the same color. Every stitch and line seemed to insist on a peculiar lack of
distinction. Alas once more--he could not possibly wear them. As if to
amuse himself he jotted down something beside the princess's poem. Tayu~
read over his shoulder:
"Red is not, I fear, my favorite color.
Then why did I let the safflower stain my sleeve?
<P 128>
A blossom of the deepest hue, and yet--"
The safflower must signify something, thought Tayu~--and she
thought of a profile she had from time to time seen in the moonlight. How
very wicked of him, and how sad for the princess!
"This robe of pink, but new to the dyer's hand:
Do not soil it, please, beyond redemption.
That would be very sad."
She turned such verses easily, as if speaking to herself. There was
nothing especially distinguished about them. Yet it would help, he thought
again and again, if the princess were capable of even such an ordinary
exchange. He did not wish at all to defame a princess.
Several women came in.
"Suppose we get this out of the way," he said. "It is not the sort of
thing just anyone would give."
Why had she shown it to him? Tayu~ asked herself, withdrawing in
great embarrassment. He must think her as inept as the princess.
<P 129>
In the palace the next day Genji looked in upon Tayu~, who had been
with the emperor.
"Here. My answer to the note yesterday. It has taken a great deal out
of me."
The other women looked on with curiosity.
"I give up the red maid of Mikasa," he hummed as he went out, "even
as the plum its color."
Tayu~ was much amused.
"Why was he smiling all to himself?" asked one of her fellows.
"It was nothing," she replied. "I rather think he saw a nose which on
frosty mornings shows a fondness for red. Those bits of verse were, well,
unkind."
"But we have not one red nose among us. It might be different if
Sakon or Higo were here." Still uncomprehending, they discussed the
various possibilities.
His note was delivered to the safflower princess, whose women gath-
ered to admire it.
"Layer on layer, the nights when I do not see you.
And now these garments--layers yet thicker between us?"
It was the more pleasing for being in a casual hand on plain white
paper.
On New Year's Eve, Tayu~ returned the hamper filled with clothes
which someone had readied for Genji himself, among them singlets of
delicately figured lavender and a sort of saffron. It did not occur to the old
women that Genji might not have found the princess's gift to his taste.
Such a rich red, that one court robe, not at all inferior to these, fine though
they might be.
"And the poems: our lady's was honest and to the point. His is merely
clever."
Since her poem had been the result of such intense labor, the princess
copied it out and put it away in a drawer.
The first days of the New Year were busy ones. Music sounded
through all the galleries of the palace, for the carolers were going their
rounds this year. The lonely Hitachi house continued to be in Genji's
thoughts. One evening--it was after the royal inspection of the white
horses--he made he made his excuses with his father and withdrew as if he
meant to spend the night in his own rooms. Instead he paid a late call upon
the princess.
The house seemed a little more lively and in communication with the
<P 130>
world than before, and the princess just a little less stiff. He continued to
hope that he might in some degree make her over and looked forward with
pleasure to the results. The sun was coming up when, with a great show
of reluctance, he departed. The east doors were open. Made brighter by the
reflection from a light fall of snow, the sun streamed in unobstructed, the
roof of the gallery beyond having collapsed. The princess came forward
from the recesses of the room and sat turned aside as Genji changed to
court dress. The hair that fell over her shoulders was splendid. If only she,
like the year, might begin anew, he thought as he raised a shutter. Remem-
bering the sight that had so taken him aback that other morning, he raised
it only partway and rested it on a stool. Then he turned to his toilet. A
woman brought a battered minor, a Chinese comb box, and a man's toilet
stand. He thought it very fine that the house should contain masculine
accessories. The lady was rather more modish, for she had on all the clothes
from that hamper. His eye did not quite take them all in, but he did think
he remembered the cloak, a bright and intricate damask.
"Perhaps this year I will be privileged to have words from you. More
than the new warbler, we await the new you."
"With the spring come the calls--" she replied, in a tense, faltering
voice.
"There, now. That's the style. You have indeed turned over a new
leaf." He went out smiling and softly intoning Narihira's poem about the
dream and the snows.
She was leaning on an armrest. The bright safflower emerged in profile
from over the sleeve with which she covered her mouth. It was not a pretty
sight.
Back at Nijo~, his Murasaki, now on the eve of womanhood, was very
pretty indeed. So red could after all be a pleasing color, he thought. She
was delightful, at artless play in a soft cloak of white lined with red.
Because of her grandmother's conservative preferences, her teeth had not
yet been blackened or her eyebrows plucked. Genji had put one of the
women to blackening her eyebrows, which drew fresh, graceful arcs. Why,
he continued asking himself, should he go seeking trouble outside the
house when he had a treasure at home? He helped arrange her dollhouses.
She drew amusing little sketches, coloring them as the fancy took her. He
<P 131>
drew a lady with very long hair and gave her a very red nose, and though
it was only a picture it produced a shudder. He looked at his own hand-
some face in a mirror and daubed his nose red, and even he was immedi-
ately grotesque. The girl laughed happily.
"And if I were to be permanently disfigured?"
"I wouldn't like that at all." She seemed genuinely worried.
He pretended to wipe vigorously at his nose. "Dear me. I fear it will
not be white again. I have played a very stupid trick upon myself. And
what," he said with great solemnity, "will my august father say when he
sees it?"
Looking anxiously up at him, Murasaki too commenced rubbing at his
nose.
"Don't, if you please, paint me a Heichu~ black. I think I can endure
the red." They were a charming pair.
The sun was warm and spring-like, to make one impatient for blos-
soms on branches now shrouded in a spring haze. The swelling of the plum
buds was far enough advanced that the rose plum beside the roofed stairs,
the earliest to bloom, was already showing traces of color.
"The red of the florid nose fails somehow to please,
Though one longs for red on these soaring branches of plum.
"A pity that it should be so."
And what might have happened thereafter to our friends?
<W Murasaki Shikibu>{Translated by Edward G.Seidensticker}
<T The Tale of Genji>
<K 1>{Japanese Volume}
<C 7>{An Autumn Exersion}
<N 1>
<P 132>
The royal excursion to the Suzaku palace took place toward the middle of
the Tenth Month. The emperor's ladies lamented that they would not be
present at what was certain to be a most remarkable concert. Distressed
especially at the thought that Fujitsubo should be deprived of the pleasure,
the emperor ordered a full rehearsal at the main palace. Genji and To~ no
Chu~jo~ danced "Waves of the Blue Ocean." To~ no Chu~jo~ was a handsome
youth who carried himself well, but beside Genji he was like a nondescript
mountain shrub beside a blossoming cherry. In the bright evening light the
music echoed yet more grandly through the palace and the excitement
grew; and though the dance was a familiar one, Genji scarcely seemed of
this world. As he intoned the lyrics his auditors could have believed they
were listening to the Kalavinka bird of paradise. The emperor brushed
away tears of delight, and there were tears in the eyes of all the princes
and high courtiers as well. As Genji rearranged his dress at the end of his
song and the orchestra took up again, he seemed to shine with an ever
brighter light.
"Surely the gods above are struck dumb with admiration," Lady Ko-
kiden, the mother of the crown prince, was heard to observe. "One is
overpowered by such company."
Some of the young women thought her rather horrid.
To Fujitsubo it was all like a dream. How she wished that those
unspeakable occurrences had not taken place. Then she might be as happy
as the others.
<P 133>
She spent the night with the emperor.
"There was only one thing worth seeing," he said.'" Waves of the
Blue Ocean.' Do you not agree?
"Nor is To~ no Chu~jo~ a mean dancer. There is something about the
smallest gesture that tells of breeding. The professionals are very good in
their way--one would certainly not wish to suggest otherwise--but they
somehow lack freshness and spontaneity. When the rehearsals have been
so fine one fears that the excursion itself will be a disappointment. But I
would not for anything have wished you to miss it."
<N 2>
The next morning she had a letter from Genji. "And how did it all
seem to you? I was in indescribable confusion. You will not welcome the
question, I fear, but
"Through the waving, dancing sleeves could you see a heart
So stormy that it wished but to be still?"
The image of the dancer was so vivid, it would seem, that she could
not refuse to answer.
"Of waving Chinese sleeves I cannot speak.
Each step, each motion, touched me to the heart.
"You may be sure that my thoughts were far from ordinary."
A rare treasure indeed. He smiled. With her knowledge of music and
the dance and even it would seem things Chinese she already spoke like
an empress. He kept the letter spread before him as if it were a favorite
sutra.
<N 3>
On the day of the excursion the emperor was attended by his whole
court, the princes and the rest. The crown prince too was present. Music
came from boats rowed out over the lake, and there was an infinite variety
of Chinese and Korean dancing. Reed and string and drum echoed through
the grounds. Because Genji's good looks had on the evening of the re-
hearsal filled him with foreboding, the emperor ordered sutras read in
several temples. Most of the court understood and sympathized, but Ko-
kiden thought it all rather ridiculous. The most renowned virtuosos from
the high and middle court ranks were chosen for the flutists' circle. The
director of the Chinese dances and the director of the Korean dances were
both guards officers who held seats on the council of state. The dancers had
for weeks been in monastic seclusion studying each motion under the
direction of the most revered masters of the art.
The forty men in the flutists' circle played most marvelously. The
sound of their flutes, mingled with the sighing of the pines, was like a wind
coming down from deep mountains. "Waves of the Blue Ocean," among
falling leaves of countless hues, had about it an almost frightening beauty.
The maple branch in Genji's cap was somewhat bare and forlorn, most of
the leaves having fallen, and seemed at odds with his handsome face. The
<P 134>
General of the Left replaced it with several chrysanthemums which he
brought from below the royal seat. The sun was about to set and a suspi-
cion of an autumn shower rustled past as if the skies too were moved to
tears. The chrysanthemums in Genji's cap, delicately touched by the frosts,
gave new beauty to his form and his motions, no less remarkable today
than on the day of the rehearsal. Then his dance was over, and a chill as
if from another world passed over the assembly. Even unlettered menials,
lost among deep branches and rocks, or those of them, in any event, who
had some feeling for such things, were moved to tears. The Fourth Prince,
still a child, son of Lady Sho~kyo~den, danced "Autumn Winds," after
"Waves of the Blue Ocean" the most interesting of the dances. All the
others went almost unnoticed. Indeed complaints were heard that they
marred what would otherwise have been a perfect day. Genji was that
evening promoted to the First Order of the Third Rank, and To~ no Chu~jo~
to the Second Order of the Fourth Rank, and other deserving courtiers
were similarly rewarded, pulled upwards, it might be said, by Genji. He
<P 135>
brought pleasure to the eye and serenity to the heart, and made people
wonder what bounty of grace might be his from former lives.
<N 4>
Fujitsubo had gone home to her family. Looking restlessly, as always,
for a chance to see her, Genji was much criticized by his father-in-law's
people at Sanjo~. And rumors of the young Murasaki were out. Certain of
the women at Sanjo~ let it be known that a new lady had been taken in at
Nijo~. Genji's wife was intensely displeased. It was most natural that she
should be, for she did not of course know that the "lady" was a mere child.
If she had complained to him openly, as most women would have done,
he might have told her everything, and no doubt eased her jealousy. It was
her arbitrary judgments that sent him wandering. She had no specific
faults, no vices or blemishes, which he could point to. She had been the
first lady in his life, and in an abstract way he admired and treasured her.
