Miya no Kimi's room was in this same west wing where there seemed to be so many young women admiring the moon. The poor thing! he thought when he remembered her: she herself is no different from those two! Why, His Highness her father once considered me! This was excuse enough. He set off to find her. Two or three page girls came along, prettily dressed to wait on their mistress that night. Obviously shy, they disappeared when they saw him, and he reflected that that was what girls were like.
He came up to the southeast corner of the wing and cleared his throat, at which a somewhat older gentlewoman emerged to receive him. “If I said that I am secretly drawn to your mistress, that would amount only to repeating awkwardly the words used by everyone else. I cannot help wanting ‘some other word.’”38
The woman did not pass his remarks on to her mistress; instead she officiously replied, “Now that my lady is in such unforeseen circumstances, my lord, I cannot help remembering the thoughts entertained toward you by His Late Highness her father. I have no doubt that my lady is grateful for any such intimations of warm feeling toward her as I gather you are moved at times to express.”
She has nerve, treating me as though I were just anyone! Annoyed, he continued aloud, “Quite apart from a tie between her and me that should make it difficult for her wholly to reject me,39 I would be very pleased if as things now stand she were to call upon me whenever she may feel so inclined. I shall hardly be able to respond, however, if she must talk to me only through someone else.”
In some agitation the woman took his point and urged Miya no Kimi to do better.
“When my present melancholy situation recalls ‘The very Takasago Pine, of old,’40 I assure you that your appeal to that tie inspires me to hope and trust.” She spoke directly to him in a charmingly gentle, youthful voice. Such a response from any ordinary woman in a household of this kind would have delighted him, but in her case it upset him a little that such as she, even as she was now, need not shrink from allowing a man to hear her own voice. What he gathered of her presence made him eager to see her as well, since she was probably just as appealing in looks. He assumed with some interest that to His Highness she must be yet another occasion for folly, but the thought also reminded him to reflect on how rare constancy is. There she is, a young lady lovingly brought up by a father of the very highest distinction, but I suppose that there are a good many others like her. What is extraordinary is that two such flawless sisters should have grown up among those hills in the care of a veritable holy man. And she, who seemed so light-minded, so rash—the brief time I had with her was simply wonderful after all. So it was that his every thought turned at last to memories of one family, always the same. While he pondered that strangely painful tie on into the twilight, mayflies flitted before him in the air.
“There it is, just there, yet ever beyond my reach, till I look once more,
and it is gone, the mayfly, never to be seen again.
It might not be there at all,”41 they say he murmured to himself.
53
TENARAI
Writing Practice
Tenarai (“writing practice”) means not just practicing calligraphy by copying out model examples but also writing out poems, including new ones of one's own, for pleasure or consolation. In the second part of this chapter Ukifune consoles herself in this way.
RELATIONSHIP TO EARLIER CHAPTERS
“Writing Practice” covers the same time as does “The Mayfly” and extends somewhat beyond it, into Kaoru's twenty-eighth year.
PERSONS
The Commander, age 27 to 28 (Kaoru)
His Reverence, the Prelate of Yokawa, over 60 (Yokawa no Sōzu)
His mother, an old nun, over 80
His younger sister, a nun, around 50
His disciple, an Adept
The caretaker of the Uji Villa
A young woman, around 22 to 23 (Ukifune)
The Captain, son-in-law of the Prelate's sister, late 20s
Shōshō, a nun
Komoki, a page girl serving Ukifune
Saemon, a nun
Her Majesty, the Empress, 46 to 47 (Akashi no Chūgū)
Kozaishō, a gentlewoman in the service of the First Princess
The Governor of Kii, grandson of the old nun, 29 to 30
There lived in those days at Yokawa1 a reverend Prelate, a thoroughly saintly man with a mother in her eighties and a sister of fifty. These two women made a pilgrimage to Hatsuse in connection with an old vow, accompanied by an Adept, His Reverence's closest and most respected disciple, who performed the dedications for their images and scriptures. After these observances they started back. They were crossing the Nara Heights2 when His Reverence's mother, now a nun, began to feel so unwell that the party was thrown into a quandary, for they did not see how she was to get all the way home. They therefore stopped at a friend's house near Uji, where they decided to have her rest for the day; but when her condition remained poor, they sent word to Yokawa. His Reverence, who wished only to remain on the Mountain, had not planned this year to leave it at all, but the dramatic news that his mother was gravely ill and might conceivably die on her journey brought him swiftly to her.
He and his disciples with the greatest healing powers were loudly engaged in their rites, although she had certainly lived a full life already, when their host heard what they were doing and expressed his dismay at lodging someone very old and very ill when he was now purifying himself for a pilgrimage to the Holy Mountain.3 His Reverence sadly recognized that the man had reason to be upset, and since the house was in any case hopelessly cramped, he prepared slowly and cautiously to move his mother elsewhere. Unfortunately, the Mid-God was obstructing her direction home and had to be avoided. He then remembered that the so-called Uji Villa,4 once the property of His Late Eminence Suzaku, must be nearby. Since he knew the steward there, he sent word that he wished to stay a day or two.
“The steward and his party left for Hatsuse yesterday,” reported the messenger, who had brought with him instead a thoroughly shabby old man, the caretaker.
“Please come now if you like,” the caretaker said. “The main house is only going to waste. Pilgrims often stop there.”
“Excellent! It is an imperial villa, but we will not be disturbed as long as no one is there.” His Reverence sent his messenger to look the place over. The old caretaker, who was quite used to visitors, had made rudimentary preparations to receive them.
His Reverence went first. The badly run-down house struck him as thoroughly frightening, and he had the monks with him chant scriptures. The Adept who had gone to Hatsuse and another monk of similar rank had a lesser colleague familiar with such things light them a torch, after which they set off to look around the deserted back of the house for anything unusual.5 They seemed to be in a wood. Peering through the eerie gloom beneath the trees, they made out some sort of white expanse and stopped short, wondering what it could be. The one with the torch lifted it high: something was there.
“It must be some shape-changed fox.6 The rascal! I'll make it show itself!” He stepped forward a little.
“Look out! It's probably nasty!” The other formed the mudra for quelling such creatures and meanwhile glared at it. He felt as though his hair would have stood on end if he had had any. The one with the torch went straight up to it, quite calmly, for a better look. It had long, glossy hair, and it was leaning against the great gnarled root of a tree, weeping bitterly.
“Extraordinary! We must have His Reverence look at it!” The speaker went back to his master and told him what they had found.
“I have always heard that a fox may take human form, but I have never seen one that has actually done it!” His Reverence stepped straight down from the house and went for a look.
His mother would soon be arriving, and the more able domestics were fully occupied in the kitchen and elsewhere. All was quiet in the wood as four or five monks kept watch over whatever it was. Nothing special happened. Mystified, they continued watchin
g. Why, it will soon be dawn! We must see whether it is human or what! Silently, they intoned the proper mantra and formed the proper mudra, but to His Reverence the answer was apparently obvious already.
“She is human,” he said. “There is nothing unusual or evil about her. Go and ask her who she is. I see no reason to believe she is dead. If she was left here for dead, then she has apparently revived.”
“But why would anyone leave a dead body here at this villa? Perhaps she is human, but a fox, a tree spirit, or something like that must then have addled her wits and brought her here. This is serious. I am sure the place is now polluted.”
They shouted for the old caretaker, and the answering echoes were terrifying. He arrived, a shabby figure with one hand to his hat to prevent it from sliding down over his face.
“Does any young woman live nearby?” They showed him what they were talking about.
“Foxes do this,” he replied. “Strange things can happen under this tree. One autumn, the year before last, they made off with a little boy just a year or so old, the son of someone in service here, and this is where they brought him. It is hardly surprising.”
“Did the boy die?”
“No, he is still alive. Foxes love to give people a fright, but they never actually do anything much.” He had seen it all before, and the arrival of a party of people in the middle of the night seemed to preoccupy him a good deal more.
“I see. That, then, is the sort of thing we are dealing with. But please look again.” His Reverence had his fearless disciple step forward.
“Are you a demon? A god? Are you a fox or a tree spirit? You can't hide, you know, not with all these great wonder-workers around you! Tell me who you are, tell me!” He tugged at her clothing, at which she covered her face and wept the more.
“Why, you have your nerve, you tree spirit, you demon, you! Do you think you can hide from me?” He wanted a look at her face, but he was terrified that she might be one of those demonesses he had heard there used to be, the ones without eyes or nose, and to show off his stalwart bravery he therefore tried to strip off her clothes. She turned to lie facedown and sobbed aloud.
The disciple was sure that nothing this strange could belong to the everyday world, whatever it might be, and he wanted to see what she really was; but unfortunately, a downpour was threatening. “She will die if we just leave her like this,” he said. “We must get her outside the wall.”7
“She is shaped like a real human,” His Reverence objected, “and it would be a terrible thing just to leave her to die before our eyes. No, it would be grievous indeed not to save the fish that swims in the lake or the stag that bells in the hills when it has been captured and is about to die. Human life is short enough as it is, and we must respect what remains of hers, even if it is no more than a day or two. Perhaps she was ravished by some god or demon, or driven from home, or cruelly deceived, and she may well be destined for an unnatural death, but the Buddha's grace is for just such as she, and it is up to us to give her medicine and so on and to try to save her. If she then dies anyway, we will at least have done our best.”
Over protests from some of the rest he had his favorite disciple carry her into the house. “Oh, no, Your Reverence, please do not! Your mother is very ill, and bringing in an evil creature like that can only lead to defilement!” Others retorted, “Shape-changer or not, it would be very, very wrong of us just to watch a living being die in this rain!” Because of the fuss servants make over everything and the awful way they talk, they laid her down in an out-of-the-way corner of the house.
There was a great commotion when the carriage bringing His Reverence's mother was drawn up and she alighted, because she was just then feeling very ill indeed. “How is that young woman we found getting on?” His Reverence inquired when a degree of calm had returned.
“She is still all limp, and she has not spoken. She is hardly breathing. A spirit seems to have stolen her wits.”
“What are you talking about?” the nun, His Reverence's younger sister, asked.
His Reverence explained the circumstances. “I have never seen anything like this in all my sixty years and more,” he said.
His sister had no sooner heard the story than she replied in tears, “I had a dream at the temple where we were. What is she like? I must see her!”
“Do. She is just there by the sliding door to the east.”
The nun hurried to her and found that she had been left lying there all alone. She saw before her a very pretty young woman in a white damask layering and scarlet trousers. Her clothing was beautifully perfumed, and her appearance suggested very great distinction. “Why, it must be the daughter I miss so much, come back to me!” Weeping, she called in her senior women and had them move the young woman to the inner room. They did so without fear, since they knew nothing of what had happened.
The young woman seemed only barely alive, but still, she opened her eyes a little. “Speak to me!” the nun begged. “Who are you, and how did this happen?” She got no answer, however; the young woman was apparently unconscious. She put some medicine to her lips herself, but she seemed to be fading fast.
“This is too much!” she implored the Adept. “She is dying! Pray for her, please, pray!”
“I knew it! His Reverence should never have been so generous with his help!” The Adept prayed nonetheless and chanted the scripture for the gods.8
His Reverence looked in. “How is she? Find out exactly what has done this to her and drive it away.” But the young woman was very weak indeed, and her breathing might stop at any time.
“She cannot possibly live,” a woman remarked.
“We could all do without having to shut ourselves up for a defilement we could perfectly well have avoided.”
“But she does seem to be a lady. We cannot just abandon her, even if she is actually going to die. What an awful bother!”
“Hush!” The nun silenced them. “You must tell no one else about this. It could cause trouble.” The young woman's condition disturbed her more than her own mother's, and she was so anxious to make sure she lived that she now never left her side. Not that she knew who she was, but she could not bear to let anyone so marvelously pretty die; and the women she had looking after her tended her eagerly in the same spirit.
The young woman opened her eyes from time to time, and then she wept endlessly. “Oh, dear, oh, dear!” the nun cried, “I believe that the Buddha has brought you to me in place of the daughter I still mourn, but I will only be more heartbroken than I was before if I lose you, too! Surely a tie from past lives has brought us together. Please say something to me, please!”
She kept pleading until at last the young woman said under her breath, “I suppose that I am alive again, but I do not deserve it. I am too despicable. Do not let anyone see me, please, but throw me tonight into the river!”
“These rare words from you are a joy, but how terrible they are! Why do you talk this way? How did you come to be in such a place?” But the young woman said no more. The nun looked for anything that might be wrong with her,9 but she found nothing, and in the presence of such loveliness she was overcome by sorrow and dismay. Could she really, then, be an apparition come only to trouble a too-fond heart?
His Reverence's party remained secluded for two days, while ceaseless chanting called down divine assistance for the two afflicted women. The strange event that had occurred caused general consternation. The humble folk from nearby who had served His Reverence in the past came to present their respects when they learned that he was there, and one remarked as they talked, “There is a great commotion going on because the daughter of His Late Highness the Eighth Prince—the one his lordship the Right Commander was visiting—suddenly died when there was nothing really wrong with her. I helped with the funeral, and that is why I could not come yesterday.”
Perhaps a demon seized her soul and brought it here, His Reverence reflected. She never looked at all real to me—there was something disturbingly insu
bstantial about her.
“The fire we saw last night did not really seem big enough for that.”
“It was kept small on purpose. The funeral was not at all grand.” The speaker stood outside because of the pollution he had incurred, and he was soon dismissed.
“His lordship the Commander did have one of His Late Highness's daughters, but she died years ago. Which daughter can he have meant? His lordship would never leave Her Highness to take up with someone else.”10
The party now prepared to leave. His Reverence's mother had recovered, the direction home was open for her, too, by now, and there was nothing attractive about the idea of lingering in so forbidding a place. Some nonetheless wondered about the young woman. “She is still very weak, and the journey could be too much for her,” they said. “It is very worrying.”
They went in two carriages. The old nun rode in the first, with two nuns to look after her, and they laid the young woman in the second,11 attended by an added gentlewoman. Progress along the way was slow because they often stopped to give the young woman medicine. The nuns lived at Ono, below Mount Hiei, and it was a long way. They arrived late at night, wishing that they had arranged to stop somewhere in between. His Reverence helped his mother to alight, and his sister tended the young woman while they all lifted her down together. The fatigue of the long journey had no doubt given the old nun reason to lament the endless miseries of age, but she recovered soon enough, and His Reverence returned to the Mountain. He did not mention the young woman to anyone who had not actually been there, for it hardly became a monk to travel in company like hers. His sister, too, made her women promise silence, because the idea that someone might come looking for the young woman troubled her very much.
The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji) Page 140
