Takahara-san takes the call on the private line to his office in Takamatsu. Oshima-san is excited, of course. "The gaijin in your house is dead, I think," he says in a rush over a crackling line. "But he sits still in front of the Buddha in seiza. What should I do?"

"Say nothing to anyone," Takahara tells him. "I will come as soon as I can. Perhaps tomorrow." He has not seen his American friend for many years, not since giving him the abandoned farmhouse to live in, so long ago. Could the old fellow actually have done it? It is a rare event in modern Japan to find a corpse sitting upright in a posture of meditation. It is always assumed that the body is that of a Holy One. This one would be seen as even more strange, the corpse being that of a foreigner. The press would turn it into a sad joke.

He calls the sister in New York; he has her number though he's never met her. She says she will come immediately. She asks him to tell someone named Shinsen, a priest at Kyosenji in the Tosa mountains, so he has to call the old seal maker in the Hyogo-machi, the only person he knows who can get in touch with anyone at that obscure sect's temple. In a few hours the seal maker calls to tell him that this Shinsen will meet him in Takamatsu the next morning.

Shinsen turns out to be another gaijin, a tall, lean one, even if he is a priest with a Buddhist name. He is perhaps a few years older than Takahara, and he somehow seems once to have been athletic. His head is completely shaved. Black cotton trousers and turtleneck, huddling in a black pea coat against the cold wind. They take a cab to the airport and the company helicopter from there to meet the sister's plane in Osaka. They don't speak during the short flight.

The sister, slim, dressed in a ski jacket, leggings, heeled boots, bows to them formally after clearing customs, addresses Shinsen as sensei, and asks no questions. Her hair is long, red and wild, she moves like a young dancer, though her face reveals her age, early to mid-forties.

Now the black helicopter descends, hovers, settles on a level area between the brown ridge and the old wooden farmhouse. Takahara steps out, not waiting for the engine to shut down. He admires the logo of his company painted on its side, Takahara Enterprises, a circle in English surrounding stylized Japanese characters saying the same thing. He turns, his longish black hair blown by the last few turns of the rotor, extends his hand back into the cabin. The sister ignores it, jumps out easily. The gaijin priest is slower.

"This is Migijima," Takahara says, adding unnecessarily, "There is the farmhouse."

The three of them walk quickly across the field, some hundred meters to the house, past the well, the outhouse. A tiny iron bell with a tattered paper tied to its clapper tings in the wind. Takahara slides open a battered lattice door, whispers "I commit a discourtesy" and waits for the traditional reply. The bell rings again, the wind rattles the house. No other response.

They enter a dim, dirt-floored anteroom. There is a platform of wood before a paper door. To one side is a box for shoes, one pair of wooden clogs in it, a worn pair of western loafers. Next to it a rusty coffee can. There is a faint smell of urine.

Takahara sits on the platform, removes his shoes and puts them in the box. He kneels before the paper door, whispers "I commit a discourtesy" again, slowly slides it open.

The others peer past him. In the room, a messy futon on the sagging tatami floor, a kerosene heater gone cold. He sucks in his breath.

"Is it he?" the woman asks.

He doesn't answer, but bows deeply from his kneeling position, not to her, to the inside. Then he shifts backward to let them see the rest of the room.

Inside, a man sits with his back to them, perfectly upright, in seiza, the formal Japanese kneeling position, facing a small wooden Buddha. He wears a summer sleeping robe. His thinning gray hair is long, tangled. To his right is a writing desk the height of a coffee table. On it are writing materials, a paper-wrapped package, some yen notes.

Shinsen sits and slips off his Chinese cloth slippers, twists up onto the platform. He bows at the doorway, then goes in. The woman sits to pull off her boots. Takahara continues to kneel by the shoebox, head bowed.

The woman also bows at the door, steps just in, kneels and sits on her heels. Shinsen walks quietly up to the man in front of the Buddha, kneels slightly to the side, peers into the face.

"Yes, it is Kansei," he says in Japanese. "He is dead."

The woman rises, walks the few steps across the floor, kneels beside the tall man, looks into the face of the corpse. They sit that way, silently, for several minutes. The tattered paper windows shiver in the wind.

Takahara comes in and sits just behind them. "Shinsen-gohosan, has he made a living Buddha?" he asks.

"No," the tall man answers. "He has simply gone beyond."

"He seems to have died peacefully," the woman says. "How long has he been dead?"

"Oshima-san called me half an hour after he found him," Takahara tells her, "just before I called you in New York yesterday morning. Before that we don't know. Oshima-san had not seen him for over a week."

They sit for a while longer. "Excuse me, Miss West," Takahara says, "but... what do you want us to do with him now?"

She slumps, shaking her head. She doesn't answer.

After a time Shinsen asks him, "What is usually required, Takahara-san?"

"The usual thing would be to call the policeman in the village, who would then call for the doctor. Then he would be taken to a funeral home. There will probably be the press..."

"Please, Takahara-san, no press. And he shouldn't be moved," the woman interrupts. She pierces him with a fierce green eye. "He is forever in samadhi," she says.

"What is done in such cases is not clear," he tells her. Takahara considers. "There may be some precedent," he says at last. "Perhaps I could get permission to burn the house."

She turns to look at Shinsen.

"It is in the proper tradition, Madomari," he tells her.

She turns back to Takahara. "Please try then, Takahara-san," she says.

He bows, "I will call from the helicopter," he says, and leaves. Shoes on in the anteroom, he sees that they continue to sit with the corpse. Shinsen bows and stands, touches the woman's shoulder. "He'll manage it, Madomari. We should look through Kansei's things."

In the helicopter, Takahara uses the cell phone to pull strings, a Shingon priest he knows, the prefectural government. It takes half an hour. He returns to the house.

"It will be all right," he says. "They will send up the doctor to pronounce him dead, and the fire brigade."

They have laid out a few of the dead man's things. There is so little. His brushes and inks, the incongruously elegant inkstone, a few ink paintings he has done, a few sutras he has copied. The wrapped package on the desk is addressed to her, Mad Mary West, her address on Bond Street, New York. She opens it. At first it appears to be in Japanese, written on rice paper with a thin brush. But she turns it sidewise to read. It is in English. She shuffles through it, reads a page here and there.

"It's about us, all of us, you too, Takahara-san. And Norman and Carmen, Nirasaki, Nishi Kyosenji, the whole story."

"Will you take anything besides the manuscript?" Shinsen asks, seeming to have no interest in what she has said.

"No," she says. "Is there anything you want?"

"His paintings should be saved, and the sutras. I'll take them to the temple."

She puts down the manuscript. Kneels at the desk, lifts the inkstone and turns toward Takahara. "He would have wanted you to have this, I think."

She bows, the inkstone raised in two hands above her head. Takahara kneels facing her, bows deeply, accepts the stone, raises it above his head. "Domo arigato," he whispers in thanks. "He truly was a dear friend, though I no longer saw him once he moved here. I know he always prayed for me."

The rumble of a truck, a knocking on the door, clatter of fire gear being rigged. The doctor enters, a skinny young man in an ill-pressed business suit, dark tie. He examines the body, signs a paper, takes the passport.

"How did he die?" Takahara asks him.

"He had been weak and sick for a long time," the doctor says shrugging. "Perhaps it was simply that the cold got to him, though his skin condition suggests perhaps some malnutrition, perhaps a cancer. There are several welts, perhaps boils. I cannot tell without taking him in for an autopsy. I'm sorry." He pauses, mutters, "There should be a priest here, I think."

"I am a priest," Shinsen tells him.

They all go out, retrieve their shoes, walk upwind toward the helicopter. The doctor says sayonara, goes to his car and drives off. The firemen do some things in the house, start the fire.

Shinsen hears the little bell on the eaves, runs back and unhooks it, brings it away. He reads the faded poem written on the paper dangling from the clapper.

The house goes up surprisingly fast, the smoke turns the evening into black night. They have to wet the grass downwind.

Takahara sees the woman's back begin to shake, sees her head bow. Shinsen stands immovable, intent on the flames. When the roof collapses she shudders, turns her face to Shinsen, tear-stained. He doesn't move. She wipes her eyes, turns back to the fire, as straight and firm as the priest. He begins to chant a sutra, Takahara doesn't know which one, barely audible over the crackling of the flames.

Soon there are just embers. Shinsen has finished the sutra. The firemen turn a hose on the collapsed house. It steams. Then two of them go into the center with picks, shovels, a body bag.

"Fire, then, of a spring evening," Shinsen whispers, smiling faintly at the poem written on the tag of the wind chime.

As they cross the rough field back to the waiting helicopter, Mad Mary West is already reading her dead brother's strangely handwritten book.

Copyright © 2002 by M.J. Sullivan