“I really want to finish this trip,” I say, blinking a few extra times. “I would do anything not to be sent back now.”
He takes hold of my hand.
“I am glad you said that, Maryushka,” he replies. “I am lonely, and you are still a fine-looking woman.”
“You think so?”
“I always thought so, even that day you bashed in my teeth.”
“Sorry about that. It was strictly business, you know.”
His hand moves to my shoulder.
“Of course. They looked better when they were fixed than they had before, anyway.”
He moves over and sits beside me.
“I have dreamed of doing this many times,” he tells me, as he unfastens the rest of the buttons on my shirt and unbuckles my belt.
He rubs my belly softly. It is not an unpleasant feeling. It has been a long time.
Soon we are fully undressed. He takes his time, and when he is ready I welcome him between my legs. All right, Boris. I give the ride, you take the fall. I could almost feel a little guilty about it. You are gentler than I’d thought you would be. I commence the proper breathing pattern, deep and slow. I focus my attention on my hara and his, only inches away. I feel our energies, dreamlike and warm, moving. Soon, I direct their flow. He feels it only as pleasure, perhaps more draining than usual. When he has done, though . . .
“You said you had some problem?” he inquires in that masculine coital magnanimity generally forgotten a few minutes afterward. “If it is something I could help you with, I have a few days off, here and there. I like you, Maryushka.”
“It’s something I have to do myself. Thanks anyway.”
I continue the process.
Later, as I dress myself, he lies there looking up at me.
“I must be getting old, Maryushka,” he reflects. “You have tired me. I feel I could sleep for a week.”
“That sounds about right,” I say. “A week and you should be feeling fine again.”
“I do not understand . . .”
“You’ve been working too hard, I’m sure. That conference . . .”
He nods.
“You are probably right. You are not really involved . . . ?”
“I am really not involved.”
“Good.”
I clean the pot and my cups. I restore them to my pack.
“Would you be so kind as to move, Boris dear? I’ll be needing the poncho very soon, I think.”
“Of course.”
He rises slowly and passes it to me. He begins dressing. His breathing is heavy.
“Where are you going from here?”
“Mishima-goe,” I say, “for another view of my mountain.”
He shakes his head. He finishes dressing and seats himself on the ground, his back against a treetrunk. He finds his flask and takes a swallow. He extends it then.
“Would you care for some?”
“Thank you, no. I must be on my way.”
I retrieve my staff. When I look at him again, he smiles faintly, ruefully.
“You take a lot out of a man, Maryushka.”
“I had to,” I say.
I move off. I will hike twenty miles today, I am certain. The rain begins to descend before I am out of the grove; leaves rustle like the wings of bats.
Sunlight. Clean air. The print shows a big cryptameria tree, Fuji looming behind it, crowned with smoke. There is no smoke today, but I have located a big cryptameria and positioned myself so that it cuts Fuji’s shoulder to the left of the cone. There are a few clouds, not so popcorny as Hokusai’s smoke (he shrugs at this), and they will have to do.
My stolen ki still sustains me, though the medication is working now beneath it. Like a transplanted organ, my body will soon reject the borrowed energy. By then, though, the drugs should be covering for me.
In the meantime, the scene and the print are close to each other. It is a lovely spring day. Birds are singing, butterflies stitch the air in zigzag patterns; I can almost hear the growth of plants beneath the soil. The world smells fresh and new. I am no longer being followed. Hello to life again.
I regard the huge old tree and listen for its echoes down the ages: Yggdrasil, the Golden Bough, the Yule tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Bo beneath which Lord Gautama found his soul and lost it. . . .
I move forward to run my hand along its rough bark.
From that position I am suddenly given a new view of the valley below. The fields look like raked sand, the hills like rocks, Fuji a boulder. It is a garden, perfectly laid out. . . .
Later I notice that the sun has moved. I have been standing here for hours. My small illumination beneath a great tree. Older than my humanity, I do not know what I can do for it in return.
Stooping suddenly, I pick up one of its cones. A tiny thing, for such a giant. It is barely the size of my little fingernail. Delicately incised, as if sculpted by fairies.
I put it in my pocket. I will plant it somewhere along my way.
I retreat then, for I hear the sound of approaching bells and I am not yet ready for humanity to break my mood. But there was a small inn down the road which does not look to be part of a chain. I will bathe and eat there and sleep in a bed tonight.
I will still be strong tomorrow.
Reflections.