The Tale of Genji

  “She is always so timid anyway,” Ukon said. “What she must be going through now!”

  Genji pitied her, frail as she was and so given to spending her days gazing up at the sky. “I shall wake him myself. Tiresome echoes are all I get for my clapping. Wait here, stay with her.”

  He dragged Ukon to her, then went to the western double doors and pushed them open. The light on the bridgeway was out, too. A breeze had sprung up, and the few men at his service—just the steward's son (a young man he used on private errands), the privy chamber page,42 and his usual man—were asleep. The steward's son answered his call.

  “Bring a hand torch. Have my man twang his bowstring43 and keep crying warnings. What do you mean by going to sleep in a lonely place like this? I thought Lord Koremitsu was here. Where is he?”

  “He was at your service, my lord, but he left when you had no orders for him. He said he would be back for you at dawn.” The young man disappeared toward the steward's quarters, expertly twanging his bowstring (he belonged to the Palace Guards) and crying over and over again, “Beware of fire!”44

  Genji thought of the palace, where the privy gentlemen must have reported for duty and where the watch must even now be being announced.45 It was not yet really so very late.

  He went back in and felt his way to her. She still lay with Ukon prostrate beside her. “What is this? Fear like yours is folly!” he scolded Ukon. “In empty houses, foxes and whatnot shock people by giving them a good fright—yes, that is it. We will not have the likes of them threatening us as long as I am here.” He made her sit up.

  “My lord, I was only lying that way because I feel so ill. My poor lady must be quite terrified.”

  “Yes, but why should she…?” He felt her: she was not breathing. He shook her, but she was limp and obviously unconscious, and he saw helplessly that, childlike as she was, a spirit had taken her.

  The hand torch came. Ukon was in no condition to move, and Genji drew up the curtain that stood nearby.46

  “Bring it closer!” he ordered. Reluctant to approach his lord further in this crisis, the man had stopped short of entering the room. “Bring it here, I tell you! Have some sense!”

  Now in the torchlight Genji saw at her pillow, before the apparition vanished, the woman in his dream. Despite surprise and terror, for he had heard of such things at least in old tales, he was frantic to know what had become of her, until he shed all dignity and lay down beside her, calling on her to wake up; but she was growing cold and was no longer breathing.

  He was speechless. There was no one to tell him what to do. He should have recalled that at such times one particularly needs a monk,47 but despite his wish to be strong he was too young, and seeing her lost completely undid him. “Oh, my love,” he cried, throwing his arms around her, “come back to life! Don't do this terrible thing to me!” But she was quite cold by now and unpleasant to touch. Ukon's earlier terror yielded to a pathetic storm of weeping.

  He gathered his courage, remembering how a demon had threatened a Minister in the Shishinden.48 “No, no,” he scolded Ukon, “she cannot really be gone! How loud a voice sounds at night! Quiet, quiet!” The sudden calamity had him completely confused.

  He called for the steward's son. “Someone here has been strangely attacked by a spirit and appears to be gravely ill. Send my man straight for Lord Koremitsu and have him come immediately. If the Adept happens to be there, tell him privately to come, too. He is to be discreet and keep this from their mother. She disapproves of such escapades.”

  He got this out well enough, but he was in torment, and the awful thought that he might cause her death49 gave the place terrors beyond words. Midnight must have passed, and the wind had picked up. The pines were roaring like a whole forest, and an eerie bird uttered raucous cries; he wondered whether it was an owl. The house was so dreary, so lonely, so silent. Oh, why, he bitterly asked himself in vain regret, why had he chosen to spend the night in this dreadful place? The frantic Ukon clung to him, shaking as though she would die. He held her and wondered miserably what was to become of her. He alone had remained lucid, and now he, too, was at his wits’ end.

  The lamp guttered, while from shadowy recesses over the screen between him and the chamber50 came the thump and scuff of things walking; he felt them coming up behind him. If only Koremitsu would come soon! But Koremitsu was hard to track down, and the eternities that passed while Genji's man hunted for him made that one night seem a thousand.

  At last a distant cockcrow set thoughts whirling through his head. What could really have led him here to risk his life in such a catastrophe? His recklessness in these affairs now seemed to have made him an example forever. Never mind trying to hush this up—the truth will always out. His Majesty would hear of it, it would be on everyone's lips, and the riffraff of the town would be hawking it everywhere. All and sundry would know him only as a fool.

  At last Koremitsu arrived. He had always been at Genji's service, midnight or dawn, yet tonight of all nights he had been delinquent and failed to answer his lord's call. Genji had him come in, despite his displeasure, and he had so much to tell that words failed him at first. Ukon gathered that Koremitsu was there, and she wept to remember all that had happened. Genji, too, broke down. While alone he had borne up as well as he could and held his love in his arms, but Koremitsu's arrival had brought him the respite to know his grief, and for some time he could only weep and weep.

  At length his tears let up. “Something very, very strange has happened here, something horrible beyond words. In a moment so dire I believe one chants the scriptures, so I have sent for your brother to do that and to offer prayers.”

  “He returned to the Mountain51 yesterday,” Koremitsu replied. “But all this is quite extraordinary. Could it be that my lady was feeling unwell?”

  “No, no, not at all.”

  Genji, weeping once more, looked so perfectly beautiful that Koremitsu, too, was overcome and dissolved in tears. After all, in this crisis their need was for someone mature, someone with rich experience of the world. They were too young really to know what to do.

  “The steward here must not find out; that would be a disaster,” Koremitsu said. “He can perhaps be trusted himself, but the retainers around him will spread the story. My lord, you must leave this house immediately.”

  “But how could anywhere else be less populated?”

  “Yes, that is true. At her house the grieving women would weep and wail, and there are so many houses around that the neighbors would all notice. Everyone would soon know. At a mountain temple, though, this sort of thing is not unknown, and in a place like that it might be possible to evade attention.”

  Koremitsu then had an idea. “I will take her to the Eastern Hills, to where a gentlewoman I once knew is living as a nun. She was my father's nurse, and she is very old. The neighborhood looks crowded, but the place is actually very quiet and sheltered.” He had Genji's carriage brought up, now that full day had returned the people on the estate to their occupations.

  Genji did not have the strength to lift her in his arms, and it was Koremitsu who wrapped her in a padded mat and laid her in the carriage. She was so slight that he was more drawn than repelled. He had not wrapped her securely, and her hair came tumbling out. The sight blinded Genji with tears and drove him to such a pitch of grief that he resolved to stay with her to the end.

  However, Koremitsu would not have it. “My lord, you must ride back to Nijō before too many people are out.” He had Ukon get in the carriage as well, then gave Genji his horse and set off on foot with his gathered trousers hitched up.52 It was a strange cortège, but Genji's desperate condition had driven from Koremitsu's mind any thought of himself.53 Genji reached home oblivious to his surroundings and barely conscious.

  “Where have you been, my lord? his women wanted to know. You do not look at all well.” But he went straight into his curtained bed, pressed his hand to his heart, and gave himself up to his anguish.

  How
can I not have gone in the carriage with her? he asked himself in agony. How will she feel if she revives? She will probably assume that I just took this chance to abscond, and she will hate me. He felt sick. His head ached, he seemed to have a fever, and all in all he felt so very ill that he thought he might soon be done for himself.

  His gentlewomen wondered why he did not rise even though the sun was high. Despite their offer of a morning meal he just lay there, suffering and sick at heart. Meanwhile, messengers—the young gentlemen from His Excellency's54— came from His Majesty, whose failure to find Genji yesterday had worried him greatly. From within his blinds Genji invited the Secretary Captain alone to “Come in, but remain standing.55

  “In the fifth month a former nurse of mine became so ill that she cut off her hair and took the Precepts,” he explained, “and that seemed to make her better, but recently her illness flared up again, and in her weakened condition she asked to see me a last time. I went to her because, after all, she has been close to me since I was a baby, and I thought she would be hurt if I did not. Unfortunately, a servant of hers, one already unwell, died before they could remove her from the house. In fear of what this would mean for me, they let the day go by before they took her away, but I found out, and so now, in a month filled with holy rites, this tiresome difficulty means that I cannot in good conscience go to the palace.56 I apologize for talking to you like this, but I have had a headache ever since daybreak. I must have a cold.”

  “I shall report this to His Majesty,” the Secretary Captain answered. “There was music last night, and he looked for you everywhere. He did not seem at all pleased.”

  He spoke now for himself. “What really is this defilement you have incurred? I am afraid I find your story difficult to believe.”

  Genji felt a twinge of alarm. “Spare His Majesty the details. Just tell him I have been affected by an unforeseen defilement. It is all very unpleasant.” His reply sounded casual, but at heart he was desperate with grief. In his distress he refused to see anyone. Summoning the Chamberlain Controller,57 he had him convey formally to His Majesty a report on his condition. To His Excellency's he wrote that, for the reason he mentioned, he could not present himself at court.

  Koremitsu came at dark. There were few people about because all Genji's visitors had left without sitting down once he warned them that he was defiled. Genji called him in. “Tell me, did you make quite sure there was no hope?” He pressed his sleeves to his eyes and wept.

  “Yes, my lord, I believe that it is all over.” Koremitsu, too, was in tears. “I could not stay long. I have arranged with a saintly old monk I know to see tomorrow to what needs to be done, since that is a suitable day.”58

  “What about her gentlewoman?”

  “I doubt she will survive this. This morning she looked ready to throw herself from a cliff in her longing to join her mistress. She wanted to let her mistress's household know, but I managed to persuade her to be patient and to think things over first.”

  Genji was overwhelmed. “I feel very ill myself, and I wonder what is to become of me.”

  “My lord, you need not brood this way. All things turn out as they must. I will not let anyone know, and I plan to look after everything myself.”

  “I suppose you are right. I have been trying to convince myself of that, too, but it is so painful to be guilty of having foolishly caused someone's death. Say nothing to Shōshō59 or to anyone else,” he went on, to make sure Koremitsu's lips were sealed. “Your mother, especially, disapproves strongly of this sort of thing, and I could never face her if she knew.” Koremitsu assured him to his immense relief that he had told even the monks of the temple a quite different story.

  “How strange! What can be going on?” the women murmured as they caught scraps of this conversation. “He says he is defiled and cannot go to the palace? But why are the two of them whispering and groaning that way?”

  “Keep up the good work, then.” Genji gave Koremitsu directions for the coming rite.

  “But, my lord,” Koremitsu answered, rising, “this is no time for ostentation.”

  Genji could not bear to see him go. “You will not like this, I know, but there will be no peace for me until I see her body again. I shall ride there myself.”

  Koremitsu thought this risky, but he replied, “So be it, my lord, if that is your wish. You must start immediately, then, and be back before the night is over.”

  Genji changed into the hunting cloak that he had worn lately on his secret outings and set forth. Oppressed as he was and burdened by sorrow, he wondered after that encounter with danger whether he really should undertake so perilous a journey, but the merciless torments of grief drove him to persevere, for if he did not see her body now, when in all eons to come would he look upon her again as she had once been?

  As always he took his man and Koremitsu with him. The way seemed endless. The moon of the seventeenth night60 shone so brightly that along the bank of the Kamo River his escort's lights 61 barely showed, and such was his despair that the view toward Toribeno troubled him not at all.62 At last he arrived.

  The neighborhood had something disturbing about it, and the nun's board-roofed house, beside the chapel where she did her devotions, was desolate. Lamplight glowed faintly through the cracks, and he heard a woman weeping within. Outside, two or three monks chatted between spells of silently calling Amida's Name.63 The early night office in the nearby temples was over, and deep quiet reigned, while toward Kiyomizu there were lights and signs of dense habitation. A venerable monk, the nun's own son, was chanting scripture in such tones as to arouse holy awe. Genji felt as though he would weep until his tears ran dry.

  He went in to find the lamp turned to the wall64 and Ukon lying behind a screen, and he understood her piercing sorrow. No fear troubled him. She was as lovely as ever; as yet she betrayed no change. He took her hand. “Oh, let me hear your voice again!” he implored, sobbing. “What timeless bond between us can have made me love you so briefly with all my heart, only to have you cruelly abandon me to grief?” The monks, who did not know who he was, wondered at his tears and wept with him.

  Genji invited Ukon to come to Nijō, but she only replied, “What home could I have, my lord, now that I have so suddenly lost the lady I have never left in all the years since she and I were children together? But I want to let the others know what has become of her. However dreadful this may be, I could not bear to have them accuse me of having failed to tell them.” She went on amid bitter tears, “I only wish I could join her smoke and rise with her into the sky!”

  “Of course you do,” he said consolingly, “but that is life, you know. There has never been a parting without pain. The time comes for all of us, sooner or later. Cheer up and trust me. Even as I speak, though,” he added disconcertingly, “I doubt that I myself have much longer to live.”

  “My lord,” Koremitsu broke in, “it will soon be dawn. You should be starting home.”

  Sick at heart, Genji looked back again and again as he rode away.

  Monks calling on Amida

  The journey was a very dewy one,65 and it seemed to him that he was wandering blindly through the dense morning fog. She had lain there looking as she did in life, under that scarlet robe of his, the one he had put over her the night before in exchange for one of her own. What had the tie between them really been? All along the way he tried to work it out. Koremitsu was beside him once more to assist him, because in his present condition his seat was none too secure, but even so he slid to the ground as they reached the Kamo embankment.

  “You may have to leave me here by the roadside,” he said from the depths of his agony. “I do not see how I am to get home.”

  The worried Koremitsu realized that if he had had his wits about him he would never have let Genji insist on taking this journey. He washed his hands in the river and called in the extremity of his trouble on the Kannon of Kiyomizu,66 but this left him no wiser about what to do. Genji took himself resolutely in hand,
called in his heart on the buddhas,67 and with whatever help Koremitsu could give him managed somehow to return to Nijō.

  His gentlewomen deplored this mysterious gadding about in the depths of the night. “This sort of thing does not look well,” they complained among themselves. “Lately he has been setting out more restlessly than ever on these secret errands, and yesterday he really looked very ill. Why do you suppose he goes roaming about like this?”

  As he lay there, he did indeed seem extremely unwell, and two or three days later he was very weak. His Majesty was deeply disturbed to learn of his condition. Soon the clamor of healers was to be heard everywhere, while rites, litanies, and purifications went forward in numbers beyond counting. The entire realm lamented that Genji, whose perfection of beauty already aroused apprehension, now seemed unlikely to live.

  Through his suffering he called Ukon to his side, granted her a nearby room, and took her into his service. Koremitsu managed to calm his fears, despite the anxiety that gripped him, and he helped Ukon to make herself useful, reflecting that she had after all no other refuge. He called her whenever he felt a little better and gave her things to do, and she was soon acquainted with all his staff. Although no beauty, in her dark mourning68 she made a perfectly presentable young woman.

  “It is strange how the little time that she and I had together seems in the end to have shortened my life as well,” he said to her privately. “If it had been given me to live long, I would have wanted to do all I could for you, so as to heal the pain of losing the mistress you trusted for all those years, but as it is, I shall soon be going to join her. How I wish it were not so!” The sight of his feeble tears made her forget her own woes and long only for him to live.

  His household was distraught, while more messengers came from the palace than raindrops from the sky. He was very sorry to know that he was causing His Majesty such concern, and he did his best to rally his own strength. His Excellency visited him daily, and thanks perhaps to his attentive ministrations, Genji's indisposition all but vanished after twenty days and more of grave illness, and he seemed bound for recovery.