The Tale of Genji, Page 53

  The young scholar submitted a fine composition that day, and he became a regular candidate. Only three of his fellows passed, even though His Majesty had chosen learned aspirants with years of study behind them. When the autumn appointments were announced, he received his cap of office and was named an Adviser. He never for a moment forgot his love, but his uncle the Minister kept such a hateful eye on him that no trick succeeded in bringing him to her. He found a way to pass her letters, but their plight remained a sad one.

  Genji wanted a quiet place to live—it might as well be large and handsome enough to accommodate any ladies who lived in uncomfortably far-flung mountain villages—and he therefore set aside four chō of land76 at Rokujō and Kyōgoku, where Her Majesty's old residence had been, and had the work begun. The following year would be His Highness of Ceremonial's fiftieth, and the mistress of Genji's west wing was therefore planning a celebration77 that Genji quite agreed could not be omitted. He urged the construction on for this reason, because it seemed to him that the preparations could go forward very nicely on his splendid new estate. Once the New Year had begun, he devoted himself further to the preparations, to the banquet,78 and to the choice of musicians and dancers. The mistress of his west wing looked after the adornments for the sacred scrolls and images, the vestments, the rewards,79 and so on. He assigned tasks also to the lady in his east pavilion. The relations between them grew in warmth and frequency.

  The world was abuzz over all this, and His Highness of Ceremonial heard about it, too. His Grace is always so good to everyone, His Highness reflected with mingled bitterness and guilt, yet he has acted callously toward me and mine. He has embarrassed me on occasion, slighted members of my household, and made me smart many a time—yes, he must have a reason for disliking me. Still (and here his thoughts turned to joy), this mark of his consideration, and this way of setting all the world ringing while he prepares it, comes as a most unexpected honor so late in my life, even if the good fortune of my daughter, whom he prizes before the world and loves beyond all his other ladies, has not passed to my own house. His Highness's wife, however, objected and thought it all a great bore. She probably detested Genji even more now because of the way he had failed to help her daughter when she went to serve His Majesty.

  Genji's Rokujō estate was finished in the eighth month. Her Majesty had the southwest quarter, no doubt because that was where her residence had once stood. The southeast quarter was for himself. He gave the northeast to the lady from his east pavilion and the northwest to the lady from Akashi. He had the existing hills and lake shifted about as necessary, changing the shapes of mountains and waters to suit each resident's wishes.

  The southeast quarter boasted high hills, every tree that blossoms in spring, and a particularly lovely lake; and in the near garden, before the house, he took care to plant not only five-needled pines, red plums, cherry trees, wisteria, kerria roses, and rock azaleas, all of which are at their best in spring, but also, here and there, discreet touches of autumn. In Her Majesty's quarter he planted the hill already there with trees certain to glow in rich autumn colors, turned springs into clear streams, added rocks to the brook to deepen its voice, and contrived a waterfall, while on the broad expanse of his new-laid meadow, flowers bloomed in all the profusion of the season. The result was an autumn to put to shame the moors and mountains of Saga and Ōi. The northeast quarter, with its cool spring, favored summer shade. Chinese bamboo grew in the near garden, to freshen the breeze; tall groves offered welcoming depths of shade, as in a mountain village; the hedge was of flowering deutzia; and among the plantings of orange, fragrant with the past, of pinks and roses and peonies, there also grew spring and autumn flowers. The east edge of this quarter was divided off into a riding ground with a pavilion and surrounded by a woven fence. Sweet flag had been induced to grow thickly beside the water, for the games of the fifth month,80 and the nearby stables housed the most superb horses. The northwest quarter's northern sector was given over to rows of storehouses. Along the dividing fence grew a dense stand of pines intended to show off the beauty of snow. There was a fence entwined with chrysanthemums to gather the morning frosts of early winter, a grove of deep-hued oaks,81 and a scattering of nameless trees transplanted from the fastnesses of the mountains.

  Arched bridge

  Genji and his lady moved during the equinox.82 He had wanted them all to move in then, but Her Majesty thought the idea ostentatious and waited a little. The lady of Falling Flowers, as docile and undemanding as ever, arrived the same night. Everything done for spring was out of season now, but it was still lovely. They came in fifteen carriages, their escort made up largely of gentlemen of the fourth and fifth ranks, but including Genji's pick of the best from the sixth and also from among the privy gentlemen. It was not excessive. He had kept his train modest, lest he incur the world's disapproval, and nothing about it was showy or self-important. Nor did he at all neglect that other lady, because he placed the Adviser83 at her service, and the Adviser attended her so well that one would have thought the two of them did indeed belong together. The rooms in the gentlewomen's part were much more nicely laid out than usual.

  Her Majesty came from the palace five or six days later, but her arrival was nonetheless grand. It goes without saying that great good fortune was hers, but her own elegance and dignity, too, had earned her the world's highest approbation. Between the quarters of the estate ran walls and galleries that Genji had designed so as to encourage friendly commerce between them all.

  In the ninth month splashes of autumn color appeared, and Her Majesty's garden became indescribably lovely. One windy autumn evening she sprinkled many-colored flowers and leaves into a box lid and sent them to the residence of His Grace. The tall page girl, in deep purple under a patterned aster layering and a light russet dress gown, came tripping with easy grace along the galleries and over the arched bridges. Despite the formality of the occasion Her Majesty had not been able to resist sending this delightful girl, whose long service in such company gave her an air and manner far more distinguished than any other's.

  Her Majesty had written,

  “You whose garden waits by your wish to welcome spring, at least look upon

  these autumn leaves from my home, carried to you on the wind.”

  The younger gentlewomen gave her emissary a lovely welcome. In answer their mistress spread a bed of moss in a box lid, dotted the moss with mighty boulder pebbles, and planted in it a five-needled pine84 to which she tied,

  “They are trifling things, fall leaves scattered on the wind: I would have you see

  in the pine gripping the rock the truest color of spring.”

  Close inspection of the pine among its rocks revealed exceedingly fine workmanship. Her Majesty was delighted by this evidence of the sender's quick and searching wit, and her gentlewomen praised it, too.

  “She has you, you know,” Genji remarked, “with this message of autumn leaves. You must answer her properly in the season of spring flowers. I wonder whether the way you spoke ill of autumn leaves just now may not offend the Tatsuta Lady—your answering poem would have greater force if you had retreated and sought refuge under the blossoms.” Giving forth as he did a youthful charm that unfailingly captivated those dear to him, he brought his home ever closer to his ideal. Back and forth the messages flew.

  The lady at Ōi decided that she who mattered so little might slip in unnoticed once the mighty were settled, and she arrived in the tenth month.85 Genji saw to it that both her furnishings and her arrival itself should be a credit to her. For her daughter's sake he made little distinction in protocol between her and the others, and he gave her a thoroughly dignified welcome.

  22

  TAMAKAZURA

  The Tendril Wreath

  Tamakazura resists translation, but the choice made here is “tendril wreath.” The word became the chapter title and Tamakazura's traditional name because Genji uses it to refer to her in a poem late in the chapter:

&nbsp
; “Yes, my love lives on, just as it did long ago; yet, O tendril wreath,

  say what long and winding stem led you all the way to me!”

  RELATIONSHIP TO EARLIER CHAPTERS

  “The Tendril Wreath” overlaps with the later part of “The Maidens.” It begins early in the year when Genji is thirty-five and continues, past the end of “The Maidens,” to the end of that year.

  PERSONS

  His Grace, the Chancellor, Genji, age 35

  Ukon, Murasaki's gentlewoman, formerly Yūgao's

  Yūgao's nurse

  The young lady, Yūgao's daughter, called Fujiwara Ruri-gimi by Ukon, 21 (Tamakazura)

  The nurse's husband, the Dazaifu Assistant (Dazai no Shōni)

  The Audit Commissioner, Tamakazura's suitor, about 30 (Taifu no Gen)

  Hyōtōda, the Bungo Deputy, eldest son of the Dazaifu Assistant

  The second son

  Ateki, now Hyōbu, younger daughter of the Dazaifu Assistant

  Her elder sister

  The innkeeper at Tsubaichi

  Sanjō, Tamakazura's gentlewoman

  The priest at Hasedera

  Genji's lady, 27 (Murasaki)

  Genji's daughter, 7 (Akashi no Himegimi)

  The lady of the northeast quarter of Rokujō, the lady of summer (Hanachirusato)

  The Captain, 14 (Yūgiri)

  The safflower (Suetsumuhana)

  Despite the passing months and years he had not forgotten someone he loved even now, though she was gone like dew from off a twilight beauty, and after his wide experience of many ladies' hearts and ways he only wished that she were still alive. He remained fond of Ukon, who although unremarkable in herself reminded him of her and who counted now among his most long-serving and familiar gentlewomen. She had waited on the mistress of his west wing ever since his move to Suma, when he had sent his women there, and she had been valued there for her quickness and discretion. At heart, though, she knew that her mistress would have equaled the lady from Akashi in Genji's esteem, if she had lived, and that considering how long he went on tactfully caring even for women who meant little to him, she, too, although hardly among the great, would certainly have moved by now to his Rokujō estate; and this caused her sorrow and regret.

  Ukon had kept Genji's secret. She had never discovered the fate of the little girl left in the western district of the City and, in deference to his warning to protect his name, since it was all over now anyway, she had not even undertaken to make inquiries. Meanwhile, the nurse's husband had been named Dazaifu Assistant, and his household had gone down with him to his post. So it was that in her fourth year the girl went off to Tsukushi.

  Her nurse wept day and night with longing to know where her mistress had gone. She addressed all the buddhas and gods in prayer and hunted in every likely place, but she learned nothing at all. Very well, then, she thought, there is no help for it; at least I have her daughter to preserve her memory. What a shame it is for this little girl to have to come so far with us on so unworthy a journey! She wanted to get word to the girl's father, but the right moment never seemed to come.

  “We don't know where her mother has gone, and what we would say if he were to ask?” she and her women reminded each other in the meantime.

  “She has had hardly anything to do with him, after all, and anyway, he would only worry if he kept her.”

  “I am afraid he would never let us take her away if he knew.”

  So the decision was made. Still, the little girl was already proud and hand-

  Ship

  some, and her nurse felt very sorry when she took her aboard a ship wholly unequipped to receive her, and the ship rowed away. The girl in her childish way still remembered her mother, and her nurse's tears flowed on and on whenever she asked whether they were going to Mummy now. Her own daughters missed the lady, too, and she had to keep admonishing them, and herself as well, that they were endangering the voyage.1

  “My lady was so young at heart—I wish we could have shown her all this!” one daughter said while they passed endless beautiful scenes; but the other was thinking longingly of the City, and she replied, “If my lady were alive now, we would not be going away!” Heads together in sad envy of the returning waves,2 they wept to hear the boatmen sing in their rough voices, “How far we have come, and with what heavy hearts!”

  “What loves do they mourn, that our stalwart boatmen, too, should with sad voices

  sing their way along the shore of yonder Ōshima Isle?”

  “On the trackless seas that stretch behind and ahead into the unknown,

  where, alas, are we to seek the lady for whom we long?”

  So each, “banished to the wilds,”3 gave voice to what was in her heart.

  “I shall not forget,” the nurse repeated at every breath as they rounded Cape Kane,4 and once they were there, she only wept the more to think how very far they had come. Night and day her mistress's little daughter was her darling. At rare intervals she even dreamed of her mistress, and she would see that same woman5 beside her and feel so oppressed and ill afterward that she knew with anguish that her mistress was no longer alive.

  The Dazaifu Assistant was due to go back up again, now that his term of office was over, but it was a long voyage, and he was too worried about his lack of men and means to leave right away. Then he fell gravely ill, and when he felt death approaching, he considered his little charge, who was ten by now and frighteningly pretty. “What will become of her if I am to leave her, too? It seemed to me very wrong for her to grow up in this unfortunate place, but I meant to take her to the City in time, to inform those who would wish to know about her, and to see her worthily settled, since all the possibilities the City offers encouraged high hopes; and now I am to end my life here after all!” He left his three sons this injunction: “Think of nothing else but taking this young lady back to the City. Never mind your obligations to me.”6

  None of his household staff knew whose child she was, for he had described her as a granddaughter whose upbringing had fallen to him. He had never let anyone see her and had looked after her with great care. His sudden death was so cruel a blow that his wife wanted only to leave, but he had many local enemies whose machinations she feared,7 and while strangely unreal years went by, her charge grew up into a young lady, one not only more beautiful than her mother but, perhaps because of what she owed to her father, of exquisite distinction. In her person she was perfectly sweet and poised. A great many country gallants set about courting her when the rumor of her quality spread, but no one in the family took any notice, since the very notion was an offense.

  “Yes,” her nurse explained to all and sundry, “she has looks enough, but there is something too wrong with her for me to give her away in marriage; I mean to make a nun of her instead, and to keep her with me the rest of my life.”

  “They say the late Assistant's granddaughter is defective,” the rumor went round. “What a shame!”

  This was unnerving talk. “We must get her to the City somehow and let His Excellency her father know about her,” her nurse said. “I doubt that he will ignore her, considering how sweet he thought her when she was little.” In desperation the nurse addressed many prayers to the buddhas and gods.

  Her sons and daughters had formed their own ties to the place and settled down, and although she herself at heart was as eager to go as ever, the City had indeed begun to seem very far away. The better she came to know the world, the more disappointing she found it, and she began to do the three yearly retreats.8 By twenty the young lady was fully mature and strikingly lovely.

  The province where they lived was Hizen. Everyone there with any pretension to quality had heard about the Assistant's granddaughter and was nonetheless pursuing her, even now, to the point of being a complete nuisance. One of them, a man known as the Audit Commissioner, had relations throughout Higo, where he enjoyed a high reputation. He was a powerful warrior, but his fierceness included a streak of gallantry as well, and he liked to
collect pretty women. “Never mind what is wrong with her,” he said when he heard about the young lady. “I do not care how bad it is. I shall look after her and ignore it.”

  His insistent suit alarmed her nurse. “No, no,” she had him told, “it is impossible. She cannot listen to any such talk; she is about to become a nun.” This only aroused him further, however, and it brought him straight to their province. There he called her sons together.

  If things go my way, my power is yours to command, he told them, and two of them were inclined to yield.

  “At first we agreed that this would be sadly beneath her,” they said, “but he is someone we all could trust to do right by us. Do you think we could go on living here if he were to turn against us? She is of high lineage, yes, but she means nothing to her father, and what good does it do her if no one knows? By now she is lucky to have him so keen. This is what she must have come for, all the way down to these wilds. What is the point of her running off to hide? There is no telling what he may do if he gets his back up, and he will not take no for an answer.”

  Their warnings shocked the Bungo Deputy, the eldest of the three. “That is wrong, and it is a very great shame. Remember what our father told us. We must find some way to take her up to the City after all.”

  The daughters wept with dismay. “Her mother wandered off and disappeared without a trace,” they cried, “and when the least we can do for her is to make sure she has the life she deserves, why, the very idea that she should spend it with someone like that!” But the suitor in question knew nothing of this. He fancied himself a fine gentleman and blithely plied her with letters. His writing was not all that bad, and he was very pleased with them, despite his marked country accent, what with the colored Chinese paper he used9 and the penetrating incense with which he perfumed it