Dvorjan in obredna osama

Besedilo

Dvorjan in obredna osama

This, too, happened long ago. There was a fifth-rank chamberlain named Tachibana no Mochinaga, who served as Assistant Director of the Palace Table. When the Lord Minister of the Left at Uji summoned him, he replied, “Today and tomorrow I must observe a strict period of ritual seclusion.” But the minister insisted: “What is this? How can a man serving at court speak of ritual seclusion? You are to come without fail.” Awed by the sternness of the summons, Mochinaga went. Some ten days later, the Minister of the Left himself entered a period of ritual seclusion of exceptional strictness. Screens and the like were set up in the openings of his gates, and even the monks who came to conduct the rite of the Benevolent Kings were admitted only through the earthen-walled gate on the Kayanoin side; their young attendants were not allowed in. Hearing of the minister’s seclusion, Mochinaga hurried over and tried to enter through this gate. Two guards stationed there stepped forward to stop him, saying, “Our orders are to admit no one.” “You there, you fools!” he said. “I have been summoned!” Since they knew him well as a chamberlain, they could hardly refuse him and let him through. He went to the chamberlains’ office, sat down, and began talking loudly about one thing and another. Hearing him, the minister asked, “Who is that talking?” Morikane replied, “It is Mochinaga, my lord.” “What? With my seclusion so strict, did he come last night and remain within? Go and ask him.” Morikane went and conveyed the question. The chamberlains’ office was close to the minister’s rooms, and Mochinaga answered in a booming voice, without the least restraint: “The other day, when I was observing a period of ritual seclusion of my own, His Lordship summoned me. I explained that I was in seclusion, but he said, ‘There is no such thing as ritual seclusion. You are to come without fail.’ So I came. From this I learned that there is no such thing as ritual seclusion.” Hearing this, the minister nodded and said no more, or so the story goes.