2

      He had no outrunners and his carriage and livery were unobtrusive. As he crossed the Inner River and left the city he passed a small house with tasteful plantings. Inside someone was playing a lively strain on a Japanese koto accompanied by a thirteen-stringed Chinese koto of good quality. The house being just inside the gate he leaned from his carriage to survey the scene. The fragrance that came on the breeze from a great laurel tree* made him think of the Kamo festival. It was a pleasant scene. And yes—he had seen it once before, a very long time ago. Would he be remembered? Just then a cuckoo called from a nearby tree, as if to urge him on. He had the carriage turned so that he might alight. Koremitsu, as always, was his messenger.

“Back at the fence where once it sang so briefly,

The cuckoo is impelled to sing again.”

The women seemed to be near the west veranda of the main building. Having heard the same voices on that earlier occasion, Koremitsu coughed to attract attention and handed in his message. There seemed to be numbers of young women inside and they at first seemed puzzled to know who the sender might be.

This was the answer:

“It seems to be a cuckoo we knew long ago.

But alas, under rainy skies we cannot be sure.”

Koremitsu saw that the bewilderment was only pretended.” Very well. The wrong trees, the wrong fence.” * And he went out.

And so the women were left to nurse their regrets. It would not have been proper to pursue the matter, and that was the end of it. Among women of their station in life, he thought first of the Gosechi dancer, a charming girl, daughter of the assistant viceroy of Kyushu.* He went on thinking about whatever woman he encountered. A perverse concomitant was that the women he went on thinking about went on thinking about him.