worse with useless worries."
Despite his various efforts to please her, she at length said that she was
not feeling well and withdrew to an inner room.
He spent a sleepless night, aware that he must seem ridiculous to these
women. He understood Nakanokimi's anger, he told himself, shedding
bitter tears of his own, but she went too far. Still he could imagine that
the resentment he now felt she must have known several times over.
<P 871>
Kaoru seemed to comport himself as if he were master of the place.
He treated the domestics like his own, it seemed to Niou, and they trooped
off in procession to see that he was comfortable and abundantly fed. Niou
was touched and somewhat amused. Kaoru had lost weight and his color
was bad; he seemed but half alive to his surroundings. Niou offered genu-
inely felt condolences. Kaoru longed to talk about the dead girl, knowing
well the futility, but he cut himself short, lest he sound like a womanish
complainer. The days that had been given over to tears had changed him,
but not for the worse. His features were more interesting, more cleanly cut
than ever, thought Niou, sure that he himself would find them attractive
were he a woman. Further evidence of his deplorable susceptibility, he
could see. He turned his thoughts to Nakanokimi. How, without calling
down malicious slander upon himself, could he move her to the city? She
was being difficult, but to stay another night would certainly mean dis-
pleasing his father; and so he started back. He had exhausted his powers
of gentle persuasion. Thinking to show him even a little of what aloofness
was like, she had been to the end unyielding.
As New Year approaches the skies are forbidding even in civilized
regions. Here in the mountains no day passed without storms to heap the
snows deeper. The passing days brought no lessening of the sorrow. Niou
sent lavish offerings for memorial services. People were beginning to worry
about Kaoru, from whom there came hardly a word. Did he mean to weep
his way into the New Year? His thoughts were beyond words when finally
he left Uji. For the women the sorrow was as great. The house had some-
how been alive while he had been with them, and now he was going. The
quiet would be even worse than the shock of those first tragic days. He had
been with them so gentle and considerate, so attentive in matters small
and large, and they had come to know him far better than in the days of
the early visits. They wept as they told themselves that they would see him
no more.
A message came from Niou: "I have concluded that I will find it no
easier as time goes by to travel such distances, and have made plans to
bring you nearer."
His mother had apprised herself of all the details, and was sympa-
thetic. If Kaoru was so lost in grief for the older princess, then the younger
must also be a rather considerable person. Suppose Niou were to install her
in the west wing at Nijo~, where he could visit her as he wished. She
evidently meant to have it seem that Nakanokimi had entered the service
of the First Princess. Still, he must be grateful. Regular visits would now
be possible. It was in these circumstances that he sent off his message to
Uji.
Kaoru heard of his plans. It had been Kaoru's intention to bring his
own love into the city once the Sanjo~ mansion was finished. He regretted
that he had not taken her advice and made Nakanokimi a substitute.
He concluded that it must be his duty to make arrangements for the
move to the city. If Niou chose to be suspicious, that was very silly of him.
<W Murasaki Shikibu>{Translated by Edward G.Seidensticker}
<T The Tale of Genji>
<K 5>
<C 48>{Early Ferns}
<N 1>
<P 872>
The spring sunlight did not discriminate against these "thickets deep."
But Nakanokimi, still benumbed with grief, could only wonder that so
much time had gone by and she had not joined her sister. The two of them
had responded as one to the passing seasons, the color of the blossoms and
the songs of the birds. Some triviality would bring from one of them
a verse, and the other would promptly have a capping verse. There had
been sorrows, there had been times of gloom; but there had always
been the comfort of having her sister beside her. Something might inter-
est her or amuse her even now, but she had no one to share it with.
Her days were bleak, unbroken solitude. The sorrow was if anything
more intense than when her father had died. Yearning and loneliness
left day scarcely distinguishable from night. Well, she had to live out
her time, and it did little good to complain that the end did not come at
her summons.
There was a letter from the abbot for one of her women: "And how
will matters be with our lady now that the New Year has come? I have
allowed no lapse in my prayers for her. She is, in fact, my chief worry.
These are the earliest fern shoots, offerings from certain of our acolytes."
The note came with shoots of bracken and fern, arranged rather elegantly
<P 873>
in a very pretty basket. There was also a poem, in a bad hand, set apart
purposely, it seemed, from the text of the letter.
"Through many a spring we plucked these shoots for him.
Today remembrance bids us do as well.
Please show this to your lady."
Nakanokimi was much moved. The old man was not one to compose
poems for every occasion, and these few syllables said more to her than
all the splendid words, overlooking no device for pleasing her, of a certain
gentleman who, though ardent enough to appearances, did not really seem
to care very much. Tears came to her eyes. She sent a reply through one
of her women:
"And to whom shall I show these early ferns from the mountain,
Plucked. in remembrance of one who is no more?"
She rewarded the messenger liberally.
Still in the full bloom of her youth, she had lost weight, and the effect
<P 874>
was to deepen her beauty, and to remind one of her sister. Side by side,
the two sisters had not seemed particularly alike; but now one could almost
forget for a moment that Oigimi was dead, so striking was the resem-
blance. Kaoru had lamented that he could not keep their older lady with
him, the women remembered, even as he might have kept a locust shell.
Since either of the princesses would have been right for him, it was cruel
of fate not to have let him have the younger.
Certain of his men continued to visit Uji, having made the acquaint-
ance of women there. Through them the princess and Kaoru had occasional
word of each other. Time had done nothing to dispel his grief, she learned,
nor had the coming of the New Year stanched the flow of his tears. It had
been no passing infatuation, she could see now. He had been honest in his
avowals of love.
Niou was chafing at the restrictions his rank placed upon him, and the
evidence was that they would only be more burdensome as time went by.
He thought constantly about bringing Nakanokimi to the city.
<N 2>
When the busiest days were over, the time of the grand levee and the
like, Kaoru found himself with heavy heart and no one who understood.
He paid Niou a visit. It was an evening for melancholy thoughts. Niou was
seated at the veranda, gazing out at the garden and plucking a few notes
now and then on the koto beside him. He had always loved the scent of
plum blossoms. Kaoru broke off an underbranch still in bud and brought
it to him, and he found the fragrance so in harmony with his mood that
he was stirred to poetry:
"This branch seems much in accord with him who breaks it.
I catch a secret scent beneath the surface."
"I should have been more careful with my blossoms.
I offer fragrance, get imputations back.
You do not make things easy for me."
They seemed the most lighthearted of companions as they exchanged
sallies.
When they settled down to serious matters, they were soon talking
of Uji. And how would Nakanokimi and her women be? asked Niou.
Kaoru told of his own unquenchable sorrow, of the memories that had
tormented him since Oigimi's death, of the amusing and moving things
that had been part of their times together--of all the laughter and tears,
so to speak. And his philandering friend, quicker to weep than anyone
even when the matter did not immediately concern him, was now weeping
most generously. He was exactly the sort of companion Kaoru needed. The
sky misted over, as if it too understood. In the night a high wind came up,
and the bite in the air was like a return of winter. They decided, after the
lamp had blown out several times, that darkness would do as well. Though
<P 875>
of course it destroyed the color of the blossoms, it did not put an end to
the conversation. The hours passed, and still they had not talked them-
selves out.
"Ah, yes," said Niou. "Yes indeed--purity such as the world is seldom
privileged to behold. But come, now, surely it cannot have been just that?"
He had a way of assuming that something had been left out, no doubt
because he suspected in others a volatility like his own. Yet he was a man
of sympathy and understanding. So skillfully did he manage the conversa-
tion as he moved from subject to subject, now seeking to console his friend,
now seeking to make him forget, trying this way and that to offer an outlet,
for the pent-up anguish--so skillfully that Kaoru, led on step by step,
poured forth the whole store of thoughts that had been too much for him.
The relief was enormous.
Niou told of his plans for bringing Nakanokimi into the city.
"I thoroughly approve. As a matter of fact, I had been blaming myself
for her difficulties and telling myself that I ought to be looking after her
as a sort of legacy of the one--I am repeating myself--I shall go on
mourning forever. But it is so easy to be misunderstood."
He went on to describe briefly how Oigimi had begged him to make
no distinction between the two of them, and had asked him to marry her
sister. He did not go so far as to speak of the night that called to mind the
cuckoo of the grove of Iwase.
In his heart, all the while, the chagrin and regret were mounting. He
should himself have done as Niou was doing with the memento she had
left behind. But it was too late. He was skirting dangerous ground, in the
direction of which lay unpleasantness for everyone. He tried to think of
other matters. Yet there was this consideration: who if not he was to take
her father's place in arranging the move to the city? He turned his mind
to the preparations.
<N 3>
At Uji, attractive women and girls were being added to Nakanokimi's
retinue, and the air was alive with anticipation. Nakanokimi alone stood
apart from it. Now that the time had come, the thought of abandoning this
"Fushimi" of hers, letting it go to ruin, seemed intensely sad. Her sorrow
would not end, but her prospects would be very poor indeed if she were
to stand her ground and insist on staying in remote Uji. How could she
even think, protested Niou, and there was much to be said for the view,
<P 876>
of living in a place where the promises they had made must certainly be
broken? It was a dilemma.
Finally the move was set for early in the Second Month. As the day
approached, Nakanokimi looked out at the buds on the cherry trees, and
thought how very difficult it would be to leave them, and the mountain
mists too. And she would be homeless, a lodger at an inn, facing she could
not know what humiliation and ridicule. Each new thought, as she
brooded the days away, brought new misgivings and reservations. She
presently emerged from mourning, and the lustration seemed altogether
too cursory and casual. She had not known her mother, and had not
mourned for her. She thought how much she would have preferred to put
on the deeper weeds with which one mourned a parent, but she kept the
thought to herself, for it went against custom. Kaoru sent a carriage and
outrunners for the lustration ceremony, and learned soothsayers as well.
<N 4>
He also sent a poem:
"How quickly time does pass. You made and donned
Your mourning robes, and now the blossoms open."
And he sent numerous flowery robes, for the ceremony and for the
move to the city, none of them gaudy or ostentatious, each appropriate to
the rank of the recipient.
"You see how it is," said the women to their mistress. "He never
misses a chance to show us he has not forgotten. How very kind of him.
Even if you had a brother, we can assure you, he could not possibly do
more for you."
The older ones, no longer as interested in bright colors as they once
had been, were moved by the kindness itself. And the younger ones said:
"He's been coming all these years, and now we're running off. She will
miss him, make no mistake about that."
On the day before the move, early in the morning, Kaoru appeared
at Uji. Shown to the usual sitting room, he thought how Oigimi, had she
lived, would by now have relented, and he would even now be setting an
example for his friend Niou to follow. The image of the dead lady came
back, and memories of things she had said. She had not really given herself
to him, it was true, but neither had she put him off in a way that could
be called cruel or insulting. He must continue to regret that his own
eccentricities had helped keep the distance between them.
He went to the door and looked for the hole through which he had
once peeped in upon the two sisters, but there were blinds and curtains
beyond.
In the other room women were weeping softly and exchanging sad
memories of their dead lady. The tears flowed on, and especially
Nakanokimi's, as if to wash away murky forebodings.
<P 877>
As she lay gazing vacantly out at the garden, a message was brought
