Chapter 2
That Tuesday Sai stayed in. He usually slept in on Tuesdays until mid-morning. Then he'd either go meet Hikaru somewhere - if the boy was free - or he'd explore the neighborhood around Ogata's apartment building by himself. But today he had slept until 11:30, and then had found the rain pelting the window so hard he could almost feel the cold water through the double glazing as he laid a hand on the damp window pane.
He had taken up his book again and read about at least 7 bloody battles before Ogata rang his mobile at 5 to ask if he wanted a ride to the club for dinner and Go. Sai countered with a suggestion of curry hamburger at 'home' with a game for desert, because he really didn't fancy getting wet - the rain had not let up for a single moment all day - and because he knew the neither the Touyas nor Hikaru were going to be at the club today, so it really wasn't worth the trip. Mrs. Touya had commanded the male members of the family's presence at dinner that evening, and Hikaru had mumbled something about bowling with 'the guys'. Sai knew, of course, that 'the guys' were the young pros friends from when Hikaru had been an insei. Sai had met Isumi (a solid player, maybe too solid; mustn't forget playing Go is fun too) and Waya (a maniac on the board, but sloppy and thus very beatable), not too long ago. But Sai wasn't too interested in joining them in 'bowling' after Hikaru had explained the game to him.
The 10-dan pro and the former Heian noble shared a curry burger - extra sauce - and a strong game of Go after Ogata had warmed himself up with a hot shower; he had gotten home soaked, making Sai feel justified in indulging in his boring domesticity of that day. Sai did hope the next day's weather would be a lot better, because one day indoors in per week was quite enough for him, and there was the outing to consider. Yes, tomorrow Hikaru would take him to the museum, and hopefully, the former Heian noble would find more of his past there!
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Wednesday saw Sai and Hikaru alighting Kawai's cab at the taxi stand in front of the Tokyo Historic Museum.
Sai had never been to this part of Tokyo before and immediately he could hear the difference in street sounds. The closest he could describe was that the space sounded like a much bigger version of the square in front of the Mall on Ogata's street. Here too was the sound of water falling, but almost like there were ten fountains instead of just one. The echoes of the street sounds were different as well. Maybe the buildings were taller here, or just bigger. There was no way for him to know, really, and Sai settled for enjoying the sounds without knowing how they came to be.
Hikaru had been his usual high spirited self that morning. As Sai had noticed in dealing with his young friend - when not actually playing or watching Go - the kid just couldn't sit still; fact that Sai found a very amusing contrast. But since listening to street life was not anywhere as interesting as Go - at least to Hikaru - the boy pulled on Sai's arm, effectively breaking the blind man's contemplative mood. Sai let himself be dragged up a seemingly never ending stone staircase until they reached a plateau, which Hikaru then steered them across. Then there were a few more stone steps, and a sudden change of ambiance heralded their entry in a big enclosed space.
Hikaru left him standing, saying something about 'getting tickets and a map,' and cautioned him to stay put. Sai had no intention of straying; he was too busy listening to the noises of human life reflecting off the walls and the awfully high sounding ceiling. The echoes were stupendous!
The sudden appearance of a voice next to him startled him momentarily.
'Can I help you, sir?' A man's voice.
Sai froze, thoughts running through his head at 10.000 miles a minute. Was he in trouble? Was he in the way? Would he be moved on now? And if so, would he be allowed to walk out under his own steam or be bodily removed? If he was removed, would Hikaru be able to find him or would he be lost in a part of Tokyo that was unknown to him? What was he going to do when night came, he didn't want to be out all alone at night!
Then he stopped himself. /Hikaru. Remember you're here with Hikaru and so you're not alone./ The thought of his friend calmed him enough to rethink the situation and modify his own reaction to it. The man's voice had not sounded harsh or unfriendly, so Sai admonished himself for reacting to it as if it had. No, the man had sounded friendly enough, and the offer of help seemed kindly meant too. He exhaled and formulated an appropriate response to the man's query.
'My friend is getting tickets and a map,' he added that detail hoping that the addition would make Sai's presence there sound more convincing. This guy could be a security guard, with the task of keeping the riff raff out. And as a former inmate of the Men's Homeless Shelter of Harbor street, he knew very well what it is like to be considered 'riff raff'.
'He should be back soon,' Sai continued nervously. Hikaru was really taking his time, worrying the blind man somewhat, even if he was sure Hikaru would not abandon him here.
'In that case,' the man spoke politely, 'I will leave you to it. Should you need any help at all, just raise your hand and I, or one of my colleagues, will help you. We are at your service,' he added and the air displacement in front of the former Heian noble indicated the man's polite bow. Sai gave a short bow and thanked the man.
Just at that moment Hikaru reappeared, relieving Sai's overactive anxiety. The boy gently put his hand on his elbow and steered him out the noisy hall. Sai was quite glad of his young friend's help, as the echoes of that huge room were so overwhelming he wouldn't have been able to follow the boy's footsteps by sound alone.
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They left the hall and entered a corridor to come to a stairwell. They had gone up one flight of stairs then through another corridor, up three steps, a right turn, down 6 steps, through a heavy door, turned left, down another corridor, turned right, another three steps up, and through another heavy door, when Hikaru stopped them and started fiddling with a big piece of paper.
'Uh, Hikaru, are you sure you know where we're going?' Sai asked, trying not to sound too critical. He actually wasn't worried about getting back to the big hall; these narrow passages and bits of stairs were very easy for him to remember. But the trip so far seemed oddly complicated to him, with its twisting and turning. Of course Sai had - as far as he remembered - never been to a museum before, so he had no real clue what the layout of one might be.
'I'm taking a short cut,' the boy mumbled distractedly, 'we should be close now.'
Sai decided to leave this part to Hikaru; he was old enough not to get lost in here anyway. As he waited, he stepped a little closer to the wall he had felt was there with his cane. The sounds during their convoluted trip had been oddly muffled, and now that there was a moment, he decided he wanted to verify a theory he had on that. He touched the wall with his finger tips and was not at all surprised that they encountered soft cloth instead of hard wall paper or paint. There was actually some give in the material as well, indicating there was a space behind the fabric. Well that accounted for the muffled sounds and the slightly cramped feeling too.
Sai had just noted it down as an interesting choice of wall covering, when Hikaru resolutely said, 'Right. We've missed a turning; we need to go back.' With that, the boy wrapped his hand around Sai's elbow and he was once more being directed where to go.
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It was with some relief that Sai found himself in a new space, after having maneuvered through yet another heavy door. This space was roomier than the corridors had been, but had a similar hushed quality, so he assumed the wall here were covered in fabric too. He was about to tap his way over to wall to find out when Hikaru spoke.
'Ah, this is it. Oh, I think we've missed a room or so, 'cause this is the Nara period already. Uh, I think the start of the exhibit is this way,' the boy said and Sai felt him tug on his sleeve, indicating direction.
But Sai didn't move and instead asked almost breathlessly, 'Isn't the Heian just after the Nara period? Can we go there now?'
The former Heian noble of course had known the sequence of Japanese historical time periods, but reading about them in a book was likely to be quite different from experiencing them in a museum. He suddenly found himself very anxious to go straight to his own period now that he was finally so close.
'Yes, it is,' the boy confirmed. 'Yes, we can, if you wanna. Uh...' Air was displaced when the young pro swung around the blind man, as if looking 'round for information.
'Ah, over there,' Hikaru stated and again Sai received a tug on his sleeve. He followed the boy's muffled footfalls and felt the air current shift when he passed under an arch into a new room.
'Oh, look at this,' came from his left. Sai changed direction and moved towards Hikaru new location.
'It's "the silk day attire of a mid-level ranked courtier", it says here,' the young pro continued more softly when Sai had reached him. It was odd; the fabric muffled sound effect of the place made even a boisterous kid like his friend keep his voice down almost naturally.
'It looks just like what you used ta wear. T' same colors too. Look at that pattern, like that, yeah,' Hikaru mused. Sai stretched out his fingers unconsciously, wanting to touch the fabric, feel its rich reality, only to come upon a cold pane of glass blocking his way.
He did not have time to think about his disappointment, because just then there was a sudden swelling of human noise behind him as many feet entered the room and a female voice rang out loudly, seemingly unimpressed with the compulsion to stay quiet that the room's decor had hoped to produce.
'This is the Heian period. It lasted from the year 794 to the year 1185. In this classical period the imperial court experienced its heyday of art, most notably poetry and literature. The /Tale of Genij/ was written in this period. Daisuke, thumb out of your mouth, now!' The sudden change in the lady's voice startled Sai, but since the rebuke obviously had not been meant for him he relaxed immediately.
Undisturbed the lady continued her monotonous monologue with, 'the nobles at court also spent their time playing music and games and of course, practicing politics. The actual running of the country was left to the lower officials and the warrior class, who kept the peasants in line, while the nobility had their life of leisure.'
The former Heian noble frowned at this information; had his class and therefore he himself been a wastrel in his first life? The Braille book had indeed mentioned that life at court was good, but it had also said that the Heian period had been one of the most prosperous of Japan's history. But the chapter on the Heian period had been disappointingly short. Did this lady know more than the book?
The lady continued talking and walking, taking the many tiny footsteps with her.
'The period ended in 1185 - Raiden, leave that alone! - with a bloody civil war that pretty much wiped out the entire corrupt noble class, and from then on the warrior class ruled.' Suddenly the footsteps seized. 'Who can tell me who was part of the warrior class?' She paused a moment and silence reined.
'Tadashi?' she asked.
'The samurai, Miss Hama,' a very young voice replied.
'Yes, that is correct. Riku stop pulling Haruka's hair. And as you all know my ancestors were samurai too.' There were many murmurs of assent, all very young voices. The procession started moving again, Miss Hama's speech fading as she and her school class moved into the next room.
'Now the Kamakura period is much more interesting; it's the time of the samurai. See those swords? Those are /katana/ and were used to...'
Sai stood with his hand still on the glass and feeling deeply disappointed in himself and his class. Had his contemporaries really left all the work to others while they had lived a life of luxury? Had he? The Braille history book had said that everybody had prospered, but had made no mention of the division of labor of that period (nor had it in any of the other periods, to be fair), so what the teacher had said could well be true.
'Hikaru, is what she said true?' he asked his friend softly.
'Uh? Who said what?' A clear note of confusion in the kid's tone.
'About the Heian nobles not working but only playing games?' /Of Go/ he almost added.
'Uh, yeah, I think so. That's pretty much what I remember from history class. We skipped most of the early periods and did loads on the Meiji Restoration. Very boring.'
Sai hadn't reached the chapter on the Meiji Restoration yet. So he couldn't agree or disagree with his young friend's assessment of the period and gave no comment. He realized he needed more information on his own period as well as the others. Until he had read more he would reserve judgment of his own class. It could well all be true, and he knew that he would be bitterly disappointed if it was, but as long as he didn't know, there was hope.
'Oh look here,' the boy pulled his sleeve again and he let himself be lead along the glass wall, his hand slipping gently over the glass.
'It's a map of Japan. I think it was actually drawn in the period. Oh, look, they've got the shape of Hokkaidō wrong!'
Sai of course couldn't see and wasn't very interested right now anyway. But as the young pro had halted his advance along the wall to look at the map, Sai had had to halt as well or run into to his friend's back, and while coming to a standstill his hand had dropped down from the glass to the fabric covered wall underneath where his ultrasensitive fingers had grazed a plastic tag mounted on the wall. It had bumps on it, that Sai's fingers read instantly as '-missioned'.
Sai perked up immediately; the joyful novelty of being able to read had not worn off, nor did he think it ever would. He let his fingers find the beginning of the tag and then read out, 'Map of Japan, inscribed as having been commissioned by Emperor Shirakawa in the third year of his reign, 1075.'
'Gee, is that what that says?' The boy move next to him and his hand brushed Sai's as Hikaru touched the tag. He had shown his friend his Braille books before so the concept was not new to the boy.
'Pretty neat; I can't see there is anything there at all in this light, but you can read it just fine, I guess!' Hikaru sounded pretty surprised at that. 'Maybe I should learn me some of that too!' he added, laughing.
They moved on the next window, where Sai found a tag that said: 'Later illustration of /the Tale of Genji/, depicting female quarters in the imperial palace during the Heian period.'
'Urg, the perspective is all funny,' was Hikaru's only comment.
Being male, Sai rather doubted he'd ever been in the female quarters. The history book mentioned that men and women lived separately most of their lives, unless they were married, and mostly not even then. Sai wondered briefly if he had been married, way back then, but then dismissed the thought; if he had been then he hadn't told Hikaru about it when he'd been a ghost, because if he had the young pro would have told him by now.
He really hoped he hadn't been married, because the idea of leaving a wife - or even worse a wife and child - behind when he had committed suicide struck him as utterly wrong, and he just couldn't see his former self - however much of an over privileged wastrel he might have been - feel any different on this subject than he did right now. He exhaled. Of course, he would never know for sure, unless he started remembering his first life properly. He reminded himself that that was exactly why he was here today; only so far, disappointingly, no memories had been triggered. Not too surprising, he realized, since he hadn't actually been able to handle any Heian item yet!
He found Hikaru's arm and urged, 'Hikaru, there are supposed to be objects that can be touched here, can you find them for me?'
'Sure, uh, lemme look, it's actually quite dark in here...'
The boy started moving away from the wall with the map and art work, and Sai held on to his arm and followed closely until Hikaru halted again.
'Here it is, on this table.'
Sai moved next to his friend and indeed found the edge of a table. His hand slid across the surface, finding a big plaque fastened to it. Hoping to find more Braille he moved his fingers across it, but they came away disappointed; the plaque was perfectly smooth. Then his hand was grabbed and moved a full hand-width to his right where the fingers encountered another plaque, this time with Braille relief.
'This is the one you want,' Hikaru said, letting go of his hand.
"Objects can be handled freely," it said. Sai reached out further across the table, hoping to encounter a familiar object that might make him remember and give him a glimpse of the past. The table seemed to run out a lot sooner than he had expected and Sai found his hand suddenly plunged into a depth. As he pulled his hand back hastily, the back brushed some object that then shifted and started to fall. The blind man grabbed the object quickly - a bowl of some kind - and brought it towards himself. He sat it down on top of the Braille plaque and started feeling it.
It was round, cold to the touch (ceramic for sure) with relief on the sides (a flower, he thought, a chrysanthemum maybe) and ridges that could indicate a circular decoration all around the rim. It felt like an ordinary food bowl, one he'd had thousands of meals out of. But hold on, the bowls at the hospital and the shelter had been plastic or metal, not ceramic. It was only recently that he had been eating from ceramic plates and bowls, and those had felt nothing like this one! No, he was holding a bowl like the ones from his first life in his hands; he was sure of it. /Oh!/ A harrowing thought just occurred to him; he wasn't holding an actual 1000 year old bowl was he? He unconsciously gripped it tighter when he asked Hikaru the same thing.
'Uh, I doubt it,' the boy replied and then paused. 'Oh, here it says: "All items in the handling bin are made by Yunomi Enterprises, in their reproduction department. Yunomi Enterprises is proud to make available these items that are meticulously produced using the authentic materials of the period, wherever possible." I guess not then, but that's not bad either,' Hikaru added.
Sai was still uncertainly fingering the bowl, unwilling to let it go for fear of damaging it, when he asked his friend to describe what was in the 'bin'.
'Uh, some more bowls, and chopsticks. Paper scroll, brushes, comb, fan, musical instrument, some pieces of cloth from kimono, I think. Uh... Nothing about Go though! That sucks!'
Sai was starting to feel his friend's impatience. If there wasn't anything Go related on the table, there would be nothing to hold the young man's attention. But Sai was unwilling to let himself be hurried and he wasn't about to leave without touching all these items, hoping for a single spark.
'Hikaru, can you put this bowl back for me and,' he had think for a moment what to try first. Maybe the most tactile, he decided, 'hand me the kimono cloth, if you please.'
'Sure,' came the boy's reply. Sai was happy to note that the tone of annoyance had disappeared; maybe Hikaru wasn't really pissed off after all.
The bowl was lifted from his fingers and a swatch of soft cloth was placed in his open hands a moment later. Sai ran his hand over it in slow sweeps; it was the softest and smoothest material he'd ever felt. There was a sense of sweeping his hands across yards of material, hands and arms entering luscious sleeves when dressing, smoothing out folds and tucking material under belts of contrastingly colored silks, and long sleeves sweeping outwards like the wings of a white crane, before settling on the ground out of the way of the Goban. Sai's hand stilled as, before his eyes, he saw the Goban filling up with moves and counter moves. The hands playing were not his, but that of a boy, and his vantage point wasn't quite right either, as though he was not sitting properly in from of the Goban but more off to the side. He looked over to his left and next to him sat Hikaru, tailor fashion, still a young boy wearing a bright yellow T-shirt. Sai looked over to the boy's opponent, but the other side of the board was shrouded in complete darkness and he was unable to make out the other player's face. Unconsciously he raised his hand to his mouth in consternation, but was immediately distracted by the white silk sleeve that covered all of his hand. It was very high quality material, soft and smooth to the touch, as soft and smooth as the swatch he was rubbing between his fingers right now, here in a museum in Tokyo. With that awareness, the vision faded and Sai's world was black once more.
He swallowed at the loss of light and wished the vision back again, but his world stayed stubbornly dark. Had this been a memory? Or merely a sensory fragment? If a memory, it was an odd one, to be sure. But odd or not, true memory or not, Sai was very glad to have experienced it.
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Over the next half hour the blind man handled each item as his young friend passes them to him, one after the other. First was a brush and some paper, both of which Sai recognized as familiar, but neither drew a spark. Then came some chopsticks, a comb and a fan. The fan, with its bamboo ribs and paper 'wings', was just as familiar as Hikaru's own tasseled version had been when he had handled it, but it too neither sparked a memory nor enabled a vision.
Then another bamboo item was laid in his hands. It was long, adorned with ridges at intervals, with seven holes placed evenly along one side and with a single oval hole placed at some distance from the others. Sai recognized it at once as a /fue/, a flute. Of their own volition his fingers sought out the round holes, covering them with the pads of the each finger's first joint and the oval was placed to his lips, bringing the flute out to his right. He breathed out strongly, and a single wailing tone was produced. Without his mind commanding them, his fingers shifted, finding a new formation of covered and uncovered holes. He breathed again, only now realizing that it wasn't a breath at all, but more a powerful pushing out of air from his mouth. Another, lighter tone came forth. Again a slight shift in positioning his fingers, blowing out more air, and the tone changed to a lower one again. Lift some fingers, lower others, blow and another long tone came forth, bringing with it a mist of deep red. Dark at first but becoming more vibrant by the lengthening of the tone. A new tone brought a veil of orange, and another a partial disc of yellow. Sai noticed that his black world, wherever it wasn't now red and orange and yellow, was turning blue above him and green below. The yellow disc grew stronger and rounder as it slowly rose in the distance, the reds and oranges turned into fluffy pink clouds, all commanded by the flute's changing tones. Sai could see and feel the wind play gently with the green grass at his feet. The sun was now so bright he couldn't look straight at it and he slowly turned around. He cast his eyes upon the purple mountain range up ahead, recognizing mount Daimonji in its early dawn state, its snow tops colored pink by the weak sun.
A wind blew and made the sleeves of his Heian noble's outfit flap around him wildly. But it was not strong enough to make him stop his song. New tones flowed and with them the fields around him were lit by the early morning sunshine. An elongated high tone seemed to produce a flock of birds that flew overhead, while the lower tones seemed to point out nearby trees that were crooked from being whipped by the same winds, year in and year out. Middle tones gave life to the far mountains and a nearby stream, and the tall summer yellowed grass that was being whipped around his knees in the strong breeze. Then the wind suddenly died down and Sai saw a beautiful sunny day. The sun shone warm on his silk clad back and the mountains glistened in the distance. As he looked up he saw that the sky was a vibrant blue that stretched out into infinity, like the single note he was playing stretched out into first one tone than another, and another, and...
As he lowered the flute from his lips the vision was lost and his world turned dark once more. He carefully placed the flute to the table and used his sleeve to wipe away the tears that ran down his cheeks. It had been the most magnificent thing he had ever seen. He was grateful for the vision, truly grateful, but why did it have to end?
'Excuse me sir?' A male voice came across the table. Sai felt drained and bruised, and the last thing he wanted to do was to talk to a stranger.
'If I may say, that was most beautiful, you play well, sir,' the man persisted.
'Thank you,' he replied dully before turning to Hikaru and whispered, /'I'd like to go now, please.'/
/'Alright,'/ Hikaru said and Sai felt his left arm taken up and he had just time to unwrap and extend his cane before the young man had started moving them out.
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An interminable journey of corridors and turns and steps up and steps down brought them to the outside air. But when Hikaru started to drag him down the huge stone steps outside, Sai resisted his pull and sat down heavily putting his head in his hands. His hands became wet instantly with the tears he just couldn't stop. His shoulders shook with irrepressible sobs.
'Look, uhm,' the boy stammered. 'D'ya want something to drink or somethin'?' Hikaru tried after a half minute. 'Yeah, that's a good idea,' he answered his own question. The boy's hand padded his shoulder once and then moved off.
'Stay here, I see a soda stand, I'll be right back.' The boy's voice grew softer with distance and anything more Hikaru might have said was swept away by the wind.
Sai wiped his sleeve across his face, trying to get most of the moisture off. That vision had been so beautiful, the colors so vibrant and the sensations so real. There was no way he would believe that that place hadn't been real to him at some point in his life. He could remember the fluttering white sleeves he had worn and the purple trousers that the grass had grazed in its wild dance in the wind. Hikaru had described how he had looked as a ghost, the clothing, the hair, the fan and of course that hat. The description had not included a flute, but then maybe he hadn't had one as a ghost. But at least it made it very likely that the vision had been of some place his former self had visited. Sai experienced a wave of homesickness towards that untouched place. He so wanted to go there or, barring that, he would settle for just seeing and experiencing it again.
He suddenly wondered if going back in to the museum and handling the flute again would call back the vision. The thought was interrupted by Hikaru's arrival with a can of soda for Sai, and one for himself.
While he sat and sipped the drink - with odd bubbles in it that tickled his throat - he decided against going back. He realized that if he were to try the flute again and the vision would not reappear, he'd be heartbroken. Even if the vision did come again, it would inevitably come to an end again and his heart would still be broken. No, it was wiser to not try and just cherish the experience he'd already had. At least it was for now.
With that, he finished his sickly sweet drink, gave his face a last thorough wipe, and asked his young friend where he wanted to go next. The day was young after all.
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TBC
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