riages, they put the watchfulness of the grooms to severe test. Genji
remembered the death of his first wife, Yu~giri's mother. Perhaps he had
been in better control of himself then--he could remember that there had
been a clear moon that night. Tonight he was blinded with tears. Murasaki
had died on the fourteenth and it was now the morning of the fif-
teenth. The sun rose clear and the dew had no hiding place. Genji thought
of the world he must return to, bleak and comfortless. How long must he
go on alone? Perhaps he could make grief his excuse for gratifying the old,
old wish and leaving the world behind. But he did not want to be remem-
bered as a weakling. He would wait until the immediate occasion had
passed, he decided, his heart threatening to burst within him.
Yu~giri stayed at his father's side all through the period of mourning.
Genuinely concerned, he did what he could for the desperately grieving
Genji. A high wind came up one evening, and he remembered with a new
onset of sorrow an evening of high winds long before. He had seen her so
briefly, and at her death that brief glimpse had been like a dream. Invoking
the name of Lord Amita~bha, he sought to drive away these almost unbear-
able memories--and to let his tears lose themselves among the beads of his
rosary.
"I remember an autumn evening long ago
As a dream in the dawn when we were left behind."
He set the reverend gentlemen to repeating the holy name and to
reading the Lotus Sutra, very sad and very moving. Still Genji's tears
flowed on. He thought back over his life. Even the face he saw in the mirror
had seemed to single him out for unusual honors, but there had very earl y
been signs that the Blessed One meant him more than others to know the
sadness and evanescence of things. He had made his way ahead in the
world as if he had not learned the lesson. And now had come grief which
surely did single him out from all men, past and future. He would have
nothing more to do with the world. Nothing need stand in the way of his
devotions. Nothing save his uncontrollable grief, which he feared would
not permit him to enter the path he so longed to take. He prayed to
Amita~bha for even a small measure of forgetfulness.
Many had come in person to pay condolences, and there had been
messages from the emperor and countless others, all of them going well
beyond conventional expressions of sympathy. Though he had no heart
<P 721 >
for them, he did not want the world to think him a ruined old man. He
had had a good and eventful life, and he did not want to be numbered
among those who were too weak to go on. And so to grief was added
dissatisfaction at his inability to follow his deepest wishes.
There were frequent messages from To~ no Chu~jo~, who always did the
right thing on sad occasions and who was honestly saddened that such
loveliness should have passed so swiftly. His sister, Yu~giri's mother, had
died at just this time of the year, and so many of the people who had sent
condolences then had themselves died since. There was so very little time
between the first and 1ast. He gazed out into the gathering darkness and
presently set down his thoughts in a long and moving letter which he had
delivered to Genji by one of his sons and which contained this poem:
"It is as if that autumn had come again
And tears for the one were falling on tears for the other."
This was Genji's answer:
"The dews of now are the dews of long ago,
And autumn is always the saddest time of all."
"It is very kind of you to write so often," he added, not wanting his
perceptive friend to guess how thoroughly the loss had undone him. He
wore darker mourning than the gray weeds of that other autumn.
The successful and happy sometimes arouse envy, and sometimes
they let pride and vanity have their way and bring unhappiness to others.
It was not so with Murasaki, whom the meanest of her servants had loved
and the smallest of whose acts had seemed admirable. There was some-
thing uniquely appealing about her, having to do, perhaps, with the fact
that she always seemed to be thinking of others. The wind in the trees and
the insect songs in the grasses brought tears this autumn to the eyes of
many who had not known her, and her intimates wondered when they
might find consolation. The women who had long been with her saw the
life they must live without her as utter bleakness. Some of them, wishing
to be as far as possible from the world, went off into remote mountain
nunneries.
There were frequent messages from Akikonomu, seeking to describe
an infinite sorrow.
"I think that now, finally, I understand.
"She did not like the autumn, that I knew--
Because of the wasted moors that now surround us?"
<P 722>
Hers were the condolences that meant most, the letters that spoke to
Genji through the numbness of his heart. He wept quietly on, lost in a sad
reverie, and took a very long time with his answer.
"Look down upon me from your cloudy summit,
Upon the dying autumn which is my world."
He folded it into an envelope and still held it in his hand. He had taken
residence in the women's quarters, not wanting people to see what a
useless dotard he had become. A very few women with him, he lost
himself in prayer. He and Murasaki had exchanged their vows for a thou-
sand years, and already she had left him. His thoughts must now be on
that other world. The dew upon the lotus: it was what he must strive to
become, and nothing must be allowed to weaken the resolve. Alas, he did
still worry about the name he had made for himself in this world.
Yu~giri took charge of the memorial services. If they had been left to
Genji they would have been managed far less efficiently. He would take
his vows today, Genji told himself; he would take his vows today. Dream-
like, the days went by.
The empress too remained inconsolable.
<W Murasaki Shikibu>{Translated by Edward G.Seidensticker}
<T The Tale of Genji>
<K 4>
<C 41>{The Wizard}
<N 1>
<P 723>
Bright spring was dark this year. There was no relief from the sadness of
the old year. Genji had callers as always, but he said that he was not well
and remained in seclusion. He made an exception for his brother, Prince
Hotaru, whom he invited behind his curtains.
"And why has spring so graciously come to visit
A lodging where there is none to admire the blossoms?"
The prince was in tears as he replied:
"You take me for the usual viewer of blossoms?
If that is so, I seek their fragrance in vain."
He went out to admire the rose plum, and Genji was reminded of other
springs. And who indeed was there to admire these first blossoms? He had
arranged no concerts this year. In very many ways it was unlike the springs
of other years.
<N 2>
The women who had been longest in attendance on Murasaki still
wore dark mourning, and acceptance and resignation still eluded them.
Their one real comfort was that Genji had not gone back to Rokujo~. He
was still here at Nijo~, for them to serve. Although he had had no serious
affairs with any of them, he had favored one and another from time to
time. He might have been expected, in his loneliness, to favor them more
warmly now, but the old desires seemed to have left him. Even the women
on night duty slept outside his curtains. Sometimes, to break the tedium,
<P 724>
he would talk of the old years. He would remember, now that romantic
affairs meant so little to him, how hurt Murasaki had been by involve-
ments of no importance at all. Why had he permitted himself even the
trivial sort of dalliance for which he had felt no need to apologize?
Murasaki had been too astute not to guess his real intentions; and yet,
though she had been quick to recover from fits of jealousy which were
never violent in any event, the fact was that she had suffered. Each little
incident came back, until he felt that he had no room in his heart for them
all. Sometimes a woman would comment briefly on an incident to which
she had been witness, for there were women still with him who had seen
everything.
Murasaki had given not the smallest hint of resentment when the
Third Princess had come into the house. He had known all the same that
she was upset, and he had been deeply upset in his turn. He remembered
the snowy morning, a morning of dark, roiling clouds, when he had been
kept waiting outside her rooms until he was almost frozen. She had re-
ceived him quietly and affectionately and tried to hide her damp sleeves.
All through the wakeful nights he thought of her courage and strength and
longed to have them with him again, even in a dream.
"Just see what a snow we have had!" One of the women seemed to
be returning to her own room. It was snowy dawn, just as then, and he
was alone. That was the tragic difference.
"The snow will soon have left this gloomy world.
My days must yet go on, an aimless drifting."
<N 3>
Having finished his ablutions, he turned as usual to his prayers. A
woman gathered embers from the ashes of the night before and another
brought in a brazier. Chu~nagon and Chu~jo~ were with him.
"Every night is difficult when you are alone, but last night was worse
than most of them. I was a fool not to leave it all behind long ago."
How sad life would be for these women if he were to renounce the
world! His voice rising and falling in the silence of the chapel as he read
from a sutra had always had a strange power to move, unlike any other,
and for the women who served him it now brought tears that were not to
be held back.
"I have always had everything," he said to them. "That was the
station in life I was born to. Yet it has always seemed that I was meant for
sad things too. I have often wondered whether the Blessed One was not
determined to make me see more than others what a useless, insubstantial
world it is. I pretended that I did not see the point, and now as my life
comes to a close I know the ultimate in sorrow. I see and accept my own
inadequacies and the disabilities I brought with me from other lives. There
is nothing, not the slenderest bond, that still ties me to the world. No, that
<P 725>
is not true: there are you who seem so much nearer than when she was
alive. It will be very hard to say goodbye."
He dried his tears and still they flowed on. The women were weeping
so piteously that they could not tell him what sorrow it would be to leave
him.
In sad twilight in the morning and evening he would summon the
women who had meant most to him. He had known Chu~jo~ since she was
a little girl, and would seem to have favored her with discreet attentions.
She had been too fond of Murasaki to let the affair go on for very long,
and he thought of her now, with none of the old desire, as one of Murasa-
ki's favorites, a sort of memento the dead lady had left behind. A pretty,
good-natured woman, she was, so to speak, a yew tree nearer the dead
lady's grave than most.
<N 4>
He saw only the closest intimates. His brothers, good friends among
the high courtiers--they all came calling, but for the most part he declined
to see them. Try though he might to control himself, he feared that his
senility and his crankish ways would shock callers and be what future
generations would remember him by. People might assume, of course, that
his retirement was itself evidence of senility, and that would be a pity; but
it could be far worse to have people actually see him. Even Yu~giri he
addressed through curtains and blinds. He had decided that he would bide
his time until talk of the change in him had stopped and then take holy
orders. He paid very brief calls at Rokujo~, but because the flow of tears was
only more torrential he was presently neglecting the Rokujo~ ladies.
<N 5>
The empress, his daughter, returned to court, leaving little Niou to
keep him company. Niou remembered the instructions his "granny" had
left and was most solicitous of the rose plum at the west wing. Genji
thought it very kind of him, and completely charming. The Second Month
had come, and plum trees in bloom and in bud receded into a delicate mist.
Catching the bright song of a warbler in the rose plum that had been
Murasaki's especial favorite, Genji went out to the veranda.
"The warbler has come again. It does not know
That the mistress of its tree is here no more."
It was high spring and the garden was as it had always been. He tried
not to remember, but everything his eye fell on brought such trains of
memory that he longed to be off in the mountains, where no birds
sing. Tears darkened the yellow cascade of _yamabuki_. In most gardens the
cherry blossoms had fallen. Here at Nijo~ the birch cherry followed the
double cherries and presently it was time for the wisteria. Murasaki had
brought all the spring trees, early and late, into her garden, and each came
into bloom in its turn.
"_My cherry_," said Niou. "Can't we do something to keep it going?
<P 726>
Maybe if we put up curtains all around and fasten them down tight. Then
the wind can't get at it."
He was so pretty and so pleased with his proposal that Genji had to
smile. "You are cleverer by a great deal than the man who wanted to cover
the whole sky with his sleeve." Niou was his one companion.
"It may be that we can't go on being friends much longer," he con-
tinued, feeling as always that tears were not far away. "We may not be
able to see each other, even if it turns out that I still have some life left
in me."
