Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing
is a literary device that prepares a reader for future events in a
narrative. A character is made to stumble before he trips before he
makes a fatal fall. Commonly, plot events are used to implement this
effect; but character dialogue, a change of setting, flashbacks, and
titles are also used.
At
times, a writer may add bits of foreshadowing that are not relevant
to the story line. These rather unimportent, unrelated events may be
used to intentionally perplex a reader, to add breath to the plot, or
to add tension to the mix. This use is sometimes labeled
sideshadowing, but it comes to the same thing. Dostoevsky used this
ploy frequently in his novels. Life is full of inconsequential
events, he thought, and he wanted his narratives to mirror this fact.
The
device is not limited to literary works. Composers frequently add
themes or bits of themes to prepare the listener for a climax to come
or for a change of theme. Film directors also use foreshadowing, most
often to lend credibility to subsequent events.
THE
BLIND GEISHA
II
- 8
A
Meeting Place Of Manifold Ills
Ravens
caroaked, one then another, as they circled above the firs and spruce
on the hillside above Elizabeth's house. The woman stood with her
long handled pruning shears in hand, poised to nip a tatty branch of
the old laurel hedge. The birds were just above the tops of the
trees, on the glide, riding the cooler air down to the flat apron of
land that was mostly scrub and sand tending always on to the sea .
Portentous,
ubiquitous birds. Poe's disquieting drivel. She snipped her branch,
raised a hand to her brow to see the birds, a pair, caroak, caroak,
as they cut across to the cedar in the corner of her yard.
"Humph,"
Elizabeth said. She sighted down the hedge. Up to no good, those
fellows. "Secateurs. That's the word I was looking for."
These clumsy old things, she thought, lifting the shears, are getting
too much for me. "Grace gave them to me," she said softly,
talking to herself. Christmas before last, those secateurs, though
nobody here calls them that. Clippers we call them. Like scissors
only more burly. "The perfect tool for this job if I could only
find them."
Nestling
the handles of her shears against her hip, she prodded and stroked
the ball of her arthritic thumb. She had risen early, read again from
the sutra of Vimalakirti; remained puzzled and skeptical. Watson had
done a remarkable job of translating the piece. She had met the man,
briefly, in a restaurant in Palo Alto. They were both enamored with
Yeats and, she remembered, he had quoted the Irish poet's phrase in
defense of his own translations:
A
line will take us hours maybe;
yet
if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
our
stitching and unstitching has been naught.
"There
is a good deal more than a moment's thought in that sutra," she
said aloud.
Caroake,
caroake, called the ravens. More had come and settled in the trees at
the corner of her property. Crows joined them screeching, it seemed,
just to hear their voice.
"Up
to no good," she said again. The creatures. Do crows have Buddha
nature? she thought. Then chuckled. "What would the answer be?
Like the mu koan. "Croak," she said. "Croak. Croak."
She
arched her back, stretched. The pruning shears slipped quietly to the
ground, unnoticed. He was quite the boy, this Vimalakirti. Rich, but
traveled the alleys. Went to wine shops, brothels. Half think that's
where Ikkyu got the notion. A deceptive fellow, this Vimalakirti.
Healthy as a horse, but feigned illness so people would come to
console him. Then, with this captive audience, he proselytizes.
Looking
up to the birds, she recited what she remembered of the opening
paragraph of the sutra:
"Good
people, this body is impermanent, without durability, without
strength, without firmness, something that decays in a moment, not to
be relied on. It suffers, it is tormented, a meeting place of
manifold ills."
"'A
meeting place of manifold ills indeed'." She stretched the
fingers of her hands, made a fist and stretched again. "Glucosamine,"
she said. I always forget. She patted her pockets for a tissue. The
distant chime of her phone turned her head. "Now where in the
world did I leave that gizmo?"
She
ran fingers through a curl of hair, patted pockets once more, turned
and walked to the house, listening. As she poked her head through the
open top of the Dutch door, she saw the package that Grace had left.
Off to ... where was that girl going this morning? Elizabeth turned
her head, startled, as three ravens touched down behind her uttering
their guttural cough, and rose up again as one.
"Oh,"
the woman said. "What in the world?" Silly birds. Carry me
off one day. What was that Hitchcock thing? "You are," she
said firmly, "just the common raven. You birds. Corvus corax.
Ubiquitous. Proletarian. A bit vulgar, you are," she said.
Boorish. "Croak," she said. "Croak." Bit of that
myself, I am.
Chuckling,
she turned, opened the door and walked through to the kitchen.
"Time
to put the kettle on," she said. That comforting phrase. Put the
kettle on. How tea came to be such a panacea is a rather odd piece of
business, I think. "It's bitter taste really doesn't recommend
it."
Into
her mug she drop a pinch of loose tea, centered the kettle on the
burner, and stood listening for the waves as they went about their
eternal business. A shake of head. "Eternal? Not the word I
wanted." Joyce's word. 'In' something. She eased
herself onto a chair beside the table, opened the manila envelope,
and slipped out the brief manuscript. Someone---where had Grace found
this? "Can't remember," Elizabeth said.
Robin
song; then again. Then a flurry in the shrubbery and strident calls.
"Those
jays. After her nest again." Why they build them in such obvious
places ...
Turning
her head, she listened for the boiling of the kettle. She took up the
manuscript.
"1968,"
she said. "So long ago." The saddest year. She slowly
turned the cover page and read:
A
Paraphrase Of Vimalakirti
6
june 1968
Curious.
There was no preface, no introduction. No by-line. Edited by that
fellow in Corvallis. "It just starts off and hammers home its
points. Not the elegance of the original, or fluidity; but effective
for all that. Grace doesn't care for the mix of allusions, but
Socrates, I think, would have found a fellow traveler in Mr V. She
read:
Nothing
remains but my vial, my needle. Asclepius has been paid for his cock.
Much better, this vial, than merely waiting around to die. I have
decayed in a moment. Or so it seems. This body now tormented suffers
in its weakness, and my impermanence would now torment me. Save the
vial, eh Crito.
Never
put your money on this sack of bones and flesh. Your body is a
product of random selection and chance mutation. Never doubt it. Your
body is a flicker of your imagination. Your body is a shadow, an
echo, with no more substance than dream. All men of sense and wisdom
of every age have come to this conclusion.
She
had gone to bed early, downstairs. Her bedroom. Not her favorite
room. Drab, it was. A bit musty. The rear corner of the house
suffered from dry rot. "And too many memories." We shared
the bathroom between the two bedrooms, Micki and I. Oceanside now
Grace's room. The way she wandered about brushing her teeth, spouting
incomprehensible words through a mouth full of foam. Quoting her
French poets. Pirouettes from room to room.
Elizabeth
had gone to bed early; and Grace, returning from Corvallis sometime
after eleven o'clock, had found her still awake.
"Run
the fellow to earth, did you, dear?"
"I
did." Grace had leaned against the door jamb, package in hand.
"Shall I leave you be? This will keep."
"No,
no." Elizabeth patted the bed. "Come show me," she
said.
And
Grace had read from the pages.
"Sounds
familiar doesn't it," she had said.
"The
Vimalakirti Sutra, paraphrased. A section anyway. Yes?"
"Yes,
indeed. The Body Section. 'Good people, no person of enlightened
wisdom could depend on a thing like this body.' From the Burton
translation. Is it plagiarized?"
Elizabeth
shook her head. "Enough change. Different perspective. Same
message, though." She took a tissue from her sleeve and patted
her nose. "Where in the world did you come up with this?"
"A
grad student at Oregon wrote his dissertation on Vimalakirti. I
scanned through and found, in the bibliography, a mention of a paper
by a professor at Oregon State. Tracked him down. One of the
professor's students had dictated the piece in one sitting. Terminal
cancer patient, he was. Wanted anonymity. After the fellow died, the
professor put out a few copies under his name as editor. Caused some
ripples in the philosophy department, but didn't get much notice
beyond Corvallis."
"My
my," Elizabeth had said.
The
robins and jays had declared a truce, but gulls were squawking and
her fox squirrels were querulous and noisy. She scanned the
manuscript, reading silently, then aloud:
Your
body, objective, carnate, mortal. Where does ego arise? Wind, fire,
water ... have they awareness of themselves. Not likely. An
unnecessary encumbrance, awareness. Ashes, ripples on the sand, rush
of wind through the trees: never singular, these things. Nor plural
either. Wind, fire, water ...
Wind,
fire, water, she thought. That covers one's mortality nicely. Between
life and death, gossamer. She stumbled as she stood, leaned heavily
on the table, and moved slowly down the hall. Tears welled in her
eyes.
"Pfui,"
she said. Stupid old woman. Have to pee. She smiled, still softly
crying. "Have water coming out of both ends," she said.
Yes, that was it: Ineluctable.
On
the stove the kettle hissed and steamed and quietly whistled.
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