the same empress. These thoughts seemed to bring the girl closer, and he
longed to have her for his own.
The next day he wrote to the nun. He would also seem to have
communicated his thoughts in a casual way to the bishop. To the nun he
said:
"I fear that, taken somewhat aback by your sternness, I did not ex-
press myself very well. I find strength in the hope that something of the
resolve demanded of me to write this letter will have conveyed itself to
you."
With it was a tightly folded note for the girl:
"The mountain blossoms are here beside me still.
All of myself I left behind with them.
"I am fearful of what the night winds might have done."
The writing, of course, and even the informal elegance of the folding,
quite dazzled the superannuated woman who received the letter. Some-
what overpowering, thought the grandmother.
She finally sent back: "I did not take your farewell remarks seriously;
and now so soon to have a letter from you--I scarcely know how to reply.
She cannot even write'Naniwa' properly, and how are we to expect that
she give you a proper answer?
"Brief as the time till the autumn tempests come
To scatter the flowers--so brief your thoughts of her.
"I am deeply troubled."
The bishop's answer was in the same vein. Two or three days later
Genji sent Koremitsu off to the northern hills.
"There is her nurse, the woman called Sho~nagon. Have a good talk
with her."
How very farsighted, thought Koremitsu, smiling at the thought of
the girl they had seen that evening.
The bishop said that he was much honored to be in correspondence
with Genji. Koremitsu was received by Sho~nagon, and described Genji's
apparent state of mind in great detail. He was a persuasive young man and
he made a convincing case, but to the nun and the others this suit for the
hand of a mere child continued to seem merely capricious. Genji's letter
was warm and earnest. There was a note too for the girl:
"Let me see your first exercises at the brush.
"No Shallow Spring, this heart of mine, believe me.
And why must the mountain spring then seem so distant?"
This was the nun's reply:
"You drink at the mountain stream, your thoughts turn elsewhere.
Do you hope to see the image you thus disturb?"
Koremitsu's report was no more encouraging. Sho~nagon had said that
they would be returning to the city when the nun was a little stronger and
would answer him then.
Fujitsubo was ill and had gone home to her family. Genji managed a
sympathetic thought or two for his lonely father, but his thoughts were
chiefly on the possibility of seeing Fujitsubo. He quite halted his visits to
other ladies. All through the day, at home and at court, he sat gazing off
into space, and in the evening he would press Omyo~bu to be his intermedi-
ary. How she did it I do not know; but she contrived a meeting. It is sad
to have to say that his earlier attentions, so unwelcome, no longer seemed
real, and the mere thought that they had been successful was for Fujitsubo
a torment. Determined that there would not be another meeting, she was
shocked to find him in her presence again. She did not seek to hide her
distress, and her efforts to turn him away delighted him even as they put
him to shame. There was no one else quite like her. In that fact was his
undoing: he would be less a prey to longing if he could find in her even
a trace of the ordinary. And the tumult of thoughts and feelings that now
assailed him--he would have liked to consign it to the Mountain of Ob-
scurity. It might have been better, he sighed, so short was the night, if
he had not come at all.
"So few and scattered the nights, so few the dreams.
Would that the dream tonight might take me with it."
He was in tears, and she did, after all, have to feel sorry for him.
"Were I to disappear in the last of dreams
Would yet my name live on in infamy?"
She had every right to be unhappy, and he was sad for her. Omyo~bu
gathered his clothes and brought them out to him.
Back at Nijo~ he spent a tearful day in bed. He had word from Omyo~bu
that her lady had not read his letter. So it always was, and yet he was hurt.
He remained in distraught seclusion for several days. The thought that his
father might be wondering about his absence filled him with terror.
Lamenting the burden of sin that seemed to be hers, Fujitsubo was
more and more unwell, and could not bestir herself, despite repeated
messages summoning her back to court. She was not at all her usual self
--and what was to become of her? She took to her bed as the weather
turned warmer. Three months had now passed and her condition was clear;
and the burden of sin now seemed to have made it necessary that she
submit to curious and reproving stares. Her women thought her behavior
very curious indeed. Why had she let so much time pass without informing
the emperor? There was of course a crucial matter of which she spoke to
no one. Ben, the daughter of her old nurse, and Omyo~bu, both of whom
were very close to her and attended her in the bath, had ample opportunity
to observe her condition. Omyo~bu was aghast. Her lady had been trapped
by the harshest of fates. The emperor would seem to have been informed
<P 100>
that a malign spirit had possession of her, and to have believed the story,
as did the court in general. He sent a constant stream of messengers, which
terrified her and allowed no pause in her sufferings.
Genji had a strange, rather awful dream. He consulted a soothsayer,
who said that it portended events so extraordinary as to be almost un-
thinkable.
"It contains bad omens as well. You must be careful."
"It was not my own dream but a friend's. We will see whether it comes
true, and in the meantime you must keep it to yourself."
What could it mean? He heard of Fujitsubo's condition, thought of
their night together, and wondered whether the two might be related. He
exhausted his stock of pleas for another meeting. Horrified that matters
were so out of hand, Omyo~bu could do nothing for him. He had on rare
occasions had a brief note, no more than a line or two; but now even these
messages ceased coming.
Fujitsubo returned to court in the Seventh Month. The emperor's
affection for her had only grown in her absence. Her condition was now
apparent to everyone. A slight emaciation made her beauty seem if any-
thing nearer perfection, and the emperor kept her always at his side. The
skies as autumn approached called more insistently for music. Keeping
Genji too beside him, the emperor had him try his hand at this and that
instrument. Genji struggled to control himself, but now and then a sign of
his scarcely bearable feelings did show through, to remind the lady of what
she wanted more than anything to forget.
Somewhat improved, the nun had returned to the city. Genji had
someone make inquiry about her residence and wrote from time to time.
It was natural that her replies should show no lessening of her opposition,
but it did not worry Genji as it once had. He had more considerable
worries. His gloom was deeper as autumn came to a close. One beautiful
moonlit night he collected himself for a visit to a place he had been visiting
in secret. A cold, wintry shower passed. The address was in Rokujo~, near
the eastern limits of the city, and since he had set out from the palace the
way seemed a long one. He passed a badly neglected house, the garden
dark with ancient trees.
"The inspector's house," said Koremitsu, who was always with him.
"I called there with a message not long ago. The old lady has declined so
shockingly that they can't think what to do for her."
"You should have told me. I should have looked in on her. Ask, please,
if she will see me."
Koremitsu sent a man in with the message.
The women had not been expecting a caller, least of all such a grand
one. For some days the old lady had seemed beyond helping, and they
feared that she would be unable to receive him. But they could hardly turn
such a gentleman away--and so a cushion was put out for him in the south
room.
<P 101>
"My lady says that she fears you will find it cluttered and dirty, but
she is determined at least to thank you for coming. You must find the
darkness and gloom unlike anything you have known."
And indeed he could not have denied that he was used to something
rather different.
"You have been constantly on my mind, but your reserve has
it difficult for me to call. I am sorry that I did not know sooner of
illness."
"I have been ill for a very long time, but in this last extremity--it was
good of him to come." He caught the sad, faltering tones as she gave the
message to one of her women. "I am sorry that I cannot receive him
properly. As for the matter he has raised, I hope that he will still count the
child among those important to him when she is no longer a child. The
thought of leaving her uncared for must, I fear, create obstacles along the
road I yearn to travel. But tell him, please, how good it was of him. I wish
the child were old enough to thank him too."
"Can you believe," he sent back, "that I would put myself in this
embarrassing position if I were less than serious? There must be a bond
between us, that I should have been so drawn to her since I first heard of
her. It all seems so strange. The beginnings of it must have been in a
different world. I will feel that I have come in vain if I cannot hear the
sound of her young voice."
"She is asleep. She did not of course know that you were coming."
But just then someone came scampering into the room. "Grand-
mother, they say the gentleman we saw at the temple is here. Why don't
you go out and talk to him?"
The women tried to silence her.
"But why? She said the very sight of him made her feel better. I heard
Though much amused, Genji pretended not to hear. After proper
statements of sympathy he made his departure. Yes, she did seem little
more than an infant. He would be her teacher.
The next day he sent a letter inquiring after the old lady, and with it
a tightly folded note for the girl:
"Seeking to follow the call of the nestling crane
The open boat is lost among the reeds.
"And comes again and again to you?"
He wrote it in a childish hand, which delighted the women. The child
was to model her own hand upon it, no detail changed, they said.
Sho~nagon sent a very sad answer: "It seems doubtful that my lady,
after whom you were so kind as to inquire, will last the day. We are on
<P 102>
the point of sending her off to the mountains once more. I know that she
will thank you from another world."
In the autumn evening, his thoughts on his unattainable love, he
longed more than ever, unnatural though the wish may have seemed, for
the company of the little girl who sprang from the same roots. The thought
of the evening when the old nun had described herself as dew holding back
from the heavens made him even more impatient--and at the same time
he feared that if he were to bring the girl to Nijo~ he would be disappointed
in her.
"I long to have it, to bring it in from the moor,
The lavender that shares its roots with another."
In the Tenth Month the emperor was to visit the Suzaku palace.
>From all the great families and the middle and upper courtly ranks the most
<P 103>
accomplished musicians and dancers were selected to go with him, and
grandees and princes of the blood were busy at the practice that best suited
their talents. Caught up in the excitement, Genji was somewhat remiss in
inquiring after the nun.
When, finally, he sent off a messenger to the northern hills, a sad reply
came from the bishop: "We lost her toward the end of last month. It is the
way of the world, I know, and yet I am sad."
If the news shocked even him into a new awareness of evanescence,
thought Genji, how must it be for the little girl who had so occupied the
nun's thoughts? Young though she was, she must feel utterly lost. He
remembered, though dimly how it had been when his mother died, and
he sent off an earnest letter of sympathy. Sho~nagon's answer seemed rather
warmer. He went calling on an evening when he had nothing else to
occupy him, some days after he learned that the girl had come out of
mourning and returned to the city. The house was badly kept and almost
deserted. The poor child must be terrified, he thought. He was shown to
the same room as before. Sobbing, Sho~nagon told him of the old lady's last
days. Genji too was in tears.
"My young lady's father would seem to have indicated a willingness
to take her in, but she is at such an uncomfortable age, not quite a child
and still without the discernment of an adult; and the thought of having
her in the custody of the lady who was so cruel to her mother is too awful.
Her sisters will persecute her dreadfully, I know. The fear of it never left
my lady's mind, and we have had too much evidence that the fear was not
groundless. We have been grateful for your expressions of interest, though
we have hesitated to take them seriously. I must emphasize that my young
lady is not at all what you must think her to be. I fear that we have done
badly by her, and that our methods have left her childish even for her
years."
"Must you continue to be so reticent and apologetic? I have made my
own feelings clear, over and over again. It is precisely the childlike quality
that delights me most and makes me think I must have her for my own.
