The Tale of Genji

  He wondered whether the Buddha gives us despair at such times purposely to make us reject this world, for she faded before his eyes, and then, O sorrow, she was gone. He all but stamped his feet in frenzy at being helpless to detain her, and never mind those who might think him mad. It was all over; her sister had seen that and was clearly desperate to follow. Who could blame her? She was beside herself, and the ever-so-sensible women pulled her away because that sort of thing was now of very ill omen.89

  No, no, it cannot be! I must be dreaming! He brought the lamp close and raised the wick to see her. The face she had hidden seemed only asleep, for nothing about it had changed, and in anguish he wished that he could see her as no more than a cicada shell.90 During their last ministrations to her the women tidied her hair, which gave forth a breath of the same dear fragrance it had had when she was alive, and he prayed to the buddhas, Oh, please allow me as a rare boon to find some taint of the common in her, that I may mourn her less! If it is you who truly show the way to renunciation, let me at least find in her some horror that will relieve me of this grief! But he was beyond comfort, and now that she was no more, he resolved at least to look after her until she was smoke. It was in a sad, sad state that he assured the usual rites. He wavered as though walking on air, and she remained frail to the last, for there rose from her in the end only a very little smoke. He went away numb with sorrow.

  Many people joined the mourning confinement,91 which should have lightened the loneliness a little, but the young Princess was despondent with shame over what they must think of her plight, and she herself seemed scarcely alive. A great many messages came from His Highness. She recalled how her sister had maintained her condemnation of him to the end, and her bond with him seemed very bitter indeed.

  Disgusted now with the world, the Counselor considered doing what he had so long wished to do, but he feared the disapproval of Her Cloistered Highness at Sanjō,92 and pity for the younger Princess troubled his thoughts as well; because his task after all, once she was gone, was, as she had said, to accept her sister as herself. I knew that even if she had become her sister, I could not really have loved anyone else, but still, I should never have caused her such sorrow; I should have courted her sister instead and accepted her in consolation for my infinite loss. He never went to the City. People there understood from his silence and from his retreat there, unconsoled, that he had cared for her very much indeed, and many messages reached him from the palace and elsewhere.

  Meanwhile the days slipped by. He had the service each seventh day done very solemnly, and he honored her memory with great devotion, but there was a limit to what he could do, and he who still wore the same colors as always93 sighed to see the women to whom she had meant so much now dressed in dark gray:

  “They are all in vain, these my endless tears that fall blood red with sorrow,

  for I may wear nothing dyed the color of remembrance.”

  Mournful in a sanctioned rose gleaming like ice with his tears of sorrow, he was the picture of grace and beauty. The women peered at him. “Granted the tragedy of what has happened,” they said, “it is a very harsh blow that we must soon become strangers to this lord whom we know so well!”

  “What an extraordinary fate theirs has been!”

  “To think that they both refused him, when he has been so kind!” They all wept.

  He addressed the young Princess to say, “I hope that I may now talk freely with you, in memory of our loss. Please do not remain distant from me!” But she knew the depth of her misfortune too well to be anything other than desperately shy, and she would not yet meet him or talk to him. Now and again it seemed to him that although more vivid in character, and a little more childlike and proud, she did not match her sister in warmth or depth of charm.

  It had snowed all day while he gazed and dreamed, until at last a twelfth-month moon, the one they always call so dreary, shone forth in cloudless splendor, and he rolled up the blinds to look out. A temple bell yonder rang out faintly, as when one lay with pillow raised and heard it announce the close of day.94

  “Lest I linger on, oh, I would follow the moon coursing through the sky,

  for when all is said and done, this world cannot be my home.”

  He lowered the shutters against the strong wind, and there at the water's edge was the moon, shining up from the ice that mirrored the mountains. No touch he might add to his house in the City, he thought, could give him this. If she could live again for a while, I would talk of this beauty with her! His endless longing was more than his heart could contain.

  “I would so make mine, suffering these pangs of love, the draft that brings death,

  that I may quite soon be gone into the Snowy Mountains.”

  Oh, for a demon to teach me the last half of the verse, that I might follow that great example and cast myself from the heights! he said to himself, which made him rather a tainted holy man!95

  The women saw wholly admirable gentleness and depth of heart in the way he called them out to chat, and the younger ones were especially captivated. The older women were more and more stricken with regret. “The shock of what happened with His Highness, and her apparent certainty of suffering ridicule: those are the things that made our mistress so very ill,” they said, “but she did not want her sister to know and kept all her anger to herself, and meanwhile she ate nothing at all until in the end she just wasted away. On the surface she never made the slightest show of being wise, but underneath she had vast depth and pondered all things, so that her sister's fate pained her greatly, because to her it meant that His Late Highness's command to them had been set at naught.” They went on to tell each other what the elder Princess had said on this or that occasion, and soon they were all weeping bitterly.

  The Counselor saw himself as responsible for the disasters they had suffered and wished that he could undo what he had done, and he came so to detest all the world that he gave himself to fervent prayer. He was so engaged one night, sleepless, when long before dawn, amid the snow and the bitter cold he heard the shouting of many men and the sound of horses. The worthy monks woke with a start, wondering who could have arrived in the dead of night through the snow: it was His Highness, who entered, wet through, in a miserable hunting cloak. His way of knocking at the gate made it clear who he was, and the Counselor stole away to hide in an inner room. The mourning retreat was not yet over, but His Highness had been so anxious to come that he had spent all night on the way, thwarted by the snow.

  His arrival might have promised her some relief from her days of sorrow, but she was in no mood to receive him; she shrank from the man who had caused her sister such grief and was profoundly angry that it was too late now for him to change, since her sister was no longer there to improve her opinion of him. Her attitude prompted the women to reason urgently with her, until at last she sat and heard him present at voluble length, through the blinds, his apologies for his long absence. Judging from what he gathered of her presence, she herself seemed so pathetically near expiring that she might soon join her elder sister, and he found this truly alarming.

  He took the risk of staying on into the day. To his pleas that she receive him face-to-face she only replied with cruel indifference, “If I ever feel a little more my-self…”

  The Counselor, who could hear them, summoned a likely one of the women to give her a secret and somewhat officious message: “You may well condemn his crimes against you in the course of these recent months, for his casual treatment of you offends your dignity, but please give some thought to receiving him nicely after all. He has never encountered such feelings before, and he must be very unhappy.” Its effect was to confirm the young Princess in her shy reserve, and she did not reply.

  “You are extremely unkind,” His Highness protested. “You seem to have completely forgotten every assurance I gave you!” He spent the day lamenting his fate.

  That night, while the wind howled louder than ever, he lay there sighing over the misery he had brought on himself, until she began to pity him and received him through the blinds, as before. The way he swore eternal fidelity by every god in the land96 made her wonder in dismay where he had learned such glib eloquence, but as she listened, she found that she could not reject him wholly, for now sympathy tempered her anger over his slights when he was away, and his looks were enough to charm anyone. Softly, she said,

  “The way we have come calls no memory to mind but of treachery;

  what, then, might the future bring, that you should deserve my trust?”

  This did nothing whatever to reassure him.

  “If the way ahead appears destined in your mind very soon to end,

  now at least, in the present, O do not turn me away!

  We have so little time to be together anyway! Please do not be too severe with me!” He did all he could to bring her round, but she answered that she felt unwell and retired, and he spent the rest of a miserable night smarting to think how he must look to her women. He did not blame her for being angry with him, but she really was too cruel! From his own bitter tears he learned to understand her greater unhappiness.

  He was moved and amused to note the Counselor's proprietary manner when he called on the women's services or had several of them wait on him at meals. Saddened to see him so thin and pale and so apparently distracted, His Highness let him know how sorry he was. As for the Counselor, he longed to talk to His Highness about his loss, although he knew how little good that would do him, but he also feared that it would seem weak and foolish of him, and so he refrained, which left him little to say. After many days of tears his features had changed, although not for the worse, for they now had so fine a beauty and grace that His Highness, who deplored his own waywardness, saw that he would certainly lose his heart to him, if he himself were a woman. That was a worry. He decided to move her to the City while somehow evading at the same time the censure and anger he could otherwise expect.

  Despite her rebuff he started back in the morning, for he knew that he would rue the day if Their Majesties ever learned where he had been. Again he tried all his eloquence on her, but she wanted him to taste for himself the bitterness of his own indifference, and she refused to yield.

  As the year draws to a close, even in happier places, something new comes into the sky, and every tempestuous day it snows and snows; meanwhile the Counselor grieved on and on as though it were all a dream. His Highness sent great quantities of offerings for scripture readings. Some in the City wondered whether the Counselor might really mourn into the New Year, and they sufficiently deplored the way he had shut himself off from the world that the time came at last for him to return. His feelings as he prepared to do so passed all description. None of the callers his presence had brought to the house would be seen again once he was gone, that the sorrowing women knew, and they feared the ensuing quiet more than the busier grief of the tragedy itself. “A bantering word or two with him was all very well now and again, over the years, whenever he happened to come,” they assured one another, “but he has been so good and kind all through this unbroken stay, so attentive to little things and so thoughtful in every way—and to think that we shall not see him again!” They were distraught.

  A message came from His Highness. “It has become exceedingly difficult for me to go to you,” he said, “and not knowing what else to do, I am seeking a way to bring you closer.” Her Majesty felt for him when she learned this, reflecting that if even the Counselor's feelings were as strongly engaged as they seemed to be, then everyone would surely agree that the lady deserved special consideration; and she discreetly suggested that he bring her to the west wing at Nijō where he could visit her at any time. She must want to have it appear that she will go to the First Princess! His Highness, when he grasped this, was delighted by the prospect of having her so nearby, and he let her know.

  I see, the Counselor reflected when he heard. I meant to bring her sister to Sanjō once the building was finished, and I certainly should have managed to move her there instead! He felt his loss afresh, and His Highness's apparent suspicions seemed to him utterly unfounded. Who but me will provide her with everything she needs? they say he demanded to know.

  48

  SAWARABI

  Bracken Shoots

  Sawarabi (“bracken shoots”) were gathered and eaten in early spring. The chapter derives its title from a poem by Naka no Kimi, acknowledging a gift of sawarabi from the Adept:

  “As I am this spring, who will enjoy them with me, now that he is gone:

  these bracken shoots from the hills, picked in memory of him?”

  RELATIONSHIP TO EARLIER CHAPTERS

  “Bracken Shoots” continues “Trefoil Knots.” It takes place in the spring of Kaoru's twenty-fifth year.

  PERSONS

  The Counselor, age 25 (Kaoru)

  The younger daughter of Hachi no Miya, 25 (Naka no Kimi)

  His Highness of War, 26 (Niou Miya)

  The Adept (Uji no Ajari)

  Ben, a gentlewoman, then a nun (Ben no Ama)

  Taifu, a gentlewoman

  His Excellency, the Minister of the Right, 51 (Yūgiri)

  The mere sight of spring sunlight, which shines even in the wilds,1 convinced her that she must be dreaming, and she would then wonder how she had lived through those months and days. Ever at one before the flowers and birdsong of the passing seasons, they had combined their little half verses2 on each and talked over every shock or sorrow their lonely life brought them, which had comforted them both; but now, with no one to understand the things that moved or amused her, her mood was all darkness, torment, and a desolation still more complete than when her father had died. In the confusion of her mind she barely knew dusk from dawn, but we each have our allotted time in the world, and alas, life would not leave her.

  A note came from the Adept: “How is your mistress getting on in the New Year? I perform rites for her constantly, and now that she is alone, she is always in my anxious prayers.” He had sent a pretty basket of bracken and horsetail shoots.3 “These are from among the very first the acolytes have picked for the altar,” he said. His poem, in a very poor hand, was purposely written all in quite separate letters:

  “Then, it was for him that I would spring after spring gather this same gift,

  and in honor of those days these first bracken shoots are yours.4

  Please read this to her.”

  He had obviously taken great trouble over it, and she liked it much better than any she had ever received from that gentleman whose facile eloquence seemed only to show how little he really cared. She wept and had her women write down her reply:

  “As I am this spring, who will enjoy them with me, now that he is gone:

  these bracken shoots from the hills, picked in memory of him?”

  She had the messenger given a reward.

  Lovely as she already was in the full bloom of youth, her cares had drawn her features a little, giving her a nobler grace that made her resemble the sister she had lost. Side by side they had seemed quite different, but now the resemblance was so striking that if one forgot for a moment, one could imagine that she was her sister. The sight moved the women to lament, “His lordship the Counselor mourned our lady night and day, until he longed to be able to contemplate at least her empty shell—what a shame her destiny was not to be his, when she would have done just as well!” The arrival of one of his men gave each an occasion to inquire after the other. The news that despite the New Year he was always lost in thought and often in tears convinced her that his attachment had been no passing whim, and she felt for him now more than ever.

  His Highness, whose life hardly ever allowed him a moment to go to her, now resolved that he would bring her to the City.

  Once the privy banquet and other such distractions were over, his lordship the Counselor went to call on His Highness of War, since he could not unburden himself of his despair to anyone else. It was a quiet evening, and His Highness sat near the veranda, lost in thought. He was enjoying the scent of the plum blossoms he loved, toying meanwhile with a sō no koto, when the Counselor broke off one of the tree's lower branches and approached him with it. The sweetly delicious, mingled fragrance struck His Highness as just right.

  “Are they so attuned to your least shade of feeling, you who have picked them,

  that, their color all unseen, these blossoms yet scent the air?”5

  he said, and the Counselor returned the pleasantry:

  “Let him then beware, before he picks as his own the bough in full bloom

  that to its admirer brings taunts and accusations!”

  They were the best of friends.

  They settled down to talk, and His Highness hastened to inquire about the mountain village. The Counselor then spoke in his turn of how deeply he felt his loss and of how his heart had been hers from the start until this very day. Amid tears and smiles, as they say, he enlarged on his memories, sad or amusing, through the round of the years, until His Highness himself, always quick both to love and to weep, was wringing the tears from his sleeves even over someone else's misfortune and giving his friend every reason to be pleased with him. Meanwhile the sky veiled itself in mist as though it, too, understood.

  That night a howling wind brought with it a still-wintry chill, and the lamp kept blowing out. They could not bring themselves to break off their conversation despite such gloom as when darkness covers all,6 and they talked on until very late without yet finishing what they had to say. “Come now, that cannot be all!” His Highness exclaimed, for his friend had described a tender bond unexampled in all the world, and His Highness's own willful ways led him to press the matter on the assumption that there must be more. Still, he was a man of understanding, and he so skillfully offered now words of consolation and now appeals to deep feeling that his charm swept the Counselor on little by little to tell him all of the pent-up sorrows in his heart; and he felt much better for having done so.