had been very young when his father died and had understood little of
what was happening. Now his sorrow made his mother grieve as if it were
for someone else.
"I had been sure," she said, her voice very weak, "that this would be
a bad year for me. I did not feel so very ill at first, and did not wish to
be one of those for whom the end always seems to be in sight. I asked for
no prayers or services besides the usual ones. I must call on you, I kept
telling Myself, and have a good talk about the old days. But it has been
so seldom these last weeks that I have really felt myself. And so here we
are."
She seemed much younger than her thirty-seven years. It was even
sadder, because she was so youthful, that she might be dying. As she had
said, it was a dangerous year. She had been aware for some weeks of not
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being well but she had contented herself with the usual penances and
retreats. Apologizing for His negligence, the emperor ordered numerous
services.
Genji was suddenly very worried. She had always been sickly, and he
had thought it just another of her indispositions.
Protocol required that the emperor's visit be a short one. He returned
to the palace in great anguish. His mother had been able to speak to him
only with very great difficulty. She had received the highest honors which
this world can bestow, and her sorrows and worries too had been greater
than most. That the emperor must remain ignorant of them added to the
pain. He could not have dreamed of the truth, and so the truth must be
the tie with this world which would keep her from repose in the other.
Genji shared in the public concern at this succession of misfortunes
in high places, and of course his private feelings were deep and complex.
He overlooked nothing by way of prayer and petition. He must speak to
her once again of what had been given up so long before. Coming near her
curtains, he asked how she was feeling. In tears, one of her women gave
an account.
"All through her illness she has not for a moment neglected her
prayers. They have only seemed to make her worse. She will not touch the
tiniest morsel of food, not the tiniest bit of fruit. We are afraid that there
is no hope."
"I have been very grateful," she said to Genji, "for all the help you
have been to the emperor. You have done exactly as your father asked you
to do. I have waited for an opportunity to thank you. My gratitude is far
beyond the ordinary, and now I fear it is too late."
He could barely catch the words and was too choked with tears to
answer. He would have preferred not to exhibit his tears to her women.
The loss would have been a grievous one even if she had been, all these
years, no more than a friend. But life is beyond our control, and there was
nothing he could do to keep her back, and no point in trying to describe
his sorrow.
"I have not been a very effective man, I fear, but I have tried, when
I have seen a need, to be of use to him. The chancellor's death is a great
blow, and now this--it is more than I can bear. I doubt that I shall be in
this world much longer myself."
And as he spoke she died, like a dying flame. I shall say no more of
his grief.
Among persons of the highest birth whose charity and benevolence
seem limitless there have been some who, sheltered by power and position,
have been unwitting agents of unhappiness. Nothing of the sort was to be
detected in the comportment of the dead lady. When someone had been
of service to her she went to no end of trouble to avoid the sort of
recompense that might indirectly have unfortunate consequences. Again,
there have since the day of the sages been people who have been misled
<P 340>
into extravagant and wasteful attentions to the powers above. Here too
matters were quite different with the dead lady. Her faith and devotion
complete, she offered only what was in her heart to offer, always within
her means. The most ignorant and insensitive of mendicant mountain
priests regretted her passing.
Her funeral became the only business of court, where grief was uni-
versal. The colors of late spring gave way to unrelieved gray and black.
Gazing out at his Nijo~ garden, Genji thought of the festivities that spring
a dozen years before." This year alone, " he whispered. Not wanting to
be seen weeping, he withdrew to the chapel, and there spent the day in
tears. The trees at the crest of the ridge stood clear in the evening light.
Wisps of cloud trailed below, a dull gray. It was a time when the want of
striking color had its own beauty.
"A rack of cloud across the light of evening
As if they too, these hills, wore mourning weeds."
There was no one to hear.
The memorial rites were over, and the emperor still grieved. There was
an old bishop who had had the confidence of successive empresses since
Fujitsubo's mother. Fujitsubo herself had been very close to him and
valued his services highly, and he had been the emperor's intermediary in
solemn vows and offerings. A saintly man, he was now seventy. He had
been in seclusion, making his own final preparations for the next life, but
he had come down from the mountains to be at Fujitsubo's side. The
emperor had kept him on at the palace.
Genji too had pressed him to stay with the emperor through the
difficult time and see to his needs as in the old days. Though he feared,
replied the bishop, that he was no longer capable of night attendance, he
was most honored by the invitation and most grateful that he had been
permitted to serve royal ladies for so long.
One night, in the quiet before dawn, between shifts of courtiers on
night duty, the bishop, coughing as old people will, was talking with the
emperor about matters of no great importance.
"There is one subject which I find it very difficult to broach, Your
Majesty. There are times when to speak the truth is a sin, and I have held
my tongue. But it is a dilemma, since your august ignorance of a certain
matter might lead to unknowing wrong. What good would I do for anyone
if I were to die in terror at meeting the eye of heaven? Would it have for
me the scorn which it has for the groveling dissembler?"
What might he be referring to? Some bitterness, some grudge, which
he had not been able to throw off? It was unpleasant to think that the most
saintly of hearts can be poisoned by envy.
<P 341>
"I have kept nothing from you since I learned to talk," said the
emperor, "and I shall not forgive easily if now you are keeping something
from me."
"It is wrong, I know, Your Majesty. You must forgive me. You have
been permitted to see into depths which are guarded by the Blessed One,
and why should I presume to keep anything from you? The matter is one
which can project its unhappy influence into the future. Silence is damag-
ing for everyone concerned. I have reference to the late emperor, to your
late mother, and to the Genji minister.
"I am old and of no account, and shall have no regrets if I am punished
for the revelation.
"I humbly reveal to you what was first revealed to me through the
Blessed One himself. There were matters that deeply upset your mother
e was carrying you within her. The details were rather beyond the
grasp of a simple priest like myself. There was that unexpected crisis when
the Genji minister was charged with a crime he had not committed. Your
royal mother was even more deeply troubled, and I undertook yet more
varied and elaborate services. The minister heard of them and on his own
initiative commissioned the rites which I undertook upon Your Majesty's
accession." And he described them in detail.
<P 342>
It was a most astounding revelation. The terror and the sorrow were
beyond describing. The emperor was silent for a time. Fearing that he had
given offense, the old man started from the room.
"No, Your Reverence. My only complaint is that you should have
concealed the matter for so long. Had I gone to my grave ignorant of it,
I would have had it with me in my next life. And is there anyone else who
is aware of these facts?"
"There are, I most solemnly assure you, two people and two people
only who have ever known of them, Omyo~bu and myself. The fear and
the awe have been all the worse for that fact. Now you will understand,
perhaps, the continuing portents which have had everyone in such a state
of disquiet. The powers above held themselves in abeyance while Your
Majesty was still a boy, but now that you have so perfectly reached the
age of discretion they are making their displeasure known. It all goes back
to your parents. I had been in awful fear of keeping the secret. "The old
man was weeping. "I have forced myself to speak of what I would much
prefer to have forgotten."
It was full daylight when the bishop left.
The emperor's mind was in turmoil. It was all like a terrible dream.
His reputed father, the old emperor, had been badly served, and the em-
peror was serving his real father badly by letting him toil as a common
minister. He lay in bed with his solitary anguish until the sun was high.
A worried Genji came making inquiries. His arrival only added to the
confusion in the emperor's mind. He was in tears. More tears for his
mother, surmised Genji, it being a time when there was no respite from
tears. He must regretfully inform the emperor that Prince Shikibu had
just died. Another bit of the pattern, thought the emperor. Genji stayed
with him all that day.
"I have the feeling," said the emperor, in the course of quiet, intimate
talk, "that I am not destined to live a long life. I have a feeling too which
I cannot really define that things are wrong, out of joint. There is a spirit
of unrest abroad. I had not wished to upset my mother by subjecting her
and all of you to radical change, but I really do think I would prefer a
quieter sort of life."
"It is out of the question. There is no necessary relationship between
public order and the personal character of a ruler. In ages past we have seen
the most deplorable occurrences in the most exemplary reigns. In China
there have been violent upheavals during the reigns of sage emperors.
Similar things have happened here. People whose time has come have died,
and that is all. You are worrying yourself about nothing."
He described many precedents which it would not be proper for me
to describe in my turn.
In austere weeds of mourning, so much more subdued than ordinary
court dress, the emperor looked extraordinarily like Genji. He had long
<P 343>
been aware of the resemblance, but his attention was called to it more
forcibly by the story he had just heard. He wanted somehow to hint of it
to Genji. He was still very young, however, and rather awed by Genji and
fearful of embarrassing or displeasing him. Though it turned on matters
far less important, their conversation was unusually warm and affection-
ate.
Genji was too astute not to notice and be puzzled by the change. He
did not suspect, however, that the emperor knew the whole truth.
The emperor would have liked to question Omyo~bu; but somehow to
bring her into this newest secret seemed a disservice to his mother and the
secret she had guarded so long and so well. He thought of asking Genji,
as if by way of nothing at all, whether his broad knowledge of history
included similar examples, but somehow the occasion did not present
itself. He pursued his own studies more diligently, going through volumi-
nous Chinese and Japanese chronicles. He found great numbers of such
irregularities in Chinese history, some of which had come to the public
notice and some of which had not. He could find none at all in Japanese
history--but then perhaps they had been secrets as well guarded as this
one. He found numerous examples of royal princes who had been reduced
to common status and given the name of Genji and who, having become
councillors and ministers, had been returned to royal status and indeed
named as successors to the throne. Might not Genji's universally recog-
nized abilities be sufficient reason for relinquishing the throne to him? The
emperor turned the matter over and over in his mind, endlessly.
He had reached one decision, consulting no one: that Genji's appoint-
ment as chancellor would be on the autumn lists. He told Genji of his secret
thoughts about the succession.
So astonished that he could scarcely raise his eyes, Genji offered the
most emphatic opposition. "Father, whatever may have been his reasons,
favored me above all his other sons, but never did he consider relinquish-
ing the throne to me. What possible reason would I now have for going
against his noble intentions and taking for myself a position I have never
coveted? I would much prefer to follow his clear wishes and be a loyal
minister, and when you are a little older, perhaps, retire to the quiet
pursuits I really wish for."
To the emperor's very great disappointment, he was adamant in his
refusal.
Then came the emperor's wish to appoint him chancellor. Genji had
reasons for wishing to remain for a time a minister, however, and the
emperor had to be content with raising him one rank and granting him the
special honor of bringing his carriage in through the Great South Gate. The
emperor would have liked to go a little further and restore him to royal
status, but Genji's inclinations were against that honor as well. As a prince
he would not have the freedom he now had in advising the emperor, and
who besides him was to perform that service? To~ no Chu~jo~ was a general
<P 344>
and councillor. When he had advanced a step or two Genji might safely
turn everything over him to him and, for better or worse, withdraw from
public life.
