Part 9

The memory of animals, in regard to certain forms of relative experience, is strangely weak and dim. But the organic memory of the animal,--the memory of experience accumulated through countless billions of lives,--is superhumanly vivid, and very seldom at fault.... Think of the astonishing skill with which a cat can restore the respiration of her drowned kitten! Think of her untaught ability to face a dangerous enemy seen for the first time,--a venomous serpent, for example! Think of her wide acquaintance with small creatures and their ways,--her medical knowledge of herbs,--her capacities of strategy, whether for hunting or fighting! What she knows is really considerable; and she knows it all perfectly, or almost perfectly. But it is the knowledge of other existences. Her memory, as to the pains of the present life, is mercifully brief.

*

Tama could not clearly remember that her kittens were dead. She knew that she ought to have had kittens; and she looked everywhere and called everywhere for them, long after they had been buried in the garden. She complained a great deal to her friends; and she made me open all the cupboards and closets,--over and over again,--to prove to her that the kittens were not in the house. At last she was able to convince herself that it was useless to look for them any more. But she plays with them in dreams, and coos to them, and catches for them small shadowy things,--perhaps even brings to them, through some dim window of memory, a sandal of ghostly straw....

In the Dead of the Night

Black, chill, and still,--so black, so still, that I touch myself to find out whether I have yet a body. Then I grope about me to make sure that I am not under the earth,--buried forever beyond the reach of light and sound. .. . A clock strikes three! I shall see the sun again!

Once again, at least. Possibly several thousand times. But there will come a night never to be broken by any dawn,--a stillness never to be broken by any sound.

This is certain. As certain as the fact that I exist.

Nothing else is equally certain. Reason deludes; feeling deludes; all the senses delude. But there is no delusion whatever in the certain knowledge of that night to come.

Doubt the reality of substance, the reality of ghosts, the faiths of men, the gods;--doubt right and wrong, friendship and love, the existence of beauty, the existence of horror;--there will always remain one thing impossible to doubt,--one infinite blind black certainty.

The same darkness for all,--for the eyes of creatures and the eyes of heaven;--the same doom for all,--insect and man, ant-hill and city, races and worlds, suns and galaxies: inevitable dissolution, disparition, and oblivion.

And vain all human striving not to remember, not to think: the Veil that old faiths wove, to hide the Void, has been rent forever away;--and Sheol is naked before us,--and destruction hath no covering.

So surely as I believe that I exist, even so surely must I believe that I shall cease to exist--which is horror!... But--

Must I believe that I really exist?... In the moment of that self-questioning, the Darkness stood about me as a wall, and spake:--

"I am only the Shadow: I shall pass. But the Reality will come, and will not pass.

"I am only the Shadow. In me there are lights,--the glimmering of a hundred millions of suns. And in me there are voices. With the coming of the Reality, there will be no more lights, nor any voice, nor any rising, nor any hope.

"But far above you there will still be sun for many a million years,--and warmth and youth and love and joy.. .. Vast azure of sky and sea,--fragrance of summer bloom,--shrillings in grass and grove,--flutter of shadows and flicker of light,--laughter of waters and laughter of girls. Blackness and silence for you,--and cold blind creepings."

I made reply:--

"Of thoughts like these I am now afraid. But that is only because I have been startled out of sleep. When all my brain awakens, I shall not be afraid. For this fear is brute fear only,--the deep and dim primordial fear bequeathed me from the million ages of the life of instinct.... Already it is passing. I can begin to think of death as dreamless rest,--a sleep with no sensation of either joy or pain."

The Darkness whispered:--

"What is sensation?"

And I could not answer, and the Gloom took weight, and pressed upon me, and said:--

"You do not know what is sensation? How, then, can you say whether there will or will not be pain for the dust of you,--the molecules of your body, the atoms of your soul?... Atoms--what are they?"

Again I could make no answer, and the weight of the Gloom waxed greater--a weight of pyramids--and the whisper hissed:--

"Their repulsions? their attractions? The awful clingings of them and the leapings?... What are these?... Passions of lives burnt out?--furies of insatiable desire?--frenzies of everlasting hate? --madnesses of never ending torment?... You do not know? But you say that there will be no more pain!..."

Then I cried out to the mocker:--"I am awake--awake--fully awake! I have ceased to fear;--I remember!... All that I am is all that I have been. Before the beginnings of Time I was;--beyond the uttermost circling of the Eternities I shall endure. In myriad million forms I but seem to pass: as form I am only Wave; as essence I am Sea. Sea without shore I am;--and Doubt and Fear and Pain are but duskings that fleet on the face of my depth.. .. Asleep, I behold the illusions of Time; but, waking, I know myself timeless: one with the Life that has neither form yet also one begins and the grave and graves,--the the eater of neither form nor name, yet also one with all that begins and ends,--even the grave and the maker of graves,--the corpse and the eater of corpses...."

*

A sparrow twittered from the roof; another responded. Shapes of things began to define in a soft gray glimmering;--and the gloom slowly lightened. Murmurs of the city's wakening came to my ears, and grew and multiplied. And the dimness flushed.

Then rose the beautiful and holy Sun, the mighty Quickener, the mighty Putrefier,--symbol sublime of that infinite Life whose forces are also mine!...

Kusa-Hibari

Issun no mushi ni mo gobu no tamashii.--_Japanese Proverb._

His cage is exactly two Japanese inches high and one inch and a half wide: its tiny wooden door, turning upon a pivot, will scarcely admit the tip of my little finger. But he has plenty of room in that cage,--room to walk, and jump, and fly; for he is so small that you must look very carefully through the brown-gauze sides of it in order to catch a glimpse of him. I have always to turn the cage round and round, several times, in a good light, before I can discover his whereabouts; and then I usually find him resting in one of the upper corners,--clinging, upside down, to his ceiling of gauze.

Imagine a cricket about the size of an ordinary mosquito,--with a pair of antennae much longer than his own body, and so fine that you can distinguish them only against the light. _Kusa-Hibari_, or "Grass-Lark," is the Japanese name of him; and he is worth in the market exactly twelve cents: that is to say, very much more than his weight in gold. Twelve cents for such a gnat-like thing!...

By day he sleeps or meditates, except while occupied with the slice of fresh egg-plant or cucumber which must be poked into his cage every morning. ... To keep him clean and well fed is somewhat troublesome: could you see him, you would think it absurd to take any pains for the sake of a creature so ridiculously small.

But always at sunset the infinitesimal soul of him awakens: then the room begins to fill with a delicate and ghostly music of indescribable sweetness,-a thin, thin silvery rippling and trilling as of tiniest electric bells. As the darkness deepens, the sound becomes sweeter,--sometimes swelling till the whole house seems to vibrate with the elfish resonance,--sometimes thinning down into the faintest imaginable thread of a voice. But loud or low, it keeps a penetrating quality that is weird.... All night, the atomy thus sings: he ceases only when the temple bell proclaims the hour of dawn.

*

Now this tiny song is a song of love,--vague love of the unseen and unknown. It is quite impossible that he should ever have seen or known, in this present existence of his. Not even his ancestors, for many generations back, could have known anything of the night-life of the fields, or the amorous value of song. They were born of eggs hatched in a jar of clay, in the shop of some insect-merchant; and they dwelt thereafter only in cages. But he sings the song of his race as it was sung a myriad years ago, and as faultlessly as if he understood the exact significance of every note. Of course he did not learn the song. It is a song of organic memory,--deep, dim memory of other quintillions of lives, when the ghost of him shrilled at night from the dewy grasses of the hills. Then that song brought him love--and death. He has forgotten all about death; but he remembers the love. And therefore he sings now--for the bride that will never come.

So that his longing is unconsciously retrospective: he cries to the dust of the past,--he calls to the silence and the gods for the return of time.... Human lovers do very much the same thing without knowing it. They call their illusion an Ideal; and their Ideal is, after all, a mere shadowing of race-experience, a phantom of organic memory. The living present has very little to do with it.... Perhaps this atomy also has an ideal, or at least the rudiment of an ideal; but, in any event, the tiny desire must utter its plaint in vain.

The fault is not altogether mine. I had been warned that if the creature were mated, he would cease to sing and would speedily die. But, night after night, the plaintive, sweet, unanswered trilling touched me like a reproach,--became at last an obsession, an affliction, a torment of conscience; and I tried to buy a female. It was too late in the season; there were no more kusa-hibari for sale,--either males or females. The insect-merchant laughed and said, "He ought to have died about the twentieth day of the ninth month." (It was already the second day of the tenth month.) But the insect-merchant did not know that I have a good stove in my study, and keep the temperature at above 75° F. Wherefore my grass-lark still sings at the close of the eleventh month, and I hope to keep him alive until the Period of Greatest Cold. However, the rest of his generation are probably dead: neither for love nor money could I now find him a mate. And were I to set him free in order that he might make the search for himself, he could not possibly live through a single night, even if fortunate enough to escape by day the multitude of his natural enemies in the garden,--ants, centipedes, and ghastly earth-spiders.

*

Last evening--the twenty-ninth of the eleventh month--an odd feeling came to me as I sat at my desk: a sense of emptiness in the room. Then I became aware that my grass-lark was silent, contrary to his wont. I went to the silent cage, and found him lying dead beside a dried-up lump of egg-plant as gray and hard as a stone. Evidently he had not been fed for three or four days; but only the night before his death he had been singing wonderfully,--so that I foolishly imagined him to be more than usually contented. My student, Aki, who loves insects, used to feed him; but Aki had gone into the country for a week's holiday, and the duty of caring for the grass-lark had devolved upon Hana, the housemaid. She is not sympathetic, Hana the housemaid. She says that she did not forget the mite,--but there was no more egg-plant. And she had never thought of substituting a slice of onion or of cucumber! ... I spoke words of reproof to Hana the housemaid, and she dutifully expressed contrition. But the fairy-music has stopped; and the stillness reproaches; and the room is cold, in spite of the stove.

*

Absurd!... I have made a good girl unhappy because of an insect half the size of a barley-grain! The quenching of that infinitesimal life troubles me more than I could have believed possible. ... Of course, the mere habit of thinking about a creature's wants--even the wants of a cricket--may create, by insensible degrees, an imaginative interest, an attachment of which one becomes conscious only when the relation is broken. Besides, I had felt so much, in the hush of the night, the charm of the delicate voice,--telling of one minute existence dependent upon my will and selfish pleasure, as upon the favour of a god,--telling me also that the atom of ghost in the tiny cage, and the atom of ghost within myself, were forever but one and the same in the deeps of the Vast of being.... And then to think of the little creature hungering and thirsting, night after night, and day after day, while the thoughts of his guardian deity were turned to the weaving of dreams!... How bravely, nevertheless, he sang on to the very end,--an atrocious end, for he had eaten his own legs!... May the gods forgive us all,--especially Hana the housemaid!

Yet, after all, to devour one's own legs--for hunger is not the worst by that can happen to a being cursed with the gift of song. There are human crickets who must eat their own hearts in order to sing.

The Eater of Dreams

Mijika-yo ya! Baku no yumé kū Hima mo nashi!

--"Alas! how short this night of ours! The Baku will not even have time to eat our dreams!"--Old Japanese Love-song.

The name of the creature is Baku, or Shirokinakatsukami; and its particular function is the eating of Dreams. It is variously represented and described. An ancient book in my possession states that the male Baku has the body of a horse, the face of a lion, the trunk and tusks of an elephant, the forelock of a rhinoceros, the tail of a cow, and the feet of a tiger. The female Baku is said to differ greatly in shape from the male; but the difference is not clearly set forth. In the time of the old Chinese learning, pictures of the Baku used to be hung up in Japanese houses, such pictures being supposed to exert the same beneficent power as the creature itself. My ancient book contains this legend about the custom:--

"In the _Shōsei-Roku_ it is declared that Kōtei, while hunting on the Eastern coast, once met with a Baku having the body of an animal, but speaking like a man. Kōtei said: 'Since the world is quiet and at peace, why should we still see goblins? If a Baku be needed to extinguish evil sprites, then it were better to have a picture of the Baku suspended to the wall of one's house. Thereafter, even though some evil Wonder should appear, it could do no harm.'"

Then there is given a long list of evil Wonders, and the signs of their presence:--

"When the Hen lays a soft egg, the demon's name is Taifu.

"When snakes appear entwined together, the demon's name is Jinzu.

"When dogs go with their ears turned back, the demon's name is Taiyō.

"When the Fox speaks with the voice of a man, the demon's name is Gwaishū.

"When blood appears on the clothes of men, the demon's name is Yūki.

"_When the rice-pot speaks with a human voice, the demon's name is_ Kanjo.

"_When the dream of the night is an evil dream, the demon's name is_ Ringetsu...."

And the old book further observes: "Whenever any such evil marvel happens, let the name of the Baku be invoked: then the evil sprite will immediately sink three feet under the ground."

*

But on the subject of evil Wonders I do not feel qualified to discourse: it belongs to the unexplored and appalling world of Chinese demonology, and it has really very little to do with the subject of the Baku in Japan. The Japanese Baku is commonly known only as the Eater of Dreams; and the most remarkable fact in relation to the cult of the creature is that the Chinese character representing its name used to be put in gold upon the lacquered wooden pillows of lords and princes. By the virtue and power of this character on the pillow, the sleeper was thought to be protected from evil dreams. It is rather difficult to find such a pillow to-day: even pictures of the Baku (or "Hakutaku," as it is sometimes called) have become very rare. But the old invocation to the Baku still survives in common parlance: Baku kuraë! Baku kuraë!--"Devour, O Baku! devour my evil dream!"... When you awake from a nightmare, or from any unlucky dream, you should quickly repeat that invocation three times;--then the Baku will eat the dream, and will change the misfortune or the fear into good fortune and gladness.

*

It was on a very sultry night, during the Period of Greatest Heat, that I last saw the Baku. I had just awakened out of misery; and the hour was the Hour of the Ox; and the Baku came in through the window to ask, "Have you anything for me to eat?"

I gratefully made answer:--

"Assuredly!... Listen, good Baku, to this dream of mine!--

"I was standing in some great white-walled room, where lamps were burning; but I cast no shadow on the naked floor of that room,--and there, upon an iron bed, I saw my own dead body. How I had come to die, and when I had died, I could not remember. Women were sitting near the bed,--six or seven,--and I did not know any of them. They were neither young nor old, and all were dressed in black: watchers I took them to be. They sat motionless and silent: there was no sound in the place; and I somehow felt that the hour was late.

"In the same moment I became aware of something nameless in the atmosphere of the room,-a heaviness that weighed upon the will,--some viewless numbing power that was slowly growing. Then the watchers began to watch each other, stealthily; and I knew that they were afraid. Soundlessly one rose up, and left the room. Another followed; then another. So, one by one, and lightly as shadows, they all went out. I was left alone with the corpse of myself.

"The lamps still burned clearly; but the terror in the air was thickening. The watchers had stolen away almost as soon as they began to feel it. But I believed that there was yet time to escape;--I thought that I could safely delay a moment longer. A monstrous curiosity obliged me to remain: I wanted to look at my own body, to examine it closely.... I approached it. I observed it. And I wondered--because it seemed to me very long,--unnaturally long....

"Then I thought that I saw one eyelid quiver. But the appearance of motion might have been caused by the trembling of a lamp-flame. I stooped to look--slowly, and very cautiously, because I was afraid that the eyes might open.

"'It is Myself,' I thought, as I bent down,--'and yet, it is growing queer!'... The face appeared to be lengthening.... 'It is not Myself,' I thought again, as I stooped still lower,--'and yet, it cannot be any other!' And I became much more afraid, unspeakably afraid, that the eyes would open....

"_They_ opened!--horribly they opened!--and that thing sprang,--sprang from the bed at me, and fastened upon me,--moaning, and gnawing, and rending! Oh! with what madness of terror did I strive against it! But the eyes of it, and the moans of it, and the touch of it, sickened; and all my being seemed about to burst asunder in frenzy of loathing, when--I knew not how--

I found in my hand an axe. And I struck with the axe;--I clove, I crushed, I brayed the Moaner,--until there lay before me only a shapeless, hideous, reeking mass,--the abominable ruin of Myself....

"--_Baku kuraë! Baku kuraë! Baku kuraë!_ Devour, O Baku! devour the dream!" "Nay!" made answer the Baku. "I never eat lucky dreams. That is a very lucky dream,--a most fortunate dream.... The axe--yes! the Axe of the Excellent Law, by which the monster of Self is utterly destroyed!... The best kind of a dream! My friend, _I_ believe in the teaching of the Buddha."

And the Baku went out of the window. I looked after him;--and I beheld him fleeing over the miles of moonlit roofs,--passing, from house-top to house-top, with amazing soundless leaps,--like a great cat....