before sunrise. Taking along only four or five of his closest attendants, he
boarded the boat. That strange wind came up again and they were at
Akashi as if they had flown. It was very near, within crawling distance,
so to speak; but still the workings of the wind were strange and marvelous.
<N 5>
The Akashi coast was every bit as beautiful as he had been told it was.
He would have preferred fewer people, but on the whole he was pleased.
Along the coast and in the hills the old monk had put up numerous
<P 252>
buildings with which to take advantage of the four seasons: a reed-roofed
beach cottage with fine seasonal vistas; beside a mountain stream a chapel
of some grandeur and dignity, suitable for rites and meditation and invoca-
tion of the holy name; and rows of storehouses where the harvest was put
away and a bountiful life assured for the years that remained. Fearful of
the high tides, the old monk had sent his daughter and her women off to
the hills. The house on the beach was at Genji's disposal.
The sun was rising as Genji left the boat and got into a carriage. This
first look by daylight at his new guest brought a happy smile to the old
man's lips. He felt as if the accumulated years were falling away and as
if new years had been granted him. He gave silent thanks to the god of
Sumiyoshi. He might have seemed ridiculous as he bustled around seeing
to Genji's needs, as if the radiance of the sun and the moon had become
his private property; but no one laughed at him.
I need not describe the beauty of the Akashi coast. The careful atten-
tion that had gone into the house and the rocks and plantings of the
garden, the graceful line of the coast--it was infinitely pleasanter than
Suma, and one would not have wished to ask a less than profoundly
sensitive painter to paint it. The house was in quiet good taste. The old
<P 253>
man's way of life was as Genji had heard it described, hardly more rustic
than that of the grandees at court. In sheer luxury, indeed, he rather outdid
them.
<N 6>
When Genji had rested for a time he got off messages to the city. He
summoned Murasaki's messenger, who was still at Suma recovering from
the horrors of his journey. Loaded with rewards for his services, he now
set out again for the city. It would seem that Genji sent off a description
of his perils to priests and others of whose services he regularly made
use, but he told only Fujitsubo how narrow his escape had in fact been.
He repeatedly laid down his brush as he sought to answer that very
affectionate letter from Murasaki.
"I feel that I have run the whole gamut of horrors and then run it
again, and more than ever I would like to renounce the world; but though
everything else has fled away, the image which you entrusted to the mirror
has not for an instant left me. I think that I might not see you again.
"Yet farther away, upon the beach at Akashi,
My thoughts of a distant city, and of you.
"I am still half dazed, which fact will I fear be too apparent in the
confusion and disorder of this letter."
Though it was true that his letter was somewhat disordered, his men
thought it splendid. How very fond he must be of their lady! It would seem
that they sent off descriptions of their own perils.
The apparently interminable rains had at last stopped and the sky was
bright far into the distance. The fishermen radiated good spirits. Suma had
been a lonely place with only a few huts scattered among the rocks. It was
true that the crowds here at Akashi were not entirely to Genji's liking, but
it was a pleasant spot with much to interest him and take his mind from
his troubles.
<N 7>
The old man's devotion to the religious life was rather wonderful.
Only one matter interfered with it: worry about his daughter. He told
Genji a little of his concern for the girl. Genji was sympathetic. He had
heard that she was very handsome and wondered if there might not be
some bond between them, that he should have come upon her in this
strange place. But no; here he was in the remote provinces, and he must
think of nothing but his own prayers. He would be unable to face
Murasaki if he were to depart from the promises he had made her. Yet he
continued to be interested in the girl. Everything suggested that her nature
and appearance were very far from ordinary.
Reluctant to intrude himself, the old man had moved to an outbuild-
ing. He was restless and unhappy when away from Genji, however, and
he prayed more fervently than ever to the gods and Buddhas that his
unlikely hope might be realized. Though in his sixties he had taken good
<P 254>
care of himself and was young for his age. The religious life and the fact
that he was of proud lineage may have had something to do with the
matter. He was stubborn and intractable, as old people often are, but he
was well versed in antiquities and not without a certain subtlety. His
stories of old times did a great deal to dispel Genji's boredom. Genji had
been too busy himself for the sort of erudition, the lore about customs and
precedents, which he now had in bits and installments, and he told himself
that it would have been a great loss if he had not known Akashi and its
venerable master.
In a sense they were friends, but Genji rather overawed the old man.
Though he had seemed so confident when he told his wife of his hopes,
he hesitated, unable to broach the matter, now that the time for action had
come, and seemed capable only of bemoaning his weakness and inad-
equacy. As for the daughter, she rarely saw a passable man here in the
country among people of her own rank; and now she had had a glimpse
of a man the like of whom she had not suspected to exist. She was a shy,
modest girl, and she thought him quite beyond her reach. She had had
hints of her father's ambitions and thought them wildly inappropriate, and
her discomfort was greater for having Genji near.
<N 8>
It was the Fourth Month. The old man had all the curtains and fixtures
of Genji's rooms changed for fresh summery ones. Genji was touched and
a little embarrassed, feeling that the old man's attentions were perhaps a
bit overdone; but he would not have wished for the world to offend so
proud a nature.
A great many messages now came from the city inquiring after his
safety. On a quiet moonlit night when the sea stretched off into the
distance under a cloudless sky, he almost felt that he was looking at the
familiar waters of his own garden. Overcome with longing, he was like a
solitary, nameless wanderer. "Awaji, distant foam," he whispered to him-
self.
"Awaji: in your name is all my sadness,
And clear you stand in the light of the moon tonight."
He took out the seven-stringed koto, long neglected, which he had
brought from the city and sPread a train of sad thoughts through the house
as he plucked out a few tentative notes. He exhausted all his skills on "The
Wide Barrow," and the sound reached the house in the hills on a sighing
of wind and waves. Sensitive young ladies heard it and were moved. Lowly
rustics, though they could not have identified the music, were lured out
into the sea winds, there to catch cold.
<P 255>
The old man could not sit still. Casting aside his beads, he came
running over to the main house.
"I feel as if a world I had thrown away were coming back," he said,
breathless and tearful. "It is a night such as to make one feel that the
blessed world for which one longs must be even so."
Genji played on in a reverie, a flood of memories of concerts over the
years, of this gentleman and that lady on flute and koto, of voices raised
in song, of times when he and they had been the center of attention,
recipients of praise and favors from the emperor himself. Sending to the
house on the hill for a lute and a thirteen-stringed koto, the old man now
seemed to change roles and become one of these priestly mendicants who
make their living by the lute. He played a most interesting and affecting
strain. Genji played a few notes on the thirteen-stringed koto which the
old man pressed on him and was thought an uncommonly impressive
performer on both sorts of koto. Even the most ordinary music can seem
remarkable if the time and place are right; and here on the wide seacoast,
open far into the distance, the groves seemed to come alive in colors richer
than the bloom of spring or the change of autumn, and the calls of the
water rails were as if they were pounding on the door and demanding to
be admitted.
The old man had a delicate style to which the instruments were
beautifully suited and which delighted Genji. "One likes to see a gentle
lady quite at her ease with a koto," said Genji, as if with nothing specific
in mind.
The old man smiled. "And where, sir, is one likely to find a gentler,
more refined musician than yourself? On the koto I am in the third genera-
tion from the emperor Daigo. I have left the great world for the rustic
surroundings in which you have found me, and sometimes when I have
been more gloomy than usual I have taken out a koto and picked away at
it; and, curiously, there has been someone who has imitated me. Her
playing has come quite naturally to resemble my master's. Or perhaps it
has only seemed so to the degenerate ear of the mountain monk who has
only the pine winds for company. I wonder if it might be possible to let
you hear a strain, in the greatest secrecy of course." He brushed away a
tear.
"I have been rash and impertinent. My playing must have sounded
like no playing at all." Genji turned away from the koto. "I do not know
why, but it has always been the case that ladies have taken especially well
to the koto. One hears that with her father to teach her the fifth daughter
of the emperor Saga was a great master of the instrument, but it would
seem that she had no successors. The people who set themselves up as
masters these days are quite ordinary performers with no real grounding
at all. How fascinating that someone who still holds to the grand style
should be hidden away on this coast. Do let me hear her."
"No difficulty at all, if that is what you wish. If you really wish it, I
<P 256>
can summon her. There was once a poet, you will remember, who was
much pleased at the lute of a tradesman's wife. While we are on the
subject of lutes, there were not many even in the old days who could bring
out the best in the instrument. Yet it would seem that the person of whom
I speak plays with a certain sureness and manages to affect a rather pleasing
delicacy. I have no idea where she might have acquired these skills. It
seems wrong that she should be asked to compete with the wild waves,
but sometimes in my gloom I do have her strike up a tune."
He spoke with such spirit that Genji, much interested, pushed the lute
toward him.
He did indeed play beautifully, adding decorations that have gone out
of fashion. There was a Chinese elegance in his touch, and he was able to
induce a particularly solemn tremolo from the instrument. Though it might
have been argued that the setting was wrong, an adept among his retainers
was persuaded to sing for them about the clean shore of Ise. Tapping out
the rhythm, Genji would join in from time to time, and the old man would
pause to offer a word of praise. Refreshments were brought in, very pret-
tily arranged. The old man was most assiduous in seeing that the cups were
kept full, and it became the sort of evening when troubles are forgotten.
<N 9>
Late in the night the sea breezes were cool and the moon seemed
brighter and clearer as it sank towards the west. All was quiet. In pieces
and fragments the old man told about himself, from his feelings upon
taking up residence on this Akashi coast to his hopes for the future life and
the prospects which his devotions seemed to be opening. He added, unsol-
icited, an account of his daughter. Genji listened with interest and sympa-
thy.
"It is not easy for me to say it, sir, but the fact that you are here even
briefly in what must be for you strange and quite unexpected surround-
ings, and the fact that you are being asked to undergo trials new to your
experience--I wonder if it Might not be that the powers to whom an aged
monk has so fervently prayed for so many years have taken pity on him.
It is now eighteen years since I first prayed and made vows to the god of
Sumiyoshi. I have had certain hopes for my daughter since she was very
young, and every spring and autumn I have taken her to Sumiyoshi. At
each of my six daily services, three of them in the daytime and three at
night, I have put aside my own wishes for salvation and ventured a sugges-
tion that my hopes for the girl be noticed. I have sunk to this provincial
<P 257>
obscurity because I brought an unhappy destiny with me into this life. My
father was a minister, and you see what I have become. If my family is to
follow the same road in the future, I ask myself, then where will it end?
But I have had high hopes for her since she was born. I have been deter-
mined that she go to some noble gentleman in the city. I have been accused
of arrogance and unworthy ambitions and subjected to some rather un-
pleasant treatment. I have not let it worry me. I have said to her that while
I live I will do what I can for her, limited though my resources may be;
and that if I die before my hopes are realized she is to throw herself into
the sea." He was weeping. It had taken great resolve for him to speak so
openly.
Genji wept easily these days. "I had been feeling put upon, bundled
off to this strange place because of crimes I was not aware of having
committed. Your story makes me feel that there is a bond between us. Why
did you not tell me earlier? Nothing has seemed quite real since I came
