“I must be getting old, Maryushka,” he reflects. “You have tired me. I feel I could sleep for a week.”

“That sounds about right,” I say. “A week and you should be feeling fine again.”

“I do not understand . . .”

“You’ve been working too hard, I’m sure. That conference . . .”

He nods.

“You are probably right. You are not really involved . . . ?”

“I am really not involved.”

“Good.”

I clean the pot and my cups. I restore them to my pack.

“Would you be so kind as to move, Boris dear? I’ll be needing the poncho very soon, I think.”

“Of course.”

He rises slowly and passes it to me. He begins dressing. His breathing is heavy.

“Where are you going from here?”

“Mishima-goe,” I say, “for another view of my mountain.”

He shakes his head. He finishes dressing and seats himself on the ground, his back against a treetrunk. He finds his flask and takes a swallow. He extends it then.

“Would you care for some?”

“Thank you, no. I must be on my way.”

I retrieve my staff. When I look at him again, he smiles faintly, ruefully.

“You take a lot out of a man, Maryushka.”

“I had to,” I say.

I move off. I will hike twenty miles today, I am certain. The rain begins to descend before I am out of the grove; leaves rustle like the wings of bats.

11. Mt. Fujifrom Mishima-goe

Sunlight. Clean air. The print shows a big cryptameria tree, Fuji looming behind it, crowned with smoke. There is no smoke today, but I have located a big cryptameria and positioned myself so that it cuts Fuji’s shoulder to the left of the cone. There are a few clouds, not so popcorny as Hokusai’s smoke (he shrugs at this), and they will have to do.

My stolen ki still sustains me, though the medication is working now beneath it. Like a transplanted organ, my body will soon reject the borrowed energy. By then, though, the drugs should be covering for me.