CHAPTER 5

I passed a field of rice seedlings on my right, then turned into the graveyard. I was walking down its broad maple-lined central avenue when I saw someone who could be Sensei emerging from the teahouse at the far end. I went on toward the figure until I could make out the sunlight flashing on the rim of his spectacles. “Sensei!” I called abruptly.

He halted and stared at me.

“How . . . ? How . . . ?”

The repeated word hung strangely in the hushed midday air. I found myself suddenly unable to reply.

“Did you follow me here? How . . . ?”

He seemed quite calm. His voice was quiet. But a shadow seemed to cloud his face.

I explained how I came to be there.

“Did my wife tell you whose grave I’ve come to visit?”

“No, she didn’t mention that.”

“I see. Yes, she wouldn’t have any reason to, after all. She had only just met you. There’d be no need to tell you anything.”

He seemed finally satisfied, but I was puzzled by what he had said.

Sensei and I walked together among the graves to the exit. One of the tombstones was inscribed with a foreign name, “Isabella So-and-so.” Another, evidently belonging to a Christian, read “Rogin, Servant of God.” Next to it stood a stupa with a quotation from the sutras: “Buddhahood is innate to all beings.” Another gravestone bore the title “Minister Plenipotentiary.” I paused at one small grave whose name I could make no sense of and asked Sensei about it. “I think that’s intended to spell the name Andrei,” he replied with a wry little smile.

I found humor and irony in this great variety of humanity displayed in the names on the tombstones, but I gathered that he did not. As I chattered on about the graves, pointing out this round tombstone or that tall thin marble pillar, he listened in silence. Finally he said, “You haven’t seriously thought about the reality of death yet, have you?”

I fell silent. Sensei did not speak again.

At the end of the cemetery a great ginkgo tree stood blocking the sky. “It will look lovely before long,” Sensei remarked, looking up at it. “This tree turns a beautiful color in autumn. The ground is buried deep in golden leaves when they fall.” Every month when he came here, I discovered, he made a point of passing under this tree.

Some distance away a man had been smoothing the rough earth of a new grave; he paused on his hoe and watched us. We turned left, and soon were back on the street.

I had nowhere in particular to go, so I continued to walk beside him. He spoke less than usual. It did not make me feel awkward, however, and I strolled along easily beside him.

“Are you going straight home?” I asked.

“Yes, there’s nowhere else I need to go.”

We fell silent again and walked south down the hill.

“Is your family grave there?” I asked a little later, breaking the silence.

“No.”

“Whose grave is it? Is it some relation?”

“No.”

Sensei said no more, and I decided not to pursue the conversation. About a hundred yards on, however, he abruptly broke the silence. “A friend of mine is buried there.”

“You visit a friend’s grave every month?”

“That’s right.”

This was all he told me that day.