But this, this, cannot be operated upon. And surely that is a different thing entirely, another matter, different ball game, kettle of fish. Name it – cancer, tumour, malignancy, growth. However you cut it (however you cut it!) it is inoperable.

  Easy for you to say.

  The condition is terminal, irreversible.

  After me now, conjugate the verb.

  I die, you die,

  He, she or it dies,

  We die, you die, they die.

  Do not go gentle. But at this stage going gentle has great appeal. I do not want to go screaming and kicking, or for that matter mewling and puking, into that good night.

  Earlier this year I picked up a copy of the Maniichi Daily News which had been left in the library at Gakushuin. I flicked through the pages, glancing at the headlines, and saw a photograph from Seoul. It showed two South Korean soldiers standing guard at a memorial to General Douglas MacArthur, who had died on April 5th in Washington. The service had been attended by the South Korean President and the commander of UN forces in the peninsula. The article mentioned the general’s heroic peace-keeping achievements and said it was believed he had died of cirrhosis of the liver. He was 84 years old.

  I shall return.

  Not this time he won’t.

  I recalled my first meeting with him, the jolt from the coffee he poured me. A good cup of java. He had spoken of the new Japan, told me how people like me would be crucial in effecting the transition. People like me.

  His Pacific campaign was called Operation Downfall.

  A war hero, laid to rest. An honourable man.

  Look on my works, ye mighty…

  Cirrhosis of the liver.

  And here I am with my in-operable tumour, counting the days, counting down.

  The thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.

  Perhaps I will know the exact time of my departure, like the monk Hoshin. He announced it to his disciples who thought he was joking. He had a grave dug and an open coffin placed beside it. He climbed in. Still the disciples thought he was teaching them some lesson about accepting mortality. One of them, entering into the spirit of the thing, suggested the master write a death verse. Hoshin thought for a moment, then shouted out.

  From brilliancy I came

  To brilliancy I return.

  What is this?

  Then he let out a roar, lay down in the coffin and died.

  That I should have such certainty, such courage.

  The fear comes sometimes, inevitably, in the wee small hours, the middle of the night when life is at its ebb. Brahma Muhurta, the hour of the gods. The thin time between worlds. I surface from uneasy sleep, dragged up by the scruff, gasping, panicky. There’s the thud of pain in the head, deep in the core of the brain, and the clench of sick agitation in the gut, in the chest.

  There are presences here in the ward, death-forces all around.

  Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?

  Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste,

  I run to death, and death meets me as fast,

  And all my pleasures are like yesterday…

  Donne.

  Done.

  I try to fight the fear, face it down, and a memory comes to me of Tomiko and a story she told.

  When she was young, in her teens, she and her sister Kazuko often had to walk home along a lonely road, by a forest, near a graveyard. Tomiko was always terrified – even when her sister was with her she was fearful of demons and ghosts. And one day Kazuko said to her, I will come here alone, at midnight. I will wear a white kimono and whiten my face. I will stand under the pine tree and wait. I will embrace the fear. I will become a ghost myself.

  I found that thrilling, as a statement, as an attitude – not just facing-the-fear, but identifying with the ghost, becoming the other and realising her oneness with it. That seemed to me to be the embodiment of Zen.

  Hokusai drew ghouls and hungry ghosts, leering and grimacing in the night. Hakuin depicted fierce demons boiled down and simmered into soup, for the realised man to eat (and take into himself). He made one late painting of Jizo who was Yamaraj, the god of death, wrote in harsh black calligraphy, I BOW TO THE BODHISATTVA OF HELL.

  An image I found genuinely chilling, from a Japanese horror film, the moment of terror when the ghost turns its face towards us, out of the screen. But there is no face, only a smooth featureless blankness. Nothing. No-self. Oblivion.

  Kazuko with her white face, her white kimono, standing under the pines at midnight, waiting.

  The hungry ghosts hovering around my bed.

  I struggle to raise myself on one elbow. Draw breath in pain. The young nurse is at her station, in the glow of her light, an aura in the darkness. She is seated with her back to me, leaning on her desk and writing something. Her back to me. So I can’t see her face. I will her to turn around but then am consumed with the fear that she will turn and have no face.

  She turns, slowly. I want to cry out but cannot. It is unbearable. She turns, and she is herself, here, in the glow of her light. She turns and she smiles at me, concerned. She smiles and brings me back to this world, the only one.

  My old friend Shinki has sent me a kind letter enquiring after my health (this in spite of his own wife being unwell). Knowing how much he thinks in visual terms, I have sent him a reply in the form of a graph, showing the change in my condition over these past months – my state of fitness on the vertical axis, the passage of time (inexorable as ever) on the horizontal. The graph shows a sharp decline, followed by a slight levelling out on my admission to hospital, then, sadly, a further, if wavering descent.

  I hope it will make him smile, and also let him know that for the moment at least, I still have my wits about me. (God help me if I should lose those!)

  Bob Aitken has also written to me. Perhaps the word has spread that I am not long for this world, and in his way he is thanking me and saying farewell. He graciously accepted my flaws, he said, as he accepted the flaws in his own father. His father brought him into being, he said, and shaped his character. I for my part put him in touch with himself (whatever that might mean) and with this great rich wonderful world. If we had not met, he said, he might well have spent his life mired in the mundane and the trivial. He said my words often come to him when he is teaching his own students, and my face sometimes appears to him in dreams. (God help him!)

  But I take all this in the spirit in which it is intended, and as a kind of absolution.

  Aitken Roshi. Dairyu Chotan.

  Great Dragon of the Clear Pool.

  Bob.

  Thank you.

  There are letters too from Ma and from Dora, sending their prayers, wishing me well.

  Dear Dora married some years ago, but still comparatively late in life, to a Mr Lord, a colleague at the bank where she worked. I wrote and congratulated her, said if her husband were ever knighted, she would be Lady Lord.

  A fellow of infinite jest.

  (Sand spilling from a skull).

  Alas poor Blyth.

  Padmasambhava instructed his followers to bury Buddhist scriptures for the enlightenment of future generations, a time capsule.

  What would I bury of mine? What dross will I leave behind? An archive for some poor soul to catalogue and curate.

  My old tweed jacket, lovat green, patched at the elbows. (Chalkdust and chocolate crumbs in the pockets).

  My flute, my cello, my trombone…

  The container for all of this will have to be on the large side. (I am large, I contain multitudes!) It will need to be expandable. (Expendable?)

  Some well-thumbed sheet music. Bach, yes, but others also. Corelli, Sonata for cello and piano. Galliard, Sonatas for trombone and piano.

  Perhaps as a farewell statement I could play a blast on the trombone, a final raspberry, a last rasping fart delivered forte, con brio. Perhaps that can be my death-verse. Paa-aa-arp!

  I have always thought the desire to be nothing is particularly common among those who are practically nothing to begin with. And yet…

  I am tired.

  I have some old photographs that have somehow survived from a time long gone, another age, before two world wars – the War-to-end-all-wars and the one which followed with relentless inevitability less than twenty years later. The photos are sepia-tinted, faded and cracked. The oldest of them was taken in a studio and shows me as a very small boy, perhaps five or six years old. I am dressed in a kind of sailor suit with a loose striped blouse, a broad-brimmed straw hat pushed back on my thick dark hair. I am seated on what I assume was a papier-mâché rock on an ersatz beach in front of a painted backdrop depicting a wild dramatic sea, waves surging under a dark lowering sky. I lean jauntily on a long-handled spade, look straight at the camera, out into the world, into the future and all it holds. I look happy, ready to laugh, ready for play.

  When I was down beside the sea

  A wooden spade they gave to me

  To dig the sandy shore.

  My holes were empty like a cup,

  In every hole the sea came up,

  Till it could come no more.

  I loved Stevenson even as a child (perhaps especially as a child).

  I remember that little boy I was, travelling in the train with those free tickets my father had been given. It was always a thrill, and I would turn one of the knobs in the compartment, as if by that small act I was starting up the engine and setting it in motion. In my imagination I was driving the train. I caused the pistons to turn, the whistle to blow, the smoke to pour as we picked up speed and thundered through the countryside.

  Faster than fairies, faster than witches,

  Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;

  And charging along like troops in a battle,

  All through the meadows the horses and cattle…

  I eased back on the controls, brought the train to a stop at our destination, the seaside town at the end of the line.

  Down Southend.

  I would love (as my old dad would have loved) to travel on the Shinkansen, the high-speed bullet train. The service has just commenced – miraculously – in time for the Olympics. Every Japanese I know has been inordinately proud of the post-war rebuilding of the country’s infrastructure, especially the railway system. It is fully integrated – everything seems to interconnect. And yes, the trains really do run on time! And the jewel in this particular crown is the Shinkansen. Sleek and futuristic, it travels at 125 miles per hour, can make the journey from Tokyo to Osaka in three hours. Faster than fairies. Faster than witches.

  Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,

  All by himself and gathering brambles….

  It was one of the first poems I learned by heart, and the ending moved me in a way I didn’t understand.

  And here is a mill and there is a river:

  Each a glimpse and gone for ever!

  A glimpse and gone. Forever.

  A Child’s Garden was Stevenson’s Songs of Innocence, offset by those dark little Fables, wry and sardonic, his Songs of Experience.

  One of the fables is called “The Penitent” and has the quality of a ballad. I used to know it by heart.

  A man meets a lad weeping and asks him, What do you weep for? I am weeping for my sins, says the lad. You must have little to do, says the man.

  The next day they meet again and once more the lad is weeping. Why do you weep now? the man asks.

  I am weeping because I have nothing to eat, says the lad.

  I thought it would come to that, says the man.

  Those beggars outside the temple in Seoul, freezing to death.

  Does a dog have the Buddha nature?

  Why should a dog a horse a rat have life?

  That young boy, Paul Dickson, just the age I was then, not yet 20.

  He’d have effectively been pressganged, returned to ‘his regiment’ by force.

  That heroic young conshie named Paul.

  He finds himself on a transport ship, crossing the Channel. Cursed and beaten, spat upon, brutalised. On the battlefield he is ordered to fight. He continues to refuse but is willing to work as a stretcher bearer. Though he will not fight, he can still save lives, or at least ease suffering. He does his bit. He sees men die, blown to pieces all around him. He will not add to the carnage. He will not kill. He will not fight. They are losing the battle. The regiment is decimated. They order him to fight, they try to force a gun into his hands, but he throws it down onto the ground. He has never fired a gun, and he never will.

  His voice from the next cell.

  I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,

  I brought him up to be my pride and joy.

  Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder,

  To shoot some other mother’s darling boy?

  He is summarily court-martialled, summarily taken outside, summarily shot dead by a summarily-convened firing squad. He lies face-down in the mud. That wayward tuft of hair refuses to lie flat on his head. They drag his body away.

  Lug the guts into the neighbour room.

  Think only this. Some corner of a foreign field.

  That Orwell story, set in Burma, about a prisoner being taken to the gallows to be hung, stepping round a puddle to avoid getting his feet wet.

  I thought it would come to this.

  This. Not this.

  That other poor boy Lee. My son. Innocent and damned.

  If we hadn’t adopted him.

  If I hadn’t let him go back to London with Annie.

  If he hadn’t learned English.

  If he hadn’t returned to Korea.

  If, if, if…

  That way madness lies.

  Above the gates of hell is written in letters of fire, IF ONLY…

  Too little care.

  Remorse. Agenbite.

  Buraisu-san, the nurse says. Why are you crying?

  Buraisu-san.

  The boy I was. Reginald Horace. Young Reggie. Reg.

  There was a young fellow named Reg. Who was frequently heard to allege.

  Blyth. Blithe spirit. Hail to thee. Bird thou never wert.

  Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.

  Who is it that can tell me who I am?

  Blyth’s shadow.

  Not this. Not this. Not this. Not this.

  Not peace, not joy, not love, not light. Not this.

  Not prayer and meditation, satori or nirvana. Not this.

  Not Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva. Not Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

  Not Buddha, Krishna, Kali, not Christ. Not the Bible, the Gita, the Dhammapadda.

  Not Confucius. Not Lao-Tsu.

  Not heaven and hell. Not sun, moon and stars.

  Not earth, water, fire, air. Not this.

  Not Through the Looking Glass or Precious Mirror Cave.

  Not Shakespeare, Stevenson, Wordsworth, Eckhart, Blake.

  Not Dante, Cervantes, Spinoza, Goethe.

  Not Mozart not Beethoven. Not Bach, not even Bach.

  Not Herbert, Donne, Traherne, Vaughan.

  Not Lawrence, not Dickens, not Arnold, not Hardy.

  Not Yamanashi, not Suzuki. Not Akio and Motoko.

  Not Prince Akihito and Princess Michiko.

  Not Hirohoto or Macarthur.

  Not Henderson, not Bob Aitken, Great Dragon of the Clear Pool.

  Not Basho, not Buson, Not Issa, not Shiki.

  Not haiku not tanka, not senryu.

  Not koans. Not Mu. Not the sound of one hand.

  Not form, not emptiness.

  Not Zen.

  Not Hakuin or Dogen, Bodhidharma or Hui-Neng.

  Not the rain on the window, the wind in the pines.

  Not a song at twilight when the lights are low.

  Not wabi-sabi, not mono no aware.

  Not beauty or sadness, the transience of things.

  Not a cup of tea. Not the bittersweet taste of persimmon.

  Not Ma and Pa. Not Dora. Not Annie, not Lee.

  Not Leytonstone, Not Soeul. Not Kobe, Kamakura, Tokyo.

  Not Tomiko. Not Harumi and Nana. Not Akiko.

  Not yesterday today tomorrow, not Time.

  Not Death-the-destroyer-of-worlds.

  Not anything, not anything at all. Not nothing.

  Not this. Not this.

  Tomiko is here. She has come to see me at the last. No. My eyes clear and it is Harumi. She has flown from America to be with me, and she has brought the boy, my grandson, the most beautiful little fellow I have ever seen. Taro.

  Harumi props up the pillows behind me so I can sit up.

  She takes my hand. My own grip is weak but I feel the strength and warmth in hers.

  Nana korobi ya oki… she says. Seven times down, eight times up.

  Not this time, I say.

  Not this time.

  Where am I?

  St Luke’s in Tokyo. Seiroka. No, they moved me here to Seiwa where no doubt I’ll breathe my last.

  My posthumous Buddhist name has already been chosen.