<P 1026>
daughters, he had come the steep mountain road all these years, and now
he could scarcely endure the sound of those two syllables "Uji." There
had been bad omens, he now saw, from the start: in that "image," for
instance, of which Nakanokimi had first spoken, an image to float down
a river. At fault himself all along, he had been unhappy with the girl's
mother for the almost casual simplicity of the funeral services. He had
attributed it to bad breeding. Now that he knew the facts he wondered
what the unfortunate woman would be thinking of him. The girl had been
well favored for one of her station in life. Unaware of the liaison with
Niou, the mother would no doubt have thought the tragedy somehow
related to Kaoru himself. Suddenly he was very sad for her.
There had been no remains and so there could be no pollution. Wish-
ing to maintain appearances before his men, he stayed on a side veranda
all the same, not far from his carriage. After a time it came to seem a not
very dignified position, and so he went to sit in the garden, deep-shaded
moss for his cushion. He did not think that he would again be visiting this
ill-starred house.
"Should even I, sad house, abandon you,
Who then will remember the ivy that offered shelter?"
The abbot had recently become an archdeacon. Kaoru summoned
him, gave instructions for memorial services, asked that several more
priests be set to invoking the holy name, and specified the images and
scriptures to be dedicated each week. Suicide was a grave sin. He wished
to leave out nothing that might lessen the burden of guilt. It was dark
when he set out for the city. If Ukifune were still alive, he thought, sending
for the nun, he would not be leaving at such an hour.
She refused to see him and he did not press the matter. "Alone with
my own ugliness," she sent back, "I have thoughts of nothing else. You
would see me sunk in abysmal dotage."
All the way back he cursed himself for his neglect. Why had he not
called Ukifune to the city earlier? The sound of the river, while he was still
within earshot, seemed to pound and flail at him. There could have been
no sadder an ending to it all. Even the earthly remains had disappeared.
Among what empty shells, under what waters?
<N 8>
Ukifune's mother had not been allowed to go home. The governor
made a serious issue of the defilement, the younger daughter still not
having had her child. The mother spent comfortless days in unfriendly
wayside lodgings. The other girl was a worry of sorts; but presently the
child was delivered. Still kept at a distance, the governor's wife had no
further room in her thoughts for her surviving daughters.
A courteous and friendly note came from Kaoru. It aroused her from
the lethargy and brought new twinges of sorrow.
<P 1027>
"My first thought was to send condolences in this horrible affair; but
I have been very upset, and my eyes have been dark with tears. How much
more impenetrable the darkness must be for you. After that first thought
it came to me that I should allow you time to recover somewhat, and so
the days have slipped aimlessly by. How is one to describe the evanescence
of it all? If I should survive this most difficult of times, and I sometimes
think I shall not, please look upon me as a memento of sorts, and come
to me when you think I might be of assistance."
Nakanobu, his emissary, had another message, which had not been
committed to writing. "I had thought that there was no hurry, and so the
months went by. You may have had doubts about my intentions. I hereby
make solemn vow that in everything I am at your service. Always remem-
ber, if you will, that I have said so. I have heard that you have several other
youngsters, and I shall consider it my duty to watch over them when the
time comes for them to seek positions."
The governor's wife insisted that Nakanobu come inside. It had not
been the sort of pollution, she said, that was likely to rub off on others.
She wept as she composed her answer.
"I wanted nothing more than to die, and perhaps I have lived on that
I might have these kind words from you. I blamed her loneliness over the
years upon my own insignificance. Then came the great honor of your
acquaintance and your undertakings, and I looked forward to seeing her
finally in honorable circumstances. And nothing came of my hopes. Yes,
Uji is a gloomy village, and our bonds with it were as gloomy. If a few more
years are granted me, I shall remember your good offer of support. I am
blind with tears at the moment, and can say no more."
It was hardly a time for gifts. Yet she was uncomfortable at sending
Nakanobu away empty-handed. She took out a sword and a belt, both
beautifully wrought, the latter inlaid with mottled sections of rhinoceros
horn. She had meant them to go one day to Kaoru. She ordered that they
be put in a pouch, which she sent out to Nakanobu as he was getting into
his carriage.
"In memory of my daughter."
Kaoru too thought it an odd time to be giving gifts.
"She made me come in," said Nakanobu, "and between her sobs she
told me among other things how grateful she was for what you had said
about the other children. She was so unimportant herself, she said, that she
could not do very much, but she would ask you to find something for them
when the time came. Though of course they were such poor things, she
said, that she couldn't expect too much. And she said she wouldn't breathe
a word about your reasons for being interested in them."
It was true, thought Kaoru, that the bond between them was not cause
for pride; but had not emperors, even, taken women of low status? Such
matches seemed dictated by fate and no one called them in question.
Among commoners the precedents were legion for taking lowborn women
and women who had been married before. Let people say that he had
<P 1028>
become son-in-law to His Eminence of Hitachi--well, never from the
outset had his intentions for the girl been such as to demean him. The
governor's wife had lost one child, and he only meant to let her know that
the loss would bring profit to the others.
The governor came briefly to see his wife. He was very angry. Why
had she left home at such a time? She had not informed him of Ukifune's
whereabouts, and he had assumed that the girl had fallen upon hard times,
and asked no questions. The mother had been saving her news for the girl's
removal to the city, but there was no longer any point in secrecy. Weeping,
she told him everything. She showed him Kaoru's letter. In growing
wonderment, he read and reread it, for he was well provided with a certain
rustic snobbishness.
"So she died on us just when she was having all this good luck? I was
with his family for a while, but he was way up there on top, and I didn't
really know him. So he's thinking of the others, is he?"
The mother lay sobbing. Such cause for joy, and Ukifune was not here
to partake of it.
The governor managed a tear or two of his own. He thought it un-
likely, however, that Kaoru would have paid much attention to them if the
girl had lived. He had been wrong and he wanted to make amends, that
was all, and, within these limits, he was prepared to put up with a little
gossip.
<N 9>
The time came, on the forty-ninth day after her disappearance, for the
most elaborate of the memorial rites. Kaoru was not entirely sure that she
was dead, but rites could do her no harm, living or dead. He made arrange-
ments in secret with the Uji monastery, sending rich offerings to the sixty
priests who were to read the sutras. The governor's wife visited Uji and
made arrangements of her own. Niou sent Ukon a silver bowl filled with
pieces of gold. Since he naturally wanted to stay in the background, Ukon
made the offering as if it were her own. Those of her comrades who were
not privy to the secret wondered how she could have come by so much.
Kaoru asked all his particular intimates to be in attendance.
All rather astonishing, said the general public. "Why, we never even
heard of her, and now such a stir. Whoever can she have been?"
The astonishment mounted when His Eminence put in an appearance
at Uji and grandly took over the house. He had meant to outdo himself
in honor of his new grandchild, and his own house was jammed with ritual
utensils and trappings, Chinese and Korean hangings and the like; but
there was a limit to what a provincial governor could do. And here were
_these_ ceremonies--secret, if you please, and just look at them! The girl
would have done all right for herself if she had lived. His Eminence would
have had a hard time getting an audience with her.
Nakanokimi also sent offerings, as well as food for the seven monks
whose services she herself had commissioned. The emperor, learning for
the first time of the girl's existence, was sad that Kaoru should have been
<P 1029>
so fond of her and yet should have felt constrained, out of deference to
the Second Princess, to keep her in hiding.
Niou and Kaoru continued to grieve, but Niou was recovering. The
loss had been particularly affecting because it had come just at the climax
of a love that should not have been. Soon he was looking here and there
for consolation. The heavier duties were passed on to Kaoru, who meant
to leave nothing undone. The sorrow still lay too deep for words.
The empress was in provisional mourning at Rokujo~. Her second son
had become minister of rites and seldom found time to visit. Niou came
often, seeking to beguile his sorrows in the apartments of his sister, the
First Princess. It annoyed him that so many of the beauties surrounding
her should be so skillful at concealing themselves. Among them was one
Kosaisho~, famous for her elegance and grace, of whom Kaoru had with
some difficulty made the secret acquaintance. He admired her for her
artistic accomplishments. When she struck up a melody on koto or lute the
sound was somehow different, and she had her own style too when she
jotted down a poem or granted an interview. Niou had not failed to make
note of the name she was acquiring for herself, and once again he consid-
ered devices for thwarting his friend. Kosaisho~ had turned him coldly
away. She was not among those who came running, she let it be known.
Yes, thought Kaoru, she was unusual.
Unable to remain silent in the face of such grief, she wrote to him on
paper that only a lady of great refinement could have selected.
"Pray think me not less feeling than the others.
But I am no one. Silent pass my days.
"And were I she, would sorrow then...?"
She had somehow known that it would be for him an evening of
unusual melancholy.
"Yes, I know the sadness that all is fleeting.
But I did not mean that you should hear my sighs."
And immediately he went to see her, to tell her how much her delicate
sense of timing had meant to him. He was so solemn and withdrawn, and
her rooms were not meant for receiving men of rank; and indeed he did
seem ridiculously confined, over in a corner by the door. There was no
suggestion of obsequiousness, however, in her answers. She _did_ have some-
thing, a certain depth and gravity, that one seldom found in serving
women. He wondered why she had gone into the service of even a princess.
He did not know, but he wished that something more appropriate might
<P 1030>
be arranged. No hint of these thoughts was allowed to slip into the conver-
sation.
When the lotuses were at their best, the empress ordered a solemn
reading of the Lotus Sutra. Images and scriptures were consecrated to the
memory of her father and of Murasaki, who had reared her. The services
were extraordinarily beautiful and dignified, reaching a climax with the
fifth of the eight books, and concluding on the morning of the fifth day.
The assembly was large and varied, for everyone who knew a lady in the
household managed an invitation. The partition between the main hall and
the north rooms had been taken down, and as serving women swarmed in
and out removing the votive decorations and otherwise restoring the hall
to its normal state, the First Princess withdrew with her retinue to the west
gallery. In the evening most of her women, fatigued after the long ser-
vices, went off to their own rooms.
Having changed to an informal court robe, Kaoru strolled down to the
angling pavilion. There were certain monks with whom he had matters to
discuss, but unfortunately they had all left. He went on to take the evening
cool by the lake. That gallery, it came to him, would provide withdrawing
<P 1031>
rooms for the First Princess and her few attendants, Kosaisho~ among them,
and there would be only curtains to conceal them. He caught a rustling of
silk. A sliding door above a board walk happened to be open a crack.
Looking in, he saw that, for such secluded precincts, it offered a remarka-
bly bright and unobstructed view. The curtains were somewhat disor-
dered, permitting him to see far inside. Three women and a little girl who
had removed their cloaks were chipping busily at a large block of ice on
a tray of some description. They could scarcely be in the royal presence
--but there the princess was, marvelously beautiful in a robe of white
gossamer (she had evidently changed since the services), ice in hand, half
smiling at the labors in progress before her. He had seen beautiful ladies,
but none, he thought, as beautiful as she. The day being a warm one, her
hair, indescribably rich and lustrous, had been pushed to one side, reveal-
ing her full profile. By comparison her women seemed rather plain. But
then, collecting himself for a better look, he saw that there was another
worth making note of: in a yellow singlet of raw silk and a lavender train,
