I
THE MOAT
It is winter, and yet a summer sky of clearest blue, faint and pure. A white sun rides in the southern sky, winning me to believe it summer until the cold northern wind lifts the edge of my cloak, and I know it winter.
It is warm here in the corner of the bridge, full in the sunlight, and I linger. The dark, still waters of the moat creep stealthily along on either side of me; in the distance I can see the rounded arch of a bridge, so arched is the span and so white that I could believe the people had stolen the young crescent of the moon to span their waters.
I lean on my bamboo parapet and look. The dark still waters run between brown stone walls all overhung with the twisted limbs of the fir-trees, such big strong branches lying almost along the ground, and twisted as if in a vain endeavour to get back to the earth beneath. I watch the thick strong branches, soberly green, the masses of foliage riotously so, a green line and its shadow.
The stone banks of the moat are unhewn and uncemented, but their surface is one unbroken line of sober brown; and I look at the long wave of muddy finger-marks traced by the tide’s edge, and now high up the wall, and drop my eyes to the deep mud-brown of the waters below.
The bamboo parapet grows hot, hotter. I wonder who laid those stones, and who keeps them so free of grass and weeds. On the whole they are not more silent and solid than the big limbs of the trees above. Past the bridge in the distance is an unkempt space of yellow grass, then a tall red building shoots abruptly into the sky. The small brown policeman, hidden by his military cloak and sword, stands motionless as I. Am I dreaming that this is a city of a million souls?
Blue, green, brown, black; sky, trees, stones, water; a white sun, a white bridge—and suddenly the two seem to meet in a whirl of dust, my scale of colours vanishes and with it the dreamy quiet and the summer sun. A clatter of gheta on the bridge, two kuruma past the policeman, a boat on the moat, the voice of the tōfu man following his bell along the road, the shadow of the tall house over the world—and I awake to winter and the town.