The Tale of Genji, Page 29

  In the second month the Mistress of the Wardrobe was named Mistress of Staff,29 her predecessor having been moved by mourning for His Late Eminence to become a nun. Distinguished of manner and imposing in rank, she among all His Majesty's ladies enjoyed his greatest regard. The Empress Mother, who spent more and more time at home, adopted the Umetsubo as her palace residence, while the new Mistress of Staff occupied the Kokiden. She who had once languished in the gloom of the Tōkaden30 now lived gaily amid countless gentlewomen, and yet in her heart she grieved, for she could not forget what had begun so unexpectedly. Her secret correspondence with Genji must have continued. He dreaded the consequences if their affair should become known, but that familiar quirk of his probably made him more eager than ever. The Empress Mother, with her sharp temper, had restrained herself while His Late Eminence lived, but now she seemed bent on revenge for every grudge she nursed against him. He met nothing but disappointment, and although this was no surprise, being so strangely at odds with the world robbed him of any wish to appear among people.

  His Excellency of the Left was similarly disheartened and made no effort to appear at the palace. The Empress Mother resented it that he had withheld his late daughter from the then–Heir Apparent and reserved her for Genji instead, and she had no use for him. His relations with His Excellency of the Right, too, had always been prickly, and whereas fortune had smiled on him in His Late Eminence's reign, times had changed, and it was he of the Right who now lorded it as he pleased. No wonder Genji's former father-in-law felt bitter.

  Genji called upon him as always. He was if anything more attentive to the women who had once served him there, and he showed great devotion to his little son; and all this so pleased and surprised the old gentleman that he still did for Genji whatever lay in his power. Once Genji's exalted standing had put far too many demands on his time, but now he lost touch with several ladies he had been visiting, and he also gave up as unbecoming the more lighthearted of his secret adventures, so that for once his leisured life suited him perfectly.

  Five Altar Rite

  All the world admired the good fortune enjoyed by the lady in Genji's west wing. Privately, Shōnagon attributed it entirely to the prayers of her mistress, the late nun. His Highness corresponded with his daughter as he pleased, no doubt to her stepmother's chagrin, since the daughters this lady had thought destined to rise high had failed instead and were only a disappointment. The happy fate of Genji's darling was just like a fiction in a tale.

  Mourning had obliged the High Priestess of the Kamo Shrine to resign, and she was succeeded by the lady of the bluebells. Few precedents authorized an imperial granddaughter to serve as Kamo Priestess, but presumably there was no qualified daughter. Genji had not given her up, despite the passage of time, and he was sorry to see her life take so unusual a course. He was presumably still writing to her, his letters reaching her as before through Chūjō. A change of fortune had failed to impress him, but he now wavered painfully between two capricious affairs that gave him little consolation.

  His Majesty thought well of Genji, as his father on his deathbed had enjoined him to do, but his youth made him still too weak and pliable successfully to oppose anything undertaken by the Empress Mother or by His Excellency his grandfather, and the ways of the court therefore seemed greatly to displease him.

  Life brought Genji trouble upon trouble, but thanks to his secret understanding with the Mistress of Staff, the two were not wholly parted, despite the risk. Genji saw His Majesty enter seclusion at the start of a Five Altar Rite and immediately met her in what, as always, seemed a dream. Chūnagon managed to lead them undetected into the hall they remembered so well. There were many people about at the time, and they were frightened to be so near the veranda. She cannot have been indifferent to him, for he never wearied even those who saw him day in and day out. She herself was in full womanly bloom, and despite perhaps a certain want of gravity, the delightful youth and grace of her looks made her thoroughly desirable.

  It must have been nearly dawn when a man cleared his throat directly beside them and cried, “Present at your service, my lord!” Genji gathered that another Palace Guards officer was concealed nearby and that some wag among his colleagues had sent the fellow to report.31 He was amused but also upset. They heard the fellow hunting his superior high and low and calling, “Hour of the Tiger, first quarter!”32

  “My own heart alone explains the many reasons why I wet my sleeves,

  when cockcrow warns me of dawn and of your drifting away,”33

  she said, lovely in her frail distress.

  Genji replied,

  “Do you mean to say I must live my life this way amid endless sighs?

  There will never come a dawn when you do not have my heart.”

  He hastened away. With everything so beautifully misty under a dawn moon, the very thoroughness of his disguise made him incomparable as he passed—alas, without realizing it—the Fujiwara Lieutenant, the Shōkyōden Consort's elder brother,34 who had just emerged from the Fujitsubo and was standing by a shutter, a little out of the moonlight. Genji could easily have become a figure of fun.

  This sort of thing sometimes led him to admire the one who kept herself at such a distance from him, but as far as his own wishes went, he often was more inclined to hold her discretion against her. She herself now felt too constrained and out of place to go to the palace, and she was upset that she could no longer see the Heir Apparent. Lacking anyone else to trust, she looked only to Genji in all things, and his failure to give up his unfortunate obsession often reduced her to despair. Meanwhile the mere idea that His Late Eminence had noticed nothing terrified her, and in fear that some hint of the truth might spread at any moment, with grave consequences for the Heir Apparent (since she hardly cared what it might mean for herself), she commissioned prayers and used every device to stay out of Genji's way, in the hope that he would give up. In time, though, to her horror, he found his way to her after all, after plotting so deep a stratagem that nobody knew. It was like a dream.

  He talked for so long that no one could ever repeat all he said, but she steadfastly withheld any response until sharp chest pains alarmed Ōmyōbu and Ben, her intimate gentlewomen, into giving her urgent care. Bitterness and despair so blinded him to all thought of past or future that he lost his head and failed to leave even when dawn was upon him.

  Screen

  In the confusion while anxious gentlewomen clustered around their stricken mistress, a distraught Genji found himself thrust hastily into the retreat.35 Frantic women rushed to get his clothes out of sight. Her Majesty was faint with anguish and in fact quite ill. His Highness of War and her Commissioner of the Household arrived, and Genji was aghast to hear them calling loudly for a priest. Not until the day was almost over did she revive. She had no idea that Genji was still shut up nearby, and her women were too afraid of upsetting her again to tell her.

  She had moved to her day sitting room. His Highness had gone, believing her now to be well, and she was nearly alone. Most of her women were discreetly out of sight behind curtains and screens, for she usually kept only a few beside her.

  “How can we get his lordship away from here?” Ōmyōbu and Ben whispered to each other. “It would be too awful if my lady were to feel faint again tonight.”

  Meanwhile, Genji silently opened the door of the retreat, which was already slightly ajar, and came in upon Her Majesty through the gap between two screens. The joy of so rare a sight started tears from his eyes.36 She was gazing outside, thinking how unwell she still felt and how little time she might yet have to live, offering him as she did so a profile of inexpressible beauty. Fruit lay beside her in case she should wish to eat. The way it was arranged in a box lid37 made it look tempting enough, but she had never even glanced at it. Absorbed as she was in anxiety over the course her life was taking, she struck him as touchingly frail. Her hairline, the shape of her head, the sweep of her hair—all in their lovely way recalled precisely the l
ady in his own west wing.

  After so many years he had begun to forget how extraordinarily the two resembled each other, and this fresh reminder helped to console him. In noble dignity, too, they were indistinguishable, but perhaps because he had loved the one before him so deeply and so long, he saw her now matured to the greater perfection, and the conviction that she really was peerless troubled him until he stole in beneath her curtains and rustled his robe. It was he, his fragrance told her so. In fright and surprise she sank facedown to the floor. “At least look at me, won't you?” he cried, thwarted and angry, and drew her to him. She slipped off her dress robe to escape, only to discover with horror that he had accidentally caught her hair as well, and with a sinking heart she knew the force of her fate.

  The self-control that Genji had so fought to maintain now broke down. Lost to reason, he poured forth a thousand miseries and complaints, in a flood of tears, but she was repelled and did not even deign to reply. “I am not feeling at all well, and I prefer to answer you at another time,” she said, but he pressed on with his endless recital of woe. Some of his words undoubtedly struck home. Not that all this had not happened before, but she so shrank from having it repeated that despite her tender feelings for him she managed to talk him past anything worse, until dawn broke at last.

  Genji was ashamed to have willfully disobeyed her and sufficiently daunted by her dignity to seek to placate her. “I would do nothing I might regret,” he pleaded, “if only I could sometimes tell you like this all I suffer.” Love like theirs must be fraught with pain, and their feelings were beyond any comparison.

  Both gentlewomen desperately urged him to go now that it was light. In dismay at seeing her half expiring, he said, “I would gladly die of shame to have you hear I am still alive, if it were not that this sin of mine will last beyond this life.” He spoke from a disturbing reverie.

  “If there is no end, today and forevermore, to what severs us,

  I wonder how many lives I shall spend in misery,”

  he went on, “and my clinging will shackle you as well.”

  She answered with a sigh,

  “Leave me, if you will, burdened with your bitterness through all lives to come,

  but know your real enemy is your heart, and yours alone.”

  The simplicity of her words was beyond all praise, but respect for her feelings and fear for his own situation now led him, dazed, to take his leave.

  How could he have the face ever to appear before her again? To let her know how sorry he was, he did not even send her a letter. Calling on neither His Majesty nor the Heir Apparent, he shut himself up at home, where the thought of her cruelty kept him prisoner to the sad torments of longing until he fell ill, for the spirit was indeed gone from his body. He asked himself in misery why in life woe should only pile upon woe, and he resolved to accept these trials no more—only to remember how dear his own young lady was, how sweetly she depended upon him, and how impossible she would be for him to leave.

  The aftermath still left Her Majesty unwell. She gathered from the grieving Ōmyōbu that Genji had shut himself up at home and had sent no note. For the Heir Apparent's sake she feared that he might now have turned alarmingly against her, and that if he had had enough of worldly life, he might even act to renounce it. She at last decided that unless this sort of thing ceased, her name would soon be bandied about to her dishonor in a world that in any case brought her nothing but misery, and she preferred to give up a title that the Empress Mother (so she was told) felt should never have been hers in the first place. The memory of His Late Eminence's exceptional regard brought home to her how profoundly all things had changed. She might be spared the fate of Lady Seki,38 but she was nonetheless sure to suffer widespread ridicule.

  These bitter musings on the hatefulness of worldly life decided her to reject it, but it so pained her to go through this change without seeing the Heir Apparent that she first went quietly to the palace. Genji always waited thoughtfully on her on the least occasion, but this time he pleaded indisposition to absent himself from her cortège. He saw to her needs as correctly as ever,39 but those who understood felt very sorry for him.

  The Heir Apparent had grown into a beautiful little boy, and the joy of seeing his mother again made him very affectionate, but although love for him shook her resolve, she perceived well enough that shifting fortunes had taken their toll and that little now remained of the court she had once known. The constant threat of displeasing the Empress Mother made it perilous even to visit the palace this way, and there were indeed moments sufficiently awkward that fear for her son came to trouble her deeply.40

  “How would you feel, Your Highness, if you did not see me for a long time, and then afterward I looked different and not very nice?”41

  He studied her face. “Like Shikibu?42 But how could you look like that?” he answered, smiling.

  Alas, he was too young to understand. “Shikibu is ugly because she is old.” She was weeping. “No, no, the thing is that I am going to cut my hair even shorter than hers and wear a gray robe like the priests on night watch,43 and I shall not be able to see you nearly as often as I do now.”

  “But I shall miss you if you are gone that long!” His tears caused him to turn bashfully away from her with a sweep of his lovely hair. The older he grew, the kinder his eyes became, as though Genji's face had slipped over his own. Mild decay affected his teeth, darkening the inside of his mouth and giving him a smile so winsome that she would gladly have seen such beauty in a girl.44 This distressing resemblance to his father, which was his single flaw, put her in fear of the world and its censorious gaze.

  Genji missed him badly, but the wish to make his mother regret her cruelty led him to restrain himself, until concern that such idleness ill became him prompted him to set out on a trip through the autumn fields and, by the way, to visit Urin'in.45 He spent two or three days in the hall of a certain Master of Discipline,46 his maternal uncle, reading the scriptures and performing rites of devotion, and while he was there he often felt very moved. All the leaves had turned by now, and he nearly forgot the City before the beauty of the autumn fields.

  He summoned the most gifted of the temple monks and set them to debating before him.47 In such a place he spent the night absorbed in the vanity of all things, but toward dawn he again remembered her who to him meant suffering. Meanwhile the monks clattered about offering holy water beneath a lingering moon, scattering chrysanthemums and red leaves dull or bright—modest occupations, no doubt, but, he felt, sufficient to relieve the tedium of this life and of course to assure a happy prospect for the life to come. He kept thinking how dismally he was squandering his own existence. “All who call his Name, he will gather to himself, nor once cast them aside,”48 his host slowly chanted in lofty tones while Genji asked himself in intense envy, Why not make this life my own?—only to be most ignominiously caught up in troubled thoughts of his darling at home.

  He was rarely away from her for so many days, and he was worried enough to send her a flurry of letters. “I thought I might see whether I really could give it all up,” he wrote, for example, “but time drags by all too slowly, and I am gloomier than ever. I still have more questions, and I am uncertain what to do. What about you?”

  Even this from him, casually set down on Michinokuni paper,49 was a pleasure to look at.

  “Having left you there, frailly lodged as a dewdrop trembling on a leaf,

  I am prey to many fears whenever the four winds blow,”

  he had added with deep feeling, and his reader wept. On thin white paper she replied,

  “Ah, when the winds blow, how the spider's thread that hangs on that fading leaf

  quickly tangles, and my heart trembles lest it be betrayed!”50

  That was all.

  Her writing is prettier all the time, he said to himself, smiling with pleasure at how lovely she was. They corresponded so often that her writing looked very like his, though with an added touch of feminine grace.
I seem to have brought her up quite nicely in every way.

  He wrote also to the Kamo Priestess, since the breeze had so short a way to blow between them.51 “Your mistress will never know how I have longed for her beneath these unfamiliar skies,” he observed rather bitterly to Chūjō;52 and to the Priestess herself:

  “Far be it from me to offend the mighty gods, but your raiment now

  cannot help reminding me of that autumn long ago.53

  All I want to do, and foolishly, I know, is ‘to turn the past to now’;54 yet I feel as though it should be possible…” He had written his letter, so familiar in tone, on green Chinese paper and attached it solemnly to a sakaki branch.

  Chūjō replied, “Having so little to do I let my mind dwell on memories, and then, my lord, my thoughts often turn to you; but it really is no use.” Her letter was long and thoughtful.

  The Priestess had written along the edge of a sacred streamer,

  “Long ago, you say—what is it that happened then, that my raiment now

  should arouse such memories and once more detain your heart?

  More recently…” Her writing, which had no great character, nevertheless showed practiced skill, and her cursive letters55 were nicely done. He was sacrilegiously stirred to imagine the bluebell now more richly beautiful than ever.56

  The season, he remembered, was just the same as that sad time at the Shrine on the Moor, and in his deplorable way he reproached the gods for the strange coincidence. It was odd of him to have these regrets now, considering the years he had allowed to go by while he could have won her if he had really wished to. She herself recognized his special interest in her and seems in her sporadic replies to have made little effort to discourage him, which was not entirely admirable of her.