7

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 impossi-ble 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 maidservant, 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 devils ought to make themselves more evident.”

He understood everything. He too was in tears.

“I am not able to do exactly as I would wish, and so I lived with my worries, sure that I would soon have her near me, where I could protect her and see to her needs. She thought me cold and distant, it seems, and I can't help suspecting that she preferred someone else. Well, let me say it. I would far rather not, but while no one is listening—the affair with Prince Niou. When did it begin? He is very good at ruining women's lives. Wasn't he responsible, wasn't it that she wanted to see more of him? Tell me everything, please. I do not want you to leave anything out.”

So he knew. How sad for her poor lady! “You ask very difficult questions. I never once left her side.” She fell silent for a time. “You will have heard of it. One day when my lady was in hiding at her sister's, the prince stole in upon her in a way that seemed to us shockingly improper. We would have none of it, and he left. My lady was terrified and moved into the queer little house where you found her. We tried to keep our move here a secret, but—I can't think where he might have found out—letters started coming late last spring, a considerable number of them. She refused to look at them. We told her that she should feel honored, and that he would think her rude, and so she did answer once or twice. And that is all I know.”

Just what he might have expected. It seemed pointless and even cruel to inquire further. He lapsed into his own thoughts. The girl had fallen victim to Niou's charms, but she had not found Kaoru's own advances distasteful. And so she had been caught in an impossible dilemma, and here was the river, beckoning, and she had given in to it. If he had not left her in this wilderness, she might have found life difficult, but she would hardly have sought a “bottomless chasm.” * How sinister his ties had been with this river, how deep its hostility flowed! Drawn by the Eighth Prince's daughters, he had come the steep mountain road all these years, and now he could scarcely endure the sound of those two syllables “Uji.” * There had been bad omens, he now saw, from the start: in that “image,” for instance, of which Nakanokimi had first spoken, an image to float down a river. At fault himself all along, he had been unhappy with the girl's mother for the almost casual simplicity of the funeral services. He had attributed it to bad breeding. Now that he knew the facts he wondered what the unfortunate woman would be thinking of him. The girl had been well favored for one of her station in life. Unaware of the liaison with Niou, the mother would no doubt have thought the tragedy somehow related to Kaoru himself. Suddenly he was very sad for her.

There had been no remains and so there could be no pollution. Wish-ing to maintain appearances before his men, he stayed on a side veranda all the same, not far from his carriage. After a time it came to seem a not very dignified position, and so he went to sit in the garden, deep-shaded moss for his cushion. He did not think that he would again be visiting this ill-starred house.

“Should even I, sad house, abandon you,

Who then will remember the ivy that offered shelter?”

The abbot had recently become an archdeacon.+ Kaoru summoned him, gave instructions for memorial services, asked that several more priests be set to invoking the holy name, and specified the images and scriptures to be dedicated each week. Suicide was a grave sin. He wished to leave out nothing that might lessen the burden of guilt. It was dark when he set out for the city. If Ukifune were still alive, he thought, sending for the nun, he would not be leaving at such an hour.

She refused to see him and he did not press the matter. “Alone with my own ugliness,” she sent back, “I have thoughts of nothing else. You would see me sunk in abysmal dotage.”

All the way back he cursed himself for his neglect. Why had he not called Ukifune to the city earlier? The sound of the river, while he was still within earshot, seemed to pound and flail at him. There could have been no sadder an ending to it all. Even the earthly remains had disappeared. Among what empty shells, under what waters?