The Tale of Genji, Page 52

  how did the robe between us come to be so deeply dyed?”44

  She had hardly spoken when His Excellency came in. Like it or not, off she went.

  The young man went to lie down in his room, suffocating with bitter resentment at having, as it were, been left behind. He was so upset to hear the three carriages discreetly hurrying away that he pretended to be asleep when Her Highness sent for him, and he did not move. It was his tears that flowed on. He spent the night sighing and hurried home while the frost still lay white on the ground. He did not want anyone to see his swollen eyes, and since Her Highness was bound to call him to her again, he quickly escaped to where he could feel more at ease. All the way there he wallowed in this misery of his own creation. The sky, still dark above him, remained densely clouded.

  “How the skies above, in a dawn that ice and frost bind so cruelly,

  close in, and darkness gathers in a steady shower of tears!”

  Gosechi dancer

  This year His Grace was to present a Gosechi dancer. He made no extraordinary preparations for doing so, but as the time approached, his household busied itself with the costumes for the page girls and so on.45 He had the costumes for the women who would accompany the dancer to the palace46 made in the east pavilion, and he looked after everything else at his own residence. Her Majesty47 offered him the most beautiful things for the attendants and page girls. The disappointment left by the cancellation of last year's event meant that this year the privy gentlemen seemed unusually eager to do things brilliantly, and people were talking about how each dancer's household was bent in a thousand ways on outdoing every other. Dancers came from the Inspector Grand Counselor, the Intendant of the Left Gate Watch, and, among the privy gentlemen, from Yoshikiyo, now Governor of Omi, and from the Left Grand Controller. They all had their dancer stay on at the palace, since His Majesty had decreed that this year the dancers should wait upon him: that was why every gentleman had been so eager to have his daughter chosen.

  For his own dancer Genji summoned the daughter of Lord Koremitsu, then Governor of Tsu and Left City Commissioner, since rumor made her out to be a beauty. Koremitsu disliked the idea,48 but others insisted. “The Grand Counselor is apparently presenting his daughter by an outside mother,”49 they said, “so why should you be ashamed to put forward your own?” In the end he decided reluctantly that he might as well have her go straight to the palace. He had her learn her dance very nicely at home, gave careful thought to choosing the best gentlewomen to tend her, and on the day sent her off toward evening. Genji, at home, looked over all his ladies' page girls and attendants and picked the prettiest of them. Each, according to her station, therefore took it as a great honor to be selected. He decided to have them pass before him in order to rehearse them for their presentation to His Majesty. All were worthy, and their looks and faces left him at a loss to discriminate between them. “I wish I could offer His Majesty one more!” he said, laughing. He based his final choice on quickness and deportment.

  The young scholar lay brokenhearted and in blank despair, never glancing at his food or even reading, until he quietly set out to explore in the hope of lightening his mood. With his marvelous looks and bearing and his quiet dignity and grace, the younger gentlewomen were very pleased to see him. For reasons best known to his conscience Genji did not allow him anywhere near the mistress of Nijō, not even up to her blinds, but instead kept him so far away that he hardly knew even her chief gentlewomen. Today, though, he seems somehow to have slipped in50 amid all the confusion. They had ushered the dancer out of her carriage and into a screened-off space prepared specially for her in the aisle near the double doors. He stole up to the screens and peeked through: there she was, lying there exhausted. She seemed to be just his friend's age but a little taller and, if anything, rather more striking. It was too dark to see her clearly, but on the whole she reminded him a great deal of his friend, and although he did not exactly lose his heart to her, he was sufficiently stirred to rustle his robes. She was wondering innocently what the sound could mean when he said,

  “You whose privilege it is to serve the Goddess of Toyo-oka,

  never forget how I long soon to claim you as my own.51

  Within the sacred fence…”52 His was indeed an abrupt approach. The voice was youthful and pleasing, but she could not imagine whose it was, and she was feeling a little alarmed when her women came bustling up to put her makeup right. All the commotion induced him unwillingly to leave.

  He had been staying away from the palace because he so detested his light blue, but he went now because novel dress-cloak colors were allowed in honor of the Gosechi Festival. Youthful good looks or not, he was grown-up for his age, and he went about in high good humor. Everyone made much of him, from His Majesty on down, and he was prized by all.

  The Gosechi dancers were all exquisitely groomed for their entry into the palace, but Genji's and the Grand Counselor's were the ones whose looks caused a sensation. Both were undoubtedly a pleasure, but it was Genji's whose fresh charm truly set her apart. She was such a wonder of stylish beauty that one could hardly believe her really to be what she actually was,53 and that is probably why everyone praised her so. The dancers were all somewhat older than usual, which made the festival this year a little different.

  Genji came for a look, too, and he remembered the maiden who had caught his eye long ago. He wrote to her at dusk on the day of the Dragon.54 You can imagine what his letter was like.

  “That fair dancing girl must have grown wise in her time, for the friend she knew

  when she tossed her angel sleeves is himself much older now.”55

  The poor thing was very touched that after all these years he should still feel moved to express such feelings.

  “Since you mention it, all that is present to me as though it were new:

  how beneath my sunshade band I melted like frost on your sleeves.”56

  Her answer came back, fittingly enough, on green patterned paper57 and written in a disguised hand in ink now dark, now light, and leaning here and there toward the cursive. For someone like her, Genji thought, it was a delight.

  The young man went roaming about in secret, now that a certain someone had caught his fancy, but he was not allowed anywhere near her. He was curtly sent away instead, and being at a bashful age, he gave up with many an inward sigh.

  His Majesty had seemed to wish the dancers to attend him immediately, but for the moment they were dismissed; Omi's daughter went to the purification at Karasaki, and Tsu's to Naniwa.58 The Grand Counselor submitted a plea to have his daughter formally admitted to the palace.59 The Intendant of the Left Gate Watch was reprimanded for having presented an ineligible dancer, but she, too, was kept on in His Majesty's service. When Tsu observed that a Dame of Staff post lay vacant, His Grace, to his son's keen regret, was glad enough to honor his retainer's loyal service. If my rank were not what it is, the young man reflected, I should have liked at my age to ask for her myself. She did not mean that much to him, but the prospect of renouncing her without even having told her his feelings only multiplied his tears.

  A brother of hers, a privy page, came often to wait on him, and he now spoke to the young fellow with unusual warmth. “When does your Gosechi dancer go to the palace?”

  “This year, my lord, or so I hear.”

  “She is so pretty that I am a little in love with her. I envy you being with her so much. Will you make it possible for me to see her again?”

  “How could I, my lord? Even I cannot see her as I please. How could I give a young gentleman a look, when none of her brothers is allowed anywhere near her?”

  “Then a letter, at least.” The young gentleman in question gave him one.

  This was a blow, since the page had already been warned against such things, but his master was in dead earnest, and pity won out. He took the letter away with him.

  His sister was very pleased with it—she may have been clever for her age. It was on thin, deep green pap
er,60 prettily layered, and the still-youthful writing showed happy promise.

  “Was it clear enough, in the fullness of bright day, how my heart is set

  on that fair dancing maiden and her angel's feather sleeves?”61

  They were reading it when their father came in, and they failed in their terror to hide it. “What is that letter?” he demanded to know, seizing it. The two children flushed scarlet. “You are up to no good, are you!” he grumbled. He called back his son, who had moved to flee.

  “Who wrote this?”

  “His Grace's young gentleman gave it to me. He insisted.”

  His father grinned broadly. “What a delightfully forward young man!” he exclaimed. “You are his age, but you are not worth much, are you!”

  After praising the writer he showed the letter to his son's mother as well. “As long as the young gentleman deigns to notice her, I would rather let him have her than send her into palace service. He can be trusted, I think, considering the man His Grace is and how he never forgets any woman he has known. I would not mind playing Akashi Novice!” Still, the preparations went on as before.

  Once deprived even of writing, the young man only set his heart the more resolutely on the nobler of his two loves, and as time heightened his desperate longing, he could not help wondering whether he would ever see her again. He had no wish even to call on Her Highness. Memories of where she had lived and of where they had played together all these years flooded through him until he lost any desire to visit the house at all. Instead he shut himself up again in his room.

  Genji decided to entrust him to the lady in the west wing of his east pavilion.62 “I doubt that Her Highness has long to live,” he said, “and considering that you have known him ever since he was small, I hope that you will look after him once she is gone.” She willingly agreed, and she set warmly and kindly about doing just that.

  She certainly is no beauty! the young man would say to himself after the fleeting glimpses he had of her, and even so my father has never abandoned her! How I wish I were less helplessly drawn to a face that brings me so much suffering! And how I would prefer someone as kind and gentle as she! Still, I pity a woman there is no point in actually seeing. No wonder His Grace, who knows her heart and her looks, keeps many veils63 between them even after all these years, though to make up for it he still provides her with everything she requires. (How clever of him to think of things like that!) Her Highness dressed unusually,64 of course, but she was still very handsome, as he had long assumed any woman to be, whereas the lady in the west wing had actually never had any looks, and now she seemed to be losing what little she could offer to age; she was so thin and her hair was so sparse that, alas, one felt like saying so.

  As the year came to an end, Her Highness busied herself with New Year's clothes for her grandson alone. She made many lovely sets, but the sight of them only oppressed him. “Why are you doing so much,” he asked, “when I may not even go to court on New Year's Day?”

  “Why not? You are talking like a decrepit old man.”

  “I may not be old, but I do feel decrepit,” he murmured with tears in his eyes.

  Her Highness heard him with sorrow, well knowing what the matter must be, and she, too, seemed on the verge of tears. “A man carries himself with pride even when of humble rank,” she said. “You should not mope this way. What is your excuse for being moody and dejected? You are only putting yourself at risk.”65

  “What do you mean? People dismiss me contemptuously as a mere sixth-ranker. I know I will not be one forever, but it is a trial, you know, just to go to the palace. No one would even dream of scorning me this way if His Late Excellency were still alive. I have my father, of course, but he keeps me so distinctly at a distance that I cannot easily go to him. I can only approach him at all in the east pavilion. The lady in the west wing there is very kind to me. I would not have any of these troubles, though, if only I had a mother, too.”

  His tears were streaming down now, and the sight of him trying to hide them touched Her Highness so deeply that she wept even more. “Anyone, high or low, who loses his mother is affected as you are, but you, like anyone else, have your destiny in life, and I am sure there will come a time when people leave off dismissing you; no, you must not be downhearted. I do wish, though, that His Late Excellency had lived a little longer! Your father's vast influence shelters us just as well, I know, but there are many things I wish were otherwise. I hear everyone praises the Palace Minister for his exceptional character, but he is less and less like what he used to be, and I regret having lived to see it, because it angers me to see someone like you, with all your future before you, caught up in these difficulties, however trifling they may be.” She was weeping.

  Genji stayed quiet on the first day of the New Year and did not go out. The Blue Roans were led to his residence, according to the precedent established by the Minister Yoshifusa,66 and on the festival days67 past practice was given a new magnificence.

  After the twentieth of the second month His Majesty made a progress to the Suzaku Palace.68 It was too soon for the best of the cherry blossoms, but the third month would be one of remembrance for Her Late Eminence.69 The early blossoms were so lovely that His Eminence had had his residence done up especially nicely, and all who escorted the progress, even the senior nobles and Princes, took care to be at their best. They all wore leaf green over a cherry blossom layering, and His Majesty wore red. The Chancellor was there by imperial command, and since he, too, wore red, they shone more than ever as one and were hard to tell apart. All present stood out in costume and bearing. His Eminence, too, had matured very handsomely and grown in grace of bearing and deportment. No academicians were summoned today, just ten students known for their talent at Chinese poetry. The topic was announced as though for the Ceremonial Bureau examination,70 probably because His Grace's son was to take the examination in earnest. The more fainthearted of the students, numb and helpless, set themselves adrift in boats on the garden lake. Soon the orchestra barges71 were rowing about under a westering sun, playing modal preludes to which the wind off the hills nicely added a music of its own, while the young gentleman nursed his grudge against the world, groaning that if his path were not such a hard one, he would be amusing himself with the rest.

  When they danced “Song of the Spring Warbler,” His Eminence remembered that party under the cherry blossoms long ago. “I wonder whether we shall ever see the like again,” he said, setting Genji off on a train of fond memories of that reign.

  When the dance ended, Genji offered him a cup of wine.

  “The warbler still sings as sweetly as ever then in those bygone days,

  but the blossoms he once loved do not look at all the same.”

  And His Eminence:

  “Even at a home veiled from the Ninefold Palace by thick banks of mist

  I still hear the warbler's voice proclaiming that it is spring.”

  The former Viceroy Prince, now His Highness of War, offered His Majesty the cup and added with keen wit,

  “The hollow bamboo that calls such sweet music forth out of the old days

  now rouses the spring warbler to carolings ever new.”

  “When the bird of spring carols on and on so long fondly for the past,

  does be mean that blossoms now lack the beauty they had then?”72

  The dance “Song of the Spring Warbler”

  His Majesty spoke with superlative grace.

  All this went on in private, among a select company, so that some poems may not have reached me, or perhaps they were never written down.

  His Majesty called for stringed instruments, since the musicians were too far off to hear very well. His Highness of War took the biwa, His Excellency the Palace Minister the wagon, and His Eminence the sō no koto, while His Grace as usual received the kin. No words can convey the quality of their music, for they were superb masters, and they played with all the art at their command. Many privy gentlemen were there to sing th
e solfège.73 They first performed “Ah, Wondrous Day!” and then “Cherry Blossom Man.” Cressets were lit here and there on the island, under the charming light of a misty moon, and His Majesty's music came to an end.

  On his way back His Majesty called upon the Empress Mother, though the night was well advanced, for he felt that it would be unkind to pass by on this occasion without doing so. His Grace courteously accompanied him. Her Majesty received them with pleasure. Noting the all too obvious signs of her great age, Genji thought of Her Late Eminence and lamented to himself that some people did indeed live very long lives.

  “Someone as old as I am, forgets everything,” she said, “and yet, you know, your most gracious visit has brought back to me after all that reign of long ago.” She began to weep.

  “I no longer recognized the coming of spring now that I have lost those dear, fostering presences,”74 His Majesty replied, “but today has consoled me greatly. We simply must sometimes…”

  “I shall not neglect to wait upon you,” His Grace added.

  Her heart beat fast, sure enough, at the noisy commotion of His Majesty's departure. She rued what Genji must think of her and lamented that his destiny to govern should have proven so impossible to thwart.

  The Mistress of Staff,75 in her quiet meditations, came across many absorbing memories of her own. Genji probably still allowed the wind to take her word from him. Whenever the Empress Mother had something to say to His Majesty, whenever she felt dissatisfied with the sinecures and benefices granted her or with anything else at all, she longed to turn back the sad decline that her long life obliged her to witness, and she condemned it all bitterly. The older she grew, the more ill-tempered she became, until even His Eminence found her company unbearable.