THE TALE OF HIKARI

CHAPTER 2

KOKO KARA SENRI O-KYAKU-SAN: A VISITOR FROM A 1000 RI AWAY

Examining the autumn leaves in her hands, Hikari headed towards the collection of blinds and screens that made up her sleeping quarters. She had an inexplicable urge to paint, and the leaves would provide a simple, subject matter for that as well as a colourful note in her room. She hoped she could still remember the strokes. She had not practised her painting for months, and she had never been that skilled at it. It was one of her father’s great disappointments that neither of his children had a talent for the art he loved so well.

Suddenly, she paused, sniffing the air, a frown coming to her face. The room smelt of a delicate, spicy perfume, but it was neither Izumi’s nor her mother’s. It could not be Mimi’s, could it? Her friend was only expected to arrive at their estate the next day. Wheeled wagons travelled slowly along the narrow and twisted tracks of the provinces, and her parents would not have provided any lesser means of transport for their most precious jewel.

“Hello?” she called, and a familiar figure stepped out from behind her screens-of-state. Tachikawa Mimi had not changed at all since she last had seen her. She was still a beautiful, graceful woman who carried herself with a confidence born of the knowledge that all eyes were upon her. Her make-up was impeccably done, and her robes were layered in the most fashionable colours for the season: two layers of maroon above three layers of green with a scarlet undergown to finish it. Pine-tree layers, Hikari recalled the combination was called.

Her carefully chosen leaves fell forgotten to the floor, “Mimi! Welcome!”

“Yagami Hikari, you have wasted away to a wraith during your time in these rustic parts!” Mimi exclaimed with her usual forthrightness.

Hikari crimsoned, thinking it useless to protest that she had only expected Mimi the next day and had been going to prepare herself for her arrival. Mimi’s father was an official at court - a favourite of the Emperor - and she had never been to the provinces for more than a few weeks at a time in the heat of summer. She would not understand Hikari’s recent apathy to her appearance. In Miyako, no self-respecting woman would walk around without her make-up and with her teeth artlessly unblackened. However, in Miyako, there were more than the eyes of servants and family to admire her beauty. And the eyes of peasants, a small voice added to her humiliation.

As much as she would have liked to forget her early morning encounter with the young peasant in her gardens, he had made it impossible for her to do so. Every morning, she found a new sketch lying on the grass outside her window. Most of them were of seasonal themes - pawlonia leaves, dragonflies, chrysanthemums, sparrows, rice being harvested - but others were delicately observed and executed sketches of fishermen on the shore or women playing with their children. If the thought weren’t patently ridiculous, she would have believed her words had bruised his pride and he was sending the pictures to her to stir her into a sense of shame about her hasty words. She wished he would stop leaving them for her, but she had the uncomfortable feeling that she had come to look forward to his sketches as the only variation in her monotonous days and that she would miss them when they no longer appeared.

“However, it is nothing that I can’t mend,” Mimi continued in cheerful tones, “You’re fortunate that I brought suitable cosmetics with me. I will send my serving-women to bring them to us.”

“Thank you,” Hikari said, thinking it easier to agree than to argue. She knew she could have no use for the beauty treatment in the provinces, but it would not be unpleasant to sit back and allow Mimi to make her into a lady of refinement again, especially as her friend’s taste had always been unquestioned among their social circle. She had once worn a daring combination of colours to a concert, and everyone in the city had been clamouring for them the next day. Her incenses too had always taken the prize in any category in which she had entered them.

After Mimi had dispatched one of her woman to fetch her cosmetics and she had hurried off to bring the case in from the wagon, Hikari asked her, “May I ask what brings you to this province?”

Her friend smiled brightly and artificially at her, but something like grief flickered in her brown eyes, “I’m not allowed to pay a visit on an old friend?”

“I’m very glad that you did,” Hikari returned her smile, knowing that Mimi was lying to her. She had been in the provinces for almost two years now, and her friend had never come to see her in that time. She couldn’t blame her - Mimi was a moth irresistably drawn to live in the bright light of Miyako. Her entertainments, her romantic entanglements, her elegant luxuries, she would have been miserable living without them for even a day. No, she would not have come to this deserted, bleak province for no better reason than a social call, “But I wish you would tell me why you are really here.”

Mimi looked away from her, her eyes sinking to the low table on which Hikari had spread all her writing materials. There were her executions of various sutras; letters written to her friends in the capital that were to go back with Mimi; spontaneous poems that had suggested themselves to her. And the painting that had arrived that morning and that she had not had time to hide. It showed geese winging their way across a wide, grey sea. The whole scene had been done with such delicacy and care that she had almost heard their wild, lonely cry echoing into the sky when she had first seen it. A frown creasing her forehead, Mimi stretched out a hand to take it and Hikari felt herself grow cold, as if the cool of autumn had given way to winter snows already. Mimi was not the only one who had a secret to conceal.

“Hikari, this is charming!” she exclaimed, “It’s so natural and fresh. I’m glad to see your time in the provinces hasn’t ruined all your taste. Your solitude must have given you time to practise too, because I don’t remember you ever being able to draw like this. You must show me others you have done.”

She gave her friend a weak smile, “I’m not the artist.”

“Your father? I’ve heard that he is a talented artist. His paintings of the great heroes once won a competition for his side, didn’t they?”

“Yes, but it’s by neither of them.”

“An admirer?” Mimi asked significantly, looking at the sketch with new interest, “Like the geese in his painting, maybe he longs to fly across the long ri to be by your side.”

“And my sleeves are as wet with weeping for him, as if I had trailed them in the sea day and night,” Hikari replied in amusement, holding up the trailing sleeves of her robe to show they were quite dry. Whatever that peasant had intended these paintings to be, he could not have meant them to be tokens of love. Thick-brained as peasants were, even he would be aware that a romance between them would be like something from an old Chinese tale; like the tale where the woman fell for her dog and took him for a lover, the bonds of karma transcending all sense of what was decent or natural, “The only tears I shed are because I have no admirers.” (1)

“Perhaps you are lucky to be alone,” she said, her voice quiet, “Perhaps it is better to live out your life in these provinces where you are as unadmired as any wildflower in the woods.”

Hikari looked at her friend in surprise. She would have thought a moth would sooner hate the light around which it fluttered than Mimi would wish to be away from Miyako and her many male admirers, “Mimi, I’m your friend. I wish you would tell me what’s wrong.”

Mimi stared at the picture in her hands without replying. Very gently, she brushed one of the geese with the tip of her finger and it came up black. She looked at her hand with a puzzled frown on her face. Hikari disciplined herself to calmness, although her heart was beating as if it were a live quail caught in the hunter’s hand. Mimi kept her secrets, and she would not share hers.

“Ash,” the other woman whispered, “Everything is ash.”

There was a long silence, before her maid re-entered the room. She was carrying a small, delicately carved box in her hands. The wood was wonderfully fragrant, and filled the room with its scent. She placed it in front of Mimi, who set the picture aside and almost managed to smile at Hikari, “Now it is time for my own artistry. Give me a moment to mix up my inks and I shall turn you into a masterpiece.”

***

“Will you play for us, Mimi?” Izumi asked, holding out a so to her, “Hikari tells me your talent has left the court at Miyako spellbound on more than one occasion.”

The three women were sitting beneath the spreading cedars in the garden of the mansion, the remains of their outdoor meal set to one side. Hikari’s face felt stiff and strange with its coating of rice-flour, while her mouth was still bitter with the taste of iron and gallnuts used to blacken her teeth. She had not recognised herself when she had seen herself in the mirror - it had seemed a strange, elegant woman was staring back at her, her painted eyebrows quizzical.

With a little nod of agreement, Mimi took the sou in her arms and began to pluck its strings with light fingers. Her sweet, clear voice rose to join the soft sounds of her instrument. It was a lover’s lament, where the woman complained she had been waiting for weeks to see the man she loved but the wood-grouse was the only one who came tapping outside her window. When she had finished her song, she set the instrument aside with a little sigh. In the moonlight, Hikari could see tears glittering in her eyes. (2)

“Mimi, what is wrong?” she asked in concern.

“Hikari, will you fetch me my wraps? I’m scared of catching cold,” Izumi asked with a strange expression on her face. Hikari opened her mouth to protest that the night was dry and warm, but closed it almost immediately. It was a pretext to get rid of her, she realised. Izumi wished to speak to Mimi alone. It was almost certainly about whatever had brought her friend to the provinces.

Burning with curiosity to hear what they said, Hikari set off towards the house. She could feel Izumi’s eyes on her back, watching her, waiting for her to leave before she spoke. She climbed the steps to the main pavilion and turned left as if she were going to her stepmother’s apartments, but paused the instant she was out of sight of the gardens. From here, if the night remained still, she would be able to hear every word they spoke. She knew what she was doing was shameful, but she was concerned for Mimi. There was something wrong with her friend, and she needed to know what it was to help her.

“His name was Shibayama Junpei,” Izumi said so quietly that Hikari had to struggle to hear her words, “He was the first man I loved, the first man I allowed past my screens of state, the first man I wanted to wed. Unfortunately, he came from a family that was no imperial favourite, and he was only a clerk of the fifth class as a result. When he approached my father to arrange a marriage between the two of us, my father turned him down and forbade me from having anything to do with him. He said he had already arranged a marriage with a provincial official for me, and that I would be leaving for his household in two weeks. It was a good match, my father said, even though I would be his second wife. By that, I knew he meant that this provincial official was wealthy. My family’s fortunes had been in trouble for some time, and our only chance of restoring them was for me to wed a rich man,” she paused for a long time, and, when she continued, her voice was unsteady, “And I was lucky, Mimi. My husband is a good man - he treats me with great respect and kindness; he allows me my luxuries from Miyako; he does not burden me with . . . with too many visits. But he is not Junpei, and I can never love him.”

“My father also expects me to be pleased,” Mimi replied bitterly, “Pleased! To be married to a man three times my age who stinks of the medicines he uses to keep himself off his deathbed, who only sees me as a way to keep up his strength! His visits behind my screen of state . . . Ugh! He doesn’t care about me any more than my father does! It’s all politics to my father! He’s rich and influential, so he’ll smooth my brother’s climb up the ranks. Shinji might even make the third this year, they say. I hate politics! I hate them! I hate them!” (3)

Mimi was crying for real now; short, angry sobs that sounded as if they were torn from her body. Hikari sank to her knees, heart thudding in her chest, her own eyes damp. So that was the secret that she had been unable to tell her. Beautiful, stylish Mimi was to be married off to a walking corpse of a man, so her worthless brother could have a position he did not deserve. And her stepmother had a secret as well that she could have never guessed: Hikari wondered if her tears at night were for Junpei many ri away at Miyako.

For the first time, she was almost glad that her father had not arranged a marriage for her. Her father was a good man, but he was also an ambitious one. She knew he wanted more for Taichi than a life spent in the provinces. He might decide that her happiness in a marriage was less important than securing the good will of a influential man. Marriage was politics, as everyone knew. Love was learnt in the years spent together, if it were learnt at all.

“Please keep this a secret,” Mimi said, when her breathing had slowed and her sobs had quietened, “I don’t want Hikari to know. She . . . she doesn’t need to know.”

“I promise,” Izumi replied, “Besides, she will know soon enough what it is like.”

“Her father is organising a match for her?”

“No,” she said, and, despite everything she had just thought, Hikari felt a cold knot of disappointment form in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t understand why her father was delaying. She was of marriageable age, and any alliance with a man at Miyako could only serve to improve her family’s positions. At this rate, it seemed her fears about dying a virgin were not entirely unjustified. She might as well shave her head, put on the holy robe and recede into the obscurity of a nunnery.

“But he will have to arrange one soon enough,” Izumi continued, “For her sake, I hope it is with a good and kind man whom she can love.”

“And a handsome one,” Mimi added with a wistful sigh, “I wanted to marry a handsome man.”

“Junpei was handsome.”

In the garden, the soft sound of the sou began to rise to the moon. It was the loneliest sound that Hikari had ever heard.

***

TO BE CONTINUED IN ‘THE POETRY COMPETITION’

***

NOTES:

(1) The Chinese tales enjoyed by the Japanese were often very lurid and improbable. The tale of the woman who fell in love with her dog is actually a genuine Chinese tale, and is recorded in all its detail in The Tale of Murasaki. The Roman had a similar attitude to Greek tales.

(2) For the two people who don’t know this, AiM, Mimi’s seiyuu, is a J-Pop star by trade and has the most lovely voice. I was listening to her singing while writing parts of this, actually.

(3) During the Heian Era, there was a medical belief drawn from Chinese religious texts that, if a man brought a woman to orgasm but did not himself ejaculate, it would be good for his strength and vigour. It was drawn from the whole principle of yin and yang, of course. And the ranks are just different ranks in the civil service, distinguished by different colour robes. Obviously, the higher you are, the more power and prestige you have.