The Heike Story (8 page)

Ruriko had spent another night in the east wing, and Iyenari was beside himself this morning with helpless rage. He had just finished arranging some irises in a vase, placed a helmet adorned with wistarias on a helmet-stand, prepared the sweet-flag wine and set out the cups with which to toast the May Festival, and then sent a servant to fetch Ruriko, only to be told that she and Yasuko were in the bathhouse—had been there for some time.

He turned accusingly to his wife and complained: "Now you shall see what happens to her one of these days! We shall have another Yasuko on our hands, mark my words!" But the sight of the azure skies and the brilliant sunlight quickly made him regret his petulance. "Ah, let us forget all this, for today is the Fifth of May!" he exclaimed. "Bring me my court robes; it's about time for me to go," he said, though he rose listlessly as he spoke.

Today was the day of the Kamo races. By now the paddocks were surely boiling over with the surging throngs. Iyenari, as in previous years, was a member of the committee in charge of the festivities following the races. He toyed with the idea of a feigned illness, thought better of it, put on his ceremonial robes, and placed the flower-decked helmet on his head. While his wife secured its cords under his lifted chin, he gave some orders to a servant.

"Bring out the carriage—the new one, mind you!"

The messenger hurried off to the servants' quarters, but soon was back with the news that the ladies only awhile ago had driven off in the elegant new carriage!

"The imbeciles!" Iyenari roared at the messenger. What ever made them take the new carriage? Not a word to him! Ruriko should have known better! Even that young woman seemed to have lost all respect for her uncle and aunt! Was it possible that even she had been ensnared by the feigned love of that mere tenant?

Iyenari was both angry and sorry for himself. There was nothing he could do now but take the old carriage. He concealed his unhappy countenance behind its shutters as it rolled through the main gate.

Soon, in the distance, beneath the clouds of dust, he glimpsed the massed crowds thronging the Kamo course. Between the verdant young foliage he caught the flash of red and white bunting, the rippling of colored pennants, the clusters of the "sacred tree" tied to the starting-post; then gradually the entrance to the racecourse came into view, milling with jostling humanity.

His carriage was now caught in a tangle of vehicles. Who could believe there were so many carriages? He had never realized that such a variety existed in the capital. Amazing! Suddenly he sat up, cursing roundly to himself. There was his very own, his new carriage just crossing his path with a fine flourish of whips! Curses on that mare—that old female whom no one could saddle!

The ceremony announcing the day's entries had just ended. From the royal box, the nineteen-year-old Emperor Sutoku, his Fujiwara consort at his side, glanced round him smiling. The ex-Emperor Toba was also there, surrounded by court ladies and other attendants, who stood throughout for the opening ritual. When they took their seats, an excited hum rose as the company exchanged lively comments on the jockeys and horses.

The grounds were dotted with numerous tents for the grooms, the musicians in the band, and physicians dispatched to care for the usual casualties.

Each leaf on the trees of the near-by Kamo Shrine scintillated in the breeze. The music of the orchestra drifted on the wind over the heads of the crowds. On the green turf near the paddock gate, where a pennant waved, impatient racehorses threw the grooms into a frenzy. Now and again a long roar of mirth swept the stands as a spirited steed, the bit between its teeth, sent a groom sprawling, Or a colt, being tried for its pace, stood with its feet planted, relieving itself in front of the imperial pavilion. In the royal box the Emperor and ex-Emperor smiled with amusement, while waves of laughter passed over the flower-bedecked rows of patricians. Here, rank on rank, the ostentation and elegance of the Court and Palace were displayed in the many-shaped headdresses and the rainbow-colored robes. The younger courtiers affected the fashion of lightly powdered faces, painted eyebrows, and rouged cheeks and exhaled the scent of the rare perfumes they carried in their sleeves. In one of the pavilions courtiers in helmets decked with wistaria made a wide splash of purple, scenting the air with the fragrance of flowers.

This was the day of the Kamo races; no less was it a tournament of fashion and extravagance in which the Court and the Palace sought to outdo each other. And all unseen to the beholder, this was the tilting-field in the rivalry between the Emperor and the abdicated monarch. Though occupying the same box, son and father rarely spoke to each other. Theirs was an estrangement of many years, and the gulf between them had only widened with the passing of time. Behind their estrangement lay a grotesque history.

Emperor Sutoku was the ex-Emperor Toba's first-born son by his consort, Fujiwara Shoko, who had been a maid-in-waiting at the Cloister Palace at the time Shirakawa had abdicated and taken the tonsure. The ex-Emperor Shirakawa's attentions to young Shoko were so ardent that the courtiers whispered among themselves that the notoriously amorous monarch's devotion was more than paternal. Shoko, chosen after a few years to be the Emperor Toba's concubine, was soon elevated to be his consort, the Empress. Reluctant to sever his relations with Shoko even after she had become his son's wife, the ex-Emperor Shirakawa continued to visit her in secret. The young Emperor Toba was ignorant of the intrigue until his Empress gave birth to the Crown Prince. It was then swiftly rumored at Court that the Emperor had been quite indifferent to the first cries of the newborn infant, convinced that the child was not his own but his father's.

The ex-Emperor's unnatural conduct and treachery poisoned Toba's youth, leaving a wound that refused to heal, and his bitter disavowals of his son Sutoku, who now reigned, created rancors and recriminations which threatened to set off a holocaust between the heads of the two governments. Yet how urbanely was it concealed today in the perfumed elegance of the Kamo races! Who could believe that these flower-embowered ranks, these powdered, effeminate figures, absorbed in the pursuit of pleasure, were fuel for the terrible conflagration lying in store for them?

"See how his majesty smiles!"

"The Emperor now stands. He watches with such interest!"

Such were the remarks exchanged between the courtiers whose eyes were on the racecourse, but whose inward vision hovered around the two rulers, constantly aware of the bitter hatred coiled in the hearts of those two.

Event followed event until noon. Dust rose high over the parched racecourse.

"You seem dazed, Wataru. What's the matter?" Kiyomori inquired of his friend, whom he found standing idly at one side of the warriors' pavilion.

The black four-year-old with the white fetlocks, in which Wataru had placed so much hope, was not on the list. Puzzled by this omission, Kiyomori had waited since the start of the races for a chance to speak to Wataru, who shrank from his questions and replied dejectedly:

"This morning, while it was still dark, I made the mistake of taking the black colt from the stables here and giving him a run. ... It was fate—just bad luck."

"What happened?"

"The carpenters who were here yesterday setting up the stands must have left some nails about, for the colt stepped on one and got it in his right hind hoof. I wish it had been I that was spiked!"

"Hmm—" was Kiyomori's only reply as the jockeys' superstition flashed across his mind. Wataru would only jeer at it again. But Kiyomori's next words were immeasurably comforting to Wataru.

"Don't lost heart, Wataru. There will be other races in which he can compete. There's Ninna-ji this autumn. He's good enough to win anywhere. Why hurry him?"

"Umm. . . . I'll enter him this autumn!" Wataru exclaimed.

Kiyomori began to chuckle. "Why such regret? Have you bet heavily on this colt?"

"No, sheer obstinacy. They've all been telling me that this colt would bring bad luck."

"Did you go through the 'whip ritual'?" Kiyomori inquired.

"The 'whip ritual'? I'll have none of that! Pure superstition! Why should these riders who have priests mumble incantations over their whips expect to win? I thought I would open their eyes."

While Wataru spoke, Kiyomori's eyes wandered. To the roll of drums, two horses and their riders streaked away from the starting-post in a curl of dust, but he was not looking at them. His eyes swept over the massed heads in the main pavilion. Between the throngs of men and women he caught a glimpse of his mother. Among all those elegantly dressed women, his mother stood out breathtakingly lovely in her gorgeous robes.

The eyes of the crowd were fixed hard on the course, but his mother's glance was turned toward him. Their eyes met. She beckoned to him with her eyes, but Kiyomori stared back at her coldly. She continued to smile, cajoling and pleading, as though amused by a sulking child, then turned to speak to Ruriko, who stood beside her. At the same moment a thunder of applause shook the air. A flourish of drums rolled at the goal post, where a crimson flag waved to signal that the Palace horses had won the day. A chorus of voices burst into a victory song, which rose and swelled around the ex-Emperor's pavilion.

Wataru muttered a few words and left. Kiyomori also turned to go. He pushed his way through the crowds in the direction of the main stand. Yasuko's eyes, like an angler's line, seemed to draw him in closer and closer to her. As he drew near her, her eyes asked: "And did you come, after all?"

Kiyomori, making his way toward his mother, felt only hatred for her. All his hate and rage were in the look that he gave her as he approached the pavilion where she sat. As he became conscious of the many women around him, he suddenly felt awkward and shy, and waves of red dyed his cheeks and large ears.

"You amusing child!" Yasuko laughed as she studied her son's discomfiture. "What makes you so shy? Am I not after all your mother? Come here to me."

In her voice were all those accents of love which only a mother knows how to employ. But it was not his mother who had caused him to blush. To him she was not a woman, but the embodiment of beauty—a beauty that he hated and yet prized above everything. With a sensation of hurling himself over an invisible barrier, Kiyomori came close to her. It was neither strange nor unnatural to be close beside her like this, he thought, but his glance wandered vaguely as if seeking refuge from the eyes turned on him.

Yasuko observed his uneasiness and quickly concluded that Ruriko was the cause of his discomfiture. She stole a side look at one and then at the other and, turning to Ruriko, whispered: "This is my son, Heita Kiyomori, of whom I spoke one day."

To Kiyomori she then said: "When you were three or four years old, you visited the Nakamikado with whom Ruriko is now staying."

In spite of Yasuko's efforts to put him at his ease, Kiyomori remained silent. His pounding heart made him flush more deeply. Ruriko saw this and turned crimson. Her eyelids fluttered and drooped as though she faced a glare, and an audible sigh escaped from her lips.

Kiyomori felt a familiar, nauseating sensation come over him as he stood beside his mother. (Beautiful and deceitful, that she was!) He felt impelled to question her once more. Was he the son of an emperor or of a debauched priest? Who was his real father? An insupportable grief over her unchasteness seemed to goad him to seek an answer. To him she now seemed more sullied than all the common whores and courtesans in the capital.

In a period of grossly unrestrained relations between the sexes, Kiyomori realized that he expected of his mother a chastity that he had no reason to demand. Yet as her child, her son, he had wanted to believe that she was the purest of women, the noblest, the archetype of love itself. From those infant years when he had nursed at her breast, he had gazed up at this ideal—his mother; throughout his boyhood, the figure had not changed, until with Morito's revelation she was transformed into a soiled lump of flesh. Utterly revolted, Kiyomori felt her uncleanness to be also his; until that time he had been happy in the thought that the blood of Tadamori of the Heike and a chaste mother ran in his veins, but now he felt only a self-loathing.

On that night when he met Morito and was told of his mother's past, Kiyomori in rage and despair cast his youth and innocence to a whore. The contempt for his mother was that which he now felt for himself. He loathed his own flesh and his blood; the only thing that held him back from a course of lust and dissipation was Tadamori, this man who was not his real father, the Squint-Eyed One whose great love and forbearance he could not bring himself to spurn. Tadamori's love alone made Kiyomori vow that he would be a worthy son and keep watch over his unruly passions.

The sight of his mother was enough to make Kiyomori forget his resolutions. He wondered if this turbulent blood was all that he had got from her.

Yasuko was disappointed and annoyed. Kiyomori showed no signs of relenting toward her. She had expected him to come to her with tears. She was also irritated by his indifference to Ruriko and his studied absorption in the sights around them.