2

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.