lose? It will be observed that a certain fickleness was at work.
The girl was now awake, and very surprised. Genji felt a little sorry
for her. But though inexperienced in the ways of love, she was bright and
modern, and she had not entirely lost her composure. He was at first
reluctant to identify himself. She would presently guess, however, and
what did it matter if she did? As for the unfriendly one who had ned him
and who was so concerned about appearances--he did have to think of her
reputation, and so he said to the girl that he had taken advantage of
directional taboos to visit her. A more experienced lady would have had
no trouble guessing the truth, but this one did not sense that his explana-
tion was a little forced. He was not displeased with her, nor was he strongly
drawn to her. His heart was resentfully on the other. No doubt she would
be off in some hidden chamber gloating over her victory. She had shown
a most extraordinary firmness of purpose. In a curious way, her hostility
made her memorable. The girl beside him had a certain young charm of
her own, and presently he was deep in vows of love.
"The ancients used to say that a secret love runs deeper than an open
one." He was most persuasive. "Think well of me. I must worry about
appearances, and it is not as if I could go where my desires take me. And
you: there are people who would not at all approve. That is sad. But you
must not forget me."
"I'm afraid." Clearly she was afraid. "I won't be able to write to you."
"You are right that we would not want people to know. But there is
the little man I brought with me tonight. We can exchange notes through
him. Meanwhile you must behave as if nothing had happened." He took
as a keepsake a summer robe the other lady seemed to have thrown
off.
<N 4>
The boy was sleeping nearby. The adventure was on his mind, how-
ever, and Genji had no trouble arousing him. As he opened the door an
elderly serving woman called out in surprise.
Who s there?
"Just me," replied the boy in some confusion.
"Wherever are you going at this time of the night?" The woman came
out, wishing to be helpful.
"Nowhere," said the boy gruffly. "Nowhere at all."
He pushed Genji through the door. Dawn was approaching. The
woman caught sight of another figure in the moonlight.
"And who is with you? Oh, Mimbu, of course. Only Mimbu reaches
such splendid heights." Mimbu was a lady who was the victim of much
humor because of her unusual stature. So he was out walking with Mimbu,
muttered the old woman. "One of these days you'll be as tall as Mimbu
yourself." Chattering away, she followed after them. Genji was horrified,
but could not very well shove her inside. He pulled back into the darkness
of a gallery.
Still she followed. "You've been with our lady, have you? I've been
having a bad time with my stomach these last few days and I've kept to
my room. But she called me last night and said she wanted more people
around. I'm still having a terrible time. Terrible," she muttered again,
getting no answer. "Well, goodbye, then."
She moved on, and Genji made his escape. He saw more than ever how
dangerous these adventures can be.
<N 5>
The boy went with him to Nijo~. Genji recounted the happenings of
the night. The boy had not done very well, he said, shrugging his shoulders
in annoyance at the thought of the woman's coldness. The boy could find
no answer.
"I am rejected, and there is nothing to be done for me. But why could
s e not have sent a pleasant answer? I'm no match for that husband of
hers. That's where the trouble lies." But when he went to bed he had her
cloak beneath his own. He kept the boy beside him, audience for his
laments.
"It's not that you aren't a nice enough boy, and it's not that I'm not
fond of you. But because of your family I must have doubts about the
durability of our relationship."
A remark which plunged the boy into the darkest melancholy.
Genji was still unable to sleep. He said that he required an inkstone.
On a fold of paper he jotted down a verse as if for practice:
"Beneath a tree, a locust's empty shell.
Sadly I muse upon the shell of a lady."
He wondered what the other one, the stepdaughter, would be think-
ing of him; but though he felt rather sorry for her and though he turned
the matter over in his mind, he sent no message. The lady's fragrance
lingered in the robe he had taken. He kept it with him, gazing fondly at
it.
The boy, when he went to his sister's house, was crushed by the
scolding he received. "This is the sort of thing a person cannot be expected
to put up with. I may try to explain what has happened, but can you
imagine that people will not come to their own conclusions? Does it not
occur to you that even your good master might wish to see an end to this
childishness?"
Badgered from the left and badgered from the right, the poor boy did
not know where to turn. He took out Genji's letter. In spite of herself his
sister opened and read it. That reference to the shell of the locust: he had
taken her robe, then. How very embarrassing. A sodden rag, like the one
discarded by the fisherman of Ise.
The other lady, her stepdaughter, returned in some disorder to her
own west wing. She had her sad thoughts all to herself, for no one knew
what had happened. She watched the boy's comings and goings, thinking
that there might be some word; but in the end there was none. She did not
have the imagination to guess that she had been a victim of mistaken
identity. She was a lighthearted and inattentive creature, but now she was
lost in sad thoughts.
The lady in the main hall kept herself under tight control. She could
see that his feelings were not to be described as shallow, and she longed
for what would not return, her maiden days. Besides his poem she jotted
down a poem by Lady Ise:
The dew upon the fragile locust wing
Is lost among the leaves. Lost are my tears.
<W Murasaki Shikibu>{Translated by Edward G.Seidensticker}
<T The Tale of Genji>
<K 1>{Japanese Volume}
<C 4>{Evening Faces}
<N 1>
On his way from court to pay one of his calls at Rokujo~, Genji stopped to
inquire after his old nurse, Koremitsu's mother, at her house in Gojo~.
Gravely ill, she had become a nun. The carriage entrance was closed. He
sent for Koremitsu and while he was waiting looked up and down the
dirty, cluttered street. Beside the nurse's house was a new fence of plaited
cypress. The four or five narrow shutters above had been raised, and new
blinds, white and clean, hung in the apertures. He caught outlines of pretty
foreheads beyond. He would have judged, as they moved about, that they
belonged to rather tall women. What sort of women might they be? His
carriage was simple and unadorned and he had no outrunners. Quite
certain that he would not be recognized, he leaned out for a closer look.
The hanging gate, of something like trelliswork, was propped on a pole,
and he could see that the house was tiny and flimsy. He felt a little sorry
for the occupants of such a place--and then asked himself who in this
world had more than a temporary shelter. A hut, a jeweled pavilion, they
were the same. A pleasantly green vine was climbing a board wall. The
white flowers, he thought, had a rather self-satisfied look about them.
"'I needs must ask the lady far off yonder,'" he said, as if to himself.
An attendant came up, bowing deeply. "The white flowers far off
yonder are known as 'evening faces,'" he said." A very human Sort of
name--and what a shabby place they have picked to bloom in."
It was as the man said. The neighborhood was a poor one, chiefly of
small houses. Some were leaning precariously, and there were "evening
faces" at the sagging eaves.
"A hapless sort of flower. pick one off for me, would you?"
The man went inside the raised gate and broke off a flower. A pretty
little girl in long, unlined yellow trousers of raw silk came out through a
sliding door that seemed too good for the surroundings. Beckoning to the
man, she handed him a heavily scented white fan.
"put it on this. It isn't much of a fan, but then it isn't much of a flower
either."
Koremitsu, coming out of the gate, passed it on to Genji.
"They lost the key, and I have had to keep you waiting. You aren't
likely to be recognized in such a neighborhood, but it's not a very nice
neighborhood to keep you waiting in."
<N 2>
Genji's carriage was pulled in and he dismounted. Besides Koremitsu,
a son and a daughter, the former an eminent cleric, and the daughter's
husband, the governor of Mikawa, were in attendance upon the old
woman. They thanked him profusely for his visit.
The old woman got up to receive him. "I did not at all mind leaving
the world, except for the thought that I would no longer be able to see you
as I am seeing you now. My vows seem to have given me a new lease on
life, and this visit makes me certain that I shall receive the radiance of Lord
Amita~bha with a serene and tranquil heart." And she collapsed in tears.
Genji was near tears himself. "It has worried me enormously that you
should be taking so long to recover, and I was very sad to learn that you
have withdrawn from the world. You must live a long life and see the
career I make for myself. I am sure that if you do you will be reborn upon
the highest summits of the Pure Land. I am told that it is important to rid
oneself of the smallest regret for this world."
Fond of the child she has reared, a nurse tends to look upon him as
a paragon even if he is a half-wit. How much prouder was the old woman,
who somehow gained stature, who thought of herself as eminent in her
own right for having been permitted to serve him. The tears flowed on.
Her children were ashamed for her. They exchanged glances. It would
not do to have these contortions taken as signs of a lingering affection for
the world.
Genji was deeply touched. "The people who were fond of me left me
when I was very young. Others have come along, it is true, to take care
of me, but you are the only one I am really attached to. In recent years there
have been restrictions upon my movements, and I have not been able to
look in upon you morning and evening as I would have wished, or indeed
to have a good visit with you. Yet I become very depressed when the days
go by and I do not see you.'Would that there were on this earth no final
partings.'" He spoke with great solemnity, and the scent of his sleeve, as
he brushed away a tear, quite flooded the room.
Yes, thought the children, who had been silently reproaching their
mother for her want of control, the fates had been kind to her. They too
were now in tears.
<N 3>
Genji left orders that prayers and services be resumed. As he went out
he asked for a torch, and in its light examined the fan on which the
"evening face" had rested. It was permeated with a lady's perfume, elegant
and alluring. On it was a poem in a disguised cursive hand that suggested
breeding and taste. He was interested.
"I think I need not ask whose face it is,
So bright, this evening face, in the shining dew."
"Who is living in the house to the west?" he asked Koremitsu. "Have
you perhaps had occasion to inquire?"
At it again, thought Koremitsu. He spoke somewhat tartly. "I must
confess that these last few days I have been too busy with my mother to
think about her neighbors."
"You are annoyed with me. But this fan has the appearance of some-
thing it might be interesting to look into. Make inquiries, if you will,
please, of someone who knows the neighborhood."
Koremitsu went in to ask his mother's steward, and emerged with the
information that the house belonged to a certain honorary vice-
governor. "The husband is away in the country, and the wife seems to
be a young woman of taste. Her sisters are out in service here and there.
They often come visiting. I suspect the fellow is too poorly placed to know
the details."
His poetess would be one of the sisters, thought Genji. A rather
practiced and forward young person, and, were he to meet her, perhaps
vulgar as well--but the easy familiarity of the poem had not been at all
unpleasant, not something to be pushed away in disdain. His amative
propensities, it will be seen, were having their way once more.
Carefully disguising his hand, he jotted down a reply on a piece of
notepaper and sent it in by the attendant who had earlier been of service.
"Come a bit nearer, please. Then might you know
Whose was the evening face so dim in the twilight."
Thinking it a familiar profile, the lady had not lost the opportunity
to surprise him with a letter, and when time passed and there was no
answer she was left feeling somewhat embarrassed and disconsolate. Now
came a poem by special messenger. Her women became quite giddy as they
turned their minds to the problem of replying. Rather bored with it all, the
messenger returned empty-handed. Genji made a quiet departure, lighted
by very few torches. The shutters next door had been lowered. There was
something sad about the light, dimmer than fireflies, that came through the
cracks.
<N 4>
At the Rokujo~ house, the trees and the plantings had a quiet dignity.
The lady herself was strangely cold and withdrawn. Thoughts of the
"evening faces" quite left him. He overslept, and the sun was rising when
