The Pillow-Book of Sei Shōnagon (9 page)

When one sends a poem or a
kayeshi
(“return-poem”) to someone and, after it has gone, thinks of some small alteration—perhaps only a couple of letters—that would have improved it.

When one is doing a piece of needlework in a hurry, and thinking it is finished unthreads the needle, only to discover that the knot at the beginning has slipped and the whole thing come undone. It is also very annoying to find that one has sewn back to front.

Once when her Majesty was staying at my Lord the Prime Minister’s house,
*
and she was with him in the western wing, to which he had retired in order to make room for her, we gentlewomen found ourselves herded together in the central building with very little to occupy us. We were romping and idling in the corridors, when someone came from the Empress, saying: “This dress is wanted in a hurry. Please get together and do it immediately. Her Majesty wants it back within the hour.”
†
What we were to make up was a piece of plain, undamasked silk.
‡
We all collected along the front of the main hall, the work was given out piecemeal, and there was a wild race to see who could get her bit finished first. It was a maddening business, for one was not near enough to some of the others to see what they were doing.

Nurse My
ō
bu got hers done in no time, and laid it down in front of her. She had been told to sew the shoulders of the bodice, but had carelessly put the stuff inside out and without finishing off the work in any way had just slammed it down and gone off to amuse herself. When we came to put the dress together, the back seams did not fit properly, and it was clear there had been some mistake. There was a great deal of laughing and scolding. It was clearly My
ō
bu’s fault and everyone said she must do her seam over again.

“I should first like to know who has sewn anything wrong,” she burst out. “If anyone had sewn a piece of damask inside out, so that the pattern was wrong, of course she would have to do it again. But with plain silk, what difference can it make? If anyone has got to do it all over again, I should think it had better be one of the girls who did not do her share the first time.” “How can anyone have the face to suggest such a thing?” the others cried. But My
ō
bu could not be prevailed upon, and in the end Gen Sh
ō
nagon and some others were obliged to un-pick the stitches and put the thing right. It was amusing to watch the expression on their faces while they did so.

This all happened because her Majesty was to wait upon the Emperor at dusk and wanted the dress to be ready in time. “I shall know that the one who gets her work done quickest really loves me,” she had said.

It is particularly annoying if a letter goes astray and gets delivered to someone to whom one would never have dreamt of showing it. If the messenger would simply say straight out that he has made a mistake, one could put up with it. But he always begins arguing and trying to prove that he only did as he was told. It is this that is so trying, and if there was not always someone looking on, I am sure I should rush at him and strike him.

To plant a nice
hagi
*
or
susuki
,
†
and then find someone with a long-box and gardening tools who has dug them up and is carrying them away—is a painful and annoying experience. The provoking part of it is that if a male even of the humblest description were on the spot, the wretch would never dare to do so. When one stops him and expostulates, he pretends he has only thinned them out a bit, and hurries off. I really cannot tell you how annoying it is.

One is staying with a provincial Governor or some small official of that kind, and a servant comes from some grand house. He speaks and behaves with the utmost rudeness and an air as much as to say “I know I am being rude; but people like you can’t punish me for it, so what do I care?” I find that very annoying.

A man picks up a letter that one does not want him to see and takes it with him into the courtyard, where he stands reading it. At the first moment one rushes after him in rage and desperation; but at the curtains one is obliged to stop, and while one watches him reading one can hardly prevent oneself from swooping down upon him and snatching it away.

A lady is out of humor about some trifle, and leaving her lover’s side goes and establishes herself on another couch. He creeps over to her and tries to bring her back, but she is still cross, and he, feeling that this time she has really gone too far, says: “As you please,” and returns to the big bed, where he ensconces himself comfortably and goes to sleep. It is a very cold night and the lady, having only an unlined wrap to cover herself with, soon begins to suffer. She thinks of getting up; but everyone else in the house is asleep and she does not know what to do or where to go. If she must needs have this quarrel, it would have been better, she thinks, to start it a little earlier in the evening. Then she begins to hear strange noises both in the women’s quarters and outside. She becomes frightened and softly creeps towards her lover, plucks at the bedclothes, and raises them. But he vexingly pretends to be fast asleep; or merely says: “I advise you to go on sulking a little longer.”

Small children and babies ought to be fat. So ought provincial governors, or one suspects them of being bad-tempered. As regards appearance, it is most essential of all that the boys who feed the carriage-oxen should be presentable. If one’s other servants are not fit to be seen, they can be stowed away behind the carriage. But outriders or the like, who are bound to catch the eye, make a painful impression if they are not perfectly trim. However, if it is too obvious that one’s menservants have been lumped together behind the carriage in order to escape notice, this in itself looks very bad.

It is a mistake to choose slim, elegant youths on purpose that they may look well as footmen, and then let them wear trousers that are grimy at the ends and hunting-cloaks or the like that have seen too much wear. The best that can be hoped is that people will think they are walking beside your carriage by chance and have nothing to do with you.

But it is a great convenience that all one’s servants should be handsome. Then if they should happen to tear their clothes or make themselves in any way shabby or untidy, it is more likely to be overlooked.

Officers of State, who have official attendants allotted to them, sometimes spoil the effect by allowing their page-boys to go about dirty and ill-kempt.

Whether a gentleman is at home or on an official mission or staying with friends he ought always to have round him quantities of handsome page-boys.

For secret meetings summer is best. It is true that the nights are terribly short and it begins to grow light before one has had a wink of sleep. But it is delightful to have all the shutters open, so that the cool air comes in and one can see into the garden. At last comes the time of parting, and just as the lovers are trying to finish offall the small things that remain to be said, they are suddenly startled by a loud noise just outside the window. For a moment they make certain they are betrayed; but it turns out only to be a crow that cried as it flew past.

But it is pleasant, too, on very cold nights to lie with one’s lover, buried under a great pile of bedclothes. Noises such as the tolling of a bell sound so strange. It seems as though they came up from the bottom of a deep pit. Strange, too, is the first cry of the birds, sounding so muffled and distant that one feels sure their beaks are still tucked under their wings. Then each fresh note gets shriller and nearer.

When a poem of one’s own, that one has allowed someone else to use as his, is singled out for praise.

Someone who is going on a long journey wants introductions to people in the various places through which he will pass, and asks you for a letter. You write a really nice letter of recommendation for him to present to one of your friends who lives at some place through which he will pass. But your friend is cross at being bothered and ignores the letter. To be thus shown up as having no influence is very humiliating.

There is nothing in the whole world so painful as feeling that one is not liked. It always seems to me that people who hate me must be suffering from some strange form of lunacy. However, it is bound to happen, whether at Court or in one’s home, that some people like one and some don’t, which I find very distressing. Even for a child of the servant-class (and much more for one of good-breeding) it is very painful, after having always been petted at home, to find itself the object of a disapproving stare. If the girl in question has anything to recommend her, one thinks it quite reasonable that she should have been made a fuss of. But if she is without attractions of any kind, she knows that everybody is saying, “Fancy anyone making a pet of a creature like that! Really, parents are very odd!” Yes, at home or at Court the one thing that matters is to be liked by everyone, from their Majesties downward!

Sh
ō
nagon elsewhere tells us that she used often to say to the Empress: “I must always come first in people’s affections. Otherwise, I would far rather be hated or even actually mal-treated. In fact, I would rather die than be loved but come second or third.”

Writing is an ordinary enough thing; yet how precious it is! When someone is in a far corner of the world and one is terribly anxious about him, suddenly there comes a letter, and one feels as though the person were actually in the room. It is really very amazing. And, strangely enough, to put down one’s thoughts in a letter, even if one knows that it will probably never reach its destination, is an immense comfort. If writing did not exist, what terrible depressions we should suffer from! And if it is a relief to put down, once and for all, the things that have been weighing on one’s mind, with a vague idea that the person in question may one day read what one has written, it is no exaggeration to say that the arrival of an answer can sometimes work like a real Elixir of Life!

The boys employed by magicians are extraordinarily clever. When their master is sent for to perform a ceremony of purification, these boys are expected to read the invocations,
*
and no one thinks anything of it. But to see them dash up at exactly the right moment, without a word from their master, and sprinkle cold water on the face of the patient, really makes one envious. I wish I could get hold of boys like that to wait upon me!

If one hears a servant girl say about anyone, “He’s an awfully nice gentleman,” one at once feels a slight contempt for the person in question. One would really think better of him if she abused him. Even a lady can lose by being too much praised in the wrong quarters; and, considering how much one is certain to suffer by being decried, it seems a pity that even the praise one gets should only do one harm!

Captain Narinobu
*
is a son of His Highness the Reverend President of the Board of War. He is not only very handsome, but also exceedingly intelligent. How that poor daughter of Kanesuke’s must have suffered at the time he broke with her, and she was obliged to go off with her father to Iyo, where he had been appointed Governor! One imagines her being due to start at dawn, and his coming to say good-bye the night before. I see him wrapped in a Court cloak, standing in the pale moonlight of dawn, as she must then have seen him for the last time.

In old days he used frequently to come and see me. He talked with considerable freedom, never hesitating to say the most disagreeable things about those of whom he disapproved.

There was in those days a certain gentlewoman of her Majesty’s, rather a tiresome person who made a great fuss about her penances, and the like. She was known by her surname, which was Taira or something grand of that sort. But she had really only been adopted by these people, and among the other girls it was considered amusing always to refer to her by her original name.

She was not at all good-looking—this Taira girl—nor had she any other quality to recommend her. But she seemed entirely unaware of her defects and always pushed herself forward when there was company at the Palace, in a way that her Majesty particularly disliked, though no one had the strength of mind to tell her so. . . .

Once, when the Empress said that Shikibu no Omoto and I were to sleep in her apartments instead of going back to our own room, we settled down for the night in the southern ante-room. After a while there was a tremendous banging on our door. We decided it would be a nuisance to have anyone coming in, and pretended to be asleep. But the knocking was followed by violent shouting, and I heard her Majesty say: “Go and wake her up, one of you. She is only pretending to be asleep.” The “Taira” girl then came in and tried to wake me; but she found that I was very fast asleep indeed, and saying that if I would not stir she must open the door herself, she went out and began a conversation with the visitor. I kept on thinking she would come back, but midnight came and still she did not appear. I was fairly certain that the visitor was my lord Narinobu. . . .

Next morning she heard us talking in our ante-room, and joining us, said to me: “I do think that when a man comes through such storms of rain as there were last night, you ought to treat him better. I know that he has been behaving very badly lately, and that you had almost lost sight of him. But I think you ought to forgive anyone who arrives with his clothes as wet as that.”

I cannot follow that line of argument. It seems to me that if a man who comes regularly every night is not put offeven by a heavy shower of rain, which is something to his credit. But if, after absenting himself for weeks on end, he is fool enough to choose such weather as this for coming back, then all I can say is I would rather he showed more sense and less devotion. But I suppose that is a matter of taste.

The case is this. Narinobu likes sometimes to have dealings with a woman who has observed and reflected sufficiently to acquire a mind of her own. But he has many other attachments to keep up, not to mention his main responsibility, and it would be quite impossible for him to see me often. His object in choosing so atrocious a night for his visit was chiefly that other people might be impressed by his devotion and point out to me how much beholden I ought to feel. However, I suppose if he did not care for me at all, he would not think it worthwhile to indulge even in such stratagems as these.

When it is raining I fall into complete gloom, and even if only a few hours ago the sun was shining brightly I cannot in the least remember what things looked like when it was fine. Everything looks equally disagreeable, so that it makes no difference to me whether I am in the loveliest corner of the Palace arcades or in the most ordinary of houses; so long as it is raining I can think of nothing else but how long the rain is going to last.

But if anyone comes on a night when the moon is up and there is a clear sky, even if it is ten days, twenty days, a month, a year, yes, even seven or eight years since his last visit, I can look back with pleasure on his visit; and even if the place is not very convenient for meeting and one must be prepared for interruption at any moment—even if, at the worst, nothing more happens than a few remarks exchanged at a respectful distance— one feels that next time, if circumstances are favorable, one will allow him to stay the night.