The Bread We Eat in Dreams

in Hokkaido. Most of the lions cheat because their lives are boring and they crave excitement. Guarding temples does not hold the same thrill as hunting or biting. Auspicious Snow Lion is the best dice-player. He comes all the way from Taipei to play and drink and hunt rabbits in the forest. He does not speak Japanese, but he pretends to humbly lose when they others snarl at his winning streaks.

25. Sometimes they play Go. The lions are terrible at it. Fortuitous Brass Lion likes to eat the black pieces. Namazu laughs at him and waggles his whiskers. Typhoons spin up off the coast of Okinawa.

26. Everyone on the unhuman side of the House of Second-Hand Carnelian is curious about Ko. Has he ever been in love? Fought in a war? What are his thoughts on astrology? Are there any good scandals in his past? How old is he? Does he have any children? Where did he learn calligraphy? Why is he here? How did he find the house and get stuck there? Was part of him always a brush named Yuu? Using the thousand eyes in the screen, they spy on him, but cannot discover the answers to any of these questions.

27. They have learned the following: Ko is left-handed. Ko likes fish skin better than fish flesh. Ko cheats when he meditates and opens his eyes to see how far the sun has gotten along. Ko has a sweet tooth. When Ko talks to the peach trees and the bears, he has an Osaka accent.

28. The Noble and Serene Electric Master refused to let Yuu copy anything out on its Jar. The Noble and Serene Electric Master does not approve of graffiti. Even when Yuu remembered suddenly an exquisite verse written repeated among the Aosaginohi Herons who glow in the night like blue lanterns. The Jar of Lightning snapped its cap and crackled disagreeably. Yuu let it rest; when you share a house you must let your manners go before you to smooth the path through the rooms.

29. The Heron-verse went: Autumn maples turn black in the evening. I turn them red again and caw for you, flying south to Nagoya. The night has no answer for me, but many small fish.

30. Who stretched the plum-colored screen with silver tigers leaping upon it down the very narrow line separating the halves of the house? For that matter, who built the House of Second-Hand Carnelian? Sazae-Onna knows, but she doesn’t talk to anyone.

31. Yuki-Onna came to visit the Jar of Lightning. They had been comrades in the army of storms long ago. With every step of her small, quiet feet, snowflakes fell on the peach grove and the Nothingness River froze into intricate patterns of eddies and frost. She wore a white kimono with a silver obi belt, and her long black hair was scented with red bittersweet. Everyone grew very silent, for Yuki-Onna was a Kami and not a playful lion or a hungry Kirin. Yuu trembled. Tiny specks of ink shook from his badger-bristles. He longed to write upon the perfect white silk covering her shoulders. Hone-Onna brought tea and black sugar to the Snow-and-Death Kami. Snow fell even inside the house. The Noble and Serene Electric Master left its Jar and circled its blue sparkling jagged body around the waist of Yuki-Onna, who laughed gently. One of the bears on the other side of the peach grove collapsed and coughed his last black blood onto the ice. Yuu noticed that the Snow-and-Death Kami wore a necklace. Its beads were silver teeth, hundreds upon thousands of them, the teeth of all of winter’s dead. Unable to contain himself, Yuu wrote in the frigid air: Snow comes; I have forgotten my own name.

32. Yuki-Onna looks up. Her eyes are darker than death. She closes them; Yuu’s words appear on the back of her neck.

33. Yuu is unhappy. He wants Sazae-Onna to love him. He wants Yuki-Onna to come back to visit him and not the Noble and Serene Electric Master. He wants to be the premier calligrapher in the unhuman half of Japan. He wants to be asked to join Namazu’s dice games. He wants to leave the House of Second-Hand Carnelian and visit the Emperor’s island or the crystal whale who lives off the coast of Shikoku. But if Yuu tries to leave his ink dries up and his wood cracks until he returns.

34. Someone wanted a good path between the human and the unhuman Japans. That much is clear.

35. Sazae-Onna does not like visitors one little bit. They splash in her pond. They poke her and try to get her to come out. Unfortunately, every day brings more folk to the House of Second-Hand Carnelian. First the Guardian Lions didn’t leave. Then Datsue-Ba came back with even more splendid clothes for them all, robes the color of maple leaves and jewels the color of snow and masks painted with liquid silver. Then the Kirin returned and asked Sazae-Onna to marry him. Yuu trembled. Sazae-Onna said nothing and pulled her shell down tighter and tighter until he went away. Nine-Tailed Kitsune and big-balled Tanuki are eating up all the peaches. Long-nosed Tengu overfish the river. No one goes home when the moon goes down. When the Blue Jade Cicadas arrive from Kamakura Sazae-Onna locks her kitchen and tells them all the shut up.

36. Yuu knocks after everyone has gone to sleep. Sazae-Onna lets him in. On the floor of her kitchen he writes a Kappa proverb: Dark clouds bring rain, the night brings stars, and everyone will try to spill the water out of your skull.

37. At the end of summer, the unhuman side of the house is crammed full, but Ko can only hear the occasional rustle. When Kawa-Uso the Otter Demon threw an ivory saddle onto the back of one of the bears and rode her around the peach grove like a horse, Ko only saw a poor she-bear having some sort of fit. Ko sleeps all the time now, though he is not really sleeping. He is being Yuu on the other side of the plum-colored screen. He never writes poetry in the tatami anymore.

38. The Night Parade occurs once every hundred years at the end of summer. Nobody plans it. They know to go to the door between the worlds the way a brown goose knows to go north in the spring.

39. One night the remaining peaches swell up into juicy golden lanterns. The river rushes become kotos with long spindly legs. The mushrooms become lacy, thick oyster-drums. The Kitsune begin to dance; the Tengu flap their wings and spit mala beads toward the dark sky in fountains. A trio of small dragons the color of pearls in milk leap suddenly out of the Nothingness River. Cerulean fire curls out of their noses. The House of Second-Hand Carnelian empties. Namazu’s Lions carry him on a litter of silk fishing nets. The Jar of Lightning bounces after Hone-Onna and her gentleman caller, whose bones clatter and clap. When only Yuu and the snail-woman are left, Sazae-Onna lifts up her shell and steps out into the Parade, her pink hair falling like floss, her black eyes gleaming. Yuu feels as though he will crack when faced with her beauty.

40. The Parade steps over the Nothingness River and the Nobody River and enters the human Japan, dancing and singing and throwing light at the dark. They will wind down through the plains to Kyoto before the night is through, and flow like a single serpent into the sea where the Goldfish Emperor of the Yokai will greet them with hismillion children and his silver-fronded wives.

41. Yuu races after Sazae-Onna. The bears watch them go. In the midst of the procession Hoeru the Princess of All Bears, who is Queen now, comes bearing a miniature Agate Great Mammal Palace on her back. Her children fall in and nurse as though they were still cubs. For a night, they know their names.

42. Yuu does not make it across the river. It goes jet with his ink. His strong birch shaft cracks; Sazae-Onna does not turn back. When she dances she looks like a poem about loss. Yuu pushes forward through the water of the Nothingness River. His shaft bursts in a shower of birch splinters.

43. A man’s voice cries out from inside the ruined brush-handle. Yuu startles and stops. The voice says: I never had any children. I have never been in love.

44. Yuu topples into the Nobody River. The kotos are distant now, the peach-lanterns dim. His badger-bristles fall out.

45. Yuu pulls himself out of the river by dry grasses and berry vines. He is not Yuu on the other side. He is not Ko. He has Ko’s body but his arms are calligraphy brushes sopping with ink. His feet are inkstones. He can still here the music of the Night Parade. He begins to dance. Not-Yuu and Not-Ko takes a breath.

46. There is only the House of Second-Hand Carnelian to write on. He writes on it. He breathes and swipes his brush, breathes, brushes. Man, brush. Brush, Man. He writes and does not copy. He writes psalms of being part man and part brush. He writes poems of his love for the snail-woman. He writes songs about perfect breath. The House slowly turns black.

47. Bringing up the rear of the Parade hours later, Yuki-Onna comes silent through the forest. Snow flows before her like a carpet. She has brought her sisters the Flower-and-Joy Kami and the Cherry-Blossom-Mount-Fuji Kami. The crown of the Fuji-Kami’s head has frozen. The Flower-and-Joy Kami is dressed in chrysanthemums and lemon blossoms. They pause at the House of Second-Hand Carnelian. Not-Yuu and Not-Ko shakes and shivers; he is sick, he has received both the pain in his femurs and the pain in his brush-handles. The Kami shine so bright the fish in both rivers are blinded. The Flower-and-Joy Kami looks at the poem on one side of the door. It reads: In white peonies I see the exhalations of my kanji blossoming. The Cherry-Blossom-Mount-Fuji Kami looks at the poem on the other side of the door. It reads: It is enough to sit at the foot of a mountain and breathe the pine-mist. Only a proud man must climb it. The Kami close their eyes as they pass

by. The words appear on the backs of their necks as they disappear into the night.

48. Ko dies in mid-stroke, describing the sensation of lungs filled up like the wind-bag of heaven. Yuu dies before he can complete his final verse concerning the exquisiteness of crustaceans who will never love you back.

49. Slowly, with a buzz like breath, the Giant Hornet flies out of her nest and through the peach grove denuded by hungry Tanuki. She is a heavy, furry emerald bobbing on the wind. The souls of Ko and Yuu quail before her. As she picks them up with her weedy legs and puts them back into their bodies she tells them a Giant Hornet poem: Everything is venom, even sweetness. Everything is sweet, even venom. Death is illiterate and a hayseed bum. No excuse to leave the nest unguarded. What are you, some silly jade lion?

50. The sea currents bring the skeleton-woman back, and Namazu who has caused two tsunamis, though only one made the news. The Jar of Lightning floats up the river. Finally the snail-woman returns to the pond in her kitchen. They find Yuu making tea for them. His bristles are dry. On the other side of the plum-colored screen, Ko is sweeping out the leaves.

51. Yuu has written on the teacups. It reads: It takes a calligrapher one hundred years to draw one breath.

Kallisti