"There is a kind of informality that can suggest a certain shallow-
ness.
He smiled. It was a point well taken. Sensing that her mother had
come forward, he brought himself to attention.
"My days have been uninterrupted gloom, and that may be why I
<P 656>
have not been feeling well." She did indeed seem to be unwell. "I have
been unable to think what to do next. You are very kind to come calling
so often."
"Your grief is quite understandable, but you should not let it get the
better of you. Everything is determined in other lives, everything has its
time and goes."
The princess seemed to be a more considerable person than he had
been led to expect. She had had wretched luck, belittled in the first instance
for having married beneath her and now for having been left a widow. He
thought he might find her interesting, and questioned the mother with
some eagerness. He did not expect great beauty, but one could be fond of
any lady who was not repulsively ugly. Beauty could sometimes make a
man forget himself, and the more important thing was an equable disposi-
tion.
"You must learn to tell yourself that I am as near as he once was." His
manner fell short of the insinuating, perhaps, but his earnestness did carry
overtones all the same.
He was very imposing and dignified in casual court dress.
"His Lordship had a gentle sort of charm," one of the women would
seem to have whispered to another. "There was no one quite like him,
really, for quiet charm and elegance. But just see this gentleman, so vigor-
ous and manly, all aglow with good looks. You want to squeal with delight
the minute you set eyes on him. There was no one like the other gentleman
and there can't be many like this one either. If we need someone to look
after us, well, we couldn't do much better."
"The grass first greens on the general's grave," he said to himself,
very softly.
There was no one, in a world of sad happenings near and remote, who
did not regret Kashiwagi's passing. Besides the more obvious virtues, he
had been possessed of a most extraordinary gentleness and sensitivity, and
even rather improbable courtiers and women, even very old women,
remembered him with affection and sorrow. The emperor felt the loss very
keenly, especially when there were concerts. "If only Kashiwagi were
here." The remark became standard on such occasions. Genji felt sadder
as time went by. For him the little boy was a memento he could share with
no one else. In the autumn the boy began crawling about on hands and
knees.
<W Murasaki Shikibu>{Translated by Edward G.Seidensticker}
<T The Tale of Genji>
<K 4>
<C 37>{The Flute}
<N 1>
<P 657>
Many still mourned Kashiwagi, who had vanished before his time. Genji
tended to feel very deeply the deaths even of people who had been nothing
to him, and he had been fond of Kashiwagi and had made him a constant
companion. It is true that he had good reason to be angry, but the fond
memories were stronger than the resentment. He commissioned a sutra
reading on the anniversary of the death. And he was consumed with pity
for the little boy, whose agent he secretly thought himself as he made a
special offering of a hundred pieces of gold. To~ no Chu~jo~ was very
grateful, though of course he did not know Genji's real reasons.
Yu~giri too made lavish offerings and commissioned his own memorial
services. He was especially attentive to the Second Princess, more so,
indeed, than her brothers-in-law. How generous he was, said Kashiwagi's
parents, far more generous than they had any right to expect. But these
evidences of the esteem in which the world had held their dead son only
added to the bitterness of the regret.
<N 2>
The Suzaku emperor now worried about his second daughter, whose
plight was no doubt the object of much malicious laughter. And his third
daughter had become a nun, and cut herself off from the pleasures of
ordinary life. The disappointment was in both cases very cruel. He had
resolved, however, to concern himself no more with the affairs of this
vulgar world, and he held his peace. He would think, in the course of his
<P 658>
devotions, that the Third Princess would be at hers. Since she had taken
her vows he had found numerous small occasions for writing to her.
Thinking the mountain harvests rather wonderful, the bamboo shoots that
thrust their way up through the undergrowth of a thicket near his retreat,
the taro root from deeper in the mountains, he sent them off to the Third
Princess with an affectionate letter at the end of which he said:
"My people make their way with great difficulty through the misty
spring hills, and here, the merest token, is what I asked them to gather for
you.
"Away from the world, you follow after me,
And may we soon arrive at the same destination.
"It is not easy to leave the world behind."
Genji came upon her in tears. He wondered why she should have
these bowls ranged before her, and then saw the letter and gifts. He was
much moved. The Suzaku emperor had written most feelingly of his long-
ing and his inability, when life was so uncertain, to see her as he would
wish. "May we soon arrive at the same destination." He would not have
called it a notable statement, but the priestly succinctness was very effec-
tive all the same. Evidences of Genji's indifference had no doubt added to
the emperor's worries.
Shyly the Third Princess set about composing her answer. She gave
the messenger a figured blue-gray robe. Genji took up a scrap of paper half
hidden under her curtains and found something written on it in a childlike,
uncertain hand.
"Longing for a place not of this world,
May I not join you in your mountain dwelling?"
"He worries so about you," said Genji. "It is not kind of you to say
these things."
She turned away from him. The still-rich hair at her forehead and the
girlish beauty of her profile seemed very sad. Because the sadness was
urging him towards something he might regret and be taken to task for,
he pulled a curtain between them, trying very hard all the same not to seem
distant or chilly.
<N 3>
The little boy, who had been with his nurse, emerged from her cur-
tains. Very pretty indeed, he tugged purposefully at Genji's sleeve. He was
wearing a robe of white gossamer and a red chemise of a finely figured
Chinese weave. All tangled up in his skirts, he seemed bent on divesting
himself of these cumbersome garments and had stripped himself naked to
the waist. Though of course it is the sort of thing all little children do, he
was so pretty in his dishabille that Genji was reminded of a doll carved
from a newly stripped willow. The shaven head had the blue-black tinge
of the dewflower, and the lips were red and full. Already there was a sort
<P 659>
of quelling repose about the eyes. Genji was strongly reminded of Ka-
shiwagi, but not even Kashiwagi had had such remarkable good looks.
How was one to explain them? There was scarcely any resemblance at all
to the Third Princess. Genji thought of his own face as he saw it in the
mirror, and was not sure that a comparison of the two was ridiculous. Able
to walk a few steps, the boy tottered up to a bowl of bamboo shoots. He
bit at one and, having rejected it, scattered them in all directions.
"What vile manners! Do something, someone. Get them away from
him. These women are not kind, sir, and they will already be calling you
a little glutton. Will that please you?" He took the child in his arms. "Don't
you notice something rather different about his eyes? I have not seen great
numbers of children, but I would have thought that at his age they are
children and no more, one very much like another. But he is such an
individual that he worries me. We have a little princess in residence, and
he may be her ruination and his Own. Will I live, I wonder, to watch them
grow up?'If we wish to see them we have but to stay alive.'" He was
gazing earnestly at the little boy.
<P 660>
"Please, my lord. That is as good as inviting bad luck," said one of the
women.
Just cutting his teeth, the boy had found a good teething object. He
dribbled furiously as he bit at a bamboo shoot.
"I see that his desires take him in a different direction," Genji said,
laughing.
"We cannot forget unpleasant associations.
We do not discard the young bamboo even so."
He parted child and bamboo, but the boy only laughed and went on
about Iris business.
<N 4>
He was more beautiful by the day, so beautiful that people were a
little afraid for him. Genji was beginning to think that it might in fact be
possible to "forget unpleasant associations." It had been predestined, no
doubt, that such a child be born, and there had been no escaping them. But
so often in his life thoughts about predestination had failed to make actual
events more acceptable. Of all the ladies in his life the Third Princess had
had the most to recommend her. The bitterness surged forward once more
and the transgression seemed very hard to excuse.
Yu~giri still thought a great deal about Kashiwagi's last words. He
wanted to see how they might affect Genji. But of course he had very little
to go on, and it would not be easy to think of the right questions. He could
only wait and hope that he might one day have the whole truth, and a
chance to tell Genji of Kashiwagi's dying thoughts.
<N 5>
On a sad autumn evening he visited the Second Princess. She had
apparently been having a quiet evening with her music. He was shown to
a south room where instruments and music still lay scattered about. The
rustling of silk and the rich perfume as a lady who had been out near the
south veranda withdrew to the inner rooms had a sort of mysterious
elegance that he found very exciting. It was the princess's mother who as
usual came out to receive him. For a time they exchanged reminiscences.
Yu~giri's own house was noisy and crowded and he was used to troops of
unruly children. The Ichijo~ house was by contrast quiet and even lonely.
Though the garden had been neglected, an air of courtly refinement still
hung over house and garden alike. The flower beds caught the evening
light in a profusion of bloom and the humming of autumn insects was as
he had imagined it in an earlier season. He reached for a Japanese koto.
Tuned now to a minor key, it seemed to have been much favored and still
held the scent of the most recent player. This was no place, he thought,
for the impetuous sort of young man. Unworthy impulses could too easily
have their way, and the gossips something to amuse themselves with. Very
competently, he played a strain on the koto he had so often heard Ka-
shiwagi play.
<P 661>
"What a delight it was to hear him," he said to the princess's mother.
"Dare I imagine that an echo of his playing might still be in the instrument,
and that Her Highness might be persuaded to bring it out for us?"
"But the strings are broken, and she seems to have forgotten all that
she ever knew. I am told that when His Majesty had his daughters at their
instruments he did not think her the least talented of them. But so much
time has gone by since she last had much heart for music, and I am afraid
that it would only be cause to remember."
"Yes, one quite understands. 'Were it a world which puts an end to
sorrow.'" Looking out over the garden, he pushed the koto towards the
old lady.
"No, please. Let me hear more, so that I may decide whether an echo
of his playing does indeed still remain in the instrument. Let it take away
the unhappy sounds of more recent days."
"But it is the sound of the middle string that is important. I cannot
hope to have it from my own hand."
He pushed the koto under the princess's blinds, but she did not seem
inclined to take it. He did not press her.
The moon had come out in a cloudless sky. And what sad, envious
thoughts would the calls of the wild geese, each wing to wing with its
mate, be summoning up? The breeze was chilly. In the autumn sadness she
played a few notes, very faintly and tentatively, on a Chinese koto. He was
deeply moved, but wished that he had heard more or nothing at all. Taking
up a lute, he softly played the Chinese lotus song with all its intimate
overtones.
"I would certainly not wish to seem forward, but I had hoped that you
might have something to say in the matter."
But it was a melody that brought inhibitions, and she kept her sad
thoughts to herself.
"There is a shyness which is more affecting
Than any sound of word or sound of koto."
Her response was to play the last few measures of the Chinese song.
<P 662>
She added a poem:
"I feel the sadness, in the autumn night.
How can I speak of it if not through the koto?"
He was resentful that he had heard so little. The solemn tone of the
Japanese koto, the melody which the one now gone had so earnestly taught
her, were as they had always been, and yet there was something chilling,
almost menacing in them.
"Well, I have plucked away on this instrument and that and kept my
feelings no secret. My old friend is perhaps reproving me for having
enjoyed so much of the autumn night with you. I shall come again, though
you may be sure that I shall do nothing to upset you. Will you leave our
koto as it is until then? People do have a way of thinking thoughts about
a koto and about a lady." And so he left hints, not too extremely broad,
