RETURN NO RESPITE
I
Distantly, the sound of a wind-chime teased, suggesting a breeze where there was none, for the air in the temple garden was thick and still.
Dry bamboo stood without rustling and the terrapins lay mouthing in the afternoon heat. Sunlight speared at a slant onto the surface of the fishpond, touching the scarlet lilies with fire. Under the water, the goldfish also burned, except on the side where the shadow of a priest made a short peninsula of grey.
Sanzo had always been lean, but now he was more than spare, even gaunt. The purple eyes were still quick and bright, but the cheekbones beneath them stood out like knife-blades over unfamiliar hollows. The hand which held the Marlboro red to the match shook slightly, and was ridged like a fan where the flesh no longer filled the gaps between the bone. Yet the whip of his wrist, as he flung the match hissing into the pond, remained strong and fast and full of purpose.
The monks disapproved of him extinguishing his fiery matches on top of the tranquil carp but, after so many years, his unorthodox behaviour no longer attracted comment.
In fact, he rarely gave them any surprises these days. The monks were reassured, knowing that they could nearly always find him reading in the temple library, or writing at his desk, or praying in the set of rooms which he shared with his dependant, or sitting in the garden with a newspaper (which they thought odd but not counter to religious principle, despite their thorough search for a basis of objection). The priest’s exciting past was treated as a legend rather than fact, as if, by denying its reality, its reoccurrence could be prevented.
If priest Sanzo was not to be found in the monastery precincts, it was probably because he was walking abroad in the town, where he was known to have friends. Not that he saw them often; Sanzo’s reservedness had not matured him into a recluse, but he was not at ease in the town, where he observed, and felt oppressed by, an increasing intolerance and materiality.
When they had first returned from the west, bearing the recovered sutra and heady with victory, the town had welcomed them as heroes. In fact, Sanzo had found the attention irritating and had no patience with explaining (yet again) their success, how they had arrived at the castle and overcome all the evil that lay within. The kappa, of course, had gone overboard with elaborations, the odds against them and their own achievements becoming more impossible with each re-telling.
Now, Gojyo was too afraid to set foot in the town often, as a majority of its citizens had discovered a collective enjoyment in persecuting the half-breed population. Many of the half-youkai, half-human residents had been torched alive in their houses or murdered with knives as they crept out at night, desperate to find food. It sickened Sanzo: the world was rotting with people who deserved to die – why pick on the red-heads?
Gojyo, in fact, had been the first of them to break the old order.
One day, he had smiled directly at Hakkai, winked a bold red eye and told him that, no offence to Hakkai but, he was moving out and moving in with a woman in a village to the north. Hakkai had congratulated Gojyo, whereas Sanzo grunted dismissively because the kappa had said nothing about marriage.
Hakkai was privately (but not so privately that he didn’t tell Sanzo) a little relieved, because it left him free to find a love-mate of his own, without feeling that he was deserting the man who had stopped beside him when he was so badly injured and had devoted his rough and ready means to patching him up and making him well and to giving him company and a rock to rest on till he recovered himself.
As they had all predicted, it didn’t take long for Hakkai to find someone he adored and who thought he would be a perfect husband and father (which he was). Hakkai and Kouma, his pretty wife (yes, there had been a lovely wedding and Sanzo had even danced with Goku – or so they told him), moved into a cottage in the town and began to fill it with children. Sanzo had lost count of the exact quantity. Maybe six. Maybe seven.
Not infrequently, Gojyo had to absent himself from his lady for a while, which he always claimed was a withdrawal to punish her for some misdemeanour, although he knew perfectly well where Hakkai and Sanzo thought that the punishment was due.
During these exiles, Gojyo would fetch up at Hakkai’s place and play the entertaining uncle for the six (or was it seven?) children; usually word would get to the monastery and Sanzo and Goku came to visit. Wine would flow and the memories flowed with it and, after Kouma disappeared indoors to put the children to bed, the four of them would re-group their ideas about the journey and discuss how things might have been different and how villains these days didn’t know their arse from their ear-hole!
II
The first sign of real trouble had come when Goku went off his food. One day he announced that he didn’t want any more.
Sanzo, who only been drinking tea anyway, said idly, “What’s the problem? Finally filled up your black hole?”
Goku had replied that he didn’t see the point in eating any more food.
Sanzo lowered his tea bowl. “There never was any point in the ridiculous quantities you’ve been eating, so what’s changed?”
Then Goku had scowled and looked to be on the verge of tears. “There’s no point in anythin’ any more. Hakkai’s got a family and Gojyo’s gone away and you have to be like a normal priest and… and” He trailed off lamely and clamped his teeth over his lower lip. “And I don’t know what to do!”
Sanzo had been silent for a few seconds and then said “Continue”.
Goku looked at Sanzo defensively. “There’s just nothin’ for me to do. There’s no bad guys after the sutra and there’s no journey and there’s no adventures in the monastery an’ the monks don’t want me here an’ I’m really really bored, Sanzo. There’s nothin’ for me to do any more.”
Sanzo said gently, “You don’t have to stay here, Goku. If you want to choose another way of life, you’re free to do that. I will help you to find what you need if I can.”
“I don’t think it’s the life maybe – it’s jus’ bein’ here all the time. I’m bored.”
So, over the next two years, they had taken some short journeys, visited other monasteries, travelled to towns to investigate rumours of magic and crimes, but it was never the same without Jeep, and Goku became bored again as soon as they returned and Sanzo couldn’t go on wandering round the country as an unpaid companion to a bored monkey. They had had sensible discussions and useless arguments and the result was largely the same: Goku was always bored.
“I think it is the life maybe – can I go somewhere else and not live with monks?”
So Sanzo had suggested that Goku could try living in the forest where there were trees to climb and the river to play in and no walls or fences to keep him in or out, but Goku was back within a few months: he didn’t like the loneliness, or the bathroom deficiencies, or the feeling that there were things going on which he didn’t know about, or the fact that there were no takiyaki stands – and, most of all, most importantly and insurmountably of all, he didn’t like being away from Sanzo.
Sanzo had asked, “What is it that you want to do, Goku? What would you have done if you had never met me, if I had never taken you out of the cave?”
And Goku had looked tearful and wise and exasperated all at the same time and said, “I’d still have been tied up in the stupid cave, wouldn’t I? I wouldn’t be able to do anythin’.”
Sanzo looked away from the frustrated, unhappy face in front of him and thought again. He himself was an ordinary human and his life would run a human cycle, one which Goku could not follow. Goku’s nature was special; a human way of life was never going to fit that wide, exuberant, passionate energy, which had been born from the earth itself, like a flower of life, a single expression of all the living that there was or ever had been or ever would be. How could this possibly be confined within the limitations of a human span of years or a human span of endeavour?
Sanzo, Hakkai, Gojyo, all of them had known that the long-term for Goku in a human world, and in a world which would inevitably move on without Sanzo and Hakkai and Gojyo still being there, was going to be difficult, but Sanzo had hoped that the pain could be held off a little longer if the monkey was kept busy enough. Was there nothing else at the monastery for Goku to do? He could hardly help in the kitchens, or the rest of them would starve!
Goku was a matchless fighter, of course. Could he not help train the monks in some forms of martial art? Surely he would relish the use of his weapons again?
So it happened that Goku was assigned to accompany and assist the martial arts instructors, who trained the young monks each morning in kung fu. Goku was asked to show different techniques and to demonstrate the use of weapons and to offer his skills against the more senior students for sparring practice.
III
For a while, helping to teach kung fu seemed to keep Goku amused.
Certainly he enjoyed the physical exertion, enjoyed handling Nyoibo again and inventing different exercises to use the monks as multiple attackers or defenders. Certainly the younger boys found his antics and breath-taking speed fascinating to watch, even if it did not teach them much which they could use for themselves.
Sanzo was grateful for the lull, but not surprised when one of the instructors began to complain to him that Goku was causing trouble, was late to arrive, lost concentration very quickly, and was unwilling to repeat exercises or to help the novices in the several hours a day of their routine practice. Sanzo sighed: Goku’s innate strength and his flawlessness of co-ordination could not be touched by any of the instructors, let alone the students, and that restless package of energy and muscle which they called Son Goku could not, of course, understand the need to spend so much time on practice or see why improvement was so slow or why so many aspects required SO much repeated explanation.
Sanzo would not normally go near the courtyard where the martial arts instruction took place but, now, it seemed to him prudent to take a walk in that direction from time to time and to make some observations about the progress of Goku’s involvement.
After a few weeks, it became obvious to Sanzo that Goku’s participation was disruptive. Then it became destructive: Goku could no longer restrain his full strength from the fuel of his frustration, and the line of bleeding and bruised boys standing by the door of the herbalist became longer and longer as the days went by.
One monk was so badly injured that Sanzo had been forced to send for Hakkai and to request that he apply his flow of healing chi to the internal organs which had been so forcibly distended and ruptured. The young monk had recovered completely and, for the rest of the year, had enjoyed telling the story of his miraculous cure at the hands of the one-eyed healer, but the time had come for Sanzo to step in and to ask Goku to stop “helping”. Goku did not complain but reverted to kicking his heels in the temple grounds and to growling about boredom.
Without prompting, Hakkai and Kouma asked Goku if he would like to come to live with them and their six (or was it seven?) children; there would be plenty of opportunity to play and Goku liked Hakkai’s cooking and Sanzo could come to visit perhaps more often. Wasn’t it a good idea?
As with everything else, it had been a good idea to start with.
It remained a good idea until Hakkai and Kouma realized that Goku was child number seven (or was it eight?): he couldn’t be relied on to close gates or doors, to put laundry in the right basket, to buy the right number of sweet potatoes or the right type of fish, not to lose keys or clothes or medicines, not to leave boiling water unattended on the stove, not to feed the six month old baby wasabi peas, and not to pull the five year old screaming out of bed when she was sleeping just because he had thought of a great game in the dark.
Hakkai and Kouma said nothing to Sanzo about their difficulties but, then, Goku became bored with bathing the children again, with collecting the washing again, with combing hair again, with putting on shoes again, with spooning in congee again again again AGAIN!
“Sanzo, how do I stop living with Hakkai, please? Is there an application process?”
“I thought you liked it.” Sanzo’s comment was uncoloured, his voice deliberately level. He was even slightly sleepy with Hakkai’s warming yaki soba, soft and bulky like a pillow, inside him.
Goku wriggled and scuffed his feet. “Yeah. I liked it but they do the same stuff all the time – like time after time after time - an’ I’m too careless so it’s not good with all the kids aroun’ an’ Kouma has to yell at me an’ stuff. I mean, I like it but – but it’s jus’ not the right place for me to be, I don’t think. Do you?” Goku looked up at Sanzo, golden eyes begging, “Can we go away somewhere real excitin’, just you an’ me and have adventures an’ stuff an’ never have to do anythin’ boring ever again?”
Sanzo met the pleading with a blunt wall of fact. “Goku, I can’t decide for you where the right place is for you to be. All I know is that I can’t leave the real world and that I can’t escape from the chakra which marks me a priest or from the passing of time which is changing me into an old man.”
He held out his hands. “Look at these, Goku. When I stretched out my fingers to break your chains in the cave, these lines were not there, these wrinkles were not there, these freckles were not there, these veins did not stand out like uneven blue noodles!” The monkey looked away suddenly. “Goku, I cannot rescue you from your nature and I cannot escape from my own. I can never return to what I was even yesterday, let alone to what I was all those years ago when the journey to the west was our only purpose. Some things are gone forever, Goku. Do you understand?”
There was silence between them and Goku would not meet Sanzo’s eyes.
Later in the evening, Sanzo returned to the monastery and Goku prepared to tell Hakkai and Kouma that he would leave them in peace quite soon. In a few weeks, indeed, Hakkai and Goku appeared at the monastery gate with two small bundles of Goku’s things, mainly his clean clothes, carefully ironed by Kouma, and several strange presents from the children ranging from some pieces of dried orange peel to a drawing of Uncle Gojyo holding a cigarette twice as tall as himself.
Sanzo was not present in the apartment when they arrived but Hakkai helped Goku to make up the bed and to arrange everything tidily, even the orange peel.
When Hakkai had gone, Goku took a large bottle from the inside pocket of his cloak and hid it between the bed and the wall. He felt slightly sick, and touching the bottle made his breathing tight with tension: he had never had a secret from Sanzo before.
IV
When the shadows were long, Sanzo returned from the library and was nearly knocked to the floor by Goku flying though the doorway onto him. “SANZO!! I came back!” Strong, ridiculous arms wrapped round Sanzo’s bony shoulders.
Sanzo pushed him off – “Careful with the sutras, moron!” – but the arms merely dropped down to his waist and squeezed hard through the heavy silk robes. The priest felt his breath forced into his throat as the floating ribs bent inwards to the point of painfulness.
“Hakkai’s been feeding you too much red meat! Get off me, you animal.”
Goku grinned. “I’m back, Sanzo. I’m back!”
“And I have bruises to prove it” grumbled the priest. He straightened up and walked into the apartment. “I suppose you want me to make up a bed for you so that you can prolong your inane disturbance?”
Bed. The bed! Goku’s eyes widened and he stopped dead.
Sanzo looked at him sharply. “Well?”
“Mmm – isn’t any need. I mean – already done it! No need. No need!” He began to skip about, waving his arms in agitation.
Sanzo frowned at his peculiar behaviour. “You never made a bed in your life. It must be a monumental wreck. Let me see.”
“No! I mean, no, not now. Later. Doesn’t matter. Let’s go and – mm, let’s – er, let’s go and EAT.” Goku hovered nervously near the door, bobbing up and down, and dancing on the balls of his feet like he was ready to run.
Sanzo fumbled in his sleeve for cigarettes. He flicked at the lighter and put the packet down on the table. Then he took a long, slow inhale and regarded Goku with curiosity, irritation and – thought Goku – suspicion. (The bed! Did he know? How could he know – but how come he already mentioned the bed?)
“You are one hell of a weird monkey tonight.”
V
The hell of a weird monkey was too frightened to think of touching the bottle for a long, long time and life resumed the form of normality. The bottle stayed a detached secret, a crime in waiting.
Sanzo had his own secrets about accepting Goku back into his life: he was secretly grateful to have his privation relieved and he secretly resumed bearing the weight of dread about Goku’s future, the dread of a future both when Sanzo was a part of it and when he was not.
He had felt the monkey’s absence like snow, enjoying the chill of abstinence whilst hating the sting of the cold. Sanzo had always being a slave to the frugal, feeling that he deserved to have the good things taken away, that his discipline could always stand to manage with less – and, with age, he found that the abundance of the thinking in his head, his mental fruiting, needed to be balanced by a physical barrenness and minimalism. He had become addicted to self-denial. He drank only tea and ate very little food – and just rice and green vegetables at that; he washed in cold water and slept on a hard bed without a pillow. Cigarettes and comfortable jeans were his only concession to sensory enjoyment.
Goku was a concession to enjoyment in another sense. Goku was a second necessary balance: he had been brought into Sanzo’s sight like an incarnation of innocence and trust, a vicarious liberation from the cynicism and disgust and constriction and sacrifice which made Genjyo Sanzo the waspish and obdurate scholar that he was. Goku was also relief from the ugly; in his energy and his pleasure, his appetite and his enthusiasm, and in his affection and his desire for justice, Goku was beautiful.
If the world had been a different place, Goku would be Sanzo’s prize in waiting.
For months, Goku basked in being close to Sanzo again, enjoyed being back in a place which smelled pleasantly of Sanzo, whether Sanzo was there or not. Every evening, Goku collapsed into sleep conscious of the comforting smell of the priest around him and frequently, if he woke during the night, he could hear the flick of the lighter on the balcony outside and then enjoy the sound of Sanzo giving that long, steady, loosening exhalation. Goku would roll onto his tummy and watch the small orange circle which glowed in the darkness at head-height, like a special chakra for an invisible priest. Magic.
Eventually, Goku’s contentment wore thin as his energy reasserted itself. He became more unhappy as each hour of Sanzo’s reading or teaching or praying seemed to have far more than sixty minutes to it.
Sanzo spent so much time reading and Goku had tried so many times before to discover what the fascination of the black marks on the white paper could be! Hakkai had used his inexhaustible patience to find a thousand ways to explain what the characters meant, but, even when Goku learned a meaning (“in”, “out”, “dog”, “cat”), where was the fascination? He had stared long and hard and even stroked, licked and listened to the print – but there was still nothing: just small black shapes. Dead ants. Iron filings. Old tea leaves.
Sanzo had said that characters were like food – you used them for what they gave you, in the same way that, when you were hungry, you ate gyoza or donburi to make your body feel warm and satisfied inside. Eating the words with your eyes made your mind feel warm and satisfied, said Sanzo. Goku didn’t get it.
Sanzo said that maybe Goku never had any mind-hunger so he didn’t need any mind-food. Goku still didn’t get it.
Goku knew there was a lot he didn’t get. Like where the hell he should be. If not here, then where?
Goku tried to make a picture in his head of where he wanted to be; he knew it wasn’t the forest, he knew it wasn’t Hakkai’s house, he knew it wasn’t with Gojyo but, when he squeezed his eyes shut so tight that it hurt and tried to push the picture of a place into his head, he only ever saw the same thing. He saw his own manacled, muscle-heavy hand clawing towards the light and then slender fingers reaching down to touch him in the darkness and the black leather arm-shield and square shoulders in a white silk robe and the chains breaking away in pieces as his wondering eyes lifted to the sun, the face of Genjyo Sanzo. And that was the place! That was the only place Son Goku could ever be, could ever be – happy. The sun.
VI
Then came the night of the storm.
Goku had smelt the thunder on the air long before the first rumble could be heard. He and Sanzo had gone to bed as usual, the priest shading sore eyes from a peculiar purple sunset and the monkey knowing that the rain would start in a few hours. Goku hoped that Sanzo would not wake, although he knew too well that the monk was a light sleeper and that the rain always triggered Sanzo’s sensitivities – and his most savage temper. Goku pulled the covers tighter round him and allowed himself to drift into unconsciousness.
Goku woke with his heart banging inside him almost as loudly as the thunder was crashing outside. Rain pounded on the roof and flashes of lightning flooded the room with a strange blue light. Once awake, Goku had only Sanzo in his mind. The monkey stood up and hovered in the middle of the room. He was desperate to go to Sanzo, just to be with him because Sanzo hated the rain, but he was also wary of the monk’s considerable wrath. What would Sanzo really want him to do? Hell, he just didn’t know.
In the next few seconds of electric light, Goku decided to go out onto the balcony in the rain and look into Sanzo’s room. A voice inside him persisted in pretending that he might see Sanzo still lying asleep.
Despite the overhang of the roof, the balcony was drenched and the driving rain soaked Goku to the skin as he edged along in the dark, trying not to kick over the ornamental shrubs in their damageable ceramic pots. Then he stood by the lattice of Sanzo’s door and a voice inside him persisted in pretending that he might see Sanzo still lying asleep.
Instead of which, as soon as the lightning flared again, Goku was terrified to find Sanzo’s wildly staring eyes not two inches from his own, just the other side of the thin lattice-work!
Goku heard a thin high-pitched “Yiiiiiii!” which came from his own side of the door and, at the same time, “Murderworthy ape! Prepare to die!” in Sanzo’s angriest, most aggravated tone. The door burst open and a vicious grip instantly clamped itself hard into the cartilage of Goku’s throat, cutting off short the still piercing “Yiiiiiii!”
“Never spy on me again, unspeakable vermin! Would you prefer to drown in the rain or do I strangle you myself, you plague of a primate?” Sanzo was deliberately choking the monkey, not letting him bring air in or out of his lungs. Goku was too frightened to struggle, too paralyzed by the confusion of his own emotions to breathe or move or think.
In the lightning’s glare, Sanzo’s furious, betrayed face spiked into Goku’s brain and he felt dizzy. His knees began to give way. The sky exploded in a deafening clap of thunder overhead.
Flash! Rumble. Rumble - boom!
Goku went limp, his weight suspended at the end of the angry priest’s arm. Sanzo stepped forward and supported the weight with both arms, moving backwards to carry the sodden monkey into the room and then letting him slide without ceremony to the floor. “Brainless, interfering idiot.”
There was another detonation from the clouds. Silence.
Then it happened. The sky exploded in a shower of sparks and wildly forking volleys of light and the temple roof flew into a thousand pieces and the sound of the thunder could not drown the terrible noise of masonry and beams striking the stones of the courtyard so far below.
Sanzo rushed to the edge of the balcony and peered through the sheets of rain at the temple building. Running figures appeared in the courtyard from all sides and the blue light showed the walls of the roofless building trembling and then shaking more violently and beginning to topple inwards onto the statue of Buddha and the golden altar and the famous screen of a Thousand Clouds. The priest in Sanzo felt beyond any capability of feeling as his widened eyes accepted images of the destruction of the holiest place in his home.
It was a night of disaster. Three boys, who had run into the temple to save some of the community’s treasures, were themselves lost under the tons of debris. The statue of Buddha, made of a rare and brittle white jade, was changed into a snowstorm of splinters. The statue had been the luck of the monastery for more than five hundred years and the abbot was almost incoherent with anguish. There was no hope of repair. There were no funds to commission a new Buddha and, in any case, it wasn’t merely a matter of finding another pretty piece of stone to fill a hole.
In the end, Sanzo offered to approach the Three Aspects for assistance.
The Three Aspects were sympathetic and directed the Thirty First of China to journey with the abbot and an entourage of twenty monks, chosen from the best scholars and the wisest priests, to a monastery high in the mountains to the north where another revered statue of Buddha would be given to the abbot.
From that point on, the Thirty First of China should understand that he was never to leave the statue’s side until it was sited with all due ceremony in the rebuilt temple; the Thirty First of China was to guard the statue from attack or invasion from any evil spirit or influence – it would be catastrophic for any negative force to enter the statue during its exposure on the road. The Thirty First of China was to use prayers, incense, offerings and anything else – absolutely anything else (the Three Aspects had exchanged knowing looks when these words were spoken) – to protect the statue’s integrity and its powers of bestowing wellbeing.
The abbot detailed the responsibilities for arranging the rebuilding works, elections were held to appoint twenty monks as retinue and Sanzo threw a few items of kit into the cloth in which he bundled up his luggage. Goku was appalled. “How long ya gonna be away?”
“As long as it takes”. Ammunition. Reading glasses. Spare pair of jeans.
“But I wanna come too, Sanzo! Why can’t I come with you? You’d need someone to do the fightin’ on the journey.” The monkey hopefully struck a combative pose: zaa!
“We wouldn’t. The statue isn’t like the sutra. The fighting’s different – not your sort of fighting.” Toothbrush, razor, comb.
“But fightin’’s fightin’ – how’s it not my sort of fightin’, Sanzo?” Goku was starting to tug at Sanzo’s sleeve as the monk bent over his bed, stripping off the covers which he would not need again for two, three, four months.
“Take your hands off me! I’m not going to explain myself. I’ve told you: I can’t take you on this journey. That’s all. It’s only for a few months. Just deal with it.”
“But Sanzo, what am I gonna do? You can’t leave me here!”
“You’re not a prisoner; you can do what you like. You can stay here or you can go somewhere else.”
“But I haven’t got anywhere else to go. An’ the monks don’t like me. What am I gonna do?” The monkey’s voice struck a dismal, self-pitying note.
Sanzo turned round, holding an armful of sheets for the laundry, and looked Goku sternly in the eye. “You’re beginning to grate on my nerves, dumb-ass. Nothing will change: you still sleep here, you still get fed, you still have the garden to use and the orchard to raid and the boys to tease. Nothing will change; you only have to pretend that I’m still here. Now can the whining!”
VII
After Sanzo was gone, Goku descended into a pit of unhappiness; he could still hear Sanzo’s voice saying, “You only have to pretend that I’m still here” but he didn’t know how to pretend. How you could you pretend something larger than yourself? How could you pretend the sun?
Nothing gave him contentment or peace. He could only feel a hole bigger than hunger, gnawing up towards his heart. This wasn’t like reading - the mind-food for the mind-hunger. There was nothing to take away the Sanzo-hunger, except Sanzo.
At night, the fears of being left alone pressed in on him. Suppose Sanzo never came back?
Suppose they got attacked on the road and Goku wasn’t there to defend Sanzo and Sanzo died and Goku waited for ever an’ ever an’ Sanzo never came? It would be worse than the cave, because in the cave he didn’t know the sun. Now he knew. He had stood in the sunshine and had known a warm, golden, healthy happiness. Suppose the sun had set forever?
Goku did his best to behave like a sensible monkey; he tried hard to find innocent amusement or a worthwhile occupation. He even asked to help with the work of clearing the temple site; he was strong and willing, after all, even if he knew nothing. The monks sent him away crossly, told him not to be a nuisance, not to try to meddle with holy matters a thousand light years beyond his stunted understanding.
In the evenings, Goku, with the gnawing inside him, sat alone at the table looking at Sanzo’s empty ash-tray which he dusted like a talisman each day without fail. Touching the ash-tray in the apartment, clasping it in the duster against his chest, was a bit like calling out to Sanzo from the cave: Goku didn’t really know that he was doing it but he was calling, using the ash-tray like a bell to tell Sanzo that he was desperate, needed to be rescued again. Saaaanzoooo!
Goku’s brain ached with the horrible consciousness of gnawing and the Sanzo-hunger. How the hell could he forget it, shake it off, fool it into giving him five minutes of peace? He couldn’t sleep, his food tasted like dust and the pain in his head was becoming worse by the day.
How did you forget stuff? He certainly forgot stuff when the limiter was removed. Goku touched the diadem nervously; should he take it off? He would certainly forget: he would remember nothing – not Sanzo, not himself, not anything. But he had always ended up with the limiter back in its place and then Sanzo would be mad at him and he might be punished with the cave again and – and he had broken Gojyo’s ribs and nearly killed Hakkai once. And he did remember that; that, the hurting people who shouldn’t be hurt, could not be repeated.
Goku groaned. There seemed no way out of the pain. Was day of aching to follow the ache of the day before without end? Sanzo – was Sanzo gone for ever? Even his smell was growing faint. Was there no way to forget what was no longer there? Was there no way to solve the secret of forgetfulness?
At once, the words “water of forgetfulness” jumped in his mind. The bottle –
Should he try the bottle, the awful bottle which had scared him so much to buy and which scared him more to keep and hide and ignore? Would the bottle help him?
Goku dragged the heavy bottle up from its burial place behind the bed and looked at it. Was it really the water of forgetfulness?
He pulled out the stopper and sniffed cautiously. Something angry bit him in the inside of the nose and he jerked his head back, half way between a sneeze and choking. Yiiiiiii! What strange stuff!
Goku found a bowl and poured some of the Forget Water in it. The liquid was clear, looked like water. He put the bowl to his lips and took the cool distillation into his mouth. Aah! Something scratched and clawed his throat viciously, thrashing under his tongue and bucking up into the soft parts of his nose as he desperately forced the wild beast down into his stomach. Yiiiiiii! He put the bowl down. Inside his stomach, the beast seemed to lose its claws and settled into a pattern of hot breathing, warm and fiery against his ribs. Not so bad.
Goku picked up the bowl again and took another gulp. This time, the beast took longer to start scratching and biting, and the fiery glow was more intense, more lasting. The glow gave him a core of comfort. Goku’s head felt almost sleepy, felt like there was a thick, cosy blanket between him and what was outside -
Suddenly he realized that he hadn’t thought about Sanzo not being there for the longest ever, perhaps three or four whole minutes! It was working then; the Forget Water was the right medicine for his pain.
The Forget Water quickly became Goku’s best friend. The bottle came out to play and the Forget Water rocked Goku to sleep, and the dead weight of forgetfulness dragged his mind away from the sad window which looked onto the world without Sanzo.
He no longer remembered to be fretful about the lost purpose of his existence, no longer took the Sanzo-hunger to bed with him; but, now, as much as a life without Sanzo had been and was impossible, so was a day without the water of forgetfulness.
The weeks, the months of bottle passed. The Forget Water had become life blood.
The weeks, the months passed and Goku drifted from one day to the next in a listless suspension, not functioning beyond a basic degree of sustenance and hygiene but at least no longer alone with his pain and confusion, for the bottle was always with him.
“I could never leave an idiot like you alone” – one night (one night four months after Sanzo had expected to be back) the caravan finally reached the monastery gate and Sanzo returned.
He stumbled wearily to his apartment and, there, found Goku sprawled unconscious on a chair, his head flattened against the table and another bottle of rice spirit (for Goku had had to buy many more) standing upright beside him and accusing like a prosecutor. As if the smell was not an indictment in its own right.
Sanzo stared in horror; was he losing his mind?
He had already been staggering from lack of sleep and suffering the pain of his digestion ruined by weeks of oily food and irregular meals. His strength and spirit were exhausted by fending off the enemies of goodness with an extremity of mental effort and determination beyond anything he had previously had demanded of him. For the last month, he had been craving rest within this familiar, benign set of walls - had he really returned at last, only to find that the enemies of goodness had stormed his own home and abducted the proper Son Goku in his absence?
The truth of the matter tore at Sanzo in blinding flashes: Sanzo had successfully protected the statue of Buddha for a thousand miles of arduous travel, but the price had been his failure to protect the abandoned monkey from this dreadful, domestic defeat.
In the morning, Sanzo tried beating Goku, tried reasoning with him, tried forcing abstinence on him, but it was too late: the monkey was in the grip of a physical addiction far stronger than his now undermined desire to please the distressed priest. Alcohol had eroded Goku’s will-power and Sanzo was too drained to find enough resolution of mind for both of them.
By daylight, it was apparent that Goku was a different person, inhabited by a powerful craving for the thing which had destroyed his integrity. Even Sanzo’s return gave Goku only a dull joy; the bottle deadened all appreciation, of pain, of purpose, of pleasure.
Sanzo did not despair; he was sure that the damage was only temporary. The time would come when Sanzo had the energy and power to pluck the evil from Goku’s system and to restore the monkey to his former energy and wholesomeness.
Until that time, Goku’s alcoholism became the mirror to his own chain-smoking and the monk accepted the role of putting the monkey to bed and cleaning up after him almost as reparation. Sanzo had more than enough strength of mind not to say, “I couldn’t protect him” but not enough to stop saying, “I could never leave an idiot like you alone.”
Thus they lived, Sanzo sheltering the shell of the old Goku, and the changed Goku sheltering in the haze of his muffled sensibilities. It would not always be like this, thought Sanzo with confidence, as he lined up some of Goku’s empties on a wall and shot them. His aim was still good. All the bottles were dead. He killed them with a savage and ironic relish.
None of the ironies were lost on Sanzo. The monks were used to the sound of gunfire, and Sanzo’s own habit of eccentricity, so detested by the monks, meant that it was relatively easy to add the few more behavioural oddities needed to cover up the truth of Goku’s condition. Such an irony too, though, that Goku’s secret, the infamous bottle, had now needed to become Sanzo’s secret as well. Sanzo, whose personality was private rather than secretive, suffered - not least because the secret shared, in no way lessened the burden on either of them.
VIII
Today, as Sanzo unlocked the door after holding his tutorial, the smell told him that Goku had again ingested more alcohol than he could hold, had vomited and would be lying senseless on the bed which would now need changing.
Sanzo tried to shake Goku awake. The golden eyes opened, but there was neither focus nor recognition and Sanzo left him to sleep. He would haul him to the bathroom later.
Meanwhile, and without displaying any emotion, Sanzo fetched the bucket which he now sadly kept for the purpose and knelt on the floor, carefully tucking his robe behind him with one hand and then washing the tiles for the countless time. His brittle fingers moved methodically and with attention to the task. It wasn’t that the years had given his quick nature any greater patience; more that the exercise of endurance and the long practice of advance planning had strengthened the restraint on his impatience.
Impatience? In truth, he could find no reason within himself to be impatient with Goku, who drank out of unhappiness, not indulgence, and out of desperation, rather than desire. So Sanzo stayed on his knees and scrubbed the stones clean.
He hated having to lock Goku in, hated having to revive the role of prisoner, to shut him away from part of his life as a priest. However, the fact was that Goku’s jealousy had become too fierce and uncontrolled, too uninhibited and lunatic; Sanzo could not risk another confrontation between Goku and the young monks who had been thought worthy to take lessons from Sanzo, to become his particular disciples, so that he might consider whether any of them would be suitable to inherit responsibility for the two sutras.
The young monks were likeable boys - eager, cheerful, trusting, intelligent, both in awe of and slightly in love with their charismatic and unusual teacher – and Goku was as jealous as hell. For the first time in many years, Sanzo felt the cold clutch of fear and was careful never to let the Smith and Wesson stray from his person; if the gun came into Goku’s hands when his jealousy was urging him into madness, who could say what damage might not be done?
There was no resolution available to Sanzo: how could Goku participate in the tutorials where Sanzo explained in detail and questioned in detail the tenets and implications of his faith? How could Sanzo both encourage the boys to approach him, to sit at his feet, to lean over the same book and relieve the pain of Goku’s jealousy? It was impossible.
So, when Sanzo was teaching, Goku was locked in their apartment – and, by extending the same pragmatism and logic, how then could Sanzo deny Goku access to the alcohol that his poor, confounded senses now craved? That also was impossible, so Sanzo turned the key on Goku and on a significant supply of rice wine. And came back to.…….this.
The smell offended him. The sight of the abandoned bottle, half-buried in the folds of the bed-cover, offended him. But he could not judge the unconscious animal stretched out before him guilty of any offence.
Sanzo’s own consumption had remained simple and meagre – mainly rice and tea, and nicotine - but, if Goku wanted alcohol to deaden his misery and to blur the image of his purposelessness, then Sanzo would not forbid him to drink and would address the consequences without anger. In any case, their relationship had long out-grown the harisen. He couldn’t even say “stupid monkey” any more without a lump in his throat.
Sanzo supposed that it was Gojyo who had put into Goku’s head the idea of alcohol being the “water of forgetfulness”. Water, thought Sanzo, was clean, - about as far from vomit as you could get. The qualities of vomit - rejected, uncompleted, acidic, a symptom of sickness – should never apply to his beautiful Goku. Goku should be like the water: natural, pure, balanced, a combination of force and pliancy, ever changing and ever moving, essential to survival, inseparable from the very kernel of life itself.
One day Sanzo would restore Goku to his true nature. The unclean water in the bucket seemed to sneer at him and to mock his resolve. How many years had it been already, so did “one day” mean never, priest Sanzo?
Sanzo stood up, tipped the mockery down the sluice and rinsed his hands. He bent over the sour-smelling - and occasionally grunting - figure on the bed and put his fingers into the creature’s thick hair, ruffling it gently as the memories stirred in his mind. Drunkenly and half through sleep, Goku smiled in pleasure and snuggled into Sanzo’s hand. A wet mist smudged the edges of Sanzo’s vision and his own voice sounded inside his head, “I could never leave an idiot like you alone.”
He had never wanted anything he would have to protect.
Yet, here he was: anxiously training monks to ensure the succession of guardianship for his two sutras and desperately, almost distraughtly, concerned for the future of his wonderful monkey in the days to come, when his own human frame was perished and his soul drawn upwards beyond Goku’s grasp.
He couldn’t bear to think of those empty hands reaching after him.
Hold nothing, Sanzo knew – but, he also knew that he could not, yet, find the strength inside himself to force open his own fingers and let the treasure he was holding drop, broken, into oblivion.
He could not let go.
Not yet.
