The Tale of Genji

  “Very well, then, you shall have a discreet room on the west side,” Taifu sent in reply to the letter. “It is not very comfortable, but if you do not mind too much, you are welcome there for a little while.” The young woman looked forward to knowing her half sister, and she felt more pleased than anything else that things had worked out this way.

  The Governor was eager to treat his new son-in-law magnificently, but he did not actually know how to convey any brilliance; he just rolled some coarse Azuma silks into a ball and tossed them in.8 The food was brought in with much noise and in vast abundance, which so impressed the Lieutenant's servants that the Lieutenant, too, congratulated himself on his admirable success. The Governor's wife, who knew how ill tempered it would be to ignore the proceedings, bore it all and just sat and watched. It was a big house, but what with the space now done up with so much fuss for the new son-in-law and his men, and the east wing where the Minamoto Junior Counselor lived, and rooms for all the Governor's sons, it was full. The Lieutenant now occupied what had once been her favorite daughter's room, and she could hardly bear the thought of the poor girl being obliged to make do with some odd corner along a gallery, for example. That was what had set her mind working and made her think of His Highness's. No one here seems to have any respect for her at all, she reflected; and so it was that she whisked her off, with blind hope, to a place where the young woman's father would not have wished to find her. Only her daughter's nurse and two or three young gentlewomen accompanied them. They were lodged at the north end of the west aisle, a spot far away from anyone else.

  The lady at His Highness's had not seen her guest for many years, but she did not feel that she was a stranger and maintained no reserve in her presence, welcoming her instead most graciously. Her unhappy guest was filled with envy as she watched her play with her little son. Have I, then, nothing to do with His Late Highness's wife?9 she asked herself. He despised me just because I was in service, and everyone else is cruel enough to do the same. It is so hard to have to go about begging this way! No one came to them, since she had said her daughter was under a taboo. She stayed for two or three days, which gave her time to become familiar with the house.

  When His Highness visited the wing, she peered curiously at him through a crack. He was as perfectly beautiful as a plucked spray of cherry blossoms, and household retainers of the fourth or fifth rank, far finer in looks and manner than her Governor, whom despite her anger she had no wish to offend, knelt before him to report on one matter or another. Most of the young gentlemen of the fifth rank were ones she did not recognize. Her own stepson, an Aide in the Bureau of Ceremonial and also a Chamberlain, appeared with a message from His Majesty, but it was not for such as he actually to approach a Prince. Ah, she said to herself, what a wonder he is to behold, and how fortunate she is to be near him! From a distance one may entertain all sorts of dark thoughts about the terrible things he might do to her, however splendid a man like him may be, but that is foolishness! Just look at him! What an extraordinary privilege it would be to be with him that way just once a year, like Tanabata! And there he was, holding and caressing his little boy. His wife was sitting behind a low standing curtain, but he pushed it aside to talk to her, and the two made a most beautiful couple. His Late Highness was a Prince, too, but how utterly different in his dismal solitude!

  His Highness went into the curtained bed, leaving the young gentlewomen and the nurse to look after his little son. All sorts of people came to him, but he claimed not to be feeling well and rested until sunset. They brought him his meal right there. In the presence of such elegance and grandeur she saw that her own household, which she had thought very splendid indeed, was really deplorably common. My own daughter, though, would not look out of place beside him, she told herself. Those girls may be mine, too, the ones their father, with all his pride in his wealth, boasts he will make great ladies, but I know that I must continue hoping for better when I think how far this one outshines them! She spent the night in fantasies of the future.

  The sun was high when His Highness arose. “Her Majesty is unwell, as she is so often, and I must go to her,” he said, and got dressed. The Governor's wife peeped through, eager to know what he looked like now. Incomparable in formal dress, and glowing with noble beauty, he was playing with his son, whom he found it difficult to leave. He set out directly from the wing after partaking of gruel and steamed rice.

  Now was the time for the gentlemen who had gathered to his residence at dawn, and who had been waiting patiently in his household office ever since, to come forward and report to him whatever they had to say. One of them, a man with pretensions to looks but with a drearily unremarkable face, wore a dress cloak and a sword.

  “That's that Lieutenant, Hitachi's son-in-law,” the women told each other. “He was first going to marry our visitor, but he said he preferred to enjoy the advantages of having the Governor's own daughter instead, so they say that little chit of a girl is what he got.”

  “Our guest's women won't talk about it, though. I got it all from one of his.”

  They had no idea that their guest's mother was listening, and she was aghast at what she heard. How could I have ever imagined him to be worth anything? He seems to have nothing at all. She now despised him more than ever.

  The little boy came crawling out and peeked under the blinds, and His Highness turned back at the sight and went to him. “I shall withdraw immediately if Her Majesty seems well,” he said. “If she is as indisposed as ever, I shall spend the night attending her. I hate to spend a single night away from you lately.” He played with him a little while to humor him and then set out once more, a figure too marvelous ever to tire of watching, and so perfectly pleasing that his departure left rather a void.

  She went to visit the lady who had given her refuge, and praised His Highness to the skies, till the lady smiled at her country ways. “You were still an infant when your mother passed away,” she said. “We who looked after you felt deep regret on your behalf, as did His Late Highness himself. Still, great good fortune was yours after all, and you managed to grow up very well even in the depths of those hills. It is so sad that you lost your sister, though.” She had tears in her eyes.

  The lady was weeping, too. “My life has its bitter moments,” she replied, “and then others as well when it seems to me that I may still hope for some consolation. As for those who brought me into the world, I am resigned to their loss, since such things are only to be expected. There it is—after all, I never even knew my mother. But I shall always miss my sister very much. I feel so sorry whenever I see how loyal the Commander is to her, even now, because he often laments that his heart is still drawn to nothing and no one but her.”

  “The Commander must be proud to stand so extraordinarily high in His Majesty's esteem, though. Might all that not have turned out to be an obstacle if your sister had lived?”

  “Ah, that certainly would have been cruel, if both of us had felt ourselves mocked for having suffered just the same fate. I suppose that what keeps her memory so fresh for him is that he never actually made her his; but even so, it is extraordinary how for some reason he simply cannot forget her. He even went to immense trouble to look after the memorial services for my father.” She spoke with gentle warmth.

  “He actually talked to the nun Ben in the hope of having my unworthy daughter take your sister's place. I could not possibly consider such a thing, of course, but it is a great honor all the same that that ‘single stem’10 should mean so much to him, and I cannot help admiring his depth of feeling.” Fresh tears sprang to her eyes as she spoke, at the thought of the daughter whose prospects so concerned her.

  She went on to convey in a general way the Lieutenant's contempt for her daughter, on the assumption that the gentlewomen around her already knew. “She will be a comfort to me as long as I live,” she said, “whatever happens. It would be so sad, though, for her to be reduced to homeless misery after I am gone that I believe in the end I may
have no choice but to make her a nun and send her somewhere, perhaps far off in the mountains, where she may learn to give up all hope in the world.”

  “Hers is a very distressing plight, but you know, the contempt that she has suffered is the common lot of anyone in her position. What you propose would be too hard for her. Even I, who by my father's solemn choice lived rather that way, and who now find myself in circumstances quite unlike anything I had imagined, could not possibly manage what you suggest. Besides, it would be such a pity for her to adopt the drab habit of a nun.” Her deliberate manner of speaking gave her visitor great pleasure.

  The young woman's mother showed her age, but she was handsome enough, and she did not lack distinction. She certainly was remarkably heavy, but in that she matched the Governor of Hitachi very well.

  “As far as I can see, His Late Highness's most unkind rejection has meant that people are more and more inclined to look down on her as though she were not one of them, but meeting you and talking to you this way consoles me for those past griefs.” She went on to tell of the life they had led, and of how melancholy Ukishima11 had been. “Now that I have told you all about Mount Tsukuba and about how the world there seemed to have turned hateful just for me,12 since I had no one to talk to, I should like to continue presuming on your kindness, but those hopeless scamps of mine at home must be calling for me and making a nuisance of themselves. These worries give me no peace. Knowing as I do all too well how sadly I have lowered myself by assuming my present guise, I shall leave it to you to do as you think best for my daughter and say no more about it.” Her urgent appeal left His Highness's wife hoping that her half sister really deserved all this.

  In looks as in temperament the young woman was distinctly attractive. Not excessively reticent, she was pleasingly artless yet never willful, and she did very well at keeping out of sight of the women in her intimate service. How like my sister she is when she speaks! His Highness's wife thought. The Commander wants an image of her so badly—I do wish I could have him see her!

  Just then the Commander's arrival was announced. Her women arranged a standing curtain and prepared to receive him as usual. “Oh, I do want a look at him!” the Governor's wife exclaimed. “People who have seen him say the most wonderful things about him, but surely he does not compare with His Highness!”

  “You may find that he does!” the women all answered.

  “But how could any gentleman possibly outshine His Highness?”

  The Commander must have alighted from his carriage, judging from his escort's boisterous cries, but he did not immediately appear. To those awaiting him with bated breath, his figure as he entered evoked less wonder and delight than elegance and noble grace. One felt one's hand move to tidy a wayward lock of hair, for his presence conveyed a daunting refinement, and his manner was one of the very highest distinction. He must have just come from the palace, since his escort was so large.

  “I went to call on Her Majesty yesterday evening, having heard that she was unwell,” he said, “and I was sorry to find none of the Princes with her. I have been there all this time in place of His Highness. He got there very late this morning. It occurred to me, if I may say so, that you might have sufficiently forgotten yourself to detain him!”

  “You have been most kind.” That was her only reply. He seemed to have arrived in a rather excited mood, knowing that His Highness would be staying on at court.

  He spoke to her most affectionately, as always. Whatever the subject, he turned it not bluntly but with the lightest of touches to sad musings on how he could never forget the past and how the world now was ever more hateful to him. How was it possible that the memory of her sister should always so absorb him? Since he had already dwelled on the subject to her with great feeling, she could only suppose that he wished her to know that he could say even more. Still, manner betrays sentiment, and since she was neither stock nor stone, the more she watched him, the more she acknowledged his pathetically genuine depth of feeling.

  He spoke at such length of the disappointments he had suffered that she sighed bitterly. Perhaps it was a wish to cleanse him of this passion that prompted her to speak of the “doll” he had mentioned. “She is here in hiding,” she said—just a word, no more.

  This was another stirring topic, and he looked forward to meeting her, but he preferred not to make too sudden a shift. “Ah, that would be a boon indeed, if my buddha13 were to answer my prayers; but then any occasional wish of mine that things might still be otherwise14 would only muddy the waters of my mountain stream.”

  “You and your thoughts of a holy life—you are impossible!” she said at last, with a little laugh that he found delightful.

  “Very well, then, please tell her. It occurs to me that that evasion of yours does not seem to bode well.” Tears again came to his eyes.

  “If she is truly the double of her I knew, I shall keep her close:

  she shall be my cleansing charm through the cruel shoals of love,”

  he said, as so often turning his tears to levity.15

  “No one would believe a charm you send down the shoals of a cleansing stream

  to be the cherished double you keep close to you always.

  ‘So many hands are tugging,’ the poem goes16— I would feel very sorry for her.”

  “I need hardly say that she is the last shoal my love would catch upon. Yes, I am just like that sad foam on the water.17 A cleansing doll sent floating down the stream: that is what I am!”

  Meanwhile it was getting dark, and she did not wish her visitors to wonder what might be going on. “Please do not stay too long, at least this evening,” she said, and she talked him round so nicely that she managed to get him to go.

  “Very well,” he conceded, “but do let your visitor know that she should not imagine me to be following a passing whim, since I have desired this for years. And please ask her to be thoroughly discreet. I am completely unaccustomed to this sort of thing, and I am likely to proceed awkwardly enough.” He left after making this final request.

  “What an absolutely perfect gentleman he is!” The Governor's wife gave voice to her praise and went on again to ponder the idea first brought up and then often repeated by her daughter's nurse. I told her it was out of the question, but now that I have actually seen him, I would gladly have her await the light of that Herdboy Star, even if he has to cross the River of Heaven to reach her. She is just too pretty to give to anyone common. To think that I, who have spent all my time with people who are practically barbarians, once thought that Lieutenant a prize! She regretted having ever had such an idea. The fine pillar on which he had leaned, the cushion on which he had sat, the delicious perfume that lingered behind him—all seemed to her rare and wonderful.

  Even those who saw him quite often praised him every time. “You read in the scriptures about certain things that have especially great merit, and according to the Buddha himself, giving off a fragrance like that is certainly one of them. In the Medicine King chapter18 especially he talks about Oxhead sandalwood19 or something.”

  “What a ghastly name! But when that gentleman is nearby, you realize how right the Buddha was.”

  “It is because he has been absorbed in pious devotions ever since he was a boy.”

  The women talked on, and another added, “I would just like to know what he was in his past lives!” The Governor's wife sat listening to all this with a happy smile.

  His Highness's wife quietly passed on to her something of what the Commander had said. “Once he has conceived an affection, he never wavers; he pursues it almost to the point of obsession, which is why I believe that you might as well give him a chance, even though his present situation certainly seems to invite great caution. You were thinking of having her leave the world in any case.”

  “I thought that she should live where no birds sing20 only because I want to spare her pain and contempt. Yes, now that I have seen for myself what he is like, I think that anyone might wish to be close
to such a gentleman, if only as one of his servants, and certainly a young woman could hardly help being keen on him; but for one so unworthy that might only sow the seeds of further sorrow. It seems to me that for any woman, high or low, this sort of thing is all too likely to mean suffering in this life and the next, and that is why I feel so sorry for her. However, I leave the matter entirely to you. I only ask that whatever you do, you do not abandon her.”

  It was a troubling responsibility. “Ah,” the lady sighed, “so far I have always had faith in his depth of heart, but it is not easy to foresee the future.” She said no more.

  At dawn a carriage came from the Governor's residence, together with an angry and threatening message. “Forgive me, but I must go now,” his wife said. “I look to you for everything. Please give her refuge a little longer; and while I continue to ponder whether she should live among the rocks21 or elsewhere, please do not reject her, unworthy though she may be, and teach her whatever she needs to know.” This first separation was a sad trial for her daughter, but the prospect of spending time in such pretty and fashionable surroundings pleased her nonetheless.

  The carriage was just driving away under a barely lightening sky when His Highness withdrew from the palace. Eager to see his little boy again, he set out discreetly with an unusually modest escort. He met the departing guest head-on. She stopped her carriage, and His Highness drew his up to the gallery. “What carriage is that, hurrying off while it is still dark?” he asked, intrigued. He was terrifyingly quick to note from his own experience that this is exactly the way a man leaves after a secret visit.

  “My lady of Hitachi is going home,” came the report from the Hitachi party.