The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon
[The section which follows dates from 999, second month.]

When I was away from the Palace on holidays there were several Court gentlemen who used to come and visit us. This seemed to agitate the people of the house. I was, however, not at all sorry to see it put a stop to, for I had no very strong feeling about any of these visitors. But it was difficult without rudeness to be invariably 'not at home' to people who were calling repeatedly at all hours of the night and day; all the more so because, precisely with those whose visits were causing most scandal, my acquaintance was in reality very slight.

So this time I made up my mind not to let my whereabouts be generally known, but only to tell Tsunefusa,[1] Narimasa,[2] and a few others.

To-day Norimitsu came, and told me in the course of conversation that yesterday my lord Tadanobu had tried to find out from him where I was, saying that as I was Norimitsu's 'sister'[3] he must surely know my address. 'He was very insistent,' Norimitsu said to me, 'but I was determined not to give you away. He refused to believe that I didn't know, and went on pressing me in a way that really made me feel very uncomfortable. Moreover, Tsunefusa was sitting near by, looking perfectly innocent and unconcerned, and I was certain that if I caught his eye I should inevitably burst out laughing. In the end I was obliged to choke my laughter by seizing upon a piece of sea-cloth[4] that was lying on the table and stuffing it into my mouth.

Everyone must have thought me very greedy, and wondered what new delicacy I had found to devour between meals. But I managed all the same to avoid telling him anything. If I had laughed, it would of course have been fatal. In the end, he really thought I did not know. It was splendid .... !' I begged him to go on as he had begun, and for days afterwards heard no more about it.

But very late one night there was a tremendous banging on the front gate, enough to have woken a houseful of people at twice the distance. I sent someone to see what was the matter, and was told it was an Imperial Guardsman 'with a letter from the Major of the Bodyguard of the Left,' that is to say, from Norimitsu. Everyone in the house was in bed, so I took the letter close to the hall-lamp, and read: 'To-morrow is the last day of the Spring Reading in the Palace. If Tadanobu is there keeping the penance-day with their Majesties, he may easily ask me where you are, and if (in front of everyone) he insists upon my telling him, I certainly shall not be able to keep up the pretence that I do not know. May I tell him you are here? I certainly won't unless I have your permission to do so.'

I wrote no answer, but sent him a minute piece of seaweed,[5] wrapped up in paper.

Next time he called, Norimitsu said: 'He got me into a corner and went on at me about it all night. It is really very disagreeable to be pestered like that, and as you did not answer the letter in which I asked for your instructions .... But, by the way, I did receive a wrapper containing a piece of seaweed. No doubt in a moment of absent-mindedness ....’

As if one could conceivably do such a thing by accident! He still could not in the least understand what I had meant, and evidently thought I had merely sent him a very mean and useless present. Irritated by his stupidity, I made no reply, but seizing the inkstand wrote on a scrap of paper the poem: 'If from the fishing-girl who dives beneath the waves the present of a rag you have received, surely she hints that to the world you should not tell in what sea-bed she hides.'[6]

'So Madam has started writing poems, has she?' he exclaimed. 'I, for one, shall not read them,' and scrunching up the piece of paper, he marched off.

So it came about that Norimitsu and I, who had always been such good friends and allies, were for a while rather cool towards each other. Soon, however, he wrote to me saying: 'I may have been to blame; but even if you don't wish to see me, I hope you do not regard our old alliance as altogether a thing of the past. That, after all, would mean the breaking of a good many promises .... '

It was a favourite saying of his that people never sent him poems so long as they liked him. 'It's a sure sign that they have turned against one,' he used to say. 'When you have made up your mind that you can bear me no longer, just send me one of those, and I shall know what to make of it.'

next...

return to The Tale of Genji