as you always have. I have a great many deeds and titles and the like, but
I've rather lost track of them these last years. I'll look into them."
The hint that Genji was an indirect party to the negotiations warned
the man that he might be inviting trouble. The recompense being ample,
he made haste to get the house in order.
Genji had been puzzled and upset by the lady's reluctance to move.
He did not want people to associate his daughter with Akashi. Presently
the Oi house was ready and he learned of it. Now he understood: the lady
had been frightened at the thought of the great city. These precautions had
been reasonable and indeed laudable.
He sent off Lord Koremitsu, his usual adviser and agent in confidential
matters, to scout the grounds and see if further preparations were neces-
sary.
"The setting is very good," said Koremitsu. "I was reminded a little
of Akashi."
Nothing could be better. The temple which Genji was putting up was
<P 320>
to the south of the Daikakuji, by a mountain cascade which rivaled that
of the Daikakuji itself. The main hall of the Oi villa was simple and
unpretentious, almost like a farmhouse, in a grove of magnificent pines
beside the river. Genji himself saw to all the furnishings. Very quietly, he
sent off trusted retainers to be the lady's escort.
So there was no avoiding it. The time had come to leave the familiar
coast. She wept for her father and the loneliness he must face, and for
every small detail of her old home. She had known all the sorrows, and
would far rather that this manna had never fallen.
<N 3>
The hope that had been with the old man, waking and sleeping, for
all these years was now to be realized, but the sadness was more than he
would have thought possible now that the time had come. He would not
see his little granddaughter again. He sat absently turning the same
thought over and over again in his mind.
His wife was as sad. She had lived more with her daughter than her
husband, and she would go with her daughter. One becomes fond, after
a time, of sea and strand, and of the chance acquaintance. Her husband
was a strange man, not always, she had thought, the firmest support, but
the bond between them had held. She had been his wife, and Akashi had
become for her the place to live and to die. The break was too sudden and
final.
The young women were happy enough to be finished with country
life, which had been mostly loneliness and boredom, but this coast did
after all have a hold on them. With each advancing wave they wept that
it would return, but they would not.
<N 4>
It was autumn, always the melancholy season. The autumn wind was
chilly and the autumn insects sang busily as the day of the departure
dawned. The Akashi lady sat looking out over the sea. Her father, always
up for dawn services, had arisen deep in the night, much earlier than usual.
He was weeping as he turned to his prayers. Tears were not proper or
auspicious on such an occasion, but this morning they were general. The
little girl was a delight, like the jade one hears of which shines in darkness.
He had not once let her out of his sight, and here she was again, scrambling
all over him, so very fond of him. He had great contempt for people who
renounce the world and then appear not to have done so after all. But she
was leaving him.
"The old weep easily, and I am weeping
As I pray that for her the happy years stretch on.
"I am very much ashamed of myself." He drew a sleeve over his eyes.
No one could have thought it odd that his wife too was weeping.
<P 321>
"Together we left the city. Alone I return,
To wander lost over hill and over moor?"
The reasons did not seem adequate that she should be leaving him
after they had been together so long.
The lady was begging her father to go with them as far as Oi, if only
by way of escort.
"When do you say that we shall meet again,
Trusting a life that is not ours to trust?"
He counted over once more his reasons for refusing, but he seemed
very apprehensive. "When I gave up the world and settled into this life,
it was my chief hope that I might see to your needs as you deserved. Aware
that I had not been born under the best of stars, I knew that going back
to the city as another defeated provincial governor I would not have the
means to put my hut in order and clear the weeds from my garden. I knew
that in my private life and my public life I would give them all ample
excuse to laugh, and that I would be a disgrace to my dead parents; and
so I decided from the outset, and it seemed to be generally understood, that
when I left the city I was leaving all that behind. And indeed I did rather
effectively leave the world in the sense of giving up worldly ambitions. But
then you grew up and began to see what was going on around you, and
in the darkness that is the father's heart I was not for one moment free
from a painful question: why was I hiding my most precious brocade in
a wild corner of the provinces? I kept my lonely hopes and prayed to the
god and the blessed ones that it not be your fate, because of an unworthy
father, to spend your life among these rustics. Then came that happy and
unexpected event, which had the perverse effect of emphasizing our low
place in life. Determined to believe in the bond of which our little one here
is evidence, I could see too well what a waste it would be to have you spend
your days on this seacoast. The fact that she seems meant for remarkable
things makes all the more painful the need to send her away. No, enough,
I have left it all. You are the ones whose light will bathe the world. You
have brought pleasure to us country people. We are told in the scriptures
of times when celestial beings descend to ugly worlds. The time is past,
and we must part.
"Do not worry about services when word reaches you that I have died.
Do not trouble yourself over what cannot be avoided." He seemed to have
finished his farewells. Then, his face twisted with sorrow, he added:
"Thoughts of our little one will continue to bring regrets until the evening
when I too rise as smoke."
<N 5>
A single progress by land, the escort said, would be unmanageable,
and a succession of convoys would only invite trouble. So it had been
<P 322>
decided that so far as possible the journey would be an unobtrusive one
by boat. The party set sail at perhaps seven or eight in the morning.
The lady's boat disappeared among the mists that had so saddened the
poet. The old man feared that his enlightened serenity had left him
forever. As if in a trance, he gazed off into the mists.
The old woman's thoughts upon leaving home were in sad confusion.
"I want to be a fisherwife upon
A far, clean shore, and now my boat turns back."
Her daughter replied:
"How many autumns now upon this strand?
So many, why should this flotsam now return?"
A steady seasonal wind was blowing and they reached Oi on schedule,
very careful not to attract attention on the land portion of the journey.
They found the Oi villa very much to their taste, so like Akashi, indeed,
<P 323>
that it soothed the homesickness, though not, of course, dispelling it com-
pletely. Thoughts of the Akashi years did after all come back. The new
galleries were in very good taste, and the garden waters pleasant and
interesting. Though the repairs and fittings were not yet complete, the
house was eminently livable.
The steward, one of Genji's more trusted retainers, did everything to
make them feel at home. The days passed as Genji cast about for an excuse
to visit. For the Akashi lady the sorrow was yet more insistent. With little
to occupy her, she found her thoughts running back to Akashi. Taking out
the seven-stringed Chinese koto which Genji had left with her, she played
a brief strain as fancy took her. It was the season for sadness, and she need
not fear that she was being heard; and the wind in the pines struck up an
accompaniment.
Her mother had been resting.
"I have returned alone, a nun, to a mountain village,
And hear the wind in the pines of long ago."
The daughter replied:
"I long for those who know the country sounds,
And listen to my koto, and understand."
<N 6>
Uneasy days went by. More restless than when she had been far away,
Genji could contain himself no longer. He did not care what people would
think. He did not tell Murasaki all the details, but he did send her a note.
Once again he feared that reports would reach her from elsewhere.
"I have business at Katsura which a vague apprehension tells me I
have neglected too long. Someone to whom I have made certain commit-
ments is waiting there. And my chapel too, and those statues, sitting
undecorated. It is quite time I did something about them. I will be away
perhaps two or three days."
This sudden urge to visit Katsura and put his chapel in order made
her suspect his actual motives. She was not happy. Those two or three days
were likely to become days enough to rot the handle of the woodcutter's
ax.
"I see you are being difficult again." He laughed. "You are in a small
minority, my dear, for the whole world agrees that I have mended my
ways."
The sun was high when he finally set out.
<N 7>
He had with him a very few men who were familiar with the situation
at Oi. Darkness was falling when he arrived. The lady had thought him
quite beyond compare in the rough dress of an exile, and now she saw him
in court finery chosen with very great care. Her gloom quite left her.
And the daughter whom he was meeting for the first time--how could
<P 324>
she fail to be a treasure among treasures? He was angry at each of the days
and months that had kept them apart. People said that his son, the chan-
cellor's grandson, was a well-favored lad, but no doubt an element of
sycophancy entered into the view. Nothing of the sort need obscure his
view of the bud before him now. The child was a laughing, sparkling
delight.
Her nurse was much handsomer than when she had left for Akashi.
She told Genji all about her months on the seashore. Genji felt somewhat
apologetic. It had been because of him that she had had to live among the
salt burners' huts.
"You are still too far away," he said to the lady, "and it will not be
easy for me to see you. I have a place in mind for you."
"When I am a little more used to it all." Which was not unreasonable
of her.
They passed the night in plans and promises.
<N 8>
Genji gave orders for finishing the house. Since word had been sent
that he would be at his Katsura villa, people had gathered from all his
nearby manors, and presently sought him out at Oi. He set them to clearing
the garden.
<P 325>
"What a jumble. It could be a rather distinguished garden--but why
take the trouble? It is not as if you meant to spend the rest of your life here,
and you know better than most what a mistake it is to get too attached
to a place."
He was so open, so sure of himself. She was more in love with him
than ever.
The old nun grinned upon them. All her worries had departed. Per-
sonally supervising the work of clearing the brook that ran from under the
east gallery, Genji had thrown off his cloak. The old lady thought him
charming in his undersleeves. The holy vessels reminded him that she too
had come. He was being rude. He sent immediately for his cloak.
"I am sure it is your prayers that have made our little girl into such
perfection," he said, coming up to her curtains. "I am very grateful. And
I must thank you too, most sincerely, that you have left peace and serenity
for what must be the ugliest sort of confusion. You left your saintly
husband behind, all by himself, with nothing to occupy him but thoughts
of you. It must have been very difficult."
"Yes, I thought I had given all this up, and it was a little confusing.
But your kindness and understanding make me feel that I am being re-
warded for having lived so long." There were tears in her voice. "I worried
about the seedling pine on those unfriendly coasts. Its prospects have
improved enormously, and yet I am afraid. Its roots are so very shallow."
She spoke in soft, courtly tones.
He asked her about the villa as it had been in Prince Nakatsukasa's
day. The brook, now cleared of weeds and litter, seemed to have found the
moment to announce itself.
"The mistress, long gone, is lost upon her return
To find that the brook has quite usurped her claims."
A voice can seem affected as it trails off at the end of a poem, but the
old nun's was genteel and courtly.
"Clean waters, bringing back the distant past
To one who comes to them in somber habit."
As he stood gazing meditatively out over the scene, he seemed to the
old nun the ultimate in noble dignity.
<N 9>
Going on to his chapel, he ordered bimonthly services in honor of
Amita~bha, Sa~kyamuni, and Samantabhadra, and interim services as well,
and gave instructions for decorating the chapel and the images. He re-
turned to Oi by moonlight.
Memories of similar nights in Akashi must not go unaccompanied.
The lady brought out the Chinese koto he had given her. He plucked out
a strain as he gave himself up to the memories. The tuning, as when he
had given it to her, took him back to those days and to Akashi.
<P 326>
"Unchanged it is when now we meet again.
And do you not see changelessness in me?"
