The spring sunlight did not discriminate against these “thickets deep.” But Nakanokimi, still benumbed with grief, could only wonder that so much time had gone by and she had not joined her sister. The two of them had responded as one to the passing seasons, the color of the blossoms and the songs of the birds. Some triviality would bring from one of them a verse, and the other would promptly have a capping verse. There had been sorrows, there had been times of gloom; but there had always been the comfort of having her sister beside her. Something might interest her or amuse her even now, but she had no one to share it with. Her days were bleak, unbroken solitude. The sorrow was if anything more intense than when her father had died. Yearning and loneliness left day scarcely distinguishable from night. Well, she had to live out her time, and it did little good to complain that the end did not come at her summons.
There was a letter from the abbot for one of her women: “And how will matters be with our lady now that the New Year has come? I have allowed no lapse in my prayers for her. She is, in fact, my chief worry. These are the earliest fern shoots, offerings from certain of our acolytes.” The note came with shoots of bracken and fern, arranged rather elegantly in a very pretty basket. There was also a poem, in a bad hand, set apart purposely, it seemed, from the text of the letter.
“Through many a spring we plucked these shoots for him.
Today remembrance bids us do as well.
Please show this to your lady.”
Nakanokimi was much moved. The old man was not one to compose poems for every occasion, and these few syllables said more to her than all the splendid words, overlooking no device for pleasing her, of a certain gentleman who, though ardent enough to appearances, did not really seem to care very much. Tears came to her eyes. She sent a reply through one of her women:
“And to whom shall I show these early ferns from the mountain,
Plucked. in remembrance of one who is no more?”
She rewarded the messenger liberally.
Still in the full bloom of her youth, she had lost weight, and the effect was to deepen her beauty, and to remind one of her sister. Side by side, the two sisters had not seemed particularly alike; but now one could almost forget for a moment that Oigimi was dead, so striking was the resemblance. Kaoru had lamented that he could not keep their older lady with him, the women remembered, even as he might have kept a locust shell. Since either of the princesses would have been right for him, it was cruel of fate not to have let him have the younger.
Certain of his men continued to visit Uji, having made the acquaintance of women there. Through them the princess and Kaoru had occasional word of each other. Time had done nothing to dispel his grief, she learned, nor had the coming of the New Year stanched the flow of his tears. It had been no passing infatuation, she could see now. He had been honest in his avowals of love.
Niou was chafing at the restrictions his rank placed upon him, and the evidence was that they would only be more burdensome as time went by. He thought constantly about bringing Nakanokimi to the city.
When the busiest days were over, the time of the grand levee and the like, Kaoru found himself with heavy heart and no one who understood. He paid Niou a visit. It was an evening for melancholy thoughts. Niou was seated at the veranda, gazing out at the garden and plucking a few notes now and then on the koto beside him. He had always loved the scent of plum blossoms. Kaoru broke off an underbranch still in bud and brought it to him, and he found the fragrance so in harmony with his mood that he was stirred to poetry:
“This branch seems much in accord with him who breaks it.
I catch a secret scent beneath the surface.”
“I should have been more careful with my blossoms.
I offer fragrance, get imputations back.
You do not make things easy for me.”
They seemed the most lighthearted of companions as they exchanged sallies.
When they settled down to serious matters, they were soon talking of Uji. And how would Nakanokimi and her women be? asked Niou. Kaoru told of his own unquenchable sorrow, of the memories that had tormented him since Oigimi’s death, of the amusing and moving things that had been part of their times together — of all the laughter and tears, so to speak. And his philandering friend, quicker to weep than anyone even when the matter did not immediately concern him, was now weeping most generously. He was exactly the sort of companion Kaoru needed. The sky misted over, as if it too understood. In the night a high wind came up, and the bite in the air was like a return of winter. They decided, after the lamp had blown out several times, that darkness would do as well. Though of course it destroyed the color of the blossoms, it did not put an end to the conversation. The hours passed, and still they had not talked themselves out.
“Ah, yes,” said Niou. “Yes indeed — purity such as the world is seldom privileged to behold. But come, now, surely it cannot have been just that?”
He had a way of assuming that something had been left out, no doubt because he suspected in others a volatility like his own. Yet he was a man of sympathy and understanding. So skillfully did he manage the conversation as he moved from subject to subject, now seeking to console his friend,
now seeking to make him forget, trying this way and that to offer an outlet, for the pent-up anguish — so skillfully that Kaoru, led on step by step, poured forth the whole store of thoughts that had been too much for him. The relief was enormous.
Niou told of his plans for bringing Nakanokimi into the city.
“I thoroughly approve. As a matter of fact, I had been blaming myself for her difficulties and telling myself that I ought to be looking after her as a sort of legacy of the one — I am repeating myself — I shall go on mourning forever. But it is so easy to be misunderstood.”
He went on to describe briefly how Oigimi had begged him to make no distinction between the two of them, and had asked him to marry her sister. He did not go so far as to speak of the night that called to mind the cuckoo of the grove of Iwase.
In his heart, all the while, the chagrin and regret were mounting. He should himself have done as Niou was doing with the memento she had left behind. But it was too late. He was skirting dangerous ground, in the direction of which lay unpleasantness for everyone. He tried to think of other matters. Yet there was this consideration: who if not he was to take her father’s place in arranging the move to the city? He turned his mind to the preparations.
At Uji, attractive women and girls were being added to Nakanokimi’s retinue, and the air was alive with anticipation. Nakanokimi alone stood apart from it. Now that the time had come, the thought of abandoning this “Fushimi” of hers, letting it go to ruin, seemed intensely sad. Her sorrow would not end, but her prospects would be very poor indeed if she were to stand her ground and insist on staying in remote Uji. How could she even think, protested Niou, and there was much to be said for the view, of living in a place where the promises they had made must certainly be broken? It was a dilemma.
Finally the move was set for early in the Second Month. As the day approached, Nakanokimi looked out at the buds on the cherry trees, and thought how very difficult it would be to leave them, and the mountain mists too. And she would be homeless, a lodger at an inn, facing she could not know what humiliation and ridicule. Each new thought, as she brooded the days away, brought new misgivings and reservations. She presently emerged from mourning, and the lustration seemed altogether too cursory and casual. She had not known her mother, and had not mourned for her. She thought how much she would have preferred to put on the deeper weeds with which one mourned a parent, but she kept the thought to herself, for it went against custom. Kaoru sent a carriage and outrunners for the lustration ceremony, and learned soothsayers as well.
He also sent a poem:
“How quickly time does pass. You made and donned
Your mourning robes, and now the blossoms open.”
And he sent numerous flowery robes, for the ceremony and for the move to the city, none of them gaudy or ostentatious, each appropriate to the rank of the recipient.
“You see how it is,” said the women to their mistress. “He never misses a chance to show us he has not forgotten. How very kind of him. Even if you had a brother, we can assure you, he could not possibly do more for you.”
The older ones, no longer as interested in bright colors as they once had been, were moved by the kindness itself. And the younger ones said: “He’s been coming all these years, and now we’re running off. She will miss him, make no mistake about that.”
On the day before the move, early in the morning, Kaoru appeared at Uji. Shown to the usual sitting room, he thought how Oigimi, had she lived, would by now have relented, and he would even now be setting an example for his friend Niou to follow. The image of the dead lady came back, and memories of things she had said. She had not really given herself to him, it was true, but neither had she put him off in a way that could be called cruel or insulting. He must continue to regret that his own eccentricities had helped keep the distance between them.
He went to the door and looked for the hole through which he had once peeped in upon the two sisters, but there were blinds and curtains beyond.
In the other room women were weeping softly and exchanging sad memories of their dead lady. The tears flowed on, and especially Nakanokimi’s, as if to wash away murky forebodings.
As she lay gazing vacantly out at the garden, a message was brought from Kaoru: “Memories of these months have no order and form, but they are more than I can keep to myself. It would be a very great comfort to let you have a tiny fragment of them. Do not, please, treat me with the coldness that has been yours in the past. You make me feel as if I had been banished to some remote island.”
“I certainly would not wish you to think me unkind,” she replied, though the effort was almost too much for her;” but I am really not myself. Indeed, I am so unsettled that I fear I might say things both stupid and rude.”
But her women argued his case, and at length she received him at the door to her room. His good looks had always been somewhat intimidating, and she thought that he had improved and matured in the time since she had last seen him. Along with remarkable grace and elegance, he had an air of composure, of deliberation, such as few men could have imitated. Altogether a remarkable young man, and the knowledge that her sister had meant so much to him made the effect quite overpowering.
“It would be unlucky on such an occasion, I suppose, to speak of the lady I shall go on speaking of forever.” He broke off and began again. “I shall soon be moving to a house not far from the one where you will be. ‘Any time of the day or night,’ the devotees and experts would say — but please do let me see you. I shall want to hear from you whenever I can be of service, and I shall be at your command for as long as I live. No two people are alike, of course, and it is possible that you find the prospect offensive. What might your own thoughts be?”
“I have not wanted to leave home, and I still do not want to. Now that you tell me you are moving too — my thoughts are too much for me. I am afraid I am not making sense.”
Her voice faltered, and her very evident distress so reminded him of her sister that he was left berating himself for having generously handed her over to Niou. But all that was past. He made no mention of their night together, and his frankness in other matters was almost enough to make her think he had forgotten. The scent and color of the rose plum below the veranda brought poignant memories. The warblers seemed unable to pass without a song; and this mark of “the spring of old” was the more moving for the memories they shared. The fragrance of the blossoms came in on the breeze to mingle with Kaoru’s own fragrance. Orange blossoms could not have been more effective in summoning back the past. Her sister, she remembered, had been especially fond............