E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten
Barbery One Hour of Fervour
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80533-370-8
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-80533-370-8
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Muriel Barbery is the author of four previous novels, including the IMPAC-shortlisted multimillion-copy bestseller The Elegance of the Hedgehog. She has lived in Kyoto, Amsterdam and Paris and now lives in the French countryside.
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Before
Haru Ueno and Keisuke Shibata had met fifty years earlier at the home of Tomoo Hasegawa, who produced art documentaries for national television. Although the Japanese, as a rule, rarely entertain at home, at Tomoo’s you could meet both Japanese and foreign artists, and all sorts of people who weren’t artists. The place looked like a sailing ship beached on a mossy shore. On the upper deck, the wind came in through the windows, even in the depths of winter. The rear of the vessel clung to a flank of the Shinnyo-do. The prow faced the mountains of the East. Tomoo had designed it and had it built in the early 1960s, then kept an open house for anyone who was hungry for art, sake, and partying. The partying included friendship and laughter late into the night. The art and the sake were pure. They kept forever, just as they were. Nothing ever came to alter their essence.
And so, for almost ten years, Tomoo Hasegawa had reigned from his hillside. People called him Hasegawa-san or Tochan, the latter an affectionate diminutive reserved for children. People came and went at all hours, regardless of whether he was there. They loved him. They wished they could be like him, but no one held this against him. Beyond that, he adored Keisuke, Keisuke adored him, and, almost as if it were meant to be, they both enjoyed the cold. No matter the season, they would wander along the paths of the temple half-dressed, and, on 10 January 1970, at dawn, Haru joined them for the first time. In the pale light the hill was like an ice field, its stone lanterns glowing and the air redolent of flint and incense. The other two were chirping away in their thin garments, but Haru, who was wearing a thick coat, found himself shivering. Yet he didn’t mind, and in this glacial dawn he came to see he was a pilgrim. His family home was in Takayama, but the place where he had lived and would live his true life was Shinnyo-do. Haru didn’t believe in past lives, but he did believe in the spirit. Henceforth, he would be a pilgrim. Forever returning to his true origins.
The Shinnyo-do: a temple adjacent to other temples, perched on a hill in the northeast of the city; by extension, Haru referred to the hill by the same name. There were maple trees everywhere, old buildings, a wooden pagoda, stone walkways. And, naturally, set on the summit and sides of the hill, there were cemeteries, including those of Shinnyo-do and Kurodani, to which Haru, once he had money, would give with equal generosity. Every week for nearly fifty years he would go through the red gate and climb up to the temple, go around it, and continue south along the side of two cemeteries and through a third one, gaze out at Kyoto below him, head down Kurodani’s stone stairway, and wind his way northward between the temples until he reached his starting point. And, at every instant, he would know this was his home. Since he was only a Buddhist out of respect for tradition but wanted to join everything in his life together, he had forged the conviction that Buddhism was the name his culture had given to art, or, at the very least, to that root of art called the spirit. The spirit embraced everything, explained everything. For some mysterious reason, the hill of Shinnyo-do incarnated the essence of that spirit. When Haru went for his circular walk, he was going through life, the bare bones of it, stripped of all obscenity, cleansed of triviality. Over the years, he’d come to realise that these enlightened understandings were born of the configuration of the place itself. Over the centuries, man had brought together buildings and gardens, had laid out the temples, trees, and lanterns, and, in the end, this patient labour had given rise to a miracle: to stride along the walkway was to converse intimately with the invisible. Many people attributed this to the higher presences that haunt sacred places, but Haru had learned from the stones of his torrent that spirit arises from form, that there is only form, the grace or disgrace resulting from it – eternity or death contained in the curves of a rock. And so, during that winter of 1970 when he was still a nobody, he decided that one day his ashes would be buried in that place. For Haru Ueno knew not only who he was, he knew what he wanted. He was only waiting to understand the form it would take.
Consequently, when he made the acquaintance of Keisuke Shibata, he saw his future as clearly as an earthenware bowl in broad daylight. That evening, Tomoo Hasegawa, playing patron of the arts, was holding a launch party at his home for a handful of atypical young artists. As was customary, they brought their work to the Shinnyo-do sailing ship, and then everyone who was anyone in Kyoto came, drank, and chatted before they left again to spread the artists’ names. Most of these artists were free spirits. They did not belong to a school or a family. They sought to be – a culturally complicated thing – . They didn’t copy contemporary Western art. They worked the clay of their native land, giving it a totally new cast that always looked Japanese, without belonging to any artistic lineage. In fact, these artists were very much to Haru’s taste, because they resembled the individual he himself would like to be: young, yet deep; loyal, yet free of any bonds; thoughtful, yet full of audacity.
In those days, the few galleries dealing in contemporary art only survived by selling traditional work, as well, which was a very exclusive market requiring an entrée. Haru, the son of a modest sake brewer from the mountains, had no hope of getting his foot in the door. He paid for his room at the Daitoku-ji by helping out with the temple’s maintenance tasks, and for his studies in architecture and English by working evenings at a bar. His entire worldly possessions consisted of a bicycle, a few books, and the tea service his grandfather had given him. Finally, the fourth thing he owned was a coat, which he wore from November to May, indoors and out, suffering as he did from the cold. And yet, even if he had nothing, back in that glacial January, a magnificent compass had just been placed in his bare hands. He said to himself, I’ll do the same thing as Tomoo, but on a grander scale.
And he did. But first, after a certain number of other sake-filled nights, he described his project to Keisuke and declared, I need your money to get started. In the guise of an answer, Keisuke told him a story. In around 1600, the son of a merchant wanted to become a samurai, so his father said to him, I am old and have no other heirs, but samurai honour the way of tea, and, for that reason, I will give you my blessing. The next day, Haru invited Keisuke into his room, and with his grandfather’s tea service, he prepared tea for him, performing a casual yet nevertheless somewhat solemn ceremony. Then they drank sake and conversed, laughing all the while. The snow falling on the temples covered the curving roofs of the lanterns with immaculate ravens’ wings, and then, without warning, Keisuke launched into a tirade on the inanity of religion. Buddhism is not a religion, said Haru, or else it’s the religion of art. In that case, it’s also the religion of sake, Keisuke asserted. Haru agreed, and they drank some more. In the end, he specified the amount he would need, and Keisuke lent him the money.
Subsequently Haru would excel at circumventing obstacles. He had no premises for his gallery, he rented a warehouse. He had no network, he used Tomoo’s. He had no reputation, he went about making other people’s. He charmed everyone, and Keisuke’s assumption proved correct: deep down, Haru was a tradesman, but unlike his father, he would be a great tradesman, because he had a good instinct not only for business but also for tea – or, to put it differently, for grace. The fact is, there are two sorts of grace. The first is that which results from a spirit that is born of form, and, for that, Haru went to Shinnyo-do. The second is merely the first seen from a different angle, but because it takes on a specific appearance, it’s called beauty. For that type of grace, Haru went to Zen gardens and spent time with artists. His tea eye probed their works and broke through to the soul of each one, something he summed up by saying, I don’t have talent, but I do have taste. But he was wrong about that, because there is also a third sort of grace, in which the other two are steeped, and in this, Keisuke saw supreme talent. And even if, in Haru’s case, it was rooted in a paradox, it was no less powerful: his whole life long, he would fail at love, but when it came to friendship, he would be a master.
Friendship: and yet, it is a part of love.
One day, after Haru had dwelled at length on his predilection for Western women, Keisuke said, ‘For me, everything – life, art, the soul, woman – has been drawn with the same ink.’
‘Which ink is that?’ asked Haru.
‘Japan,’ said Keisuke. ‘I can’t imagine touching a foreign woman.’
For Haru, that was inconceivable, even though he understood Keisuke’s love for his wife. And to be honest, who would not? Sae Shibata was everything a heart could desire. When you met her, you felt a spear lodge in your heart. It didn’t hurt but, instead, was like watching the slow unwinding of an ineffable act. What sort of act? You didn’t know, you actually didn’t know much at all – was she beautiful, petite, lively or serious, no one could have said. Pale, yes. But otherwise, nothing lingered, just an...
