into them had she not had these worries.
<N 6>
A letter came from Prince Hotaru, on white tissue paper in a fine,
aristocratic hand. At first sight the contents seemed very interesting, but
somehow they became ordinary upon repeating.
"Even today the iris is neglected.
Its roots, my cries, are lost among the waters."
It was attached to an iris root certain to be much talked of.
"You must get off an answer," said Genji, preparing to leave.
Her women argued that she had no choice.
Whatever she may have meant to suggest by it, this was her answer,
a simple one set down in a faint, delicate hand:
"It might have flourished better in concealment,
The iris root washed purposelessly away.
"Exposure seems rather unwise."
A connoisseur, the prince thought that the hand could just possibly
be improved.
Gifts of medicinal herbs in decorative packets came from this and
that well-wisher. The festive brightness did much to make her forget
earlier unhappiness and hope that she might come uninjured through this
new trial.
<N 7>
Genji also called on the lady of the orange blossoms, in the east wing
of the same northeast quarter.
"Yu~giri is to bring some friends around after the archery meet. I
should imagine it will still be daylight. I have never understood why our
efforts to avoid attention always end in failure. The princes and the rest
of them hear that something is up and come around to see, and so we have
a much noisier party than we had planned on. We must in any event be
ready."
The equestrian stands were very near the galleries of the northeast
quarter.
"Come, girls," he said. "Open all the doors and enjoy yourselves.
Have a look at all the handsome officers. The ones in the Left Guards are
especially handsome, several cuts above the common run at court."
They had a delightful time. Tamakazura joined them. There were
fresh green blinds all along the galleries, and new curtains too, the rich
colors at the hems fading, as is the fashion these days, to white above.
Women and little girls clustered at all the doors. The girls in green robes
and trains of purple gossamer seemed to be from Tamakazura's wing.
There were four of them, all very pretty and well behaved. Her women too
<P 435>
were in festive dress, trains blending from lavender at the waist down to
deeper purple and formal jackets the color of carnation shoots.
The lady of the orange blossoms had her little girls in very dignified
dress, singlets of deep pink and trains of red lined with green It was very
amusing to see all the women striking new poses as they draped their
finery about them. The young courtiers noticed and seemed to be striking
poses of their own.
Genji went out to the stands toward midafternoon. All the princes
were there, as he had predicted. The equestrian archery was freer and more
varied than at the palace. The officers of the guard joined in, and everyone
sat entranced through the afternoon. The women may not have under-
stood all the finer points, but the uniforms of even the common guardsmen
were magnificent and the horsemanship was complicated and exciting. The
grounds were very wide, fronting also on Murasaki's southeast quarter,
where young women were watching. There was music and dancing, Chi-
nese polo music and the Korean dragon dance. As night came on, the
triumphal music rang out high and wild. The guardsmen were richly re-
warded according to their several ranks. It was very late when the assembly
dispersed.
<N 8>
<P 436>
Genji spent the night with the lady of the orange blossoms.li "Prince Hotaru is a man of parts," he said. "He may not be the
handsomest man in the world, but everything about him tells of breeding
and cultivation, and he is excellent company. Did you chance to catch a
glimpse of him? He has many good points, as I have said, but it may be
that in the final analysis there is something just a bit lacking in him."
"He is younger than you but I thought he looked older. I have heard
that he never misses a chance to come calling. I saw him once long ago at
court ans had not really seen him again until today. He has improved.
Prince Sochi is a very fine gentleman too, but somehow he does not quite
look like royalty."
Genji smiled. Her judgment was quick and sure. But he kept his own
counsel. This sort of open appraisal of people still living was not to his
taste. He could not understand why the world had such a high opinion of
Higekuro and would not have been pleased to receive him into the family,
but these views too he kept to himself.
They were good friends, he and she, and no more, and they went to
separate beds. Genji wondered when they had begun to drift apart. She
never let fall the tiniest hint of jealousy. It had been the usual thing over
the years for reports of such festivities to come to her through others. The
events of the day seemed to bring new recognition to her and her
household.
She said softly:
"You honor the iris on the bank to which
No pony comes to taste of withered grasses?"
One could scarcely have called it a masterpiece, but he was touched.
"This pony, like the love grebe, wants a comrade.
Shall it forget the iris on the bank?"
Nor was his a very exciting poem.
"I do not see as much of you as I would wish, but I do enjoy you."
There was a certain irony in the words, from his bed to hers, but also
affection. She was a dear, gentle lady. She had let him have her bed and
spread quilts for herself outside the curtains. She had in the course of time
come to accept such arrangements as proper, and he did not suggest chang-
ing them.
<N 9>
The rains of earlyd ummer continued without a break, even gloomier
than in most years. The ladies at Rokujo~ amused themselves with illus-
trated romances. The Akashi lady, a talented painter, sent pictures to her
daughter.
Tamakazura was the most avid reader of all. She quite lost herself in
<P 437>
pictures and stories and would spend whole days with them. Several of her
young women were well informed in literary matters. She came upon all
sorts of interesting and shocking incidents (she could not be sure whether
they were true or not), but she found little that resembled her own unfor-
tunate career. There was _The Tale of Sumiyoshi_, popular in its day, of course,
and still well thought of. She compared the plight of the heroine, within
a hairbreadth of being taken by the chief accountant, with her own escape
from the Higo person.
Genji could not help noticing the clutter of pictures and manuscripts.
"What a nuisance this all is," he said one day. "Women seem to have been
born to be cheerfully deceived. They know perfectly well that in all these
old stories there is scarcely a shred of truth, and yet they are captured and
made sport of by the whole range of trivialities and go on scribbling them
down, quite unaware that in these warm rains their hair is all dank and
knotted."
He smiled. "What would we do if there were not these old romances
to relieve our boredom? But amid all the fabrication I must admit that I
do find real emotions and plausible chains of events. We can be quite aware
of the frivolity and the idleness and still be moved. We have to feel a little
sorry for a charming princess in the depths of gloom. Sometimes a series
of absurd and grotesque incidents which we know to be quite improbable
holds our interest, and afterwards we must blush that it was so. Yet even
then we can see what it was that held us. Sometimes I stand and listen to
the stories they read to my daughter, and I think to myself that there
certainly are good talkers in the world. I think that these yarns must come
from people much practiced in lying. But perhaps that is not the whole of
the story?"
She pushed away her inkstone. "I can see that that would be the view
of someone much given to lying himself. For my part, I am convinced of
their truthfulness."
He laughed. "I have been rude and unfair to your romances, haven't
I. They have set down and preserved happenings from the age of the gods
to our own. _The Chronicles of Japan and the rest are a mere fragment of the
whole truth. It is your romances that fill in the details.
"We are not told of things that happened to specific people exactly
as they happened; but the beginning is when there are good things and bad
things, things that happen in this life which one never tires of seeing and
hearing about, things which one cannot bear not to tell of and must pass
on for all generations. If the storyteller wishes to speak well, then he
chooses the good things; and if he wishes to hold the reader's attention he
chooses bad things, extraordinarily bad things. Good things and bad things
alike, they are things of this world and no other.
"Writers in other countries approach the matter differently. Old sto-
ries in our own are different from new. There are differences in the degree
<P 438>
of seriousness. But to dismiss them as lies is itself to depart from the truth.
Even in the writ which the Buddha drew from his noble heart are parables,
devices for pointing obliquely at the truth. To the ignorant they may seem
to operate at cross purposes. The Greater Vehicle is full of them, but the
general burden is always the same. The difference between enlightenment
and confusion is of about the same order as the difference between the
good and the bad in a romance. If one takes the generous view, then
nothing is empty and useless."
He now seemed bent on establishing the uses of fiction.
"But tell me: is there in any of your old stories a proper, upright fool
like myself?" He came closer. "I doubt that even among the most un-
worldly of your heroines there is one who manages to be as distant and
unnoticing as you are. Suppose the two of us set down our story and give
the world a really interesting one."
"I think it very likely that the world will take notice of our curious
story even if we do not go to the trouble." She hid her face in her sleeves.
"Our curious story? Yes, incomparably curious, I should think." Smil-
ing and playful, he pressed nearer.
"Beside myself, I search through all the books,
And come upon no daughter so unfilial.
"You are breaking one of the commandments."
He stroked her hair as he spoke, but she refused to look up. Presently,
however, she managed a reply:
"So too it is with me. I too have searched,
And found no cases quite so unparental."
Somewhat chastened, he pursued the matter no further. Yet one wor-
ried. What was to become of her?
Murasaki too had become addicted to romances. Her excuse was that
Genji's little daughter insisted on being read to.
"Just see what a fine one this is," she said, showing Genji an illustra-
tion for _The Tale of Kumano_. The young girl in tranquil and confident
slumber made her think of her own younger self. "How precocious even
very little children seem to have been. I suppose I might have set myself
up as a specimen of the slow, plodding variety. I would have won that
competition easily."
Genji might have been the hero of some rather more eccentric stories.
"You must not read love stories to her. I doubt that clandestine affairs
would arouse her unduly, but we would not want her to think them
commonplace."
What would Tamakazura have made of the difference between his
remarks to her and these remarks to Murasaki?
"I would not of course offer the wanton ones as a model," replied
Murasaki, "but I would have doubts too about the other sort. Lady Ate-
<P 439>
miya in _The Tale of the Hollow Tree_, for Instance. She is always very brisk and
efficient and in control of things, and she never makes mistakes; but there
is something unwomanly about her cool manner and clipped speech."
"I should imagine that it is in real life as in fiction. We are all human
and we all have our ways. It is not easy to be unerringly right. Proper,
well-educated parents go to great trouble over a daughter's education and
tell themselves that they have done well if something quiet and demure
emerges. It seems a pity when defects come to light one after another and
people start asking what her good parents can possibly have been up to.
Yet the rewards are very great when a girl's manner and behavior seem just
right for her station. Even then empty praise is not satisfying. One knows
that the girl is not perfect and looks at her more critically than before. I
would not wish my own daughter to be praised by people who have no
standards."
He was genuinely concerned that she acquit herself well in the tests
that lay before her.
Wicked stepmothers are of course standard fare for the romancers,
and he did not want them poisoning relations between Murasaki and the
child. He spent a great deal of time selecting romances he thought suitable,
and ordered them copied and illustrated.
He kept Yu~giri from Murasaki but encouraged him to be friends with
the girl. While he himself was alive it might not matter a great deal one
way or the other, but if they were good friends now their affection was
likely to deepen after he was dead. He permitted Yu~giri inside the front
room, though the inner rooms were forbidden. Having so few children, he
had ample time for Yu~giri, who was a sober lad and seemed completely
dependable. The girl was still devoted to her dolls. They made Yu~giri think
of his own childhood games with Kumoinokari. Sometimes as he waited
in earnest attendance upon a doll princess, tears would come to his eyes.
