Oriental Stories/Volume 1/Issue 1/The Circle of Illusion
The Circle of Illusion
By Lottie Lesh
A peculiar story was that told by the Collector of Antiques—a tale of the Unfinished Buddha and the love of a Japanese priest for the daughter of the emperor
As Hammersmith opened the low door of shop number seven, the clear-throated tinkle of a bell above the lintel announced his arrival. Presently a thin, stoop-shouldered man wearing an ill-fitting coat appeared through a curtain at the far end of the dimly lighted room, hesitated a moment, peering through the gloom at his visitor, then laying down the book he was holding, came timidly forward.
He had nothing of the suavity of the efficient salesman. Even Hammersmith noted the contrast between his dignified, scholarly bearing and the obsequious eagerness of the hook-nosed hagglers who sold antiques in the same street. Bowing gravely, he regarded Hammersmith with a searching expression which seemed to indicate that he wished this visitor to announce his business at once and be gone. His pallid skin, his dark, melancholy eyes and the thin graying mustache which accentuated the lines of his drooping, sorrowful mouth gave his face a venerable, world-weary expression. He had the drawn, soul-starved features of a man who has spent all his days within the confines of a gloomy house, poring over musty manuscripts of long-forgotten dead men.
"I have bought a house in Madison Row," said his visitor portentously, looking down to see how the collector took this significant announcement. "My wife wishes to fill it with antiques—antiques of the best kind. She don't want to be outdone by anybody when it comes to class. Something real ancient is what she wants."
The collector cast a doubtful glance at the dusty shelves of his shop, littered with plate and pottery of uncertain age.
"Nothing I have would suit you, I fear," he murmured, more to himself than to his visitor. "Yonder on the third shelf are some Egyptian vases but they are rather common. I had a rare Ming vase, a beauty," he added, "but yesterday an Englishman who had sought it for years offered me a price which I dared not refuse. I sold it. You see," he explained in a gentle tone in which humor and humility mingled, "I have been a victim of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. When young, I collected as did my ancestors, for the love of possessing beautiful things. My family disdained those who commerced in art. We did not seek treasures at the ends of the earth in order to sell them for gold."
"But see here," urged Hammersmith aggressively, "if you had such a rare treasure yesterday, surely you have others equally rare. Something ancient is what we want. My wife would like to own something that a dead queen had possessed if she could get it. You see how particular she is; she won't be outdone by none, now she can afford fine things."
The collector shuddered slightly.
"I have nothing that would suit you, I fear—short of the family treasure." He hesitated, waiting for the stranger to go, then bowed gravely. "I bid you good-day."
The persistent seeker after antiquities took a step toward the door, but suddenly struck with an ingenious idea, turned back and called to the collector persuasively.
"Even though you do not wish to sell this family treasure you mentioned, surely you would not object to telling one who appreciates such things about it. Art is what I am interested in too. Come, tell me about your treasure."
The earnestness in Hammersmith's voice appeared to arrest the collector; moreover he was a courteous man, and to refuse such a request was hardly possible.
"When I mentioned my family treasure," he explained quietly, "I supposed that you knew to what I referred—the Unfinished Buddha. Have you never heard of it? Its name is a classic in the art world. You have never heard of it?"
Hammersmith admitted that he had not. The collector regarded him keenly, with an expression of complete incredulity.
"How strange!"
Hammersmith's face grew red. He was about to offer some excuse for his ignorance, when he perceived that the collector was no longer conscious of his presence. The little man had sunk languidly into a chair and with hands clasped in his lap seemed absorbed with some inner image of beauty. After a moment of deep meditation, he arose, and going to the back of the shop, drew forth a heavy chest which had been concealed under a cot behind the counter. Here, under lock and key, reposed the treasure. The little man lifted it gently from its resting-place and brought it forward. Carefully removing the bit of old yellow silk in which it was wrapped, he revealed within the palms of his hands a tiny green Buddha, The hand of the carver had never smoothed it; it was incomplete, but no suggestion of crudeness marred it.
"Death stayed the hand of the sculptor," murmured the collector softly, "but the hand of the brooding centuries has effaced the scars."
He sank into his chair, sighing gently.
"Every excursion into the wise old
East is a glorious adventure, if
one's heart is open to romance," he said.
"For such an one, mystery lurks behind
every gray wall. Once again, like wine in
the blood, comes the thrill that I knew
on first visiting Japan's ancient imperial
city, that subtle diarm which still lingers
like ghostly melodies echoing down the
dusty centuries. I remember the golden
summer morning when I visited the
shrines at Nikko and stopped breathless
before the Yomei-mon, the most beautiful
gate in Japan, called the sunrise to
sunset gate, where three hundred years
ago a pair of immortal lovers met and
tarried the whole long day.
"In Japan three hundred years ago it was not customary for a woman to be from under authority; but O-Miyuku-san was an orphan; moreover she was an emperor's daughter and a descendant of the gods over whom no mortal had any authority. At sunrise she had come unattended to the shrine at Nikko to do honor to the spirit of her father, the emperor, lately dead. Long after her prayers were said, she lingered in the holy place, drinking in the beauty of the shrine, richly embellished with carvings from the enchanted hand of Jingoro, filled with child-like wonder at the sight of the marvelous painted dragons which looked so life-like that they were said to uncoil from their pillars at night to drink from the lotus pool. In a dream, she paused before the Yomei-mon, wondering if it could, indeed, be the gate of Paradise through which her father would presently beckon her.
"Time does not exist in the presence of beauty. O-Miyuku-san did not know how long she stood gazing at the Yomei-mon before she became aware that a tall priest was standing beside her. Then she drew her robes swiftly about her and would have fled, but the beauty of his face held her. It was a noble face, strangely diffident and other-worldly. O-Miyuku-san, returning his gaze, clasped her little hands tightly to conceal their trembling. Was it for the daughter of an emperor and a lineal descendant of the gods to fear a mortal? She did not know that it was love which had met her at the Yomei-mon.
"Strange that Hasaki with a lifetime's study of the Sutras and all his esoteric philosophy concerning the illusion of earthly things would have tarried to gaze at a maiden. But Hasaki was only a youth, and like many another ascetic, he made the discovery of an unsuspected wisdom in the saying: 'He was created a man before he became a priest.'
"At dusk, the maiden fled. But for her there was no escape, nor for Hasaki; neither the walls of the imperial palace nor the sacred presence of the Buddha could shut out the remembrance of that which had passed before the Yomei-mon. Both knew in their hearts that 'even the knot of rope tying our boats together was knotted long ago by some love in a former birth.'
"But to love with desire O-Miyuku-san, the daughter of Heaven, was a calamity. Hasaki spent the still hours of the night in breathless repetition of the Sutras, prostrating his body before the Buddha. It was to no avail. In the gray dawn of morning he stood before the high priest, his distraught young face, white in the glow of the andon, lifted to the gentle, unmoved countenance of his wiser brother.
"'Return to the Sutras, my son,' droned the older man. 'It is not for an emperor's daughter to marry a priest. Take this image of the Buddha; keep it in the folds of your girdle, and in the hour of your temptation recite the Treasure Sutra to the Compassionate One.'
"But not eyen a high priest of Buddha has authority over the daughter of Heaven. When night fell O-Miyuku-san returned to the shrine. Crossing the slumberous courtyard on winged feet, she found Hasaki kneeling before the Buddha with open prayer roll, devoutly repeating the Sutras. When the priest beheld the princess before him, fairer even than he had remembered her, he covered his face with his hands.
"Leaning toward him, she whispered faintly, 'If you send me away, I shall die.'
"Hasaki arose, and abandoning his priest's robes, went with her out of the city.
"The palace in which the daughter of the emperor and her lover dwelt was an idyllic earthly paradise where royal peacocks feathered in emerald and dazzling gold guarded the gates as effectively as flashing swords. Here these two dreamed that they had created a paradise whose walls no power could shatter.
"Not entirely forgetful of his past life, Hasaki spent many hours fashioning tiny images of the Buddha, even as the ancient priests had done to embellish their temples. The art of carving became a passion with him, second only to his love for the princess; and presently he became known throughout the kingdom as the most exquisite artist of his day. Only one pure in heart could have conceived the works from his hand which were filled with a lofty charm and an other-worldly beauty. But one work, the most perfect of them all, a jade image of the Buddha, Hasaki never completed.
"A cholera swept the land, destroying the people by thousands. It struck down the coolies by the way side and on the wharves, where they died miserably like rats. It entered the palaces of the rich; and the gods remained as ineffably unmoved by the implorations of the powerful as they had been by the wailings of the weak.
"The little daughter of Heaven commanded her palace gates to be barred against Death, and she ordered one thousand guardsmen outside the gates to forbid his entrance. But not even the thousand guardsmen had power against that day when Hasaki lay heedless of his princess, when the agonized prayers of the daughter of Heaven fell back against her lips unanswered.
"Just before death, Hasaki spoke to O-Miyuku-san, bidding her cherish the beautiful Unfinished Buddha. 'Nirvana is profitless without you,' he whispered. 'I shall dwell beside you in the image of the god until death sets you free; thus we shall never be parted cither in life or in death or in Paradise which we shall enter together.'
"In this promise the princess found comfort after her lord's body was taken from her; and the story of the incarnation of the artist, Hasaki, in the form of the Unfinished Buddha became the wonder of the Eastern world.
"Now there was a famous collector of antiques in those days, a European with a palace on the river Rhine. This man had traveled even into Asia and the islands farthest cast and south in search of ancient and precious beauty. While journeying in the Orient, it happened that the tale of this marvelous incarnation readied his ears, and he was filled with an insatiable desire to possess the Unfinished Buddha. He did possess it. After incurring the sentence of death for insolently offering money in exchange for the sacred treasure, he escaped from prison, and stole the god from the royal treasury at night, after slaying the guard. He succeeded in fleeing the kingdom unscathed; although a terrible price was set on his head. But the daughter of Heaven, learning that the robber had his palace on the other side of the world, followed him secretly, taking with her two faithful servants.
"The palace of Brasswell, the collector, was a mediæval castle, filled with ancient storied riches of the past. It stood on a high hill overlooking a city, with the river Rhine flowing so near the base of its walls that the collector, from the turret of his castle, could see the waves of the river creaming on the beach beneath him. Here, remote from the garish life of the world, he dwelt in Oriental splendor, dreaming that he was the imperial emperor of an ancient, exotic world.
"Everything surrounding him was foreign; the tapestries on the walls, the treasures in the treasury room at the top of the castle—even the servants were foreign. A score had been imported from the ends of the earth for the sake of his pleasure. Among them were Egyptians, Nubians, Arabs and Malays; and there were also two Chinese who had lately come into his service.
"These Chinese pleased him inordinately. Their ceremonial deference to him and their noble pedigree, their ancestors having been servants of emperors for centuries, made him prize them above all his servants. He even came to honor these two with his confidence, made them his trusted counselors, and in time, showed them his priceless treasures—took them into his holy of holies at the top of the castle, into the dim religious light of that vast room whose entrance was guarded on either side by the colossal statue of a ferocious Deva king. Within that chamber gilded statues gleamed solemnly in the spacious obscurity. Colors, like tongues of flame, flared out from the shadowy places; colors of the mysterious East; lapis lazuli and emerald, the vermilion of lacquer and pomegranates, purple of Syria and crimson of Tyre.
"There, for the first time, Brasswell displayed his treasures: the work of skilled craftsmen of past centuries, art long since supposed to have perished; yellowed scrolls bearing ancient inscriptions, exquisite stone Amidas fashioned by slender delicate Japanese hands, and wood carvings showing the unmistakable trace of Unkei's handicraft. Before the barred and recessed casement golden peacocks trailed plumages of sapphires and emeralds across richly brocaded palanquin cloths. Against the purple velvet banners on the walls hung the ancient weapons of the shoguns; and from a lacquered chest, breathing the spirit of plum blossoms, caught ages ago from some queen's garden, Brasswell drew forth a ceremonial coat heavily crusted with jewels and bearing the family crest of a Chinese emperor.
"Then, a little flown with the softly murmured adulation of his servants, he brought forth a heavy iron key which had been concealed in the folds of his garment. With this key he unlocked the dragon-guarded lid of a huge stone coffin. Calling his trusted servants close, he lifted the lid of the coffin. Within lay the beautiful Unfinished Buddha.
"A murmur of horror escaped the lips of his servants. Falling on their knees, they begged their master to return the god at once to the Japanese princess, reminding him with awe-stricken faces of the terrible curse which inevitably befalls those who do injury to a priest. Brasswell laughed at their fears, relocked the coffin, hung the key once more around his neck, and informed his servants that his superior wisdom lifted him above the ignorant superstitions of the East.
"'Yours is the wisdom of the fool,' replied Li King, the elder, gently. 'For this, I foresee that in one night the curse of madness will destroy you. It is already upon you, August One; otherwise you would have read the expression of vengeance which now conceals the features of that Buddha you have stolen. There was only lofty sweetness there before.'
"Greatly surprized and displeased with this unexpected attitude on the part of his servants, Brasswell ordered them from his presence and forbade them to speak of what they had seen. Thereafter, he conferred with them less often, finding that their quiet scrutiny made him strangely ill at ease. Becoming increasingly annoyed by the curious manner with which they came to observe him, he began to watch them covertly. Once, after passing his former confidants in a corridor, Brasswell turned suddenly to discover the two in whispered conference, the elder pointing to his master with one hand and with the other significantly touching his head.
"Brasswell began to conceal himself when he heard the two approaching. He was watching them one day from behind an arras, when Li King accidentally surprized his master by carelessly sweeping aside the concealing curtain. Brasswell, crouched on the floor, looked up to see the sorrowful eyes of his servant resting upon him. Li King exchanged significant glances with his companion and shook his head sadly.
"'It has come to pass,' he murmured.
"After this incident, Brasswell tried desperately to win back the respect of his servants and re-establish his claim to sanity. But fate seemed to have conspired against him; for when he willed to act most normally, he found himself doing strange, unnatural things.
"Once, in a studied attempt to appear entirely at case in his servants' presence, he pretended to be vastly delighted with the contents of a manuscript which he held before him. Not until he saw the observant Li King make a silent gesture to his companion did he realize that the manuscript was upside down in his hands.
"Then, softly, almost imperceptibly, the entire household was corrupted. All the servants came to regard their master as a madman. Protesting at first with mighty threats against this treatment, Brasswell gradually subsided into silence; for his angry ravings only strengthened their conviction that he was mad.
"The eyes of all his house were upon him; they followed him from the tower room to the dungeon; they were everywhere. He could not escape them. At length a terror of his own kind seemed to possess him, and he ran when he heard his servants approaching. He ceased to sleep in his usual bedchamber; and his servants, searching through the gloomy castle for their demented master, often found him hiding with the spiders in some sunless hole.
"At length, a night of terrible storm descended upon them. The thunder blasts rocked in the battlements, and the lightning, darting into the enormous shadows like phantom rapiers, revealed Brasswell huddled in a heap of decaying tapestry in an uninhabited quarter of the castle. Awakened by the tumultuous storm, he became sharply conscious of a presence near him. Too terrified to move, he lay shivering miserably, when a blinding flash of lightning, illuminating the place for an instant, revealed a figure towering over him, a tall figure with ashen face, wearing the garb of a Buddhist priest.
"Like a thing pursued, Brasswell fled shrieking through the echoing corridors and up the circling stairways, until he reached the top of the castle. Flinging himself into the tower room, he unlocked the massive stone coffin and seizing the beautiful Unfinished Buddha, he rushed to the casement and threw it into the storm. The fitful lightning revealed it lying on the beach below, the waves of the river creaming around it. Brasswell's Chinese servants braved the storm to recover the god. Returning to the tower room, they found their master dead. Seeing that the huge stone coffin in which the Buddha had been entombed was now empty, they placed their master's body within it, and locking the lid, they threw the key in the Rhine.
"At dawn, they carried the Buddha to the private dwelling of a Japanese lady in the city below; but the lady had departed life in the storm of that night, gone out as if in answer to a moonbeam sent from the deep deep water world as a signal that he was waiting for her."
The strange recitative had come to a close. The collector sighed deeply:
"'And they are gone: ay, ages long ago
Those lovers fled away into the storm.'"
In the silence that fell, Hammersmith sat staring at the gentle, musing countenance of the Buddha. As if in answer to his unspoken question the collector answered softly, "It is quiescent now; the spirit has fled. It is as it was in the beginning; but the beauty of die past clings to it with the same charm that invests a room in which a long-dead queen has slept."
Hammersmith cleared his throat.
"I am a rich man. Name your price; I will pay it."
The collector shook his head.
"It is beyond price. See," he murmured, caressing the Buddha, "see with what ineffable calm it reposes, wise in the understanding that human desires are but as tiny ripples on the Infinite Ocean of Illusion. Age can not wither nor custom stale that august restfulness. Only the favored few can fathom the wisdom of its quiet. If I believed you were such," he added reluctantly, "I might entrust it to you. I am growing old—and have none to whom I can leave it."
The wistful envy that the aged feel toward those in the prime of life betrayed his earlier firmness. Then Hammersmith saw that the animation in his face had burned out and that he was indeed old. Smiling confidently, he towered over the shriveled little man.
"Name your price," he said.
A shadow of horror crossed the face of the collector.
"To take money in exchange for it would be a sacrilege. Do not speak of that again." He sighed heavily. "Take it as a gift, and in the name of friendship give me a mere fraction of what a king would pay to possess such a treasure—in the name of friendship, never as payment, remember? Five thousand dollars, perhaps. Truly that is a trifle; but I am an old man. I can not guard my treasure after death."
With Hammersmith's check folded carefully in the parchment-like hands, the collector followed his visitor to the entrance of the shop.
"Farewell," he murmured, "you take with you that which is precious. Guard it well, for the wisdom it teaches is priceless. That wisdom you will realize sooner or later—that all is illusion."
Wrapped in revery the collector watched Hammersmith disappear into the writhing crowd that surged perpetually before his dimly lighted shop. Gazing with quiet eye upon the passing pageant, he saw, as in a vision, humanity hopelessly caught in the whirling Circle of Illusion, irresistibly swept into the vortex by its own tumultuous desires.
The silken rustle of a woman's garment aroused him from his meditation. The curtains at the rear of the shop parted noiselessly, and the face of the collector's wife appeared in the aperture. It was a dark, luminous face with heavy-lidded eyes and tiny heart-shaped mouth.
"Abel," exclaimed the woman softly, "thou'rt a marvelous teller of tales; thy lyric tongue hath made us. Soon all this tawdry stock will be sold, and then, praise Allah, we shall set up a shop in Regent Street and buy some real antiques."