“I am not the age you believe, my dear,” she said quietly. “Do you wish the truth? Be warned, at first you may suppose I have gone mad.”
He studied her before replying with the same softness, “I doubt that. There is more within you than you have ever manifested. I was vaguely but surely conscious of it. Perhaps I dared never inquire.”
Then you are wiser than I believed, she thought. Her resolution crystallized. “Let us go outside,” she said. “What I have to tell is for no ears but yours.”
Not troubling about cloaks, they went forth together, onto the verandah, around this pavilion, and along a covered gallery to a kiosk overlooking the pool. Near its placidity rose a man-high stone in whose ruggedness was chiseled the emblem of the clan that had lost this home. Okura halted. “Here is a good spot for me to show you that no evil spirit uses my tongue to speak falsehoods,” she said.
Solemnly, she recited a passage she had chosen from the Lotus Sutra. Yasuhira’s manner was as grave when he told her, “Yes, that suffices me.” He was of the Amidist sect, which held that the Buddha himself watches over humankind.
They stood gazing out at things of chaste beauty. Mist from the rain filled the kiosk and covered hair, clothes, eyelashes with droplets. The cold and the silence were tike presences, whose awareness was remote from them.
“You suppose I am about fifty years old,” she said. “I am more than twice that.”
He caught a breath, looked sharply at her, looked away, and asked with closely held calm, “How can this be?”
“I know not,” she sighed. “I know only that I was born in the reign of Emperor Toba, through whom the Fujiwara clan still ruled the realm so strongly that it lay everywhere at peace. I grew up like any other girl of good birth, save that I was never ill, but once I had become fully a woman, all change in me ceased, and thus it has been ever since.”
“What karma is yours?” he whispered.
“I tell you, I know not. I have studied, prayed, meditated, practiced austerities, but no enlightenment has come. At last I decided my best course was to continue this long life as well as I was able.”
“That must be ... difficult.”
“It is.”
“Why have you not revealed yourself?” The voice trembled. “You must be holy, a saint, a Bodhisattva.”
“I know I am not. I am troubled and unsure and tormented by desire, fear, hope, every fleshly evil. Also, as my jigelessness first came slowly to notice, I have encountered jealousy, spite, and dread. Yet I could never hitherto bring myself to renounce the world and retreat to a life of sacred poverty. So whatever I am, Mi-yuki, I am not holy.”
He pondered. Beyond the garden wall swirled formlessness. Eventually he asked her, “What did you do? What have your years been like?”
“When I was fourteen, an older man—his name no longer matters—sought me out. He being influential, my parents encouraged him. I cared little for him, but knew not how to refuse. In the end he spent the three nights at my side and thereafter made me a secondary wife. He also got me a position at the court of Toba, who by then had abdicated. I bore him children, two of whom lived1. Toba died. Soon after, my husband did.
“By then the wars between the Taira and the Minamoto had broken out. I made an occasion to retire from the service of Toba’s widow and, taking my inheritance, withdrew to the family from which I sprang. It helped that a lady not at court lives so secluded. But how empty an existence!
“At last I confided in a lover I had gotten, a man of some wealth and power. He brought me to a rural estate of his, where I spent several years. Meanwhile he got my daughter married off elsewhere. He took me back to Heian-kyo under her name—such people as remembered marveled at how much she resembled her mother—and through his patronage I came again into service at a royal household. Gradually I outlived the scorn they have for provincials; but when they gradually observed how I kept my youth—
“Do you wish to hear it all?” she asked in an upsurge of weariness. “This has been my third such renewal. The tricks, the deceptions, the children I have borne and, one way or another, managed to have adopted elsewhere, lest it become too plain that they grow old while I do not. That has hurt most. I wonder how much more I could endure.”
“Therefore you are leaving everything behind,” he breathed.
“The time was already overpast. I hesitated because of the strife, the uncertainty about what would become of my kindred. Well, that has been settled for me. It feels almost like a liberation.”
“If you take nun’s vows, you cannot return here as you did before.”
“I have no wish to. I have had my fill of the petty intrigues and hollow amusements. Fewer are the midnight stars than the yawns I have smothered, the hours I have stared into vacancy and waited for something, anything to happen.” She touched his hand. “You gave me one reason to linger. But now you too must go. Besides, I wonder how much longer they can keep up the pretense in Heian-kyo.”
“You choose a harder way than I think you imagine.”
“No harder, / think, than most in times to come. It is a cruel age we are bound into. At least a wandering nun has people’s respect, and ... nobody questions her. Someday I may even win to understanding of why we suffer what we do.”
“Could I ever show courage like hers?” he asked the rain.
Once more she touched his hand. “I feared this tale might distress you.”
Still he looked before him, into the silvery blindness. “For your sake, perhaps. It has not changed you for me. While I live, you will remain my Morning Glory. And now you have helped me remember that I am safely mortal. Will you pray for me?”
“Always,” she promised.
They stood a while in silence, then went back inside. There they spoke of happy things and summoned up happy memories, pleasures and lovelinesses that had been theirs. He got a little tipsy. Nevertheless, when they said farewell it was with the dignity becoming a nobleman and a lady of the Imperial court.
IX. Ghosts
Did smoke rouse her? Bitter in her nostrils, sharp-edged in her lungs, at first it was all that was. She coughed. Her skull flew asunder. The shards fell back with a crash. They ground against each other like ice floes on a lake under storm. Again she coughed, and again. Amidst the noise and the sword-blade hurt she began to hear a crackling that loudened.
Her eyes opened. The smoke savaged them. Through it, blurily, she saw the flames. That whole side of the chapel was coming ablaze. Already the fire licked up to the ceiling. She could not make out the saints painted there, nor any icons on the walls—were they gone?—but the altar abided. As the smoke drifted and the half-light leaped, its bulk wavered in her sight. She had a wild brief sense that it was adrift, would soon reach her and crush her under its weight or else float away forever on the smoke.
Heat billowed. She crept to hands and knees. For a while she could not lift her head. It was too heavy with pain. Then something at the edge of vision drew her in a slow shamble. She slumped above and groped after comprehension.
Sister Elena. Sprawled on her back. Very still, more than the altar was, altogether empty of movement. Eyes open, firelight ashimmer in them. Mouth agape, tongue half out of it, dry. Legs and loins startlingly white against the clay floor and the habit pulled up over them. White flecks likewise catching the light across her groin. Blood- spatters bright on thighs and belly.
Varvara’s insides writhed. She threw up. Once, twice, thrice the vomit burst forth. The surges ripped through her head. When they were done, though, only the foul taste and the burning left in her, more awareness had awakened. She wondered in a vague way whether this had been the final violation or a sign of God’s grace, covering the traces of what had been done to Elena.
You were my sister in Christ, Varvara thought. So young, oh, how young. I wish you had not been in such awe of me. Your laughter was sweet to hear. I wish we could sometimes have been together, only the two of us, and
