A True Story of Oriental Mysticism
THE TALISMAN
ONE of the strangest incidents of my life happened two short years ago in Japan. I am writing it down just as it took place and withhold all comments, as I really can advance no logical explanation whatever of the whole chain of events.
During the summer of 1920 I had spent a very pleasing vacation in Kamakura, that beautiful sea resort some fifteen miles from Yokohama, famed throughout the Far East.
In company with two girl friends, I had taken a tiny little house not three minutes' walk from the golden beach.
And when, in the morning, we hastily donned native kimonos over our one-piece bathing suits and made a dash for the first plunge in the waters of the Pacific, we three lazy girls knew that by the time we came home our little house would be in perfect order and steaming hot coffee await us in Satsuma cups.
The ten fairy little fingers who did all our housework belonged to our pretty Japanese maid—Ine San.
That girl had taken a special liking to me. I don't know why, unless it was because I used to listen for hours at a time when she unfolded to me all the secrets of the weird Japanese superstitions.
My two friends used to smile condescendingly, when, squatting on the mats in Ine San's room I was becoming initiated into all the mysterious doings of the two-tailed cats and spirits of foxes who choose bodies of beautiful young girls for their permanent abode.
Sometimes, when the scoffers departed, I was granted a special favor. Ine San would take from a cupboard with sliding panels an ancient lacquered box. This was reverently placed on a silk handkerchief and ceremoniously opened. In that box were preserved amulets and charms against all evils that flesh is heir to.
Ine San could not know that all the time I was simply making a comparative study of Chinese and Japanese folk-lore, which is a very difficult thing for a white person to do, since one has first to gain the fullest confidence of one's yellow friend. She cherished the idea that she was converting me to her beliefs.
In September my vacation ended. With a regretful sigh, I bid good-bye to Kamakura, the tiny doll-house and Ine San, and returned to my regular work in Yokohama.
I was employed on the staff of a foreign paper, being pretty much occupied during the greater part of the day, though as a special favor I was allowed to do part of the non-rush work at home.
My "home" consisted of a nice comfortable room of a boarding-house situated on the Bluff, the residential quarter of Yokohama, The place was built on an English plan with all modern conveniences, but somehow I missed very much my inconvenient little Japanese house where I had spent such a delightful summer.
One rainy morning in the end of November I was awakened by a scratch at my bed-room door. I looked at my watch. It showed half past six. Who the dickens—
The scratch, the Japanese idea of a polite knock, was repeated, and the silvery voice of Ine San begged leave to enter.
She came in, clad in a mourning kimono of lotus-white crepe with untrimmed edges that proclaimed the death of a near relative.
After the first greetings in pretty good English (she had lived in American families out in the Orient most of her life), Ine San stated the object of her visit.
"I come say goo’-bye," she said. "My father's father he all dead and now family have velly long mourning. I go velly velly far—our village, must go three days and then say many prayers. I no come back long time."
I was genuinely sorry to see her go and wished her every possible happiness.
"Miss Lavrova, you always so kind to me," continued Ine San. "You no laugh Japanese believings. I bling you velly seclet and happy thing."
Saying this, she put on my coverlet a delicate mesh bag filled with about a hundred lilliput micans, a kind of Japanese orange. These were so small that a silver dollar would have made a fitting dish for any of them.
I began thanking her for the delicious present when I saw that I had been guilty of a misunderstanding.
Out of the folds of her kimono Ine San had extricated a tiny something carefully wrapped in a piece of white rice-paper. Red and gold characters were drawn on it by means of a brush.
Reverently, Ine San undid the wrapping and I beheld a small chip of some rare wood rather oddly shaped. It was neither polished nor painted.
Several hieroglyphs were burned on one side of it, and even I, with my poor knowledge of Japanese, immediately saw that they were in the ancient language used in Nippon somewhere around the tenth or twelfth century.
"Oh, what have you got there, Ine San" I exclaimed with interest.
"Velly good and strong charm, Missie, and save you life quite surely."
She began her long and rambling explanations and I, sitting up in bed, listened patiently.
It appeared that this talisman, for such it happened to be, was endowed with great mysterious powers. Sold for a few cents at an obscure ancient temple somewhere south of Tokyo, it could be secured only by a personal application to the priests.
Certainly it was never destined to fall into the impious hands of a white person such as myself. And only the fondness my little Japanese friend bore me could have made such an unlikely event possible.
"And what does the charm protect from?" I asked Ine San, not wanting to hurt her feelings and desirous to keep up an interest in the thing. Anyway, I reflected, it would do very nicely for my little curio collection.
"Him saves life, Missie," repeated Ine San. "You going get killed. You got that holy thing. You no get hurt and charm all break."
This was something new. I had never heard of such a talisman before, so I began asking questions.
Yet I elicited nothing much except what Ine San had already stated. The
