his mother out. With many pauses, the younger nun led the girl into the
nunnery. It was a sore trial to have lived so long, the old nun, near collapse,
was no doubt saying to herself. The bishop waited until she had recovered
somewhat and made his way back up the mountain.<N 6> Because it had not
been proper company for a cleric to find himself in, he kept the story to
himself. The younger nun, his sister, also enjoined silence, and was very
uneasy lest someone come inquiring after the girl. Why should they have
found her all alone in such an unlikely place? Had a malicious stepmother
taken advantage of an illness in the course of a pilgrimage, perhaps, and
<P 1049>
left her by the wayside? "Throw me back in the river," she had said, and
there had been not a word from her since. The nun was deeply troubled.
She did so want to see the girl restored to health, but the girl did not seem
up to the smallest effort in her own behalf. Perhaps it was, after all, a
hopeless case--but the very thought of giving up brought a new access of
sorrow. Secretly requesting the presence of the disciple who had offered
up the first prayers, the nun told of her dream at Hatsuse and asked that
ritual fires be lighted.
<N 7>
And so the Fourth and Fifth months passed. Concluding sadly that her
labors had been useless, the nun sent off a pleading letter to her brother:
"May I ask that you come down and see what you can do for her? I tell
myself that if she had been fated to die she would not have lived this long;
and yet whatever has taken possession of her refuses to be dislodged. I
would not dream, my sainted brother, of asking that you set foot in the
city; but surely it will do you no harm to come this far."
All very curious, thought the bishop. The girl seemed destined to live
--in that matter he had to agree with his sister. And what then would have
happened if they had left her at Uji? All that could be affirmed was that
a legacy from former lives had dictated a certain course of events. He must
do what he could, and if then she died, he could only conclude that her
destiny had worked itself out.
Overjoyed to see him, the nun told of all that happened over the
months. "A long illness generally shows itself on a person's face; but she
is as fresh and pretty as ever she was." She was weeping copiously. "So
very many times she has seemed on the point of death, and still she has
lived on."
"You are right." He looked down at the girl. "She is very pretty
indeed. I did think all along that there was something unusual about her.
Well, let's see what we can do. She brought a store of grace with her from
other lives, we can be sure of that. I wonder what miscalculation might
have reduced her to this. Has anything come to you that might offer a
clue?"
"She has not said a word. Our Lady of Hatsuse brought her to me."
"Everything has its cause. Something in another life brought her to
you."
Still deeply perplexed, he began his prayers. He had imposed upon
himself so strict a regimen that he refused to emerge from the mountains
even on royal command, and it would not do to be found in ministrations
for which there was no very compelling reason.
He told his disciples of his doubts. "You must say nothing to anyone.
I am a dissolute monk who has broken his vows over and over again, but
not once have I sullied myself with woman. Ah, well. Some people reveal
their predilections when they are past sixty, and if I prove to be one of
them, I shall call it fate."
"Oh, consider for a moment, Your Reverence." His disciples were
<P 1050>
more upset than he was. "Think what harm you would be doing the Good
Law if you were to let ignorant oafs spread rumors."
Steeling himself for the trials ahead, the bishop committed himself
silently to vows extreme even for him. He must not fail. All through the
night he was lost in spells and incantations, and at dawn the malign spirit
in possession of the girl transferred itself to a medium.
Assisted now by his favorite disciple, the bishop tried all manner of
spells toward identifying the source of the trouble; and finally the spirit,
hidden for so long, was forced to announce itself.
"You think it is this I have come for?" it shouted. "No, no. I was once
a monk myself, and I obeyed all the rules; but I took away a grudge that
kept me tied to the world, and I wandered here and wandered there, and
found a house full of beautiful girl s. One of them died, and this one
wanted to die too. She said so, every day and every night. I saw my chance
and took hold of her one dark night when she was alone. But Our Lady
of Hatsuse was on her side through it all, and now I have lost out to His
Reverence. I shall leave you."
"Who is that addresses us?"
But the medium was tiring rapidly and no more information was
forthcoming.
<N 8>
The girl was now resting comfortably. Though not yet fully conscious,
she looked up and saw ugly, twisted old people, none of whom she recog-
nized. She was assailed by intense loneliness, like a castaway on a foreign
shore. Vague, ill-formed images floated up from the past, but she could not
remember where she had lived or who she was. She had reached the end
of the way, and she had flung herself in--but where was she now? She
thought and thought, and was aware of terrible sorrows. Everyone had
been asleep, she had opened the corner doors and gone out. The wind was
high and the waters were roaring savagely. She sat trembling on the
veranda. What should she do? Where was she to go now? To go back inside
would be to rob everything of meaning. She must destroy herself. "Come,
evil spirits, devour me. Do not leave me to be discovered alive." As she
sat hunched against the veranda, her mind in a turmoil, a very handsome
man came up and announced that she was to go with him, and (she seemed
to remember) took her in his arms. It would be Prince Niou, she said to
herself.
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.
<N 9>
<P 1051>
"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 uncondition-
ally 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 con-
tinued 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. 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, " 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 singu-
lar as the story of the old bamboo cutter and the moon princess, and the
nun was uneasy lest a moment of inattention give the girl her chance to
slip away.
<P 1052>
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
afterwards; 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, joy-
ously 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 agree-
able 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 har-
vesters at the gate, raised their voices in harvest songs, and the clacking
of the scarecrows brought memories of a girlhood in the remote East
Country.
The house was set in against the eastern hills, some distance above
<P 1053>
the retreat of Kashiwagi's late mother-in-law, consort of the Suzaku em-
peror. 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 Sho~sho~ 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, mar-
ried 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, Jiju~ and Komoki, to wait upon the girl. They were a far cry
from the "birds of the capital" she had known in her other life. Had she
found for herself the "place apart from the worl?" the poet speaks of?
The bishop's sister knew that such extreme reserve must have profound
causes, and told no one of the Uji events.
<P 1054>
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
