With My Little Eye by Francis King

it, I tell myself. I might even try to answer between the tests scheduled for me.
    Now, I want a snooze.

(14)
    Miss Morita laid out on the table the map that she had taken out of her bag. ‘It is rather difficult to find,’ she told us. ‘Out of the way. First we drive to Hôrinji – well-known Shinto shrine. From there we go to Matsuno-o Shrine.’ With a forefinger, the cuticle ragged around the nail, she traced the route on the map over which all three of us had bowed our heads. ‘We do not visit shrine today. But later we must visit for the famous Rice Planting Festival. July twenty-three,’ she added with her extraordinarily exact memory for such details. ‘Saihôji is south-west of Matsuno-o Shrine.’ Again she pointed. ‘Here. The garden of the temple is famous all over the world. Now many people call it not Saihôji but Kokedera. Kokedera means Moss Temple. This garden is famous for moss – many kinds of moss, hundreds . This is the best time to visit, rainy season.’
    Without my noticing Laura had drifted away from us. Arms akimbo, she was staring out of the window at the rain. She often stared out like that, transfixed by its relentlessness. She turned. ‘It’s raining. Always this bloody rain.’
    ‘That’s why it’s called the rainy season. Let’s make the best of it.’
    ‘You must see Kokedera in rainy season,’ Miss Morita intervened . When most people say that you must see this or that, it is no more than a recommendation. But when Miss Morita said it, the words, though uttered in a voice of cotton-wool softness and deadness, nonetheless carried an inflexible authority.
    Laura moved away from the window. ‘Oh, all right. Then let’s get going.’
    ‘Excuse me.’ Miss Morita pointed at Laura’s shoes. ‘Such shoes are not good for Moss Temple. The moss is very damp, everywhere is damp.’
    ‘Then I’d better change them, hadn’t I?’
    ‘That is good idea.’
    As we threaded our way down a narrow, winding lane, and then bumped over an even narrower dirt track, branchesrattling against the sides of the Cadillac and mud spattering not merely its body but from time to time even the windshield, Laura became increasingly exasperated.
    ‘Are you sure we’re going the right way?’
    ‘Yes. Sure.’
    ‘But it seemed so much shorter on the map.’
    ‘In Japan every journey seems shorter on map.’ Was Miss Morita merely stating a self-evident truth or was she being jocular ? As so often, there was no way of knowing.
    When I last visited Kokedera, during the rainy season almost half a century later, it was crowded with people wearing raincoats and carrying umbrellas. But fifty years ago it was totally empty, but for a tall, solitary man – a German, I guessed – in a long black, belted raincoat and a black homburg hat, a black umbrella held above him. He would from time to time place the umbrella, unfolded, on the ground beside him while he took yet another photograph with the Rolleiflex dangling round his neck. As we passed him, he nodded briefly at us, and I then said, ‘Good morning.’ I received no reply.
    On our stepping out of the car, Laura struggled to open her dark green umbrella with its amber handle. It had once cost me a lot of money when I had bought it for her as a birthday present at James Smith. ‘Please,’ Miss Morita said. She took it from her and, with a small grimace, briskly unfurled it. She smiled and handed it back.
    Laura said nothing.
    The light was extraordinary, as though reflected off the moss stretching in all directions. Drops of water fell in heavy globules from the branches of the trees. Soundlessly the moss welcomed them. Miss Morita began to tell us about the priest Musô Kokushi who, in the twelfth – or was it the thirteenth? – century had designed it. ‘A kind of male, Japanese Vita Sackville-West ,’ I said fatuously. I wished that she would keep quiet.
    Suddenly Laura, who was walking a few steps ahead, no doubt in an effort not to have