He waves for a long time as the elegant, sparkling black cars wind out of the western gates, then for yet a long time, as the two abbots from Kyōto disappear into the traffic in the street leading away from the monastery, he waves, and he feels unspeakable relief that at last, at the end, after they discussed every possibility, they too have departed, and that generally everything had gone well yesterday, and the kaigen shiki came to an end with no greater problems, and he slowly strolls back to his quarters; however — for he is somehow very tired and feels even much older than his years — he decides that he will not take part in the daily morning meditation in the zendō, but will, exceptionally, take a nap, so that as he saunters in the chill wind on the narrow paths of smoothly raked white stones between the gardens, he thinks: Exalted Buddha, how fallible they were, how unworthy, how many mistakes, how many errors, how many times they faltered in the texts, how often the great drum beat at the wrong time, and above all how many wrong steps before the altar, how many uncertain and perplexed moments, from which they could not free themselves, and all the same, they did it, they were capable of that much, they had not fallen short of their abilities, he strolls in the chilly, early spring wind, to remain apart a little while, still hearing the voices led by the jikijitsu, reciting the sūtra in the zendō, he looks all around at the beautiful order and the tranquil pavilions of the monastery, and then suddenly an idea springs to mind, or well it really isn’t an idea, but rather just that. . he slows down, comes to a standstill, then turns around, heading back toward the zendō, he walks in front of it, again hearing the monks’ sūtras, and the rhythmic thumps of the mokugyo, and suddenly he finds himself in front of the hondō, and then comes to his senses, as if he were about to ask himself what he was doing here, and why he wasn’t he going to take a rest already — then he forgets what he even wanted to inquire about within himself, and slips out of his sandals and straightens his robes, as if he were about to go into the main entrance; but he doesn’t head up the steps that would take him there, instead — he himself doesn’t even know how — he stands on one of the lower steps, he looks around, no one is in sight, everyone is in the zendō, so he sits down on one of the steps and he remains there, the early spring sun shines on him, at times he shivers in a stronger breeze of the chill air, but he doesn’t move from there, he just sits on the step, leaning forward a bit with his elbows pressed onto his knees, looking ahead, and now at last he is able to pose the question to himself: what in the world was he doing here, he is able to ask himself, he just can’t find the answer, or rather he cannot understand: even if what he hears there within his soul does exist, it all adds up to just this much: nothing, he is doing nothing at all in the entire world, he just sat down here because he felt like it, to sit here and know that, there inside the hondō, Amida Buddha is now enthroned upon the altar, and he sees what no one else but himself can see, only and exclusively he, he sits there on the steps, his stomach growls, he scratches his bald head, he stares into space, onto the steps below, the steps of dried-out old hinoki cypress, and in one of the cracks he now notices a tiny ant, well, and from that point on he only watches that ant as it goes about on its funny little legs, climbing, hurrying and then slowing down in this crack, as it starts forward, then stops, then turns around and lifting up its little ball of a head, hurries off again, but once more it comes to a dead halt, climbing out from the crack, but only to crawl right back into it, and starts off again, then after a while coming to a halt again, it stops, turns around, and just as sprightly as it can, goes again backward in the crack, and all the while the early spring sun shines on it, at times a draft of the wind strikes it, you can see the ant struggling not to be carried off by the wind, little ant, says the abbot, shaking his head, little ant in the deep crack of the step, forever.
5. CHRISTO MORTO
He was generally not the type who walks with banging steps, he was not the resounding, military, lock-stepping Hussar type; yet because he liked the leather soles of his shoes and the heels of the leather soles to last a long time, the soles and the heels were fitted with proper old-fashioned shoe taps, which, however, echoed to such a degree, with every single step he took, in the narrow back street that it was becoming increasing obvious with each meter that these shoes, these black leather oxfords, did not belong here, not in Venice, and particularly not now, not in this silent neighborhood, during this total siesta; he did not, however, want to return and change them; and he might have tried to walk more softly on the old paving stones, only that he couldn’t, so that he felt continuously, passing before each house, that inside, the occupants inside were flinging curses upon him: why couldn’t he just go away and die somewhere, and what was he doing outside anyway, and especially a character with such damned well-shod black oxfords; he stepped with his left foot, he stepped with his right foot, and that was enough, he already took it as a given that the tranquility of the siesta had come to an end within these buildings with their closed façades, cloaked in muteness, because here outside — thanks to him — the silence had been broken; there was not a God-given soul in the little alleyways, not even a tourist, which was rare indeed, so that there were only the Venetians, there inside, with their failed attempts at a siesta, and him, here outside, with his solidly-made oxfords, so it seemed that only the two of them existed in the exact center of the sestiere of San Polo, in this sweet and narrow labyrinth this afternoon — he could practically hear the curses breaking out from behind the closed wooden shutters: off to stinking putrid hell with you, with those wretched black oxfords — but in this he was mistaken, for it was not only the two of them in the sweet and narrow labyrinth of the sestiere of San Polo: there was someone else as well, who at some point just appeared behind him, lagging considerably behind though in any event trailing after him with more or less the same speed: a thin gangly figure in a light-pink shirt, but of such a light pink that it stood out immediately as this very light pink flashed now and then at a turning point behind him; he didn’t know when he had been joined by him, he had no idea when he had begun to be followed, if indeed he was being followed, but somehow he sensed right away that yes, when he had set off from the San Giovanni Evangelista, where he had stayed for one night at the address of San Polo 2366, in the Calle del Pistor or the Campiella del Forner o del Marangon, he definitely was not behind him, indeed not even — he tried to recall — when he cut across the Campo S. Stin in the strong sunlight toward the Ponte dell’Archivio, or still yet, he suddenly reflected, it was possible that this figure had already been waiting for him when he stepped out through the courtyard, open to the heavens, of the San Giovanni Evangelista, and came out of the entrance of the house with its elegant, useless entrance arch designed by Pietro Lombardi, to make his way toward the Frari; it was possible, it flashed through his mind, even very possible, and he felt that at the mere conjecture that someone wanted to attack him, his stomach convulsed into a knot, and he began to feel cold, as he always did when he was afraid; he stopped at the end of the square that opened up before the Ponte dell’Archivio, like someone trying to find the right way, someone who is ruminating — as is often the case with foreigners in Venice — if it would really be a good thing to cross this bridge now or instead to turn away; and he did ruminate, but really just so that his shoes would stop making that huge clattering and he could gaze back — and he did gaze back — and the chilly sensation in his body was transformed from the chill of an uncertain anxiety to that of a decidedly sharp fear, and he had turned away already, in his echoing black oxfords, toward the Ponte, wishing to cross it hastily, but what does he want? — his step quickened in fright — to rob me? beat me? strike me down? stab me? — ah, somehow no, he shook his head, somehow the whole thing was not