Page:Anthology of Japanese Literature.pdf/104

100 therefore to go away, as I had planned earlier, to that temple in the western mountains, and to do so before he emerged from his penance.

The mountain road was crowded with associations. We had traveled it together a number of times, and then there had been that time, just at this season, when he had played truant from court and we had spent several days together in this same temple. I had only three attendants with me this time.

I hurried up to the main hall. It was warm, and I left the door open and looked out. The hall was situated on an eminence in a sort of mountain basin. It was heavily wooded and the view was most effective, although it was already growing dark and there was no moon. The priests made preparations for the early watch, and I began my prayers, still with the door open.

Just as the conch shells blew ten there was a clamor at the main gate. I knew the Prince had arrived. I quickly lowered the blinds, and, looking out, saw two or three torches among the trees.

“I have come to take your mother back,” he said to the boy, who went down to meet him. “I have suffered a defilement, though, and cannot get out. Where shall we have them pick her up?”

The boy told me what he had said, and I was quite at a loss to know how to handle such madness. “What can you be thinking of,” I sent back, “to come off on such a weird expedition? Really, I intend to stay here only the night. And it would not be wise for you to defile the temple. Please go back immediately—it must be getting late.”

Those were the first of a great number of messages the boy had to deliver that night, up and down a flight of stairs that must have been more than a hundred yards long. My attendants, sentimental things, found him most pathetic.

Finally the boy came up in tears: “He says it is all my fault—that I am a poor one not to make a better case for him. He is really in a rage.” But I was firm—I could not possibly go down yet, I said.

“All right, all right,” the Prince stormed. “I can’t stay here all night. There is no help for it—hitch the oxen.”

I was greatly relieved. But the boy said that he would like to go