Temple Of Dawn Read Free Page A

of a hummingbird which change into rainbow colors as it flutters about sucking the honey from flowers, the world shows us a brief glimpse of its potentiality for soaring; all things in the evening glow fly rapturous and ecstatic . . . and then in the end fall to the ground and die.”
    As Honda listened desultorily to Hishikawa’s words, the sky above the opposite bank was already slowly sinking into dusk, leaving a faint gleam on the horizon.
    Had he claimed that all art was evening glow? Yet there stood the Temple of Dawn!
    Honda had crossed over to the other bank on a hired boat early the previous morning and visited the Temple of Dawn.
    He had done this precisely at sunrise, a most fitting time. It was still darkish, and only the very tip of the pagoda caught the first rays of the rising sun. The Thon Buri jungle beyond was filled with the piercing cries of birds.
    As he approached, he realized that the pagoda was all inlaid with countless fragments of Chinese porcelain of either red or blue glaze. Each tier was marked by a balustrade; the one on the first story was brown, on the second green, and on the third a purplish blue. Countless porcelain dishes that had been placed there formed flowers: yellow ones represented the cores from which extended petals of plates. Some had a core of inverted lavender wine cups and here colorful golden dishes formed the petals. Chains of such flowers ascended to the summit. The leaves were all tile; and from the top, four white elephant trunks hung down at the four cardinal points.
    The repetitiveness and the sumptuousness of the pagoda were almost suffocating. The tower with its color and brilliance, adorned in many layers and graduated toward the peak, gave one the impression of so many strata of dream sequences hovering overhead. The plinths of the extremely steep stairs were also heavily festooned and each tier was supported by a bas-relief of birds with human faces. They formed a multicolored pagoda whose every level was crushed with layers of dreams, expectations, prayers, each being further weighted down with still other stories, pyramid-like, progressing skyward.
    With the first rays of dawn over the Menam River, the tens of thousands of porcelain fragments turned into so many tiny mirrors that captured the light. A great structure of mother-of-pearl sparkling riotously.
    The pagoda had long served as a morning bell tolled by its rich hues, resonant colors responding to the dawn. They were created so as to evoke a beauty, a power, an explosiveness like the dawn itself.
    In the eerie, yellowish brown morning light reflecting ruddily in the Menam River, the pagoda cast its shining reflection, presaging the coming of still another sweltering day.
    “I’m sure you’ve had enough of temples. Tonight I’ll take you someplace amusing,” said Hishikawa. Honda was gazing absently at the Temple of Dawn, now completely enveloped in darkness.
    “You’ve seen Wat Po and Wat Phra Keo. And when you went to the Marble Temple, you were lucky enough to see the Regent’s visit. And yesterday morning you saw the Temple of Dawn. There’s no end to temple-visiting if you’ve got a mind for it, but I think you’ve had enough.”
    “Hm. I suppose I have,” Honda replied vaguely, reluctant to let the thoughts in which he was so deeply absorbed be interrupted.
    He had been musing about Kiyoaki’s old Dream Diary, which he had not glanced at for so long, but which he had brought along in the bottom of his suitcase, thinking he might read it again to help pass time during his journey. Because of the intolerable heat and his weariness, he had not had the opportunity to do so until now. But the brilliant tropical colors in the description of a dream about which he had read long ago were still vivid in his mind.
    Indeed, being so busy, Honda had not accepted the trip to Thailand for purely business reasons. In his school days, at a most sensitive age, he had, through Kiyoaki, become