"You know of course that he can't run off on these trips every day.
If you make me go slinking back to tell him she just won't see him, he'll
think I'm not worth my keep. Come with me, and the two of us can fly
to explain."
Out of the question, completely out of the question. And as they
argued the night wore on.
Still on his horse, Niou waited some distance away. Numbers of dogs
<P 1008>
had come bounding up and were barking most inelegantly. His men were
in the cruelest apprehension. There were very few of them and they were
far from help. What would they do if someone were to leap out from the
underbrush?
"Enough of this." Tokikata dragged the protesting Jiju~ after him. Her
long hair under her arm, she was very pretty even in this extremity. Since
she quite refused to get on his horse, he walked beside her, helping with
her skirts. He appropriated the rough clogs of a guardsman for himself and
let her have his shoes.
It did not seem prudent to confer in an exposed position. Tokikata
spread a saddle blanket at a spot backed by a woodcutter's fence and
protected by brambles and matted grasses. Niou dismounted.
What a queer fix to be in, he was thinking, told of what had happened.
Suppose he really were to take a bad fall on this road he had chosen and
lame himself for life? He was in tears, and to the susceptible Jiju~ his plight
seemed even sadder. Had he been a veritable fiend of an enemy, his powers
of persuasion would still have had their way.
"Can't I have a single word with her?" He struggled to control his
<P 1009>
tears. "Why have things come to this, after all that has happened? You
people have turned her against me."
She explained recent events as carefully as she could. "Don't let any-
one know what day you have decided on. You have been very good to
come all this way, and I will do everything I can, even if it means ruining
myself."
Terrified of being found out, he could not reprove her for this caution.
His men chased the dogs away repeatedly but still they barked. From the
villa came the twang of bowstrings and the rough voices of the guard
alerting the house to the danger of fire.
We need not seek words to describe Niou's feelings as Jiju~ hurried him
on his way.
"I weep, I go--to lose myself!--where soar
No mountains but know the white of clinging clouds.
"Hurry home yourself."
Jiju~ wept the whole of the way back. There was nothing in the world
to compare with his gentle persuasions and the perfume from his robes,
drenched in the late-night dew.
<P 1010>
Hopelessly, Ukifune listened to Ukon's story. Then Jiju~ came in with
hers. Ukifune made no comment. She wished they would go away and let
her weep unobserved.
Ashamed of her swollen eyes, she was late in arising the next morning.
She put her dress in a semblance of order and took up a sutra. Let my sin
be light, she prayed, for going ahead of my mother. She took out the sketch
Niou had made for her, and there he was beside her again, handsome,
confident, courtly. The sorrow was more intense, she was sure, than if she
had seen him the night before. And she was sad too for the other gentle-
man, the one who had vowed unshakable fidelity, who had said that they
would go off to some place of quiet retirement. To be laughed at, called
a shallow, frivolous little wench, would be worse than to die and bring
sorrow to such an estimable gentleman.
"If in torment I cast myself away,
My sullied name will drift on after me."
She longed to see her mother again, and even her ill-favored brothers
and sisters, who were seldom on her mind. And she thought of Nak-
anokimi. Suddenly, indeed, the people she would like to see once more
seemed to form in troops and battalions. Her women, caught up in prepa-
rations for the move, dyeing new robes and the like, would pass by with
this and that remark, but she paid no attention. She sat up through the
night, ill and half distraught, wondering how she might steal into the
darkness unobserved. Looking out over the river in the morning, she felt
nearer death than a lamb on its way to the slaughter.
A note came from Niou, telling once more of his unhappiness. Not
wishing to compromise herself at this very late date, she sent back only
a poem:
"Should I leave no trace behind in this gloomy world,
What target then would you have for your complaints?"
She wanted also to tell Kaoru of her last hours; but the two men were
very close friends and the thought of their comparing notes revolted her.
It would be better to speak openly of her decision to neither.
A letter came from her mother: "I had a most ominous dream of you
last night, and am having scriptures read in several temples. Perhaps be-
cause I had trouble getting back to sleep, I have been napping today, and
I have had another dream, equally frightening. I waste no time, therefore,
in getting off this letter. Do be careful. You are so far away from all of us,
the wife of the gentleman who visits you is a disturbingly strong-minded
lady, and it worries me terribly that I should have had such a dream at a
time when you are not well. I really am very worried. I would like to visit
you, but your sister goes on having a difficult time of it. We wonder if she
might be in the clutches of some evil spirit, and I have the strictest orders
from the governor not to leave the house for a moment. Have scriptures
read in your monastery there, please, if you will."
<P 1011>
With the letter were offerings of cloth and a request to the abbot that
sutras be read. How sad, thought the girl, that her mother should go to
such trouble when it was already too late. She composed her answer while
the messenger was off at the monastery. Though there was a great deal that
she would have liked to say, she set down only this poem:
"We shall think of meeting in another world
And not confuse ourselves with dreams of this."
She lay listening to the monastery bells as they rang an accompani-
ment to the sutras, and wrote down another poem, this one at the end of
the list that had come back from the monastery of the sutras to be read:
"Join my sobs to the fading toll of the bell,
To let her know that the end of my life has come."
The messenger had decided not to return that night. She tied her last
poem to a tree in the garden.
"Here I am having palpitations," said Nurse, "and she says she's been
having bad dreams. Tell the guards to be extra careful. Why _will_ you not
have something to eat? Come, a cup of this nice gruel."
Do please be quiet, Ukifune was thinking. The woman was still alert
and perceptive enough, but she was old and hideously wrinkled. Yet
another one who should have been allowed to die first--and where would
she go now? Ukifune wanted to offer at least a hint of what was about to
happen, but she knew that the old woman would shoot bolt upright and
begin shrieking to the heavens.
"When you let your worries get the best of you," sighed Ukon, asking
to lie down near her mistress, "they say your soul sometimes leaves your
body and goes wandering. I imagine that's why she has these dreams.
Please, my lady, I ask you again: make up your mind one way or the other,
and call it fate, whatever happens."
The girl lay in silence, her soft sleeve pressed to her face.
<W Murasaki Shikibu>{Translated by Edward G.Seidensticker}
<T The Tale of Genji>
<K 6>
<C 52>{The Drake Fly}
<N 1>
<P 1012>
The Uji house was in chaos. Ukifune had disappeared, and frantic search-
ing had revealed no trace of her. I need not seek to describe the confusion,
for my readers will remember old romances that tell of maidens abducted
in the night, and of how it was the next morning.
Her first messenger having failed to return, Ukifune's mother sent a
second. "I left the city while the cocks were still crowing," he said.
Nurse and the other women made no sense. They had no notion what
might have happened, and they moved in utter confusion from one possi-
bility to the next. Ukon and Jiju~, the only two among them who had
known of the crisis, remembered their lady's growing moodiness and
feared she might have thrown herself into the river. In tears, they opened
the mother's letter.
"My worries have left me quite unable to sleep, and so I suppose I
shall not see you tonight even in my dreams. Nightmares, rather; night-
mares dominate my life and have driven me to distraction. I am very, very
worried and am going to send for you, even though you are so shortly to
move to the city. Today, of course, we are likely to have rain."
Ukon opened the girl's note to her mother and soon was sobbing
helplessly. It had happened. There could be no other explanation for so sad
a little poem. And why had she not given Ukon even a hint of it all? They
had been such friends since they were little girls. Ukon had not been
separated from her for a moment, had not kept the tiniest mote of a secret
<P 1013>
from her. Why, at the most important time of all, had she given no
indication of what was coming? It was too much. Ukon wept like a
thwarted child.
They had known that the girl was despondent, but they had not
thought her capable of such extraordinary, such frightening resolve. But
how, exactly, had she committed the dreadful act?
Nurse was less help than any of them. "What shall we do, what _shall_
we do?" she asked over and over again.
<N 2>
Sensing something out of the ordinary in her last note, Niou immedi-
ately dispatched a messenger. She had not found his company distasteful,
he was sure. Worried about his well-known fickleness, then, had she
hidden herself away? His messenger arrived at a house given over to
wailing and lamenting and could find no one to take his letter.
What had happened? he asked a maidservant.
"Our lady died last night. We are stunned, completely stunned. We
don't know where to turn. The gentleman who has been such a help isn't
here to help now."
Not knowing a great deal about the Uji household, the man did not
press the matter. Back in the city he reported to Niou, for whom the news
was like a sudden, horrible visitation. She had been indisposed, it was true,
but not seriously ill; and that last note had shown a certain flair rather
wanting in most of her notes. What could have happened?
He summoned Tokikata. "Go and see what you can find out, please."
"I don't know what rumors the general has picked up, but he has
reprimanded the guard, and now not even the servants can get in and out
of the house without being stopped. If I were suddenly to appear and he
were to hear of it, I'm afraid he would guess everything. And of course the
place will be in a frightful stir, swarms of people rushing in all directions."
"Perhaps; but I have to know the truth. You're a clever fellow. Find
a way to see that Jiju~. She'll know everything. I want the truth. We can't
believe what we hear from servants."
Unable to resist feelings on such open display, Tokikata set out for Uji
that evening. He was not of a rank to require a retinue and he wasted no
time. Though the rain had stopped, he had dressed as if for a difficult and
dangerous journey and he looked more like a foot soldier than an intimate
of royalty. The Uji house was, as he had expected, a bedlam.
"We must have the services immediately, tonight," someone was
saying. Startled, he asked for Ukon. She refused to see him.
"I cannot get myself to my feet," she sent back. "It seems a pity that
I cannot even say hello. I don't suppose that you will be coming this way
again."
"But how can I go back with nothing to report? Let me talk to your
friend, then, please."
He was so insistent that Jiju~ presently came forward. She was sobbing
uncontrollably. "Please tell the prince that it is all too terrible. He cannot
<P 1014>
possibly have foreseen that she would be capable of such a thing. We are
stunned, dazed--no, I can't think of the right word. When I am a little
more myself, I may be able to tell you about her last days, and how sad
she was, and how she hated sending him away that night. Come again,
please, when I can really talk to you. I would not want to pass the defile-
ment on to you."
Wails echoed from the inner rooms. He recognized Nurse: "Where are
you, my lady? Please come back. You haven't even let us see you, and why
should we want to go on living? I was with you from the start and I still
have not seen enough of you. My one thought through all the years was
to make you happy. And now you have left me, disappeared, not even told
me where you might be going. I can't believe that you have let a devil take
you away. I can't believe it. And so we must pray. We must pray to Lord
Taishakuten. Give her back to us, whoever you are, man or devil or
whoever. Let us look at her, even if she is dead."
<P 1015>
There were numerous obscure points in all this. "Tell me the truth.
Has someone taken her away? I am here because he wants the facts. There
is nothing to be done now, I suppose, whatever has happened, and if he
should learn the truth and find it at variance with what I have told him,
then he is sure to think me incompetent and irresponsible. You can imag-
ine, can you not, the intensity of feeling that prompted him to send me,
hoping against hope that what he had heard would not be true? In other
countries even kings have fallen too deeply in love and lost their senses,
