9. A princess of Go-Daigo tells her hatred of stories from a tree.
明子の悲鳴を聞いて斜面を駆け下りる光厳院の後を、矢をつがえた少年が追いかけます。
しかし、たどりついた川岸に明子の姿はなく、クルミの若葉の間から、川面に紙吹雪が舞い散っているのでした。
綴宮、樹上より狂言綺語の奢れるを憤りたまふ事
“Stop, Your Majesty! Don’t make me shoot you!” the boy shouted behind him.
Kazuhito didn’t stop. He ran down the path to the bank, holding his long sleeves in his fists, and jumped over stumps. Spring weeds were still soft, and they couldn’t disturb his hem. A pheasant hen was surprised by his rush, and she flew out of a bush.
Someone had passed through the narrow way to gather wild plants, and he wasn’t annoyed by cobwebs between branches.
An arrow glanced off and hit the trunk of a tree near him. Kazuhito didn’t worry about that. It’s just a threat.
“No, kid! You’re shooting at the ex-emperor!” Iga’s scolding voice shouted from above.
On the bank, tall and short trees aligned at random. The scent of wisteria filled the air. He stopped in front of a large walnut tree. Wisteria vines climbed up to the top. The buzz of carpenter bees sounded around them. Wild edible sprouts filled a basket, and sandals with red ribbons had been left under the tree.
Clusters of wisteria were hanging over the river. Fine white particles were falling through the strands of the flower clusters from a large branch over the water’s surface. They looked like petals of the later-flowering cherry blossoms of the deep mountains.
“What happened?” a silhouette of a young woman behind the trunk asked him. She had climbed the chestnut branch and sat on it. Kazuhito couldn’t see her face because of the backlight. His eyes were dazzled by bright green light through the leaves.
“I’ve come here because somebody was calling me to help,” he said.
“I need no help. Thank you. You can go back, priest.” Her voice sounded like that of a twelve- or thirteen-year-old.
“What are you doing on such a high place, young lady?” he said.
“I just watch the water’s surface and wisteria blooming. Please leave me alone,” she said, sounding nervous.
“But the book in your hands is crying. Why are you tearing it like confetti?” Kazuhito said to her, looking up.
Her upper body appeared from the leaves. Her hair was short to shoulder length, like a novice nun. “Lifeless things don’t cry. Please pray for all mortals, priest,” she answered him.
The watchboy came down there with his bow at the ready. He stopped and noticed the paper particles under the tree. He lowered his bow and told her loudly, “Princess! What are you doing to the book your mother saved from the fire?”
“Oh. Is there a princess climbing the tree?” Yutahito followed the boy slowly, along with Naohito.
The girl stood up on the branch. Her sleeves were as narrow as Iga’s for working like rural women, and her bare toes appeared. She leaned on the trunk and opened her right palm. The residue of the confetti fluttered in the air.
“No!” The boy tried to catch the pieces, but Kazuhito stopped his steps.
“Don’t rush forward, or you’ll fall into the river. The edge of the bank will be unsteady.”
The boy folded his knees and picked up the sprinkled particles. He almost cried, “Empress Dowager would be so disappointed in you, if she knew your doings. You know how precious the books are...”
“Stories are just stories, and they are not real,” the girl in the tree said in the coldest voice. “Kadoko-sama gave them to me from her kindness, but that was unwelcome. Since then, I haven’t had a good sleep! The nightmare came to me every night because of the books. I’ve been seeing the fire of hell. My mother was burned there again and again. She might have fallen in there because she preferred the unreal story to her real life!”
She, the princess of Go-Daigo, showed her upset feelings at last. “So, I decided to tear these cursed books every day after visiting her grave. Imaginary stories mustn’t kill real humans, so I’ll kill them.”
Kazuhito raised his hand high toward her and said, “Princess, stop it. Give the book to me. I’ll take your nightmares.”
“How dare you say that. I know who you are, ex-Emperor Kazuhito! Your general burned up Yoshino and my mother. I know you couldn’t help it because you were just a puppet monarch enthroned by the Ashikaga brothers. Leave me alone, because you can’t tell me anything about what I do with my own possessions.” She seemed to be suppressing her anger with effort.
“Listen,” the monk said in tones of regality. Lady Iga and her son, who were approaching, were stopped by his voice.
“The books, issues of The Tale of Genji, aren’t yours. They are mine. Give me back the series because they were stolen from my old palace in Kyoto a long time before the war.”
“What?” Iga opened her eyes wider and wider. Her son began to stare at a nest of ants by a pine tree stump.
“Is there any evidence for your words?” The princess laughed at him. “Don’t worry, many copies of the story remain in Japan. I’ll just destroy one copy of them because they killed my mother with beautiful lies.”
“You shouldn’t kill that. It tells of the old days when people didn’t solve their problems by violence. Emperor Kiritsubo[1] didn’t cut off the head of a man who stole his empress’s love, did he? Although the story wasn’t real, those days existed. We must not forget the era.”
He opened his arms widely.
“You can find evidence that it was in the book. It called me there. Turn the pages.”
“What are you saying?” She seemed to be confused by his unreadable words.
“I remembered green maple leaves. Of course, they might have been turned brown by long days...”
“Ah...?”
The samurai boy stood under the tree again. He gazed at the princess’s figure. She turned the remaining pages, and her fingers stopped flipping.
“Can you find a bookmark of maple leaves?”
“...Yes.”
“So, I ask you to give them back,” Kazuhito said.
The princess kept silent, closing and slowly putting the book into her futokoro. When she began to climb down the tree, suddenly her feet slipped on a mat of moss covering the bark.
“No! Princess...!” the boy cried out and dashed downwards.
Kazuhito ran under the bank, following him. “Grab his bow!” he shouted.
She was struggling in the water, together with fallen flowers and paper particles. The boy reached out his bow to her. “Take my bow, hurry up!” She gulped water and tried to catch the bow, but she couldn’t swim toward it.
“The stream is slow. Wait!” Kazuhito began to take off his robe. “Don’t enter the water!” Yutahito shouted and held his brother. “I haven’t heard you could swim!”
Iga held her child up and pushed him to Naohito. “Please!” The prince caught him, and she rushed to the riverside.
“Be quiet, people.” She clapped her palms and said, “Calm down, Princess. You can stand up here. This pool is shallow.”
The boy passed his weapons to Iga and entered the water with his armor. He helped her to stand. “Please wait just in here.” He ran up the slope again and brought the picnic sheet.
“It’s OK.” He pulled her up from the pool and wrapped her body with the sheet to hide her body line. She took the soaked book from her futokoro and said, “If you take them all, I’ll be able to sleep well again. Help me.” She sneezed.
The ex-emperor just nodded.
“I’m called Tsudzure,” she said.
“Thank you for giving back my possession to me, Princess Tsudzure,” he said.
---
1. The father of Shining Genji in The Tale of Genji. Even after his death, he supported his son, who stole his best-loved consort’s love.
Continued in Chapter 10, "Lady Akiko meets her old work again."
第十章 「対御方、むかしの物語取り返し給ふ事」に続きます。
