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The Tale of Genji, Page 49

Murasaki Shikibu

  The nickname jogged Genji's memory. Yes, he had heard that the lady once known as the Dame of Staff had since then become a nun and was practicing her devotions under Her Highness, but he was amazed, for it had never occurred to him even to wonder whether she was still alive. “I am very glad to hear your voice,” he said, “since his reign now belongs to the past, and those distant memories of it make one so sad! Please look after me as you would the orphan fallen beside the road!”16

  His dim approaching form took her back to those days. She put on those old coy airs again and set mumblingly about her banter, in a voice that plainly issued from a toothless, puckered mouth. “I always complained…”17 she simpered—what nerve! He could not suppress a smile at being suddenly now an old man, but her fate stirred him at the same time to pity. Some of the Consorts and Intimates who had been such rivals in her prime were no doubt dead and gone and others cast helplessly adrift in a cruel world. Why, look what age Her Late Eminence was when she died! No, life was too hard, he himself had so little time left, and there she was, a frivolous old woman, still alive, quietly pursuing her devotions. Ah, the perfidy of this world! To Granny, however, his thoughtful looks spoke of tender emotion, and she felt young again.

  “After all these years I can still never forget what you and I shared,

  or that name, ‘mother's mother,’ he was pleased to give to me,”

  she said; and he, in disgust,

  “Once you are reborn, bide your time to wait and see whether in this life

  anyone has gone so far as to forget his mother!

  Oh, the bond is a lasting one, certainly! We must have a quiet talk another time.”18 With that he left.

  The shutters on the west side of the house were down, although the gentle-women had left one or two open so as not to risk appearing unfriendly. The moon was out, illumining a thin fall of snow, and it was actually a lovely night.19 He recalled with amusement having heard those same simperings of old age cited as a bane.

  That evening he addressed the former Kamo Priestess very earnestly. “I shall trouble you no more if only you will master your repugnance and speak to me this once yourself,” he said, going straight to the point; but she who even long ago, when the world gladly overlooked their youthful indiscretions, had still shrunk bashfully from her late father's ambition20 could not all these years later, at her age, countenance giving him a single word in her own voice, and she maintained this resolve so staunchly that Genji became extremely impatient. Not that she was in the least curt with him, but it infuriated him to receive her answers through somebody else.

  It was very late by now, a high wind was blowing, and he felt wretched enough decorously to wipe away his tears.

  “You are too cruel, when I learned no lesson then from your cruelty,

  to afflict me even now with those old and cruel ways.

  The fault is mine, I know…”21 he insisted, and her gentlewomen murmured as always that it was such a shame.

  “What could make me now wish to give myself to you—though it may be true,

  as I hear, that some others find their feelings quickly change.

  It is not my way to do otherwise than I have always done.”

  The desperate Genji gave voice to a stream of the bitterest reproaches, feeling all the while like a callow youth. “Please tell no one how I have behaved,” he whispered urgently, “not a word—I would be a joke before all the world. I could speak of the Isara River, but that might be to take too great a liberty.”22

  The gentlewomen wondered what the matter could be. “What a thing to do to him!”

  “Why does my lady insist on treating him so unkindly?”

  “Nothing about him suggests that he would thoughtlessly force himself on her.”

  “Poor man!”

  She herself had never missed Genji's great quality or compelling appeal, but she felt that to show him sympathy would be to range herself in his eyes beside those other women who made so much of him and to betray her own lack of character as well. Besides, his magnificence was too daunting, and it would not become her to act tenderly toward him. No, she would correspond with him sufficiently to keep in touch, giving him prudent replies; she would still converse respectably with him; and otherwise she would pursue her devotions so as to erase the sin of all those years away.23 It would only look capricious of her suddenly to acquiesce or to seem to want no more to do with him, and people would not fail to make much of it, being as evil-tongued as she knew them to be; and so she was formal even with her gentlewomen, cultivated strict discretion, and, meanwhile, gave herself increasingly to her devotions.

  She hardly knew her many brothers and sisters because they did not have the same mother, and her residence was therefore more and more deserted. This drew her staff together in unanimous support of the great and glorious gentleman who showered her with such attentions.

  Genji did not exactly burn for her, but her coolness maddened him, and he hated to admit defeat. In bearing and reputation he was of course all anyone could wish, and he had pondered many things and acquired by now a far wider, more discriminating knowledge of people. Long and varied experience reminded him that any renewed misbehavior on his part would certainly earn him criticism, but he worried that failure might provoke still louder laughter. What shall I do? he fretted, meanwhile absenting himself night after night from Nijō, which to his lady there was no joke at all.24 She tried and tried, but naturally there were times when her tears flowed.

  “You are looking curiously unlike yourself—I cannot imagine why,” he said to her, stroking her hair, and his expression of tender concern made one want to paint them both. “It pained me to see how much His Majesty missed Her Late Eminence when she was gone, and without the Chancellor, you know, I have been kept very busy by things I have no one else to do for me. You are probably wondering why I have been here so strangely little lately, and I sympathize, but please set your mind at rest. You are quite grown-up now, but you still seldom consider others, and it is just that way you have of getting their feelings wrong that makes you so dear.” He tidied a wet lock of hair at her forehead, but she turned farther away from him and said not a word.

  “Who can have brought you up to be such a baby?” It was such a pity, when life was short anyway, to have her so upset with him! But then daydreams swept him off again.

  “Perhaps you have misunderstood my little messages to the former Kamo Priestess. If so, you are quite wrong, as you will see. I may tease her at odd moments with an enticing note, because she has always been very distant, and she sometimes answers me, since she herself has little to fill her time, but there is nothing serious to any of this, and I see no reason I should come crying to you and tell you all about it. Please understand that you have no need to worry.” He spent the whole day trying to make her feel better.

  The snow was very deep by now, and more was falling. The waning light set off pine and bamboo prettily from one another, and Genji's face took on a clearer glow. “More than the glory of flowers and fall leaves that season by season capture everyone's heart, it is the night sky in winter, with snow aglitter beneath a brilliant moon, that in the absence of all color speaks to me strangely and carries my thoughts beyond this world; there is no higher wonder or delight. Whoever called it dreary understood nothing.”

  He had the blinds rolled up. The moon illumined all before them in its single color, while the garden shivered under the weight of snow, the brook uttered pathetic sobs, and desolate ice lay across the lake. Genji had the page girls go down and roll a snowball. Their charming figures and hair gleamed in the moonlight, while the bigger, more knowing ones were lovely in their varied, loosely worn gowns25 and their night service wear with the sashes half undone, meanwhile their hair, far longer than their gowns, stood out strikingly against the white of the snow. The little ones were a pleasure to watch running about happily, dropping their fans and showing their excited faces.26 They wanted to roll their snowball even bigger, but for all thei
r struggles it would not budge. Some of them sat on the east end of the veranda, laughing nervously.

  Rolling snowballs

  “One year they made a snow mountain in Her Late Eminence's garden—not that that is remarkable in itself, but the smallest thing she did always seemed miraculous. How one misses her on every occasion! I never came to know very well what she was like, because she kept herself so far from me, but I believe she thought well of me while she was at the palace. I relied on her and kept in touch with her about all sorts of things, and although she never put herself forward, talking to her was always worthwhile, and she did the smallest thing precisely right. We shall never see her like again. For all her serenity, she had a profound distinction that no other could attain, whereas you, who despite everything have so much of the noble murasaki,27 have a difficult side to you as well, and I am afraid you may be a little headstrong. The former Kamo Priestess's temperament seems to me very different. When I am lonely, I need no particular reason to converse with her, and by now she is really the only one left who requires the best of me.”

  “But the Mistress of Staff28 is outstanding in intelligence and character! What happened is very strange, considering that she shuns any hint of indiscretion.”

  “That is true. She does indeed deserve mention as a beautiful and attractive woman. Now that I think of her, there is a great deal I have to regret and to be forgiven. Imagine, then, how many regrets a rake must have as he ages! After all, I see myself as having led a much quieter life than most.” Talking about the Mistress of Staff moved him to shed a few tears.

  “That woman in her mountain village, the one of whom you think so little, understands more than one would expect of someone like her, but she is not in the same class with the others, and I overlook her pretensions.29 I have never known anyone completely worthless. So few in this world are really exceptional, though! The lady languishing in the east pavilion is still as appealing in manner as ever, but it takes more than that. I took up with her because I liked her so much for what she was, and with great discretion she has remained like that with me ever since. I am sure she and I will never part, and I am very fond of her.”

  Girls in akome gowns

  Genji talked on this way late into the night about the present and the past. The moon shone more and more brightly through the marvelous stillness. She said,

  “Frozen into ice, water caught among the rocks can no longer flow,

  and it is the brilliant moon that soars freely through the sky.”30

  Leaning forward a little that way to look out, she was lovelier than any woman in the world. The sweep of her hair, her face, suddenly brought back to him most wonderfully the figure of the lady he had loved, and his heart, which had been somewhat divided, turned again to her alone. A mandarin duck cried,31 and he said,

  “Amid all this snow that brings back fond memories of times now gone by,

  ah, what fresh melancholy in a mandarin duck's cry!”

  When he went in again and lay down, his mind still on Her Late Eminence, he saw her dimly—it was not a dream—and perceived her to be extremely angry. “You promised never to tell, and yet what I did is now known to all. I am ashamed, and my present suffering makes you hateful to me!” It seemed to him that he was answering her when he felt set upon and awoke to hear his darling crying, “What is it? What is the matter?” Bitter disappointment overwhelmed him, and his heart pounded furiously. When he sought to calm himself, he found that he had been weeping, and he moistened his sleeves all over again.

  Lying stock-still, with his love beside him wondering what had come over him, he murmured,

  “Ah, how brief it was, the vision that came to me while, bereft of sleep,

  on a lonely winter's night I was caught up in a dream!”

  He yearned for her so sharply that he arose early and commissioned rites at temples here and there, though he never said for whom they were. It was torture to him at last to understand, after a process of deep reflection, that her anger at what he had put her through was well and truly meant, and despite her devotions, despite all the things she had done to lessen her fault, she had still failed because of that one lapse to cleanse herself of the foulness of this world; and he longed again and again to go to her in that alien realm where she must be now, to bring her comfort there, and to make her sin his own. He remained cautious, however, because people would wonder if he were too pointedly to have services done for her, and His Majesty, too, might feel the prick of conscience. Meanwhile he gave himself devoutly to calling the Name of Amida. If only I might share her lotus!32 he prayed; and yet,

  “Should I let my heart follow this longing to seek the love I have lost,

  I might, if she is not there, wander myself the Three Fords”33

  —which, some say, was a detestable thought.

  21

  OTOME

  The Maidens

  Otome (“maiden”) refers particularly to a girl chosen as a Gosechi dancer. In this chapter Genji sends a poem containing the word otome to the Gosechi Dancer already mentioned in “Falling Flowers” and “Suma.” Meanwhile, Yūgiri, his son, notices a younger Gosechi dancer and sends her a poem containing the same word.

  RELATIONSHIP TO EARLIER CHAPTERS

  “The Bluebell” ended in the winter. “The Maidens” begins the next spring and continues on into the autumn of the following year.

  PERSONS

  His Grace, the Chancellor, Genji, age 33 to 35

  The former Kamo Priestess (Asagao)

  Senji, Asagao's gentlewoman

  Her Highness, the Fifth Princess, Asagao's aunt

  Her Highness, the Third Princess, Yūgiri's grandmother (Ōmiya)

  The Commander, then His Excellency, the Palace Minister (Tō no Chūjō)

  His daughter, 14 to 16 (Kumoi no Kari)

  Her stepfather, the Inspector Grand Counselor (Azechi no Dainagon)

  The Adviser, Genji's son, 12 to 14 (Yūgiri)

  The Doctors of the Academy

  The Left Grand Controller

  Yūgiri's tutor, a Chief Clerk

  The Ise Consort, Her Majesty the Empress, 24 to 26 (Akikonomu)

  The Kokiden Consort, daughter of Tō no Chūjō, 16 to 18

  The Lord of Ceremonial, formerly His Highness of War, brother of Fujitsubo, 48 to 50 (Shikibukyō no Miya)

  The daughter of the Lord of Ceremonial, a Consort

  Ōmiya's gentlewomen

  His Majesty, the Emperor, 15 to 17 (Reizei)

  The Intendant of the Left Gate Watch, a half brother of Tō no Chūjō

  Saishō, Yūgiri's nurse

  Kumoi no Kari's nurse

  Yoshikiyo, Governor of Ōmi

  Koremitsu, Governor of Tsu and Left City Commissioner

  His daughter, a Gosechi dancer, then Dame of Staff

  Her brother, a privy page

  His Eminence, the Retired Emperor, 35 to 37 (Suzaku In)

  The former Viceroy Prince, now His Highness of War

  (Hotaru Hyōbukyō no Miya)

  Her Majesty, the Empress Mother (Kokiden)

  The Mistress of Staff (Oborozukiyo)

  The Mistress of Genji's west wing, 25 to 27 (Murasaki)

  The New Year came, and with it the end of mourning for Her Late Eminence. The world put on new colors, the change of clothes for the new season1 went off brilliantly, and of course by Kamo Festival time the skies above gladdened every heart; yet the former Kamo Priestess only gazed sadly before her, and the breeze through the laurel tree nearby in the garden brought her younger gentlewomen many memories. Then there came a note from Genji, surmising that she must be particularly enjoying the peace of this Purification Day. “Today,” he wrote,

  “Can you have believed that the Kamo River waves would wash this day back

  while you purify yourself only from your mourning gray?”2

  It was a formal, straight-folded letter on purple paper, tied to a cluster of wisteria blossoms.

  Touched by its timelines
s, she replied,

  “It seems yesterday that the only robes I wore were of mourning gray,

  and for me such purity today means that all things pass.

  Life is so frail.” That was all, but Genji gazed at it as always. When she actually changed out of mourning, he had sent her a wealth of thoughtful gifts in care of Senji, which greatly embarrassed her; but the absence of any accompanying arch, enticing letter silenced any objection, since he had long been accustomed to making her such earnest gifts on public occasions, and she seems not to have known how to refuse them.

  He did not let pass this chance to do something for the Fifth Princess as well, and she, too, was moved. “It was only yesterday, or so I thought, that this young man was just a boy, and now he looks after me like such a grown-up! He is so handsome, and at heart he has turned out so much nicer than other people!” Her young gentlewomen smiled at the way she praised him.

  “I gather that His Grace has been keen on you for ages,” she observed to her niece when they met; “it is not as though this were anything new for him. His Late Highness regretted His Grace's life taking another course, so that he could not welcome him; he often said how sorry he was that you ignored his own preference, and there were many times when he regretted what you had done.3 Still, out of respect for the Third Princess's feelings I said nothing as long as His Late Excellency's daughter was alive. Now, though, even she, who commanded great consideration, is gone, and it is true, I simply do not see what could be wrong with your being what he wished, especially when His Grace is again so eager that this seems to me almost to be your destiny.” To her niece's distaste she went on at some length in this antiquated fashion.