Текст книги "Dream of a Spring Night"

Автор книги: Ingrid J. Parker

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

From Lady Sanjo’s Pillowbook

My disappointment was great when her father did not take the Oba girl away with him.  But all is not lost.  For a time, she stayed out of my way.  This makes it harder to catch her with a man, but I was so angry for a while that I could not look at her.

Happily, the other ladies are taking their cue from my cold disdain.  All but Shojo-ben avoid her.  She does not seem to mind this.  In fact, she does little but hum tunes to herself and spend time in the eaves chamber where I caught her passing notes to her lover.  I leave her to it, thinking that she will surely carry her immodest behavior too far, and someone else will catch her at it and make an outcry.  It will come much better from one of the other ladies, or even from a servant, than from me.  Everyone knows my dislike for the girl.

But the weeks have passed without anyone noticing anything – other than her singing – and, considering it my duty, I decided to make my report to His Majesty who is to me “like the moon and stars above.”

I found Him with that ancient nun at work on His collection.  She sings while He plays His flute.  The nun is a most peculiar woman.  The situation would be highly improper, if it were not for her age.  Rumor has it that she once was a common streetwalker until Lord Kiyomori found her and set her up as his mistress, having her perform for his guests.  If so, the matter is scandalous enough:  a harlot in the presence of His Majesty?  I cannot believe it myself.

I have noticed that His Majesty is very familiar with her but He treats her with the utmost respect, once even calling her sensei, as if she were His teacher.  People say that His Majesty has a regrettable tendency to associate with low persons when He judges it a question of art.  One day, before He resigned the throne, He is said to have stopped His palanquin in a street of artisans because He recognized the name of a painter on a sign.  He got out and walked down a filthy alleyway and into the man’s house.  Sitting down on a dirty trunk in His imperial robes, He watched the painter for an hour or more, then thanked Him very politely and asked for a memento of the visit.  Alas, the man had nothing to give Him.  (Would that I could make up for all His disappointments.  “Ah, I know not the destination of my love.”)

It is this sort of thing that made His Majesty’s father think Him unsuitable for the succession.

But I digress.

Having taken pains with my appearance, not forgetting the plums in my cheeks to make my face look fuller, I knelt before His Majesty and announced that I had a report of a private nature for Him.

The nun – Otomae, I think, she is called – gave me the most peculiar stare.  It was almost as if she were trying not to laugh.  I was so disconcerted that I nearly swallowed one of the plums.

To my disgust and embarrassment, His Majesty said, “Please speak freely, Lady Sanjo.  The reverend sister is completely in our confidence.”

Speaking freely was not as easy as He thought.  The plums slow my tongue and make me lisp.  “I beg Your Majesty’s pardon,” I ventured, “but this matter concerns one of Your Majesty’s ladies.”

“I expected it would,” he said, “since that is your duty.”

Well, I had no choice.  “The young Oba woman,” I told him, “has corresponded with someone.”  I rather liked the word “corresponded.”  It implied the most intimate relationship without actually naming such a dirty thing.

He laid down His brush and raised His eyebrows at that.  “Did you say ‘corresponded’?  Try to speak more clearly.  Do you mean she has written a letter?  Or received one?  Or both?”

I could not very well say more than what I had seen.  “I caught her s-slipping a note to a male visitor, Your Majesty,” I said.  “My assumption is that it answered one of his.”

There.  It was the truth, but it would make Him think that they had spent the night together and the man had sent her a next-morning poem to which she had then replied.

His Majesty looked astonished.  “Do I assume that you are concerned because of the identity of this male visitor?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know that,” I cried.  One of the plums shifted and I had to swallow it whole.

“Well then, why are you concerned?”

  I gulped and stuttered, “But Your Majesty . . . I thought . . . you asked me to report on her.”

He frowned.  “Hmm.  And is that all you have to report?”

“Well, she is also humming to herself,” I offered, thinking that would make it clear that she was far too happy to be innocent.

He sat up and looked at me more sharply.  “What is wrong with your face?  It looks lopsided.”

Oh, dear.  I flushed under my make-up.  “A bad tooth, Sire.”

“Hmm.  What was she humming?”

“I could not hear the words, Your Majesty.  Little songs.  Common little songs, from the sound of them.  She looked happy.”  People sing when they are happy, so that was a sensible deduction.

His Majesty exchanged a glance with the nun, then said, “Ask her about the songs she sings and report back to me.”

I touched my forehead to the boards and crept away.  Really, I thought to myself, He has some very peculiar interests for such an august person.  And He is far too young to have lost all memory of romance.  It crossed my mind to pretend an avid interest in songs myself to make him more approachable.  Why should He spend all his time with an elderly nun when He could be with me?  After all, given daily close proximity, who knew what might not happen?  As the poet said, “The strength of our love may yet prolong our unfinished dream forever.” This made me so happy that I forgot all about the awkwardness with the swallowed plum.

I was still turning the idea over in my mind when I reached the door.  His Majesty and the nun had returned to their conversation, and I was about to open the door to leave, when His Majesty called out after me, “On second thought, Lady Sanjo, bring her back with you.  I will ask her myself.”

Ah, I thought, that should prove interesting.  I obeyed with alacrity.

In the first place, I knew that the Oba girl had just washed her hair.  Nothing looks more slovenly than a female with wet hair and disordered gowns.  Perhaps He would be sufficiently disgusted to ask her about the letter.  Secondly, if she really knew something about those silly songs He was forever gathering and singing, then I might make use of her to teach me.

She was undressed, sitting near a brazier filled with glowing coals to dry her hair.  I was glad to see that none of the others had offered to help her by brushing and fanning the long strands and that her hair was still heavy with water and tangled.

She blanched and balked when I brought her the message.  “I cannot go like this,” she cried.  No wonder.  She had also washed her face and looked positively naked without paint, just like the peasant she was.  No man could possibly find her attractive.

“Nonsense, you look fine,” I snapped.  “Besides, you cannot refuse an imperial command.  Heavens, don’t they teach you anything in the country?”

“Oh, please, Lady Sanjo,” she pleaded, “couldn’t you explain?  If I might just have a little time, I could change my clothes, paint my face, and dry my hair a little more.”

“No,” I said firmly.  “You will report to His Majesty now.”

I could see from her face that I would have no more trouble from her.  She bowed her head, tied her wet hair with a ribbon and threw a red jacket over the thin white undergarment.  I would have forbidden that also, but water had soaked the gauze and it clung most indecently to her figure.

We returned to His Majesty.

I saw immediately that He was startled by her appearance and smiled to myself.  She fell to her knees and murmured an apology about having been caught unprepared.

His Majesty shot me a glance, but said that it did not matter, that He only had one little question and then she might go back.  This pleased me, since it showed His lack of interest in her as a female.

The girl sat up and looked at him expectantly.  Very improper, of course.  I myself kept my face down and only stole a glance now and then.

His Majesty said, “Lady Sanjo tells me that you sing sometimes, and I recalled your father mentioning that you had a knowledge of local songs.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” said she, still staring brazenly at His face.  “I was ashamed to say so before.”

He smiled at that.  “Would you favor us with one of your songs?”

“Now?  Like this?”

His Majesty smiled more broadly and nodded.

She bowed.  “With Your Majesty’s permission, may I rise?  The songs are performed with movement.”

To my amazement, His Majesty clapped His hands.  “Imayo,” he cried.  “Do you hear that, Otomae?  It was true what they said.  Yes, yes, of course.  Rise, Lady Toshiko, and let us see and hear you.”

I was appalled, but the strange nun looked as pleased as His Majesty and nodded encouragement.  The girl rose, took up a pose, and began.

“They’re in love,” she sang, raising her arms and looking up at the ceiling, “the weaver maid and the herdsman in the sky.”  Lowering her arms slowly, she turned, and dipped.  “The pheasants in the field, the deer in autumn.”  She twisted her body, waving her arms from side to side.  “The women who sell their charms in the street.”  I cannot possibly describe the gestures that accompanied that scandalous line.  “And in winter, so are the mandarin ducks.”  She pressed her hands together, then she bowed deeply to His Majesty.

It was an exceedingly vulgar performance.  Most of the images in her song were ordinary enough – that old legend of the star-crossed lovers in the sky, deer and pheasants, ducks – I daresay I could have done better, but no lady should be aware of street women.  Her voice was also quite crude and strong.  The song was uncouth enough, but when she danced, all semblance of decency departed.  She behaved like a harlot would – or as I imagine she would, for I am, of course, not familiar with such creatures.  Whenever she flung out her arms, her jacket parted and nothing was left hidden from our eyes.  I still shudder with shame and disgust.

To my surprise, His Majesty and the nun listened and watched with the greatest interest.  Of course, even an emperor is merely a male beneath his silk robes.  Some people have said that His Majesty has put all thoughts of sexual matters from His mind to prepare himself for a religious life.  If true, it would be a great pity.  He is still a most handsome man.  But I saw with my own eyes how He flushed with pleasure as He watched the slut.

I thought the nun would surely object, but she smiled widely – her teeth were not blackened and at her age very unattractive.  Given her silence, I thought it must be true that she once was a harlot.  How abominable to pretend holiness when one’s mind dwells in the gutter of writhing bodies.

Since the proper deportment of the young ladies falls within my responsibilities, I was forced to interfere.  As soon as the girl was done, I hissed to her, “Cover yourself!  Are you totally shameless?”

She turned quite red and instantly fell to her knees, bending her head to the floor.  Apparently the fool had been so flattered by His Majesty’s interest that she had forgotten her state of undress.

“I do beg Your Majesty’s pardon,” I said quickly.  “This young woman is still very new, and Your Majesty’s summons found her unprepared.”

He looked angry, as well He might, and snapped, “I said it did not matter,” adding, “You may leave us now.”

I bowed and started to back away.  To my dismay, the girl did not move.  “Toshiko,” I whispered, angry that she was making things even more difficult than they already were.

“Only you, Lady Sanjo,” said he.  “Lady Toshiko will stay.”

Well, I was furious.  I had to return alone to our quarters where I was instantly surrounded by the others who wanted to know why the girl had been called so urgently and in undress.  If it had been night, they would have assumed that she had found favor, but it was still an hour until sunset and they were puzzled what His Majesty could want with her at that time.

“His Majesty is working on His song collection with an assistant,” I said, “and had a question about the music of her homeland.”

It was probably the truth, but I had seen His eyes widen when Her jacket fell open.  Oh,“ the anguish of my heart!”

I was not surprised when she did not return until the middle of the night.  Only a few ladies were still awake and watched as she went to her bedding and lay down as she was, pulling the covers over herself.

We live in a degenerate age.

A Degenerate Age

Even a man who feels his life slipping through his fingers may have a moment of pure delight.  In the midst of his disillusionment, mourning all the things that could never be, the retired Emperor had found enchantment.

It left him deeply troubled and confused.

For one thing, the girl who had been pawned off on him was not quite a child after all.  This he saw the moment she began to dance.  It was not just that the thin gauze of her white undergarment revealed that she had a woman’s body, hitherto hidden by voluminous layers of silk, but even his jaded eyes recognized in her movements the studied seduction practiced by the most adept performers of imayo, by women who sell their bodies to the men they entertain.

For a moment, he had stared in disbelief.  The girl’s face, bare of make-up, was as innocent as a child’s, the face of a young girl before she puts on the train of womanhood and applies the paints that hide her features and give her the appearance of a doll.  But this girl’s gestures were those of a practiced harlot.

In his first astonishment, he had almost thanked Lady Sanjo – not only because she informed him of the girl’s singing talents, but because she brought her to him in a state of undress that awakened fires he had thought long since dead.  His blood warmed – no, boiled – as he watched that young body gyrate, those small hands inviting him to touch, to take, to ravish.  He felt such a surge of lust that he hardly heard her song.  Instead his eyes searched those smooth limbs, tantalizingly revealed and hidden as she swayed and bent.  Her hair, heavy with moisture, clung to her white neck but swung free below and scented the air with perfume.  Alas, he thought, it was a wise man who said that even a mighty elephant may be tethered with the twist of a woman’s hair.

But Lady Sanjo had not planned this at all and broke the spell by hissing a reproof that caused the girl to collapse with a cry – like an empty doll that has been dropped.

Instantly, the dream dissolved.  Toshiko sobbed on the floor before him as only a young child sobs, inconsolably.  Lady Sanjo seemed like a serpent to him then, poisonous and always underfoot, ready to strike at his joy.

And he was again himself, a man well past his youth and weary of the world.  A father with daughters older than this girl.  A man who had done his duty, played the bedchamber games with wives and concubines, fathered his children, and rewarded their mothers with income, rank, and titles.  An evil karma had brought him war, rebellion, and the deaths of  brothers, sons, and friends.  He yearned for serenity now, hoped to lose himself and his memories in prayer and meditation.  He wanted to shave his head and put on the stole of priesthood so that the weight of this world would fall away from him.  He wanted to pray for the dead and the living and be at peace.

And this young woman was an obstacle in his path.

He was angry – mostly at himself.  He pitied the girl as one pities a child who has been punished for a mistake in her calligraphy exercise.

But the flush of guilty pleasure was still on his face when he glanced at Otomae and saw that she was amused by his arousal.  She had nodded to him and then gone to the weeping child, taking her in her arms, murmuring consoling words.  And she had asked her where she learned the song.

The girl clutched her jacket to her body and, in her shame, would not look at him, but her halting answers explained much.

Oba noToshiko had been taught both song and dance, those lewd gestures and alluring poses, by a trained kugutsu, one of the traveling women of pleasure who perform for men of wealth and power in hopes of seducing the master or heir into a torrid affair or one-night stand.  And that woman had been Akomaro, one of the greatest artists of imayo and a famous harlot.

He wondered at first why the young daughter of a noble house had been allowed to watch and imitate such performances but decided that it had all been part of Oba’s plot to seduce him.  It was well-known that he invited talented shirabyoshi to perform for him, and so Oba had turned his daughter into one.  The thought was sickening – all the more so because, the longer he listened and watched Otomae and the girl, the more convinced he became that the child had little or no idea of what her words and gestures meant.

What had the world come to?

He remembered that tear-stained face with its downcast eyes, those small, childish hands clutched in her lap.  Was she still a virgin or had her training included instruction in sexual matters?

What would Shinzei say now?  But Shinzei did not appear.  Otomae was chatting lightly about imayo songs and about the girl’s home, and the Emperor withdrew into himself.  Only when the guard called out the hour of the boar, did he stir again.  He dismissed the girl with a peremptory word.

“What do you think?” he asked Otomae when the great doors had closed behind her.

“I think she’s a rare treasure, sire,” said the nun with a smile.  “She probably knows all of Akomaro’s songs.”

He frowned.  “That is not what I meant.  She disturbs me.”

“That, too.  Is it such a bad thing?”

“How can you ask?  And you a nun!”

Otomae laughed.  “I was a woman once, even a very young one like your pretty little lady.  She will give you pleasure, sire.”

“What?  You approve?”

“Of course.”

He looked at her, saw the twinkle in her eyes, and traced remembered beauty in the lines of her face.  There had been a time when he was very young that Otomae had set his blood on fire.  Age had nothing to do with that.  She always made him feel younger than his years.  His mood lifted.  “Are you not jealous?” he asked with a smile.  “How mortifying for me.”

She put a hand on his.  “You are the Emperor, but also my very dear friend.  I take joy in your joy.”

He snatched up her hand and held it to his cheek.  “You know I have no joy except when I am with you.  But you are an infrequent visitor.  I have been seeking peace from the affairs of the world.  Now this girl is getting in the way.”

She touched his face with her other hand.  “Oh, my dear,” she said lovingly.  It took great temerity to touch a son of heaven so familiarly  –  and it gave him such comfort that tears rose to his eyes.  “You are not old in years and body,” she told him.  “And both men and women may find peace in each other’s arms.  The Buddha does not forbid it.”

“‘All attachment to another is impurity of the heart, and all our difficulties spring from it,’” he quoted back.

She sighed.  “Then I am a very sinful woman.”

He wanted to bury his face in her shoulder and be held by her the way she had held the weeping child, but he only took her hands into both of his and said, “Oh, Otomae, she is too young for me.  What does she know of the world?”

Otomae gently freed her hands.  “Then teach her, sire,” she said firmly.  Rising to her feet, she bowed and walked away on silent feet.

“When will I see you again?” he called after her.

She did not answer.  The door closed softly behind her.

The Man of Learning

Doctor Yamada lived in the Tokwa Quarter, not far from where the Rashomon gate had once stood and near To-ji temple.  His house was the largest in a quarter where most homes were small, one-storied affairs, roofed with boards that were weighted down by stones.  It had once been a cloth merchant’s house, but the man and most of his children had died in the last smallpox epidemic, and his widow had sold the property and returned to her family.

The doctor’s garden was quite large, because he had bought an adjoining property when that neighbor’s house burned down.  Here he grew his medicinal herbs around a small pavilion which served as his pharmacy.  But the original garden behind his house was his special joy.  He had planted a smaller version of the charming landscapes that surrounded the elegant villas and temples.  Many-colored azaleas grew here, and cherry trees.  Handsome pines twisted above picturesque rocks.  Moss and rare ferns flourished in shady corners; colored koi swam in a small pond where lotus bloomed; and frogs had taken up residence on the pond margin.  When the weather allowed it, all of his free time was spent in his gardens.

Otherwise, his needs were simple and taken care of by three servants: an older woman, a man who was severely disfigured by burns, and an orphaned boy.  The woman, Otori, had served him since childhood and ruled the small household, including its master.  She cooked, washed, cleaned the house, and dealt with peddlers and patients who came to his door.  The man’s name was Togoro.  He did the heavy work and kept the property in good repair.  The boy had no name.  They called him “Boy,” or sometimes, “Demon,” or “Stupid.”  Since he was a foundling, nobody knew his age, though the doctor guessed that he must be about fourteen.  Boy swept, ran errands, and stole occasionally.

For Doctor Yamada, daily life ran smoothly in Mibu street – or at least it did until his fateful meeting with Oba no Toshiko.

This morning, he got up and stepped out into his garden.  The sky was clear and the early sun flung golden patches across his shrubs and trees.  On the roof, the doves murmured in the warmth, and a sparrow splashed in the shallow bowl of the stone water basin beside his veranda.  Catching sight of the doctor, it shook off drops like sparkling jewels and flew away.

A hollow bamboo pipe, balanced on a wooden contraption, carried water from a cistern above.  The doctor tipped it down to refill the basin and washed his face and hands.  Then he drank from a small bamboo dipper to rinse out his mouth and spat the water into the green cushion of moss below the basin.

He cast a glance around his property, then filled a bucket from the rain barrel and started watering.  A self-sufficient man, he participated in the life of his garden, happy when a plant was thriving and unhappy when it did not.  The plants were in his care and, like his human patients, they suffered the vicissitudes of fate, disease, starvation, or cold and flourished in times of plenty.  It was enough – or at least he had always thought so.

Moving on to the herb garden, he harvested leaves and roots for his small pharmacy.  As he hung them up to dry under the roof of the veranda, his thoughts shifted to the patient he would visit later.  The Retired Emperor’s cook was a man unacquainted with the principles of moderation and therefore suffered periodically from wind and a painfully distended belly because he ate too much.  This last bout was particularly severe.  The doctor had administered purges, and the cook had taken to his bed with a good deal of weeping and moaning at the cramping of his insides.  Today the doctor hoped to find him much improved, but he checked his supply of powdered ginger, bark of cinnamon, and fermented black beans, in case the flux had not abated and a stool-firming decoction was in order.

Inevitably, a visit to the cloister palace turned his thoughts to Toshiko.  She was too young for the life she was embarked on, too young to be so alone in the world, too young to bear the burdens of womanhood which would soon be hers.

His studies at the university had included sexual matters and the female anatomy.  Besides, he knew the facts and dangers of childbirth first-hand.  He was afraid for her because he had seen too many women die during and after giving birth.  Not that he was likely to assist in the delivery of an imperial concubine – or any noblewoman, for that matter.  Such births were handled by midwives, occasionally with the advice of old men.  But he had helped poor women give birth in hovels where no one cared that he was young and male, and he would never forget the bleeding that no art of his could stop.  The only time he had seen more blood well forth from a human body had been on the battlefield.  In either case, there had been no surviving such wounds.  And that child Toshiko was much less sturdily built than those poor women had been.

“Master?” Otori called him to his morning rice, and he walked back to the house.  She always brought his bowl of hot gruel to his room there.  He usually gulped it down while checking his medical texts or making notes about the treatment of his patients that day.

Today he had no difficult cases, and his mind was on other things.  Instead of eating, he sat down and looked around his room.  In his modest dwelling, he was surrounded by the things that had given him pleasure and contentment for the past five years.

His medical books and scrolls of illustrations were neatly stacked on shelves, interspersed with the tools of his profession: sets of silver needles used in acupuncture, silver spatulas in many sizes for probing the body’s orifices, an ivory doll with which he explained the seat of the disease to the patient and his family, and on which the patient could point out the location of the pain.

But in his mind was more than medical knowledge.  His studies at the university had opened a world to him unlike any the warriors in his family would ever have understood: poetry, music – he played the flute and was passably adept on the zither – painting, and the pursuit of those unseen forces of fate, the incredible intricacies of horoscopes which lead to the making and reading of calendars, the language of dreams and omens, and most of all the behavior of his fellow humans.

To this he had since added a familiarity with plants and with the small creatures he encountered in his daily life: the cats and dogs of the neighborhood, and the birds, mice, beetles, spiders, bees, and fish of his garden.

His solitary life had seemed full until now.  He used to feel passion and joy in observation, experiment, and discovery.  He had been happy and his life in harmony with the universe.  Now nothing would satisfy him but the girl from the palace.

As a physician, he recognized his symptoms as a form of disease.  It was unnatural for a man in his mid-twenties with a fulfilling profession and a rich and useful life to yearn for a fourteen-year-old girl.  He had never needed women before, except for the occasional visit to a courtesan when his physical well-being required it.  Physical needs could be satisfied quite easily with such women, but the very thought of lying with Toshiko made him uncomfortable.  It seemed as unnatural as if she were his sister or daughter.  Clearly his condition was abnormal, disharmonious, even culpable.

Otori returned for the bowl and saw that he had not touched the gruel.

“What’s the matter?” she snapped with the easy familiarity of a family member.  “You don’t like it?  Or are you ailing with something?”

“No,” he said listlessly, shoving the bowl toward her.  “I’m not hungry.”

“Not hungry!”  Her sharp eyes fixed him.  “It’s no life for a man,” she said, wagging her finger.  “Work, work, work, and never any joy.  When will you take a wife and play with your own children the way you play with the neighbor’s brats?”

He had heard the speech before and ignored it.  “I’m seeing His Majesty’s cook this morning,” he said, getting up.  “If someone calls, tell them I’ll be back soon or take a message.”

“Don’t I always?” she grumbled.  “Better wear your good robe if you’re going to the palace.  You never know who’ll see you.  It wouldn’t hurt to get a few noble patients for a change.”

That, too, was a familiar complaint.  Since his income came from his family’s estates, he did not have to rely on his fees as a physician and, to her mind, he treated far too many poor people for free.  A steady trickle of unsavory characters frequented his house, and she was convinced that this detracted from his reputation.  About this, at least, she was quite right.  People think that a man who works among filthy and disease-riddled beggars and prostitutes cannot be an able physician, and worse, that he is likely to bring their diseases into the houses of his paying patients.

But one of his university professors had recommended him to someone on the retired Emperor’s staff, and here he was: physician to the Emperor’s cook.

Obediently, he changed into a silk robe and put on his court hat.  His full trousers were dark about the bottom from the dew-covered garden, but they would dry, and the old water stains were hardly noticeable among the pattern of small blossoms.  Taking up his case, he left the house.

He did not get very far.  A small boy was lying in wait for him and rushed up to seize the doctor’s free hand with his small, grimy one.  “Come,” he cried, pulling him toward a malodorous tenement.

The doctor resisted.  The child barely reached his waist.

“Please, Doctor,” the boy cried, “please take a look at her.  Just a little look.  She’s not eating anything and she throws up all the time.”

No use pointing out that people don’t vomit what they haven’t swallowed.  Doctor Yamada held his breath as he ducked into the small, dark hole where a woman was lying on a straw pallet, covered with a ragged piece of cloth.  She looked up at him from dull eyes in a worn, middle-aged face.  But poverty and illness add years, and he was not surprised when she told him that she was only twenty years old.  There was no one else except her son.  Yamada did not ask, but the boy’s father had probably left, if he had ever shared a roof with them.  Three other children had died, she said.  Now there were only the two of them.  She told him these things pleadingly, with a glance at her son.  Yamada thought: only twenty, and four children already?  The poor started young and burned out quickly.  The “vomiting” was not from food.  She was bringing up blood and would die soon.  But he left her medicine and some money for nourishing soup and wine to give her strength.  And he told the child where to find him.