to go off to Ise thinking him completely heartless, nor did he wish to have
<P 186>
a name at court for insensitivity. He gathered his resolve and set off for
the shrine.
It was on about the seventh of the Ninth Month. The lady was under
great tension, for their departure was imminent, possibly only a day or two
away. He had several times asked for a word with her. He need not go
inside, he said, but could wait on the veranda. She was in a torment of
uncertainty but at length reached a secret decision: she did not want to
seem like a complete recluse and so she would receive him through cur-
tains.
It was over a reed plain of melancholy beauty that he made his way
to the shrine. The autumn flowers were gone and insects hummed in the
wintry tangles. A wind whistling through the pines brought snatches of
music to most wonderful effect, though so distant that he could not tell
what was being played. Not wishing to attract attention, he had only ten
outrunners, men who had long been in his service, and his guards were in
subdued livery. He had dressed with great care. His more perceptive men
saw how beautifully the melancholy scene set him off, and he was having
regrets that he had not made the journey often. A low wattle fence,
scarcely more than a suggestion of an enclosure, surrounded a complex of
board-roofed buildings, as rough and insubstantial as temporary shelters.
The shrine gates, of unfinished logs, had a grand and awesome dignity
for all their simplicity, and the somewhat forbidding austerity of the place
was accentuated by clusters of priests talking among themselves and
coughing and clearing their throats as if in warning. It was a scene quite
unlike any Genji had seen before. The fire lodge glowed faintly. It was
all in all a lonely, quiet place, and here away from the world a lady already
deep in sorrow had passed these weeks and months. Concealing himself
outside the north wing, he sent in word of his arrival. The music abruptly
stopped and the silence was broken only by a rustling of silken robes.
Though several messages were passed back and forth, the lady herself
did not come out.
"You surely know that these expeditions are frowned upon. I find it
very curious that I should be required to wait outside the sacred paling.
I want to tell you everything, all my sorrows and worries."
He was right, said the women. It was more than a person could bear,
seeing him out there without even a place to sit down. What was she to
do? thought the lady. There were all these people about, and her daughter
would expect more mature and sober conduct. No, to receive him at this
late date would be altogether too undignified. Yet she could not bring
herself to send him briskly on his way. She sighed and hesitated and
hesitated again, and it was with great excitement that he finally heard her
come forward.
"May I at least come up to the veranda?" he asked, starting up the
stairs.
<P 187>
The evening moon burst forth and the figure she saw in its light was
handsome beyond describing.
Not wishing to apologize for all the weeks of neglect, he pushed a
branch of the sacred tree in under the blinds.
"With heart unchanging as this evergreen,
This sacred tree, I enter the sacred gate."
She replied:
"You err with your sacred tree and sacred gate.
No beckoning cedars stand before my house."
And he:
"Thinking to find you here with the holy maidens,
I followed the scent of the leaf of the sacred tree."
Though the scene did not encourage familiarity, he made bold to lean
inside the blinds.
<N 3>
<P 188>
He had complacently wasted the days when he could have visited her
and perhaps made her happy. He had begun to have misgivings about her,
his ardor had cooled, and they had become the near strangers they were
now. But she was here before him, and memories flooded back. He thought
of what had been and what was to be, and he was weeping like a child.
She did not wish him to see her following his example. He felt even
sadder for her as she fought to control herself, and it would seem that even
now he urged her to change her plans. Gazing up into a sky even more
beautiful now that the moon was setting, he poured forth all his pleas and
complaints, and no doubt they were enough to erase the accumulated
bitterness. She had resigned herself to what must be, and it was as she had
feared. Now that she was with him again she found her resolve wavering.
Groups of young courtiers came up. It was a garden which aroused
romantic urges and which a young man was reluctant to leave.
Their feelings for each other, Genji's and the lady's, had run the whole
range of sorrows and irritations, and no words could suffice for all they
wanted to say to each other. The dawn sky was as if made for the occasion.
Not wanting to go quite yet, Genji took her hand, very gently.
"A dawn farewell is always drenched in dew,
But sad is the autumn sky as never before."
A cold wind was blowing, and a pine cricket seemed to recognize the
occasion. It was a serenade to which a happy lover would not have been
deaf. Perhaps because their feelings were in such tumult, they found that
the poems they might have exchanged were eluding them.
At length the lady replied:
"An autumn farewell needs nothing to make it sadder.
Enough of your songs, O crickets on the moors!"
It would do no good to pour forth all the regrets again. He made his
departure, not wanting to be seen in the broadening daylight. His sleeves
were made wet along the way with dew and with tears.
The lady, not as strong as she would have wished, was sunk in a sad
reverie. The shadowy figure in the moonlight and the perfume he left
behind had the younger women in a state only just short of swooning.
"What kind of journey could be important enough, I ask you," said
one of them, choking with tears, "to make her leave such a man?"
<N 4>
His letter the next day was so warm and tender that again she was
tempted to reconsider. But it was too late: a return to the old indecision
would accomplish nothing. Genji could be very persuasive even when he
did not care a great deal for a woman, and this was no ordinary parting.
He sent the finest travel robes and supplies, for the lady and for her women
as well. They were no longer enough to move her. It was as if the thought
<P 189>
had only now come to her of the ugly name she seemed fated to leave
behind.
The high priestess was delighted that a date had finally been set. The
novel fact that she was taking her mother with her gave rise to talk, some
sympathetic and some hostile. Happy are they whose place in the world
puts them beneath such notice! The great ones of the world live sadly
constricted lives.
<N 5>
On the sixteenth there was a lustration at the Katsura River, splendid
as never before. Perhaps because the old emperor was so fond of the high
priestess, the present emperor appointed a retinue of unusually grand rank
and good repute to escort her to Ise. There were many things Genji would
have liked to say as the procession left the temporary shrine, but he sent
only a note tied with a ritual cord. "To her whom it would be blasphemy
to address in person," he wrote on the envelope.
"I would have thought not even the heavenly thunderer strong
enough.
"If my lady the priestess, surveying her manifold realms,
Has feelings for those below, let her feel for me.
"I tell myself that it must be, but remain unconvinced."
There was an answer despite the confusion, in the hand of the pries-
tess's lady of honor:
"If a lord of the land is watching from above,
This pretense of sorrow will not have escaped his notice."
Genji would have liked to be present at the final audience with the
emperor, but did not relish the role of rejected suitor. He spent the day in
gloomy seclusion. He had to smile, however, at the priestess's rather
knowing poem. She was clever for her age, and she interested him. Difficult
and unconventional relationships always interested him. He could have
done a great deal for her in earlier years and he was sorry now that he had
not. But perhaps they would meet again--one never knew in this
world.
<N 6>
A great many carriages had gathered, for an entourage presided over
by ladies of such taste was sure to be worth seeing. It entered the palace
in midafternoon. As the priestess's mother got into her state palanquin, she
thought of her late father, who had had ambitious plans for her and
prepared her with the greatest care for the position that was to be hers; and
things could not have gone more disastrously wrong. Now, after all these
years, she came to the palace again. She had entered the late crown prince's
<P 190>
household at sixteen and at twenty he had left her behind; and now, at
thirty, she saw the palace once more.
ho "The things of the past are always of the past.
I would not think of them. Yet sad is my heart."
The priestess was a charming, delicate girl of fourteen, dressed by her
mother with very great care. She was so compelling a little figure, indeed,
that one wondered if she could be long for this world. The emperor was
near tears as he put the farewell comb in her hair.
<N 7>
The carriages of their ladies were lined up before the eight ministries
to await their withdrawal from the royal presence. The sleeves that flowed
from beneath the blinds were of many and marvelous hues, and no doubt
there were courtiers who were making their own silent, regretful farewells.
The procession left the palace in the evening. It was before Genji's
mansion as it turned south from Nijo~ to Do~in. Unable to let it pass without
a word, Genji sent out a poem attached to a sacred branch:
"You throw me off; but will they not wet your sleeves,
The eighty waves of the river Suzuka?"
It was dark and there was great confusion, and her answer, brief and
to the point, came the next morning from beyond Osaka Gate.
"And who will watch us all the way to Ise,
To see if those eighty waves have done their work?"
Her hand had lost none of its elegance, though it was a rather cold and
austere elegance.
The morning was an unusually sad one of heavy mists. Absently he
whispered to himself:
"I see her on her way. Do not, O mists,
This autumn close off the Gate of the Hill of Meeting."
He spent the day alone, sunk in a sad reverie entirely of his own
making, not even visiting Murasaki. And how much sadder must have
been the thoughts of the lady on the road!
<N 8>
From the Tenth Month alarm for the old emperor spread through the
whole court. The new emperor called to inquire after him. Weak though
he was, the old emperor asked over and over again that his son be good
to the crown prince. And he spoke too of Genji:
"Look to him for advice in large things and in small, just as you have
until now. He is young but quite capable of ordering the most complicated
public affairs. There is no office of which he need feel unworthy and no
task in all the land that is beyond his powers. I reduced him to common
rank so that you might make full use of his services. Do not, I beg of you,
ignore my last wishes."
<P 191>
He made many other moving requests, but it is not a woman's place
to report upon them. Indeed I feel rather apologetic for having set down
these fragments.
Deeply moved, the emperor assured his father over and over again
that all of his wishes would be respected. The old emperor was pleased to
see that he had matured into a man of such regal dignity. The interview
was necessarily a short one, and the old emperor was if anything sadder
than had it not taken place.
<N 9>
The crown prince had wanted to come too, but had been persuaded
that unnecessary excitement was to be avoided and had chosen another
day. He was a handsome boy, advanced for his years. He had longed to
see his father, and now that they were together there were no bounds to
his boyish delight. Countless emotions assailed the old emperor as he saw
the tears in Fujitsubo's eyes. He had many things to say, but the boy
seemed so very young and helpless. Over and over again he told Genji
what he must do, and the well-being of the crown prince dominated his
remarks. It was late in the night when the crown prince made his depar-
ture. With virtually the whole court in attendance, the ceremony was only
a little less grand than for the emperor's visit. The old emperor looked
sadly after the departing procession. The visit had been too short.
<P 192>
Kokiden too wanted to see him, but she did not want to see Fujitsubo.
She hesitated, and then, peacefully, he died. The court was caught quite
by surprise. He had, it was true, left the throne, but his influence had
remained considerable. The emperor was young and his maternal grandfa-
ther, the Minister of the Right, was an impulsive, vindictive sort of man.
What would the world be like, asked courtiers high and low, with such a
man in control?
For Genji and Fujitsubo, the question was even crueler. At the funeral
no one thought it odd that Genji should stand out among the old emperor's
sons, and somehow people felt sadder for him than for his brothers. The
dull mourning robes became him and seemed to make him more deserving
of sympathy than the others. Two bereavements in successive years had
informed him of the futility of human affairs. He thought once more of
leaving the world. Alas, too many bonds still tied him to it.
The old emperor's ladies remained in his palace until the forty-ninth-
