The Tale of Genji

  “Write first? No, no, she could never do that. It would please me very much, though, if the tie that allows me to wait upon you as I do25 were to encourage you to grant her some consideration, even if you have not particularly done so before. In any case, the two of them once wrote to each other very nicely, and it would be a great pity if Her Highness were to prefer not to do so again.” It never occurred to Her Majesty that his own gallant designs moved him to speak as he did.

  When he withdrew from Her Majesty's presence, he thought that he might seek out the gentlewoman whose company he had enjoyed the other night, and to that end he set off westward toward that very gallery the sight of which might, he hoped, afford him another sort of consolation. The women behind the blinds of the wing drew themselves up when they saw him coming, for the dignity of his gait was truly superb. Noticing the sons of His Excellency of the Right seated in the gallery talking, he stopped and sat down before the double doors. “I come here quite often,” he said,26 “but I encounter you ladies here so seldom that I feel as though I have grown old since the last time; and so, you see, I have decided henceforth to mend my ways. No doubt those young gentlemen over there do not feel that I belong here at all.” He glanced toward his nephews.

  “If that is your wish, my lord, you must be growing young again!” Their light wit reminded him of their own mistress's extraordinary elegance. He stayed on chatting idly with them, although nothing really called him to do so, a good deal longer than he had meant.

  The First Princess was meanwhile with Her Majesty. “But the Commander went off to your wing!” Her Majesty remarked inquiringly.

  “I am sure a word or two with Kozaishō was what he had in mind,” said Dainagon, who had accompanied Her Highness.

  “When a man that utterly serious takes up with a woman anyway, she had better not be slow—he will soon see straight through her. There is no need to worry about Kozaishō, though.” It was true that she and the Commander were brother and sister, but she was still somewhat in awe of him, and she hoped that any gentle-woman he favored would mind herself properly.

  “He is particularly fond of her, my lady,” Dainagon explained; “he has probably even gone to her room. He often stays on talking with her until late at night— she obviously means more to him than most. To her His Highness is the one whose sweet words are not to be trusted, and she will not even answer him. It certainly takes a lot to please her!” Dainagon laughed, and so did Her Majesty.

  “I congratulate her for having seen what a reprobate he is. What can I possibly do to stop him, though?” Her Majesty said. “I am ashamed for him, even before all of you.”

  “I have heard something really extraordinary,” Dainagon went on. “That lady the Commander lost was actually the younger sister of His Highness's wife at Nijō—a half sister, I imagine. The former Governor of Hitachi's wife is supposed to be either her aunt or her mother, I cannot say which. And in the greatest secrecy His Highness was visiting her, too! His lordship the Commander must have heard about it, because all of a sudden he made a great show of putting her house under guard, in preparation for bringing her to the City, and the next time His Highness stole off down there, in deep disguise, he could not get in; he waited most ingloriously for ages, just as he was, still on horseback, and then he had to go home again. Perhaps the lady preferred him, though, because the next thing you know she disappeared, and people like her nurse have been crying and frantic because, they say, she must have drowned herself.”

  Her Majesty was thoroughly shocked. “Where on earth did you hear that? What an absolutely dreadful business! But surely everyone would know by now about anything that sensational! The Commander has never mentioned it, although he did talk ever so sadly about how nothing lasts and about how no one in the family of that Prince at Uji ever lives long.”

  “No, no, my lady, I quite agree that servants are not to be believed, but a page girl who was in service down there just lately joined Kozaishō's own household, and she told the whole story as though there could be no possible doubt about it. She says everyone down there was desperate to hush it up because of the awful way the lady died and the unpleasant scandal that would follow if it were known. They may not even have told the Commander himself everything.”

  “Tell that girl she is not to say one more word about it. This sort of thing could well be disastrous for His Highness. People might easily lose all respect for him.” Her Majesty was profoundly shaken.

  Some time later a letter from the First Princess arrived for the Second. The sight of her simply delightful handwriting pleased the Commander very much indeed. I wish I had seen this long ago! he thought. Many amusing pictures came from Her Majesty, too. The Commander added some even nicer ones and sent them on to Her Highness the First Princess. He must have seen himself particularly in a lovely one of Tōgimi, the Serikawa Commander's son, setting out all forlorn into the autumn twilight for love of his First Princess.27 The poor gentleman, if only his had been as kind!

  “How the autumn wind, adorning with drops of dew the bending rushes,

  brings at evening above all a chill to the longing heart!”

  He wanted to write it on the picture itself, but such is life that even so slight a hint could have grave consequences, and he knew that he could give her none at all. After such a succession of sorrows he thought, Ah, if only the lady I lost long ago had lived, I should never, never have loved anyone else! I could not have accepted His Majesty's daughter even if he had bestowed her on me, and he would not have wished to do so in any case if he had known that I had so great a love. How cruel she was, though, that Maiden of the Bridge, and how sorely she tried my heart! His anguished reflections swept him on to consider the sister His Highness had married, and such impossibly conflicting bitterness and longing ran through him that he condemned himself for foolishly nursing these regrets. And there remained, even after that, the one who had died that terrible death—a child at heart, he felt, and guilty of willful folly, and yet the thought of how she must have suffered from her fears and of how sharply his changed manner must have pricked her conscience confirmed nonetheless how sweet she had been and how rightly he had wanted her, if not truly as a wife, then at least as an always charming companion. No, he assured himself, I shall give no more thought to His Highness or hold what she did against her, because the cause of it all was my own naive failure. Reflections like these absorbed him many and many a time.

  When even a man as calm, collected, and dignified as the Commander may suffer so from these miseries, His Highness understandably remained wholly inconsolable, for he had no one whose presence brought the thought of her nearer or to whom he could confide the sorrow of his unslaked longing. Her Highness his wife might well have given him a few words of sympathy, but she had never known her half sister very well, nor after their sudden and brief acquaintance could she really mourn her very deeply. Besides, he shrank from requiring her to commiserate with him as much as he wished someone would, and he therefore sent to Uji for Jijū.

  The women of the household there had all gone their separate ways, leaving behind the nurse, Ukon, and Jijū, who were reluctant to forget their mistress's favor. Jijū had not been as close to her mistress as the others, but after the long time they had spent together, she had come to take occasional comfort from the hope that in the river's frightful roar one still caught the purling of happier shoals ahead.28 Just recently, however, fear and hatred of the sound had driven her to a poor little house in the City. His Highness found her there and invited her into his service, but it seemed to her despite her gratitude that under the circumstances the others might not speak kindly of her if she did, and she therefore declined, although she hinted at the same time that she would gladly serve Her Majesty. “That is an excellent idea,” His Highness replied. “You can still be mine there, and no one will know.” Jijū, to whom the prospect offered relief from anxiety and loneliness, found a suitable avenue of approach to the household.29 No one already there complained, for she was thoroughly presentable even if she had no rank. His lordship the Commander visited often, but it always made her unhappy to see him. Everyone said that Her Majesty had gathered together only the daughters of the very greatest houses, but when she began to look around her at last, she saw no one there like the mistress she had lost.

  A daughter of His Highness of Ceremonial, who had passed away that spring, inspired no great affection in her stepmother, the gentleman's wife, and she was moreover being sought by this lady's brother, a most unpromising Chief Equerry. The lady, who was quite indifferent to her plight, made up her mind that he should have her. “What a shame to let her go to waste like that!” Her Majesty said when she heard about it. “Her father was so fond of her!”

  The young lady herself remained despondent about this outcome until her brother, an Adviser, expressed his gratitude for Her Majesty's kind concern. It had therefore recently come to pass that she was taken into Her Majesty's service. Her birth made her the perfect companion for Her Highness the First Princess, and she enjoyed special consideration. Still, she was nonetheless a gentlewoman, and so she was known as Miya no Kimi.30 It was so touching to see her wearing only a train!31

  Now she (so it occurred to His Highness of War) may well deserve to be likened to my poor darling! After all, the Princes their fathers were brothers! Being the sort of man he was, he still had that peculiar way of thirsting for the new even as he mourned the old, and he could not wait to meet her.

  The Commander found her fate difficult to accept. To the very end His Highness her father considered offering her to the Heir Apparent, he reflected, and he even betrayed an interest in me! The spectacle of such dishonor makes it all too plain that anyone who casts herself into the waters escapes many a misery by doing so. He sympathized more with her than with anyone else.

  Her Majesty's residence at Rokujō was larger and more handsome than at the palace, and all her gentlewomen, even those not always present in waiting on her, came from far away to enjoy the comfort there, until every wing, gallery, or bridgeway was full. His Excellency of the Right looked after the estate as magnificently as his father had done. Indeed, his family was so large and prosperous that Rokujō in the present actually surpassed in brilliance what it had been then. His Highness, who for months could have been up to who knows what amorous mischief if he had truly been himself, was extraordinarily subdued and seemed in fact to have matured a little. However, Miya no Kimi now brought out his true nature once more, and he went about scheming to win her.

  Her Majesty was planning to return to the palace now that the weather was cooler, but her younger gentlewomen objected. “It would be such a shame not to see the best of autumn here,” they said, “and the beautiful leaves.” All of them had gathered around her to enjoy the lake and delight in the moon, and they often made music so particularly fresh and stylish that His Highness took great pleasure in joining them. He was like the first flower of the season, even to eyes that saw him day and night. They all found the Commander's presence somewhat daunting, though, because he did not join so readily in their amusements. Once when they were both there with Her Majesty, Jijū peeped out at them from behind a curtain, meanwhile reflecting, If only my dear mistress had taken one of them, since either promised her a splendid future, and if only she were still alive! What a mad, ghastly, and hateful thing she chose to do instead! But Jijū kept the sharp pain of it to herself, and she never said a word to anyone there to suggest that she knew anything about Uji. Meanwhile His Highness was telling Her Majesty at length about things at the palace, and the Commander left. Jijū did not want him to see her, and she hid. She was afraid that he might think her heartless for leaving before the mourning was over.

  The Commander went to where several women were chatting in low voices in a doorway along the bridgeway to the east. “You women should feel comfortable

  Woman without her Chinese jacket

  with me,” he said. “You could not get on better even with another woman! Besides, I have some worthwhile things to teach you. I am glad to say that you will understand that in time.”

  The women were wondering what to reply when an older and more experienced one called Ben answered, “My lord, is it not the woman past desiring your intimacy who can actually be comfortable with you? That is how things really are. I did not particularly aspire to talk to you so intimately, but, shameless as I am by now, I felt that it was at least my duty to do so.”

  “Then I am very sorry that you feel you need not be shy with me!” he answered. She had slipped off her Chinese jacket and swept it aside, apparently to engage in writing practice, and he gathered, too, that she was enjoying the few autumn flowers that she had picked and placed in the lid of her writing box. Many of the women had disappeared behind curtains, while others had simply turned away so that they could not be recognized from the open door. He surveyed the backs of their heads with amusement. Then he drew the inkstone to him and wrote,

  “Ah, maidenflowers, here I am in a meadow where so many bloom,

  and still not a drop of dew gleams on me to harm my name!32

  Yet you will not smile on me!” He showed the poem to one who sat with her back to him by the sliding panel. Without a quiver she calmly wrote straight back,

  “They of all blossoms sport a compromising name, yet maidenflowers

  never bend to the fancy of just any passing dew.”

  This little sample of her writing had such impeccable distinction that he wondered who she could be. She must have been on her way to Her Majesty when she found her path obstructed by his presence.

  “You talk like an old man, I am afraid,” Ben said.

  “Rest on your journey, try yourself again, and see whether maidenflowers

  in all their blooming beauty do or do not tempt your heart.

  Then I, too, will make up my mind.”

  “If you will have me, then I will lie here a night, though this heart of mine

  never lets itself be drawn to any common flower,”

  he answered.

  “Why insult me so? I was only joking about your ‘meadow’ in a general way!”

  The least word from him made the women long to hear more. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “Then I shall clear out. I am sure that at any moment you will have reason to feel shy again!”33 He arose and went away. Some of the others hoped unkindly enough that he did not take them all to be as blunt as Ben.

  He leaned against the railing to the east, watching the sun go down and looking out over the garden with all its flowers. “The most poignant of all is the autumn sky,”34 he murmured very low to himself, feeling unaccountably sad. A familiar rustle of silks signaled that the wearer was passing through the sliding panel from the near side of the chamber into the far one.

  Then His Highness came up to him. “Who went in there just now?” he asked.

  “That was Chūjō, who serves Her Highness the First Princess,” he heard a gentlewoman reply.

  What a thing to do! To think she identified Chūjō, just like that, to a man suddenly keen to know who she was! He felt sorry for Chūjō and regretted that the women here should so willingly let that man have his way. Apparently they all let him get away with his forward, willful conduct! Alas, I have reason only to be angry with them both, brother and sister alike.35 Ah, how gladly I would seduce one of the women here away from him, some beauty he is after with all his usual passion, and make him as miserable as he made me! Surely anyone worth anything should prefer me to him! But no, women's hearts seem not to work that way. His wife at Nijō does not condone his behavior, and she worries about what people will think of her growing and unfortunate preference for me, but I am touched and grateful that she, at least, has not yet rejected me. Is there a single woman here with her good taste? I do not know, since I have never really tried to find out. I would not at all mind a little fling, considering how poorly I am sleeping lately! But no, he still did not feel like it.

  What had happened on that west bridgeway drew him, curiously enough, to seek out the place again. The gentlewomen were there chatting comfortably with one another on the pretext of admiring the moon, since their mistress the First Princess was with her mother for the night. He heard with pleasure casual notes on a sō no koto. “What do you mean by leading people on this way with your music?”36 he asked, coming up to them unexpectedly, but despite their surprise they did not lower the blinds, which were raised a little.

  One sat up. “Is there an elder brother here to look like me?” she said—she must have been the one they were calling Chūjō.

  “No, but I am the maternal uncle!” he bantered. “I suppose Her Highness is with Her Majesty as usual. What has she been doing with herself during all this time at home?” It was a question he could have refrained from asking.

  “Why, nothing in particular, here or at the palace. This is just the way she lives, as far as I know.”

  What elegance her rank allows her! he reflected with an involuntary sigh that he instantly regretted enough to seek to divert attention from it, lest anyone notice it and wonder, by toying with a wagon that protruded toward him from beneath the blinds. It was tuned to the richi mode, one remarkably well suited to the season, and his playing sounded quite nice. Those among the listeners who fancied music were acutely disappointed when he left the piece unfinished.

  Is my own mother less than she? Her Highness is an Empress's daughter—that is the only difference between them.37 Her Highness is the favorite of His Majesty, her father, but my mother was her father's favorite, too! How strange it is that one should have greater distinction than the other! Akashi must be a remarkable place! Reflections like these led him to ponder his own destiny. I myself have been extremely fortunate, he thought, but how much more so if I had been given her, too! On that score, however, he was asking too much.