He prevailed on the second son to bring him to the house. A tall and imposingly massive man of about thirty, he was not unsightly, but his attitudes were repellent and his brusque manners painful to watch. His color made him the picture of health, but his voice was remarkably gruff, and his jargon was hard to follow. This was all in all a most unusual spring evening, considering that the “night gallant”10 properly comes in secret, under cover of darkness. Although perhaps not autumn, the moment certainly qualified as “strange.”11 The young lady's “grandmother” received him in the hope of avoiding wounding his feelings.
“The late Assistant was such a kind and dignified gentleman that I looked forward to getting on with him,” he began, “and I was very sorry indeed when he passed away before I could bring up with him the matter I have at heart. I have let nothing today prevent me from rushing to your side, determined as I am to place myself, in his stead, entirely at your service. I understand that the young lady who resides here belongs to an exceptional lineage, and that therefore I hardly deserve her. Your humble servant will always look up to her in his heart, and he will forever hold her above him. Madam, your manifest reluctance no doubt springs from disapproval of what you have heard concerning my involvement with many unworthy women, but I ask you, would I ever wish to honor the likes of them? No indeed, and my darling will never be less to me than the Empress herself!” It was a vigorous speech.
“Oh, no, not at all! Your words are most gratifying, but you see, she must have the very worst of karma, because she privately grieves that a delicate reason forbids her ever to marry at all, and her unhappiness, I assure you, is painful to witness.”
“Think nothing of it! Be she blind or broken-legged, I myself shall see to it that she is healed, for I have the gods and buddhas of this province at my beck and call.” After this proud declaration he insisted on deciding the day.
“This month is the last of the season, though,” she countered, in a successful appeal to country ways.12
On leaving the house he paused a while in thought, for he wished to deliver himself of a poem:
“If to my darling I should ever prove untrue, I solemnly swear
by the god of the mirror of the shrine of Matsura.13
Now, that is a poem, 14 if I say so myself,” he declared, grinning, with what colossally naive innocence!
The nurse, whose head was spinning, was not up to a reply, but her daughters said when she asked them for one that they were even dizzier than she; and so, after blank ages, this, in a trembling voice, was the best she could do:
“If my heartfelt prayers offered up year after year should now come to naught,
I might easily condemn the god and the mirror, too.”
“Just a moment! What was that you said?” All at once he loomed before her, and she paled with fear.
Her daughters nonetheless beamed at him gamely through their daze. “The young lady is simply not like other people, you see,” they earnestly explained.
“Of course it would be a great disappointment if things were not to turn out as you wish, but I am afraid my poor mother is very muddled in her old age and got it all wrong.”
“Oh. I see, I see!” He nodded. “No, no, the turn of phrase was delightful! Here in the provinces we are all supposed to be bumpkins, but we have a lot more to us than that! What is so wonderful about people from the City? I know all about this. Don't you go looking down on me!” He had a good mind to give them another, but perhaps that was too much for him, because he went away.
The nurse had it out with her eldest son, in fear and despair at seeing the second won over. He remained at a loss, protesting that no, they could not let the fellow have her, but the only two brothers he had were against him because he would not fall in with the man, insisting that they would be caught if they made an enemy of him and that anything they tried might only make things worse. Meanwhile, the young lady herself was in a pathetic state and quite naturally sure that she would rather die. All this decided her nurse to take drastic action after all. Her two daughters left their husbands of many years and set off with her. The one once called Ateki, now known as Hyōbu, slipped out with her by night to board their ship.15 They made good their escape while the Audit Commissioner was back in Higo, from where he planned to return on the appointed day, the twentieth of the fourth month.
The elder sister had so many relations there by now that she could not go with them. When the time came for sad farewells, and the younger one knew that she might never see her sister again, she realized how little it troubled her to leave what had been her home so long. The only regret that turned her gaze backward was for the coast before the Matsura shrine and for the elder sister she was leaving.
“On and on we row, in our wake Ukishima16 and our troubles past,
yet we are still sick at heart, for we know not where we go,”
she said, and the young lady:
“Down endless wave lanes our ship speeds on to a goal still invisible,
while I drift at the wind's will through a broad sea of sorrows.”
She lay facedown, overcome by a mood of helplessness.
They were afraid he might come after them, determined to have his way, when news of their flight got about, as it was certain to do, and so they had asked pointedly for a fast ship that a following wind now sped on with perilous swiftness. They safely passed the Thundering Coast.17 “Is that pirates, that little ship speeding this way?” a voice cried; but they could not help fearing, more than swashbuckling pirates, the idea of that terrible man in hot pursuit.
“With our misfortunes stirring a thunderous storm here within my breast,
there is nothing frightening about the Thundering Coast!”18
The news that they had reached Kawajiri let them breathe a little more easily. As before, the sailors' uncouth voices were very moving as they sang, “Driving on to Kawajiri from Karatomari.”19 The Bungo Deputy sang pensively with them. “We have forgotten our dear wives, our children,” the song went on, and he thought, Yes, I have left them all behind, and what will become of them? The men who might have stood by them have come with us, every one. What might he still do in his hatred of me, even after he has hounded them from their homes? Ah, he reflected now that he felt some degree of relief, what a fool I was to pick up and go without giving them a thought. He shed weakling tears as he continued to dwell on their sad plight, and he hummed, “In vain I abandoned wife and children in a barbarian land.”20
Hyōbu heard him, and her thoughts ran in the same vein. Yes, she said to herself, I have done a strange thing. What can I have meant by suddenly betraying the man who has been my support all those years and running away? Call it “going home,” perhaps, but I really have no home to go to, no friends or relations to turn to. All for just one young lady I have left the land where I lived so long to drift at the mercy of wind and wave, and I can do nothing to help myself—what, then, could I ever do to help her? Blank despair overwhelmed her, but it was too late. All they could do was to hasten on into the City.
They looked up old acquaintances of theirs who still lived on Kujō21 and secured lodgings with them, but even if this was indeed the City, it was not an area where the best people lived, and they fretted among shabby shopwives and peddlers until autumn came on. They were soon despairing often over what they had done and what lay before them. Even their trusted Bungo Deputy felt like a waterbird caught on dry land. Lost and at loose ends in these unfamiliar surroundings, he could not face going back, and yet he rued the folly of leaving; and meanwhile, the men who had followed them were all fleeing to relations elsewhere or returning to their province.
It saddened him to hear his mother lamenting day in and day out that they would never manage to settle down. “But why?” he said. “I am quite comfortable here. Surely there is nothing wrong with vanishing hither or yon in our young lady's service. How would we feel if we had just abandoned her to the likes of him, no matter how well off we might have been?” He wan
ted to console her. “It is for the gods and buddhas to lead her where she should properly go. The Yawata Shrine, not far from here, is the same as the ones down there at Matsura and Hakozaki,22 where you prayed before. You addressed many appeals to them when we were leaving. Now that we are back in the City, you must go straight there and give thanks for the aid we have received.” So he started her off on a journey to Yawata, where he found someone familiar with the place; and he located a saintly monk his father had once known as a temple secretary,23 and who was still there. Thus he brought their pilgrimage to a successful close.
Market women
“Next there are the buddhas, among whom Hatsuse is famous even in Cathay for vouchsafing the mightiest boons in all Japan.24 Hatsuse will certainly be quick to confer blessings on our lady, since she has always lived in our own land, however far away.” He had her set out again.
He had purposely decided that they should walk.25 The unfamiliar experience was very distressing and painful to her, but she did as she was told and walked on in a daze, calling out to the buddha,26 What sins burden me, that I should wander this way through the world? If you have pity on me, take me to where my mother is, even if she is no longer on earth, and if she still lives, show me her face! She did not remember her mother at all, and she had spent her life merely sighing for her sadly, but her desperate state now redoubled her misery. In this condition she stumbled into Tsubaichi27 more dead than alive, at the hour of the Serpent on their fourth day.
What she had done could be barely called walking, and they had helped her as well as they could, but her feet hurt so much that she could not move, and they had no choice but to rest. The party consisted of their trusty Deputy, with two archers and three or four pages, and the three ladies in deep hats, accompanied by some sort of chamber-pot cleaner and two old women. There were very few of them, and they kept to themselves. They took this opportunity to provide themselves with altar lights and so on, and meanwhile the sun began to sink lower in the sky.
Meal on a tray
“I have other people coming.
What are you doing here?” their host, a cleric,28 grumbled to their dismay. “These maids do whatever they please!” Another party did indeed arrive.
They, too, seemed to be on foot. There were two noble ladies and apparently a large number of servants, both men and women. Some fine-looking gentlemen, too, were supervising the leading of four or five horses, and they were taking care to pass unnoticed. The cleric, who was determined to put them up, went about scratching his head. The party already there could not change inns, whatever sympathy they might feel, so they tried to help by moving to the back or to other rooms, or to one side. A cloth panel29 screened off the young lady. The new arrivals seemed to feel quite at home. Both parties were discreet and did what they could not to disturb each other.
In point of fact the party was that of Ukon, who for ages had been longing in tears for her first mistress. She felt more and more awkward and out of place as the years went by, and she had been making this pilgrimage regularly.30 After setting out readily enough, since she was quite used to it, she was tired after all from walking and was half lying down when the Bungo Deputy came up to the cloth panel beside her, personally carrying a tray—food, presumably. “Please give this to my lady,” he said. “I am extremely sorry, but there is no meal stand for her.”
She must be above us, whoever she is, Ukon thought, and she peered through a gap. It seemed to her that she had seen the man before, but she could not place him. She had known him when he was very young, and by now he was so much darker and heavier that after all the intervening years she did not recognize him.
“Sanjō,” he called, “my lady wants you”; and she knew the woman who answered him, too. She had served Ukon's own mistress, in fact so long and so intimately that, as Ukon now realized with a strong impression of dreaming, she was one of those who had gone with their mistress to the house where she went into hiding. Ukon was extremely eager to know who her present mistress was, but the arrangements did not allow her to see. Very well, she thought, I shall simply have to ask her. That man must be the one I used to know as Hyōtōda. I wonder whether my lady's daughter is there. She called excitedly across the panel to Sanjō, but Sanjō, too busy eating to come, was impatient enough to be quite annoyed.
“I do not remember you,” Sanjō finally said. “How strange that someone from the City should recognize a servant who has spent the last twenty years in Tsukushi! Are you sure you are not thinking of someone else?” She came closer. She wore her gown over countrified softened silk, and she had put on a great deal of weight.
Ukon felt more and more acutely conscious of her own age. “Look at me again.” She thrust her face past the cloth. “Do you know me now?”
Sanjō clapped her hands together. “Why, it's you! Oh, how wonderful, how wonderful! Where have you come from? Is my lady with you?” She burst into dramatic sobs.
The memory of knowing her as a girl made Ukon painfully aware of all the years that had passed since they had last met. “First, though, is Nurse with you? What happened to my lady's little girl? And Ateki?” She said nothing about their mistress herself.
“They are all here! My lady's daughter is grown up now. But I must tell Nurse!”
They were all astonished. “I must be dreaming!” the nurse exclaimed. “How extraordinary to find again someone I had thought was so utterly hateful!” She came up to the cloth panel.
They cleared away the cloth and everything else, such as screens and so on, that separated the two parties, but at first they could only weep speechlessly. “What happened to my lady? All these years I have been praying and praying just to dream of where she is, but we were much too far away to get any news at all, and that made me so sad, I wished I had never grown old. The little girl she left behind was very sweet and dear, though, so I lingered on, because I was afraid she would hold me back on the path to the afterlife.”
Ukon knew even less how to answer her now than she had long ago, when it happened. “Come, come,” she replied, “there is no point in my telling it all to you now. Our mistress is dead.” As soon as she spoke, the three of them31 dissolved in tears.
The Bungo Deputy now roused his party to pack up their altar lights and be on their way, since the sun was going down, and they parted in greater agitation than ever. Ukon suggested going together, but both felt that that would only arouse their attendants' curiosity, so they set off without even telling the Deputy what was going on and quite content to dispense with any formality on either side. Ukon secretly noted a fine-looking young lady in the other party, very discreetly dressed and wearing something like an early-summer shift over her hair, which looked dazzlingly beautiful through the thin silk. The sight struck her as touching and sad.
It was the more seasoned walker who reached the temple first. The others arrived during the evening service, nursing their lady along as best they could. The place was crowded with noisy pilgrims. Ukon's space was near the altar, to Kannon's right.32 The priest33 looking after the others had put them a good way off toward the west, perhaps because he hardly knew them yet, and this prompted Ukon to consult those around her and to invite the young lady to join her after all. She explained things to the Deputy, left the men where they were, and brought the young lady back with her.
“I myself am of no importance,” she said, “but since I serve the present Chancellor, I can be sure of escaping any unpleasantness even when I travel this discreetly. The miserable fools in places like this look down quite shamelessly on country people.” She would have liked very much to go on talking, but what with the din from the service itself, the noise inspired her to salute Kannon instead. She said in her heart, “I have always told you I longed to find her, and now that I have caught a glimpse of her, my prayer is answered. His Grace seems very anxious to find her. Please let him know, and please grant her happiness.”
Country people had gathered there from everywhere, and likewise the provinc
ial Governor's wife.34 Sanjō was jealous of her magnificence, and she prayed in dead earnest, her palms pressed to her forehead, “Most Merciful One, I ask of you only this: if my lady is not to marry the Dazaifu Deputy, then let her be the wife of the Governor of this province! That will benefit all of us, too, and we will not be ungrateful!”
Ukon thought this a very ill-omened prayer. “What a country girl you are! What consideration do you think the Captain35 enjoyed all those years ago? Why, now that he is a Minister, with the realm at his beck and call and certain to think the world of our mistress, do you imagine she will end up as a provincial Governor's wife?”
“Hold your tongue!” Sanjō retorted. “Spare me your Ministers! Do you mean to say when her ladyship from the Dazaifu Deputy's mansion went on pilgrimage to Kanzeonji,36 her train was less imposing than an Emperor's? What are you talking about?” She went on praying, her palms to her forehead as before.
The party from Tsukushi planned to remain on retreat for three days. Ukon, who had not meant to stay that long, called a priest to let him know that she would do so. She looked forward to a quiet talk with the young lady. Since the priest was likely to know all about what she had been putting in her petitions,37 she told him as a matter of course, “This is for Fujiwara Ruri-gimi,38 as usual. Mind you pray carefully. I recently found her, you see. I shall offer my thanks later on.” Those who heard her were moved.
“That is very good,” the priest replied. “It must be a boon in response to our unceasing prayers.”