The Uji house was in chaos. Ukifune had disappeared, and frantic searching 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 possibility to the next. Ukon and Jijū, 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; nightmares 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 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.
Sensing something out of the ordinary in her last note, Niou immediately 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 Jijū. 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 Jijū presently came forward. She was sobbing uncontrollably. “Please tell the prince that it is all too terrible. He cannot 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 defilement 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.”
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 imagine, 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, but I think there can be no other example anywhere of such absolute devotion.”
Yes, thought Jijū, Niou was showing a most laudable concern. And the details of this unusual event would not be kept secret forever. “If there were even the slightest chance that someone had run off with her, do you think we would be carrying on as you see us? She had been in bad spirits for some time, and then there were those unpleasant hints that the general had found out, and her mother and Nurse here — it’s she who is making all the noise — they were all caught up in the excitement of sending her off to the man who seemed to have first claim; and so I would imagine that longing for the prince just drove her out of her mind. It was too much for her. And now she has done away with herself, body and soul, and that is the reason for the sentiments you are getting such an earful of.”
She still had not precisely come out with it. Ambiguities remained. “Well, I’ll come again. Too much is left out when you can’t sit down for a good talk. I rather imagine that the prince will be visiting you.”
“That would be a very great honor. If the world were to learn that he was fond of her, then it would seem that her stars were good to her. But she did keep it a secret, and perhaps she would rest more easily if he were to do the same. We do not mean to tell anyone that she died an unnatural death.” She did not want him to know that the body had not been found. He was clever and would soon guess the truth, and so she hurried him on his way.
Ukifune’s mother, quite beside herself, arrived in a pouring rain. “It is sad enough to have someone die before your eyes. But that is the way of the world. What can have become of her?”
Unaware of the dilemma that had so filled these last days, she had no reason to suspect that the girl had thrown herself into the river. Might some fiend have devoured her? Might a fox spirit, or some equally sinister force, have led her off? There were strange incidents in old romances, and there was one lady in particular whom the girl had cause to fear. Had some malicious nurse, perhaps, resenting the proposed move to the city, been conspiring against her?
The mother’s first thought was of the serving women. “Is there anything suspicious about the new ones?”
“None of them are here, my lady. We are so far away from things that the ones who hadn’t really settled down kept complaining about not being able to get anything done. So they went home, all of them, and took along the things they were getting ready for the move to the city, and said they’d be back.”
The house did seem rather inadequately attended. Even women who had been in service at Uji since the Eighth Prince’s time had gone home. Jijū and the others spoke of the girl’s unhappiness over the days. She had said more than once, weeping, that she wanted to die.
Under an inkstone Jijū found the poem about the “sullied name.” She looked out at the river, and shuddered at the roar of the waters.
She conferred with Ukon. “It is sad to have them go on wondering. The affair with Prince Niou was not her responsibility and there is no reason at all for her mother to feel guilty or ashamed — he is a prince, after all. Suppose we tell her. The suspense must be killing her. We can’t produce a body, and it’s only a matter of time till rumors get out. Yes, we must tell her, and see what we can do then to make things look somewhat respectable.”
In quiet tones, they told what they knew, and sank back into silent grief. So the child had fallen victim to this awful river, thought the governor’s wife, only half conscious of what she had heard. She had hated it so herself, and now she wanted to jump in after the girl.
“Let’s send people out to look for her, then. Let’s at least find the body and have a decent funeral.”
“There would be no point in it. She will be drifting out to sea by now, and there would be talk.”
The mother had no further suggestions.
Ukon and Jijū ordered a carriage and loaded it with the girl’s cushions and quilts (she had slipped from them the night before) and personal belongings. The monks were summoned who might be expected to preside over services. The nurse’s son was among them, and his uncle the abbot, and various disciples, and other old gentlemen with whom the girl had been on more or less friendly terms. The procession was made to look as if there were a body to escort to a pyre. Mother and nurse were near collapse from grief and (the omens were not good) foreboding.
Udoneri, who had so intimidated them all, stopped by with his son-in-law.” We ought to let the general know of the funeral, and allow time to do it right.”
“We want it to be very quiet, before the night is over.”
The funeral carriage proceeded to the moor at the foot of the mountain. No one was allowed near save the few monks who knew what had happened. In a moment or two the coffin was smoke. Country people tend to be stricter in these matters than city people, and superstitious as well. They had unfriendly comments to make upon what they had seen.
“Pretty strange, I say. Call that a proper funeral? Why, they might as well be taking care of a scrubwoman that died on them.”
“I don’t know. I hear city folk do it without a fuss when brothers are left.”
Even these rustic comments had Ukon and the others on their guard; and they had Niou and Kaoru to worry about. The world kept no secrets. If Kaoru were to learn that there had been no body to cremate, he would draw certain conclusions. He and Niou were close friends. He might suspect for a time that Niou had spirited the girl off, but he would not go on forever in ignorance. He would proceed to suspect other people, to look for other abductors. She had seemed much the pet of fortune while she lived, and now it did indeed seem that a sullied name must live after her.
Given the confusion of the morning, some of the menials might even now be guessing the truth. Strict precautions seemed necessary.
“We will have to let it out someday, bit by bit, I suppose, if we live long enough. But just now I’m afraid I don’t have the strength. He may hear things that will turn him against her, and that will be sad, of course.” Uneasy consciences had given them reason to keep the secret.
His mother having been ill, Kaoru had gone on a pilgrimage to Ishiyama. Uji was much on his mind, but no one informed him of the disaster. At Uji his silence was embarrassing. Then a message came from his manor. He was stunned. Earl y the next morning he sent off a letter.
“I know I should have gone running to you the moment I got this terrible news, but my mother is not well, and I must stay in retreat for some days. About the funeral last night: why did you have to hurry through it in what I am told was such a casual fashion? You should have let me know, and postponed it long enough to make decent arrangements. Nothing is to be done now; but it is sad to learn that even the hill people are talking.”
His messenger was that Nakanobu who had been such a close adviser. At Uji, Nakanobu’s arrival brought new outbursts of grief. The women could think of nothing to say, and made these floods of tears their excuse for not essaying a proper answer.
Kaoru was in despair. He had chosen the wrong place, an abode of devils, perhaps. Why had he left her there all alone? The disaster had occurred because he had in effect made things easy for Niou. He was angry at his own carelessness and his inability to behave like other men. Quite unable to give himself up to his prayers, he went back to the city.
“Though not of great importance,” he sent to his wife, “something distasteful has happened to a person rather close to me; and I shall be in retreat until the shock has passed.”
What a fleeting affair it had been! The pretty face, those winning ways, were gone forever. Why had he been so slow to act while she was alive, why had he not pressed his cause more aggressively? Numberless regrets burned within him, so intense that there was no quenching them. For him, at least, love seemed to be unrelieved torment. Perhaps the powers above were angry that, against his own better impulses, he had remained in the vulgar world. They had a way of hiding their mercy, of subjecting a man to the sorest trials and imposing enlightenment upon him. So the black thoughts ran on. He lost himself in prayer.
Niou’s grief was more open. His household was in great confusion. What sort of malign spirit could have taken possession of him? Presently the tears dried and the anguish subsided; but for him too the memory of her face and her manner brought unquenchable longing. Though he thought of devising clever ways to make it seem that he was genuinely ill, and so to hide these stupidly tear-swollen eyes, everyone guessed the truth. Who, people asked, could have sent him into a despondency so profound that it seemed to threaten his life?
Kaoru of course had full reports. His suspicions were true. Niou and Ukifune had been more than acquaintances who exchanged little notes. She was the sort Niou liked, a girl he would have had to make his own once he had caught a glimpse of her. If she had lived on, she and her friend might have made Kaoru himself look very clownish (for he and the friend were not strangers). He found the thought somehow comforting.
Everyone was talking about Niou’s indisposition. A stream of well-wishers flowed in and out of his rooms. People would think it odd, thought Kaoru, if, in mourning for a woman of no consequence, he failed to call. His uncle Prince Shikibu had recently died, rather opportunely, and Kaoru had put on somber robes. In his own mind he could call them weeds for Ukifune. Loss of weight had if anything improved him.
He made his visit on a melancholy evening after other callers had withdrawn. The illness was not so severe as to keep Niou in bed. He did not, it was true, receive people with whom he was on less than familiar terms, but he turned away no one whom he would in ordinary circumstances have admitted to his inner chambers. But he wished Kaoru had not come. The encounter was sure to bring tears.
“Nothing serious, really,” he said controlling himself for a time, “but I’m told I must be careful. I hate to upset Their Majesties so. I’ve been sitting here thinking how little there really is for us to depend upon.”
He pressed a sleeve to his eyes, able to hold back the tears no longer. All very embarrassing; but of course his friend, unaware of the cause, could tax him with no more than unmanliness.
It was as he had suspected, Kaoru was in fact thinking. And when had they managed to strike up a liaison? How the two of them must have been laughing at him all these months! His grief seemed to vanish quite away.
A very cool sort his friend was, thought Niou; indeed a rather chilly sort. He himself, when his thoughts were too much for him, needed no such disaster — the call of a bird flying over was enough — to bring on waves of sorrow. Kaoru would hardly be repelled by these weak tears, even if he had guessed their source. But perhaps this was the usual way with people who understood the transience of things? Niou was envious, and he was fascinated. Kaoru had known the girl too, had been the cypress pillar on which she had leaned. Niou looked at his friend again, this time more affectionately, as at a memento.
The desultory talk went on. Kaoru began to feel uncomfortable about the significant spot that was being reserved for silence. “When I have something on my mind — it has always been so — I find myself nervous and restless if I go for even a little while without telling you of it. But I have risen now to a modest place in the world, and you of course have far more important matters to occupy you, and so we seldom find a chance for a quiet talk. The days go by and I do not ask for an audience with you unless I have a good reason. But let me come to the point. I recently learned about a relative of the lady who died in that mountain village, you will know the one I am speaking of — I recently learned that she was living in a rather odd place. I thought of helping her, but unfortunately I found myself in circumstances that made me afraid of gossip. So I left her there, and a wretched place it was, too, and scarcely visited her at all. As time went by I came to suspect that I was not the only one she was looking to for support. But I would not want you to think that I was dreadfully upset. I had certainly not thought of her as the love of my life. No one seemed seriously at fault. She was amiable, and she was attractive, and that was all. And then, very suddenly, she died. It is a sad world we live in. But perhaps I am speaking of something you have already been informed of.” He had been dry-eyed until now. He would have preferred not to join his friend in this tasteless weeping, but once they had started the tears were not to be held back.
Niou found this break in the calm touching and at the same time threatening. He chose to feign ignorance. “Very sad, very sad. I did hear something about it, just yesterday. I wanted to offer condolences, but I heard that you were avoiding publicity.” He stopped short. Under the cool surface were complex and powerful emotions.
“That is the story. I hoped there might sometime be a chance to introduce you. Or perhaps you happened to run into her somewhere? Perhaps she visited Nijō? She was of course related to your princess.” The innuendos were becoming broader. “But I forget myself. I should not be bothering you with these trivia when you are not feeling well. Do please be careful.” And he went out.
So Niou had been genuinely in love with her, he was thinking. Her life had been a short one, but her destinies had borne her to high places. Here was Niou: the pet of Their Majesties, the handsomest and stateliest of men, with two noble beauties for wives. And he had pushed them aside to make room for her! Was not this illness, on which so many scriptures and ceremonies were being concentrated, the result of an uncontrollable love? And Kaoru could point to himself too, not immodestly: high position, a royal bride, everything; and the girl had bewitched him even as she had bewitched Niou. And in death she seemed to have a stronger hold on him than in life.
What utter folly! He would think of it no more. But he was dizzy with memory and longing. “We are not sticks and stones, we all have hearts,” he whispered to himself as he lay down.
And how, he wondered, sadness giving way to irritation, had Nakanokimi responded to news of that hasty funeral? He was not at all happy with it himself. Possibly the mother, a common sort of woman, had dispensed with ceremony on the theory that the grand ones do so out of deference to surviving brothers and sisters.
Faced with so many obscure points, he would have liked to run off to Uji and ask about Ukifune’s last days; but were he to make serious inquiries he would have a long purification to look forward to, and on the other hand he would not wish to go such a distance and turn back immediately.
The Fourth Month came. The evening of the day appointed for her move to the city was especially difficult. The scent of the orange blossoms near the veranda brought memories. A cuckoo called and called a second time as it flew overhead. “Should you stop by her dwelling, O cuckoo.” His heart heavy with memory and yearning, he broke off a sprig of orange blossom and sent it with a poem to Nijō, where Niou was spending the night.
“It sings in the fields its muted song of the dead.
Your muted sobs may have joined it — to no avail.”
The poem found Niou and his princess sunk in thoughts of the dead girl. How very much the sisters had resembled each other, he was thinking — and did his friend have to hint so broadly at what had happened?
This was his answer:
“Where orange blossoms summon memories
The cuckoo now should sing most cautiously.
“A very great trial, I am sure.”
Nakanokimi was by now familiar with the whole story. Her sisters had died so young, no doubt because they had both of them been of a too introspective nature. She, the one without worries, had lived on. And how long would it be until she joined them?
Since she obviously knew everything, the pretense at concealment was becoming awkward. Arranging matters somewhat to his own advantage, now laughing and now weeping, he made his confession. “I was very annoyed at you for hiding her,” he concluded. How very affecting it was to have the girl’s own sister for his audience!
He was more comfortable here at Nijō. At Rokujō everything was so grand and ceremonious. When he was indisposed they all fussed over him so. He had no defenses against well-wishers, and Yūgiri and his sons made genuine nuisances of themselves.
But everything still seemed so vague and dreamlike. Her sudden death had not been properly explained. He sent for Ukon.
At Uji, the roar of the waters stirred the governor’s wife to thoughts of suicide. There could be no rest from her grief. Sadly, she returned to the city. The Uji house settled into near silence, the monks its chief source of strength and cheer. This time the troublesome guards made no attempt to challenge Niou’s emissaries. How sad, the latter were thinking, that what had proved to be their lord’s last chance for a meeting had come to nothing. It had not been pleasant to watch the effects of his clandestine love, and now the memory of those nocturnal visits, and of the girl too, so fragile and so beautiful on the night of the river crossing, was enough to dissolve the least sensitive of them in tears.
They told Ukon why they had come.
“It would not do to stir up gossip at this late date,” she said, “and I doubt that any explanations I might make would satisfy him. I shall think up a good excuse to visit him once we are out of mourning. I can tell people that I have business to discuss with him. It is true that I do not want to outlive my own grief, but if someday I manage to pull myself together, I shall call on him, you may be sure, whether he sends for me or not, and describe this nightmare to him.” They could not persuade her to go with them.
“I did not have all the details and was not in a good position to judge?” said Tokikata, “but I did sense something very unusual in his feelings for her. I looked forward to the day when I might myself be of service to you, and saw no need to rush things; and this sudden disaster has only strengthened my good intentions. We seem to have this carriage, and I would hate to take it back empty. What about the other lady?”
“Yes, by all means.” Ukon summoned Jijū. “You go.”
“But I would have even less to tell him than you. And we are in mourning, you know. I wouldn’t want to pass the defilement on.”
“He is being careful of his health, but I doubt if that would worry him. He has been so upset by it all that I rather imagine he would welcome a few days’ retreat. And you won’t be in mourning much longer in any case. Come along, now, one or the other of you.”
Jijū agreed to go. She did want to see Niou again, and when could she hope for another chance? She was a handsome figure herself when she had put her somber robes in order. Because formal dress could be dispensed with in the absence of one’s lady, she had not been wearing formal trains, and she had none dyed in the proper hues of mourning. A lavender one was the best she could find. Thinking of her lady’s secret but triumphal progress along this same road had she but lived, she wept the whole of the way into the city.
She had always been partial towards Niou, and he was pleased and touched that she had come. Wishing to avoid a scene, he did not tell Nakanokimi of the visit. He went to the main hall and asked Jijū to alight at a gallery adjoining it.
She told him in great detail of Ukifune’s last days. “My lady had been in low spirits for some time and she was weeping when she went to bed that night. She seemed so wrapped up in herself, she had even less to say than usual. She was not a lady to complain about her troubles, you will remember, and that may be why she didn’t leave a proper letter behind. It hadn’t occurred to us in our wildest dreams that she would be capable of such a thing.”
All the sadness of those days came back. One somehow manages to accept a natural death — but to throw herself into those savage waters! What could account for such resolve? If only he had been there himself. He pictured himself on the spot, pulling her from the river, and regret attacked him more fiercely, to no purpose, of course.
“What fools we were not to guess when she burned her letters.”
They talked the night through. She told him too of the poem they had found in the tree. He had not paid much attention to her until now, and she interested him.
“Would you think of joining us here at Nijō? You and the lady in the other wing are not strangers, after all.”
“No, it would be too sad. Let me at least wait until we are out of mourning.”
“Do come again.” He was sorry to see her go.
As she left in the dawn, he gave her a comb box and a clothespress he had had made for Ukifune. Though he had in fact put together a considerable collection of boxes and chests, he gave her only what she could take with her. She had not expected such largesse, and was a little embarrassed at the thought of displaying it to her fellows. There being little relief these days from the tedium, however, she did show Ukon her new treasures when no one else was near. The designs were most elegant, the workmanship was superb — and this and much more their lady had thrown away! The contents of the clothespress quite dazzled them, but of course women in mourning had no use for such finery.
Numerous questions still on his mind, Kaoru paid a visit. His thoughts on the road were of long ago. What strange legacy had brought him and the Eighth Prince together? A bond from an earlier life, surely, had tied him to this family and its sad affairs, and made him see to the needs of this last sad foundling, even. He had first sought an audience with the prince in hopes of divine revelation. His mind had been on the next world; and in the end he had wandered back to this. Perhaps it was the Buddha’s way of making him see his own inadequacies.
“I still do not know what happened,” he said to Ukon. “I am in such a state of shock that I can’t somehow make myself believe it all. You will soon be out of mourning, I have told myself, and it would be better to wait; but I found that I could wait no longer. What exactly was it that took her so suddenly?”
The nun Bennokimi would have guessed the truth, thought Ukon, and if she herself sought to dissemble, the combined result would be impossible confusion. Though she had grown used to lying, this solemn honesty made her forget the several stories she had put together. She told him a good part of the truth.
For a time he said nothing. It could not be. A girl so quiet, so sparing even of commonplaces — how could she have done it? No — these women had conspired to deceive him. For a moment he was furious. But Niou’s grief seemed genuine, and here they all were, down to the lowest maid-servant, wailing and lamenting.
“Did anyone else disappear? Tell me more precisely, if you can, what happened. I cannot believe that anything I myself did can have turned her against the world. Was there a crisis, something that left her with nowhere to go? I do find it hard to believe.”
Ukon was sad for him, and at the same time troubled. She was afraid that he had guessed more of the truth than she had told him.
“You will have heard all about it, I am sure. She was unlucky from the beginning, and after she came here to live, so far away from everyone, she seemed to slip deeper and deeper into herself. But she did look forward to your visits. They were a consolation, you may be sure. She did not actually say so, but she also looked forward, I know she did, to the time when you could be together. We were delighted when we began to find reason for hoping that it might actually come. I can’t tell you how relieved and how pleased her mother was. Those were happy days for us all, her mother too, when we were busy getting her ready. And then that odd note came from you, and those awful guards — how they did frighten us — started saying you had given them a dressing down, and after that they were so strict that we could only think there had been a misunderstanding. And there was no word from you for so long. Over the years she had come to think that she was just unlucky, and she was sad for her poor mother too, who only wanted her to live a decent, respectable life. It would be too awful, she thought, after all your kindness, if some scandal were to ruin everything and make a laughingstock of them. I can think of nothing else that can have had her in such a state. Some say that this house is cursed. I’ve always thought myself that if it is then the ............