One Day the Shadow Passed Page 3

  “When you are ready I will show you. This is something very special.”

  A look of puzzlement must have crossed my face, for he nodded as if to reinforce his point.

  “Really. It is very special indeed. It can be no accident that you arrived last night.”

  Intrigued, I folded the blanket and put it next to my pillow. While I was doing this the farmer swept out the fireplace and rekindled a fresh summer fire. Then, seeing that I was ready, he ushered me with him over to the door to the garden.

  I stepped into the warm sunlight and looked out over the garden and fields, and what I saw left me speechless. Covering every inch of the vegetable garden and the rice fields below – a space probably totalling two acres or more – was a miraculous blanket of silk, shimmering and glistening in the morning sun. I had never seen anything like it before. Without taking his eyes off the sparkling vision, the farmer spoke.

  “Spider webs.”

  I gasped in amazement. He nodded his explanation.

  “They appear overnight, only very rarely, once every seven years. And by the end of the day they will all be gone.”

  I shook my head in wonder.

  “They’re so beautiful.”

  He turned to me with a smile. “You see it can be no accident that you came.”

  I was still staring in amazement at the beauty of it all.

  “But why does this happen?” I said, gesturing towards the fields.

  “Go and look. Every square foot of ground contains hundreds of thousands of tiny spiders. Altogether there must be millions of them, but they will all vanish and tomorrow not a single one will be left.”

  He stepped over to the edge of the vegetable garden and squatted down to examine the extraordinary silk blanket.

  “You see these fine strands of web? They break off and wave about in the air. Then the spiders clamber up from underneath and cling to the strands with all their strength – six, seven, sometimes ten of them on one strand, like this one here. Over the course of the day the threads come loose from their moorings and carry the spiders aloft, floating away to who knows where.”

  “But that’s incredible.”

  Then I noticed something strange. A quarter of a mile away, there was a fence that marked the boundary of the farmer’s rice field, and beyond the fence lay a commercial farm. For some reason, there wasn’t a single strand of silk beyond the fence, not one single spider planning its daring escape.

  “Why hasn’t it happened in the other fields?”

  A shadow passed over the farmer’s face. For the first time since I had met him he looked unhappy.

  “People think that they know nature, but they don’t. That is why.”

  We fell into silence. I wanted to ask him to explain his cryptic comment, but I didn’t feel it was the right time. After a minute or so he spoke again.

  “When I was a very young boy, I remember someone came running to the house in the morning asking us why we had covered our fields in a silk net. We didn’t know what he was talking about until we stepped outside. That was the last time I saw this sight. Then my father too started to use pesticides; after that, we never saw the spiders again. Until today.”

  I was glad to see him smile once more. His natural good nature had returned.

  “No one understands these things. One year it is spiders, the next it is frogs and the year after that it is toads. Nature is too deep to fathom, its patterns are too intricate. But nowadays the farmer focuses on one tiny thing, like controlling seed-blight. He sprays a chemical and by accident he wipes out ten million spiders. And because of this the insects that spiders would otherwise have eaten come and destroy our precious crops. So, the only thing left to do is to kill everything.”

  He looked at me and smiled sadly. “It’s a curious way to farm.”

  We stood in silence marvelling at the wondrous scene until the farmer turned back to me once more.

  “But now I must work.”

  Urgently I spoke. “Perhaps I can help? I would be glad to help and I could do with a rest from the walking.”

  In truth I could have pressed on. I wasn’t so tired that I had to rest, but I desperately wanted to stay. It was so peaceful here and I was intrigued by the life of the farmer. Everything that he did or said seemed to spring from one central source of belief, as if at some point in the past he had experienced a true insight into the workings of the world and it was by the light of this insight that he lived his every moment. I wanted to learn more, I wanted to find out what he thought.

  He smiled at me as if it was the most natural request in the world and replied that I was welcome to stay if I wanted.

  “But first we must get you some proper shoes or you will crush all the young shoots and stamp the earth to dust.”

  I thought that he was pleased that I had asked to stay, though I couldn’t tell for sure. It was equally possible that he simply didn’t mind either way. He certainly seemed more relaxed. I thought that perhaps the fact that my arrival had coincided with the return of the spiders made him look more favourably on me – I didn’t know.

  I followed him over to a cupboard that stood by the back door and watched him rummage around, looking for a pair of shoes. With his back still turned to me he continued to talk.

  “In America and Europe, and even in Japan these days, people drive huge pieces of machinery over the land every day. Some of those combine harvesters and tractors weigh ten tons or more; it is little wonder that the soil turns to finely pressed dust …”

  Shoes of many different sizes were stacked in neat piles in the cupboard. I looked down at my heavy walking boots.

  “What we really need are great clods of rich soil, like chunks of horse manure. Each clod is a little world of its own, filled with life, and further down, moles and worms will make their homes. Then the soil will be rich in nutrition and from our tiny seeds things as dense and hard as potatoes and turnips will be summoned into life; strong crops will grow that will be able to withstand disease, and the pests will be kept at bay by the wildlife that will make our fields their home.”

  He turned round and handed me a pair of soft fibre shoes. I sat down on the ground and wrenched off my heavy boots and slipped into the farmer’s shoes. I couldn’t prevent myself from smiling when I stood up; I felt as if I was in bare feet.

  “They’re so light!”

  The farmer smiled in return.

  It was one of those truly uplifting mornings that can only be experienced in the depths of the countryside. The air was crisp and fresh, the light was superabundant and the birds were singing joyfully in the trees. Below us the fields dressed in their fabulous silver robes shimmered in the sunlight.

  On a low work-table next to the back wall of the house was a large bamboo tray. The tray was covered in seedballs. The farmer explained that they had been left out in the open air for two days so that the clay would dry a little in the sun. This way the hardened clay skin would offer the precious contents some protection from pests, but when it rained the clay would dissolve away again and the seeds would be released onto the wet soil.

  He then carefully emptied the seedballs into a large basket and handed me the basket with a smile. He turned and picked out two old-fashioned scythes, which were leaning in a stack against the wall of the house, and hooked the long blades over his shoulder before we set off up the hill towards the orchard.

  The Zen poets of old lived high up in the cold mountains or lost in the valleys down below. White masses of cloud piled up around the peaks, and the valleys were filled with smoky rain. The tiny houses of the woodcutters were their only neighbours and the distant sound of an axe echoing through the mountains was all that might remind them of what they had left behind.

  The paths of these poets led through long gorges choked with scree and boulders. Wild rivers tumbled alongside them and mist-laden vegetation covered the canyon sides. Moss clung to the rocks on the path, which were always slippery even when there was no rain. The pines we
re always murmuring, the water was always trickling.

  The paths led between the vines and rocky caves to huts hidden deep in the mountains where the white clouds touched the snow. When travellers looked for these paths to the clouds they could never find them, they seemed to go from sky to sky.

  As I followed the farmer through the sunny fields of the orchard I was reminded of the poets of old, and I wondered if it would happen that, when I left the farm, I would never be able to find it again. I was overwhelmed by a deep sense of sadness and an urgency to experience as much as I could of its wonderful atmosphere.

  Dragonflies and butterflies fluttered between us as we walked. Bumblebees, flying like old-fashioned biplanes, zigzagged this way and that, as they travelled from blossom to blossom. Beneath our feet the ground was soft; we were walking on a carpet of wild flowers and clover. Spiders, frogs, lizards and insects that I could not even begin to name bustled around in the cool shade, or ran in spirals of panic on hearing our gentle approach.

  After a few minutes we passed through the orchard and stepped onto the open slopes of the hill. Weeds and grasses covered the hillside for half a mile. Higher up, the woods began again, and further down the sharp edge of a commercial rice farm ran in a straight line following the contour of the bottom of the hill. The farmer unhooked the scythes from his shoulder and turned them the right way up, and then explained to me what he was going to do.

  “First we will cut down the weeds and grasses, and then we will sow the seedballs onto the bare hillside. When this is done we will return the dead weeds to the field. We will lay them on top of the seedballs as a mulch.”

  I wasn’t sure that I understood him correctly. It was true that I knew little about farming, but I knew enough to know that if he was going to plant this hillside he would first have to kill or uproot all the weeds. Simply cutting the weeds down at ground level would not destroy them. And just tossing the seeds out to lie on top of the ground was hopeless; they would be eaten by birds and strangled by the weeds as soon as the weeds began to regrow.

  I asked him if he intended to use pesticides. He said no. Would he plough the land or use fertilizer? He said he planned to do neither of those things. He had his own way.

  I didn’t understand. All the people of the world ploughed the land and prepared the soil and nowadays, even in Japan, farmers had begun to use pesticides and fertilizer. I had seen the evidence with my own eyes during the course of my walk. He seemed to be expecting nature to do the farming for him.

  I asked him if the land belonged to him. He answered no. Did he know whose land it was? He did not know. He supposed that it belonged to the village, or perhaps it belonged to someone who didn’t care about it. He himself did not care to know who the owners were and he did not mind at all if, after all his work, they came to ask for it back.

  He explained that in the months to come he would cut the weeds again and the young plants that would just be sprouting from the seedballs would have a small head start on the weeds. By next year these six acres would be covered in lush green clover and the vegetables would already have started to grow.

  I was unsure what to say. Questions grew in my mind – questions that I didn’t feel that I could ask. Did he also use his technique in the orchard? Did that explain why the orchard looked so overgrown and abandoned? Why did he have no farm workers? And what about his rice? How did he grow that? I hadn’t seen his rice paddies yet but he must certainly plough and use chemicals there.

  The farmer smiled at me patiently. I had the distinct impression that he knew exactly what I was thinking. This made me feel quite uncomfortable, for I didn’t want him to suspect that I doubted him and I certainly didn’t want to offend him. But he didn’t look offended at all.

  He said that he would be glad to explain, but there was work to do. We could talk about it over lunch. In the meantime, he suggested that I take a walk in the woods. Farm work was hard and it took months to learn to use a scythe. I insisted that I would give it a go. I intended to earn my keep and besides, I was now completely fascinated.

  Using his right foot like a hoof, he cleared away the weeds from the ground around his feet, revealing hard red-coloured earth.

  “This soil is virtually clay right now. That is why the wood that grows well higher up the hillside doesn’t extend this far down. The soil must be improved or citrus trees will never be able to take hold. The clover, combined with the work that the plant roots will do, will act as a natural fertilizer. It will bring nutrition back to the soil and with it will come life. Worms and insects, birds and bees will follow. In five years’ time the soil will be black and moist and packed with microorganisms, and in ten years this too will all be orchard, filled with chestnuts and citrus and persimmons. When nature is healthy and in balance there is no need to fear pests or disease and there is no need to plough the soil. The mosquitoes do not gather by clear streams, they gather by the stagnant waters; and lice and maggots do not infect the healthy flesh, they infect the dead and dying. Rice and barley will grow wherever there is a little good earth. They do not need the farmer with his schemes. They grew before mankind was born and they will grow long after he has gone.”

  He began to swing the scythe rhythmically through the air, mowing the weeds and grasses to the ground. I looked at the hard orange earth and then lifted my gaze to survey the ragged, weed-covered hillside. Shaking my head in wonder and disbelief I gripped the scythe, and banishing all other thoughts from my mind I followed his example and set to work.

  After two hours I had developed large blisters on my hands, and my shoulders were aching from the unusual, repetitive motion. The sun was now high in the sky. I surveyed my handiwork. I had managed a quarter of an acre but I had not done the job well; tufts of weeds stuck up all over the place.

  By now the farmer was a small figure in the distance. When he noticed that I had stopped, he trotted over the field and congratulated me on my efforts.

  “That’s very good. Now you deserve a rest. Come, let’s go down to the farmhouse and have some tea inside, in the shade.”

  Sitting by the hearth next to the smouldering summer fire, I sensed that working together in the fields had created a new intimacy between us. The time was now right to ask him about his life, and with a gentle insistence I began to question him. He was not used to talking about himself – that was clear – but he had a natural and fluent way of expressing himself and as soon as he did start to speak I was instantly fascinated.

  “I was born here in the farmhouse on the night of the autumn full moon in the second year of the last Emperor’s reign. My father, Matsuo Fumimoto, farmed this land before me, as did his father before him. My family has lived in Ehime Prefecture for as long as anyone knows.”

  I poured some cool water from the pitcher and gulped it down. The farmer pressed his hands around his warm mug of tea and furrowed his brow. Gently, I encouraged him to tell his story.

  “You said that you were once a scientist? How come then you have ended up as a farmer?”

  He sipped his tea. I was worried that any minute he would want to get back to the fields, but he seemed relaxed and in no hurry. I sensed that he knew exactly what had to be done and how long it would take him, and that without even thinking about it he would know when he had to return to the fields. In any case, farming wasn’t work in the sense that I understood the word. Walking the fields and tending to the land was just the way he lived; it was like sleeping or breathing. Once again a kind smile appeared on the farmer’s face, but it was followed by a gentle frown.

  “You ask difficult questions. If you really want me to answer them properly I have to begin at the beginning.”

  I looked at the blisters on my hands and then smiled back at him.

  “Well, I think I may have done my last scything for the day. I would love to hear, if you can spare the time.”

  For reasons that I couldn’t fathom, I had an instinct that the farmer’s life might throw some light on my own struggle.
He paused to collect his thoughts and then, very slowly, he began to speak in his gentle voice.

  “When I was a child on this farm, all I knew was nature. I didn’t know it as one knows things that one learns at school. I didn’t ever have to learn about it. I had no particular interest in memorizing the workings of the seasons or what foods are available when. I just knew it all and I knew it better than I do today.”

  For a moment he paused as if working out how best to explain his life to me, and then he began again.

  “But everything changed when I was eighteen. I left the farm for the first time to travel to the city of Yokohama to take up a place at the Yokohama Agricultural Institute. I had been a good student at the village school and the teachers had told my parents that I should go to the city. It would be wrong to keep me in the stifling existence of a traditional farm.”

  The farmer chuckled at his own words and then continued.

  “My father was particularly enthusiastic about me going. He had just begun to embrace the new chemical farming that had arrived from abroad. He saw it as the salvation for small farms like our own and he thought that I would become an expert in the use of pesticides and fertilizers. But I didn’t want to go at all. In fact I was so nervous about going that I thought of running away to live in the forest, but my mother and father gave me no choice. The Yokohama Agricultural Institute was extremely prestigious and as far as they were concerned it was a great opportunity. Even now I can remember the constant stream of visitors coming to the farm to congratulate my parents on their good fortune.

  “For days I hid in the fields or wandered in the woods. I didn’t want to leave the farm. I didn’t want to go to Yokohama. But my parents were never going to listen to me. The start of term was coming and soon I would have to go.”

  Gently, I interrupted him.

  “But why didn’t you want to go?”

  “I had no wish to study farming in the big city. I didn’t want to get locked in a classroom day and night. All I knew was nature and the outdoor life.”