22

One could go searching a very long while for a perfect woman. He had been idealizing this royal princess. No rule of nature dictated that princesses be without equals.

The truly remarkable thing was that a hermit who had reared his two daughters like mountain rustics should have produced two such paragons. And the other girl, whom he had taxed with flightiness and poor judgment, of whom he had really seen so little: she too had delighted him.

So his thoughts returned always to the same family. As he sank deeper in memories of Uji, of his strange, cruel ties with the Uji family, drake flies, than which no creatures are more fragile and insubstantial, were flitting back and forth in the evening light.

“I see the drake fly, take it up in my hand.

Ah, here it is, I say—and it is gone.”

And he added softly, as always: “Here, and perhaps not here at all.”

{The Writing Practice}