The Heike Story (18 page)

Gengo broke the silence. "Have you heard about Morito?"

Saigyo, who was dreamily contemplating the beauty of the white ashes and glowing embers, looked up suddenly. "Morito?" he asked, as though trying to recapture some faraway memory.

"His name was removed in December from the official list of criminals. A traveler lately from Kumano in Kishu told me that Morito is now a monk, the same Morito who killed Kesa-Gozen five years ago and disappeared. He has taken the name Mongaku, and this past autumn vowed to do penance for one hundred days by bathing in the sacred waters of the Nachi Falls."

"Ah, Morito! . . . There's nothing like the falls at Nachi for chastising the flesh, and no way to salvation except by good works."

"This traveler told me he went to the Nachi Falls to see what this mad monk was like and found Mongaku, all in white, a coarse straw rope about his waist, praying hoarsely as he bathed in the lashing waters—a sight to freeze anyone's blood! Mongaku it seems lost consciousness several times and would have drowned were it not for the caretaker at the falls. I was told that his hair and beard almost conceal his face and sunken eyes, and that he seems hardly human."

"So that's what happened to him." Plucking a burning brand from the fire, Saigyo began tracing some words in the ashes of the hearth.

A note of sympathy crept into Gengo's voice as he repeated the story of Morito's self-flagellations. Gengo had been one of those who most bitterly condemned Morito, and listening dispassionately to Gengo's account, Saigyo thought he detected in Gengo a certain reluctance to commit himself to a lifetime with a recluse who warmed himself at the quietly rustling fire. How was Gengo to know, Saigyo reflected, that this unheroic existence imposed even greater torment than the icy lashings of the Nachi Falls in its thousand-foot leap? How was Gengo to realize that Saigyo had not slept a single night undisturbed since he had fled his home for the Eastern Hills, that his sleep was haunted by the cries of his beloved daughter from whom he had torn himself.

Who knew that during the day, when he went about his tasks of drawing water and chopping wood as he composed verses, the sighing of the wind in the treetops of the valleys below and the pines surrounding the temple sounded to him like the mourning of his young wife, and so troubled his nights that sleep no longer visited him? Never again would Saigyo find peace. He had wrenched asunder the living boughs of the tree that was his life. Remorse and compassion for his loved ones would dog him to the end of his days. In the waters of the Nachi Falls, Morito was ridding himself of those worldly passions and torments which were man's natural lot, and seeking regeneration in the sacred waters. They both sought freedom from those ambitions and desires which eternally torture men.

In the ashes on the hearth Saigyo traced and retraced the word, "pity." He had yet to learn to accept life with all its good and evils, to love life in all its manifestations by becoming one with nature. And for this he had abandoned home, wife, and child in that city of conflict. He had fled to save his own life, not for any grandiose dream of redeeming mankind; neither had he taken the vows with thoughts of chanting sutras to Buddha; nor did he aspire to the brocaded ranks of the high prelates. Only by surrendering to nature could he best cherish his own life, learn how man should live, and therein find peace. And if any priest accused him of taking the vows out of self-love, not to purify the world and bring salvation to men, Saigyo was ready to admit that these charges were true and that he deserved to be reviled and spat upon as a false priest. Yet, if driven to answer for himself, he was prepared to declare that he who had not learned to love his own life could not love mankind, and that what he sought now was to love that life which was his. Gifts he had none to preach salvation or the precepts of Buddha; all that he asked was to be left to exist as humbly as the butterflies and birds.

The following morning—the 19th of January—Saigyo left his hermitage for the Fourth Avenue in the capital. Snow was falling and he was tempted to turn back, but the thought of the letter Gengo had brought made him go on. He had not seen his friends for some time, and who knew what changes were in store for them? He crossed a bridge on which the snow lay deep and turned his steps in the direction of Lady Taikenmon's palace. At one of the crossroads of the capital he found that a crowd had gathered in spite of the storm. There were cries of: "They're sending off the exiles!"

"A couple of prisoners!"

"Husband and wife, who are they? What was their crime?"

Saigyo attempted to turn off on another road, but it too was choked with people and horses. Officers of the Police Commission stood ready to suppress signs of violence from some soldiers who seemed to be retainers of a person of rank.

"Look, barebacked! Too cruel—and they such gentle folk!" sobbed some women, craning above the crowd, and quickly concealing their faces in their sleeves.

Some lower officials with bamboo staves now appeared and roughly warned away the crowd, crying: "Back, back! Clear the road!" With peremptory orders they began pushing back the people. From the gateway of a mansion emerged two unsaddled horses on whose backs a man and a woman were roped to each. An official led the procession, bearing a sign inscribed: "Moriyuki of the Genji and his wife, Shimako, ordered banished to the land of Tosa for acting under orders from Lady Taikenmon and invoking the death-curse against His Majesty's Consort, Lady Bifukumon."

Saigyo knew the white-haired Moriyuki and his wife, old and trusted retainers to Lady Taikenmon. Shocked by what was happening to them, Saigyo could not restrain a cry of grief. The sound caused the crowd to surge toward the pair with cries of: "Farewell, Honorable Moriyuki, a sad farewell! May good health always be yours!" The people kept pace with the advancing horses as though reluctant to see the pair go. Then the watchful officials began laying about them with their bamboo staves, shouting angrily: "Here, you common folk, how dare you come near!"

Saigyo was not easily intimidated; agile enough to dodge the flailing staves, he let himself be carried along with the crowd, but in the excitement of the moment he slipped in the snow. The hoofs of an official's horse struck him as he, fell, and Saigyo lost consciousness. When he came to himself, he still lay in the mud-streaked snow. Crowd and horses had vanished. Around him was a midnight silence and the swirling snow, blotting out all trace of what had happened awhile ago as though in a dream.

Saigyo did not make his intended visit to Lady Taikenmon that day.

There were rumors that the charges of witchcraft were true, others that they were false, that the affair was a plot. The truth was never known. Outwardly, Kyoto was the same Capital of Peace and Tranquillity, though currents of unrest ran turbulently beneath it.

Not long after, the ex-Emperor Toba took the tonsure and his first consort, Lady Taikenmon, became a nun at the Ninna-ji Temple. Saigyo heard of this from her gentlewomen, who wrote that the lady at the age of forty-two had had her head shaved and taken leave of the world.

From his hermitage Saigyo watched spring approaching to the sound of bird-calls.

The great bridge of Gojo was completed; it spanned the Kamo River, linking the capital on its eastern side with the flanks of the Eastern Hills. A few years before, a certain monk, Kakuyo, appealed to the populace for support, soliciting their hard-earned pennies for its construction; he himself took part in the building of the bridge, carried stones, helped dig its foundations, and lived in a small hut on the banks of the river until the bridge was finished.

Of him the common folk said: "Though there are monks and priests who go about firing one another's temples and monasteries, here, at least, is one holy man."

With the building of the bridge, the capital spread toward the southern part of Kyoto, as far as the hill on which Kiyomizu Temple stood. What had once been a waste of tall grass and woods was soon cleared as the site for an imposing mansion. As the building progressed, people were curious as to who the owner might be, but no one seemed to know.

Early in the summer of 1145, even before the plaster had dried on its walls, members of the family and numerous housemen arrived, and it soon came to light that the master was Kiyomori of the Heike, himself, the newly appointed chief of the government's Central Office.

Turning to his wife, Tokiko, Kiyomori asked proudly: "Now tell me what you think of the house, though it can hardly compare with your father's."

Tokiko, now the mother of three, rejoiced with her husband over their new home. With their seven-year-old son, Shigemori, they inspected the house, passing from room to room, fragrant with fresh wood, and along the galleries.

"Your father," Kiyomori resumed, "who is even odder than mine, says he prefers his ancient house to this one and refuses to come here to live with us. Ah, well, if he likes it where he is, he might as well stay there. I had to wait eight years for this."

It was barely eight years since their marriage, and neither Kiyomori nor Tokiko had dreamed that they would so soon have a home of their own. Looking back over those years, Kiyomori often wondered how he had accomplished this. How brief and unreal those years of privation now seemed. Their housemen, waiting-women, and under-servants had increased tenfold, and there were more than a dozen horses in the stable.

Tadamori, his father, had also prospered, and occupied a high post in the Justice Department; he also had fiefs in the provinces of Tajima, Bizen, and Harima.

Tameyoshi of the Genji also had retrieved his fortunes. Kyoto swarmed with fresh contingents of soldiers from the east, all vassals from Tameyoshi's domains in Bando. His sons, now high-ranking officials, each maintained his own men-at-arms, and the military prestige of the Genji proclaimed them as one of the great families of the capital.

The nobility, however viewed the increasing wealth of the warriors and their growing power with alarm. There was no denying that the dangers which beset the existing order made this change inevitable, and that the ruling class must look to the warriors for protection, for the authority of the throne was now threatened from without and within. The last restraining influence on the Cloistered Emperor (Toba) and his son, the abdicated Sutoku, was gone, now that Lady Taikenmon had retired to a nunnery, and the enmity of the two former rulers had come into the open. Court circles foresaw a struggle for power. Factions already divided the Court, and plots and intrigues succeeded one another in rapid confusion. And, to add to the prevailing unrest, the militant clergy of Mount Hiei and Nara, in defiance of decrees from the throne, threatened to make war upon each other. To Tadamori and Kiyomori of the Heike, and to Tameyoshi of the Genji was given the task of suppressing the fighting monks and guarding the throne.

On the hot summer nights of July 1146, troubled faces all over the capital were turned up at the sky, where a fiery body trailed its luminous tail.

"A comet! Every night, too. . . ." "There to the northwest—see that huge comet!" "Something's about to happen—nothing good, at that." People in the capital were now sure that the apparition in the heavens was a portent of disaster, for there were ominous reports at this time that the monks of Nara had got together a vast army and were preparing to declare war on a rival monastery. Messengers on horseback began arriving morning and evening from Nara, and Tameyoshi was ordered to Uji with his troops.

Consternation shook the Court. Geomancers and astrologers were summoned to say whether the sign in the heavens was for good or evil. Priests recited prayers and incantations to ward off misfortune.

Not long after, on the 25th of August, news reached the Court from Ninna-ji Temple that Lady Taikenmon had passed from this world at the age of forty-five.

In the following year the monks of Nara challenged the monasteries of Mount Hiei in battle, and Kiyomizu Temple was destroyed by fire. In this same year, 1147, when he was thirty, Kiyomori of the Heike was promoted to the Fourth Rank and given the title of Lord Aki. As the governor of a province he received all the honors and stipends attached to the post. For Kiyomori the long-awaited day in which he was to test out his secret dreams had arrived.

MONK SOLDIERS OF THE HOLY MOUNTAIN

The Holy Mountain they called it—Mount Hiei rising above its foothills beyond the upper currents of the Kamo River, visible throughout the year from every crossroad of the capital, not too distant, nor yet too close. From daybreak to sunset the city's inhabitants could lift their weary eyes to exclaim: "Ah! there can be no such suffering and such hate as consumes us here. . . ." Here where men snarled and bit, deceived and fawned on one another, and gave blow for blow, men refused to believe that the mountain was just another dwelling-place for men, for if that hill of salvation were like this city of evil, where then were men to place their faith, or where find peace?

They insisted: "Ah no, there alone burns the light of Truth daily." In this city, consumed by the lust for blood, the common people only asked that they might look up to that light and cling to the belief that the Buddha saw all things—judged the just man just, and the good man good.