“Last night,” he said, “was fun.”
“It was spooky,” she said. “How do you know such spooky places?”
“Serendipity. Just walking around and there it was.”
“What does ‘serendipity’ mean?”
He cocked his head. “Like how we met. Serendipity is when something good happens by chance.”
She frowned. “We call that en.”
“En is serendipity?”
“Fate, not chance.” Her eyes locked onto his, innocent yet knowing, daring him to disagree. “I don’t gamble.”
Was she angry, or playing with him? In Kyoto, you learned to listen to what wasn’t said. Circumlocution was an art to be refined daily, like sado, the tea ceremony. Any idiot could whisk up a bowl of frothy matcha in minutes, but only a yabanjin, a barbarian, would skip the painstaking detail that transmuted ritual into sacrament.
Reading between the lines, he decided she was testing him.
He looked to the east, to the horizon. “Fate means I don’t have free will.”
She touched the back of her fingers to his cheek, running them slowly across the stubble. “You’re funny. And you need a shave.”
He felt like a little boy. He wanted to lock eyes with her again, but he looked down and away.
Her scent floated on the cool night air. Earthy, spinning into ethereal, it reeled in the smells of Bangkok, Mumbai, Catalan.… all the aromas and spices rare in Japanese food.
His guard down, intoxicated by her redolence, he forgot his mantra: love is trouble. She pickpocketed it, secreted it. Would he notice?
She furrowed her brow, her face innocent. “Why do you like such spooky stuff?”
“Lafcadio Hearn. ‘Kwaidan,’ ‘Ghostly Japan’.”
“You mean Koizumi Yakumo?”
“That sounds right.”
“The place last night wasn’t a temple, you know. It was a jinja. Kamisama, not Hotokesama.”
“It was the gods, not the Buddha? A shrine to the rat gods?”
“Rats have a god. And rats can be gods, too. I like foxes better. I’ll show you a fox shrine.”
“Do all animals have shrines?”
“Mostly foxes. We’ll visit O-inari-san and see many kitsune.”
“I like your name,” he said, hoping she would remind him what it was.
“Reiko? Well, I like the sound of your name too,” she said. “Haru means spring and … you.” “How do you write Reiko?” Hal asked.
“There are many ways to write it, as many as there are girls named Reiko.”
“But how do you write your name?”
“My Reiko is rare. So I write it in hiragana. You know, syllabary.”
“You can at least show me.”
“When you are ready,” she said, “I will show you everything.”
‘Everything,’ the way she said it, straightened his spine. Like fresh wasabi, a twist of sudachi, a pinch of sansho or shichimi, it tantalized his tongue. The way she said it, ‘everything’ anticipated perfect pitch, shared. Upper harmonics mirroring the fundamental—the lowest resonance frequency—born of compliance and mass, coupled. A heavier or looser string sounds lower. A lighter or tauter string sounds higher. Compliance and mass. The beginning and the end. Yin and yang. Alpha and omega. 阿吽の呼吸. ॐ, ओम्, Aum.
“I’m so happy we met, he said. But why were you out?”
“That’s my neighborhood, where I live with my mother. You’re the one who was out of bounds, not me!”
“Did you tell your mother about last night?”
“Too spooky.” She shivered. “She’d only worry. Then press me to marry some guy I’ve never met.”
“Arranged marriage?”
“Her head is stuck in the Showa era.”
“I bet my mother’s worse.”
She smiled.
“What is it with you and foxes,” he said.
“Kitsune wa bakeru.”
“Foxes are shapeshifters. I know that. And your Reiko is rare because it’s written with the kanji for spirit fox.”
She raised an eyebrow. “If it’s going to be you or me,” she said, locking eyes with him again, “You’re the one who is shapeshifting. You are a foreigner who understands Japanese. But no gaijin can speak fluent Kyoto dialect. You are the fox.”
“Nice try!” he said. “And who was wearing a white yukata at the shrine of the rat last night?”
“Funny boy!” she said. “I always wear white at night for safety. Taxi drivers are crazy here.”
“Sure,” he said. “You are a fox, a kitsune. Foxes wear white when they seduce humans.”
“Cute!” she said. “See you tomorrow at the train station. We’ll go to Fushimi Inari Shrine and you’ll find out what’s what and who’s who.”
No clever retort came to mind. He shrugged and mumbled, “OK.”
They got off the train and walked to the shrine. Red torii gates framed red torii gates like nested Russian dolls.
“We’ll each get our fortune told and learn the truth,” she said.
In front of the main shrine he reached into his pocket for change. “I don’t have any coins,” he said.
“Hold on,” she said, “stay right here.”
He followed her with his eyes.
She wandered, aimlessly, among the worshippers, then, in front of a sharply dressed man, she bent over as if she had dropped something, exposing her chest to the man’s eyes. The man very slowly sank into a hunched stance to help her, at which point she lost her balance and plunged her head into his midriff. She grabbed his body to regain her balance, giving the man a look of apology and thanks, certain to make him think more of himself and forget what happened.
When she returned, she gave Hal a fistful of bills and coins. “Take these,” she said, “and keep a few steps away from me.”
They tossed coins into the slatted box, bowed, clapped twice, and prayed to the fox gods to fulfill their dreams.
He looked at her, then out at the crowd. “I saw that,” he said.
“So you know.”
“As if it were ever a secret.”
She looked at him. “We are both foxes; now I know. So let’s go back to my den.”
“But you said …”
“Oh, that?” she said, “about my mother? It’s something I say to guard against hen na gaijin. Weirdos. Don’t worry. I don’t live with my mother. It’s OK.”
“Oh, you know you said we would …”
“Have our fortunes read?”
He gave her a quizzical smile.”
“But we know already. We’re foxes. And I don’t gamble.”
As they walked away from the shrine, one of the stone foxes at the gate said to the other, “Pretty clever for a human.”
The other stone fox said, “She fooled you, too?”
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* Spirit fox, 霊狐, is read “Reiko.” It could also mean ghost fox.
* Hen na gaijin, 変な外人, weird foreigner , is a cliche, today considered socially incorrect. Many people are also careful to say gaikokujin, foreign country person,” for “foreigner” instead of gaijin, which means the same but is considered rude.
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Stephen Benfey’s homepage with examples of his short stories can be found here.