The Heike Story (36 page)

"Masakiyo, a word with you. . . ." As he spoke, Jiro walked a few paces ahead of the litter and turned to Masakiyo, who joined him. "Here—not by trickery, I tell you. He is, after all, the master's father and it does not seem right."

"Well then, what?"

"Why not tell him everything? Let him then say his prayers. Even though he meets his end out in this desolate waste, he is after all Tameyoshi of the Genji and deserves to die as a fine warrior should."

"You are right, quite right. But that makes it all the harder. You do it."

"Not for anything! That is beyond me. You are the one for it."

After this whispered colloquy, Masakiyo turned back to Tameyoshi and told him why he had been brought here.

Tameyoshi received the disclosure quietly. "So." As he seated himself on the ground, he said with deep feeling: "Why did not my son tell me this himself? I can understand his reluctance, but a father's love encompasses much." Tameyoshi's tears fell as he continued: "Did—did he not know that a father's love can rise even above this? All those many years since he left his mother's breast and played at my knees, did he not even then come to know every corner of this heart?—Ah, Yoshitomo, that alone grieves me. Our lives are like foam on the stream, yet are we not father and son, linked to each other by ties from another life? Why could you not open your heart to me? I have fallen, indeed, yet not so low as to seek anything for myself when I came to you. Since this was fated by the gods, why could we not have spent a last evening together, lamenting this and opening our hearts to each other before parting?"

When he ended, Tameyoshi settled himself more firmly on the ground and wept no more, as though the tears of a lifetime had been spent. Composing himself further, he clasped his hands and recited a prayer. Then he turned to Masakiyo and whispered in tones as gentle as the rustling of his monk's robe: "Masakiyo, strike."

Yoshitomo soon after presented his father's head to the authorities at the Court. Though Tameyoshi's head was not dishonored by exposure in public, the common people cursed Yoshitomo more bitterly than they did Kiyomori. With the exception of the youngest, Tameyoshi's other sons were soon after captured and executed. Tametomo, who escaped to Kyushu, was later brought back a prisoner to the capital. There the tendons of his arms were severed before his banishment to the island of Oshima in the east.

SONG ON A FLUTE

Offerings of incense, flowers, and small piles of stones began to mark the roadside and bridges where so many warriors had-lately fallen in battle. They were left there by pious common folk who took no part in the conflict. Crones with infants strapped on their backs, housewives returning from market, potters on their way to the city once more to hawk their wares, peddlers of rush mats, nuns, and even an occasional ox-tender paused to offer prayers for the nameless dead.

"Ah, you pitiful dead, and more pitiful discord! Can these, indeed, be tokens of the goodness at the heart of men? Good, good!"

A hulking figure in a wide hat of plaited bamboo and tattered monk's robes stood at a crossroad muttering to himself as he stared round him at the flowers and incense near some charred ruins. He appeared to be in his early forties and shouldered a pack such as itinerant priests carry; he leaned on a pilgrim's staff; a rosary was wound round a hairy wrist. His head was not shaven and his hair hung in unkempt profusion about his travel-stained face; his worn straw sandals were caked with mud. The stern look on his face made him seem more terrible than any monk from Mount Hiei. As he moved away, striding rapidly through the streets of the capital, the sight of the ruins he passed seemed to move him deeply and he prayed aloud lustily: "Namu Amida-butsu, namu Amida-butsu. . . ."

"There he goes, the priest with the loud voice!"

"Shaggy-headed one, O shaggy-headed demon!"

"Priest-man, priest-man, where are you going?" chanted the street urchins who recognized him.

The ragged figure turned and grinned good-naturedly, exposing a red mouth through his shaggy beard.

"Shaggy one, give us some cakes!"

"Rice cakes, please!"

"Pennies will do!" the children continued to shout, running after him.

"Nothing now. Next time, next time." The figure waved, turning a corner with long strides.

In a short while he was standing before the gates of Councilor Shinzei's mansion, where he stopped to rub his beads and pray. Then striding boldly in by the gateway, he hurried past the carriage-house, planted himself at the entrance porch, and hallooed loudly.

"This is I—Mongaku—from the Togano-o Hills, north of the capital. I came here yesterday and the day before. I must have speech today with the honorable Councilor; I have somewhat to tell him. Someone go tell him I am here."

Mongaku's thundering voice seemed to have penetrated to the inner rooms of the spacious residence; some frightened servants hurried off toward the master's apartments, and others came out of the servants' quarters. Then three young warriors and the chief steward appeared. They greeted Mongaku with great courtesy. Then one of them said: "I regret to tell you that the master is detained at the Court and has not yet returned. We have no idea when he will be back, for he is so busy with matters of state."

"Oh?—On my way here I stopped at the Guard Office, and the register showed that he left the Court last night at the Hour of the Cock (six p.m.). He should be at home.—Why does he shun me? Is he not busy with restoring public peace and setting the minds of the people at rest? I have not come for any idle chatting, but to share some anxious thoughts and to give him advice. I therefore ask that my message be carried to him."

"Yes, yes. I shall see that he is told another day."

"Not some other day! I beg to see him now. Enough of these transparent lies! Go tell him now." '

"But today—"

"Now—today! It shall not be tomorrow, for every day means so many more lives lost. In the name of peace—this is most urgent. If you refuse, I shall bellow to him from here."

Mongaku showed no sign of budging even an inch. Removing his pilgrim's pack, he sat down on the ground.

Councilor Shinzei and his wife, Lady Kii, were entertaining a friend in the Spring Pavilion, where the cook had been called to prepare a special dish before them as they sipped their wine.

"Teh—a nuisance!" Shinzei remarked testily with a quick glance at his guest's litter.

"Let me see what it is," said his son, Naganori, rising.

Shinzei whispered in his son's ear: "If it is that troublesome priest Mongaku, who has been sending written protests to the Court, tell him some tale and send him packing."

Naganori, nodding that he understood, went out to the carriage entry and stood on the porch, looking down at Mongaku. "Are you not the priest Mongaku? My father is at home, but he has an important visitor. He has seen your protests. Is that not enough?"

"And who are you?"

"The Councilor's third son."

"You must pardon me—but you will not do. Tell the Councilor himself to come."

"Indeed, you lack proper respect for the Councilor by demanding that he come here."

"Not so. I have come here three days in succession, and it surely cannot be any great trouble to show himself. Moreover, it is not private business that brings me here; he can hardly grudge me his time when I come to tell him about my anxieties for the public."

"Visitors such as you are far from rare, and I have no doubt that my father has had enough of such advice."

"Silence! Mongaku does not come to call at grand houses out of any elegant madness. Day and night scores of prisoners are dragged from jail and beheaded by the river!"

"Softly, please! You disturb our guests."

"I do? Then Shinzei can hear me in his apartments. Very well, I shall speak to him from here. If he has visitors, then let them also listen to what I have to say."

Mongaku suddenly came to his feet and drew a deep breath. The voice that had been heard above the thundering of the Nachi Falls for more than ten years now seemed to shake the very rafters of Shinzei's mansion:

"Here, you, master of this house! This is a warning from heaven itself, not the idle gossip of the market-place. By your wanton executions you have created the six rounds of hell on earth. You made a nephew put his uncle to the sword; brother turn against brother; a young father behead his own father. Not even the dumb beasts are so ruthless to each other!"

“…”

"Listen further: every day that you speak in the high councils means just so many more are condemned to death. You forced Yoshitomo to bring in his father's head, to behead his brothers, and, still unsatisfied, you saw to it that Tameyoshi's aged wife was drowned and the children and others of his house lined up along the road and stabbed to death in cold blood. Do you think that no one hates you for your malevolence and savagery?"

“…”

Naganori and the housemen stood speechless before this fiery torrent of denunciations, which went on:

"Shinzei orders all this done in the name of the throne and by the warriors. What could be more treacherous than this? For three hundred years and more the benevolent rule of our emperors did away with the death penalty. There were no wars in the capital, and the people were regarded as the filial children of the sovereign. Those times are now gone. Oh, sorry state!"

Mongaku's beads rattled angrily as he shook his clenched fist. Despite more than ten years spent in mortifications and spiritual exercises, the essential character of Morito, the youthful, passionate Guard, had changed little. The scars of his ill-fated love affair had well-nigh healed, but the long pursuit of the religious life had not transformed him beyond recognition. New fires burned in him; the laxity and corruption of the clergy drove him to the solitude of the Togano-o Hills, where he dreamed of one day restoring the Tendai sect in all its purity, and he had lately gone to live in the decaying villa that Toba Sojo had once occupied. Stories of the brutalities which followed the end of the Hogen War, however, brought him down to the capital, and what he saw there caused him to admit that the teachers of religion and the enlightenment of Buddhism were powerless against politics and the madness of war. Yet Mongaku was not one to withdraw from the world and remain indifferent to men's inhumanities to one another or the degrading misery of the common folk.

While Mongaku thundered in the courtyard of the inner gate, a pair of ox-carriages drew up at the outer gate and two young courtiers stepped out.

"What's this?"

"A giant of a monk bellowing?"

Tsunemunй of the Fujiwara, the courtier, and another young nobleman, Nobuyori, stopped for a moment to listen and then entered by the gate. Half-concealed by the hedge near the inner gate, they waited for Mongaku to depart.

Tsunemunй, who had vanished at the outbreak of the fighting, appeared at the Court as soon as the conflict was over, and with disarming tact paid calls on the Regent and on Councilor Shinzei, offering his congratulations on their victory.

Tsunemunй, though unprincipled, possessed a remarkable talent for small talk and gossip, coupled with wit, and charmed and amused all whom he met. He now accompanied the courtier Nobuyori, to whom he had promised an introduction to the Councilor. ("Shinzei is the man for you to meet. The man just now. He will be controlling state affairs in time. Rather forbidding, but you must meet him some time.") Shinzei also had an eye on Nobuyori and had stayed away from Court to receive this young visitor.

Shinzei's son caught sight of the arriving visitors and was about to order his servants to drive out Mongaku, when a noisy scuffling broke out. "Get out! Go home!" he shouted, "You with your filthy abuse! One more word out of you and I'll hand you over to our soldiers."

A loud chuckling greeted Naganori's words. Mongaku was laughing. In the midst of the milling servants and housemen he stood planted, arms flung out wide, glaring at the men who surrounded him.

"Wait, wait! Hands off! I abhor violence more than anything —and it's not you that I fear, but myself when I forget myself! Now, wait! Let me say one more word to your master."

The gleam in Mongaku's eye kept his would-be captors at bay, and he roared:

"Yeh—Councilor Shinzei, listen in earnest to what Mongaku has to say. Leave off those executions and those tortures from today—this very moment, I say! Put an end to this reign of terror! Show mercy to your enemies, or vengeance will be visited on your own head.—Though you become all-powerful, what good will it do you if people come to loathe you? The fires of hell itself will one day consume your house, and you will be forced to listen to the agonized screams of your kin.—Let these abominable executions go on, then I myself will come to bind you to a wheel of fire and escort you to the execution ground at the river's edge. . . . Do you hear me, Shinzei—you?"