am I to go on?"
He could not control the quaver in his voice. The older of the women
had broken into unrestrained sobbing. It was in more ways than one a cold
evening.
The younger women were gathered in clusters, talking of things
which had somehow moved them. No doubt, they said, Genji was right
in seeking to persuade them of the comfort they would find in looking after
the boy. What a very fragile little keepsake he was, all the same. Some said
they would go home for just a few days and come again, and there were
many emotional scenes as they said goodbye.
Genji called upon his father, the old emperor.
"You have lost a great deal of weight," said the emperor, with a look
of deep concern. "Because you have been fasting, I should imagine." He
pressed food on Genji and otherwise tried to be of service. Genji was much
moved by these august ministrations.
He then called upon the empress, to the great excitement of her
women.
"There are so many things about it that still make me weep," she sent
out through Omyo~bu. "I can only imagine how sad a time it has been for
you."
"One knows, of course," he sent back, "that life is uncertain; but one
does not really know until the fact is present and clear. Your several
messages have given me strength." He seemed in great anguish, the sorrow
of bereavement compounded by the sorrow he always felt in her presence.
His dress, an unpatterned robe and a gray singlet, the ribbons of his cap
tied up in mourning, seemed more elegant for its want of color.
He had been neglecting the crown prince. Sending in apologies, he
made his departure late in the night.
The Nijo~ mansion had been cleaned and polished for his return. The
whole household assembled to receive him. The higher-ranking ladies had
sought to outdo one another in dress and grooming. The sight of them
made him think of the sadly dejected ladies at Sanjo~. Changing to less
doleful clothes, he went to the west wing. The fittings, changed to welcome
<P 180>
the autumn, were fresh and bright, and the young women and little girls
were all very pretty in autumn dress. Sho~nagon had taken care of every-
thing.
Murasaki too was dressed to perfection. "You have grown," he said,
lifting a low curtain back over its frame.
She looked shyly aside. Her hair and profile seemed in the lamplight
even more like those of the lady he so longed for.
He had worried about her, he said, coming nearer. "I would like to tell
you everything, but it is not a very lucky sort of story. Maybe I should
rest awhile in the other wing. I won't be long. From now on you will never
be rid of me. I am sure you will get very bored with me."
Sho~nagon was pleased but not confident. He had so many wellborn
ladies, another demanding one was certain to take the place of the one who
was gone. She was a dry, unsentimental sort.
Genji returned to his room. Asking Chu~jo~ to massage his legs, he lay
down to rest. The next morning he sent off a note for his baby son. He
gazed on and on at the answer, from one of the women, and all the old
sadness came back.
It was a tedious time. He no longer had any enthusiasm for the careless
night wanderings that had once kept him busy. Murasaki was much on his
mind. She seemed peerless, the nearest he could imagine to his ideal.
Thinking that she was no longer too young for marriage, he had occasion-
ally made amorous overtures; but she had not seemed to understand. They
had passed their time in games of Go and hentsugi. She was clever and she
had many delicate ways of pleasing him in the most trivial diversions. He
had not seriously thought of her as a wife. Now he could not restrain
himself. It would be a shock, of course.
What had happened? Her women had no way of knowing when the
line had been crossed. One morning Genji was up early and Murasaki
stayed on and on in bed. It was not at all like her to sleep so late. Might
she be unwell? As he left for his own rooms, Genji pushed an inkstone
inside her bed curtains.
At length, when no one else was near, she raised herself from her
pillow and saw beside it a tightly folded bit of paper. Listlessly she opened
it. There was only this verse, in a casual hand:
"Many have been the nights we have spent together
Purposelessly, these coverlets between us."
She had not dreamed he had anything of the sort on his mind. What
a fool she had been, to repose her whole confidence in so gross and
unscrupulous a man.
It was almost noon when Genji returned. "They say you're not feeling
well. What can be the trouble? I was hoping for a game of Go."
<P 181>
She pulled the covers over her head. Her women discreetly withdrew.
He came up beside her.
"What a way to behave, what a very unpleasant way to behave. Try
to imagine, please, what these women are thinking."
He drew back the covers. She was bathed in perspiration and the hair
at her forehead was matted from weeping.
"Dear me. This does not augur well at all." He tried in every way he
could think of to comfort her, but she seemed genuinely upset and did not
offer so much as a word in reply.
"Very well. You will see no more of me. I do have my pride."
He opened her writing box but found no note inside. Very childish
of her--and he had to smile at the childishness. He stayed with her the
whole day, and he thought the stubbornness with which she refused to be
comforted most charming.
Boar-day sweets were served in the evening. Since he was still in
mourning, no great ceremony attended upon the observance. Glancing
over the varied and tastefully arranged foods that had been brought in
<P 182>
cypress boxes to Murasaki's rooms only, Genji went out to the south
veranda and called Koremitsu.
"We will have more of the same tomorrow night," he said, smiling
"though not in quite such mountains. This is not the most propitious day."
Koremitsu had a quick mind. "Yes, we must be careful to choose lucky
days for our beginnings." And, solemnly and deliberately: "How many
rat-day sweets am I asked to provide?"
"Oh, I should think one for every three that we have here."
Koremitsu went off with an air of having informed himself ade-
quately. A clever and practical young fellow, thought Genji.
Koremitsu had the nuptial sweets prepared at his own house. He told
no one what they signified.
Genji felt like a child thief. The role amused him and the affection he
now felt for the girl seemed to reduce his earlier affection to the tiniest
mote. A man's heart is a very strange amalgam indeed! He now thought
that he could not bear to be away from her for a single night.
The sweets he had ordered were delivered stealthily, very late in the
night. A man of tact, Koremitsu saw that Sho~nagon, an older woman,
might make Murasaki uncomfortable, and so he called her daughter.
"Slip this inside her curtains, if you will," he said, handing her an
incense box. "You must see that it gets to her and to no one else. A solemn
celebration. No carelessness permitted."
She thought it odd. "Carelessness? Of that quality I have had no
experience."
"The very word demands care. Use it sparingly."
Young and somewhat puzzled, she did as she was told. It would seem
that Genji had explained the significance of the incense box to Murasaki.
The women had no warning. When the box emerged from the curtains
the next morning, the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. Such
numbers of dishes--when might they have been assembled?--and stands
with festooned legs, bearing sweets of a most especial sort. All in all, a
splendid array. How very nice that he had gone to such pains, thought
Sho~nagon. He had overlooked nothing. She wept tears of pleasure and
gratitude.
"But he really could have let us in on the secret," the women whis-
pered to one another. "What can the gentleman who brought them have
thought?"
When he paid the most fleeting call on his father or put in a brief
<P 183>
appearance at court, he would be impossibly restless, overcome with long-
ing for the girl. Even to Genji himself it seemed excessive. He had resentful
letters from women with whom he had been friendly. He was sorry, but
he did not wish to be separated from his bride for even a night. He had
no wish to be with these others and let it seem that he was indisposed.
"I shall hope to see you when this very difficult time has passed."
Kokiden took note of the fact that her sister Oborozukiyo, the lady
of the misty Moon, seemed to have fond thoughts of Genji.
"Well, after all," said her father, the Minister of the Right, "he has
lost the lady most important to him. If what you suggest with such dis-
pleasure comes to pass, I for one will not be desolate."
"She must go to court," thought Kokiden. "If she works hard, she can
make a life for herself there."
Genji had reciprocated the fond thoughts and was sorry to hear that
she might be going to court; but he no longer had any wish to divide his
affections. Life was short, he would settle them upon one lady. He had
aroused quite enough resentment in his time.
As for the Rokujo~ lady, he pitied her, but she would not make a
satisfactory wife. And yet, after all, he did not wish a final break. He told
himself that if she could put up with him as he had been over the years,
they might be of comfort to each other.
No one even knew who Murasaki was. It was as if she were without
place or identity. He must inform her father, he told himself. Though
avoiding display, he took great pains with her initiation ceremonies. She
found this solicitude, though remarkable, very distasteful. She had trusted
him, she had quite entwined herself about him. It had been inexcusably
careless of her. She now refused to look at him, and his jokes only sent
her into a more sullen silence. She was not the old Murasaki. He found the
change both sad and interesting.
"My efforts over the years seem to have been wasted. I had hoped that
familiarity would bring greater affection, and I was wrong."
On New Year's Day he visited his father and the crown prince. He
went from the palace to the Sanjo~ mansion. His father-in-law, for whom
the New Year had not brought a renewal of spirits, had been talking sadly
of things gone by. He did not want this kind and rare visit to be marred
by tears, but he was perilously near weeping. Perhaps because he was now
a year older, Genji seemed more dignified and mature, and handsomer as
well. In Aoi's rooms the unexpected visit reduced her women to tears. The
little boy had grown. He sat babbling and laughing happily, the resem-
blance to the crown prince especially strong around the eyes and mouth.
All the old fears came back which his own resemblance to the crown prince
had occasioned. Nothing in the rooms had been changed. On a clothes
rack, as always, robes were laid out for Genji; but there were none for Aoi.
A note came from Princess Omiya. "I had become rather better at
controlling my tears, but this visit has quite unsettled me. Here are your
<P 184>
New Year robes. I have been so blinded with tears these last months that
I fear the colors will not please you. Do, today at least, put them on,
inadequate though they may be."
Yet others were brought in. A good deal of care had clearly gone into
the weaving and dyeing of the singlets which she wished him to wear
today. Not wanting to seem ungrateful, he changed into them. He feared
that she would have been very disappointed if he had not come.
"I am here," he sent back, "that you may see for yourself whether or
not spring has come. I find myself reduced to silence by all the memories.
"Yet once again I put on robes for the new,
And tears are falling for all that went with the old.
I cannot contain them."
She sent back:
"The New Year brings renewal, I know, and yet
The same old tears still now from the same old woman."
The grief was still intense for both of them.
<W Murasaki Shikibu>{Translated by Edward G.Seidensticker}
<T The Tale of Genji>
<K 2>
<C 10>{The Sacred Tree}
<N 1>
<P 185>
The Rokujo~ lady was more and more despondent as the time neared for
her daughter's departure. Since the death of Aoi, who had caused her such
pain, Genji's visits, never frequent, had stopped altogether. They had
aroused great excitement among her women and now the change seemed
too sudden. Genji must have very specific reasons for having turned
against her--there was no explaining his extreme coldness otherwise. She
would think no more about him. She would go with her daughter. There
were no precedents for a mother's accompanying a high priestess to Ise, but
she had as her excuse that her daughter would be helpless without her. The
real reason, of course, was that she wanted to flee these painful associa-
tions.
In spite of everything, Genji was sorry when he heard of her decision.
He now wrote often and almost pleadingly, but she thought a meeting out
of the question at this late date. She would risk disappointing him rather
thin have it all begin again.
<N 2>
She occasionally went from the priestess's temporary shrine to her
Rokujo~ house, but so briefly and in such secrecy that Genji did not hear
of the visits. The temporary shrine did not, he thought, invite casual visits.
Although she was much on his mind, he let the days and months go by.
His father, the old emperor, had begun to suffer from recurrent aches and
cramps, and Genji had little time for himself. Yet he did not want the lady
