at home and he was on unusually good behavior.
"It may be said that I am beginning to matter just a little, perhaps."
He brushed away a tear that may have seemed a trifle forced. "I am no
happier for that fact. The months and years will not take away the knowl-
edge that my deepest wish was refused."
He was at the very best age, some twenty-seven or twenty-eight years
old.
"What a tiresome boy," said Tamakazura, also in tears. "Things have
come too easily, and so you care nothing about rank and promotion. If my
husband were still alive my own boys might be permitted that sort of
luxury."
They were in fact doing rather well. The oldest was a guards com-
mander and the second a moderator, though it pained her that they did not
yet have seats on the council. The youngest, until recently a chamberlain,
was now a guards captain. He too was doing well enough, but other boys
his age were doing better.
Yu~giri's son, the new captain, had many plausible and persuasive
things to say.
<W Murasaki Shikibu>{Translated by Edward G.Seidensticker}
<T The Tale of Genji>
<K 5>
<C 45>{The Lady at the Bridge}
<N 1>
<P 775>
There was in those years a prince of the blood, an old man, left behind by
the times. His mother was of the finest lineage. There had once been talk
of seeking a favored position for him; but there were disturbances and a
new alignment of forces, at the end of which his prospects were in ruins.
His supporters, embittered by this turn of events, were less than steadfast:
they made their various excuses and left him. And so in his public life and
in his private, he was quite alone, blocked at every turn. His wife, the
daughter of a former minister, had fits of bleakest depression at the
thought of her parents and their plans for her, now of course in ruins. Her
consolation was that she and her husband were close as husbands and
wives seldom are. Their confidence in each other was complete.
<N 2>
But here too there was a shadow: the years went by and they had no
children. If only there were a pretty little child to break the loneliness and
boredom, the prince would think--and sometimes give voice to his
thoughts. And then, surprisingly, a very pretty daughter was in fact born
to them. She was the delight of their lives. Years passed, and there were
signs that the princess was again with child. The prince hoped that this
time he would be favored with a son, but again the child was a daughter.
Though the birth was easy enough, the princess fell desperately ill soon
afterwards, and was dead before many days had passed. The prince was
<P 776>
numb with grief. The vulgar world had long had no place for him, he said,
and frequently it had seemed quite unbearable; and the bond that had held
him to it had been the beauty and the gentleness of his wife. How could
he go on alone? And there were his daughters. How could he, alone, rear
them in a manner that would not be a scandal?--for he was not, after all,
a commoner. His conclusion was that he must take the tonsure. Yet he
hesitated. Once he was gone, there would be no one to see to the safety
of his daughters.
So the years went by. The princesses grew up, each with her own grace
and beauty. It was difficult to find fault with them, they gave him what
pleasure he had. The passing years offered him no opportunity to carry out
his resolve.
The serving women muttered to themselves that the younger girl's
very birth had been a mistake, and were not as diligent as they might have
been in caring for her. With the prince it was a different matter. His wife,
scarcely in control of her senses, had been especially tormented by
thoughts of this new babe. She had left behind a single request: "Think
of her as a keepsake, and be good to her."
The prince himself was not without resentment at the child, that her
birth should so swiftly have severed their bond from a former life, his and
his princess's.
"But such was the bond that it was," he said. "And she worried about
the girl to the very end."
The result was that if anything he doted upon the child to excess. One
almost sensed in her fragile beauty a sinister omen.
The older girl was comely and of a gentle disposition, elegant in face
and in manner, with a suggestion behind the elegance of hidden depths.
In quiet grace, indeed, she was the superior of the two. And so the prince
favored each as each in her special way demanded. There were numerous
matters which he was not able to order as he wished, however, and his
household only grew sadder and lonelier as time went by. His attendants,
unable to bear the uncertainty of their prospects, took their leave one and
two at a time. In the confusion surrounding the birth of the younger girl,
there had not been time to select a really suitable nurse for her. No more
dedicated than one would have expected in the circumstances, the nurse
first chosen abandoned her ward when the girl was still an infant. There-
after the prince himself took charge of her upbringing.
Much care had gone into the planning of his garden. Though the
ponds and hillocks were as they had always been, the prince gazed list-
lessly out upon a garden returning to nature. His stewards being of a not
very diligent sort, there was no one to fight off the decay. The garden was
rank with weeds, and creeping ferns took over the eaves as if the house
belonged to them. The freshness of the cherry blossoms in spring, the tints
of the autumn leaves, had been a consolation in loneliness while he had
had his wife with him. Now the beauties of the passing seasons only made
him lonelier. It became his compelling duty to see that the chapel was
<P 777>
properly appointed, and he spent his days and nights in religious observ-
ances. Even his affection for his daughters, because it was a bond with this
world, made him strangely fretful. He had to set it down as a mark against
him for some misdeed in a former life, the fact that he was not up to
following his inclinations and renouncing the world. The possibility that
he might bow to custom and remarry seemed more and more remote. Time
went by and thoughts of marriage left him. He had become a saint who
still wore the robes of this world. His wife was dead and it was unthinkable
that anyone should replace her.
"Enough of this, Your Highness," said the people around him. "We
understand, please believe us, why your grief was what it was when our
lady left you. But time passes, grief should not go on forever. Can you not
bring yourself to do as others do? And look at this house, if you will, with
no one to watch over it. If there were someone, anyone, for us to look to,
it would not be the ruin it is."
So they argued, and he was informed of numerous possible matches;
but he would not listen. When he was not at his prayers, his daughters
were his companions. They were growing up and they occupied them-
selves with music and Go, and word games, and other profitless pastimes.
Each had her own individual ways, he was beginning to notice. The older
girl was composed and meditative, quick to learn but with a tendency
toward moodiness. The younger, though also quiet and reserved, was
distinguished by a certain shy and childlike gaiety.
<N 3>
One warm spring day he sat looking out over the garden. Mallards
were swimming about on the pond, wing to wing, chattering happily to
each other. It was a sight which in earlier years would scarcely have caught
the prince's eye, but now he felt something like jealousy toward these
mindless creatures, each steadfast to its mate.
He had the girls go over a music lesson, and very appealing they were
too, as they bent their small figures to the work. The sound of the instru-
ments was enough to bring tears to his eyes. Softly, he recited a verse,
brushing away a tear as he did so.
"She has left behind her mate, and these nestlings too.
Why have they lingered in this uncertain world?"
He was an extremely handsome man. Emaciation from years of absti-
nence only added to the courtliness of his bearing. He had put on a figured
robe for the music lesson. Somewhat rumpled, casually thrown over his
shoulders, it seemed to emphasize by its very carelessness the nobility of
the wearer.
Oigimi, the older girl, quietly took out an inkstone and seemed about
to write a few lines on it.
<P 778>
"Come now. You know better than to write on an inkstone." He
pushed a sheet of paper towards her.
"I know now, as I see it leave the nest,
How uncertain is the lot of the waterfowl."
It was not a masterpiece, but in the circumstances it was very touch-
ing. The hand showed promise even though the characters were separated
one from another in a still childish fashion.
"And now it is your turn," he said to Nakanokimi, the younger.
More of a child than her sister, she took longer with her verse:
"Unsheltered by the wing of the grieving father,
The nestling would surely have perished in the nest."
It saddened him to see the princesses, their robes shabby and wrin-
kled, no one to take care of them, bored and without hope of relief from
<P 779>
boredom--but they were utterly charming on such occasions, each in her
own way. He read from the holy text in his hand, sometimes interrupting
with a poem. To the older girl he had taught the lute, to the younger the
thirteen-stringed koto. When they played duets, of which they were fond,
he thought them very satisfactory pupils, if still somewhat immature.
<N 4>
He had early lost his father, the old emperor, and his mother as well.
Without the sort of resolute backing necessary for a youth in his position,
he tended to neglect serious Chinese studies. Practical matters of state and
career were yet further beyond his grasp. He was of an elegance extraordi-
nary even for one of his birth, with a soft gentility that approached the
womanish; and so the treasures from his ancestors, the fields left by his
grandfather the minister, which at the outset had seemed inexhaustible,
had presently disappeared, he could not have said where. Only his man-
sion and its furnishings--fine and numerous, to be sure--remained. The
last of his retainers had left him, and the last of those with whom he might
find companionship. To relieve the tedium he would summon eminent
musicians from the palace and lose himself in impractical pursuits. In the
course of time he became as skilled a musician as his teachers.
He was the Eighth Prince, a younger brother of the shining Genji.
During the years when the Reizei emperor was crown prince, the mother
of the reigning emperor had sought in that conspiratorial way of hers to
have the Eighth Prince named crown prince, replacing Reizei. The world
seemed hers to rule as she wished, and the Eighth Prince was very much
at the center of it. Unfortunately his success irritated the opposing faction.
The day came when Genji and presently Yu~giri had the upper hand, and
he was without supporters. He had over the years become an ascetic in any
case, and he now resigned himself to living the life of the sage and hermit.
<N 5>
There came yet another disaster. As if fate had not been unkind
enough already, his mansion was destroyed by fire. Having no other suita-
ble house in the city, he moved to Uji, some miles to the southeast, where
he happened to own a tastefully appointed mountain villa. He had re-
nounced the world, it was true, and yet leaving the capital was a painful
wrench indeed. With fishing weirs near at hand to heighten the roar of the
river, the situation at Uji was hardly favorable to quiet study. But whit
mustI e must be. With the flowering trees of spring and the leaves of
autumn and the flow of the river to bring repose, he lost himself more than
ever in solitary meditation. There was one thought even so that never left
his mind: how much better it would be, even in these remote mountains,
if his wife were with him!
"She who was with me, the roof above are smoke.
And why must I alone remain behind?"
So much was the past still with him that life scarcely seemed worth
living.
Mountain upon mountain separated his dwelling from the larger
<P 780>
world. Rough people of the lower classes, woodcutters and the like, some-
times came by to do chores for him. There were no other callers. The
gloom continued day after day, as stubborn and clinging as "the morning
mist on the peaks."
There happened to be in those Uji mountains an abbot, a most saintly
man. Though famous for his learning, he seldom took part in public rites.
He heard in the course of time that there was a prince living nearby, a man
who was teaching himself the mysteries of the Good Law. Thinking this
a most admirable undertaking, he made bold to visit the prince, who upon
subsequent interviews was led deeper into the texts he had studied over
the years. The prince became more immediately aware of what was meant
by the transience and uselessness of the material world.
"In spirit," he confessed, quite one with the holy man, "I have perhaps
found my place upon the lotus of the clear pond; but I have not yet made
my last farewells to the world because I cannot bring myself to leave my
daughters behind."
<N 6>
The abbot was an intimate of the Reizei emperor and had been his
preceptor as well. One day, visiting the city, he called upon the Reizei
emperor to answer any questions that might have come to him since their
last meeting.
"Your honored brother," he said, bringing the Eighth Prince into the
conversation, "has pursued his studies so diligently that he has been fa-
vored with the most remarkable insights. Only a bond from a former life
