was that, we said. Fate had been good to us up to a point and no further.
But it brought you to redeem us all. Isn't that a lovely thought?"
The girl too was in tears. Without the old lady to tell her, she might
never have learned of those sad events so long ago. She began to see that
she had no right to consider herself better than her rivals. Murasaki had
prepared her for the competition. Otherwise she would not have escaped
their open contempt. She had thought herself the grandest of them all, far
and away the grandest. The others had scarcely seemed worth the trouble
of a sneer. And what must they have been thinking of her all the while!
Now she knew the whole truth. She had known that her mother was not
of the best lineage, but she had not known that she herself had been born
in a remote corner of the provinces. How stupid of her not to have in-
quired! (One must join her in these reproaches. She really should have
been more curious.) She had much to think about: the sad story of her
grandmother, for instance, now quite cut off from the world.
Her mother found her lost in these painful thoughts. The liturgists,
in small groups, had resoundingly begun their noonday rites. There were
few women in immediate attendance on the princess. The old nun had
quite taken charge of her.
"But can't you be just a little more careful? The wind is blowing a gale,
and you might at least have had them bring something up to close the gaps
in the curtains. And here you are hanging over her as if you were her
doctor! Don't you know that old people are supposed to keep out of sight?"
Though the old nun must have realized that she had outdone herself,
she only cocked her head to one side as if trying to hear a little better. She
was not as old as her daughter's remarks suggested, only in her middle
sixties. Her nun's habit was in very good taste. Her tearful countenance
informed her daughter, who was not at all pleased, that she had been
dwelling upon the past.
"I suppose she has been rambling on about things that happened a
<P 571>
very long time ago. She has a way of remembering things that never
happened at all. Sometimes it all seems like a fantastic dream."
She smiled down at the girl, who was very pretty and who seemed
rather more pensive than usual. She could scarcely believe that anyone so
charming could be her own daughter--and the old nun would seem to have
upset her with sad talk of the past. It had been the lady's intention to tell
the whole story when the final goal was in sight. She doubted that any-
thing the old nun had said could destroy the girl's confidence, but she saw
all the same that the conversation had been unsettling.
The holy men having left, the Akashi lady brought in sweets and
urged her daughter to take just a morsel. So beautiful and so gentle, the
girl brought a new flood of tears from the old nun. A smile suddenly cut
a great gap across the aged face, still shining with tears. The Akashi lady
tried to signal that the effect was less than enchanting, but to no avail.
"Old waves come upon a friendly shore.
A nun's sleeves dripping brine--who can object?
"It used to be the thing, or so I am told, to be tolerant of old people
and their strange ways."
The crown princess took up paper and a brush from beside her ink-
stone.
"The weeping nun must take me over the waves
To the reed-roofed cottage there upon the strand."
Turning away to hide her own tears, the Akashi lady set down a poem
beside it:
"An old man leaves the world, and in his heart
Is darkness yet, there on the Akashi strand."
How the princess wished that she could remember the morning of
their departure!
For all the worry and confusion, the birth, towards the middle of the
month, was easy. And the child was a boy. Genji was enormously pleased
This northwest quarter seemed rather cramped and secluded
for the celebrations that would follow, though no doubt it was for the old
nun "a friendly shore." The princess was soon moved back to the southeast
quarter. Murasaki was with her, very beautiful, all in white, the baby in
her arms as if she were its grandmother. She had no children of her own,
nor had she ever before been present at a childbirth. It was all very new
and wonderful. She kept the baby with her through the dangerous and
troublesome early days. Quite giving over custody, the Akashi lady busied
herself with arrangements for the natal bath. The crown prince was repre-
sented by his lady of honor, who watched the Akashi lady carefully and
was most favorably impressed. She had known in a general way of the
<P 572>
lady's circumstances and had thought how unfortunate it would be for the
crown princess to be burdened with an unacceptable mother. Everything
convinced her that the lady had been meant for high honors. Natal ceremo-
nies should be familiar enough that I need not go into the details.
It was on the sixth day that the princess was moved back to the
southeast quarter. Gifts and other provisions for the seventh-night
ceremonies came from the palace. Perhaps because the Suzaku emperor,
the little prince's grandfather, was in seclusion and could not do the hon-
ors, the emperor sent a secretary as his special emissary and with him gifts
of unprecedented magnificence. The empress too sent gifts, robes and the
like, more lavish than if the event had taken place at the palace, and princes
and ministers seemed to have made the selection of gifts their principal
work. No exhortations to frugality came from Genji this time. The pomp
and splendor seem so to have dazzled the guests that they failed to notice
the gentler, more courtly details that are really worth remembering.
"I have other grandchildren," said Genji, taking the little prince in his
arms, "but my good son refuses to let me see them. And now I have this
pretty little one to make up for his niggardliness." And indeed the child
was pretty enough to justify all manner of boasting.
He grew rapidly, almost perceptibly, as if some mysterious force were
giving him its special attention. The selection of nurses and maids had
proceeded with great care and deliberation. Only cultivated women of
good family were allowed near him.
The Akashi lady kept herself unobtrusively occupied. She knew when
to stay in the background, and everyone thought her conduct unexception-
able. Murasaki saw her informally from time to time. Thanks to the little
prince, the resentment of the earlier years had quite disappeared, and the
Akashi lady was now among her more valued friends. Always fond of
children, she made little guardian dolls for the child and more lighthearted
playthings too. She seemed very young as she busied herself seeing to his
needs.
It was the old nun, the baby's great-grandmother, who felt badly
treated. The brief glimpse she had had, she said, threatened to kill her with
longing.
The news reached Akashi, where an enlightened old man still had
room in his heart for mundane joy. Now, he said to his disciples, he could
withdraw from the world in complete peace and serenity. He turned his
seaside house into a temple with fields nearby to support it, and appointed
for his new retreat certain lands he had acquired deep in a mountainous
part of the province, where no one was likely to disturb him. His seclusion
would be complete. There would be no more letters and he would see no
one. Various small concerns had held him back, and now, with gods native
and foreign to give him strength, he would make his way into the moun-
tains.
<P 573>
He had in recent years dispatched messengers to the city only on
urgent business, and when a messenger came from his wife he would send
back a very brief note. Now he got off a long letter to his daughter.
"Though we live in the same world, you and I, it has been as if I had
been reborn in another. I have sent and received letters only on very rare
occasions. Personal messages in intimate japanese are a waste of time, I
have thought. They contribute nothing to and indeed distract from my
devotions. I have been overjoyed all the same at news I have had of the
girl's career at court. Now she is the mother of a little prince. It is not for
me, an obscure mountain hermit, to claim credit or to seek glory at this late
date, but I may say that you have been constantly on my mind, and in my
prayers morning and night your affairs have taken precedence over my
own trivial quest for a place in paradise.
"One night in the Second Month of the year you were born I had a
dream. I supported the blessed Mount Sumeru in my right hand. To the
left and right of the mountain the moon and the sun poured a dazzling
radiance over the world. I was in the shadow of the mountain, not lighted
by the radiance. The mountain floated up from a vast sea, and I was in a
small boat rowing to the west. That was my dream.
"From the next day I began to have ambitions of which I should not
have been worthy. I began to wonder what the extraordinary dream could
signify for one like myself. Your good mother became pregnant. I did not
cease looking through texts in the true Buddhist writ and elsewhere for an
explanation of the dream. I came upon strong evidence that dreams are to
be taken seriously, and, as I have said, I began to have ambitions that might
have seemed wholly out of keeping with my lowly station. Your future
became my whole life. I withdrew to the countryside because there was
a limit to what I could do in the city. Not even the waves of old age, I
resolved, would be permitted to sweep me back. I passed long years here
by the sea because my hopes were in you. I made many secret vows in your
behalf, and the time has now come to fulfill them. Because your daughter
is to be mother to the nation you must make pilgrimages to Sumiyoshi and
the other shrines. What doubts need we have? My very last wish for the
girl is certain to be granted, and I know beyond doubt that it too will be
granted, my prayer to be reborn in the highest circle of the paradise to the
west of the ten million realms. I await the day when I am summoned to
my place on the lotus. Until then I shall devote myself to prayers among
clean waters and grasses deep in the mountains. To them I now shall go.
"The dawn is at hand. The radiance soon will pour forth.
I turn from it to speak of an ancient dream."
He had affixed the date, after which there was a postscript: "Do not
be disturbed when my last day comes. Do not put on the mourning robes
which have so long been customary. You must think of yourself as an
avatar and offer a prayer or two, no more, for the repose of the soul of an
<P 574>
aged monk. Do not, all the same, let the pleasures and successes of this
world distract your attention from the other. We are certain to meet again
in the realm to which we all seek admission. It will not be long, you must
tell yourself, until we meet there on the far shore, having left these sullied
shores behind us."
For his wife there was only a short note: "On the fourteenth I shall
leave this grass hut behind and go off into the mountains. I shall give my
useless self to the bears and wolves. Live on, and see our hopes to their
conclusion. We shall meet in the radiant land."
The messenger, a priest, filled in some of the details. "The third day
after he wrote the letter he went off into the mountains. We went with
him as far as the foothills, where he made us turn back. Only a priest and
two acolytes went on with him. I had thought when I saw him take his
first vows that I knew the deepest possible sorrow, but still deeper sorrow
lay ahead. He took up the koto and the lute that had kept him company
through the years and played on them one last time, and when he said his
last prayers in the chapel he left them there. He left most of his other
personal possessions there too, after choosing several mementos, in keep-
ing with our several ranks, for us who had joined him in taking holy orders.
<P 575>
There were about sixty of us, all very close to him. The rest of his things
have come to you here. And so we saw him off into the clouds and mists,
and mourn for him in the house he left behind."
The messenger had gone to Akashi as a boy. Still in Akashi, he was
now an old man. It is not likely that he exaggerated his account of the
sorrow and loneliness.
The most enlightened disciples of the Buddha himself, converted by
the Hawk Mountain Sermon, were plunged into grief when finally the
flame of his life went out. The old nun's grief was limitless.
The Akashi lady slipped away from the southeast quarter when she
heard what sort of letter had come. Her new eminence made it impossible
for her to see as much of her mother as in earlier years, but she had to find
out for herself what sad news had come. The old nun seemed heartbroken.
The lady had a lamp brought near and read the letter, and she too was soon
weeping helplessly.
She thought of little things that had happened over the years, things
that could have meant nothing to anyone else, and her longing for her
father was intense. She would not see him again. She now understood: he
had put his faith in a dream as the true and sacred word. It had become
an obsession, and a source of great unhappiness and embarrassment for the
lady herself. She had feared at times that she might go mad--and now she
saw that the cause of it all was one insubstantial dream.
The old nun at length controlled her weeping. "Because of you, we
have had blessings and honors quite beyond anything we deserved. The
sorrows and trials have been large in proportion. Though I certainly was
not a person of any great distinction, I thought that our decision to leave
the familiar city and live in Akashi was itself somehow a mark of distinc-
