The Heike Story (10 page)

Was it a trick of moonlight that made her look like the Kannon in the Dream Hall? Her fingers gleamed white to their very tips, and her long hair was as glossy as the horse's coat.

"Ah," Kiyomori sighed to himself, "I would have a wife, too, were there another such as she in this world!" He swallowed hard and then blushed furiously at the sound he made in his throat.

Night after night of moonlight succeeded one another. In the hills and on the plains the deer mated and squirrels danced among the wild grapevines. All the beasts of the fields seemed to be moonstruck.

Kiyomori, sitting at home, was restive. He watched his brother poring over his books by the light of a small lamp suspended near the old desk their mother had left behind, and itched to make fun of him. Here he was—eighteen—and not a thought of women in his head! He sighed for this sorry brother of his. There was nothing in the poor fellow's books that Kiyomori did not know. He watched Tsunemori. He had succumbed, Kiyomori thought, like so many other warrior youths these days, to the fad of borrowing books from the libraries of the Imperial Academy and the university—those Confucian classics in their Sung bindings from China, which had moldered undisturbed for some two hundred years on dusty shelves. What could Tsunemori possibly find interesting in Confucius' Analects or the Four Books? He himself had pretended to listen and slept through those lectures expounding the Great Sage's teachings. The Confucian precepts were just ornaments, aimed only to promote the interests of the privileged, admonishing as they did the warriors and the common people to obey their superiors. By what authority had Confucius defined those codes governing the conduct of men? What had Confucius enjoyed in his lifetime, or what great deeds had he done? Had bloodshed ceased in China because of him?—thieves become honest men?—or liars reformed? Even the venerable sage had once been worsted in an argument with a notorious criminal and been reduced to human stature.

"Foolish brother!" Kiyomori finally said. "Why fill your dull brains with such nonsense? . . . There's a paneled screen at the Court, covered with paintings of wise men and the sages; people believe that merely sitting in that room with those images will fill one with wisdom. So you, too, propose to stuff that head of yours with the likenesses of sages? Utter foolishness! We're not aristocrats! They feed us, and when they order us, must we not instantly go out and kill even those who have done us no harm? Are we not completely at their mercy? Leave those books—have done with them!"

Kiyomori was sprawled on his back in the doorway; the upper half of his body lay in the room, and his legs were thrust out over the edge of the veranda. Mosquitoes hummed about him as he lay in the shadows, gazing at Tsunemori absorbed in his books. Kiyomori was annoyed and fumed inwardly; his father had long since gone to bed, all the servants were asleep, and yet Tsunemori insisted on staying up late. He had irritably refused to accompany Kiyomori on one of his nocturnal prowls. He was a nuisance, this young brother of his, so unlike himself in temperament, though they had the same mother. Disturbing thoughts began to trickle through Kiyomori's mind, like the persistent drip of rain through a leaking roof. He wondered if the difference lay in not having had the same father. This thought made him forget his fear of Tadamori and the constraint he felt with his brother, and he yawned deliberately, muttering to himself: "Well, I'll go now. A fine moonlight night, too." He raised himself suddenly from his supine position and let one foot slide down on the dew-soaked sandals under the veranda.

"Where are you going?"

"I am trying to decide," Kiyomori replied.

"But at this hour?"

"Some of us Guards promised to meet Wataru on a moonlight night when he would take his colt out for exercise."

Tsunemori was incredulous. "What? Exercise a horse so late?"

"It's not unusual for riders to try out their horses secretly before the races."

"You're lying!"

"What?" cried Kiyomori angrily, staring at the bright halo around the lamp.

Tsunemori quickly left his desk and came to his brother and whispered: "Greet Mother for me. Will you take this?"

Kiyomori gasped as he felt of the letter that his brother thrust into the breast of his robe.

"You have her permission to visit her, don't you? I long to see her too. She left Father, but she is still our mother. I'll wait until my time comes to see her. Tell her so for me. . . . It's all in that letter."

Tears rolled down Tsunemori's cheeks. Kiyomori saw how each drop caught the glitter of moonlight. Ridiculous! What reason had he to pursue that mother of his? Softened, however, by the sight of his brother's tears, Kiyomori said gently:

"You're wrong, Tsunemori. I'm going to keep my promise to Wataru."

"Don't try to deceive me," Tsunemori insisted, "there are visitors who've told Father they saw you near the Nakamikado mansion."

"No! Who has been telling such fantastic tales?"

"Fujiwara Tokinobu. He is one of the few courtiers whom Father trusts, and I don't doubt his word," Tsunemori replied.

"So that old man has been coming round these days, has he?"

"There are matters that cannot be discussed at the Palace, and that is why he comes here."

Kiyomori scratched his head. "Caught! If so many people know, I might as well confess. I'll take your letter to Mother, Tsunemori. I tell you, however, that Father said I should go to see her if I wished."

"Then let me come with you!" cried Tsunemori.

"You idiot!" Kiyomori burst out, disconcerted. "Have you no consideration for Father? There's no need to tell him about my night escapades, though, and remember—not a word to Mokunosukй!"

Kiyomori made his exit over the wall. His brother's tearful face seemed to float before him, but he soon forgot it. Above him spread the Milky Way. The night winds cooled his feverish limbs. Where was he going? He did not know. What had caused his restlessness tonight? Whatever it was, it made him dreamy, drove him to madness, to tears, left him sleepless, until he felt desperate. He believed in some Supreme Being, as did those Buddhists who preached the virtuous life. He wondered and agonized about the man from whom he had inherited this wild blood of his. Was this a strain of madness which had passed to him from his mother or the late Emperor? If so, was he responsible for his acts? He hadn't the courage to go alone to the brothel on Sixth Avenue, but if Morito were here now, he would go instantly to those women, to any woman, or even to a fox in the shape of a woman in the moonlight. Anything—anyone who could still this thing which raged in him like a wild beast. Any illusion that would quiet it, lay it to rest. . . . To touch some woman ... to meet one now by chance.

Kiyomori walked on in a sort of delirium. He did not know how he got there, but he stood outside the walls of the Nakamikado mansion. No use—he was a coward! The wall here was much higher than the one at home. He knew that his mother's apartments were in the east wing. He recalled her words at the Kamo races— "Come to see me. . . . Ruriko will be good company."— Ruriko, far too pretty and superior for a mere dreamy warrior youth. There was no reason, however, why he should not try to see her on the excuse of visiting his mother. It was not love that made him seek her out, but his dreams.

Each time he came here, his courage evaporated. He blamed his timidity and grew discouraged at the sorry figure he made. Standing there in his old robes and worn sandals, there passed through his heated imagination those many tales he heard daily about the courtiers—the aristocrat who could lightly abduct a princess, bear her away to the open fields where the tall grass waved and the hagi flower bloomed, while away the night with her until the moon grew pale in the dawn, and dew jeweled her eyelids, then steal back with her unseen. Kiyomori thought of the courtiers who casually dropped love-letters in the halls of the Palace where ladies-in-waiting passed, and waited for night to bring the touch of sinuous tresses and hot lips. ... He wondered why fate had not decreed such things for him. ... He was a coward! If only he could put away that cringing thing in him!

Tonight he was determined to go through with it. He now stood on top of the wall, but again grew irresolute. Wild visions rioted through his heated brain. Wait! A cool wind blew on his sweating body. Through his mad fancying he remembered Mokunosukй's words: "Whoever you are, you are a man after all. You are no cripple with those fine limbs." Whether he was the son of an emperor or the child of an intrigue, was he not a child of the heavens and the earth? What he wrestled with now were his own lusts!

He suddenly wanted to laugh at himself on his high perch. He gazed up at the Milky Way flung across the heavens. Not bad—not bad at all to be alone like this under that vast autumn sky!

What was that? Again!

In the distance a tongue of flame licked at the sky. He stared in the direction of a roof that lay inside the city walls. Nothing unusual—just another fire. Fires were no longer rare these days. As the red glow spread, he thought of the numberless common folk, huddled in miserable sleep while the frivolous aristocrats ruled in pampered luxury; the two governments plotted against each other, and the ruthless armed clergy rioted. Those flames, leaping so hungrily at the sky, were the tongues of the starving masses, the common people for whom there was no redress and whose only means of protest lay in firing the objects of their hate. He recalled the more recent conflagrations: the Bifuku Gate, the West Quarter, the High Chancellor's villa. How the downtrodden and the criminals, whose very existence depended upon the prosperity of the Fujiwara, had gloated under a rain of ashes and sparks at the sight of the destruction!

Kiyomori jumped down from the wall—on the outer side— and started off at a run in the direction of the confused noises that now filled the streets.

The long, uninterrupted autumn rains caused a great deal of grumbling, but this year neither the Kamo nor the Katsura River flooded its banks. The foliage on the Northern Hills was already beginning to turn.

The pilgrimage to the Ninna-ji Temple was only ten days away, and the Guards at the Palace were busy with preparations for that event. Though still unsure of himself, Kiyomori was pleased by his new duties. The Sixth Rank had been conferred on him; he was now a Guard officer, an outrider for the imperial carriage, and determined to perform his duties faultlessly. He stayed late at the Palace and returned home nightly, too hungry and weary for idle dreaming.

On the 14th of September, shortly before midnight, there was a sound of feet hurrying toward Kiyomori's room. It was Heiroku, the steward, who called out that a messenger had arrived on horseback from the Palace. The young master was to put on his armor and report immediately.

What was this sudden summons? Kiyomori leaped out of bed. He was not, however, unduly surprised. Tsunemori's teeth chattered with excitement, and the words came tumbling out of his mouth: "What is it—war?"

"I don't know. Anything can happen these days."

"Could the monks of Mount Hiei or Kofukuji have marched on the capital with their mercenaries to petition the authorities again?"

Kiyomori opened his armor chest and pulled out his corselet, greaves, and armor tassets. As he started putting them on, he called to Tsunemori:

"Go to Father's apartments. With Mother gone, there's no one to help him with his armor."

"Mokunosukй is there with him. Shall I get mine?"

Kiyomori smiled in spite of himself. "You stay here and keep the little ones from crying."

There was a great clatter and angry shouts all round the house. The retainers were bringing the horses from the stable, bearing arms and pine torches from the storehouses, and frenziedly cursing at each other. In the open yard where the retainers usually assembled, Tadamori sat astride his horse. When Kiyomori appeared, he ordered Mokunosukй to open the gates, put spur to his horse, and was gone. Sixteen or seventeen retainers, carrying halberds, filed out at a run, hurrying to overtake Tadamori.

Nothing disturbed the sleeping streets, and Tadamori ordered his men to keep a watch out for fires. The gates on all sides of the Palace wall were barred, an anticlimax to all this feverish arming, and they went on to the Guard Office, where the gates stood open. Between the trees they saw lights in the main building of the Palace and sensed that something unusual had happened. There was a message for Tadamori: his majesty's aide wished to have a word with him. Tadamori rode through the inner gate and then disappeared into the Palace.

Kiyomori, meanwhile, arrived at the Guard Office. Leaving his horse with a retainer, he shouldered his way through the dense crowd of Guards and armed men who surrounded the building, hoping to catch in the babble of voices some explanation for the summons.

"You never can tell about people. It was only last month that we Guards met at Wataru's house in Iris Lane."