Back in his room, he bent to pick up the box and flute to place them on a shelf. The box seemed astonishingly heavy. He opened it and saw with consternation that it was filled with gold bars. His reward, the boy had said. There must be more than three years worth of salary here, enough to mend the roof and pay the wages and costs of his newly increased household, and still leave something in reserve.
Filled with the joy of it, he went to tell his wife. But the little maid informed him that her mistress had gone to her former home as soon as the rain had eased a little. Akitada felt a sudden concern for her safety and peace of mind and decided to follow her.
The sky was clearing partially, and he risked going without his straw raincoat. Walking as quickly as the many steaming puddles permitted, he crossed the town, worried how he would find her on this, her first visit to the place of the tragedy which had taken both her father and her childhood home from her.
Although he had sent workers to clear away the large debris, the grounds looked dismal after the rain. There was bare black mud where the house had once stood, and charred trees clawed with naked, twisted fingers towards the skies. All the lush flowers and shrubs had shrivelled into sodden clumps of brown decay. Tamako's garden had died as surely as had her father and her past life.
She stood, huddled in a straw cloak, near the wisteria vine, looking up at its bare twisted remnants clinging to the old trellis. It was leafless now, but miraculously he had found there that single bloom he had sent her after their first night together. That she should have come to this spot cheered him. He called out to her.
She turned, hiding muddy hands under the rain cape, and he saw that the dark silk gown she still wore in mourning for her father was streaked with dirt along the hem and there was a smudge of mud near her nose where she had brushed back an errant tress of hair. But she smiled at him, and his heart melted with tenderness.
"What brought you here?" she asked, coming quickly to him.
"I was worried about you." He gestured at the desolate garden. "It still looks very sad, but in time it will be better."
"Oh? Will you keep it then?" she asked, her eyes growing wide with excitement.
"Of course. It is your home and your garden. I thought we might just rebuild a small summer house to start with, and perhaps quarters for a gardener to take care of the place."
"Oh, not a gardener," she cried. "I'll do that. Oh, thank you, Akitada!" Her face fell. "But the money? Can we afford it?"
He was secretly pleased about that "we." "Of course," he said. "Let me tell you my news. I had several visitors this morning. Captain Kobe stopped by first, and then we were honored by the bishop and young Lord Minamoto- who is now head of his clan so I must learn to address him as 'my lord' again."
She smiled. "He is a very nice boy. What news did the captain bring?"
"Okura hanged himself."
She looked down at her hands, which had crept from the folds of her gown and were now tightly clenched. "I am glad he killed himself," she said slowly. "Father would not have wished to be responsible for another human being's execution." Then she looked back up with a smile. "I suppose Bishop Sesshin and the young lord came to thank you for your help?"
"Yes, most generously. I had really not taken the boy seriously." He told her about the gold, happy in her delight in the sudden wealth. "Of course, they also expressed their best wishes on our marriage," he continued. Pausing, he added, more diffidently, "There was some other, rather puzzling talk about the lack of able administrators in the far north. It made me wonder."
Tamako's eyes widened. "What did the bishop say?"
Akitada told her what he could recall, watching her face as he spoke. She was still smiling, but with a certain fixity that dismayed him.
"Oh," she cried, "so much good news! I think you will receive a very grand assignment. Perhaps even a governorship!" She clapped her hands. "Heavens, what a signal honor at your age!" Biting her lip, she added quickly, "It is, of course, a well-deserved honor and a fine and wise choice. How very pleased your mother will be!"
Akitada asked softly, "And you? Are you pleased?"
She blushed and lowered her eyes. "Of course. It is a very great thing for you, for all of us." Then she asked breathlessly, with a slight catch in her voice, "How soon would you be leaving? There are so many things to be got ready. If you receive the appointment, you will be gone a long time… four years at least." She hung her head.
"There is no point in worrying about the preparations. It may all just be so much wishful thinking on my part. No doubt I was reading too much into a chance remark. And it is hoping for too much! I am only a clerk, a mere eighth grade in rank." He stretched out his hand to raise her face to his. Her eyes were filled with tears, but she smiled bravely. "Tamako," he asked, "I really wanted to know how you would feel about accompanying me to such an outpost of civilization."
"Oh!" Her whole face lit up. "You would take me with you then?" As he nodded, the tears spilled over and coursed down her cheeks, mingling with the streaks of dirt. She fell to her knees on the muddy ground and bowed. "Thank you, my husband. You have made this insignificant person very happy."
"Tamako!" he scolded, reaching for her. "Get up! There is no one about and no need at all for this cursed formality. And you have spoiled your gown."
She rose, chuckling tearfully and brushing at the black stains on her skirt. He took a tissue from his sleeve and wiped away the traces of muddy tears.
"I was so afraid you would not come," he confessed. "Most of the ladies I know would consider such an assignment one of the more agonizing torments of hell. There are none of the refinements of city life there, and I am told the winters last for eight long months."
"But look at me!" she said with a laugh, showing her dirty hands and her ruined gown. "I am nothing like those ladies and shall be far more comfortable in the uncivilized north than here, for I am a stranger both to proper behavior and to such fine clothes." She turned to glance around at the blackened landscape, and sighed blissfully. "I came to tell Father's spirit about our marriage. And now I am glad that he could share this good news and my happiness."
"And mine."
Taking his hand, Tamako took Akitada through the ruined garden to the wisteria.
"Look!" she said, bending to point to the twisted old trunk where it rose from the barren ground. Four or five bright green shoots had emerged from the roots and were already reaching eagerly upward. "And there, and over there!" She pointed to shrubs and young trees, and Akitada saw that they were all putting forth new leaves.
And then a nightingale began to sing in the old willow by the gate.
Historical Note
In the eleventh century, Heian Kyo (Kyoto) was the capital of Japan and its largest city. Like the Chinese capital Ch'ang-an, it was a perfect rectangle with a grid pattern of broad avenues and smaller streets, measuring about one third of the great Chinese metropolis, or two and a half by three and a half miles, with a population of about 250,000. The Imperial Palace, a separate city of over one hundred buildings housing the ministries and bureaus of the central administration and including the imperial residence, occupied the northernmost center of Heian Kyo. Both the capital and the Imperial Palace were walled or fenced and accessible by numerous gates. Rashomon (properly Rashoo-mon or Rajoo-mon, the "Rampart Gate") was the most famous gate to the capital but had fallen into neglect and disrepair. By the middle of the century it may well have ceased to exist altogether. A famous tale about this gate, later a part of Ryunosuke Akutagawa's "Rashoomon" and an award-winning film, is in the eleventh-century collection Konjaku Monogatari (no. 29/18). Heian Kyo is said to have been quite beautiful, with its wide willow-lined avenues, its palaces and aristocratic mansions in their tranquil gardens, its temples and government buildings with their blue-tiled roofs and red-lacquered columns and eaves, its rustic Shinto shrines, its parks filled with lakes and pavilions, its many waterways and rivers crossed by arched bridges, and its surrounding landscape of mountains and lakes dotted with secluded temples and summer villas. For some of the details of the description and the maps of Heian Kyo I am indebted to R.A.B. Ponsonby-Fane's work, Kyoto: The Old Capital of Japan.