Dream of a Spring Night (Hollow Reed series) (28 page)

Toward morning she thought of a way.
 
Only one more day.

With his move to the Hojuji Palace, the emperor decided to break with the past.
 
The world of the senses had become too oppressive, too fraught with disappointment and self-recrimination.
 
He was determined to purify himself of all delusions and walked around his new residence in the first flush of pious enthusiasm.
  

He would take up his cloistered life here, at peace at last.
 
The new palace combined the best of the two worlds he would henceforth inhabit, directing the nation and treading the eightfold path to enlightenment.
 

There was the new temple hall, the Rengeo-in, with a thirty-bay-long Buddha hall consecrated to the thousand-armed Kannon.
 
He planned to take the tonsure there, bidding farewell to the world of physical passions.
 

Soon, very soon now.

He even put aside his collection of songs because it reminded him of his sins of the flesh — troublingly fresh and frequent in his thoughts.
 
Otomae had not returned since the incident of the “Little Snail” song.
 
It was as well, for
she
, too, made him feel vaguely ashamed and foolish these days.
 

Only Lady Sanjo was left to remind him of his lapse, and she demanded to see him nearly every day, always claiming urgent business.
 
The urgent business, as often as not, concerned Toshiko.

When he returned to his private rooms, she appeared again.
 
He noticed that she had grown amazingly fat.
 
At the rate she was expanding, it would be no time at all before she looked like that unfortunate woman in his Scroll of Diseases, the one who was so obese she had to lean on two maids to support her as she waddled along.

Lady Sanjo collapsed into an obeisance with a grunt and puff of breath.
 
Really, thought the Emperor, eyeing her cherry-blossom-colored gown with distaste, what possessed her to wear such unsuitably youthful colors at her age?

“What is it now?” he snapped.

She sat up on her knees.
 
“Am I being a bother, sire?” she asked with a simper, blinking her eyes at him over her fan.

“I am busy, as always.”

“Oh.”
 
She turned her head a little and blinked some more.
 
“I can come back later, when it is more convenient,
Your
Majesty.”

“No,” he said quickly.
 
The infernal woman would just continue to pester him the rest of the day.
 
“Is something the matter with your eyes?”

She bowed again with that odd little grunt.
 
“Oh, Your Majesty is always excessively kind.
 
I am afraid I am blinded by the sun whenever I set eyes on you, sire.”

Irritating female!
 
It was this sort of adulation that made getting rid of her awkward when he was tempted to do so.
 

Most recently there had been that unpleasantness of the regent complaining of her rudeness to his son.
 
The young man had been drunk and stumbled into the women’s quarters by accident, not an unusual occurrence during the many festivities of the New Year.
 
Lady Sanjo apparently had accused him of trying to rape one of the women.
 
Naturally, the young man and the regent had been offended.
 
But she could hardly be dismissed for being watchful.
 
Frowning, he said sharply, “Make it brief.”

She blinked again.
 
“It is about Lady Toshiko.”

He sighed.
 
“It is always about Lady Toshiko.
 
What is it now?”

“As Your Majesty may recall, the foolish girl indulged in too much rich food over the holidays and was too ill to be moved with the other ladies.”
 
Lady Sanjo paused to wait for his reaction.

He compressed his lips.
 
“I remember.
 
I trust she is better and has joined you?”

“No,
Your
Majesty.
 
We have tried everything, but she seems worse.
 
Apparently the food here does not agree with her.
 
I suggest that she be allowed to return to her family.”
 
She blinked and fluttered her fan nervously.

The emperor stared at her, wondering how sick Toshiko was.
 
In his efforts to cleanse his mind and body from earthly attachments, he had avoided her.
 
But if she was really ill, he should go and express his concern.
 
The image of her, lying amid tangled bedding, her long hair spread around her young body, troubled him.
 
“Hmm,” he said.
 
“I did not know it was so serious.
 
What are her symptoms?”

Lady Sanjo twisted her fan in indecision.
 
“Oh, dear,” she murmured.
 
“It is not nice to talk of such things in Your Majesty’s presence.”

“Nonsense.
 
I take an interest in medicine and have seen sickness before,” he snapped.

“Yes, sire.
 
She still cannot keep any food down, sire, and earlier she suffered from the flux.
 
I do beg your pardon for mentioning such a dirty thing.”

He frowned.
 
“She’s not with child?”

“Oh no, sire.”

Relieved, he pursed his lips.
 
“Hmm.
 
I should pay her a visit, but at the moment I am very busy.
 
Perhaps my physician can have a look at her.”

“Sire, it is not permitted to send a man to the women’s quarters,” cried Lady Sanjo.

The emperor snorted at such old-fashioned ways.
 
“The man is old enough to be her grandfather, Lady Sanjo,” he said.
 
And so he was, for this was his personal physician and not that clever and handsome young Doctor Yamada who was entirely too knowledgeable about sexual matters to be dispatched to Toshiko.
 
“If she has not been able to eat anything for the past two weeks or more, she is far more seriously ill than you have given me to understand.
 
Or are you exaggerating again just to see me?”

This plain speaking cast Lady Sanjo into such agitation that she forgot to flutter her eyes.
 
“Oh, no,
Your
Majesty.
 
I would never dream of such a thing.
 
I am merely doing my duty.
 
My report is based on what her maid tells me.
 
Of course, the woman may say things to make herself seem more indispensable as a nurse.
 
I shall go myself and make certain of the facts, and then return to report again to Your Majesty.”

The emperor lost his temper.
 
“You should have done this in the first place, Lady Sanjo,” he said with a scowl.
 
“It is your duty.
 
In the future you will not trouble me again with unverified reports.
 
When you have investigated, leave a message with my secretary.”
 
He saw with satisfaction that he had finally shocked her into comprehension.
 
She gave him a pitiful look,
sniffled
a little as she prostrated herself, and retreated.

His contentment was gone.
 
He regretted the brief affair with Toshiko – not just for spiritual reasons or because it had brought him little joy, but because it had brought her even less.
 
At least she had not conceived.
 
As soon as she was better, he would let her go.
 
Naturally, in view of their relationship, he would reward her.
 
She would return to her family a rich woman, endowed with a suitable gift of rice lands, or, if she preferred, she would be married to some provincial official.
 
If neither of those options was to her taste, she could join his daughter’s household as one of her attendants.
 
This struck him as excessively generous, considering how her family had tried to manipulate him.
 

He was saddened by the fact that he had never found a woman who had loved him for himself.
 
There had been so many of them in his life.
 
His childhood was spent in the company of women. To be served by so many women can be a cruel thing for a small boy.
 
To be forever handled, petted, dressed, undressed, bathed, dandled, and made much of may suit a dog but it makes a boy very irritable.

There had been the matter of his dolls.
 
Long before he was old enough to have any understanding, he was given an amagatsu doll to protect him.
 
It was made of two crossed pieces of bamboo with a ball of silk for a head and a simple suit of clothes draped over the sticks. It stood at his head when he slept, arms extended protectively over him, and it stayed with him until he reached manhood at age fifteen.
 

The idea was for roaming evil spirits to mistake the doll for him and possess it instead.

From time to time, other dolls appeared.
 
The paper ones he breathed on and then they were rubbed over his body before being burned to rid him of sins.
 
The hoko dolls were mostly toys.
 
They had soft silk bodies stuffed with floss silk and painted faces and black silk hair.
 
They wore fine clothes resembling his own.
 
He played with the hoko dolls much the same way the court ladies played with him.
 
He dressed and undressed them, made them walk here and
there,
made them sit or stand, made them eat and dance, and sometimes he got angry and threw them at one of his ladies-in-waiting.

Now and then, an unstuffed hoko would make its appearance.
 
The limp doll was used to exorcise his quarters in the palace.
 
Being hollow, it gathered invisible ghosts and spirits inside it.
 
These evil and jealous phantoms were attracted by his imperial presence.
 
After the priest declared the premises free of them, the doll was ceremoniously drowned in the lake of the imperial gardens after being set afloat in a paper boat.
 
He remembered enjoying this particular exorcism greatly – unlike that other one a few years later.
 

On the whole, he had regarded his dolls with mixed feelings.
 
He was not sure if they
were loving
companions and protectors or hollow vessels which hid the very evil he must fear.
 
Once he asked his nurse, Lady Kii, why the hoko doll was hollow and why it had to be drowned.

Lady Kii showed him that the amagatsu doll also had this “hollowness” because its frame was made of two crossed sections of bamboo.
 
“Bamboo is hollow,” she said.
 
“Evil spirits can slip inside.
 
Better inside the doll than inside Your Highness.”

Afterwards, he had spent many days watching for the evil spirits and finally he had taken the amagatsu apart without finding anything.
 
For his researches he had armed himself with his ceremonial sword to slay any apparitions that might approach.
 

When his Fujiwara grandfather heard about it, he had laughed.
 
The story had got around.
 
Prince Masahito threatening his amagatsu with his sword became an amusing topic for the courtiers and ladies-in-waiting.
 
They came and peered at him as he stood watch, and ran away laughing.
 
One day he crept behind a screen and cried.

Lady Kii found him there.
 
She was a kind-hearted woman and took the trouble to explain the matter further.
 
“You cannot see the evil spirits, Highness,” she said.
 
“They are invisible manifestations of the evil in other people.
 
If someone bears you a grudge, that evil intention slips into the doll.
 
If someone is jealous of you, that, too, is trapped inside the doll.
 
In this way, resentment which might turn murderous and kill you, either by poison, or sickness, or possession, cannot harm you.
 
There is no need to watch.
 
The doll does all the watching, you see.”