The Tale of Genji, Page 22

  It was worrying that the twelfth month had passed without any sign of the anticipated event.19 Her Highness's women all looked forward to it this month, at least, and His Majesty pursued his preparations on the same assumption. However, the month went by uneventfully. The rumor went round that a spirit was to blame, and meanwhile Her Highness despaired, because she knew that this might ruin her forever.20 She also felt very unwell. Genji, who had less and less doubt what the matter was, had rites done in several temples21 without saying why Life being uncertain at best, he was tormented by the prospect that their love might end in tragedy, until a little past the tenth of the second month she gave birth to a boy, and for His Majesty as well as for her own women anxiety gave way to happiness. She personally dreaded the life that lay before her, but reports that the Kokiden Consort was muttering imprecations against her reminded her that news of her death might only provoke laughter, and this gave her the strength gradually to recover. His Majesty was impatient to see the child.

  Peering out through standing curtains

  Genji, who had his own private reasons for apprehension, called on the new mother at a moment when no other visitor claimed her. “His Majesty is very keen to see him,” he said, “and I thought I might do so and report”; but she understandably pleaded that it would be awkward just now and would not allow it. Actually, the boy was astonishingly, frighteningly like Genji himself. The resemblance was impossible to miss. Her Highness, conscience-stricken, wondered how anyone could fail after a single look at him to perceive and to censure a misdeed that she herself found repellent. What would they call her when the truth dawned on a world eager to spy out the slightest flaw? Pondering these things led her to despair.

  When Genji managed to talk to Ōmyōbu, he filled her ears with passionate entreaties,22 but without any prospect of success. He pleaded so desperately to see the little boy that Ōmyōbu protested, “Why must you insist against all reason, my lord? You will naturally do so in due course”; but her own manner betrayed equal distress.

  On so grave a matter Genji could hardly speak plainly. “Will I never be allowed to talk to her in person?” He wept piteously.

  “What can be the tie that bound us two together a long time ago,

  that in this life she and I should be kept so far apart?

  I just do not understand.”

  Knowing her mistress's suffering as she did, Ōmyōbu could not dismiss him without a reply.

  “Heartsick thoughts for her when beside him and, for you, sorrow not to be;

  ah, this, then, is what they mean by the darkness of the heart!”23

  she whispered. “It is such a shame that neither of you should ever be happy!”

  Thus barred from communication, Genji went away again, but Her Highness, who feared the perils of gossip and warned against them, retreated from her once affectionate familiarity with Ōmyōbu. She continued to treat her equably, so as not to arouse comment, but to Ōmyōbu's sorrow and surprise she must sometimes have betrayed her displeasure.

  In the fourth month the young Prince went to the palace. He had developed faster than most children and by now could sit up on his own. His Majesty completely missed the extraordinary, indeed unmistakable likeness between him and his father and assumed instead that it was only natural for supremely beautiful people to resemble one another. He was completely devoted to the child. He had felt the same way about Genji, but in the end, when it became clear that those around him would not tolerate such a move, he had refrained from appointing Genji Heir Apparent, and this had been an enduring disappointment, for it pained him to see all the beauty and distinction of the maturing Genji wasted on a commoner. His new son, on the other hand, had a mother of the highest rank and shone with a light equal to Genji's, and so he loved him as a flawless gem—which for Her Highness only made one more reason for continual sorrow and anguish.

  When Genji visited Her Highness's residence as usual, to join in music making, His Majesty appeared with the child in his arms. “I have many children,” he said, “but you are the only one I have seen day and night since you were this small. I expect it is the way he reminds me of those days that makes him look so very like you. Perhaps all babies are like that.” He simply doted on his little son.

  Genji felt himself go pale. Terror, humility, joy, and pity coursed through him until he nearly wept. So eerily adorable was the burbling, smiling child that there came to Genji, despite himself, the immodest thought that if this was what he looked like, he must indeed be a treasure. Her Highness was perspiring in torment, and Genji's own pleasure in the boy turned to such anguish that he withdrew.

  At home again he lay down, and after allowing the worst of his agitation to pass, he decided to go on to His Excellency's. Gillyflowers stood out brightly there in the garden's green expanse. He had one picked and sent it to Ōmyōbu with what must have been a long letter, in which he said,

  “I see him in this, and yet even so at heart I am not consoled;

  on the lovely little pink there settles only heavier dew.24

  I had so wished the flower to bloom, but everything in this world is hopeless.”25 It must have come at just the right time, because when Ōmyōbu showed it to her mistress, urging her to give him back “just a word or two, my lady, here on the petals,”26 Her Highness herself was very deeply moved. In faint ink, as though her writing had given out in midline, she simply wrote,

  “Oh, I know full well he only calls forth further dews that moisten my sleeves,

  yet I have no heart to scorn so lovely a little pink.”

  Ōmyōbu happily conveyed this to Genji, who was lying gazing disconsolately into space, convinced that as always his letter would go unanswered. His heart pounded, and a rush of joy started tears from his eyes.

  When it gave him no relief to lie there in gloom, he went for comfort as so often to the west wing. He peeped in with a robe thrown casually over his shoulders, his sidelocks rumpled and wispy, and blowing a sweet air on his flute. There was his young lady, leaning on an armrest, as sweet and pretty as could be and, he felt, moist with the same dew as that other flower.27 Irresistible or not, she still had a mind to make him smart for not having come straight to see her when he got home, and so for once she was pouting.

  Sō no koto

  “Come here!” He sat down near the veranda.

  She hummed “when the tide is high” and put her sleeve bewitchingly to her mouth.28

  “Dear me, when did you start quoting poems like that? It is not good for people to see each other all the time.”29

  He had a koto brought in for her to play. “The sō no koto is awkward because the highest treble string breaks so easily,” he remarked, tuning the instrument down to the hyōjō mode. She could not maintain her ill humor once he had tested the tuning with a few notes and pushed the instrument from him, and she played very nicely indeed. She was still quite small, and the way she had to lean over to put in a vibrato30 was extremely engaging.

  Entranced, he taught her more music by playing his flute. She was very quick and knew the most difficult pieces after a single hearing. He was satisfied that the liveliness of her intelligence met all his hopes. When he amused himself by giving a very nice performance of “Hosoroguseri,” despite the piece's peculiar name, she accompanied him in a manner still youthful but very pretty and true to the rhythm.

  The lamps were lit, and the two had started to look at pictures when Genji's men, who had been told he would be going out, began clearing their throats to remind him, and someone observed that it looked like rain. Then as always she became sad and dejected. She stopped looking at pictures and only lay facedown, which to Genji was so enchanting that he stroked the rich cascade of her hair and said, “Do you miss me when I am gone?”

  She nodded.

  “I miss you, too. I hate to spend a whole day without seeing you. As long as you are still a child, though, I must trust in your patience and try not to offend other people who are easily hurt. It is all very awkw
ard, you see, and that is why for the time being I keep going off on these visits. Once you are grown, I will never go anywhere. The reason why I do not want them angry with me is that I hope to live a long and happy life with you!”

  His earnest reassurances only embarrassed her, and instead of answering, she just put her head in his lap and went to sleep. His heart melted, and he announced that he would not go out after all. The women rose and brought him his evening meal in place.

  “I am not going out anymore,” he said after he roused her. She felt better then and sat up, and they ate together.

  “Then sleep here,” she said, hardly touching her food, since she still suspected that he might go away. He did not see how he could ever leave such a companion, even on the last and most solemn journey of all.

  He ended up being detained this way time after time, until word of it reached His Excellency's. “Who is she?” the gentlewomen asked each other.

  “How can he treat my lady this way?”

  “So far no one has suggested who she could be.”

  “No one at all nice or well brought up would keep the pleasure of his company all to herself this way.”

  “She must be someone he happened to meet at the palace, and now he is so keen on her, he is keeping her out of sight for fear of criticism.”

  “They say she is childish and immature.”

  His Majesty, too, had heard there was such a woman. “It has pained me very much to learn that His Excellency is so displeased,” he said to Genji, “and I entirely sympathize, because he is the one who did everything to turn the mere boy you once were into the man you are now, and I hardly think that you are too young to appreciate his kindness. Why, then, are you treating him so thoughtlessly?”

  Genji assumed an attitude of contrite deference and did not reply.

  I suppose he does not like her,31 His Majesty reflected commiseratingly.

  “Still,” as he remarked later, “he shows no sign of tossing caution to the winds and losing his head over any gentlewoman of mine, or indeed over anyone else. What nooks and crannies can he have been poking about in, to have earned himself this degree of resentment?”

  Despite the passing years His Majesty himself had not managed so far to give up his interest in the same sort of thing, and he had a particular taste for pretty and clever waiting women,32 hence the presence of many on his staff. Genji's most casual approach to any of them was seldom rebuffed, but perhaps he found them simply too easy, because he seemed strangely uninterested, and even when now and then one did try her wiles on him, he would answer her tactfully but never really misbehave, with the result that some thought him a perfect bore.

  There was an aging Dame of Staff, a lady of impeccable birth, witty, distinguished, and well respected by all, who nevertheless was intensely coquettish; and Genji was curious to know why, when a woman might of course be light in her ways, she should be so thoroughly dissolute even in her declining years. On jokingly testing the waters he was shocked to find that she did not think his proposition at all incongruous, but the adventure still amused him enough to pursue it, although to her great chagrin he kept his distance for fear of starting gossip about his liaison with an old woman.

  Once, when she had finished combing His Majesty's hair, he called for a maid of the wardrobe and went out, leaving her and Genji alone in the room. She was more prettily got up than usual, with a graceful bearing—and lovely hair, and her costume was assertively brilliant—all of which to Genji's distaste betrayed her refusal to show her age; but he could not resist tugging at the end of her train to see how she would respond. From behind a heavily decorated fan she shot back a languid glance from dark-rimmed, sunken eyes set amid nests of wrinkles.

  Fan

  No one her age should carry that fan, he thought. Offering his in exchange,33 he took the fan and examined it. On paper red enough to set his face aglow he saw painted in gold a picture of tall trees. On one side, in a style now passé but not undistinguished, were casually written the words “Old is the grass beneath the trees.”34

  This is all very well, but what a horrid idea! “What we have here, I see, is ‘the wood in summer,’”35 he remarked with a smile. He felt strange enough just talking to her to fear being seen, but no such worry crossed her mind.

  “Whenever you come, I shall cut for your fine steed a feast of fresh grass,

  be it only lower leaves, now the best season is past,”

  she said with shameless archness.

  He answered,

  “If I made my way through the brush I might be seen, for it seems to me

  many steeds must like it there, underneath the forest trees.

  It is a bit risky.” He rose to go.

  She caught his sleeve and cried out through dramatic tears, “Never in my life have I been made to feel so wretched! Oh, the shame of it, after all these years!”

  “I shall be in touch later. There are other things, you see…” He broke free and continued on, but she clung to him, angrily bewailing the treachery of time.36

  Meanwhile His Majesty had finished changing and was now watching this scene through the doorway. What a very odd pair! he thought, greatly amused, and he remarked with a chuckle, “I hear constant complaints about your lack of interest in women, but you did not let this one escape you, did you!” She made no real effort to defend herself, despite a degree of embarrassment, perhaps because she was one of those who are glad enough to have a liaison known as long as the lover is worth it.

  Well, the Secretary Captain said to himself when he heard how all were agog over this incident, I pride myself on leaving no cranny unexplored, but I certainly had never thought of her! He then struck up an affair, wishing to taste her undying randiness himself. He was a promising catch who might (she thought) make up for Genji's unkindness, but apparently it was only Genji she wanted—an extravagant choice! The Secretary Captain kept his doings so quiet that Genji never found out about them.

  The Dame of Staff would start straight in on her grievance whenever she came across Genji, and her age so aroused his pity that he wished to console her, but the idea was too depressing in practice, and for a long time he did nothing. Then once, when he was roaming around the Unmeiden under cover of dusk, after a cooling shower of rain, there she was, playing her biwa very nicely. No one was better at it than she, for she joined the men in concerts before His Majesty, and her wounded feelings now made her music especially poignant. “Shall I cast my lot with the melon grower?” she was singing in a voice of great quality. Genji was not entirely pleased.37 He wondered as he listened whether his feelings might resemble that other's, long ago at Gakushū.38 Then she stopped, apparently in the grip of emotion.

  He approached her, softly singing “The Eastern Cottage,” and in song she supplied him the line “Open the door and come in.”39 He thought her a most extraordinary woman. Next came, with a sigh,

  “Nobody is there, surely, standing all wet through—ah, how cruelly

  my humble eastern cottage suffers in the soaking rain!”

  He objected to taking all the blame for her troubles and wondered what he had done to deserve this.

  “Someone else's wife is more trouble than she's worth; what with this and that,

  in her poor eastern cottage I give up making her mine.”

  He meant to pass on by, but it felt so unkind to do so that he changed his mind and humored her by engaging in a bantering exchange from which he did derive a certain enjoyment.

  Considering that Genji seemed to be calling secretly on all sorts of women, despite his innocent airs, the Secretary Captain resented his show of sober seriousness and his constant sermons, and he was forever plotting to catch him in the act. Now he was delighted to have found his chance. He bided his time in the hope of frightening and upsetting Genji just enough to teach him a lesson.

  A chilly wind was blowing rather late one night when the Secretary Captain gathered that the two must have dropped off to sleep, and he stole into th
e room. Genji heard him, since he had not meant to sleep soundly, but he did not recognize him, and he assumed that the intruder was a certain Director of Upkeep who apparently had never been able to forget her.

  “Well, I do not like this at all. I am leaving,” he declared, humiliated to be found by a man of mature years in so incongruously compromising a situation. “You undoubtedly knew quite well that this gentleman was coming,40 and I will not put up with being made out to be a fool.” With this he gathered up his dress cloak and retired behind a screen.

  Smothering his mirth, the Secretary Captain strode up to the screen that Genji had just opened and with a great clatter folded it up again, producing a spectacularly menacing din. Meanwhile the lady, who played the proud beauty despite her age and who knew something of crises like this one, having been through several before, was not too panic-stricken to restrain the intruder firmly, trembling with apprehension over what he might do to Genji. Genji would gladly have escaped unrecognized, but a vision of himself from the rear in full flight, clothing flapping around him and headdress askew, gave him pause, for he saw how silly he would look.

  Screen

  To keep Genji from recognizing him, the Captain next put on a dumb show of maddened rage and drew his sword, at which the lady cried out, “Oh, no, my darling, no!” and wrung her hands entreatingly before him. It was all he could do not to burst out laughing. Her veneer of comely youthfulness was all very well, but the spectacle of a distraught woman of fifty-seven or -eight, caught in the throes of terror between two superb youths of twenty, was absolutely absurd.

  The Secretary Captain's ostentatious disguise and the very fierceness of his pantomime now betrayed him to Genji, who felt an utter idiot when he understood that the entire performance had been for his own benefit. Highly amused, now that he knew his opponent, he seized the Captain's sword arm and gave it a hard pinch. The Captain got angry, but he nevertheless broke down and laughed.