All through the Nijo~ mansion there was a sense of helplessness. Emis-
saries from court were thicker than raindrops. Not wanting to worry his
father, Genji fought to control himself. His father-in-law was extremely
solicitous and came to Nijo~ every day. perhaps because of all the prayers
and rites the crisis passed--it had lasted some twenty days--and left no
ill effects. Genji's full recovery coincided with the final cleansing of the
defilement. With the unhappiness he had caused his father much on his
mind, he set off for his apartments at court. For a time he felt out of things,
as if he had come back to a strange new world.
By the end of the Ninth Month he was his old self once more. He had
lost weight, but emaciation only made him handsomer. He spent a great
deal of time gazing into space, and sometimes he would weep aloud. He
must be in the clutches of some malign spirit, thought the women. It was
all most peculiar.
He would summon Ukon on quiet evenings. "I don't understand it at
all. Why did she so insist on keeping her name from me? Even if she was
a fisherman's daughter it was cruel of her to be so uncommunicative. It was
as if she did not know how much I loved her."
"There was no reason for keeping it secret. But why should she tell
you about her insignificant self? Your attitude seemed so strange from the
beginning. She used to say that she hardly knew whether she was waking
or dreaming. Your refusal to identify yourself, you know, helped her guess
who you were. It hurt her that you should belittle her by keeping your
name from her."
"An unfortunate contest of wills. I did not want anything to stand
between us; but I must always be worrying about what people will say.
I must refrain from things my father and all the rest of them might take
me to task for. I am not permitted the smallest indiscretion. Everything is
exaggerated so. The little incident of the 'evening faces' affected me
strangely and I went to very great trouble to see her. There must have been
a bond between us. A love doomed from the start to be fleeting--why
should it have taken such complete possession of me and made me find
her so precious? You must tell me everything. What point is there in
keeping secrets now? I mean to make offerings every week, and I want to
know in whose name I am making them."
"Yes, of course--why have secrets now? It is only that I do not want
to slight what she made so much of. Her parents are dead. Her father was
a guards captain. She was his special pet, but his career did not go well and
his life came to an early and disappointing end. She somehow got to know
Lord To~ no Chu~jo~--it was when he was still a lieutenant. He was very
attentive for three years or so, and then about last autumn there was a
rather awful threat from his father-in-law's house. She was ridiculously
timid and it frightened her beyond all reason. She ran off and hid herself
at her nurse's in the western part of the city. It was a wretched little hovel
of a place. She wanted to go off into the hills, but the direction she had
in mind has been taboo since New Year's. So she moved to the odd place
where she was so upset to have you find her. She was more reserved and
withdrawn than most people, and I fear that her unwillingness to show her
emotions may have seemed cold."
So it was true. Affection and pity welled up yet more strongly.
"He once told me of a lost child. Was there such a one?"
"Yes, a very pretty little girl, born two years ago last spring."
"Where is she? Bring her to me without letting anyone know. It would
be such a comfort. I should tell my friend To~ no Chu~jo~, I suppose, but why
invite criticism? I doubt that anyone could reprove me for taking in the
child. You must think up a way to get around the nurse."
"It would make me very happy if you were to take the child. I would
hate to have her left where she is. She is there because we had no compe-
tent nurses in the house where you found us."
The evening sky was serenely beautiful. The flowers below the
veranda were withered, the songs of the insects were dying too, and
autumn tints were coming over the maples. Looking out upon the scene,
which might have been a painting, Ukon thought what a lovely asylum she
had found herself. She wanted to avert her eyes at the thought of the house
of the "evening faces." A pigeon called, somewhat discordantly, from a
bamboo thicket. Remembering how the same call had frightened the girl
in that deserted villa, Genji could see the little figure as if an apparition
were there before him.
"How old was she? She seemed so delicate, because she was not long
for this world, I suppose."
"Nineteen, perhaps? My mother, who was her nurse, died and left me
behind. Her father took a fancy to me, and so we grew up together, and
I never once left her side. I wonder how I can go on without her. I am
almost sorry that we were so close. She seemed so weak, but I can see now
that she was a source of strength."
"The weak ones do have a power over us. The clear, forceful ones I
can do without. I am weak and indecisive by nature myself, and a woman
who is quiet and withdrawn and follows the wishes of a man even to the
point of letting herself be used has much the greater appeal. A man can
shape and mold her as he wishes, and becomes fonder of her all the while."
"She was exactly what you would have wished, sir." Ukon was in
tears. "That thought makes the loss seem greater."
The sky had clouded over and a chilly wind had come up. Gazing off
into the distance, Genji said softly:
"One sees the clouds as smoke that rose from the pyre,
And suddenly the evening sky seems nearer."
Ukon was unable to answer. If only her lady were here! For Genji even
the memory of those fulling blocks was sweet.
"In the Eighth Month, the Ninth Month, the nights are long," he
whispered, and lay down.
The young page, brother of the lady of the locust shell, came to Nijo~
from time to time, but Genji no longer sent messages for his sister. She was
sorry that he seemed angry with her and sorry to hear of his illness. The
prospect of accompanying her husband to his distant province was a
dreary one. She sent off a note to see whether Genji had forgotten her.
"They tell me you have not been well.
"Time goes by, you ask not why I ask not.
Think if you will how lonely a life is mine.
"I might make reference to Masuda Pond."
This was a surprise; and indeed he had not forgotten her. The uncer-
tain hand in which he set down his reply had its own beauty.
"Who, I wonder, lives the more aimless life.
"Hollow though it was, the shell of the locust
Gave me strength to face a gloomy world.
"But only precariously."
So he still remembered "the shell of the locust." She was sad and at
the same time amused. It was good that they could correspond without
rancor. She wished no further intimacy, and she did not want him to
despise her.
As for the other, her stepdaughter, Genji heard that she had married
a guards lieutenant. He thought it a strange marriage and he felt a certain
pity for the lieutenant. Curious to know something of her feelings, he sent
a note by his young messenger.
"Did you know that thoughts of you had brought me to the point of
expiring?
"I bound them loosely, the reeds beneath the eaves,
And reprove them now for having come undone."
He attached it to a long reed.
The boy was to deliver it in secret, he said. But he thought that the
lieutenant would be forgiving if he were to see it, for he would guess who
the sender was. One may detect here a note of self-satisfaction.
Her husband was away. She was confused, but delighted that he
should have remembered her. She sent off in reply a poem the only excuse
for which was the alacrity with which it was composed:
"The wind brings words, all softly, to the reed,
And the under leaves are nipped again by the frost."
It might have been cleverer and in better taste not to have disguised
the clumsy handwriting. He thought of the face he had seen by lamplight.
He could forget neither of them, the governor's wife, seated so primly
before him, or the younger woman, chattering on so contentedly, without
the smallest suggestion of reserve. The stirrings of a susceptible heart
suggested that he still had important lessons to learn.
Quietly, forty-ninth-day services were held for the dead lady in the
Lotus Hall on Mount Hiei. There was careful attention to all the details,
the priestly robes and the scrolls and the altar decorations. Koremitsu's
older brother was a priest of considerable renown, and his conduct of the
services was beyond reproach. Genji summoned a doctor of letters with
whom he was friendly and who was his tutor in Chinese poetry and asked
him to prepare a final version of the memorial petition. Genji had prepared
a draft. In moving language he committed the one he had loved and lost,
though he did not mention her name, to the mercy of Amita~bha.
"It is perfect, just as it is. Not a word needs to be changed." Noting
the tears that refused to be held back, the doctor wondered who might be
the subject of these prayers. That Genji should not reveal the name, and
that he should be in such open grief--someone, no doubt, who had
brought a very large bounty of grace from earlier lives.
Genji attached a poem to a pair of lady's trousers which were among
his secret offerings:
"I weep and weep as today I tie this cord.
It will be untied in an unknown world to come."
He invoked the holy name with great feeling. Her spirit had wandered
uncertainly these last weeks. Today it would set off down one of the ways
of the future.
His heart raced each time he saw To~ no Chu~jo~. He longed to tell his
friend that "the wild carnation" was alive and well; but there was no point
in calling forth reproaches.
In the house of the "evening faces," the women were at a loss to know
what had happened to their lady. They had no way of inquiring. And
Ukon too had disappeared. They whispered among themselves that they
had been right about that gentleman, and they hinted at their suspicions
to Koremitsu. He feigned complete ignorance, however, and continued to
pursue his little affairs. For the poor women it was all like a nightmare.
perhaps the wanton son of some governor, fearing To~ no Chu~jo~, had
spirited her off to the country? The owner of the house was her nurse's
daughter. She was one of three children and related to Ukon. She could
only long for her lady and lament that Ukon had not chosen to enlighten
them. Ukon for her part was loath to raise a stir, and Genji did not want
gossip at this late date. Ukon could not even inquire after the child. And
so the days went by bringing no light on the terrible mystery.
Genji longed for a glimpse of the dead girl, if only in a dream. On the
day after the services he did have a fleeting dream of the woman who had
appeared that fatal night. He concluded, and the thought filled him with
horror, that he had attracted the attention of an evil spirit haunting the
neglected villa.
Early in the Tenth Month the governor of iyo left for his post, taking
the lady of the locust shell with him. Genji chose his farewell presents with
great care. For the lady there were numerous fans, and combs of beautiful
workmanship, and pieces of cloth (she could see that he had had them
dyed specially) for the wayside gods. He also returned her robe, "the shell
of the locust."
"A keepsake till we meet again, I had hoped,
And see, my tears have rotted the sleeves away."
There were other things too, but it would be tedious to describe them.
His messenger returned empty-handed. It was through her brother that
she answered his poem.
"Autumn comes, the wings of the locust are shed.
A summer robe returns, and I weep aloud."
She had remarkable singleness of purpose, whatever else she might
have. It was the first day of winter. There were chilly showers, as if to mark
the occasion and the skies were dark. He spent the day lost in thought.
"The one has gone, to the other I say farewell.
They go their unknown ways. The end of autumn."
He knew how painful a secret love can be.
I had hoped, out of deference to him, to conceal these difficult matters;
but I have been accused of romancing, of pretending that because he was
the son of an emperor he had no faults. Now, perhaps, I shall be accused
of having revealed too much.
<W Murasaki Shikibu>{Translated by Edward G.Seidensticker}
<T The Tale of Genji>
<K 1>{Japanese Volume}
<C 5>{Lavender}
<N 1>
Genji was suffering from repeated attacks of malaria. All manner of reli-
gious services were commissioned, but they did no good.
In a certain temple in the northern hills, someone reported, there lived
a sage who was a most accomplished worker of cures. "During the epi-
demic last summer all sorts of people went to him. He was able to cure
them immediately when all other treatment had failed. You must not let
it have its way. You must summon him at once."
Genji sent off a messenger, but the sage replied that he was old and
bent and unable to leave his cave.
There was no help for it, thought Genji: he must quietly visit the man.
He set out before dawn, taking four or five trusted attendants with him.
The temple was fairly deep in the northern hills. Though the cherry
blossoms had already fallen in the city, it being late in the Third Month,
