her into his house and make her his ideal!
"A very sad story." He wished to be completely sure. "Did she leave
no one behind?"
"She had a child just before she died, a girl, a great source of worry
for my poor sister in her declining years."
There could be no further doubt. "What I am about to say will, I fear,
startle you--but might I have charge of the child? I have rather good
reasons, for all the suddenness of my proposal. If you are telling yourself
that she is too young--well, sir, you are doing me an injustice. Other men
may have improper motives, but I do not."
"Your words quite fill me with delight. But she is indeed young, so
very young that we could not possibly think even in jest of asking you to
take responsibility for her. Only the man who is presently to be her
husband can take that responsibility. In a matter of such import I am not
competent to give an answer. I must discuss the matter with my sister."
He was suddenly remote and chilly.
Genji had spoken with youthful impulsiveness and could not think
what to do next.
"It is my practice to conduct services in the chapel of Lord Amita~bha."
The bishop got up to leave. "I have not yet said vespers. I shall come again
when they are over."
<N 7>
Genji was not feeling well. A shower passed on a chilly mountain
wind, and the sound of the waterfall was higher. Intermittently came a
rather sleepy voice, solemn and somehow ominous, reading a sacred text.
The most insensitive of men would have been aroused by the scene. Genji
was unable to sleep. The vespers were very long and it was growing late.
There was evidence that the women in the inner rooms were still up. They
were being quiet, but he heard a rosary brush against an armrest and, to
give him a sense of elegant companionship, a faint rustling of silk. Screens
lined the inside wall, very near at hand. He pushed one of the center panels
some inches aside and rustled his fan. Though they must have thought it
odd, the women could not ignore it. One of them came forward, then
retreated a step or two.
"This is very strange indeed. Is there some mistake?"
"The guiding hand of the Blessed One makes no mistakes on the
darkest nights." His was an aristocratic young voice.
"And in what direction does it lead?" the woman replied hesitantly.
"This is most confusing."
"Very sudden and confusing, I am sure.
"Since first the wanderer glimpsed the fresh young grasses
His sleeves have known no respite from the dew.
"Might I ask you to pass my words on to your lady?"
"There is no one in this house to whom such a message can possibly
seem appropriate."
"I have my reasons. You must believe me."
The woman withdrew to the rear of the house.
The nun was of course rather startled. "How very forward of him. He
must think the child older than she is. And he must have heard our poems
about the grasses. What can they have meant to him?" She hesitated for
rather a long time. persuaded that too long a delay would be rude, she
finally sent back:
"The dew of a night of travel--do not compare it
With the dew that soaks the sleeves of the mountain dweller.
It is this last that refuses to dry."
"I am not used to communicating through messengers. I wish to speak
to you directly and in all seriousness."
Again the old nun hesitated. "There has been a misunderstanding,
surely. I can hardly be expected to converse with such a fine young gentle-
man."
But the women insisted that it would be rude and unfeeling not to
reply.
"I suppose you are right. Young gentlemen are easily upset. I am
humbled by such earnestness." And she came forward.
"You will think me headstrong and frivolous for having addressed
you without warning, but the Blessed One knows that my intent is not
frivolous at all." He found the nun's quiet dignity somewhat daunting.
"We must have made a compact in another life, that we should be in
such unexpected conversation."
"I have heard the sad story, and wonder if I might offer myself as a
substitute for your late daughter. I was very young when I lost the one who
was dearest to me, and all through the years since I have had strange
feelings of aimlessness and futility. We share the same fate, and I wonder
if I might not ask that we be companions in it. The opportunity is not likely
to come again. I have spoken, I am sure you see, quite without reserve."
"What you say would delight me did I not fear a mistake. It is true
that there is someone here who is under my inadequate protection; but she
is very young, and you could not possibly be asked to accept her deficien-
cies. I must decline your very kind proposal."
"I repeat that I have heard the whole story. Your admirable reticence
does not permit you to understand that my feelings are of no ordinary
sort."
But to her they seemed, though she did not say so, quite outrageous.
The bishop came out.
"Very well, then. I have made a beginning, and it has given me
strength." And Genji pushed the screen back in place.
<N 8>
In the Lotus Hall, voices raised in an act of contrition mingled sol-
emnly with the roar of the waterfall and the wind that came down from
the mountain.
This was Genji's poem, addressed to the bishop:
"A wind strays down from the hills to end my dream,
And tears well forth at these voices upon the waters."
And this the bishops reply:
"These waters wet your sleeves. Our own are dry,
And tranquil our hearts, washedd lean by mountain waters.
"Such is the effect of familiarity with these scenes."
There were heavy mists in the dawn sky, and bird songs came from
Genji knew not where. Flowering trees and grasses which he could not
identify spread like a tapestry before him. The deer that now paused to
feed by the house and now wandered on were for him a strange and
wonderful sight. He quite forgot his illness. Though it was not easy for the
sage to leave his retreat, he made his way down for final services. His
husky voice, emerging uncertainly from a toothless mouth, had behind it
long years of discipline, and the mystic incantations suggested deep and
awesome powers.
<N 9>
An escort arrived from the city, delighted to see Genji so improved,
and a message was delivered from his father. The bishop had a breakfast
of unfamiliar fruits and berries brought from far down in the valley.
"I have vowed to stay in these mountains until the end of the year,
and cannot see you home." He pressed wine upon Genji. "And so a holy
vow has the perverse effect of inspiring regrets."
"I hate to leave your mountains and streams, but my father seems
worried and I must obey his summons. I shall come again before the cherry
blossoms have fallen.
"I shall say to my city friends:'Make haste to see
Those mountain blossoms. The winds may see them first.'"
His manner and voice were beautiful beyond description.
The bishop replied:
"In thirty hundreds of years it blooms but once.
My eyes have seen it, and spurn these mountain cherries."
"A very great rarity indeed," Genji said, smiling, "a blossom with so
long and short a span."
The sage offered a verse of thanks as Genji filled his cup:
"My mountain door of pine has opened briefly
To see a radiant flower not seen before."
There were tears in his eyes. His farewell present was a sacred mace
which had special protective powers. The bishop too gave farewell pre-
sents: a rosary of carved ebony which Prince Sho~toku had obtained in
Korea, still in the original Chinese box, wrapped in a netting and attached
to a branch of cinquefoil pine; several medicine bottles of indigo decorated
with sprays of cherry and wisteria and the like; and other gifts as well, all
of them appropriate to the mountain setting. Genji's escort had brought
gifts for the priests who had helped with the services, the sage himself and
the rest, and for all the mountain rustics too. And so Genji started out.
The bishop went to the inner apartments to tell his sister of Genji's
proposal.
"It is very premature. If in four or five years he has not changed his
mind we can perhaps give it some thought."
The bishop agreed, and passed her words on without comment.
Much disappointed, Genji sent in a poem through an acolyte:
"Having come upon an evening blossom,
The mist is loath to go with the morning sun."
She sent back:
"Can we believe the mist to be so reluctant?
We shall watch the morning sky for signs of truth."
It was in a casual, cursive style, but the hand was a distinguished one.
He was about to get into his carriage when a large party arrived from
the house of his father-in-law, protesting the skill with which he had
eluded them. Several of his brothers-in-law, including the oldest, To~ no
Chu~jo~, were among them.
"You know very well that this is the sort of expedition we like best.
You could at least have told us. Well, here we are, and we shall stay and
enjoy the cherries you have discovered."
They took seats on the moss below the rocks and wine was brought
out.1t was a pleasant spot, beside cascading waters. To~ no Chu~jo~ took out
a flute, and one of his brothers, marking time with a fan, sang "To the West
of the Toyora Temple." They were handsome young men, all of them, but
it was the ailing Genji whom everyone was looking at, so handsome a
figure as he leaned against a rock that he brought a shudder of apprehen-
sion. Always in such a company there is an adept at the flageolet, and a
fancier of the sho~ pipes as well.
The bishop brought out a seven-stringed Chinese koto and pressed
Genji to play it. "Just one tune, to give our mountain birds a pleasant
surprise."
Genji protested that he was altogether too unwell, but he played a
passable tune all the same. And so they set forth. The nameless priests and
acolytes shed tears of regret, and the aged nuns within, who had never
before seen such a fine gentleman, asked whether he might not be a visitor
from another world.
"How can it be," said the bishop, brushing away a tear, "that such a
one has been born into the confusion and corruption in which we live?"
The little girl too thought him very grand. "Even handsomer than
Father," she said.
"So why don't you be his little girl?"
She nodded, accepting the offer; and her favorite doll, the one with
the finest wardrobe, and the handsomest gentleman in her pictures too
were thereupon named "Genji."
Back in the city, Genji first reported to his father upon his excursion.
The emperor had never before seen him in such coarse dress.
He asked about the qualifications of the sage, and Genji replied in
great detail.
"I must see that he is promoted. Such a remarkable record and I had
not even heard of him."
Genji's father-in-law, the Minister of the Left, chanced to be in at-
tendance. "I thought of going for you, but you did after all go off in secret.
Suppose you have a few days' rest at Sanjo~. I will go with you, immedi-
ately."
Genji was not enthusiastic, but he left with his father-in-law all the
same. The minister had his own carriage brought up and insisted that Genji
get in first. This solicitude rather embarrassed him.
At the minister's Sanjo~ mansion everything was in readiness. It had
been polished and refitted until it was a jeweled pavilion, perfect to the
last detail. As always, Genji's wife secluded herself in her private apart-
ments, and it was only at her father's urging that she came forth; and so
Genji had her before him, immobile, like a princess in an illustration for
a romance. It would have been a great pleasure, he was sure, to have her
comment even tartly upon his account of the mountain journey. She
seemed the stiffest, remotest person in the world. How odd that the aloof-
ness seemed only to grow as time went by.
"It would be nice, I sometimes think, if you could be a little more
wifely. I have been very ill, and I am hurt, but not really surprised, that
you have not inquired after my health."
"Like the pain, perhaps, of awaiting a visitor who does not come?"
She cast a sidelong glance at him as she spoke, and her cold beauty
was very intimidating indeed.
"You so rarely speak to me, and when you do you say such unpleasant
things. 'A visitor who does not come'--that is hardly an appropriate way
to describe a husband, and indeed it is hardly civil. I try this approach and
I try that, hoping to break through, but you seem intent on defending all
the approaches. Well, one of these years, perhaps, if I live long enough."
He withdrew to the bedchamber. She did not follow. Though there
were things he would have liked to say, he lay down with a sigh. He closed
his eyes, but there was too much on his mind to permit sleep.
He thought of the little girl and how he would like to see her grown
into a woman. Her grandmother was of course right when she said that the
girl was still too young for him. He must not seem insistent. And yet--was
there not some way to bring her quietly to Nijo~ and have her beside him,
a comfort and a companion? prince Hyo~bu was a dashing and stylish man,
but no one could have called him remarkably handsome. Why did the girl
so take after her aunt? perhaps because aunt and father were children of
