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The Tale of Genji

Murasaki Shikibu

  “Would I talk to you at all, in a manner that others might question, if I distrusted you? I have often had occasion over the years to discern your feelings, and that is precisely why I turn to you, although you are unusual in that role, and why I continue to ask so much of you.”

  “I do not remember your ever asking anything of me. You are making much too much of this. Your wish to visit your mountain village marks your first request for my help. How could I not indeed appreciate your confidence in the matter?” He still seemed quite resentful, but he could hardly go on as he pleased with others listening.

  He glanced mournfully outside. It was dark by now, and insect cries were the only sound that reached him. Shadows shrouded the garden knoll. There he remained, leaning quite at his ease against a pillar and arousing only consternation within. “If love ever had an end,”70 he murmured, and so on; then he said, “I give up. The village of Not-a-Sound:71 that is where I long to go, and never mind if your hills offer no proper temple, because I would make a doll in her likeness there, and paint her picture, too, and pursue my devotions before them.”72

  “It is a very touching desire,” she said, “but disturbing, too, because alas, it brings to mind a doll in a lustration stream.73 And I worry, too, that the painter might only want gold.”74

  “You are right,” he replied. “In my eyes no sculptor or painter could do her justice. It is not that long since a sculptor's work brought petals fluttering down from the heavens:75 that is the sort of genius I need.”

  The way he talked on about how little he could ever forget her, and the deep sorrow conveyed by his dolorous air, so affected her that she slipped a little nearer to say, “Speaking of a doll image of her, I now remember a very strange thing, something quite incredible.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, elated by the new warmth in her manner, and he reached beneath the standing curtain to take her hand. Despite her intense annoyance she resolved at all costs to check his ardor and to make him behave, and she therefore ignored his gesture lest the woman nearby draw any false conclusion.

  “This summer someone whose very existence was long unknown to me came here from very far away, and although it would have been wrong of me not to be friendly to her, I also saw no reason why I should receive her too quickly into my intimacy. She has just been here, and I was moved to find her extraordinarily like my sister. You keep saying that for you she lives on in me, but those who knew us both say we looked quite different, so that it is difficult to imagine how my visitor, for whom the resemblance is so much less plausible, should have it to so astonishing a degree.”

  He thought that he must be dreaming. “But that tie between you must be just the reason why she wished to approach you,” he said. “Why have you never told me anything about this?”

  “No, no, I do not know exactly how the tie you speak of came to be. My father always feared that we might both become destitute and fall into aimless wandering, and now that I, the only one left, reflect on the matter, I find it very painful to imagine burdening his memory with anything that gossip might wish to pass on.” He understood from her words that His Highness must have known someone in secret and therefore left ferns of memory to be plucked.76

  Her talk of that close resemblance struck him particularly, and he was intensely curious. “Is that all? You might as well tell me the whole story.” It was a distressing one, though, and she could not bring herself to do so.

  “I will tell you where she is, if you wish to go to her,” she said, “but I actually know very little. And if I told you too much, you know, you might only be disappointed.”

  “I would gladly give my all to travel out onto the ocean to seek the place where her spirit dwells, if you told me to do so, but in this case I doubt that I shall feel that strongly. Still, I know that I would prefer a doll to remaining comfortless, and in that spirit I might well accept her as my buddha77 of the mountain village.” His tone was urgent.

  “Ah, I ought not to have told you so much, since my father never recognized her; it is just that I felt so sorry for you when you spoke of wanting a sculptor of genius.” And she went on, “She has been living very, very far away, which her mother thought such a shame that she took the trouble to bring her all the way here. They actually came to call on me—I could not very well turn them away. I saw too little of her to be certain, but it seemed to me that she was less uncouth than she might have been. Considering how worried her mother is about what to do with her, it might be just the thing for her to become your buddha. But surely you will not really do that.”

  He saw that for all her innocent airs she longed to say something that would deflect his unwanted attentions, and he resented it. Still, he was moved as well. Despite her resolve to refuse his approaches, she was sympathetic enough not to wish to humiliate him openly, and his heart beat at the thought. Meanwhile the night was well advanced, and she, within, was appalled to think what this scene must look like. She allowed their talk to lapse and retired, which he quite understood, but she still left him angry and chagrined to the degree that he felt self-control elude him, and tears sprang to his eyes. This did not become him, though, he knew that. With a great effort he therefore resisted the tumult of his feelings, for any rashness now would be not only barbarous toward her but damaging to himself. He went his way more than usually burdened with sighs.

  What am I to do about this obsession with her? he wondered. It means nothing but suffering. How can I possibly manage to avoid widespread censure and have at the same time what I so desire? He spent the rest of the night despairing that his lack of true experience in these matters no doubt put them both at risk. He must see for himself whether the resemblance she had mentioned was real. That would be easy enough to do if he chose, considering the young woman's station in life, but what a nuisance if she turned out not to be what he had in mind! He still felt no urge to do anything in that direction.

  It seemed to him when he went too long without seeing the house at Uji that the past slipped further and further from him, which somehow felt so sad that after the twentieth of the ninth month he made the journey there. The place was more windblown than ever, and he was greeted only by the river's desolate noise. There was no one about. What he saw pierced his heart, and sorrow overwhelmed him. He called out the nun Ben, and she came to the opening of the sliding panel, thrusting a blue-gray standing curtain before her.

  “Please forgive me, my lord,” she said, “but your presence is very daunting, and I could not presume…” She did not come all the way out.

  “I imagined how melancholy your life here must be, and I thought that I might come to talk to you, now that I have no one else with whom to share my heart. How quickly the months and years pass by!” His eyes filled with tears, and the old woman could not refrain from weeping freely.

  “This is just the time of year when my lady was in such useless torment over her sister, and that always painful memory makes the autumn wind feel especially biting and cruel. Alas, I gather vaguely that the prospect that worried her so has turned out to be real enough, which is sadly distressing news.”

  “All things may well come out right in the fullness of time, but I am painfully convinced that my own error caused her anguish. Her sister's current circumstances are, well, just what one might expect, but I see nothing worrying in them. It must come to us all at last, as to her, to rise in smoke to the sky, but whatever anyone may say, the going and staying78 are very painful for the one who remains!” He wept anew.

  As was his custom, he had the Adept come to discuss the scriptures and images for the elder sister's memorial service. “Every time I am here, I feel how pointless it is to lament what cannot be undone,” he said, “and I think of dismantling the main house to build a temple near yours. I should just as soon begin immediately.” He sketched or described the number of halls, galleries, and monks' lodges that he had in mind, and the Adept enlarged to him on the merit of such holy works.

  “It might seem cruel
to take down the house that once meant so much to His Highness, but he, too, aspired to progress on the path of merit, although it appears that consideration for those who would survive him kept him from doing so. Now the land belongs to the wife of His Highness of War, which amounts to saying that it is at His Highness's disposal. Therefore it would not be right to turn it into a temple just as it is. One may not follow one's own wishes in such a matter. Besides, the spot is too near the river and too exposed. That is why I propose to remove the main house and rebuild it elsewhere.”

  “Your intentions are wholly laudable either way, my lord. Once someone who mourned a great loss wrapped up the bones and carried them in a bag around her neck for many years, after which she cast that bag from her, thanks to the Buddha's skill, and took up the path of the holy life.79 I have no doubt that the sight of this house troubles you deeply, and that is something to look out for. At the same time what you propose will further your happiness in the life to come. I hasten to place myself at your service. I shall have a Doctor of the Almanac indicate the right day to begin and then set two or three carpenters, men familiar with these things, to work according to the Buddha's teaching.”

  After confirming his wishes the Counselor sent for men from his estates and instructed them to place themselves under the Adept's orders. All too soon it was dark, and he disposed himself to spend the night.

  I may not see the place again, he thought, wandering about to look at it. All the holy images had gone to the temple, and nothing remained but the implements the nun needed for her devotions. He gazed at them, wondering how she managed to get through her pitiful life.

  “For various reasons the main house is to be redone,” he said. “You must move to the gallery while the work is going on. If there is anything to send to His Highness's in the City, call in men from my estates and let them know what to do with it.” He gave her all sorts of practical instructions. Elsewhere he would never have seen fit to admit so old a woman to his company, but he had her lie beside him for the night and got her talking about the old days.

  No one else was listening nearby, and she was therefore able to speak freely about the late Acting Grand Counselor.80 “Whenever I remember how he still clearly longed at the last to see what you looked like, since you had just been born, I feel happy and sad all at once to think that my reward for intimate service to him81 while he lived is to have you now before my eyes when my own improbable life is nearly over. My unfortunately long life has shown and taught me many things that fill me with revulsion and shame. From my lady I now and again have a letter urging me to come and see her, because, she says, it is not nice of me to shut myself up here forever this way; but I am unfit for her company, and there is no one I wish to see save Amida Buddha himself.” She went on to talk at great length about the mistress she had lost—what she had been like over the years, what she had said at this moment or that, how she had made some little poem on the beauty of blossoms or autumn leaves; and while listening to that quavering voice he silently added reflections on how childlike she had been, how reluctant to speak, and yet, for all that, how wonderful to know. The sister who had gone to His Highness, although somewhat brighter and livelier, seemed quite prepared to embarrass anyone whose attentions she declined to honor; but, he said to himself, she seems warmly disposed toward me, and she wants it to continue in one way or another. So in his thoughts he compared the two.

  Then came the moment for him to bring up the double of whom he had heard. “I cannot say whether or not she is now in the City,” the old woman replied; “but I believe that I have heard of her. Soon after his wife died, and before he moved to these hills, His Late Highness took up in passing, very secretly, with a rather nice senior gentlewoman called Chūjō. No one knew anything about it. When she had a girl who, as he well knew, was presumably his, he was shocked, dismayed, and outraged, and he never looked at her again. Remarkably enough, he learned his lesson from that and became more or less a holy man, which made her position so awkward that she left his service. She married the Governor of Michinokuni. One year she came back up to the City and let His Highness's household know that his daughter was safe and well, but when His Highness heard that, he flatly forbade any more such messages, which was a bitter disappointment to her. She next accompanied her husband to Hitachi,82 where he had been posted, and for years there was no more news of her. Then, so I hear, she came up to the City this spring and went to call at His Highness's. Her daughter must be twenty by now. Some years ago she actually wrote to me about how pretty her girl was growing up to be, how she longed to do better for her, and so on.”

  He decided after questioning her further that it must really be true, and he began to want to see this young woman. “Why, I would go gladly to lands unknown in order to meet anyone in the least like what she used to be!” he said. “No doubt His Highness rejected her, but still, she was very, very closely related to him. Please, if she ever has occasion to come here, do just mention to her what I have said.”

  “Her mother is a relation of mine, since she is a niece of His Highness's wife, but she and I were separated at the time,83 and we saw very little of each other. Lately I had word from Taifu, in the City, that the daughter says she wishes at least to visit His Highness's grave and that Taifu has encouraged her to do so, but I have not yet heard anything from her. Very well, then, my lord, I shall pass on your remarks when she comes.”

  Before starting back at daybreak, he had the Adept presented with silks and cottons that he had had brought late the evening before. He gave the nun some, too. He had also ordered other cloth84 that he distributed to the monks and to the nun's servants. It was a desolate place for her to live, but his continuing generosity allowed her to pursue her devotions in peace, in a manner quite presentable for her station. He paused as he was leaving, detained by the prospect of autumn leaves thickly strewn, untrodden, beneath boughs stripped bare by the merciless savagery of autumn gales. Color lingered only in the vines clinging to the picturesque mountain trees. He had someone pick him a sprig of kodani,85 thinking to give it to the lady at His Highness's.

  “Did not memory tell me I have lodged before beneath these ivied trees,

  ah, then, how forlorn this night, spent lonely and far from home,”

  he murmured to himself, and the nun replied,

  “You have lodged before here beneath the withered boughs of this ivied tree—

  how sad, then, it is to think that you keep that memory!”

  The poem had its own distinction, despite being thoroughly old-fashioned, and it helped to console him.

  His Highness was with her when the sprig of colored leaves came. Oh, no, not again! she fretted when the messenger innocently delivered them with the mention that they were from Sanjō; but she could hardly try to hide them.

  “What pretty ivy!” His Highness remarked sarcastically. He had it brought to him for a better look.

  The letter said, “How have you been lately? I wonder. I shall tell you in person about my trip to your mountain village and about how the morning fog on the hills led me more than ever astray. I asked the Adept to turn the main house into a temple. Once I have your permission, I shall have it moved elsewhere. Please send the nun Ben your instructions to that effect”; and so on.

  “He did well to keep what he wrote sober. He must have heard I am here,” said His Highness, and to some extent he was doubtless right. Greatly relieved, she thought him awful to insist on talking like that, and her angry looks were charming enough to make him forgive everything.

  “Answer him, then. I promise not to look.” He turned away. And so she did, since it would have seemed odd of her to flatter him and refrain.

  “I envy your going there,” she wrote. “I myself had decided that what you suggest is just what needs to be done. Rather than seek another refuge among the rocks,86 I should much prefer to keep this one from going to rack and ruin, and I shall be much obliged to you if you will kindly see to whatever there is to do.”
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  His Highness saw in this no sign of anything wrong in their friendship, but, given his own proclivities, he must have suspected that there was more to it than that.

  The plume grass stood out prettily in the already wintry garden nearby, for the plumes seemed to beckon like hands, while the stems not yet in head made strings of perilously swaying dewdrop pearls—a common sight, of course, but there was something especially affecting then about the evening breeze.

  “I feel a sadness from a stem not yet in plume among these grasses,

  beckoning like waving sleeves moistened already with dew,”87

  he murmured as he sat there playing a biwa, wearing only a dress cloak over his pleasantly soft garments.88 It was a piece in the ōshiki mode, one so moving that she, who played the biwa, too, could not long remain angry; instead she leaned on her armrest to peer at him for a moment around her low curtain, in a manner so appealing that one longed to see more.