The Sacred Tree/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
A MEETING AT THE FRONTIER
It will be remembered that the year after the old Emperor’s death Iyo no Suke[1] was sent as governor to a distant province and that his wife, the lady of the Broom-tree episode, was prevailed upon to accompany him. Vague rumours reached her concerning Genji’s banishment; it was said that he was in disgrace and was living somewhere along the shores of Suma. Though obliged to feign indifference, she was indeed naturally very much distressed and longed to write to him. But though ‘the wind sometimes blew across the Tsukubane hills’[2] she dared not trust her secret to so fickle a breeze, and while she waited for some securer messenger the months and years went swiftly by. It had at one time seemed as though Genji’s banishment might last indefinitely, far longer in any case than Iyo no Suke’s short term of office. But in the end it so turned out that Genji had already been back in the Capital for a year when Iyo’s governorship expired. By an odd chance it happened that on the very day when the ex-governor and his party were to enter the Barrier at Ōsaka, Genji was to pass through this same barrier on his way to Ishiyama where he was to attend a service in the Temple of Kwannon. Ki no Kami and various other friends and relations of the ex-governor had come out from the City to meet him, and from them the returning provincials learnt that Genji with a vast ceremonial procession would shortly be passing along their road. Iyo no Suke, wishing to reach the Barrier while things were still quiet, set out with his party long before daylight. But his wagons crowded with women and their luggage jolted along so slowly that when daylight came they were still trailing along the coast-road at Uchi-ide. News now came that Genji’s procession had crossed the Awata Road. Already his first outriders were in sight. So dense was even this vanguard of the great procession that to press past it was out of the question. Accordingly, at the foot of the Frontier Hill Iyo called a halt. The wagons were drawn up along the wayside, and the oxen released from the yoke were soon browsing here and there among the fir-trees. Meanwhile the travellers sat in the shelter of a neighbouring copse, waiting for the procession to pass.
Although this was but a portion of Iyo no Suke’s train, for he had sent some wagons on in advance while others were still to follow, it seemed a very large party; no less than ten coaches, with such a blaze of shawls, scarves and gaily coloured favours protruding from their windows that they looked more like the coaches from which ladies of fashion view the departure of Vestals to Ise or Kamo than the workaday vehicles in which rustic persons are usually conveyed to the Capital.
In honour of Genji’s return to public life the pilgrimage to Ishiyama was on this occasion carried out with unusual solemnity, and at the head of the procession rode vast throngs of noblemen and courtiers, most of whom stared with considerable curiosity at this cluster of gay equipages drawn up along the roadside.
It was the last day of the ninth month, and autumn leaves in many tints of red and brown stood out against a dull background of colourless winter grass. Suddenly from behind the frontier guardhouse there burst forth a blaze of many-coloured travelling cloaks, some richly embroidered, some batik-dyed, of every pattern and hue. Genji’s coach was passing. He too scanned the party by the roadside, but instantly lowered the carriage blind. He had recognized, among those who had come out to meet the travellers, his page and message-carrier Utsusemi’s brother—a child in those old days but now Captain of the Guard. He bade one of his equerries call this young man to his side and when he arrived said to him laughingly: ‘I hope your sister notices how attentive I am to her. It is not often that I go all the way to the Barrier to meet my friends!’ He spoke lightly, but his heart beat fast and there rose up in his mind a host of tender memories to which in this hasty message it would have been useless to allude.
It was years since Utsusemi had spoken of Genji; yet she had never forgotten what had passed between them and it needed only these few words from him to renew all the misery in which her yearning for him had plunged her long ago.
When Genji returned from Ishiyama, Utsusemi’s brother, the Captain of the Guard, came out towards the Barrier to meet him and made his excuses for having taken a day’s leave in honour of his sister’s return. As a boy he had been very good-looking and Genji had taken a great fancy to him. But despite the fact that he owed everything to Genji, without whose patronage he would never have been able to enter the Imperial Guard at all, still less to obtain promotion, no sooner had his master’s fortunes begun to decline than this young man, fearing to offend those in power, entered the service of his brother-in-law, the provincial governor. Genji, though he showed no resentment at the time, found this dereliction very hard to forgive. Their old relations were never resumed; but the Captain was still numbered among the favourite gentlemen of his household. Iyo no Suke’s son, Ki no Kami, had become governor of Kawachi and was consequently no longer on the spot. The younger son, Ukon no Jō, had, as will be remembered, followed Genji into exile and now stood very high in his favour. His position was envied not only by this young Captain of the Guard but by many another who in the days of Genji’s adversity had thought it wiser to leave him to his fate.
Soon after this Genji sent for the Captain[3] and gave him a letter to be taken to his sister. ‘So was this affair, which he thought had come to an end long ago, still dragging on after all these years?’ the young man asked himself as he carried the letter to Iyo no Suke’s house. ‘Did not our meeting of the other day seem almost as though it had been arranged by Fate? Surely you too must have felt so.’ With the letter was the acrostic poem: ‘Though on this lake-side Fate willed that we should meet, upon its tideless shore no love-shell[4] can we hope to find.’ ‘How bitterly I envied the Guardian of the Pass,’[5] he added.
‘I hope you will send an answer,’ said the Captain. ‘He has got it into his head that I behaved badly to him some time ago. I should be very glad if I could get back on to the old terms with him. I do not myself see much point in correspondences of this kind; but when anyone writes to me such a letter as I suppose this to be, I take care to write a civil answer. No one blames me for that; and still less is a woman thought the worse of for showing that a little harmless flattery does not altogether displease her.’
She was still the same shy, inexperienced girl of years ago; her brother’s tone profoundly shocked her and she had no intention of carrying on a flirtation for his benefit. But naturally enough she did feel flattered at the reception of such a note and in the end consented to reply. With her letter was an acrostic poem in which she said that the Barrier of Ōsaka had been no barrier to her tears, nor the Hill of Ōsaka a true hill of meeting.[6]
She was connected in his mind with the most delightful and also perhaps the most painful moment in his life. Hence his thoughts tended frequently to recur to her, and he continued to write to her from time to time.
Meanwhile Iyo no Suke, who was now a very old man, began to decline in health, and feeling that his end was near, he called his sons to him and discussed with them the disposition of his worldly affairs. But what evidently concerned him above all was the future of his young wife. They must promise him to yield to her wishes in everything and to treat her exactly as they had done during his lifetime. Still unsatisfied by their assurances he sent for them over and over again at every hour of the night and day and exacted fresh promises. But Utsusemi, after all that she had suffered already, could not believe that happiness of any kind could ever be in her fate. She saw herself, so soon as her husband was dead, bandied about unwanted from one relation’s house to another, and the prospect appalled her. Iyo knew only too well what was passing in her mind. He desired so persistently to comfort and protect her that, could life be prolonged by mere anxiety to live, he would never have deserted her. For her indeed he would gladly have forgone the joys of Paradise that his ghost might linger on earth and keep her from all harm. Thus, profoundly distrusting the intention of his sons and full of the blackest forebodings, he died at last after a bitter struggle against fate, and only when his will could no longer hold out against the encroachments of sickness and old age.
For a while, with their father’s dying injunctions fresh in their ears, the step-sons treated her with at any rate superficial kindness; but this soon wore off and she began to find her position in the house exceedingly unpleasant. This no doubt lay rather in the nature of the circumstances themselves than in any particular ill-will on the part of her guardians. But she felt herself to be the object of a deliberate persecution and her life became one continual succession of tears and lamentations. The only one of the brothers who seemed to have any sympathy with her was Ki no Kami: ‘Please keep nothing back from me,’ he said. ‘My father was so anxious that I should help you and how can I, unless you entrust your secrets to me?’ Then he took to following her about. She remembered how amorous he had always been. Soon his intentions became perfectly apparent. She had suffered enough already in her life; why should she sit down and wait quietly for the fresh miseries which fate had now in store for her? Without a word to anybody she sent for her confessor and took the vows of a nun. Her waiting-women and servants were naturally aghast at this sudden step. Ki no Kami took it as a personal affront. ‘She did it simply to spite me,’ he told people; ‘but she is young yet and will soon be wondering how on earth she is going to support such an existence for the rest of her life,’—sagacity which did not impress his hearers quite as he intended.
- ↑ Utsusemi’s husband. See vol. i, chapters 2 and 3.
- ↑ ‘The wind that blows across the ridge, that blows across the hills, would that it might carry a message to him that I love.’
- ↑ Utsusemi’s brother; the ‘boy’ of vol. i, ch. 3.
- ↑ Kai-nashi=‘no shell’; but also ‘no profit.’
- ↑ I.e. Iyo no Suke.
- ↑ Ō-saka means ‘Hill of Meeting’; seki means a barrier, but also a flood-dam. See above, p. 25.