You may imagine the gloom, though you do not share it."
She set it down on paper so old that the purple had faded to an
alkaline gray. The hand was a strong one all the same, in an old-fashioned
style, the lines straight and prim. Genji scarcely looked at it. He wondered
what sort of expectations he had aroused. No doubt he was having what
people call second thoughts. Well, there was no alternative. He must look
after her to the end. At the princess's house, where of course these good
intentions were not known, despondency prevailed.
In the evening he was taken off to Sanjo~ by his father-in-law. Every-
one was caught up in preparations for the outing. Young men gathered to
discuss them and their time was passed in practice at dance and music.
Indeed the house quite rang with music, and flute and flageolet sounded
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proud and high as seldom before. Sometimes one of them would even
bring a drum up from the garden and pound at it on the veranda. With
all these exciting matters to occupy him, Genji had time for only the most
necessary visits; and so autumn came to a close. The princess's hopes
seemed, as the weeks went by, to have come to nothing.
The outing approached. In the midst of the final rehearsals Tayu~ came
to Genji's rooms in the palace
"How is everything?" he asked, somewhat guiltily.
She told him. "You have so neglected her that you have made things
difficult for us who must be with her." She seemed ready to weep.
She had hoped, Genji surmised, to make the princess seem remote and
alluring, and he had spoiled her plans. She must think him very unfeeling.
And the princess, brooding her days away, must be very sad indeed. But
there was nothing to be done. He simply did not have the time.
"I had thought to help her grow up," he said, smiling.
Tayu~ had to smile too. He was so young and handsome, and at an age
when it was natural that he should have women angry at him. It was
natural too that he should be somewhat selfish.
<P 123>
When he had a little more time to himself he occasionally called on
the princess. But he had found the little girl, his Murasaki, and she had
made him her captive. He neglected even the lady at Rokujo~, and was of
course still less inclined to visit this new lady, much though he felt for her.
Her excessive shyness made him suspect that she would not delight the
eye in any great measure. Yet he might be pleasantly surprised. It had been
a dark night, and perhaps it was the darkness that had made her seem so
odd. He must have a look at her face--and at the same time he rather
dreaded trimming the lamp.
One evening when the princess was passing the time with her women
he stole up to the main hall, opened a door slightly, and looked inside. He
did not think it likely that he would see the princess herself. Several
ancient and battered curtain frames had apparently been standing in the
same places for years. It was not a very promising scene. Four or five
women, at a polite distance from their lady, were having their dinner, so
unappetizing and scanty that he wanted to look away, though served on
what seemed to be imported celadon. Others sat shivering in a corner, their
once white robes now a dirty gray, the strings of their badly stained aprons
in clumsy knots. Yet they respected the forms: they had combs in their
hair, which were ready, he feared, to fall out at any moment. There were
just such old women guarding the treasures in the palace sanctuary, but
it had not occurred to him that a princess would choose to have them in
her retinue.
"What a cold winter it has been. You have to go through this sort of
thing if you live too long."
"How can we possibly have thought we had troubles when your royal
father was still alive? At least we had him to take care of us." The woman
was shivering so violently that it almost seemed as if she might fling herself
into the air.
It was not right to listen to complaints not meant for his ears. He
slipped away and tapped on a shutter as if he had just come up.
One of the women brought a light, raised the shutter, and admitted
him.
The nurse's young daughter was now in the service of the high priest-
ess of Kamo. The women who remained with the princess tended to be
gawky, untrained rustics, not at all the sort of servants Genji was used to.
The winter they had complained of was being very cruel. Snow was piling
in drifts, the skies were dark, and the wind raged. When the lamp went
out there was no one to relight it. He thought of his last night with the
lady of "the evening faces." This house was no less ruinous, but there was
some comfort in the fact that it was smaller and not so lonely. It was a far
from cozy place all the same, and he did not sleep well. Yet it was interest-
ing in its way. The lady, however, was not. Again he found her altogether
too remote and withdrawn.
Finally daylight came. Himself raising a shutter, he looked out at the
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garden and the fields beyond. The scene was a lonely one, trackless snow
stretching on and on.
It would be uncivil to go off without a word.
"Do come and look at this beautiful sky. You are really too timid."
He seemed even younger and handsomer in the morning twilight
reflected from the snow. The old women were all smiles.
"Do go out to him. Ladies should do as they are told."
The princess was not one to resist. Putting herself into some sort of
order, she went out. Though his face was politely averted, Genji contrived
to look obliquely at her. He was hoping that a really good look might show
her to be less than irredeemable.
That was not very kind or very realistic of him. It was his first impres-
sion that the figure kneeling beside him was most uncommonly long and
attenuated. Not at all promising--and the nose! That nose now dominated
the scene. It was like that of the beast on which Samantabhadra rides, long,
pendulous, and red. A frightful nose. The skin was whiter than the snow,
a touch bluish even. The forehead bulged and the line over the cheeks
suggested that the full face would be very long indeed. She was pitifully
thin. He could see through her robes how narrow her shoulders were. It
now seemed ridiculous that he had worked so hard to see her; and yet the
visage was such an extraordinary one that he could not immediately take
his eyes away. The shape of the head and the now of the hair were very
good, little inferior, he thought, to those of ladies whom he had held to
be great beauties. The hair fanned out over the hem of her robes with
perhaps a foot to spare. Though it may not seem in very good taste to dwell
upon her dress, it is dress that is always described first in the old romances.
Over a sadly faded singlet she wore a robe discolored with age to a murky
drab and a rather splendid sable jacket, richly perfumed, such as a stylish
lady might have worn a generation or two before. It was entirely wrong
for a young princess, but he feared that she needed it to keep off the winter
cold. He was as mute as she had always been; but presently he recovered
sufficiently to have yet another try at shaking her from her muteness. He
spoke of this and that, and the gesture as she raised a sleeve to her mouth
was somehow stiff and antiquated. He thought of a master of court rituals
taking up his position akimbo. She managed a smile for him, which did
not seem to go with the rest of her. It was too awful. He hurried to get his
things together.
"I fear that you have no one else to look to. I would hope that you
might be persuaded to be a little more friendly to someone who, as you
see, is beginning to pay some attention to you. You are most unkind." Her
shyness became his excuse.
"In the morning sun, the icicles melt at the eaves.
Why must the ice below refuse to melt?"
She giggled. Thinking that it would be perverse of him to test this
<P 125>
dumbness further, he went out. The gate at the forward gallery, to which
his carriage was brought, was leaning dangerously. He had seen something
of the place on his nocturnal visits, but of course a great deal had remained
concealed. It was a lonely, desolate sight that spread before him, like a
village deep in the mountains. Only the snow piled on the pine trees
seemed warm. The weed-choked gate of which his friend had spoken that
rainy night would be such a gate as this. How charming to have a pretty
lady in residence and to think compassionate thoughts and to long each
day to see her! He might even be able to forget his impossible, forbidden
love. But the princess was completely wrong for such a romantic house.
What other man, he asked himself, could be persuaded to bear with her
as he had? The thought came to him that the spirit of the departed prince,
worried about the daughter he had left behind, had brought him to her.
He had one of his men brush the snow from an orange tree. The
cascade of snow as a pine tree righted itself, as if in envy, made him think
of the wave passing over "famous $$ Sue, the Mount of the Pines." He
longed for someone with whom he might have a quiet, comforting talk,
if not an especially intimate or fascinating one. The gate was not yet open.
He sent someone for the gatekeeper, who proved to be a very old man. A
girl of an age such that she could be either his daughter or his granddaugh-
ter, her dirty robes an unfortunate contrast with the snow, came up hug-
ging in her arms a strange utensil which contained the merest suggestion
of embers. Seeing the struggle the old man was having with the gate, she
tried to help. They were a very forlorn and ineffectual pair. One of Genji's
men finally pushed the gate open.
"My sleeves are no less wet in the morning snow
Than the sleeves of this man who wears a crown of snow."
And he added softly: "The young are naked, the aged are cold."
He thought of a very cold lady with a very warmly colored nose, and
he smiled. Were he to show that nose to To~ no Chu~jo~, what would his
friend liken it to? And a troubling thought came to him: since To~ no Chu~jo~
was always spying on him, he would most probably learn of the visit. Had
she been an ordinary sort of lady, he might have given her up on the spot;
but any such thoughts were erased by the look he had had at her. He was
extremely sorry for her, and wrote to her regularly if noncommittally. He
sent damasks and cottons and unfigured silks, some of them suited for old
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women, with which to replace those sables, and was careful that the needs
of everyone, high and low, even that aged gatekeeper, were seen to. The
fact that no expressions of love accompanied these gifts did not seem to
bother the princess and so matters were easier for him. He resolved that
he must be her support, in this not very intimate fashion. He even tended
to matters which tact would ordinarily have persuaded him to leave pri-
vate. The profile of the governors wife as he had seen her over the Go
board had not been beautiful, but she had been notably successful at
hiding her defects. This lady was certainly not of lower birth. It was as his
friend had said that rainy night: birth did not make the crucial difference.
He often thought of the governor's wife. She had had considerable charms,
of a quiet sort, and he had lost her.
The end of the year approached. Tayu~ came to see him in his palace
apartments. He was on easy terms with her, since he did not take her very
seriously, and they would joke with each other as she performed such
services as trimming his hair. She would visit him without summons when
there was something she wished to say.
"It is so very odd that I have been wondering what to do." She was
smiling.
<P 127>
"What is odd? You must not keep secrets from me."
"The last thing I would do. You must sometimes think I forget myself,
pouring out all my woes. But this is rather difficult." Her manner suggested
that it was very difficult indeed.
"You are always so shy."
"A letter has come from the Hitachi princess." She took it out.
"The last thing you should keep from me."
She was fidgeting. The letter was on thick Michinoku paper and
nothing about it suggested feminine elegance except the scent that had
been heavily burned into it. But the hand was very good.
"Always, always my sleeve is wet like these.
Wet because you are so very cold."
He was puzzled. "Wet like what?"
Tayu~ was pushing a clumsy old hamper toward him. The cloth in
which it had come was spread beneath it.
"I simply couldn't show it to you. But she sent it especially for you
to wear on New Year's Day, and I couldn't bring myself to send it back,
she would have been so hurt. I could have kept it to myself, I suppose, but
that didn't seem right either, when she sent it especially for you. So I
thought maybe after I had shown it to you--"
"I would have been very sorry if you had not. It is the perfect gift for
someone like me, with 'no one to help me dry my tear-drenched
pi110w.'"
He said no more.
It was a remarkable effort at poetry. She would have worked and
slaved over it, with no one to help her. The nurse's daughter would no
doubt, had she been present, have suggested revisions. The princess did
not have the advice of a learned poetry master. Silence, alas, might have
been more successful. He smiled at the thought of the princess at work on
her poem, putting all of herself into it. This too, he concluded, must be held
to fall within the bounds of the admirable. Tayu~ was crimson.
In the hamper were a pink singlet, of an old-fashioned cut and re-
markably lusterless, and an informal court robe of a deep red lined with
