whom he had had even fleeting affairs, nor were there any among them
in whom he could find no merit; and so it was, perhaps, that an easy, casual
relationship often proved durable. There were some who changed their
minds and went on to other things, but he saw no point in lamenting what
was after all the way of the world. The lady behind that earlier fence would
seem to have been among the changeable ones.
<W Murasaki Shikibu>{Translated by Edward G.Seidensticker}
<T The Tale of Genji>
<K 2>
<C 12>{Suma}
<N 1>
<P 219>
For Genji life had become an unbroken succession of reverses and afflic-
tions. He must consider what to do next. If he went on pretending that
nothing was amiss, then even worse things might lie ahead. He thought
of the Suma coast. People of worth had once lived there, he was told, but
now it was deserted save for the huts of fishermen, and even they were
few. The alternative was worse, to go on living this public life, so to speak,
with people streaming in and out of his house. Yet he would hate to leave,
and affairs at court would continue to be much on his mind if he did leave.
This irresolution was making life difficult for his people.
Unsettling thoughts of the past and the future chased one another
through his mind. The thought of leaving the city aroused a train of
regrets, led by the image of a grieving Murasaki. It was very well to tell
himself that somehow, someday, by some route they would come together
again. Even when they were separated for a day or two Genji was beside
himself with worry and Murasaki's gloom was beyond describing. It was
not as if they would be parting for a fixed span of years; and if they had
only the possibility of a reunion on some unnamed day with which to
comfort themselves, well, life is uncertain, and they might be parting
forever. He thought of consulting no one and taking her with him, but the
<P 220>
inappropriateness of subjecting such a fragile lady to the rigors of life on
that harsh coast, where the only callers would be the wind and the waves,
was too obvious. Having her with him would only add to his worries. She
guessed his thoughts and was unhappy. She let it be known that she did
not want to be left behind, however forbidding the journey and life at the
end of it.
Then there was the lady of the orange blossoms. He did not visit her
often, it is true, but he was her only support and comfort, and she would
have every right to feel lonely and insecure. And there were women who,
after the most fleeting affairs with him, went on nursing their various
secret sorrows.
Fujitsubo, though always worried about rumors, wrote frequently. It
struck him as bitterly ironical that she had not returned his affection
earlier, but he told himself that a fate which they had shared from other
lives must require that they know the full range of sorrows.
He left the city late in the Third Month. He made no announcement
of his departure, which was very inconspicuous, and had only seven or
eight trusted retainers with him. He did write to certain people who should
know of the event. I have no doubt that there were many fine passages in
the letters with which he saddened the lives of his many ladies, but,
grief-stricken myself, I did not listen as carefully as I might have.
<N 2>
Two or three days before his departure he visited his father-in-law.
It was sad, indeed rather eerie, to see the care he took not to attract notice.
His carriage, a humble one covered with cypress basketwork, might have
been mistaken for a woman's. The apartments of his late wife wore a
lonely, neglected aspect. At the arrival of this wondrous and unexpected
guest, the little boy's nurse and all the other women who had not taken
positions elsewhere gathered for a last look. Even the shallowest of the
younger women were moved to tears at the awareness he brought of
transience and mutability. Yu~giri, the little boy, was very pretty indeed,
and indefatigably noisy.
"It has been so long. I am touched that he has not forgotten me." He
took the boy on his knee and seemed about to weep.
The minister, his father-in-law, came in. "I know that you are shut
up at home with little to occupy you, and I had been thinking I would like
to call on you and have a good talk. I talk on and on when once I let myself
get started. But I have told them I am ill and have been staying away from
court, and I have even resigned my offices; and I know what they would
say if I were to stretch my twisted old legs for my own pleasure. I hardly
need to worry about such things any more, of course, but I am still capable
of being upset by false accusations. When I see how things are with you,
I know all too painfully what a sad day I have come on at the end of too
long a life. I would have expected the world to end before this was allowed
to happen, and I see hot a ray of light in it all."
"Dear sir, we must accept the disabilities we bring from other lilies.
Everything that has happened to me is a result of my own inadequacy. I
<P 221>
have heard that in other lands as well as our own an offense which does
not, like mine, call for dismissal from office is thought to become far graver
if the culprit goes on happily living his old life. And when exile is consid-
ered, as I believe it is in my case, the offense must have been thought more
serious. Though I know I am innocent, I know too what insults I may look
forward to if I stay, and so I think that I will forestall them by leaving."
Brushing away tears, the minister talked of old times, of Genji's fa-
ther, and all he had said and thought. Genji too was weeping. The little
boy scrambled and rolled about the room, now pouncing upon his father
and now making demands upon his grandfather.
"I have gone on grieving for my daughter. And then I think what
agony all this would have been to her, and am grateful that she lived such
a short life and was spared the nightmare. So I try to tell myself, in any
event. My chief sorrows and worries are for our little man here. He must
grow up among us dotards, and the days and months will go by without
the advantage of your company. It used to be that even people who were
guilty of serious crimes escaped this sort of punishment; and I suppose we
must call it fate, in our land and other lands too, that punishment should
come all the same. But one does want to know what the charges are. In
your case they quite defy the imagination."
<P 222>
To~ no Chu~jo~ came in. They drank until very late, and Genji was
induced to stay the night. He summoned Aoi's various women. Chu~nagon
was the one whom he had most admired, albeit in secret. He went on
talking to her after everything was quiet, and it would seem to have been
because of her that he was prevailed upon to spend the night. Dawn was
at hand when he got up to leave. The moon in the first suggestions of
daylight was very beautiful. The cherry blossoms were past their prime,
and the light through the few that remained flooded the garden silver.
Everything faded together into a gentle mist, sadder and more moving than
on a night in autumn. He sat for a time leaning against the railing at a
corner of the veranda. Chu~nagon was waiting at the door as if to see him
off.
"I wonder when we will be permitted to meet again." He paused,
choking with tears. "Never did I dream that this would happen, and I
neglected you in the days when it would have been so easy to see you."
Saisho~, Yu~giri's nurse, came with a message from Princess Omiya. "I
would have liked to say goodbye in person, but I have waited in hope that
the turmoil of my thoughts might quiet a little. And now I hear that you
are leaving, and it is still so early. Everything seems changed, completely
wrong. It is a pity that you cannot at least wait until our little sleepyhead
is up and about."
Weeping softly, Genji whispered to himself, not precisely by way of
reply:
"There on the shore, the salt burners' fires await me.
Will their smoke be as the smoke over Toribe Moor?
Is this the parting at dawn we are always hearing of? No doubt there are
those who know."
"I have always hated the word'farewell,'" said Saisho~, whose grief
seemed quite unfeigned." And our farewells today are unlike any others."
"Over and over again, "he sent back to Princess Omiya, "I have
thought of all the things I would have liked to say to you; and I hope you
will understand and forgive my muteness. As for our little sleepyhead, I
fear that if I were to see him I would wish to stay on even in this hostile
city, and so I shall collect myself and be on my way."
All the women were there to see him go. He looked more elegant and
handsome than ever in the light of the setting moon, and his dejection
would have reduced tigers and wolves to tears. These were women who
had served him since he was very young. It was a sad day for them.
There was a poem from Princess Omiya:
"Farther retreats the day when we bade her goodbye,
For now you depart the skies that received the smoke."
Sorrow was added to sorrow, and the tears almost seemed to invite
further misfortunes.
<N 3>
<P 223>
He returned to Nijo~. The women, awake the whole night through, it
seemed, were gathered in sad clusters. There was no one in the guardroom.
The men closest to him, reconciled to going with him, were making their
own personal farewells. As for other court functionaries, there had been
ominous hints of sanctions were they to come calling, and so the grounds,
once crowded with horses and carriages, were empty and silent. He knew
again what a hostile world it had become. There was dust on the tables,
cushions had been put away. And what would be the extremes of waste
and the neglect when he was gone?
He went to Murasaki's wing of the house. She had been up all night,
not even lowering the shutters. Out near the verandas little girls were
noisily bestirring themselves. They were so pretty in their night dress--
and presently, no doubt, they would find the loneliness too much, and go
their various ways. Such thoughts had not before been a part of his life.
He told Murasaki what had kept him at Sanjo~. "And I suppose you
are filled with the usual odd suspicions. I have wanted to be with you every
moment I am still in the city, but there are things that force me to go out.
Life is uncertain enough at best, and I would not want to seem cold and
unfeeling."
<P 224>
"And what should be'odd' now except that you are going away?"
That she should feel these sad events more cruelly than any of the
others was not surprising. From her childhood she had been closer to Genji
than to her own father, who now bowed to public opinion and had not
offered a word of sympathy. His coldness had caused talk among her
women. She was beginning to wish that they had kept him in ignorance
of her whereabouts.
Someone reported what her stepmother was saying: "She had a sud-
den stroke of good luck, and now just as suddenly everything goes wrong.
It makes a person shiver. One after another, each in his own way, they all
run out on her."
This was too much. There was nothing more she wished to say to
them. Henceforth she would have only Genji.
"If the years go by and I am still an outcast," he continued, "I will
come for you and bring you to my'cave among the rocks.' But we must
not be hasty. A man who is out of favor at court is not permitted the light
of the sun and the moon, and it is thought a great crime, I am told, for him
to go on being happy. The cause of it all is a great mystery to me, but I
must accept it as fate. There seems to be no precedent for sharing exile with
a lady, and I am sure that to suggest it would be to invite worse insanity
from an insane world."
He slept until almost noon.
To~ no Chu~jo~ and Genji's brother, Prince Hotaru, came calling. Since
he was now without rank and office, he changed to informal dress of
unfigured silk, more elegant, and even somehow grand, for its simplicity.
As he combed his hair he could not help noticing that loss of weight had
made him even handsomer.
"I am skin and bones," he said to Murasaki, who sat gazing at him,
tears in her eyes. "Can I really be as emaciated as this mirror makes me?
I am a little sorry for myself.
"I now must go into exile. In this mirror
An image of me will yet remain beside you."
Huddling against a pillar to hide her tears, she replied as if to herself:
"If when we part an image yet remains,
Then will I find some comfort in my sorrow."
Yes, she was unique--a new awareness of that fact stabbed at his
heart.
Prince Hotaru kept him affectionate company through the day and
left in the evening.
<N 4>
It was not hard to imagine the loneliness that brought frequent notes
<P 225>
from the house of the falling orange blossoms. Fearing that he would seem
unkind if he did not visit the ladies again, he resigned himself to spending
yet another night away from home. It was very late before he gathered
himself for the effort.
"We are honored that you should consider us worth a visit," said Lady
Reikeiden--and it would be difficult to record the rest of the interview.
They lived precarious lives, completely dependent on Genji. So lonely
indeed was their mansion that he could imagine the desolation awaiting
it once he himself was gone; and the heavily wooded hill rising dimly
beyond the wide pond in misty moonlight made him wonder whether the
"cave among the rocks" at Suma would be such a place.
He went to the younger sister's room, at the west side of the house.
