She was compelled to cap the literary allusion by saying, “But not, I fear, ‘everlasting fortune,’” and whetted that a little by adding, “As for Morning Glory, at my age might not Pine Tree be better?”
He smiled. “So I have kept some of my touch in guiding conversation. Shall we get unpleasant topics out of the way at once? Then we can discourse of former times and their joys.”
“If we have the heart to.” If you do, she meant. I never had any choice but to make myself strong. ‘”I had hoped the Lord Tsuchimikado would retain you.”
“Under these circumstances, dismissal may be less than the worst thing that could happen to me,” she said. He failed to completely hide puzzlement. She explained: “Without a family holding rice land, I would be scarcely more than a beggar, lacking even a place of my own like this to retire to when off duty. The others would despise and soon abuse me.”
“Indeed?”
“Women are as cruel as men, Mi-yuki.”
He nibbled a cake. She realized that was cover for the collecting of his thoughts. At length he said, “I must confess, the knowledge of the situation made thin my expectations for you.”
“Why so?” She knew the answer perfectly well, but also knew that explaining to her would help him.
“It is true that Lord Tsuchimikado stayed at peace during the uprising,” he said, “but if he did not work against the Hojo chieftains, neither did he assist them. Now I daresay he feels a need to curry favor, the more so because they may then make one of his line the next Emperor when our present sovereign dies or abdicates. Ridding himself of every member of any family that was in revolt seems a trivial gesture. Just the same, it is a gesture, and Lord Tokifusa, whom they have set as military governor over Heian-kyo, will take due note of it.”
“I wonder what sin in a past life caused Lord Go-Toba to try to seize back the throne he had quitted,” Okura mused.
“Ah, it was no madness, it was a noble effort that should have succeeded. Remember, his brother, the then Emperor Juntoku, was with him in it, and so were not only families like ours and their followers, but soldiers of the Taira who would fain avenge what the Minamoto did to their fathers; and many a monk also took up arms.”
A bleakness’ passed through Okura. She knew how the monks of Mount Hiei repeatedly descended on this city and terrorized it, not only by threats but by beatings, killings, looting, burning. They came to enforce political decisions they wanted; but were they any better than the outright criminal gangs who effectively ruled over the entire western half of the capital?
“No, it must have been because of our own former sins that we failed,” Yasuhira continued. “How far have we fallen since the golden days! We might have won to an Emperor who truly ruled.”
“What do you mean?” asked Okura, sensing how he needed to express his bitterness.
It erupted: “Why, what has the Emperor been for generations but a doll in the hands of the mighty, enthroned as a child and made to step down and retire into a life of idleness when he reached manhood? And meanwhile the clans have made earth sodden with blood as they fought out who should name the Shogun.” He gulped for air and explicated in the same rush of words: “The Shogun is the military head in Kamakura who is the real master of the Empire. Or who was. Today—today the Hojo have won the clan wars; and their Shogun is himself a boy, another doll who says what their lords want him to say.”
He reined himself in and apologized: “I beg Asagao’s pardon. You must be shocked at my bluntness; and needlessly, for of course a woman cannot understand these things.”
Okura, who had kept her ears open and her mind awake amply long enough to know everything he had told her, replied, “True, they are not for her. What I do understand is that you grieve over what we have lost. Poor Mi- yuki, what shall become of you?”
Somewhat calmed, Yasuhira said, “I was in a better position to bargain for leniency than Masamichi or most others. Thus I have leave to occupy my mansion in Heian-kyo for a short time yet. After I must depart, it will be to a farm in the east, well beyond Ise, that I am allowed to keep. The tenants will support me and my remaining dependents.”
“But in poverty! And so far away, among rude countryfolk. It will be like passing over the edge of the world.”
He nodded. “Often will my tears fall. Yet—“ She could not readily follow his quotation, having had scant opportunity to practice spoken Chinese, but gathered that it was about maintaining a serene spirit in adversity. “I hear there is a view of the sacred mountain Fuji. And I can take some books and my flute with me.”
“Then you are not wholly destroyed. That is one bright dustmote in the dark air.”
“What of you? What has happened to this household?”
“Yesterday came the baron who will take possession here. The worst kind of provincial, face unpowdered and weathered like a peasant’s, hair and beard abristle, uncouth as a monkey and growling a dialect so barbarous that one could barely comprehend him. As for the soldiers in his train, oh, they could almost have been wildfolk of Hokkaido. Yes, knowledge of what I leave behind may temper my longing for Heian-kyo. He gave us a few days to make our preparations.”
Yasuhira hesitated before he said, “Mine will be no fitting existence for a well-born lady. However, if you have nothing eke, come with my party. For the rest of our days we can strive to console each other.”
“I thank you, dear old friend,” she answered mutedly, “but I do have my own road before me.”
He emptied his cup. She refilled it. “Indeed? Let me be glad on your account, not disappointed on mine. Who will take you in?”
“No one. I will seek the temple at Higashiyama—that one, for I have often been there with the Ex-Imperial consort and the chief priest knows me—I will go and take vows.”
She had not expected him to show dismay. He almost dropped his cup. Wine slopped forth to stain his outer robe. “What? Do you mean full vows? Become a nun?”
“I think so.”
“Cut off your hair, your beautiful hair, don coarse black raiment, live— How will you live?”
“The fiercest bandit dares not harm a nun; the poorest hovel will not deny her shelter and some rice for her bowl. I have in mind to go on perpetual pilgrimage, from shrine to shrine, that I may gain merit in whatever years of this life are left me.” Okura smiled. “During those years, perhaps I can call on you from time to time. Then we will remember together.”
He shook his head, bemused. Like most courtiers, he had never traveled far, seldom more than a day’s journey from Heian-kyo. And that had been by carriage—to services that for his kind were occasions more social than religious; to view blossoms in the springtime countryside or the maple leaves of autumn; to admire and make poems about moonlight on Lake Biwa ... “Afoot,” he mumbled. “Roads that wet weather turns into quagmires. Mountains, gorges, raging rivers. Hunger, rain, snow, wind, fiery sun. Ignorant commoners. Beasts. Demons, ghosts. No.” He set down his cup, straightened, firmed his voice. “You shall not. It would be hard for a young man. You, a woman, growing old, you will perish miserably. I won’t have it.”
Rather than remind him that he lacked authority over her, for his concern was touching, she asked gently, “Do I seem feeble?”
He fell silent. His eyes searched, as if to pierce the garments and look at the body that had sometimes lain beneath his. But no, she thought, that would never cross his mind. A decent man, he found nudity disgusting, and in fact they had always kept on at least one layer of clothing.
Finally he murmured, “It is true, it is eerie, the years have scarcely touched you, if at all. You could pass for a woman of twenty. But your age is—what? We have known each other for close to thirty years, and you must have been about twenty when you came to court, so that makes you only a little younger than me. And my strength has faded away.”
You speak aright, she thought. Bit by bit I have seen you holding a book farther from your eyes or blinking at words you do not quite hear; half your teeth are gone; more and more fevers come upon you, coughs, chills; do your bones hurt when you rise in the mornings? I know the signs well, and well I should, as often as I have watched them steal over those I loved.
The impulse had seized her days before, when the bad news broke and she began to think what it meant and what to do. She had curbed it, but it stayed restlessly alive. If she yielded, what harm? She could trust this man. She was unsure whether it would help or hinder him against his sorrow.
Let me be honest with him, she decided. At least it will give him something to think about besides his great loss, in the solitude that awaits him.
