than the words. It spoke to the least sensitive of those present, and it spoke
worlds to her for whom everything these days was vaguely, delicately sad.
She sent a poem to the Akashi lady through little Niou, the Third
Prince:
<P 714>
"I have no regrets as I bid farewell to this life.
Yet the dying away of the fire is always sad."
If the lady's answer seemed somewhat cool and noncommittal, it may
have been because she wished above all to avoid theatrics.
"Our prayers, the first of them borne in on brushwood,
Shall last the thousand years of the Blessed One's toils."
The chanting went on all through the night, and the drums beat
intricate rhythms. As the first touches of dawn came over the sky the scene
was is if made especially for her who so loved the spring. All across the
garden cherries were a delicate veil through spring mists, and bird songs
rose numberless, as if to outdo the flutes. One would have thought that
the possibilities of beauty were here exhausted, and then the dancer on the
stage became the handsome General Ling, and as the dance gathered
momentum and the delighted onlookers stripped off multicolored robes
<P 715>
and showered them upon him, the season and the occasion brought a yet
higher access of beauty. All the finest performers among the princes and
grandees had quite outdone themselves. Looking out upon all this joy and
beauty, Murasaki thought how little time she had left.
<N 3>
She was almost never up for a whole day, and today she was back
in bed again. These were the familiar faces, the people who had gathered
over the years. They had delighted her one last time with flute and koto.
Some had meant more to her than others. She gazed intently at the most
distant of them and thought that she could never have enough of those
who had been her companions at music and the other pleasures of the
seasons. There had been rivalries, of course, but they had been fond of one
another. All of them would soon be gone, making their way down the
unknown road, and she must make her lonely way ahead of them.
The services were over and the other Rokujo~ ladies departed. She was
sure that she would not see them again. She sent a poem to the lady of the
orange blossoms:
"Although these holy rites must be my last,
The bond will endure for all the lives to come."
This was the reply:
"For all of us the time of rites is brief.
More durable by far the bond between us."
They were over, and now they were followed by solemn and continu-
ous readings from the holy writ, including the Lotus Sutra. The Nijo~
mansion had become a house of prayers. When they seemed to do no good
for its ailing lady, readings were commissioned at favored temples and
holy places.
<N 4>
Murasaki had always found the heat very trying. This summer she
was near prostration. Though there were no marked symptoms and though
there was none of the unsightliness that usually goes with emaciation, she
was progressively weaker. Her women saw the world grow dark before
their eyes as they contemplated the future.
Distressed at reports that there was no improvement, the empress
visited Nijo~. She was given rooms in the east wing and Murasaki waited
to receive her in the main hall. Though there was nothing unusual about
the greetings, they reminded Murasaki, as indeed did everything, that the
empress's little children would grow up without her. The attendants an-
nounced themselves one by one, some of them very high courtiers. A
familiar voice, thought Murasaki, and another. She had not seen the em-
<P 716>
press in a very long while and hung on the conversation with fond and
eager attention.
Genji looked in upon them briefly. "You find me disconsolate this
evening," he said to the empress, "a bird turned away from its nest. But
I shall not bore you with my complaints." He withdrew. He was delighted
to see Murasaki out of bed, but feared that the pleasure must be a fleeting
one.
"We are so far apart that I would not dream of troubling you to visit
me, and I fear that it will not be easy for me to visit you."
After a time the Akashi lady came in. The two ladies addressed each
other affectionately, though Murasaki left a great deal unsaid. She did not
want to be one of those who eloquently prepare the world to struggle along
without them. She did remark briefly and quietly upon the evanescence
of things, and her wistful manner said more than her words.
Genji's royal grandchildren were brought in.
"I spend so much time imagining futures for you, my dears. Do you
suppose that I do after all hate to go?"
Still very beautiful, she was in tears. The empress would have liked
to change the subject, but could not think how.
"May I ask a favor?" said Murasaki, very casually, as if she hesitated
to bring the matter up at all. "There are numbers of people who have been
with me for a very long while, and some of them have no home but this.
Might I ask you to see that they are taken care of?" And she gave the
names.
Having commissioned a reading from the holy writ, the empress re-
turned to her rooms.
<N 5>
Little Niou, the prettiest of them all, seemed to be everywhere at once.
Choosing a moment when she was feeling better and there was no one else
with her, she seated him before her.
"I may have to go away. Will you remember me."
"But I don't want you to go away." He gazed up at her, and presently
he was rubbing at his eyes, so charming that she was smiling through her
tears. "I like my granny, better than Father and Mother. I don't want you
to go away."
"This must be your own house when you grow up. I want the rose
plum and the cherries over there to be yours. You must take care of them
and say nice things about them, and sometimes when you think of it you
might put flowers on the altar."
He nodded and gazed up at her, and then abruptly, about to burst into
tears, he got up and ran out. It was Niou and the First Princess whom
Murasaki most hated to leave. They had been her special charges, and she
would not live to see them grow up.
<N 6>
<P 717>
The cool of autumn, so slow to come, was at last here. Though far
from well, she felt somewhat better. The winds were still gentle, but it was
a time of heavy dews all the same. She would have liked the empress to
stay with her just a little while longer but did not want to say so. Messen-
gers had come from the emperor, all of them summoning the empress back
to court, and she did not want to put the empress in a difficult position.
She was no longer able to leave her room, however much she might want
to respect the amenities, and so the empress called on her. Apologetic and
at the same time very grateful, for she knew that this might be their last
meeting, she had made careful preparations for the visit.
Though very thin, she was more beautiful than ever--one would not
have thought it possible. The fresh, vivacious beauty of other years had
asked to be likened to the flowers of this earth, but now there was a
delicate serenity that seemed to go beyond such present similes. For the
empress the slight figure before her, the very serenity bespeaking evanes-
cence, was utter sadness.
Wishing to look at her flowers in the evening light, Murasaki pulled
herself from bed with the aid of an armrest.
Genji came in. "Isn't this splendid? I imagine Her Majesty's visit has
done wonders for you."
How pleased he was at what was in fact no improvement at all--and
how desolate he must soon be!
"So briefly rests the dew upon the _hagi_.
Even now it scatters in the wind."
It would have been a sad evening in any event, and the plight of the
dew even now being shaken from the tossing branches, thought Genji,
must seem to the sick lady very much like her own.
"In the haste we make to leave this world of dew,
May there be no time between the first and last."
He did not try to hide his tears.
And this was the empress's poem:
"A world of dew before the autumn winds.
Not only theirs, these fragile leaves of grass."
Gazing at the two of them, each somehow more beautiful than the
other, Genji wished that he might have them a thousand years just as they
were; but of course time runs against these wishes. That is the great, sad
truth.
"Would you please leave me?" said Murasaki. "I am feeling rather
worse. I do not like to know that I am being rude and find myself unable
to apologize." She spoke with very great difficulty.
The empress took her hand and gazed into her face. Yes, it was indeed
like the dew about to vanish away. Scores of messengers were sent to
<P 718>
commission new services. Once before it had seemed that she was dying,
and Genji hoped that whatever evil spirit it was might be persuaded to
loosen its grip once more. All through the night he did everything that
could possibly be done, but in vain.<N 7> Just as light was coming she faded
away. Some kind power above, he thought, had kept the empress with her
through the night. He might tell himself, as might all the others who had
been with her, that these things have always happened and will continue
to happen, but there are times when the natural order of things is unac-
ceptable. The numbing grief made the world itself seem like a twilight
dream. The women tried in vain to bring their wandering thoughts
together. Fearing for his father, more distraught even than they, Yu~giri had
come to him.
"It seems to be the end," said Genji, summoning him to Murasaki's
curtains. "To be denied one's last wish is a cruel thing. I suppose that their
reverences will have finished their prayers and left us, but someone qual-
ified to administer vows must still be here. We did not do a great deal for
her in this life, but perhaps the Blessed One can be persuaded to turn a
little light on the way she must take into the next. Tell them, please, that
I want someone to give the tonsure. There is still someone with us who
can do it, surely?"
He spoke with studied calm, but his face was drawn and he was
weeping.
"But these evil spirits play very cruel tricks," replied Yu~giri, only
slightly less benumbed than his father. "Don't you suppose the same thing
has happened all over again? Your suggestion is of course quite proper. We
are told that even a day and a night of the holy life brings untold blessings.
But suppose this really is the end--can we hope that anything we do will
throw so very much light on the way she must go? No, let us come to terms
with the sorrow we have before us and try not to make it worse."
But he summoned several of the priests who had stayed on, wishing
to be of service through the period of mourning, and asked them to do
whatever could still be done.
<N 8>
He could congratulate himself on his filial conduct over the years,
upon the fact that he had permitted himself no improper thoughts; but he
had had one fleeting glimpse of her, and he had gone on hoping that he
might one day be permitted another, even as brief, or that he might hear
her voice, even faintly. The second hope had come to nothing, and the
other--if he did not see her now he never would see her. He was in tears
himself, and the room echoed with the laments of the women.
"Do please try to be a little quieter, just for a little while." He lifted
the curtains as he spoke, making it seem that Genji had summoned him.
In the dim morning twilight Genji had brought a lamp near Murasaki's
dead face. He knew that Yu~giri was beside him, but somehow felt that to
screen this beauty from his son's gaze would only add to the anguish.
"Exactly as she was," he whispered. "But as you see, it is all over."
<P 719>
He covered his face. Yu~giri too was weeping. He brushed the tears
away and struggled to see through them as the sight of the dead face
brought them flooding back again. Though her hair had been left untended
through her illness, it was smooth and lustrous and not a strand was out
of place. In the bright lamplight the skin was a purer, more radiant white
than the living lady, seated at her mirror, could have made it. Her beauty,
as if in untroubled sleep, emptied words like "peerless" of all content. He
almost wished that the spirit which seemed about to desert him might be
given custody of the unique loveliness before him.
Since Murasaki's women were none of them up to such practical
matters, Genji forced himself to think about the funeral arrangements. He
had known many sorrows, but none quite so near at hand, demanding that
he and no one else do what must be done. He had known nothing like it,
and he was sure that there would be nothing like it in what remained of
his life.
<N 9>
Everything was finished in the course of the day. We are not permitted
to gaze upon the empty shell of the locust. The wide moor was crowded
with people and carriages. The services were solemn and dignified, and she
ascended to the heavens as the frailest wreath of smoke. It is the way of
<P 720>
things, but it seemed more than anyone should be asked to endure. Helped
to the scene by one or two of his men, he felt as if the earth had given way
beneath him. That such a man could be so utterly defeated, thought the
onlookers; and there was no one among the most insensitive of menials
who was not reduced to tears. For Murasaki's women, it was as if they
were wandering lost in a nightmare. Threatening to fall from their car-
