The Tale of Genji

  She was in no mood to answer. The shock was too great, and she now thought him hateful, but she controlled herself well enough to upbraid him, “Your attitude is astonishing! Think what this will look like to other people! I am appalled!”

  Seeing her nearly in tears, he felt for her, and he could not entirely blame her. Still, he answered, “Why should anyone mind? Very well, here we are together, but just remember that other time! Your sister approved, after all! I am the one whom your outrage might well offend! Rest assured that I have nothing rash or indecent in mind.” He spoke quite calmly, but his months of bitter regret now tortured him so much that he went on and on about it without ever making a move to release her sleeve. She could do nothing, and, to put it mildly, she was aghast.

  “What is this now? Why, you might be a little girl!” he said when she wept, more intensely ashamed and repelled than if she had hardly known him. She was indescribably sweet and pathetic, but he also found in her a daunting gravity far beyond the younger sister of those days. At last, tormented by having had to suffer this way for intentionally letting her go to someone else, he burst into tears.

  The two gentlewomen in waiting nearby would certainly have gone to defend their mistress from an unwanted intruder, but this gentleman was in a position to carry on a familiar conversation with her, and they assumed that if he was doing so, there must be a reason for it. They therefore pretended to notice nothing, despite their dismay, and unfortunately withdrew in silence. He himself must have struggled to contain his burning regret for what he had done then, but the rare tact that was always his, even long ago, restrained him now from acting on his desire. The scene was not of the kind one may dwell on at length. Although disappointed, he knew that he must avoid attracting attention, and he therefore took his leave, ruing what he had done.

  He had not thought the early night over yet, but dawn was near. If he feared that someone might see him, no doubt it was for her sake. No wonder she feels unwell, he reflected, as I keep hearing she does. Yes, what kept me back was mainly feeling sorry for her over that hip band62 she was so embarrassed about. What a fool I have made of myself yet again! Still, he would certainly have shrunk from any cruelty toward her. Besides, he would have suffered torments later if a moment of ardor had led him to force her; arranging impossible, clandestine meetings would have tested him sorely, and just think of the misery of contesting her with His Highness! At this very moment,63 though, none of these sage reflections could save him from desperate yearning. He could not imagine not having her, which was really and truly hopeless of him. The quality of her presence, a little more slender than before and nobly captivating, seemed to him never to have left him at all but to be with him even now, and he knew nothing else. She wants so much to go to Uji, and I would gladly take her there, but would His Highness ever agree? Assuming that he would not, it could mean disaster to do so in secret. How can I possibly have my desire without causing a scandal? He lay there sleepless, his thoughts in turmoil.

  It was still dark when his letter arrived. As before, it had the appearance of a straight-folded, formal one.

  “So heavy a dew lay along that painful path I followed in vain,

  the autumn sky called to mind those sad skies of long ago.

  Your unkind reception was incomprehensibly cruel.64 What else can I say?”

  Her women would notice something unusual if she failed to answer, and she wrote most unhappily, “Thank you for your note. I am too unwell to give you a reply.” That was all, and it struck him as disappointingly brief. Instead he yearningly recalled her entrancing presence.

  Messenger with a straight-fold letter

  Despite her extreme distress and alarm, she had not refused him in grim silence, perhaps because she now knew a little more of the world. She had instead shown great discernment and dignity and had actually sent him on his way with kind and comforting words, so that in memory her manner stirred keen regret and filled his mind until he felt only despair. She seemed to him wonderfully improved in every way. Well, then, he reflected, if His Highness were to abandon her, she would simply have to rely on me. It could never be easy or open even so, but she would be my only love, although no one else would know, and I would set her above all others. Reprehensibly enough, he never thought about anything else. How treacherous men are, for all their airs of deep thought and wise understanding! So much for his desolation over the sister he had lost—no, he was not after all suffering that much. Such reflections went round and round in his mind. He forgot about being her trusty support when he heard someone say, “His Highness has gone to Nijō today”; his heart pounded, and jealousy consumed him.

  His Highness had not been home for so long that even he deplored it, and at last he went there on the spur of the moment. Oh, no, she told herself, I will not let him see that I am displeased with him! She wanted to visit her mountain village, but the only man she could look to for that had turned out to have obnoxious intentions, and knowing that now, she saw how very cramped her world was and how unfortunate her place in it, and she made up her mind to accept things patiently for as long as she lived. She therefore received him so sweetly and prettily that she pleased him better than ever, and he excused himself endlessly for his neglect over the past days. Her belly had swelled a little, and he was filled with sympathy to find her wearing the telltale hip band that had so embarrassed her, for he had never before been close to a woman in her condition. He was actually quite taken with the novelty of it. After having had to get used to minding his manners, he felt very comfortably at home, and he assured her in various ways of his deep affection. She wondered as she listened whether all men were such good talkers, and the memory of that importunate presence returned to mind. All these years she had thought him so good and kind, but if that was what his kindness meant, she wanted no more of it; and as for all this one's promises of lasting devotion, We shall see, We shall see! was the silent thought with which she greeted each one, although she did at the same time believe them a little.

  To think, though, how cruelly he took advantage of me and came straight in! she reflected. He assured me that he and my sister were never close in that way, which is certainly remarkable, but I should not have allowed that to make me careless. So it was that she resolved to multiply her precautions. Understanding the terrible danger that any prolonged absence by His Highness might pose, she said nothing about it but instead did rather more than before to make him want to be with her. This utterly enchanted him, until the expert that he was noted with surprise, behind the perfectly commonplace fragrance she had given her clothes, another one, distinct and utterly different; for his scent had suffused them. He then sought to discover what had been going on, and his not wholly unexpected questions left her desperately at a loss for a reply. I knew it! he thought with beating heart. This was sure to happen! I always assumed he would yield to temptation! Actually, she had changed her shift and so on, but remarkably enough, the scent had permeated even her person.

  “He must have taken the last liberties if his scent is this strong on you,” he kept saying, hatefully enough to reduce her to utter misery and confusion. “Here I have been telling you all you mean to me, and you meanwhile have decided to be the first to forget!65 No one of your rank may stoop to such betrayal! Have I really been gone that long? I can hardly believe this of you!” He said a great deal more, although it would all be too painful to repeat, but to his intense annoyance she answered not a word. He added,

  “The scent that passes sleeve to sleeve in close embrace, one to another,

  has suffused my mood as well and made me very angry!”

  To that outrageous speech of his she had no reply, but this was another matter.

  “When so trustingly I believed this middle robe always would be ours,

  would you for a touch of scent abandon me forever?”66

  She wept as she spoke. The sight affected him deeply; but then he thought, This is exactly why it happened!67 and felt such a wave of revu
lsion that he, too, always the tenderhearted gallant, burst into tears. Never mind if she had erred gravely, he could never, never reject her, she was just too sweet and too dear; and so it was that his anger left him, and he said no more. Instead he turned to consoling her.

  The next morning he arose from a pleasant night, washed up, and took his breakfast there as well. The style of her rooms made a striking change from the glittering layers yonder of brocade or damask from Koma and Cathay. It all felt so plain and familiar, and her women, too, some in softly rumpled clothes, gave him a feeling of peace. She herself had on pale gray-violet over a pink layered long dress, all quite casually worn, and the comparison with the other one, always so perfect in every detail and almost oppressively beautiful, put her at no disadvantage. She was too gentle and too lovely that he need feel in the least embarrassed by his fondness for her. Once prettily round-faced and plump, she was a little thinner now, and her much paler skin gave her a pleasingly noble air. Even before that scent betrayed her, he had found her enchanting appeal so far beyond any ordinary woman's that he worried constantly, since knowing the world as well as he did, he felt certain that any man but a brother who visited and talked with her, and who for any reason grew accustomed to hearing her voice or glimpsing her presence, would sooner or later be stirred and come to feel about her just as he did himself. He searched cabinets, chests, and so on for compromising letters, as though looking for something else, but he found none. There were only prim, terse notes on commonplace topics, mixed in among other things without any particular care. Strange! he thought. There must be others! Now he was more suspicious than ever, and no wonder. Any discerning woman should fancy the Counselor, he reflected, considering what he is like, and why should he then sternly reject her? They would make such a fine couple. I suppose they must be in love. By the time he had got this far, he was miserable, resentful, and angry, and he remained sufficiently agitated not to leave that day either. Of the two or three notes he sent to Rokujō, some old women there whispered, “How quickly one message from him piles on another, like fallen leaves!”

  The Counselor was not pleased to learn that His Highness had stayed on and on. But, he told himself, I can do nothing about it. I am an idiot, that is the trouble. What business do I have feeling this way about someone I only wanted to see happily settled? Having managed to bring himself round, he was glad that His Highness had at least not abandoned her, and the thought of her women in their comfortably rumpled clothes prompted him to call on his mother.

  “I wonder whether you have anything decent to wear already made up,” he said. “You see, I have in mind a use for it.”

  “I suppose there must be some plain white ones, as usual, for the services next month,”68 she replied. “I doubt that there are any dyed ones, but I could have that done without delay.”

  “No, no, it is not that important. Whatever you happen to have now will do.” He had her wardrobe inspected and sent off several sets of women's robes and long dresses—whatever there was—together with bolts of undyed plain silk and silk damask. For the lady herself he included, from among his own things, scarlet silk beaten to an especially beautiful luster, white silk damask, and so on in generous quantities; and since it turned out that there were no trousers, he also put in for some reason a trouser cord, to which he tied,

  “You whose single tie binds you elsewhere forever, as this cord is one,

  I shall not run on and on, charging you with cruelty.”

  He addressed it to Taifu, an experienced gentlewoman who seemed to be close to her mistress. “I apologize for these; they are no more than what was ready to hand. Please dispose of them as you think best,” his message said; but discreetly or not, he had wrapped up her portion separately in a box. Taifu showed her mistress none of it, but experience had made such instances of his thoughtfulness quite familiar by now, and it never occurred to her to make an issue of the matter and return them. Instead she passed them out to the women of the household, and they all busied themselves sewing. The younger ones, who waited most closely on her, undoubtedly deserved the best. The lower servants, who had been going about looking terribly untidy, now made a fine sight in white clothes all the more pleasant for being so discreet.

  Who else would have been so attentive to her needs? His Highness, who was devoted to her, certainly saw that she should lack nothing, but he could hardly keep his eye on every familiar detail. Having always been thoroughly pampered, he of course did not know what it was to languish in penury. To him life meant shivering with delicious pleasure before the dew on a flower, and when he went so far as quite naturally to provide the woman he loved with the practical necessities of life, as time or season required, the response was astonishment and, from someone like her sharp-tongued nurse, cries of “Oh, but he shouldn't have!” She had had occasion to feel acutely, if silently, ashamed to note among her page girls some whose costume did her no credit, and to wonder what right she really had to live in so fine a house; and lately, what with the celebrated brilliance of that other woman's life at Rokujō she had been quite mortified to imagine what His Highness's own people must think of her. This the Counselor understood perfectly, and she by no means despised a solicitude that might have been merely officious had he been less close to her, but she also feared that any too-obvious generosity on his part might attract unwanted attention. And now he had yet again sent Taifu some very nice clothing he had had made, with an outer gown that he had had specially woven for Taifu's mistress, and thread for damask as well. He, too, had enjoyed privilege, just as much as His Highness. He was absurdly proud, held the world in disdain, and boasted superb loftiness of mind, yet ever since first witnessing His Late Highness's life among the hills, he had painfully grasped what special sorrow such isolation could bring, and with deep sympathy he had extended these reflections to the world at large. Such, they say, was the bitter lesson that Uji had taught him.

  What he still wanted was therefore always to be her trusted and courteous friend, but instead she painfully absorbed his every thought, so that his letters to her became longer and longer and at times betrayed feelings he wished to conceal. She would sigh then over the misfortune that seemed to cling to her. If he were a complete stranger, I could easily dismiss him ignominiously as a madman, she reflected, but I have so long relied on him as a somewhat unusual benefactor that it would only look strange if things were to sour between us now. Besides, I am not ungrateful for all his kindness and consideration. However, that does not mean I can possibly treat him as though he and I were really close. What am I to do? It was a very troubling dilemma. The younger women in her service, the ones who might have been worth talking to, were all new, and the ones she actually knew were the old women from her hills. In the absence of anyone with whom to discuss her feelings heart-to-heart, she thought constantly of her sister. Would he have these notions now, if she were alive? It was all very sad, and it tried her even more sorely than her anxiety that His Highness might betray her.

  The Counselor, who could bear it no longer, came one quiet evening to call. She had a cushion put out for him on the veranda and let him know that just at the moment she was feeling too unwell to be able to talk. Stung nearly to tears, he nonetheless forced himself in the women's presence to disguise what he felt. “But when you are not well, you have priests you do not know at all very near you! Will you not have me within your blinds even as you might a physician? Passing messages back and forth through other people this way seems to me perfectly pointless!” He was so plainly angry that the witnesses to the other night agreed that she was indeed taking it too far. They lowered the blinds of the chamber and admitted him to where the priest sat on night duty. This was truly excruciating for her, but with her women talking that way she did not wish to be too obvious about it, and so she slipped forward a little, most unwillingly, to receive him.

  Her faint voice and her halting responses brought straight to mind the memory of her sister when she was first unwell, which was so sa
d and frightening that he felt a darkness within him and was unable for some time to continue speaking. Deeply offended by the distance she was keeping between them, he reached under the blind to slide the standing curtain back a little and leaned in toward her as before, as though quite at home. This was too much, and she summoned one Shōshō. “My chest hurts,” she said. “I should like you to press on it for me.”

  “But that will only make it worse!” he said with a sigh when he heard her, and sat up straight again, for underneath he was indeed quite uneasy. “Why are you always so unwell? I asked about that and was told that one does feel ill at first, but that most of the time later on one feels perfectly well. You seem to be taking this much too much like a child.”

  “I often have this pain in my chest,” she replied, acutely embarrassed. “My sister did, too. They say that is the way people are when they are not meant to live long.”

  No, he thought with a sharp pang of sorrow, no one lives the life of the thousand-year pine!69 Never mind that the woman she had called to her side might hear him; he passed over in silence anything that could possibly be compromising, but he still managed to tell her everything that he had felt for her for so long, in words that only she, and no one else listening, could understand. The charm with which he spoke was so engaging that Shōshō thought, Oh, yes, he is such a kind gentleman!

  Everything reminded him endlessly of the love he had lost. “The only thing I have ever really wanted since childhood is to give up the world for good,” he said, “but perhaps that is not my destiny, because even though she was never mine, I felt such passion for her that that alone seems to have thwarted my hope of leading a holy life. I have looked elsewhere for consolation, but although someone may have seemed now and then, when I came to know her, to promise distraction, I have never felt my heart turn toward anyone else. The failure of all my attempts, when no one else really attracted me, has left me ashamed that you might think me capricious, but while I should certainly deserve your rebuke if I were most strangely to entertain culpable desires, I do not see who could possibly blame me for wishing to share my thoughts with you from time to time, just as we are now, and to talk things over in friendship. My feelings are not those of other men, and I will never give anyone cause for disapproval. Please, please give me your trust.” He spoke between reproach and tears.