The Lady and the Monk by Pico Iyer Page A

found it incumbent on her to make conversation with me. Where did I come from? she began hesitantly. How long had I been here? What was I doing in Japan?
    At that moment, bells began tolling, and we were led off again, in our little group, around a rock garden and over the famous hanging causeway and along a wide stone pathway to the great
zendō
, a celebrated National Treasure usually closed to the public. There, under a dragon-writhing roof, the ceremony commenced. Drums sounded sonorously as the monks walked in, one by one, in purple and orange robes, with orange sashes and pointed Chinese shoes. A screeching came from within, and the
rōshi
himself appeared, followed by a long, muttered wailing that sounded like a coyote’s howl. A monk waved a bamboo whisk above us all, extending a skinny, but commanding, hand in each of the main directions. The solemnity was broken, in our corner, as the Filipina, giggling brightly, asked if we knew where the rest room was. Four men blew on bamboo flutes, piercing, mellifluous, and sad.
    Outside once again in the radiant morning, men in dark suits, women in kimono, stood on the Tsūten Bridge, bowing with the ceremonious elegance of characters from
The Makioka Sisters
, One woman glittered like a brooch in a blue-and-golden sari and metallic blue fingernails, her temple dancer’s features sharp under kohl-ringed eyes. Old men in grave suits sat on Coca-Colabenches, reclining in the autumn sun like ageless school friends of the Emperor.
    When we returned to our places in the monastery, we found beside every seat an elegant purple carrier bag with golden lettering, loaded high with gifts; in front of each setting, two wooden boxes on a tray, stuffed with every kind of delicacy; and — since there was no way that anyone could begin to eat all this — another elegant bag, and a stylish lavender cloth, or
furoshiki
, in which to pack the boxes and take them home.
    Again I found myself next to the decorous Japanese woman. Again the obligatory questions began. Who was my favorite musician? What was my age? How did I like Kyoto? Apparently, my answers were the right ones — she, too, was thirty and liked Bruce Springsteen and felt that Kyoto was “little magic town” — and so, as we munched our inexplicable food, she ventured a little further. “Sunday, my daughter little have birthday party. Please come here my house.” Sure, I replied, game for anything, and she wrote down meticulously the name of a train station and then her telephone number. “Please you come. Maybe two o’clock, begin.” “Thank you very much,” I said, and then, with a mother’s brisk efficiency, she whipped out my
furoshiki
, packed my food away into my boxes, wrapped the boxes in the lavender cloth, and handed it all back to me as if it were her gift.
    Later, back home, I peeled back layer after layer of the elegant cloth. Simply opening the temple’s treasure was an almost sensual experience. Caskets of Japanese cake sat inside, and bottles of expensive sake; a poem in flowing calligraphic script, written by the
rōshi
himself, and a screen on which to mount it; and, of course, the purple cloth, touched now with the lady’s perfume.
    Five days later, I was spending all morning writing on Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, my mind on the follies of credulity, when suddenly I remembered the woman’s birthday party. It had been a fairly casual invitation, I thought, with no meaningattached to it, but I felt that courtesy alone suggested I attend. “You never know what to expect with these things,” Mark had advised me, but I felt pretty sure that children’s birthday parties must be something of a universal: fifteen or twenty kids careening around, amidst a mess of many-colored balloons and party hats, alternately laughing and screaming, while mothers stood by the kitchen, enforcing order and swapping gossip. So I packed the bear that I had bought as a ceremonial offering, and timed my arrival to be a safe