catching tricks; but when you take the trouble to compare the two the real
thing is the real thing.
"So it is with trivialities like painting and calligraphy. How much
more so with matters of the heart! I put no trust in the showy sort of
affection that is quick to come forth when a suitable occasion presents
itself. Let me tell you of something that happened to me a long time ago.
You may find the story a touch wanton, but hear me through all the same."
He drew close to Genji, who awoke from his slumber. To~ no Chu~jo~,
chin in hand, sat opposite, listening with the greatest admiration and
attention. There was in the young man's manner something slightly comi-
cal, as if he were a sage expostulating upon the deepest truths of the
universe, but at such times a young man is not inclined to conceal his most
intimate secrets.
"It happened when I was very young, hardly more than a page. I was
attracted to a woman. She was of a sort I have mentioned before, not the
most beautiful in the world. In my youthful frivolity, I did not at first think
of making her my wife. She was someone to visit, not someone who
deserved my full attention. Other places interested me more. She was
violently jealous. If only she could be a little more understanding, I
thought, wanting to be away from the interminable quarreling. And on the
other hand it sometimes struck me as a little sad that she should be so
worried about a man of so little account as myself. In the course of time
I began to mend my ways.
"For my sake, she would try to do things for which her talent and
nature did not suit her, and she was determined not to seem inferior even
in matters for which she had no great aptitude. She served me diligently
in everything. She did not want to be guilty of the smallest thing that
might go against my wishes. I had at first thought her rather strong-willed,
but she proved to be docile and pliant. She thought constantly about
hiding her less favorable qualities, afraid that they might put me off, and
she did what she could to avoid displaying herself and causing me embar-
rassment. She was a model of devotion. In a word, there was nothing
wrong with her--save the one thing I found so trying.
"I told myself that she was devoted to the point of fear, and that if
I led her to think I might be giving her up she might be a little less
suspicious and given to nagging. I had had almost all I could stand. If she
really wanted to be with me and I suggested that a break was near, then
she might reform. I behaved with studied coldness, and when, as always,
her resentment exploded, I said to her:'Not even the strongest bond
between husband and wife can stand an unlimited amount of this sort of
thing. It will eventually break, and he will not see her again. If you want
to bring matters to such a pass, then go on doubting me as you have. If
you would like to be with me for the years that lie ahead of us, then bear
the trials as they come, difficult though they may be, and think them the
way of the world. If you manage to overcome your jealousy, my affection
is certain to grow. It seems likely that I will move ahead into an office of
some distinction, and you will go with me and have no one you need think
of as a rival.' I was very pleased with myself. I had performed brilliantly
as a preceptor.
"But she only smiled.'Oh, it won't be all that much trouble to put
up with your want of consequence and wait till you are important. It will
be much harder to pass the months and the years in the barely discernible
hope that you will settle down and mend your fickle ways. Maybe you are
right. Maybe this is the time to part.'
"I was furious, and I said so, and she answered in kind. Then, sud-
denly, she took my hand and bit my finger.
"I reproved her somewhat extravagantly.'You insult me, and now you
have wounded me. Do you think I can go to court like this? I am, as you
say, a person of no consequence, and now, mutilated as I am, what is to
help me get ahead in the world? There is nothing left for me but to become
a monk.' That meeting must be our last, I said, and departed, flexing my
wounded finger.
"'I count them over, the many things between us.
One finger does not, alas, count the sum of your failures.
"I left the verse behind, adding that now she had nothing to complain
about.
"She had a verse of her own. There were tears in her eyes.
"'I have counted them up myself, be assured, my failures.
For one bitten finger must all be bitten away?'
"I did not really mean to leave her, but my days were occupied in
wanderings here and there, and I sent her no message. Then, late one
evening toward the end of the year--it was an evening of rehearsals for
the Kamo festival--a sleet was falling as we all started for home. Home.
It came to me that I really had nowhere to go but her house. It would be
no pleasure to sleep alone at the palace, and if I visited a woman of
sensibility I would be kept freezing while she admired the snow. I would
go look in upon her, and see what sort of mood she might be in. And so,
brushing away the sleet, I made my way to her house. I felt just a little shy,
but told myself that the sleet melting from my coat should melt her
resentment. There was a dim light turned toward the wall, and a comforta-
ble old robe of thick silk lay spread out to warm. The curtains were raised,
everything suggested that she was waiting for me. I felt that I had done
rather well.
"But she was nowhere in sight. She had gone that evening to stay with
her parents, said the women who had been left behind. I had been feeling
somewhat unhappy that she had maintained such a chilly silence, sending
no amorous poems or queries. I wondered, though not very seriously,
whether her shrillness and her jealousy might not have been intended for
the precise purpose of disposing of me; but now I found clothes laid out
with more attention to color and pattern than usual, exactly as she knew
I liked them. She was seeing to my needs even now that I had apparently
discarded her.
"And so, despite this strange state of affairs, I was convinced that she
did not mean to do without me. I continued to send messages, and she
neither protested nor gave an impression of wanting to annoy me by
staying out of sight, and in her answers she was always careful not to anger
or hurt me. Yet she went on saying that she could not forgive the behavior
I had been guilty of in the past. If I would settle down she would be very
happy to keep company with me. Sure that we would not part, I thought
I would give her another lesson or two. I told her I had no intention of
reforming, and made a great show of independence. She was sad, I gath-
cam' and then without warning she died. And the game I had been playing
to seem rather inappropriate.
"She was a woman of such accomplishments that I could leave every-
thing to her. I continue to regret what I had done. I could discuss trivial
things with her and important things. For her skills in dyeing she might
have been compared to Princess Tatsuta and the comparison would not
have seemed ridiculous, and in sewing she could have held her own with
princess Tanabata."
The young man sighed and sighed again.
To~ no Chu~jo~ nodded. "Leaving her accomplishments as a seamstress
aside, I should imagine you were looking for someone as faithful as Prin-
cess Tanabata. And if she could embroider like princess Tatsuta, well, it
does not seem likely that you will come on her equal again. When the
colors of a robe do not match the seasons, the flowers of-spring and the
autumn tints, when they are somehow vague and muddy, then the whole
effort is as futile as the dew. So it is with women. It is not easy in this world
to find a perfect wife. We are all pursuing the ideal and failing to find it."
The guards officer talked on. "There was another one. I was seeing her
at about the same time. She was more amiable than the one I have just
described to you. Everything about her told of refinement. Her poems, her
handwriting when she dashed off a letter, the koto she plucked a note on
-- everything seemed right. She was clever with her hands and clever with
words. And her looks were adequate. The jealous woman's house had
come to seem the place I could really call mine, and I went in secret to the
other woman from time to time and became very fond of her. The jealous
one died, I wondered what to do next. I was sad, of course, but a man
cannot go on being sad forever. I visited the other more often. But there
was something a little too aggressive, a little too sensuous about her. As
I came to know her well and to think her a not very dependable sort, I
called less often. And I learned that I was not her only secret visitor.
"One bright moonlit autumn night I chanced to leave court with a
friend. He got in with me as I started for my father's. He was much
concerned, he said, about a house where he was sure someone would be
waiting. It happened to be on my way.
"Through gaps in a neglected wall I could see the moon shining on
a pond. It seemed a pity not to linger a moment at a spot where the moon
seemed so much at home, and so I climbed out after my friend. It would
appear that this was not his first visit. He proceeded briskly to the veranda
and took a seat near the gate and looked up at the moon for a time. The
chrysanthemums were at their best, very slightly touched by the frost, and
the red leaves were beautiful in the autumn wind. He took out a flute and
played a tune on it, and sang'The Well of Asuka' and several other songs.
Blending nicely with the flute came the mellow tones of a japanese
koto. It had been tuned in advance, apparently, and was waiting. The ritsu
scale had a pleasant modern sound to it, right for a soft, womanly touch
from behind blinds, and right for the clear moonlight too. I can assure you
that the effect was not at all unpleasant.
"Delighted, my friend went up to the blinds.
"'I see that no one has yet broken a path through your fallen leaves,'
he said, somewhat sarcastically. He broke off a chrysanthemum and
pushed it under the blinds.
"'Uncommonly fine this house, for moon, for koto.
Does it bring to itself indifferent callers as well?
"'Excuse me for asking. You must not be parsimonious with your
music. You have a by no means indifferent listener.'
"He was very playful indeed. The woman's voice, when she offered
a verse of her own, was suggestive and equally playful.
"'No match the leaves for the angry winter winds.
Am I to detain the flute that joins those winds?'
"Naturally unaware of resentment so near at hand, she changed to a
Chinese koto in an elegant _banjiki_. Though I had to admit that she had
talent, I was very annoyed. It is amusing enough, if you let things go no
further, to exchange jokes from time to time with fickle and frivolous
ladies; but as a place to take seriously, even for an occasional visit, matters
here seemed to have gone too far. I made the events of that evening my
excuse for leaving her.
"I see, as I look back on the two affairs, that young though I was the
second of the two women did not seem the kind to put my trust in. I have
no doubt that the wariness will grow as the years go by. The dear, uncer-
tain ones--the dew that will fall when the _hagi_ branch is bent, the speck
of frost that will melt when it is lifted from the bamboo leaf--no doubt
they can be interesting for a time. You have seven years to go before you
are my age," he said to Genji. "Just wait and you will understand. perhaps
you can take the advice of a person of no importance, and avoid the
uncertain ones. They stumble sooner or later, and do a man's name no good
when they do."
To~ no Chu~jo~ nodded,as always. Genji, though he only smiled, seemed
to agree.
"Neither of the tales you have given us has been a very happy one,"
he said.
"Let me tell you a story about a foolish woman I once knew," said To~
no Chu~jo~." I was seeing her in secret, and I did not think that the affair was
likely to last very long. But she was very beautiful, and as time passed
I came to think that I must go on seeing her, if only infrequently. I sensed
that she had come to depend on me. I expected signs of jealousy. There
were none. She did not seem to feel the resentment a man expects from
a woman he visits so seldom. She waited quietly, morning and night. My
affection grew, and I let it be known that she did indeed have a man she
could depend on. There was something very appealing about her (she was
an orphan), letting me know that I was all she had.
"She seemed content. Untroubled, I stayed away for rather a long
time. Then--I heard of it only later--my wife found a roundabout way to
be objectionable. I did not know that I had become a cause of pain. I had
desperately lonely and worried for the child she had borne. One day she
sent me a letter attached to a wild carnation." His voice trembled.
"And what did it say?" Genji urged him on.
"Nothing very remarkable. I do remember her poem, though:
"'The fence of the mountain rustic may fall to the ground.
Rest gently, 0 dew, upon the wild carnation.'
"I went to see her again. The talk was open and easy, as always, but
she seemed pensive as she looked out at the dewy garden from the ne-
glected house. She seemed to be weeping, joining her laments to the songs
of the autumn insects. It could have been a scene from an old romance. I
whispered a verse:
"'No bloom in this wild array would I wish to slight.
But dearest of all to me is the wild carnation.'
"Her carnation had been the child. I made it clear that my own was
