Page:Anthology of Japanese Literature.pdf/416

412 glancing into the kitchen. His wife, a radiant beauty, was the irregular offspring of a person of rank. Not only was she adept in the poetics of the ancient school, she had a rare gift for music, and particularly for the reed pipes: frost gathered in midsummer when she blew winter melodies; with longevity tunes she made her husband utterly feeble. She was addicted to the pursuit of elegance, whether in arts or manners. For summer nights she had her room screened from mosquitoes by panels of silk gauze: inside were placed a five-foot-square tray-garden and a floating lamp, as well as fireflies specially procured from Uji and Seta. Thus she relieved the discomforts of hot weather. In winter she warmed herself at a covered brazier large enough for eight people, and had little girls with bobbed hair chafe the soles of her feet. Husband and wife slept in the perfume of precious incense, while its smoke, wreathing up in as many shapes as from Fuji, Asama, and Muro no yashima, curled through their clothing. Devotees of the cult of fragrance, they lived in a style of unfailing splendor. Where the father had strewn the seeds of riches the son now possessed mountains wooded in silver-bearing trees; but the clatter of interest money in his scales only annoyed him, just as the subtle rhythms of the hand drum irritate the vulgar. No one carrying an account book visited his mansion on the last day of the year: all bills were paid early in November, as if the New Year (not greeted by the customary gate-pines) had arrived too soon.

Yet his wife was unhappy. Though she lived in luxurious fashion, and though her husband was handsome and sophisticated, a man who, far from counting among the Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety, was more devoted to wife than mother—despite all this good fortune, which would seem to have left no desire unfulfilled, she perversely disliked being a woman.

One thought obsessed her: “Why was I cursed with this sex? Tied down to a skinny devil, and no chance to enjoy myself as I please!”

Boldly she extracted her husband’s consent to have her hair trimmed in masculine style, the rich pinned coiffure replaced by a