year, and when you can't get out into the country you feel like giving up.
Do you hear me, neighbor?"
He could make out every word. It embarrassed the woman that, so
near at hand, there should be this clamor of preparation as people set forth
on their sad little enterprises. Had she been one of the stylish ladies of the
world, she would have wanted to shrivel up and disappear. She was a
placid sort, however, and she seemed to take nothing, painful or embar-
rassing or unpleasant, too seriously. Her manner elegant and yet girlish,
she did not seem to know what the rather awful clamor up and down the
street might mean. He much preferred this easygoing bewilderment to a
show of consternation, a face scarlet with embarrassment. As if at his very
pillow, there came the booming of a foot pestle, more fearsome than the
stamping of the thunder god, genuinely earsplitting. He did not know
what device the sound came from, but he did know that it was enough to
awaken the dead. From this direction and that there came the faint thump
of fulling hammers against coarse cloth; and mingled with it--these were
sounds to call forth the deepest emotions--were the calls of geese flying
overhead. He slid a door open and they looked out. They had been lying
near the veranda. There were tasteful clumps of black bamboo just outside
and the dew shone as in more familiar places. Autumn insects sang busily,
as if only inches from an ear used to wall crickets at considerable distances.
It was all very clamorous, and also rather wonderful. Countless details
could be overlooked in the singleness of his affection for the girl. She was
pretty and fragile in a soft, modest cloak of lavender and a lined white
robe. She had no single feature that struck him as especially beautiful, and
yet, slender and fragile, she seemed so delicately beautiful that he was
almost afraid to hear her voice. He might have wished her to be a little
more assertive, but he wanted only to be near her, and yet nearer.
"Let's go off somewhere and enjoy the rest of the night. This is too
much."
"But how is that possible?" She spoke very quietly. "You keep taking
me by surprise."
There was a newly confiding response to his offer of his services as
guardian in this world and the next. She was a strange little thing. He
found it hard to believe that she had had much experience of men. He no
longer cared what people might think. He asked Ukon to summon his man,
who got the carriage ready. The women of the house, though uneasy,
sensed the depth of his feelings and were inclined to put their trust in him.
Dawn approached. No cocks were crowing. There was only the voice
of an old man making deep obeisance to a Buddha, in preparation, it would
seem, for a pilgrimage to Mitake. He seemed to be prostrating himself
repeatedly and with much difficulty. All very sad. In a life itself like the
morning dew, what could he desire so earnestly?
"Praise to the Messiah to come," intoned the voice.
"Listen," said Genji. "He is thinking of another world.
"This pious one shall lead us on our way
As we plight our troth for all the lives to come."
The vow exchanged by the Chinese emperor and Yang Kuei-fei
seemed to bode ill, and so he preferred to invoke Lord Maitreya, the
Buddha of the Future; but such promises are rash.
"So heavy the burden I bring with me from the past,
I doubt that I should make these vows for the future."
It was a reply that suggested doubts about his "lives to come."
The moon was low over the western hills. She was reluctant to go with
him. As he sought to persuade her, the moon suddenly disappeared behind
clouds in a lovely dawn sky. Always in a hurry to be off before daylight
exposed him, he lifted her easily into his carriage and took her to a nearby
villa. Ukon was with them. Waiting for the caretaker to be summoned,
Genji looked up at the rotting gate and the ferns that trailed thickly down
over it. The groves beyond were still dark, and the mist and the dews were
heavy. Genji's sleeve was soaking, for he had raised the blinds of the
carriage.
"This is a novel adventure, and I must say that it seems like a lot of
trouble.
"And did it confuse them too, the men of old,
This road through the dawn, for me so new and strange?
"How does it seem to you?"
She turned shyly away.
"And is the moon, unsure of the hills it approaches,
Foredoomed to lose its way in the empty skies?
"I am afraid."
She did seem frightened, and bewildered. She was so used to all those
swarms of people, he thought with a smile.
The carriage was brought in and its traces propped against the veranda
while a room was made ready in the west wing. Much excited, Ukon was
thinking about earlier adventures. The furious energy with which the
caretaker saw to preparations made her suspect who Genji was. It was
almost daylight when they alighted from the carriage. The room was clean
and pleasant, for all the haste with which it had been readied.
"There are unfortunately no women here to wait upon His Lordship."
The man, who addressed him through Ukon, was a lesser steward who had
served in the Sanjo~ mansion of Genji's father-in-law. "Shall I send for
someone?"
"The last thing I want. I came here because I wanted to be in complete
solitude, away from all possible visitors. You are not to tell a soul."
The man put together a hurried breakfast, but he was, as he had said,
without serving women to help him.
Genji told the girl that he meant to show her a love as dependable as
"the patient river of the loons." He could do little else in these strange
lodgings.
The sun was high when he arose. He opened the shutters. All through
the badly neglected grounds not a person was to be seen. The groves were
rank and overgrown. The flowers and grasses in the foreground were a
drab monotone, an autumn moor. The pond was choked with weeds, and
all in all it was a forbidding place. An outbuilding seemed to be fitted with
rooms for the caretaker, but it was some distance away.
"It is a forbidding place," said Genji. "But I am sure that whatever
devils emerge will pass me by."
He was still in disguise. She thought it unkind of him to be so secre-
tive, and he had to agree that their relationship had gone beyond such
furtiveness.
"Because of one chance meeting by the wayside
The flower now opens in the evening dew.
"And how does it look to you?"
"The face seemed quite to shine in the evening dew,
But I was dazzled by the evening light."
Her eyes turned away. She spoke in a whisper.
To him it may have seemed an interesting poem.
As a matter of fact, she found him handsomer than her poem sug-
gested, indeed frighteningly handsome, given the setting.
"I hid my name from you because I thought it altogether too unkind
of you to be keeping your name from me. Do please tell me now. This
silence makes me feel that something awful might be coming."
"Call me the fisherman's daughter." Still hiding her name, she was
like a little child.
"I see. I brought it all on myself? A case of warekara?"
And so, sometimes affectionately, sometimes reproachfully, they
talked the hours away.
Koremitsu had found them out and brought provisions. Feeling a little
guilty about the way he had treated Ukon, he did not come near. He
thought it amusing that Genji should thus be wandering the streets, and
concluded that the girl must provide sufficient cause. And he could have
had her himself, had he not been so generous.
Genji and the girl looked out at an evening sky of the utmost calm.
Because she found the darkness in the recesses of the house frightening,
he raised the blinds at the veranda and they lay side by side. As they gazed
at each other in the gathering dusk, it all seemed very strange to her,
unbelievably strange. Memories of past wrongs quite left her. She was
more at ease with him now, and he thought her charming. Beside him all
through the day, starting up in fright at each little noise, she seemed
delightfully childlike. He lowered the shutters earl y and had lights
brought.
"You seem comfortable enough with me, and yet you raise difficul-
ties."
At court everyone would be frantic. Where would the search be di-
rected? He thought what a strange love it was, and he thought of the
turmoil the Rokujo~ lady was certain to be in. She had every right to be
resentful, and yet her jealous ways were not pleasant. It was that sad lady
to whom his thoughts first turned. Here was the girl beside him, so simple
and undemanding; and the other was so impossibly forceful in her de-
mands. How he wished he might in some measure have his freedom.
It was past midnight. He had been asleep for a time when an exceed-
ingly beautiful woman appeared by his pillow.
"You do not even think of visiting me, when you are so much on my
mind. Instead you go running off with someone who has nothing to recom-
mend her, and raise a great stir over her. It is cruel, intolerable." She
seemed about to shake the girl from her sleep. He awoke, feeling as if he
were in the power of some malign being. The light had gone out. In great
alarm, he pulled his sword to his pillow and awakened Ukon. She too
seemed frightened.
"Go out to the gallery and wake the guard. Have him bring a light."
"It's much too dark."
He forced a smile. "You're behaving like a child."
He clapped his hands and a hollow echo answered. No one seemed to
hear. The girl was trembling violently. She was bathed in sweat and as if
in a trance, quite bereft of her senses.
"She is such a timid little thing," said Ukon, "frightened when there
is nothing at all to be frightened of. This must be dreadful for her."
Yes, poor thing, thought Genji. She did seem so fragile, and she had
spent the whole day gazing up at the sky.
"I'll go get someone. What a frightful echo. You stay here with her."
He pulled Ukon to the girl's side.
The lights in the west gallery had gone out. There was a gentle wind.
He had few people with him, and they were asleep. They were three in
number: a young man who was one of his intimates and who was the son
of the steward here, a court page, and the man who had been his intermedi-
ary in the matter of the "evening faces." He called out. Someone answered
and came up to him.
"Bring a light. Wake the other, and shout and twang your bowstrings.
What do you mean, going to sleep in a deserted house? I believe Lord
Koremitsu was here."
"He was. But he said he had no orders and would come again at
dawn."
An elite guardsman, the man was very adept at bow twanging. He
went off with a shouting as of a fire watch. At court, thought Genji, the
courtiers on night duty would have announced themselves, and the guard
would be changing. It was not so very late.
He felt his way back inside. The girl was as before, and Ukon lay face
down at her side.
"What is this? You're a fool to let yourself be so frightened. Are you
worried about the fox spirits that come out and play tricks in deserted
houses? But you needn't worry. They won't come near me." He pulled her
to her knees.
"I'm not feeling at all well. That's why I was lying down. My poor
lady must be terrified."
"She is indeed. And I can't think why."
He reached for the girl. She was not breathing. He lifted her and she
was limp in his arms. There was no sign of life. She had seemed as defense-
less as a child, and no doubt some evil power had taken possession of her.
He could think of nothing to do. A man came with a torch. Ukon was not
prepared to move, and Genji himself pulled up curtain frames to hide the
girl.
"Bring the light closer."
It was most a unusual order. Not ordinarily permitted at Genji's side,
the man hesitated to cross the threshold.
"Come, come, bring it here! There is a time and place for ceremony."
In the torchlight he had a fleeting glimpse of a figure by the girl's
pillow. It was the woman in his dream. It faded away like an apparition
in an old romance. In all the fright and honor, his confused thoughts
centered upon the girl. There was no room for thoughts of himself.
He knelt over her and called out to her, but she was cold and had
stopped breathing. It was too horrible. He had no confidant to whom he
could turn for advice. It was the clergy one thought of first on such
occasions. He had been so brave and confident, but he was young, and this
was too much for him. He clung to the lifeless body.
"Come back, my dear, my dear. Don't do this awful thing to me." But
she was cold and no longer seemed human.
The first paralyzing terror had left Ukon. Now she was writhing and
wailing. Genji remembered a devil a certain minister had encountered in
the Grand Hall.
"She can't possibly be dead." He found the strength to speak sharply.
"All this noise in the middle of the night--you must try to be a little
quieter." But it had been too sudden.
He turned again to the torchbearer. "There is someone here who
seems to have had a very strange seizure. Tell your friend to find out where
Lord Koremitsu is spending the night and have him come immediately. If
the holy man is still at his mother's house, give him word, very quietly,
that he is to come too. His mother and the people with her are not to hear.
She does not approve of this sort of adventure."
