Nature Tales for Winter Nights (eBook)

snow mountains everywhere

In winter the early mornings. It is beautiful indeed when snow has fallen during the night, but splendid too when the ground is white with frost; or even when there is no snow or frost, but it is simply very cold and the attendants hurry from room to room stirring up the fires and bringing charcoal, how well this fits the season’s mood! But as noon approaches and the cold wears off, no one bothers to keep the braziers alight, and soon nothing remains but piles of white ashes […]

The Snow Mountain

From the tenth day of the Twelfth Month it snowed very heavily. I and the other ladies-in-waiting gathered large quantities of snow and heaped it in lids; then we decided to build a real snow mountain in the garden. Having summoned the servants, we told them it was on Her Majesty’s orders, and so they all got to work. Men from the Office of Grounds, who had come to do some sweeping, also joined in, and soon the mountain was rising high above the ground. Next came some officials from the Office of the Empress’s Household, who made suggestions and helped build an especially beautiful mountain. There were also a few Assistant Officials from the Emperor’s Private Office and some more men from the Office of Grounds, so that soon we had about twenty people working away. In addition messages were sent to the servants off duty, saying that a special stipend would be given to anyone who helped on that day, but that those who did not appear for work could expect nothing. This brought the men rushing out, except for those who lived far away and could not be informed.

When the mountain was finished, officials from the Office of the Empress’s Household were summoned and given rolls of silk tied up in sets of two. They threw the rolls on to the veranda, and each of the workmen came and took a set. Having bowed low, they thrust the silk into their robes before withdrawing. Some of the Court gentlemen changed from their formal over-robes into hunting costume and remained in attendance at the Empress’s Office.

‘Well,’ said Her Majesty, ‘how long is that mountain likely to last?’

Everyone guessed that it would be ten days or a little more.

‘And what do you think?’ the Empress asked me.

‘It will last till the fifteenth of the First Month,’ I declared.

Even Her Majesty found this hard to believe, and the other women insisted that it would melt before the end of the year. I realized I had chosen too distant a date; the mountain would last until the first of the year at the outside, which was the latest day I should have given. Yet there was no taking back what I had said: though I knew the mountain was unlikely to survive till the fifteenth, I stuck to my original prediction.

Towards the twentieth it began raining. There was no sign that the snow was about to melt, but the mountain did shrink a little. ‘Oh, Goddess of Mercy of Shirayama,’ I prayed frenziedly, ‘do not let our mountain melt away!’

On the day we built the mountain Tadataka, the Secretary in the Ministry of Ceremonial, arrived with a message from the Emperor. We gave him a cushion and joined him for a talk. ‘Today they’re making snow mountains everywhere,’ he told us. ‘The Emperor has ordered his men to build one in the garden in front of his Palace, and they’re also building them in the Eastern Palace and in the Koki and Kyogoku Palaces.’ Hearing this, I wrote a poem and asked the woman standing beside me to recite it:

Tadataka was impressed. ‘I would not want to spoil the brilliant effect of your poem by making a poor reply,’ he said, bowing repeatedly. ‘The next time I find myself outside the blinds of some fashionable Court lady I shall repeat your lines.’ And with that he took his leave.

I had heard that Tadataka was very fond of poetry, and his behaviour surprised me. When I told the Empress about it, she said, ‘He obviously preferred not to reply at all unless he could produce something really good.’

Towards the end of the year the snow mountain seemed to have become smaller, yet it was still very high. About noon one day, when I and some of the other women were sitting out on the veranda, Hitachi no Suke arrived. ‘Why haven’t we seen you for such a long time?’ we asked her. ‘Oh, nothing special,’ she said. ‘It’s just that something rather sad happened to me.’ ‘And what may that be?’ we asked. ‘Well,’ she replied, ‘I couldn’t help feeling that

She drawled out her poem, and we all laughed contemptuously. Since no one was paying much attention, she made her way up to the snow mountain and walked round it before leaving. Later we sent Lady Ukon a message about the visit, and she replied, ‘Why didn’t you bring her here? It was really too bad to abandon her like that and make her go all the way to that great mountain of yours by herself.’ This caused us to burst into laughter again.

New Year came without affecting the snow mountain in any way.

On the first day of the year it again started snowing heavily. I was happily thinking how the snow would gather on the mountain when Her Majesty said, ‘This has come at the wrong time. Leave what was there before and brush away all the new snow.’

Very early on the following morning, as I was going from the Palace to my room, I saw a man who looked like a head retainer. He was on his way to the Empress’s Office and was shivering with cold. On the sleeve of his night-watch costume, which was as green as a citron leaf, I noticed a piece of paper, also green, attached to a pine twig.

‘Who sent this?’ I asked him.

‘The High Priestess of Kamo,’ he replied.

Realizing at once that this must be something pleasant, I carried the letter to the Empress’s room. Her Majesty was still in bed, and I did my best to open her lattice-door myself, using for this purpose a go board on which I stood as I tried to push up the heavy grating. The lattice was very heavy, but finally one side opened with a creaking sound that wakened the Empress. ‘Why are you doing that?’ she asked. ‘I have a letter from the High Priestess,’ I replied, ‘which I had to deliver to Your Majesty as quickly as possible.’ ‘Well,’ she said, getting up, ‘it certainly is early for a letter.’

Looking inside, she discovered a pair of hare-sticks, each about five inches long. They had been placed end to end so that they looked like a single hare-wand; some paper had been wrapped round the head of the sticks, which were prettily decorated with sprigs of wild orange, club moss, and mountain sedge. But there seemed to be no written message. ‘Can this really be all?’ said the Empress. Searching more carefully, however, we found the following verse written on a bit of paper wrapped round the end of the stick:

As I watched the Empress writing her reply to this letter (which turned out to be the beginning of a regular correspondence between her and the High Priestess), I was full of admiration. Determined to make her letter as elegant as the one she had received, Her Majesty took the utmost pains to correct the wording until she considered it just right. The messenger was rewarded with an unlined costume of white material and another of dark red that looked like plum blossom. I enjoyed watching the man set off in the falling snow with the clothes over his shoulder. Unfortunately I never found out what Her Majesty had replied.

Meanwhile our snow mountain, dirty and unattractive though it had become, showed no sign of melting; and one would really have thought that it belonged to the northern land of Koshi. I prayed that somehow it would survive until the fifteenth. I was convinced that I would win, but some people insisted that it would not outlast the seventh. We had all decided to wait and see what happened when suddenly on the third of the month the Empress was obliged to return to the Imperial Palace. This was a great disappointment, and at first I seriously thought that we would never know the outcome. ‘Well,’ said everyone (including Her Majesty), ‘it was all very delightful. What a shame we couldn’t see it to the end!’

I determined then that, if my original guess turned out to be correct, I would show Her Majesty the remaining snow, whatever happened. I realized that this would require special steps, so I took advantage of the confusion of packing and moving to summon a gardener who lived in a hut near the wall of the Empress’s Office. When he came to the veranda where I was sitting, I told him to take extremely good care of the mountain. ‘Make sure it lasts until the fifteenth,’ I said, ‘and don’t let any children climb up and scatter the snow. If you look after it really well and it lasts until the middle of the month, Her Majesty will give you a generous reward, and I too shall show you my gratitude.’ So saying, I gave him...