“You suppose I am about fifty years old,” she said. “I am more than twice that.”
He caught a breath, looked sharply at her, looked away, and asked with closely held calm, “How can this be?”
“I know not,” she sighed. “I know only that I was born in the reign of Emperor Toba, through whom the Fujiwara clan still ruled the realm so strongly that it lay everywhere at peace. I grew up like any other girl of good birth, save that I was never ill, but once I had become fully a woman, all change in me ceased, and thus it has been ever since.”,
“What karma is yours?” he whispered.
“I tell you, I know not. I have studied, prayed, meditated, practiced austerities, but no enlightenment has come. At last I decided my best course was to continue this long life as well as I was able.”
“That must be … difficult.”
“It is.”
“Why have you not revealed yourself?” The voice trembled. “You must be holy, a saint, a Bodhisattva.”
“I know I am not. I am troubled and unsure and tormented by desire, fear, hope, every fleshly evil. Also, as my jigelessness first came slowly to notice, I have encountered jealousy, spite, and dread. Yet I could never hitherto bring myself to renounce the world and retreat to a life of sacred poverty. So whatever I am, Mi-yuki, I am not holy.”
He pondered. Beyond the garden wall swirled formlessness. Eventually he asked her, “What did you do? What have your years been like?”
“When I was fourteen, an older man—his name no longer matters—sought me out. He being influential, my parents encouraged him. I cared little for him, but knew not how to refuse. In the end he spent the three nights at my side and thereafter made me a secondary wife. He also got me a position at the court of Toba, who by then had abdicated. I bore him children, two of whom lived1. Toba died. Soon after, my husband did.
“By then the wars between the Taira and the Minamoto had broken out. I made an occasion to retire from the service of Toba’s widow and, taking my inheritance, withdrew to the family from which I sprang. It helped that a lady not at court lives so secluded. But how empty an existence!
“At last I confided in a lover I had gotten, a man of some wealth and power. He brought me to a rural estate of his, where I spent several years. Meanwhile he got my daughter married off elsewhere. He took me back to Heian-kyo under her name—such people as remembered marveled at how much she resembled her mother—and through his patronage I came again into service at a royal household. Gradually I outlived the scorn they have for provincials; but when they gradually observed how I kept my youth—
“Do you wish to hear it all?” she asked in an upsurge of weariness. “This has been my third such renewal. The tricks, the deceptions, the children I have borne and, one way or another, managed to have adopted elsewhere, lest it become too plain that they grow old while I do not. That has hurt most. I wonder how much more I could endure.”
“Therefore you are leaving everything behind,” he breathed.
“The time was already overpast. I hesitated because of the strife, the uncertainty about what would become of my kindred. Well, that has been settled for me. It feels almost like a liberation.”
“If you take nun’s vows, you cannot return here as you did before.”
“I have no wish to. I have had my fill of the petty intrigues and hollow amusements. Fewer are the midnight stars than the yawns I have smothered, the hours I have stared into vacancy and waited for something, anything to happen.” She touched his hand. “You gave me one reason to linger. But now you too must go. Besides, I wonder how much longer they can keep up the pretense in Heian-kyo.”
“You choose a harder way than I think you imagine.”
“No harder, / think, than most in times to come. It is a cruel age we are bound into. At least a wandering nun has people’s respect, and … nobody questions her. Someday I may even win to understanding of why we suffer what we do.”