even lasted a day, maybe not even an hour.
Howling Hell, said the monk. This is the next level down. Here you will be herded with all the rest into a gigantic red-hot building. And once you are inside, crammed together, suffocating, you will realise there is no exit, no door, no way out. You are trapped there, unable to move, as the intolerable heat increases even more and all you can do is howl and scream and cry and add to the cacophony of all those millions howling and screaming and crying all around you. And this you will endure for twice as long as the previous level. Ten million years, times twelve hundred and ninety-six thousand.
He looked at me again. I felt sick in my stomach.
You may think the exact numbers don’t matter. But when you are there, and every single second is agony, it matters very much indeed.
Thinking of the numbers made my head feel like stone.
Now, said the monk, we descend ever further, from the Howling Hell to the Great Howling Hell. Here you will be crammed into an even bigger, even hotter building with thick burning walls, and outside those walls are thicker, hotter walls. You will be in a box within a box, a prison within a prison, a tomb within a tomb, where the space between the inner and outer walls is filled with molten metal, sealing it completely. And all the time you are there, you are tortured by the knowledge that even if by some miracle you could break through the first wall, you could never ever broach the second. So you howl and scream and cry, endlessly, or at least for twice as long as before. Some of you can add it up for yourselves, I’m sure.
Did his features twist a little as he said this, into a kind of grimace that might have been a smile? That was even more unsettling, and already he was racing ahead, ever deeper.
The sixth level, he said, is known simply as the Heating Hell – as if the other levels were not hot enough. Here you will be impaled on red-hot spikes, you will be flayed and wrapped in strips of white-hot iron. And for how long? Yes, twice as long as the hell before.
I noticed at the corners of his dry lizard-lips were little flecks of spit. He closed his eyes for a moment, continued.
And what is below the Heating Hell? What is the next level down? By now you should know it will be even worse, even hotter, for this is the Intense Heating Hell. Here you will be boiled in vats of molten bronze, then dragged out and impaled on larger spikes that tear your insides apart, the pain so intense you lose consciousness for an instant, only to wake to the same torment, again, again, again, for twice as long as before.
He opened his eyes again, looked out from some deep dark place. His voice was low and gravelly, incantatory, the way he would chant the Nembutsu.
You have heard of the first seven hells, and the tortures and agonies that await you there. But these are as nothing compared to the last, the worst, the deepest hell. This is the Hell of Ultimate Torment.
I could read the words, blazing in the air, a sign written in flame.
In this realm, he said, the intense heat is seven times hotter than all the previous hells combined, and the pain is seven times greater. Here you will be trapped for seven times as long, in an immense edifice of blazing hot metal, at the centre of a mountain of white-hot iron. An army of demons will devise ever greater tortures, pouring molten bronze into your open mouth. Your body and the bodies of all the others suffering this damnation will be indistinguishable from the flames engulfing you. You will be separated only by the sound of your anguished screams which will echo back up through all the other hells. At times they can even be heard here in this world of ours, in the darkest night when you are racked with misery and despair. For surely these hells exist deep in your own being, and you can be pitched into them at any time.
Was that a bird shrieking out there in the courtyard? And was that an owl I’d heard screeching in the night? And was that really a cat that had woken me in the small hours, yowling like a baby stolen from its parents?
Don’t whimper, said my father.
Existence is suffering, said the old monk. Its cause is desire. To conquer desire you must follow the Buddha-path. There is no other way.
His sermon was finished. He bowed and folded his hands, sipped a few more drops of water from his bowl. I was anxious to get out, to get home, to see my mother. The monk stood up, his old legs stiff as he creaked and unfolded himself. He walked slowly towards the door and I bowed my head as he passed. But he didn’t pass. He stopped right in front of me. I kept my head down, stared at his gnarled old feet in their worn straw sandals, the thin toes bony and splayed, the blackened toenails thick and cracked.
So, he said. Have these words put the fear in you?
I looked up at him, that great domed head, that ferocious gaze, and my whole body shook. My mouth was dry, my throat closed. I couldn’t say one word.
A man of silence, he said. This is a good place to begin.
He held up his right hand, fingers spread, and for a moment I flinched, expecting him to strike me. But instead he closed his hand again, made a fist, clenched it in front of my face.
Ha! he said, shaking the fist. Then he let out a terrifying roar of a laugh, sprayed spit, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked at my father who tensed beside me.
Look after this one, said the monk. Teach him well.
He glared down at me again, nodded, gave a kind of rough grunt and moved on. I watched his old feet in their straw sandals, shuffling across the polished floor, then he was out the door and gone.
My father smacked the back of my head. Why didn’t you speak?
I had nothing to say, I said.
Useless, said my father.
All the way home I kept my head down, looked at my own bare feet leaving their mark in the dust with every step. The sun had baked the ground all day and it burned, made me walk quick, not linger. I looked up at Mount Fuji in the haze. I imagined it throwing up fire and smoke. Beneath me were all these worlds, deeper and deeper underground. I was walking on the roof of hell.
Back home I still had nothing to say.
My mother laughed, but she was gentle, not mocking.
That old monk’s a holy terror, isn’t he? He’d put the fear of death into anybody.
I still said nothing.
Sometimes it’s good to be just a little afraid, she said, so we’ll do the right thing.
She had made noodles with my favourite broth, ginger and scallions and the thing I loved most, tororojiru with the rich earthy taste of mashed-up yams. I ate it in silence apart from the slurping. I drank the last of the broth, pushed the empty bowl away from me.
My older brother came into the kitchen, made a face at me behind my mother’s back, tongue out, eyes popping, a demon.
She turned and saw him, laughed and waved him away. Then she stroked my head, ran her hands over the short cropped hair.
Go out and play a while, she said.
Outside, it was the same old place, the same old world I knew, but it was different. It was still Hara, way-station on the Tokaido, at the foot of Great Fuji. I was Iwajiro of the Nagasawa family, and my father ran the inn, Omodaka-ya. This was my life, here
