You have been much on my mind, but I have thought it best to keep my
distance.
"We go, we stay, alike of this world of dew.
We should not let it have such a hold upon us.
"You too should try to shake loose. I shall be brief, for perhaps you
will not welcome a letter from a house of mourning."
Now back at Rokujo~, she waited until she was alone to read the letter.
Her conscience told her his meaning all too clearly. So he knew. It was too
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awful. Surely no one had been more cruelly treated by fate than herself.
What would the old emperor be thinking? He and her late husband, the
crown prince, were brothers by the same mother, and they had been very
close. The prince had asked his protection for their daughter, and he had
replied that he would look upon the girl as taking the place of her father.
He had repeatedly invited the lady and her daughter to go on living in the
palace, but she held to a demanding view of the proprieties. And so she
had found herself in this childish entanglement, and had succeeded in
making a very bad name for herself. She was still not feeling well.
In fact, the name she had made for herself was rather different. She
had long been famous for her subtlety and refinement, and when her
daughter moved to another temporary shrine, this one to the west of the
city, all the details were tasteful and in the latest fashion. Genji was not
surprised to hear that the more cultivated of the courtiers were making it
their main business to part the dew-drenched grasses before the shrine.
She was a lady of almost too good taste. If, wanting no more of love, she
were to go with her daughter to Ise, he would, after all, miss her.
The memorial services were over, but Genji remained in seclusion for
seven weeks. Pitying him in the unaccustomed tedium, To~ no Chu~jo~ would
come and divert him with the latest talk, serious and trivial; and it seems
likely that old Naishi was cause for a good laugh now and then.
"You mustn't make fun of dear old Granny," said Genji; but he found
stories of the old lady unfailingly amusing.
They would go over the list of their little adventures, on the night of
a misty autumn moon, just past full, and others; and their talk would come
around to the evanescence of things and they would shed a few tears.
On an evening of chilly autumn rains, To~ no Chu~jo~ again came calling.
He had changed to lighter mourning and presented a fine, manly figure
indeed, enough to put most men to shame. Genji was at the railing of the
west veranda, looking out over the frostbitten garden. The wind was high
and it was as if his tears sought to compete with the driven rain.
"Is she the rain, is she the clouds? Alas, I cannot say."
He sat chin in hand. Were he himself the dead lady, thought To~ no
Chu~jo~, his soul would certainly remain bound to this world. He came up
to his friend. Genji, who had not expected callers, quietly smoothed his
robes, a finely glossed red singlet under a robe of a deeper gray than To~
no Chu~jo~'s. It was the modest, conservative sort of dress that never seems
merely dull.
To~ no Chu~jo~ too looked up at the sky.
"Is she the rain? Where in these stormy skies,
To which of these brooding clouds may I look to find her?
Neither can I say," he added, as if to himself.
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"It is a time of storms when even the clouds
To which my lady has risen are blotted away."
Genji's grief was clearly unfeigned. Very odd, thought To~ no Chu~jo~.
Genji had so often been reproved by his father for not being a better
husband, and the attentions of his father-in-law had made him very un-
comfortable. There were circumstances, having largely to do with his
nearness to Princess Omiya, which kept him from leaving Aoi completely;
and so he had continued to wait upon her, making little attempt to hide
his dissatisfaction. To~ no Chu~jo~ had more than once been moved to pity
him in this unhappy predicament. And now it seemed that she had after
all had a place in his affections, that he had loved and honored her. To~ no
Chu~jo~,s own sorrow was more intense for the knowledge. It was as if a
light had gone out.
Gentians and wild carnations peeped from the frosty tangles. After To~
no Chu~jo~ had left, Genji sent a small bouquet by the little boy's nurse,
Saisho~, to Princess Omiya, with this message:
"Carnations at the wintry hedge remind me
Of an autumn which we leave too far behind.
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Do you not think them a lovely color?"
Yes, the smiling little "wild carnation" he now had with him was a
treasure.
The princess, less resistant to tears than the autumn leaves to the
winds, had to have someone read Genji's note to her.
She sent this answer:
"I see them, and my sleeves are drenched afresh,
The wild carnations at the wasted hedge."
It was a dull time. He was sure that his cousin Princess Asagao, despite
her past coolness, would understand his feelings on such an evening. He
had not written in a long time, but their letters had always been irregularly
spaced. His note was on azure Chinese paper.
"Many a desolate autumn have I known,
But never have my tears flowed as tonight.
Each year brings rains of autumn."
His writing was more beautiful all the time, said her women, and see
what pains he had taken. She must not leave the note unanswered.
She agreed. "I knew how things must be on Mount Ouchi, but what
was I to say?
"I knew that the autumn mists had faded away,
And looked for you in the stormy autumn skies."
That was all. It was in a faint hand which seemed to him--his imagi-
nation, perhaps--to suggest deep, mysterious things. We do not often find
in this world that the actuality is better than the anticipation, but it was
Genji's nature to be drawn to retiring women. A woman might be icy cold,
he thought, but her affections, once awakened, were likely to be strength-
ened by the memory of the occasions that had called for reluctant sympa-
thy. The affected, overrefined sort of woman might draw attention to
herself, but it had a way of revealing flaws she was herself unaware of. He
did not wish to rear his Murasaki after such a model. He had not forgotten
to ask himself whether she would be bored and lonely without him, but
he thought of her as an orphan he had taken in and did not worry himself
greatly about what she might be thinking or doing, or whether she might
be resentful of his outside activities.
Ordering a lamp, he summoned several of the worthier women to
keep him company. He had for some time had his eye on one Chu~nagon,
but for the period of mourning had put away amorous thoughts. It seemed
most civilized of him.
He addressed them affectionately, though with careful politeness. "I
have felt closer to you through these sad days. If I had not had you with
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me I would have been lonelier than I can think. We need not brood over
what is finished, but I fear that difficult problems lie ahead of us."
They were in tears. "It has left us in the blackest darkness, " said one
of them, "and the thought of how things will be when you are gone is
almost too much to bear." She could say no more.
Deeply touched, Genji looked from one to another. "When I am gone
--how can that be? You must think me heartless. Be patient, and you will
see that you are wrong. Though of course life is very uncertain." Tears
came to his eyes as he looked into the lamplight. They made him if
anything handsomer, thought the women.
Among them was a little girl, an orphan, of whom Aoi had been
especially fond. He quite understood why the child should now be sadder
than any of the others. "You must let me take care of you, Ateki." She
broke into a violent sobbing. In her tiny singlet, a very dark gray, and her
black cloak and straw-colored trousers, she was a very pretty little thing
indeed.
Over and over again he asked the women to be patient. "Those of you
who have not forgotten--you must bear the loneliness and do what you
can for the boy. I would find it difficult to come visiting if you were all
to run off."
They had their doubts. His visits, they feared, would be few and far
between. Life would indeed be lonely.
Avoiding ostentation, the minister distributed certain of Aoi's belong-
ings to her women, after their several ranks: little baubles and trinkets, and
more considerable mementos as well.
Genji could not remain forever in seclusion. He went first to his
father's palace. His carriage was brought up, and as his retinue gathered
an autumn shower swept past, as if it knew its time, and the wind that
summons the leaves blew a great confusion of them to the ground; and for
the sorrowing women the sleeves that had barely had time to dry were
damp all over again. Genji would go that night from his father's palace to
Nijo~. Thinking to await him there, his aides and equerries went off one by
one. Though this would not of course be his last visit, the gloom was
intense.
For the minister and Princess Omiya, all the old sorrow came back.
Genji left a note for the princess: "My father has asked to see me, and I
shall call upon him today. When I so much as set foot outside this house,
I feel new pangs of grief, and I ask myself how I have survived so long.
I should come in person to take my leave, I know, but I fear that I would
quite lose control of myself. I must be satisfied with this note."
Blinded with tears, the princess did not answer.
The minister came immediately. He dabbed at his eyes, and the
women were weeping too. There seemed nothing in the least false about
Genji's own tears, which gave an added elegance and fineness of feature.
At length controlling himself, the minister said: "An old man's tears
<P 178>
have a way of gushing forth at the smallest provocation, and I am unable
to stanch the flow. Sure that I must seem hopelessly senile and incontinent,
I have been reluctant to visit your royal father. If the subject arises, perhaps
you can explain to him how matters are. It is painful, at the end of your
life, to be left behind by a child." He spoke with great difficulty.
Genji was weeping only less openly. "We all of course know the way
of the world, that we cannot be sure who will go first and who will remain
behind, but the shock of the specific instance is all the same hard to bear.
I am sure that my father will understand."
"Well, then, perhaps you should go before it is too dark. There seems
to be no letting up of the rain."
Genji looked around at the rooms he was about to leave. Behind
curtains, through open doors, he could see some thirty women in various
shades of gray, all weeping piteously.
"I have consoled myself," said the minister, "with the thought that
you are leaving someone behind in this house whom you cannot abandon,
and that you will therefore find occasion to visit in spite of what has
happened; but these not very imaginative women are morbid in their
insistence that you are leaving your old home for good. It is natural that
they should grieve for the passing of the years when they have seen you
on such intimate and congenial terms, indeed that they should grieve more
than for the loss of their lady. You were never really happy with her, but
I was sure that things would one day improve, and asked them to hope for
the not perhaps very hopeful. This is a sad evening."
"You have chosen inadequate grounds for lamenting, sir. I may once
have neglected you and your good lady, in the days when I too thought
that a not very happy situation would improve. What could persuade me
to neglect you now? You will see presently that I am telling you the truth."
He left. The minister came back into the house. All the furnishings
and decorations were as they had been, and yet everything seemed lifeless
and empty. At the bed curtains were an inkstone which Genji had left
behind and some bits of paper on which he had practiced his calligraphy.
Struggling to hold back the tears, the minister looked at them. There were,
it seemed, some among the younger women who were smiling through
their tears. Genji had copied and thrown away highly charged passages
from old poems, Chinese and Japanese, in both formal and cursive scripts.
Magnificent writing, thought the minister, looking off into space. It was
cruel that Genji should now be a stranger.
"The old pillow, the old bed: with whom shall I share them now?" It
was a verse from $$ Po Chu-i. Below it Genji had written a verse of his own:
"Weeping beside the pillow of one who is gone,
I may not go, so strong the ties, myself."
"The flower is white with frost." It was another phrase from the same
poem, and Genji had set down another of his own:
<P 179>
"The dust piles on the now abandoned bed.
How many Mew-drenched nights have I slept alone!"
With these jottings were several withered carnations, probably from
the day he had sent flowers to Princess Omiya.
The minister took them to her. "The terrible fact, of course, is that she
is gone, but I tell myself that sad stories are far from unheard of in this
world. The bond between us held for such a short time that I find myself
thinking of the destinies we bring with us into this world. Hers was to stay
a short time and to cause great sorrow. I have somehow taken comfort in
the thought. But I have missed her more each day, and now the thought
that he will be no more than a stranger is almost too much to bear. A day
or two without him was too much, and now he has left us for good. How
