The Pillow-Book of Sei Shōnagon (8 page)

When I was away from the Palace on holidays there were several Court gentlemen who used to come and visit us. Th is seemed to agitate the people of the house. I was, however, not at all sorry to see it put a stop to, for I had no very strong feeling about any of these visitors. But it was difficult without rudeness to be invariably “not at home” to people who were calling repeatedly at all hours of the night and day; all the more so because, precisely with those whose visits were causing most scandal, my acquaintance was in reality very slight.

So this time I made up my mind not to let my whereabouts be generally known, but only to tell Tsunefusa,
*
Narimasa,
†
and a few others.

Today Norimitsu came, and told me in the course of conversation that yesterday my lord Tadanobu had tried to find out from him where I was, saying that as I was Norimitsu’s “sister”
‡
he must surely know my address. “He was very insistent,” Norimitsu said to me, “but I was determined not to give you away. He refused to believe that I didn’t know, and went on pressing me in a way that really made me feel very uncomfortable. Moreover, Tsunefusa was sitting near by, looking perfectly innocent and unconcerned, and I was certain that if I caught his eye I should inevitably burst out laughing. In the end I was obliged to choke my laughter by seizing upon a piece of sea-cloth
*
that was lying on the table and stuffing it into my mouth. Everyone must have thought me very greedy, and wondered what new delicacy I had found to devour between meals. But I managed all the same to avoid telling him anything. If I had laughed, it would of course have been fatal. In the end, he really thought I did not know. It was splendid. . . .!” I begged him to go on as he had begun, and for days afterwards heard no more about it.

But very late one night there was a tremendous banging on the front gate, enough to have woken a houseful of people at twice the distance. I sent someone to see what was the matter, and was told it was an Imperial Guardsman “with a letter from the Major of the Bodyguard of the Left,” that is to say, from Norimitsu. Everyone in the house was in bed, so I took the letter close to the hall-lamp, and read: “Tomorrow is the last day of the Spring Reading in the Palace. If Tadanobu is there keeping the penance-day with their Majesties, he may easily ask me where you are, and if (in front of everyone) he insists upon my telling him, I certainly shall not be able to keep up the pretense that I do not know. May I tell him you are here? I certainly won’t unless I have your permission to do so.”

I wrote no answer, but sent him a minute piece of seaweed,
†
wrapped up in paper.

Next time he called, Norimitsu said: “He got me into a corner and went on at me about it all night. It is really very disagreeable to be pestered like that, and as you did not answer the letter in which I asked for your instructions. . . . But, by the way, I did receive a wrapper containing a piece of seaweed. No doubt in a moment of absent-mindedness. . . .”

As if one could conceivably do such a thing by accident! He still could not in the least understand what I had meant, and evidently thought I had merely sent him a very mean and useless present. Irritated by his stupidity, I made no reply, but seizing the inkstand wrote on a scrap of paper the poem: “If from the fishing-girl who dives beneath the waves the present of a rag you have received, surely she hints that to the world you should not tell in what sea-bed she hides.”

“So Madam has started writing poems, has she?” he exclaimed. “I, for one, shall not read them,” and scrunching up the piece of paper, he marched off.

So it came about that Norimitsu and I, who had always been such good friends and allies, were for a while rather cool towards each other. Soon, however, he wrote to me saying: “I may have been to blame; but even if you don’t wish to see me, I hope you do not regard our old alliance as altogether a thing of the past. That, after all, would mean the breaking of a good many promises. . . .”

It was a favorite saying of his that people never sent him poems so long as they liked him. “It’s a sure sign that they have turned against one,” he used to say. “When you have made up your mind that you can bear me no longer, just send me one of those, and I shall know what to make of it.”

Despite this warning, Sh
ō
nagon sent him another acrostic poem. “I don’t suppose he ever read it,” she continues, “and in any case he never answered. Soon afterwards he was promoted to the Fifth Rank and became Lieutenant-Governor of T
ō
t
ō
mi; since when our friendship has come completely to an end. . . .”

The following dates from about the same time: A Court lady, when she is on holiday, needs to have both her parents alive.
*
She will get on best in a house where people are always going in and out, where there is a great deal of conversation always going on in the back rooms, and where at the gate there is a continual clatter of horsemen. Indeed, she would far rather have too much noise than too little.

It is very annoying if one is living in someone else’s house and a friend comes from Court, either openly or in secret, just to ask how long one will be away or to apologize for not having written (“I did not even know you were on holiday . . .”)—it is, as I say, extremely annoying, particularly if he is a lover, to have the owner of the house coming and making a scene (“very dangerous ... at this time of night too,” and more in the same style) merely because one has opened the front door for a moment, to let the visitor in. Then later on: “Is the big gate locked?” To which the porter grunts in an injured tone: “There’s someone here still. Am I to lock him in?” “Well, lock up directly he goes,” says the landlord. “There have been a lot of burglaries round here lately.” All of which is not very pleasant to overhear.

After this the master of the house is continually poking out his head to see whether the visitor is still there, to the great amusement of the footmen whom the guest has brought with him. Most alarming of all is to hear these footmen doing an imitation of the landlord’s voice. What a row there will be if he hears them!

It may happen that someone, who neither appears to be nor indeed is in any way a lover, finds it more convenient to come at night. In that case he will not feel inclined to put up with the churlishness of the family, and saying: “Well, it is rather late; and as it seems to be such a business for you to open the gate . . .” he will take his departure.

But if it is someone of whom the lady is really fond, and after she has told him again and again that she dare not receive him, he nevertheless goes on waiting outside her room till dawn; at which point the porter, who has during his nightly rounds continually lingered regretfully by the gate, exclaims in a tone intended to be heard: “The morning’s come” (as though such a thing had never happened before!) “and that front gate has been —
*
open all night,” whereupon in broad daylight, when there is no longer any point in doing so, he locks the gate—all that sort of thing is very trying.

As I have said, with real parents of one’s own, it would be all right. But step-parents can be a nuisance. One is always wondering how they will take things; and even a brother’s house can be very tiresome in this way.

Of course, what I really like is a house where there is no fuss about the front gate, and no one particularly minds whether it is midnight or morning. Then one can go out
*
and talk to whoever it may be—perhaps one of the princes, or of the lords attached to his Majesty’s service—sit all through a winter’s night with the shutters open, and after the guest has gone, watch him make his way into the distance. If he leaves just at daybreak, this is very agreeable, particularly if he plays upon his flute as he goes. Then, when he is out of sight, one does not hurry to go to bed, but discusses the visitor with someone, reviews the poems he made, and so gradually falls to sleep.

“I saw someone, who had no business here, in the corridor early this morning. There was a servant holding an umbrella over him. He was just going away....” So I heard one of the girls say, and suddenly realized that it was to a visitor of mine that she was referring!

However, I really didn’t know why she should describe him as “having no business here.” As a matter of fact, he is only a
chige
,
†
a person of quite comfortable eminence, whom I have every right to know, if I choose.

Presently a letter came from the Empress, with a message that I was to reply instantly. Opening it in great agitation, I saw a drawing of a huge umbrella; the person holding it was entirely hidden, save for the fingers of one hand. Underneath was written the quotation: “Since the morning when dawn broke behind the fringe of the Mikasa
*
Hills. . . .”

The whole affair was a trivial one, but her Majesty might easily have been cross about it, and when the letter came I was actually hoping that no one would mention the matter to her. And now, instead of a scolding, came only this joke, which, though it humiliated me, was really very amusing. I took another piece of paper and drawing upon it the picture of a heavy rainstorm, I wrote underneath: “It is a case of much cry and no rain.’’

Everyone laughs at Masahiro.
†
It must really be very painful for his parents and friends. If he is seen anywhere with at all a decent-looking servant in attendance upon him, someone is sure to send for the fellow and ask him whether he can be in his senses, to wait upon such a master. Everything at his house is extremely well done and he chooses his clothes with unusually good taste; but the only result is to make people say: “How nice those things would look on anyone else!”

It is true that he does sometimes talk in the most peculiar way. For example, he was sending home some things he had been using when on duty at the Palace and he called for two messengers. One came, saying that there was not more there than one man could easily carry. “You idiot,” said Masahiro, “I asked for two messengers because there is someone else’s things here as well as my own. You can’t ask one man to carry two men’s stuff, any more than you can put two pints into a one-pint pot.” What he meant no one knew; but there was loud laughter.

Once someone brought him a letter, asking for an immediate reply. “What a moment to choose!” Masahiro cried. “I can hear beans crackling on the stove. And why is there never either ink or brushes in this house? Someone must steal them. If it were something to eat or drink that got stolen, I could understand.…”

When the Emperor’s mother, Princess Senshi, was ill, Masahiro was sent from the Palace to inquire after her. When he came back, we asked him what gentleman had been in waiting upon the Princess. “So-and-so and so-and-so,” he said, mentioning four or five names. “No one else?” we said. “Oh yes,” answered Masahiro, “there were others there, only they had gone away.”

Once when I happened to be alone he came up to me and said: “My dear lady, I have something I must tell you about at once.” “Well, what is it?” I asked. “Something,” he said, “that I have just heard one of the gentlemen say.” And coming quite close to my curtain: “I overheard someone who instead of saying ‘Bring your body up closer to mine,’ said ‘Bring your five limbs
*
..:’” and he went off into fits of laughter.

Once on the second of the three Appointment nights
†
it fell to Masahiro to go round oiling the lamps. He rested his foot on the pedestal of a lamp-stand, and as it happened to have been recently covered with
yutan
*
and was not yet dry, it stuck to him, and as soon as he started to move away the lamp-stand toppled over. So fast was the framework stuck to his stockinged foot, that the lamp banged along after him as he walked, causing a regular earthquake at each step.

The Palace roll-call
†
has a special charm. Those who are actually waiting upon his Majesty do not have to attend it, but are checked offon the spot by officers who come from seat to seat. But the rest all come clattering out into the courtyard, pell-mell. In our quarters,
‡
if one goes to that side and listens hard, one can actually hear the names, which must have caused a flutter in many a susceptible breast. . . . Some by their manner of answering win great approval, while on others very severe judgments are passed. When it is all over, the watchmen twang their bows, and there is another great clatter of shoes, among which is discernible the even heavier tread of the Chamberlain who is advancing to take up his position at the north-east corner of the balcony, where he kneels in the attitude catted the High Obeisance, facing the Emperor’s seat, while with his back to the watchmen he asks them who was there. . . . Sometimes, if for one reason or another a good many courtiers are absent, no roll-call is held, and when the headwatchman reports this, the Chamberlain generally asks him to explain the reason why there was no roll-call, and then retires. But when Masahiro is on duty he does not listen to what he is told, and if the young lords try to teach him his duties, flies into a temper, lectures them on the impropriety of omitting a roll-call, and is laughed at for his pains not only by these lords, but by the very watchmen whom he is rebuking.

On one occasion Masahiro left his shoes on the sideboard in the Royal pantry. Everyone who passed broke into exclamations of disgust and called upon the owner of the filthy things to take them away at once. It was very awkward, for though no one dared mention Masahiro’s name, everyone knew they were his. “Who do these things belong to? I haven’t the least idea,” said the Chief Steward or someone of that kind. Suddenly Masahiro appeared, saying: “Th ose dirty things are mine!” The fact that he had the face to come for them in person caused a fresh sensation.

Once when neither of the chamberlains was on duty and there was no one near the High Table, Masahiro took a dish of beans that was lying there and hiding behind the small partition,
*
began stealthily devouring them. Presently some courtiers came along and pulled away the partition.…

I have a great objection to gentlemen coming to the rooms of us ladies-in-waiting and eating there. Some gentlewomen have a tiresome habit of giving them food. Of course, if he is teased long enough and told that nothing can happen till he has eaten, a man will in the end give way. He cannot very well express disgust at what he is offered, cover up his mouth, or turn his head the other way. But for my part, even if they come very late and very drunk, I absolutely refuse to give them even so much as a bowl of rice. If they think this is mean, and don’t come again—well then, let them not come!

Of course, if one is at home and food is sent from the back room, one cannot interfere. But it is just as unpleasant.

Elsewhere Sh
ō
nagon says: The things that workmen eat are most extraordinary. When the roof of the eastern wing was being mended, there were a whole lot of workmen sitting in a row and having dinner. I went across to that side of the house and watched. The moment the things were handed to them, they gulped down the gravy, and then, putting their bowls aside, ate up all the vegetables. I began to think that they were going to leave their rice, when suddenly they fell upon it and in a twinkling it had all disappeared. There were several of them sitting there together and they all ate in the same way; so I suppose it is a habit of builders. I can’t say I think that it is a very attractive one.

Another of Sh
ō
nagon’s butts was Fujiwara no Nobutsune, Assistant in the Board of Rites.

“I am very ready at making Chinese poems or Japanese,” he said to her one day,
*
“you need only give me a subject. . . .” “That is easily done,” I said. “It shall be a Japanese poem.” “Good,” he cried. “But you had better give me a whole lot, while you are about it.
One
would hardly be worth while.” But when I gave him the subject, he suddenly lost his nerve and said he must be going. Someone told us it was his handwriting that he was uneasy about. “He writes an atrocious hand in Chinese and Japanese,” this lady said, “and he has been laughed at about it so much that he is apt to take fright.”

In the days
*
when he had an appointment in the Board of Household Works, he sent a plan to some craftsman or other with “This is the way I want it done” written underneath in Chinese characters of a sort one would never have supposed anyone in the world could perpetrate. The document was such a monstrosity that I seized it and wrote in the margin “I should not do it quite in this way, or you will indeed produce a queer object.” The document then went to the Imperial apartments, where it was passed from hand to hand, causing a good deal of amusement.

Nobutsune was very angry about this.