5

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He made his visit on a melancholy evening after other callers had withdrawn.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 circum-stances 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 Nijo~? 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 cuck-oo.” * His heart heavy with memory and yearning, he broke off a sprig of orange blossom and sent it with a poem to Nijo~, 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.”