IV
WET LEAVES
It had rained all night and all day; big, solid drops of rain that fell as compactly through the air as battalions of small shot, but at twilight the raindrops dwindled, slackened, dwindled, ceased.
The clear, colourless sky, which the whole day long had shot down its drops of rain, drew together in grey clouds, growing momentarily greyer, thicker and more grey, and shining with a pale light as though far away behind those thick coverings a great white light was burning.
The stones on the pathway were all wet and shining and crunched down into little pools of water under one’s heels. The trees were dripping raindrops at each leaf, the trunks of all the pines were a dark brown with wet.
In the garden there was peace, a peace of plants weighed down with raindrops, and very tired. Up on the damp hillside the note of a solitary bird sounded forlornly. Uguisu, the Japanese nightingale was calling. One sweet short song, and then a greater silence.
Above the little grey shrine to Inari, the Fox God, two golden oranges swayed out against the dark green bush. The raindrops on their under sides trickled slowly over the little temple, and down the miniature steps, while those on the upper sides stood out in little clusters growing larger and larger until an imperceptible stir of the heavy fruit sent them chasing their fellows down the temple’s roof.
And the sky above grew greyer. The golden oranges, larger for the raindrops, swayed mysteriously out, bright yellow against dark green, in a damp, dark world.
At the path’s edge another pathway of clear water encircled the temple and the orange trees; a water so clear that it hardly seemed to exist, while the brown banks and the brown stones showed wet and dark as the pathway under foot. And round the temple and the orange trees in ever silent motion along the brown pathway swam strange fishes; bright blue carp with black sides and designs in creamy white, large orange carp with tracings in silver, golden carp with six or seven waving tails, and solitary in their midst one white patriarch whom age had turned to driven snow.
And the damp, dark world turned slowly darker. The wet hillside grew a black, blurred line; the light behind the cloud was going out; the trees had lost their colour.
All silently the blue carp moved along the dark pathway, and the golden orange globes dripped above the little temple. Bright blue, orange; the light behind the clouds was out.