossil fuels were just other gifts from the sun, anyway.

Had Shakespeare known that complicating factoid?

Ought I to enlighten him about it now?

I cleared my throat and got ready to explain about the origin of

fossil fuels.

Both of them would love that.

But the ghost interrupted me before I could begin. He seemed

amused. “Never mind about it,” he said, “Can you skip on ahead,

please?”

I was happy to move away from the passage that now most definitely

delighted me not.

“Well”, I said, “Guildenstern and Rosencrantz now tell Hamlet that

some players are on their way to Elsinore. They talk about that for a

bit, then Polonius returns and Hamlet becomes very, very antic. He

sings a nonsense song about Jepthah, who sacrificed his daughter.

Then the players enter and Hamlet greets them.”

The ghost smiled happily, all his nervousness and antic behavior

was clearly gone. He cleared his throat and raised his voice, and

started in on Hamlet’s famous speech of welcome to the players.

I was hoping desperately there was no hidden coal smoke or mention

of sickness that might be construed as a secret reference to the

effects of coal smoke. I was very tired of all that. It was getting

old for me. The inky cloak and the fruitful river in the eye may have been

mischievous references to coal that I could admire for their impish

wit, but to have the ‘man delights not me’ speech revealed to be

merely complaining about smoke was, after all, pretty devastating.

“You are welcome, masters, welcome all!”, said the ghost, turning

to a group of imaginary players, before continuing;

“I am glad to see thee well. Welcome, good friends. O, old friend! Why thy face is valenc’d since I saw thee last; com’st thou to beard me in Denmark? What, my young lady and mistress!by ‘ lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw thee last, by the altitude of a chopine. Pray God your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not crack’d within the ring. Masters, you are all welcome. We’ll e’en to’t like French falc’ners----fly at anything we see; we’ll have a speech straight. Come, give us a taste of your quality, come, a passionate speech.”

He stopped and bowed slightly.

“So, then, what did you notice?”, asked the ghost, suddenly

reminding me of a college professor quizzing a class. I supposed he

could play anyone he wished.

“Hamlet seems happy, finally”, I said, “and kind, sincere,

generous. The antic disposition is suddenly gone”

“Very good. And do you notice any strange words that stick out,

that do not belong in a more or less ordinary greeting like this?”

“How about the word God”, said Kazuo, “and maybe ring, gold, and

definitely falc’ners.”

“And heaven, face, altitude, and pray”, I said, “they all seem a bit weird

here.”

What had Juliet said? O for a falc’ners voice.

Falcons. Heaven. Pray. Gold. Ring. Face.

I looked down at my ring finger and saw Nerissa’s gold ring, a

symbol of the sun.

“Love me and leave me not”

The sun was hiding in Hamlet’s strange words!

“All these words add up to the sun!” I said, “You’ve hidden the

sun in here! But why?”

Kazuo looked at me thoughtfully.

“Isn’t Hamlet supposed to be about Shakespeare himself?”

“Yes, of course”, I said with impatience.

“Then”, said Kazuo, “unlike Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear,

Hamlet is not an Everyman figure who chooses coal over the sun.

Hamlet is this playwright, Viola.”

I saw the allegory clearly, suddenly. Hamlet was about a fight.

There was a dead, good king: the sun economy. There was a bad,

powerful and living king; the fossil fuel economy. Hamlet, the son of

the good, dead king, was trying to expose what he felt was the

inferiority and falseness of the powerful, living one.

But was our economy so very wrong? It worked for us. I liked it

well enough. I supposed I must be a person more like Gertrude, just

satisfied with the way things were.

I didn’t say that, however.

My secret.

Ophelia had been the green places, the flowers and meadows, sacrificed.

Hamlet had loved her best.

I said, “I get it! Hamlet finds the sun when he meets the players.

His speech is social, sincere, no longer sarcastic and antic. You”, I

said to the ghost, “found your calling as a secret defender of

England’s by-then defunct sun economy when you started writing plays

and entered the world of the theater. That is what you have

allegorized here. It is about you and the sun. You hid the sun with words

while using its glimmering, golden power. That’s why you keep

referring to the dead king as Hyperion, a primal god of the sun in

Greek mythology. I had always wondered why you did that. And the

whole technique depended on the stage. The way that the greeting is

grasped on a conscious level, with Hamlet shouting out the words,

while unconsciously, the strangest words create little bumps in the

brain of the listener, where they become unconsciously grasped, and

equal the sun.”

The ghost sat down between Kazuo and me and started sipping his

tea. He looked tired. We all were tired. It was quite late, after

all. Or early, rather, in this New Year.

“I thought you would never get it”, he said, smiling at us both,

“but you did.”

Chapter 34

Hey ding-a-ding-a-dingHey ding-a-ding-a-dingSweet lovers love the spring

One of my favorite Japanese holidays is Setsu-bun. It is always held

on February 3, and marks the old division of the seasons, winter

from spring. It is a remnant of the old lunar calendar that Japan

followed until the Meiji era. It is another form of a New Year.

Zenji, Kaoru, and I were charging around the house in the dark

that February 3, participating in these seasonal magical rites. You

must circle inside the house clockwise, and start after dusk. Open

each window of the house and throw out a handful of roasted soybeans

while you recite the magic words.

Zenji shouted “Oni wa soto! Fuku wa Uchi!”

Goblins stay out! Luck stays in!

I scattered some inside the hallway, where we were standing.

Next window! It was in the tiny and ancient lavatory. We crowded

beside the toilet, slid open the windows and threw out three or four

beans at a time in turn. Oni wa soto! Then we threw another three or

four beans onto the floor. Fuku wa uchi!

I so enjoyed Setsu-bun. It was like casting spells.

After dinner, I was folding up laundry and pairing up socks on

the tatami mat. Zenji, lying on his stomach, was eating a few

roasted beans and reading a manga. Bored, I asked him, “What’s your

manga about?

“It’s about a ninja named Nagato. See, it’s called Nagato.” He

showed me the cover. A young man, striking a daring pose, and

wearing a headband, looked very mysterious in black. Behind him

there was the full moon and a huge pheasant wearing a fighting mask.

The pheasant’s wings were spread powerfully. Flames burned in the

background.

“A ninja?”

“He is in a school for ninjas. He is learning, Still, sometimes

he might have to fight an enemy or go on a spying mission.”

“What kind of things is he learning?”, I asked.

“Well, he watches things in nature and uses them to understand

what is going on. By watching beetles move a certain way on a tree,

he can tell if it will rain. And, by looking into a cat’s eyes he

can tell the time. And if he can get into a certain box, he must be

able to get outside the box again.”

“Cat’s have big black pupils when it’s dark”, I said.

“Right. And if birds change their way of flying or singing, he

can understand why, like a storm might be coming, or a hot day would

follow.”

“How does this help him be a ninja?”, I asked.

“Well, he can use his knowledge to make a plan to fight his

enemies or go on a spying mission. And sometimes he might disguise

himself as a street cleaner or a musician.”

“I see.”

“Mom?”

“yes?”

“I really want to read this, so can you go talk to Kaoru if you

want to talk?”

Kaoru was reading another manga, in the dining room, and I didn’t

want to bother her.

I had finished the laundry, so I went to the computer and clicked

on the “email” icon. Spring was here, or almost here. This was the

season to make adjustments and plans in Japan, where everything,

such as schools and jobs, ends in March and begins in April. Now I

was making almost enough money to support all four of us, though

very modestly. Both food and rent were much cheaper in Tsubame than

in the Tokyo area.

What was more, to tell the truth, I felt a bit lonely. The

children were great company but they weren’t the same as having my

husband around every day. Kazuo and I had shared the secret of the

ghost and our relationship had improved with the adventure. Would he

consider moving here? We could undertake more ghostly adventures,

raise the children together, work as private tutors and language

teachers and part-time college instructors, poor but happy. We could

buy a cheap old falling-down house near the mountains, tell jokes to

each other, find old books to read in the library, go to flea

markets, go for walks with Teru, drink coffee together and enjoy

growing old together while we were thrifty and patched up our old

clothes.

After all, two people who love each other don’t need a lot of money to have fun and be

happy.

Now, with Nagato, Bruno, Shakespeare, Hamlet, the sun, Lo Spaccio,

and ninjas all swirling around in my restless mind, I started to

type:

Dear Kazuo,

Zenji told me a little about ninjas and Nagato. Ninjas watched nature very closely and

used it to guide their knowledge and actions. And I was thinking, actually, that Bruno was a

lot like a ninja. You know, he was thinking about the sun being at the center. He realized that

it was significant, that there wasn’t anything else out there, ultimately, to bring anything of

material value to the earth. Copernicus’ discovery had confirmed that. So, like ninjas who

learn to recognize the significance of certain natural phenomenon, Bruno used the same

technique (I mean on a cosmic level) to see the basic relationship that was number one for

us, that everything goes back to the sun. And that we are small parts of this huge whole.

Then I can say (I know you might think it’s funny) that Shakespeare was also like a ninja.

Observing nature (what was happening with coal consumption in London in his time, I mean)

and seeing that it was always growing, he realized that people could never really control

their relationship with fossil fuels. The world was cold and difficult, so we would be forced to

use them as we competed with each other. But coal could change the relationship people had

with the sun, and Shakespeare saw that it was possibly risky. That is what Romeo and

Juliet is all about.

Anyway, what I am trying to say is that I think we should let this theme of ninjas be a

good guide for our marriage—in fact, for our lives!! I escaped from a place where I wasn’t

happy, and I could come back to the mountains. Sure I lost status, I lost my job, we’ve been

poor as a result. But ninjas travel light, they are obscure, they can disguise themselves, and

they are focused merely on survival rather than being number one. It’s a better strategy in

my opinion.

I’ve become a sort of ninja here, with my odd jobs. I even work with indigo and wear it a

lot, like real ninjas did, as Nagumo-san lets me use the extra dye for my own clothes, and I

have dyed a lot of them different shades of indigo blue.

As you know, we live in a tiny old house, but it’s cheap and it’s good enough. I’m working

for survival, not for great power or wealth. And I’m happy. I think we (that is, I mean to say,

you) should leave ambition behind and come here to live simply in Tsubame with us. You

might find any sort of job and just do it with your whole heart, looking with gratefulness up

to the sun every day. Anyway, that is what I think.

Love,

your wife,

Viola

Chapter 35Methinks the lady doth protest too much……

The phone rang about two hours later. Kazuo checks his email

pretty often,

“Viola, hi.”

There was no more impatience in his voice. We had come a long

way. I hoped it wasn’t just because we weren’t living together.

“Hi!” I said, trying to sound casual and free-spirited.

“I got your email.”

Was he trying to sound like he was being patient?

“Oh? Oh, well, actually, it was just something I wrote without

any plan, so if you----“

“Actually, it was very interesting. You made a lot of

intellectual connections.”

“Thank you.”

That fusion thing again.

“And I would like to go and live in Tsubame with you and Kaoru and

Zenji….”

“But…..?” I said.

I could already hear the punch line coming. I already knew the answer. No.

In my mind, I turned into a lizard sitting on a rock in the sun, impervious to fate and love.

“Oh, Viola.” There was pain in his voice. “I want to, of course.

But that’s not the way things work here in Japan. There are a lot of

other people, professors, graduate students, and staff members who

are my friends and colleagues and students, at this big university.

We can’t just abandon the enterprise and leave. You were just a

language teacher, a foreigner working on one-year contracts. It’s

different for me. I’ve got tenure. This is a large public

university. I have a responsibility to stay.”

I was ever to be the fool, the player, the geisha, the eikaiwa teacher.

Little gigs here and there. My fortune. My fate. A paid entertainer.

Like dinner theater. Cheap gags, riffs.

“ It’s O.K, there’s only room for one ninja in the house

anyway!”, I said brightly and falsely.

“Viola.”

“Never mind”, I said, “it wasn’t a serious idea. It was just a

joke.”

Ha!

You lie up to the hearing of the gods!

“One day we will be together again. In the meantime, you have

managed to find some good jobs that you like and some interesting

experiences happening with a ghost there. Tsubame is an old

traditional town, and it makes sense Shakespeare’s ghost chose it,

and not Kurumachi.”

“Yes”, I said simply.

“I’ll still visit whenever I can, you know.”

“I know.”

“The kids are doing well there. The water there is tasty and

clean. I’ve learned how important that is. You’re managing fine.”

“Thanks.” It was true. A skin rash I’d had in Kurmachi had

disappeared when I had moved back to Tsubame.

“And Viola,”

“Yes?”

“Why don’t you write a book about this ghost and everything that

happened to you there in Tsubame?”

Could someone with four jobs write a book too?

Impossible.

The ideas were so off-the-wall. A pile of rejection letters and obscurity awaited anyone

foolish enough to try to write about this weird topic and the strange playwright who had

loved the sun so much.

“Never”, I said vehemently, “not in a million years.”

I would not be that fool.

“That sounds like a case of, you know,….methinks the lady doth protest too

much.”

“I thought you said you had never read Hamlet.”

“I haven’t.”

“People will only laugh at me.” A thought entered my head, or

rather a quotation. I continued, “Besides, have you ever heard of

Viola, I mean the character in Twelfth Night?”

“No, what about her?”

“There’s a big mess having to do with mistaken identities, and

she says: ‘O, time, thou must untangle this, not I, it is too hard a knot for me t’untie.’ She

doesn’t have to do anything. I think that is the right approach

here. I don’t want to be ridiculed and mocked.”

“Well, it’s up to you. But I’m not laughing at you.”

Then, of course, the next thing he did was to start laughing at

me. “Hey, I bet I’m the only professor in my department with a real

ninja, or a modern version, at least, for a spouse.”

I was so pleased by these words that I stopped sulking.

I had to laugh now.

“Thanks”, I said.

“And remember, Viola, that ninjas spend a lot of time alone, and

endure things patiently. That’s what the “nin” kanji means. Inner

feelings, or kokoro, is the lower part of the kanji, and yaiba, or blade

is on the top. The feelings endure sharp pain. It has come to mean

forebearance, or shinobu. Another word for ninja is shinobimono. Ninjas

could never make any noise or reveal themselves. They were secretive

and if they suffered, they did so silently.”

“That sounds awful”, I said, “I’m going to change my mind about

the whole thing.”

A few minutes later, my cell phone blinked and buzzed on the

table. Checking it, I found that Kazuo had sent me a single emoji, a

red b, followed by the kanji for “ninja”: 面面. I looked at the kanji

carefully. Indeed the kanji “nin” was the kanji for blade, 面, over the kanji

for feelings, 面. I realized I would have to just have to endure my

loneliness. I had entertained, with such a sense of freewheeling

fun, the fantasy of being a ninja. But if I looked more closely at

the job, it was one that also came with suffering inscribed in its

very name.

Chapter 36

Your master quits you…..

It was early April, and the heavenly cherry blossoms were in bloom

again, pink clouds suspended in the air. The cherry trees along the

river were visible over a wall that runs along a narrow piece of land

behind our house. I have some long poles for drying laundry there; the

poles perch on two racks so they can accommodate a lot of clothes if

the clothes are hanging efficiently on the plastic clip hangers most

people use here. I was busy hanging the laundry one morning; the

children had started the new school year, and we were all enjoying the

warmer weather and sunnier days. I turned around to pick up a shirt of

Zenji’s from the laundry basket, and there was the ghost, standing

behind me, and now wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. He looked thin.

He hadn’t come around since early that New Year’s Day, so I was very

surprised and pleased to see him. In the bright daylight, his skin

looked almost translucent. I was very glad that the space we were

meeting was private, enclosed by a large laurel bush on one side, the

wall and another bushy tree on the other side. He looked more than ever

like a spirit, especially outside in the daylight. Somehow, he crossed

and re-crossed the space between the two worlds, spirit and human, to

visit me. How had he managed it? I had no idea. I was just happy to see

him again.

“Viola”, he said, “you look well.”

“Thank you”, I said, pausing. I didn’t want to say “you don’t”. But

it was true. He was looking more ghostly and reedy and frail than

before.

But he moved with agility. I felt a chilliness as he passed close to

me, like cold air from a cave. In a few steps he was at the laurel

tree, and I could see that something which had not been there before

was now, by magic, hanging on its branches. It was the long friar’s

robe, brown and homespun. The ghost put it on a cleared his throat. I

knew a performance was about to start. I sat down on the old and worn

looking bamboo bench beside me to enjoy the show.

The ghost began,

“Marry, this well carried shall on her behalfChange slander to remorse, that is some good.But not for that dream I on this strange course,But on this travail look for greater birth;She dying, as it must be so maintained,Upon the instant that she was accus’d,Shall be lamented, pitied, and excusedOf every hearer; for it so falls outThat what we have we prize not to the worthWhiles we enjoy it, but being lack’d and lost, Why then we rack the value; then we findThe virtue that possession would not show usWhiles it was ours; so will it fare with Claudio:When he shall hear she died upon his words,Th’idea of her shall sweetly creep Into his study of imagination,And every lovely organ of her lifeShall come apparell’d in more precious habit,More moving, delicate, and full of life,Into the eye and prospect of his soul,Than when she liv’d indeed. Then shall he mourn, If ever love had interest in his liver,And wish he had not so accused her;No, though he thought his accusation true.

Let this be so, and doubt not but successWill fashion the event in better shapeThan I can lay it down in likelihood.”

He stopped, closed his eyes, and stepped over to the bench to

sit down beside me. A cherry tree petal drifted in the breeze and

landed top of his ghostly head. Another landed in my lap.

“I’m not quite sure”, I said, “but I think it’s from Much Ado

About Nothing. What tipped me off was the friar’s robe. Friar Francis,

this time, not Friar Lawrence. Though, ummm, if you think about it

both of them are religious figures trying desperately to make a young

woman appear dead so that a marriage may take place later.”

“Do you remember the young woman’s name in Much Ado?”

“Something with an o at the end, I think.”

“Hero. Her name was Hero.”

There was something so cold and dead about his voice now, so

freezing and still. I felt an abyss open up in the air surrounding

us, a gaping tragedy looming, someone about to be sacrificed, and the

plunging sensation of a horrible death about to be witnessed. But

then, instead of this dark despair, the sound gave way to something

brighter: one name came echoing back from this chasm. I could hear it

in the wind. I heard it by magic, something defiant and certain, but

also kind and a little impatient.

The satirical rogue!

Of course!

Giordano Bruno.

“Bruno, you wanted to say”, I said, “Hero is Bruno. Hero was Bruno.

Your hero.”

I could see it all.

Slandered and falsely accused by Claudio, Mankind, Bruno was to

come alive again when his ideas were recognized and valued finally.

That time was not yet, perhaps.

Although lately renewable energy, which was to say the sun, the tides, the wind and all

that, had certainly become a hot topic.

“How did you work it all out?” I asked with excitement, “did you

write any special clues into the play?”

“Do you have the play?”

I ran to get my Riverside. The sliding door in the back where we

were was open, so I just stepped up, and inside, then returned

quickly with the huge brown book. Soon, I had opened to Much Ado

About Nothing.

“Have a look at Act I, scene 1, lines 230 through 235.”

I read the lines:

“Benedick: That I neither feel how she should be lov’d, nor know how she should be worthy, is the opinion that fire cannot melt out of me; I will die in it at the stake.

Don Pedro: Thou wast ever an obstinate heretic in the despite of beauty.” “

“I see”, I said, “fire cannot melt out of me; I will die in it at the stake; obstinate

heretic. You put them all together quickly, at the start. I can see it

now.”

I started to cry a little, thinking about the execution and the

pain, both the physical and the emotional pain, of 400 years ago. A

few cherry blossoms swirled around us.

“Any others?” I asked.

“Yes. In Act V, Don Pedro asks Benedick, ‘Why what’s the matter that you

have such a February face, so full of frost, of storm, and cloudiness?’”

“Of course! Bruno was executed on February 17, 1600.”

“When I read the news, I was devastated. I felt so helpless. I

could do nothing to help him. I decided to write something that

would be a lasting tribute to him. Public, but secret.”

“And that is why you called this play Much Ado About Nothing!”, I

cried, “It was your public yet very secret commentary on the charges

against Bruno’s, and his whole trial and execution. Wow!”

“Yes.”

“It was very brave of you”, I said, “But why has no one spotted

this before?”

“I suppose that no one stumbled onto the basic way I arranged sun

figures in my plays, first and foremost, Juliet, of course. No one

caught onto the connection to Lo Spaccio, and its opening lines about

the sun. Without those keys, it is hard to find the others……. But I

think you have been looking for my other sun figures a little in

your free time, haven’t you?”

He smiled. He knew!

It was true. I had been looking for the sun figures on my own,

when I had a little time.

“Actually, yes”, I said, “And I found one just the other day,

Antony, whose face was as the heavens and lighted…..wait….” I said, unable to

remember the lines exactly. I started looking through the pages, but

the ghost was faster.

“His face was as the heavens, and therein stuck a sun and moon, which kept their course,

and lighted the little O, the earth”, he said softly as another shower of pink

cherry blossom petals drifted down from the sky between us.

“Your sun figures do show a lot of variety”, I said, “that is one

thing that makes them so hard to spot. Not all of them are as

shining, positive and marvelous as Juliet. There could be only one

Juliet.”

“She was really the first one.”

“And was she maybe the best? Desdemona is a nice try, but that

phrase ‘thou flaming minister’ Othello uses on his way to stifle her in bed

makes me cringe a little. Othello may be my least favorite play.”

“It did not satisfy me, either.”

“I see”, I said, imagining him as a man 400 years ago in a cold

garret in London working over his manuscript of Othello. “But what

about Much Ado About Nothing? Who is the sun figure in it?”

“Can you guess?”

“It has to be Hero, aligned with Bruno She is another Juliet,

after all. You are trying to write a happy ending instead. Like

Juliet, Hero is supposed to die, but is secretly really alive.

Marries an impulsive but good young man. Everyman. Claudio and

Romeo.”

“I have marked a thousand blushing apparitions to start into her face……...in her eye

there hath appeared a fire to burn the errors that these princes hold. Both lines are

from Act 4, scene 1.”

“I understand!” I said, “you are showing Hero’s connection to the

sun, with ‘a thousand blushing apparitions to start into her face’, and her link to

Bruno, with the word fire and the errors of the princes, is to comment on

the accusations against Bruno by the powerful authorities in Rome and

Venice.”.

“Right, and a little bit later, I directly connect her to the sun

in Act Five when Claudio appears at her grave to recite her epitaph.

Don Pedro says:

“Good morrow, masters, put your torches out.The wolves have preyed, and look, the gentle day,Before the wheels of Phoebus, round aboutDapples the drowsy east with spots of grey.

Thanks to you all, and leave us. Fare you well. “

“It’s like a code!” I said, “it uses a sunrise to refer secretly

to the coming resurrection of Hero, or, rather, Bruno, or rather, his

ideas. How very clever.”

“Thank you.”

“But who is Benedick in all this?”

The ghost looked down at his translucent hands and in a rougher voice,

said,

“Why he is the Prince’s jester, a very dull fool: only his gift is in devising impossible slanders. None but libertines delight in him, and the commendation is not in his wit, but in his villany, for he both pleases men and angers them, and then they laugh at him and beat him.”

“From Act Two, scene one,” he continued.I started laughing. “The prince’s jester, it must be you! Impossible slanders! Those

are your plays! Oh, excellent! It’s marvelous! I love it!”

“I wanted to show my own state of mind, my own torment, and how I

decided not to kill Claudio after all. Benedick is my way to do that.”

“Ahh, I see! Beatrice says kill Claudio, and you almost decide to, but

then you don’t. It’s an allegory for the way you felt after Bruno’s

death. Part of you wanted to give up completely, but you didn’t lose

faith in humanity and only write bleak tragedies in which the

Everyman character dies.”

Cherry blossoms scattered around us.

“Yes.”

“Then I suppose that Beatrice is the desire for vengeance you felt. “

“’Come, talk not of her! You shall find her the infernal Ate in good apparel!’ Do you recall

that line from Act 2, scene 1? ”

“Vaguely. Ate is who, exactly?”

“Ate is the ancient Greek goddess of discord, mischief, and revenge.”

“I see! You overcame that feeling, the feeling to wish to take

revenge; you disarmed her and in a sense, married her. Brilliant.

Utterly complex, too, psychologically speaking. Almost modern in its

sensibilities. Benedick kisses her, saying peace, I will stop your mouth, and

she becomes silent and doesn’t say anymore.”

I paused while I searched for the words.

Here and there, blew more cherry blossom petals.

I almost said fantastic use of allegory, but then the right words came,

after all.

“It’s……ethereal!....sublime!.....and passionate!”, I cried.

I was now finally satisfied.

“Viola, if I did once actually kiss you, now, for real……would it

be all right with you?”.

More cherry blossoms, a rougher wind.

A ghost? I was to kiss a phantom?

Would I survive the experience?

He leaned over and gave me a very faint and brief, but very real

kiss on my lips. I felt a sensation much like ice, with a small,

appropriate amount of fire too. The cherry blossoms floated. The sky

was blue. No clouds were to be seen anywhere.

“Viola.”

“Good heavens!”, I exclaimed, feeling at once renewed and peaceful

after the strange kiss, “When will I see you again? Please, oh please,

don’t say it will be three months again before you return.”

“I…..I….. won’t be able to return for a while, maybe forever.

Ghosts need energy to interact with the living, and my energy has

been terribly depleted. Getting new energy is difficult for us

spirits. Ordinary metabolisms don’t function in the world of mu.”

“You are looking rather wan, after all.” I felt terribly sad. “But

we have only gotten started on Antony and Cleopatra, and there are still

so many other plays I wanted to discuss with you! Coriolanus, The Tempest,

Timon of Athens, Twelfth Night, Titus Andronicus, Cymbeline, and Measure for Measure and

more. All the others, in fact. The Histories, too. Did you even hide

sun figures and cosmic allegories in the Histories? Or did you adopt

a different approach? I have been wondering, wondering a lot,

actually.”

He looked down at his ghostly hands again. The wind became

chillier.

He remained silent, and I realized that he wasn’t going to tell me

more for now.

“Come inside where it’s warmer,” I said, trying to change

everything, “and let’s talk a little more at least.”

He didn’t move. I noticed that I could see the laurel bush vaguely

through his body. He was becoming more translucent, even transparent,

now.

I sat still and waited, holding my breath, while he faded away

into the air.

Soon he had completely disappeared. I sat very still, hoping that

he would return. I looked around, trying to remember everything, the

laurel tree, the old and decrepit bamboo bench, the wind, all as it

was that day, so I could conjure it up in my mind later.

The cherry blossoms that had blown around on us lay scattered on

the bench and the ground. I picked them up carefully and put them

randomly in some of the pages of his plays.

One day, I would look at them again.

ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

Months have passed, but indeed, as I feared, he has not returned.

I have often played with the idea of writing a book about the things

he said. Sometimes I all but decide to undertake to write a scholarly

tome of 10 volumes, with about eight hundred careful footnotes, and

in my daydreams, I even have extensively debated what color the cover

should be, dusky red or cream, azure, the green of bamboo leaves, or

even my familiar favorite, indigo. In pleasant imaginary scenes, I

walk past the shelf where I see these thick books, whose colors

change like the sky, and I glance at them, always hoping that he will

be standing there, smiling at me.

I know just how it will be.

We’ll start talking; and this time, we’ll go through all the

plays, even the long, daunting histories. There will be magical

performances and surprises, dreams, music, magic, strangers,

monologues, and more recognition scenes.

But he is never there, and I am nothing of a scholar anyway.

And other times, I decide to write down everything exactly as it

happened, simply and naturally, but there the problem is: who would

believe me?

So I have not done anything about it.

The seasons still change here in Tsubame, the wind stirring up

brawls among the reeds and grasses along the river. Kazuo visits

occasionally and with care and understanding we are managing to

balance things. He mentions Shakespeare’s ghost sometimes, but now

less and less frequently. This makes me sad, but it is natural for

people to forget all sorts of things over time, so it might be better

to let it be this way.

The mountains, green and splendid, as always surround this old

little town. And in every other way, also, my ordinary life, another

drama not yet played out, does not change.

EPILOGUE

The Capitol

The palace gardens at night

Night has already fallen and a stately, late dinner is being served in the palace. Outside, in

the palace gardens, the branches of the plum trees in the orchard shiver faintly in the evening

breeze. Spring arrived one month ago, and the air is still cool. One pine tree stands nearer the

palace walls than the others and no guards are nearby to observe when a kunoichi clad in the

darkest indigo blue crawls along the wall and steps with difficulty onto one thick branch of the

pine tree.

A half moon is framed by a cluster of clouds in the sky. She hugs the branch, then gently

and silently swings down and lands on the ground. Crouching down low and finding the

shadowy back part of the huge pine, she waits there for the stubborn moon to disappear. Ten

minutes pass, then twenty. One guard, a samurai, appears, a languid figure, bored, whose long

sword in its case brushes against a stone with a small cracking sound. He does not see the

kunoichi. He stalks away, taking big strides, suddenly in a hurry, as if he had remembered

something urgent.

The clouds fold in, expanding like unfolding gauze, and the moon disappears briefly. How

long? A few minutes, but this is long enough: the kunoichi darts to the shadows of a large

camellia bush she has noticed half way to the palace and waits there while the clouds dance

away from their partner, the half-moon. A few samurai can be heard nearer the palace, talking

about the unexpected results of a recent archery competition.

The samurai move away, nearer to the edge of the palace gate and the kunoichi circles a

small pond as a bird might circle it, a series of movements and starts and stops, naturally

dictated by the presence or absence of light. Now she has come to close to the Willow Room, a

large hall. She waits behind a rock, crouching. A samurai stands guard attentively at the side

door. Fifteen minutes pass. Thirty minutes pass. Another samurai retainer comes to take over

the post. She tries to make her breathing even more quiet as the chill breeze drops and the

stone she clutches for support takes on a clammy feel from the dew. Finally the floor inside

creaks softly and the massive wooden door slides open a bit. One of the most senior advisors of

the shogun emerges. Wearing green and gold silk, he has come from the after-dinner festivities.

He steps down and loudly tells the samurai to go inside and look for an important and special

bamboo flute, a shakuhachi, that has suddenly gone missing.

“The flute has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Investigate the matter

thoroughly, please, and then report back to me at once.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The samurai obediently steps up and disappears in the doorway and the senior advisor

moves slowly toward the pond and the stone where the kunoichi is hiding. Encircled by a cluster

of clouds, the moon shines brightly and the kunoichi recognizes the shogun’s senior advisor

coming so near her. He is their only spy on the inside of the palace, a very clever man with great

power, a man of such formal and consummate propriety that no one inside the palace would

ever suspect he was actually an agent.

She steps briefly out of the shadows and then back into them, and this advisor, whose

name is Watanabe, brushes near the stone where she hides, disappears into the shadows with

her and pauses to quickly drop something into her hand: a small scroll of paper which has been

secreted in his sleeve all evening. The ninja gently and silently tucks the scroll into the left breast

pocket of her indigo tunic. Watanabe emerges into the moonlight and slowly walks away, as

though absentmindedly pondering an issue of importance. He circles back to the doorway and

goes inside the palace.

The scroll bears a secret of great importance, so the ninja knows that she must not fail to

bring it out of the palace gardens.

She waits another ten minutes, until the moon disappears behind some more clouds,

before she starts running back to the camellia bush. Crouching in its shadows now, she gathers

herself and prepares to run back to the pine, but her mind checks her. There is something amiss,

and stops herself from making a single move. What is it? There! In the breeze, she has picked

up, only for an instant, the smell of salt and something sour! A samurai’s sweat!

Samurai, more than most men, carry the faint inescapable odor of an animal; this is

because some samurai, those with a preference for meat dishes, hunt wild boar and deer in the

mountains outside the capitol, and, consuming these creatures, these samurai exude a richer,

more sour smell than poorer men, who eat mostly rice, barley and river fish. The kunoichi waits

silently, crouched in the shadows, while the samurai passes close by; the only sound he makes is

when he steps on a twig near her foot. She makes sure not to raise her face up, nor move, and

now her breathing happens silently, the result of fastidious technical training.

She waits ten more minutes there, sniffs the air again from as many directions as she can

manage while crouching down, then runs softly and stealthily back to the pine tree. She doesn’t

bother to climb the pine tree, but goes over the wall directly, using a rope with a small iron

hook.

It is dawn before she is on the winding mountain road leading out of the capitol. A wide

straw hat covers her face completely and she has pulled on a thick and dark gray kimono over

her clothes; she had left it tied in a bundle under a tree outside the palace walls and picked it up

after her mission was accomplished. The dawn sky is grey and overcast, presaging rain, and she

shivers a bit in the damp and chilly mountain air.

Two more hours of walking on the path among pines and bushes, and over streams, brings

her to a small Buddhist temple at the edge of a forested valley. A light, cold drizzle is already

falling as she goes around to a little-noticed side entrance and she bows when she sees a young

monk drawing water from a well nearby. He bows silently in return, and takes the bamboo

bucket of water to the door, leaving it outside. He slides open the door and steps inside. A few

minutes later, an older monk, the head of the temple, appears at the doorway.

“Come inside.”

“Thank you.”

An hour later, she is warm and dry and asleep on a small thin mat in the room of the older

monk. He has given her a bowl of rice, a few pieces of pickled radish, a dish of her favorite fresh

creamy tofu, and some tea. She has often used this temple as a hiding place or a resting place,

and the older monk has shared her bed, though their passion must be conducted in silence and

secrecy. Cat-like, she comes and goes as she wishes.

Carrying the secret scroll, she will be on her way again the next day, on the mountain road

leading back to Iga. Perhaps the monk will arrange for her to travel with a group of itinerant

actors as he sometimes has in the past. Perhaps he will style her hair and rummage through an

enormous old paulownia wood trunk he keeps, a jumble full of strange items he collects and

never throws away, and find clothing, and maybe an old basket, suitable for a mountain

woman so that she can pass more easily through the Shogun’s guarded checkpoints. He seems

to enjoy assisting her with her disguises, setting her up, launching her forward, and warning

her away from dangers.

The older monk has a lively, playful, passionate, and devout spirit, with the soul of a

scholar, and that is why she trusts him. It might be said, that of all the men she knows, he is the

one who resembles most closely a husband in her life. Yet, both by nature aloof, they have

concluded that they should not marry. She was born, moreover, in the Year of the Snake, while

he is a Tiger, recognized by astrologers to be among the most incompatible romantic pairs of

all.

Besides, she loves being a kunoichi, a spy, a ninja. The solitary job, which comes with

difficult trials and hardships, as well as excitement and novelty, has been her life and taken her

to places she could never have imagined when she was just a girl, the cossetted eldest daughter

of a wealthy merchant, growing up near the coast in the Eastern provinces years ago.