And what had happened then? He carried her to a very strange place and disappeared. She remembered weeping bitterly at her failure to keep her resolve, and she could remember nothing more. Judging from what these people were saying, many days had passed. What a sodden heap she must have been when they found her! Why had she been forced against her wishes to live on?
She had eaten little through the long trance, and now she would not take even a drop of medicine.
“You do seem bent on destroying all my hopes,” said the younger nun, the bishop’s sister, not for a moment leaving her side. “Just when I was beginning to think the worst might be over. Your temperature has gone down—you were running a fever all those weeks—and you seemed a little more yourself.”
Everyone in the house was delighted with her and quite unconditionally at her service. What happiness for them all that they had rescued her! The girl wanted to die; but the indications were that life had a stubborn hold on her. She began to take a little nourishment. Strangely, she continued to lose weight.
“Please let me be one of you,” she said to the nun, who was ecstatic at the prospect of a full recovery. “Then I can go on living. But not otherwise.”
“But you are so young and so pretty. How could you possibly want to become a nun?”
The bishop administered token orders, cutting a lock of hair and enjoining obedience to the five commandments.193 Though she was not satisfied with these half measures, she was an unassertive girl and she could not bring herself to ask more.
“We shall go no further at the moment,” said the bishop, leaving for his mountain cell. “Do take care of yourself. Get your strength back.”
For his sister, these events were like a dream. She urged the girl to her feet and dressed her hair, surprisingly untangled after months of neglect, and fresh and lustrous once it had been combed out its full length. In this companionship of ladies “but one year short of a hundred,”194 she was like an angel that had wandered down from the heavens and might choose at any moment to return.
“You do seem so cool and distant,” said the nun. “Have you no idea what you mean to me? Who are you, where are you from, why were you there?”
“I don’t remember,” the girl answered softly. “Everything seems to have left me. It was all so strange. I just don’t remember. I sat out near the veranda every evening, that I do half remember. I kept looking out, and wishing I could go away. A man came from a huge tree just in front of me, and I rather think he took me off. And that is all I remember. I don’t even know my name.” There were tears in her eyes. “Don’t let anyone know I am still alive. Please. That would only make things worse.”
Since it appeared that she found these attempts at conversation tiring, the nun did not press further. The whole sequence of events was as singular as the story of the old bamboo cutter and the moon princess,195 and the nun was uneasy lest a moment of inattention give the girl her chance to slip away.
The bishop’s mother was a lady of good rank. The younger nun was the widow of a high-ranking courtier. Her only daughter, who had been her whole life, had married another well-placed courtier and died shortly afterward; and so the woman had lost interest in the world, taken the nun’s habit, and withdrawn to these hills. Yet feelings of loneliness and deprivation lingered on. She yearned for a companion to remind her of the one now gone. And she had come upon a hidden treasure, a girl if anything superior to her daughter. Yes, it was all very strange—unbelievably, joyously strange. The nun was aging but still handsome and elegant. The waters here were far gentler than at that other mountain village. The house was pleasingly furnished, the trees and shrubs had been set out to agreeable effect, and great care had obviously gone into the flower beds. As autumn wore on, the skies somehow brought a deepened awareness of the passing days. The young maidservants, making as if to join the rice harvesters at the gate, raised their voices in harvest songs, and the clacking of the scarecrows196 brought memories of a girlhood in the remote East Country.
The house was set in against the eastern hills, some distance above the retreat of Kashiwagi’s late mother-in-law, consort of the Suzaku emperor. The pines were thick and the winds were lonely. Life in the nunnery was quiet, with only religious observances to break the monotony. On moonlit nights the bishop’s sister would sometimes take out a koto and a nun called Shōshō would join in with a lute.
“Do you play?” they would ask the girl. “You must be bored.”
As she watched these elderly people beguiling the tedium with music, she thought of her own lot. Never from the outset had she been among those privileged to seek consolation in quiet, tasteful pleasures; and so she had grown to womanhood with not a single accomplishment to boast of. Her stars had not been kind to her. She took up a brush and, by way of writing practice, set down a poem:
“Into a torrent of tears I flung myself,
and who put up the sluice that held me back?”
It had been cruel of them to save her. The future filled her with dread. On these moonlit nights the old women would recite courtly poems and talk of this and that ancient happening, and she would be left alone with her thoughts.
“Who in the city, now bathed in the light of the moon,
will know that I yet drift on through the gloomy world?”
Many people had been in her last thoughts—or what she had meant to be her last thoughts—but they were nothing to her now. There was only her mother, who must have been shattered by the news. And Nurse, so desperate to find a decent life for her—how desolate she must be, poor thing! Where would she be now? She could not know, of course, that the girl was still alive. Then there was Ukon, who had shared all her secrets through the terrible days when no one else had understood.
It is not easy for young people to tell the world goodbye and withdraw to a mountain village, and the only women permanently in attendance were seven or eight aged nuns. Their daughters and granddaughters, married or in domestic service, would sometimes come visiting. The girl avoided these callers, for among them might be one or two who frequented the houses of the gentlemen she had known. It seemed absolutely essential that her existence remain a secret, and no doubt strange theories about her origins were going the rounds. The younger nun assigned two of her own maidservants, Jijū and Komoki, to wait upon the girl. They were a far cry from the “birds of the capital”197 she had known in her other life. Had she found for herself the “place apart from the world” the poet speaks of?198 The bishop’s sister knew that such extreme reserve must have profound causes, and told no one of the Uji events.
Her son-in-law was now a guards captain. His younger brother, a court chaplain and a disciple of the bishop, was in seclusion at Yokawa. Members of the family often went to visit him. Once on his way up the mountain the captain stopped by Ono. Outrunners cleared the road, and the elegant young gentleman who now approached brought back to the girl, so vividly that it might have been he, the image of her clandestine visitor. Ono was little nearer the center of things than Uji, but the nunnery and its grounds showed that the occupants were ladies of taste. Wild carnations coyly dotted the hedge, and maiden flowers and bellflowers were coming into bloom; and among them stood numbers of young men in bright and varied travel dress. The captain, also in travel dress, was received at the south veranda. He stood for a time admiring the garden. Perhaps twenty-seven or twenty-eight, he seemed mature for his age. The nun, his mother-in-law, addressed him through a curtained doorway.
“The years go by and those days seem far away. It is good of you to remember that the darkness of our mountains awaits your radiant presence. And yet—” There were tears in her voice. “And yet I am surprised, I must admit, that you so favor us.”
“I have not for a moment forgotten the old days; but I fear I have rather neglected you now that you are no longer among us. I envy my brother his mountain life and would like to visit him every day. But crowds of people are always wanting to come with me. Today I managed to shake them off.”
“I am not at all sure that I believe you. You are saying what young people say. But of course you have not forgotten us, and that is evidence that you are not like the rest of them. I thank you for it, you may be sure, every day of the year.”
She had a light lunch brought for the men and offered the captain lotus seeds and other delicacies. Since this was of course not the first time she had been his hostess, he saw no cause for reticence. The talk of old times might have gone on longer had a sudden shower not come up. For the nun, regret was added to sorrow, regret that so fine a young man had been allowed to become a stranger. Why had her daughter not left behind a child, a keepsake? Quite lost in the nostalgia these occasional visits induced, she sometimes said things she might better have kept to herself.
Looking out into the garden, alone once again with her thoughts, the girl was pathetic and yet beautiful in the white singlet, a plain, coarse garment, and drab, lusterless trousers in harmony with the subdued tones of the nunnery. What an unhappy contrast she must be with what she had once been! In fact, even these stiff, shapeless garments became her.
“Here we have our dead lady back, you might almost think,” said one of the women; “and here we have the captain too. It makes you want to weep, it really does. People will marry, one way and another, and it would be so nice if we could have him back for good. Wouldn’t they make a handsome couple, though.”
No, never, the girl replied silently. She had no wish to return to the past, and the attentions of a man, any man, would inevitably pull her toward it. She had been there, and she would have no more of it.
The nun having withdrawn, the captain sat looking apprehensively up at the sky. He recognized the voice of the nun Shōshō and called her to him.
“I am sure that all the ladies I knew are here, but you can probably imagine how hard it is for me to visit you. You must have concluded that I am completely undependable.”
They talked of the past, on and on, for Shōshō had been in the dead lady’s service.
“Just as I was coming in from the gallery,” he said, “a gust of wind caught the blind, and I was treated to a glimpse of some really beautiful hair. What sort of damsel do you have hidden away in your nunnery?”
He had seen the retreating figure of the girl and found her interesting. How much more dramatic the effect would certainly be if he were to have a good look at her. He still grieved for a lady who was much the girl’s inferior.
“Our lady was quite unable to forget her daughter, your own lady, and nothing seemed to console her. Then quite by accident she came on another girl, and she seems to have recovered somewhat from her grief. But it is not at all like the girl to have let you see her.”
Now this was interesting, thought the captain. Who might she be? That single glimpse, a most tantalizing one, had assured him that she was well favored. He questioned Shōshō further, but her answers were evasive….
Just as the moon came flooding over the hills the captain appeared. (There had been that note from him earlier in the day.) The girl fled aghast to the rear of the house.
“You are being a perfect fool,” said Shōshō.199 “It is the sort of night when a girl should treasure these little attentions. Do, I beg of you, at least hear what he has to say—or even a part of it. Are you so clean that his very words will soil you?”
But the girl was terrified. Though someone ventured to tell him that she was away, he probably knew the truth. Probably his messenger had reported that she was alone.
His recriminations were lengthy. “I don’t care whether or not I hear her voice. I just want to have her beside me, prepared to decide for herself whether I am such an ugly threat. She is being quite heartless, and in these hills too, where it might be imagined that there would be time to cultivate the virtue of patient charity. It is more than a man should be asked to bear.
“In a mountain village, deep in the autumn night,
a lady who understands should understand.
“And I do think she should.”
“There is no one here to make your explanations for you,” said Shōshō to the girl. “You may if you are not careful seem rude and eccentric.”
“The gloom of the world has been no part of my life,
and how shall you call me one who understands?”
The girl recited the poem more as if to herself than by way of reply, but Shōshō passed it on to him.
He was deeply touched. “Do ask her again to come out, for a moment, even.”
“I seem to make no impression upon her at all,” said Shōshō, who was beginning to find his persistence, and with it a certain querulousness, a little tiresome. She went back inside—and found that the girl had fled to the old nun’s room, which she had not before so much as looked in upon.
Shōshō reported this astonishing development.
“With all this time on her hands,” said the captain, “she should be more than usually alive to the pity of things, and all the indications are that she is a gentle and sensitive enough person. And that very fact, you know, makes her unfriendliness cut more cruelly. Do you suppose there is something in her past, something that has made her afraid of men? What might it be, will you tell me, please, that has turned her against the whole world? And how long do you expect to have her with you?”
Openly curious now, he pressed for details; but how was Shōshō to give them?
“A lady whom my lady should by rights have been looking after was lost for a number of years. And then, on a pilgrimage to Hatsuse, we found her again.”
The girl lay face down, sleepless, beside the old nun, whom she had heard to be a very difficult person. The nun had dozed off from early evening, and now she was snoring thunderously. With her were two nuns as old as she, snoring with equal vigor. Terrified, the girl half wondered whether she would survive the night. Might not these monsters devour her? Though she had no great wish to live on, she was timid by nature, rather like the one we have all heard of who has set out across a log bridge and then changed her mind.200 She had brought the girl Komoki with her. Of an impressionable age, however, Komoki had soon returned to a spot whence she could observe this rare and most attractive caller. Would she not please come back, would she not please come back? Ukifune was asking; but Komoki was little help in a crisis.
The captain presently gave up the struggle and departed.
“She is so hopelessly wrapped up in herself,” said the women, “and the worst of it is that she is so pretty.”
At what the girl judged would be about midnight the old nun awoke in a fit of coughing and sat up. In the lamplight her hair was white against her shawl.
Startled to find the girl beside her, she shaded her eyes with her hand as the mink (or some such creature) is said to do201 and peered over.
“Now this is strange,” she said in a deep, menacing voice. “What sort of thing might you be?”
The moment had come, thought the girl. She was going to be devoured. When that malign being had led her off she had not resisted, for she had not had her senses about her. But what was she to do now? They had dragged her ignominiously back into the world, and black memories were a constant torment; and now came a new crisis, one which she seemed incapable of surmounting or even facing. Yet perhaps if she had had her way, if she had died, she would this moment be facing a crisis still more terrible. Sleepless, she thought back over her life, which seemed utterly bleak. She had not known her father and she had divided all those years between the capital and the remote provinces. And then she had come upon her sister. For a time she had been happy and secure; but that untoward incident had separated them. Some relief from her misfortunes had seemed in prospect when a gentleman declared himself ready to offer her a respectable position, and she had responded to his attentions with that hideous blunder. It had been wrong to permit even the smallest flutter of affection for Niou. The memory of her ultimate disgrace, brought on by his attentions, revolted her. What idiocy, to have been moved by his pledge and that
Islet of Oranges and the pretty poem it had inspired!202 Her mind moved from incident to incident, and longing flowed over her for the other gentleman. He had not exactly burned with ardor, but he had seemed calm and dependable. From him above all she wanted to keep news of her whereabouts and circumstances. Would she be allowed another glimpse of him, even from a distance? But she sternly dismissed the thought. It was wrong. She must not harbor it for a moment.
After what had seemed an endless night, she heard a cock crowing. It was an immense relief—but how much greater a delight had it been her mother’s voice awakening her! Komoki was still absent from her post. The girl lay in bed, exhausted. The early snorers were also early risers, it seemed. They were noisily at work on gruel and other unappetizing dishes. Someone offered her a helping, but the donor was ugly and the food strange and unappetizing. She was not feeling well, she said, not venturing an open refusal. The old women did not sense that their hospitality was unwelcome.
Several monks of low rank came up to the nunnery. “The bishop will be calling on you today.”
“What brings him so suddenly?”
“An evil spirit of some sort has been after the First Princess. The archbishop203 has been doing what he can, but two messengers came yesterday to say that only His Reverence offers real hope.” They delivered these tidings in proud voices. “Then late last night the lieutenant came, the son of the Minister of the Left, you know.204 He had a message from Her Majesty herself. And so His Reverence will be coming down the mountain.”
She must summon up her courage, thought the girl, and have the bishop administer final vows. Today there were no meddling women to gainsay them. “I fear I am very ill,” she said, rousing herself, “and when he comes I hope I may ask him to let me take my vows. Would you tell him so, please?”
Traditional Japanese Literature Page 29