frighten me."
<P 495>
He permitted himself a tentative smile, which did not please her. Even
those of her women whom he had especially favored, Moku and Chu~jo~
among them, thought and said, with proper deference, that he was behav-
ing badly. The lady herself, whom he had found in one of her lucid
moments, wept quietly.
"I cannot complain that you do not find my stupidity and eccentrici-
ties to your taste. But it does not seem fair that you should bring Father
into the argument. It is not his fault, poor man, that I am what I am. But
I am used to your arbitrary ways, and do not propose to do anything about
them."
She was still handsome as she turned angrily away. She was a slight
woman and illness made her seem even more diminutive. Her hair, which
had once been long and thick, now looked as if someone had been pulling
it out by the roots. It was wild from long neglect and dank and matted from
weeping, altogether a distressing sight. Though no one could have de-
scribed her as a great beauty, she had inherited something of her father's
courtliness, badly obscured now by neglect and illness. There was scarcely
a trace left of youthful freshness.
"Can you really think I mean to criticize your father? The suggestion
<P 496>
is ill advised in the extreme and could lead to serious misunderstanding.
The Rokujo~ house is such perfection that it makes a plain, rough man like
me feel very uncomfortable. I want to have her here where I can be more
comfortable, that is all. Genji is a very important man, but that is not the
point. You should think rather of yourself and what they will say if word
gets to that beautifully run house of the unpleasantness and disorder here.
Do try to control yourself and be friendly to her If you insist on going,
then you may be sure that I will not forget you. My love for you will not
vanish and I will not join in the merriment--indeed it will make me very
sad--when the world sees you making a fool of yourself. Let us be faithful
to our vows and try to help each other."
"I am not worried about myself. You may do with me as you wish.
It is Father I am thinking of. He knows how ill I am and it upsets him
enormously that after all these years people should be talking about us. I
do not see how I can face him. And you are surely aware of another thing,
that Genji's wife is not exactly a stranger to me. It is true that Father did
not have responsibility for her when she was a girl, but it hurts him that
she should now have made herself your young lady's sponsor. It is no
concern of mine, of course. I but observe."
<P 497>
"Most perceptively. But I fear that once again you are a victim of
delusions. Do you think that a sheltered lady like her could know about
the affairs of the lady of whom you are so comtemptuous? I do not think
that your father is being very fatherly and I would hate to have these
allegations reach Genji."
They argued until evening.<N 8> He grew impatient and fretful, but unfor-
tunately a heavy snow was falling, which made it somewhat awkward for
him to leave. If she had been indulging in a fit of jealousy he could have
said that he was fighting fire with fire and departed. She was calmly lucid,
and he had to feel sorry for her. What should he do? He withdrew to the
veranda, where the shutters were still raised.
She almost seemed to be urging him on his way. "It must be late, and
you may have trouble getting through the snow."
It was rather touching--she had evidently concluded that nothing she
said would detain him.
"How can I go out in such weather? But things will soon be different.
People do not know my real intentions, and they talk, and the talk gets
to Genji and To~ no Chu~jo~, who of course are not pleased. It would be
wrong of me not to go. Do please try to reserve judgment for a time. Things
will be easier once I have brought her here. When you are in control of
yourself you drive thoughts of other people completely from my mind."
"It is worse for me," she said quietly, "to have you here when your
thoughts are with someone else. An occasional thought for me when you
are away might do something to melt the ice on my sleeves."
Taking up a censer, she directed the perfuming of his robes. Though
her casual robes were somewhat rumpled and she was looking very thin
and wan, he thought the all too obvious melancholy that lay over her
features both sad and appealing. The redness around her eyes was not
pleasant, but when as now he was in a sympathetic mood he tried not to
notice. It was rather wonderful that they had lived together for so long.
He felt a little guilty that he should have lost himself so quickly and
completely in a new infatuation. But he was more and more restless as the
hours went by. Making sure that his sighs of regret were audible, he put
a censer in his sleeve and smoothed his robes, which were pleasantly soft.
Though he was of course no match for the matchless Genji, he was a
handsome and imposing man.
His attendants were nervous. "The snow seems to be letting up a
little," said one of them, as if to himself. "It is very late."
Moku and Chu~jo~ and the others sighed and lay down and whispered
to one another about the pity of it all. The lady herself, apparently quite
composed, was leaning against an armrest. Suddenly she stood up, swept
the cover from a large censer, stepped behind her husband, and poured the
<P 498>
contents over his head. There had been no time to restrain her. The women
were stunned.
The powdery ashes bit into his eyes and nostrils. Blinded, he tried to
brush them away, but found them so clinging and stubborn that he had
to throw off even his underrobes. If she had not had the excuse of her
derangement he would have marched from her presence and vowed never
to return. It was a very perverse sort of spirit that possessed her.
The stir was enormous. He was helped into new clothes, but it was
as if he had had a bath of ashes. There were ashes deep in his side whiskers.
Clearly he was in no condition to appear in Tamakazura's elegant rooms.
Yes, she was ill, he said angrily. No doubt about that--but what an
extraordinary way to be ill! She had driven away the very last of his
affection. But he calmed himself. A commotion was the last thing he
wanted at this stage in his affairs. Though the hour was very late, he called
exorcists and set them at spells and incantations. The groans and screams
were appalling.
<N 9>
Pummeled and shaken by the exorcists as they sought to get at the
malign spirit, she screamed all through the night. In an interval of relative
calm he got off a most earnest letter to Tamakazura.
"There has been a sudden and serious illness in the house and it has
not seemed right to go out in such difficult weather. As I have waited in
hopes of improvement the snow has chilled me body and soul. You may
imagine how deeply troubled I am, about you, of course, and about your
women as well, and the interpretation they may be placing on it all.
"I lie in the cold embrace of my own sleeves.
Turmoil in the skies and in my heart.
"It is more than a man should be asked to endure."
On thin white paper, it was not a very distinguished letter. The hand
was strong, however. He was not a stupid or uncultivated man. His failure
to visit had not in the least upset Tamakazura. She did not look at his letter,
the product of such stress and turmoil, and did not answer it. He passed
a very gloomy day.
The ravings were so violent that he ordered prayers. He was praying
himself that her sanity be restored even for a little while. It was all so
horrible. Had he not known what an essentially gentle creature she was,
he would not have been able to endure it so long.
He hurried off in the evening. He was always grumbling, for his wife
paid little attention to his clothes, that nothing fitted or looked right, and
indeed he was a rather strange sight. Not having a change of court dress
at hand, he was sprinkled with holes from the hot ashes and even his
underrobes smelled ominously of smoke. Tamakazura would not be
pleased at this too clear evidence of his wife's fiery ways. He changed
underrobes and had another bath and otherwise did what he could for
himself.
<P 499>
Moku perfumed the new robes. A sleeve over her face, she whispered:
"Alone with thoughts which are too much for her,
She has let unquenchable embers do their work."
And she added: "You are so unlike your old self that not even we
underlings can watch in silence."
The eyebrows over the sleeve were very pretty, but he was asking
himself, rather unfeelingly, one must say, how such a woman could ever
have interested him.
"These dread events so fill me with rage and regret
That I too choke from the fumes that rise within me.
"I will be left with nowhere to turn if word of them gets out." Sighing,
he departed.
He thought that Tamakazura had improved enormously in the one
night he had been away. He could not divide his affections. He stayed with
her for several days, hoping to forget the disturbances at home and fearful
of incidents that might damage his name yet further. The exorcists con-
tinued to be busy, he heard, and malign spirits emerged noisily from the
lady one after another. On occasional trips home he avoided her rooms and
saw his children, a daughter twelve or thirteen and two younger sons, in
another part of the house. He had seen less and less of his wife in recent
years, but her position had not until now been challenged. Her women
were desolate at the thought that the final break was approaching.
Her father sent for her again. "It is very clear that he is abandoning
you. Unless you wish to look ridiculous you cannot stay in his house.
There is no need for you to put up with this sort of thing so long as I am
here to help you."
She was somewhat more lucid again. She could see that her marriage
was a disaster and that to stay on until she was dismissed would be to lose
her self-respect completely. Her oldest brother was in command of one of
the guards divisions and likely to attract attention. Her younger brothers,
a guards captain, a chamberlain, and an official in the civil affairs ministry,
came for her in three carriages. Her women had known that a final break
was unavoidable, but they were sobbing convulsively. She was returning
to a house she had left many years before and to less spacious rooms. Since
it was clear that she would not be able to take all of her women with her,
some of them said that they would go home and return to her service when
her affairs were somewhat more settled. They went off taking their meager
belongings with them. The lamentations were loud as the others saw to the
cleaning and packing as became their several stations.
Her children were too young to understand the full proportions of the
disaster that had overtaken them.
"I do not care about myself," she said to them, weeping. "I will face
what comes, and I do not care whether I live or die. It is you I am sad for.
<P 500>
You are so very young and now you must be separated and scattered.
You, my dear," she said to her daughter, "must stay with me whatever
happens. It may be even worse for you," she said to the boys. "He will not
be able to avoid seeing you, of course, but he is not likely to trouble himself
very much on your account. You will have someone to help you while
Father lives, but Genji and To~ no Chu~jo~ control the world. The fact that
you are my children will not make things easier for you. I could take you
out to wander homeless, of course, but the regrets would be so strong that
I would have them with me in the next world."
They were sobbing helplessly.
She summoned their nurses. "It is the sort of thing that happens in
books. A perfectly good father loses his head over a new wife and lets her
dominate him and forgets all about his children. But he has been a father
in name only. He forgot about them long ago. I doubt that he can be
expected to do much for them."
It was a forbidding night, with snow threatening. Her brothers tried
to hurry her.
"A really bad storm might be blowing up."
They brushed away tears as they looked out into the garden. Higekuro
had been especially fond of his daughter. Fearing that she would never see
him again, she lay weeping and wondering how she could possibly go.
"Do you so hate the thought of going with me?" said her mother.
The girl was hoping to delay their departure until her father came
home, but there was little likelihood that he would leave Tamakazura at
so late an hour. Her favorite seat had been beside the cypress pillar in the
east room. Now it must go to someone else. She set down a poem on a sheet
of cypress-colored notepaper and thrust a bodkin through it and into a
crack in the pillar. She was in tears before she had finished writing.
"And now I leave this house behind forever.
Do not forget me, friendly cypress pillar."
"I do not share these regrets," said her mother.
"Even if it wishes to be friends,
We may not stay behind at this cypress pillar."
The women were sobbing as they took their farewells of trees and
flowers to which they had not paid much attention but which they knew
they would remember fondly.
Moku, being in Higekuro's service, would stay behind.
This was Chu~jo~'s farewell poem:
"The waters, though shallow, remain among the rocks,
And gone is the image of one who would stay beside them.
<P 501>
"I had not dreamed that I would have to go."
"What am I to say?" replied Moku.
