The medium was now weeping and flinging her hair madly about. "Go
away, all of you. I want a word with Lord Genji and it must be with him
alone. All these prayers and chants all these months have been an un-
relieved torment. I have wanted you to suffer as I have suffered. But then
I saw that I had brought you to the point of death and I pitied you, and
so I have come out into the open. I am no longer able to seem indifferent,
though I am the wretch you see. It is precisely because the old feelings have
not died that I have come to this. I had resolved to let myself be known
to no one."
<P 618>
He had seen it before. The old terror and anguish came back. He took
the little medium by the hand lest she do something violent.
"Is it really you? I have heard that foxes and other evil creatures
sometimes go mad and seek to defame the dead. Tell me who you are, quite
plainly. Or give me a sign, something that will be meaningless to others
but unmistakable to me. Then I will try to believe you."
Weeping copiously and speaking in a loud wail, the medium seemed
at the same time to cringe with embarrassment.
"I am horribly changed, and you pretend not to know me. You are the
same. Oh dreadful, dreadful."
Even in these wild rantings there was a suggestion of the old aloof-
ness. It added to the horror. He wanted to hear no more.
But there was more. "From up in the skies I saw what you did for my
daughter and was pleased. But it seems to be a fact that the ways of the
living are not the ways of the dead and that the feeling of mother for child
is weakened. I have gone on thinking you the cruelest of men. I heard you
tell your dear lady what a difficult and unpleasant person you once found
me, and the resentment was worse than when you insulted me to my face
and finally abandoned me. I am dead, and I hoped that you had forgiven
<P 619>
me and would defend me against those who spoke ill of me and say that
it was none of it true. The hope was what twisted a twisted creature more
cruelly and brought this horror. I do not hate her; but the powers have
shielded you and only let me hear your voice in the distance. Now this has
happened. Pray for me. Pray that my sins be forgiven. These services, these
holy texts, they are an unremitting torment, they are smoke and flames,
and in the roar and crackle I cannot hear the holy word. Tell my child of
my torments. Tell her that she is never to fall into rivalries with other
ladies, never to be a victim of jealousy. Her whole attention must go to
atoning for the sins of her time at Ise, far from the Good Law. I am sorry
for everything."
It was not a dialogue which he wished to pursue. He had the little
medium taken away and Murasaki quietly moved to another room.
The crowds swarming through the house seemed themselves to bode
ill. All the high courtiers had been off watching the return procession from
the Kamo Shrine and it was on their own way home that they heard the
news.
"What a really awful thing," said someone, and there was no doubting
the sincerity of the words. "A light that should for every reason have gone
on shining has been put out, and we are left in a world of drizzling rain."
But someone else whispered: "It does not do to be too beautiful and
virtuous. You do not live long. 'Nothing in this world would be their rival,'
the poet said. He was talking about cherry blossoms, of course, but it is
so with her too. When such a lady lives to know all the pleasures and
successes, her fellows must suffer. Maybe now the Third Princess will
enjoy some of the attention that should have been hers all along. She has
not had an easy time of it, poor thing."
Not wanting another such day, Kashiwagi had ridden off with several
of his brothers to watch the return procession. The news of course came
as a shock. They turned towards Nijo~.
"Nothing is meant in this world to last forever," he whispered to
himself. He went in as if inquiring after her health, for it had after all been
only a rumor. The wailing and lamenting proclaimed that it must be true.
Prince Hyo~bu had arrived and gone inside and was too stunned to
receive him. A weeping Yu~giri came out.
"How is she? I heard these awful reports and was unable to believe
them, though I had of course known of her illness."
"Yes, she has been very ill for a very long time. This morning at dawn
she stopped breathing. But it seems to have been a possession. I am told
<P 620>
that although she has revived and everyone is enormously relieved the
crisis has not yet passed. We are still very worried."
His eyes were red and swollen. It was his own unhappy love, perhaps,
that made Kashiwagi look curiously at his friend, wondering why he
should grieve so for a stepmother of whom he had not seen a great deal.
"She was dangerously ill," Genji sent out to the crowds. "This morn-
ing quite suddenly it appeared that she had breathed her last. The shock,
I fear, was such that we were all quite deranged and given over to loud and
unbecoming grief. I have not myself been as calm and in control of things
as I ought to have been. I will thank you properly at another time for
having been so good as to call."
It would not have been possible for Kashiwagi to visit Rokujo~ except
in such a crisis. He was in acute discomfort even so--evidence, no doubt,
of a very bad conscience.
Genji was more worried than before. He commissioned numberless
rites of very great dignity and grandeur. The Rokujo~ lady had done terrible
things while she lived, and what she had now become was utterly horrible.
He even felt uncomfortable about his relations with her daughter, the
Reizei empress. The conclusion was inescapable: women were creatures of
sin. He wanted to be done with them. He could not doubt that it was in
fact the Rokujo~ lady who had addressed him. His remarks about her had
been in an intimate conversation with Murasaki overheard by no one.
Disaster still seemed imminent. He must do what he could to forestall it.
Murasaki had so earnestly pleaded to become a nun. He thought that
tentative vows might give her strength and so he permitted a token tonsure
and ordered that the five injunctions be administered. There were noble
and moving phrases in the sermon describing the admirable power of the
injunctions. Weeping and hovering over Murasaki quite without regard for
appearances, Genji too invoked the holy name. There are crises that can
unsettle the most superior of men. He wanted only to save her, to have
her still beside him, whatever the difficulties and sacrifices. The sleepless
nights had left him dazed and emaciated.
Murasaki was better, but still in pain through the Fourth Month. It
was now the rainy Fifth Month, when the skies are their most capricious.
Genji commissioned a reading of the Lotus Sutra in daily installments and
other solemn services as well towards freeing the Rokujo~ lady of her sins.
At Murasaki's bedside there were continuous readings by priests of good
voice. From time to time the Rokujo~ lady would make dolorous utterances
through the medium, but she refused all requests that she go away.
Murasaki was troubled with a shortness of breath and seemed even
weaker as the warm weather came on. Genji was in such a state of distrac-
tion that Murasaki, ill though she was, sought to comfort him. She would
have no regrets if she were to die, but she did not want it to seem that she
did not care. She forced herself to take broth and a little food and from
the Sixth Month she was able to sit up. Genji was delighted but still very
worried. He stayed with her at Nijo~.
<P 621>
The Third Princess had been unwell since that shocking visitation.
There were no specific complaints or striking symptoms. She felt vaguely
indisposed and that was all. She had eaten very little for some weeks and
was pale and thin. Unable to contain himself, Kashiwagi would sometimes
come for visits as fleeting as dreams. She did not welcome them. She was
so much in awe of Genji that to rank the younger man beside him seemed
almost blasphemous. Kashiwagi was an amiable and personable young
man, and people who were no more than friends were quite right to think
him superior; but she had known the incomparable Genji since she was a
child and Kashiwagi scarcely seemed worth a glance. She thought herself
very badly treated indeed that he should be the one to make her unhappy.
Her nurse and a few others knew the nature of her indisposition and
grumbled that Genji's visits were so extremely infrequent. He did finally
come to inquire after her.
It was very warm. Murasaki had had her hair washed and otherwise
sought renewal. Since she was in bed with her hair spread about her, it was
not quick to dry. It was smooth and without a suggestion of a tangle to
the farthest ends. Her skin was lovely, so white that it almost seemed
iridescent, as if a light were shining through. She was very beautiful and
as fragile as the shell of a locust.
The Nijo~ mansion had been neglected and was somewhat run-down,
and compared to the Rokujo~ mansion it seemed very cramped and narrow.
Taking advantage of a few days when she was somewhat more herself,
Genji sent gardeners to clear the brook and restore the flower beds, and
the suddenly renewed expanse before her made Murasaki marvel that she
should be witness to such things. The lake was very cool, a carpet of
lotuses. The dew on the green of the pads was like a scattering of jewels.
"Just look, will you," said Genji. "As if it had a monopoly on coolness.
I cannot tell you how pleased I am that you have improved so." She was
sitting up and her pleasure in the scene was quite open. There were tears
in his eyes. "I was almost afraid at times that I too might be dying."
She was near tears herself.
"It is a life in which we cannot be sure
Of lasting as long as the dew upon the lotus."
And he replied:
"To be as close as the drops of dew on the lotus
Must be our promise in this world and the next."
Though he felt no great eagerness to visit Rokujo~, it had been some
time since he had learned of the Third Princess's indisposition. Her brother
and father would probably have heard of it too. They would think his
inability to leave Murasaki rather odd and his failure to take advantage of
a break in the rains even odder.
The princess looked away and did not answer his questions. Interpret-
<P 622>
ing her silence as resentment at his long absence, he set about reasoning
with her.
He called some of her older women and made detailed inquiries about
her health.
"She is in an interesting condition, as they say."
"Really, now! And at this late date! I couldn't be more surprised."
It was his general want of success in fathering children that made the
news so surprising. Ladies he had been with for a very long while had
remained childless. He thought her sweet and pathetic and did not pursue
the matter. Since it had taken him so long to collect himself for the visit,
he could not go back to Nijo~ immediately. He stayed with her for several
days. Murasaki was always on his mind, however, and he wrote her letter
after letter.
"He certainly has thought of a great deal to say in a very short time,"
grumbled a woman who did not know that her lady was the more culpable
party. "It does not seem like a marriage with the firmest sort of founda-
tions."
Kojiju~ was frantic with worry.
Hearing that Genji was at Rokujo~, Kashiwagi was a victim of a jeal-
<P 623>
ousy that might have seemed out of place. He wrote a long letter to the
Third Princess describing his sorrows. Kojiju~ took advantage of a moment
when Genji was in another part of the house to show her the letter.
"Take it away. It makes me feel worse." She lay down and refused to
look at it.
"But do just glance for a minute at the beginning here." Kojiju~ un-
folded the letter. "It is very sad."
Someone was coming. She pulled the princess's curtains closed and
went off.
It was Genji. In utter confusion, the princess had time only to push
it under the edge of a quilt.
He would be going back to Rokujo~ that evening, said Genji. "You do
not seem so very ill. The lady in the other house is very ill indeed and I
would not want her to think I have deserted her. You are not to pay any
attention to what they might be saying about me. You will presently see
the truth."
So cheerful and even frolicsome at other times, she was subdued and
refused to look at him. It must be that she thought he did not love her.
He lay down beside her and as they talked it was evening. He was awak-
ened from a nap by a clamor of evening cicadas.
"It will soon be dark," he said, getting up to change clothes.
"Can you not stay at least until you have the moon to guide
you?"
She seemed so very young. He thought her charming. At least until
then--it was a very small request.
"The voice of the evening cicada says you must leave.
'Be moist with evening dews,' you say to my sleeves?"
Something of the cheerful innocence of old seemed to come back. He
sighed and knelt down beside her.
"How do you think it sounds in yonder village,
The cicada that summons me there and summons me here?"
He was indeed pulled in two directions. Finally deciding that it would
be cruel to leave, he stayed the night. Murasaki continued to be very much
on his mind. He went to bed after a light supper.
He was up early, thinking to be on his way while it was still cool.
"I left my fan somewhere. This one is not much good." He searched
