The Tale of Genji, Page 55

  The services seem to have gone on loudly all through the night.

  At dawn the party went down to the lodge of Ukon's priest. They probably meant to have an undisturbed talk. The young lady was admirably embarrassed to be seen so poorly dressed.

  “I have seen a great many ladies,” Ukon began, “keeping the surprisingly exalted company I do, but I have taken it for granted for years that not one of them could equal my present mistress39 in looks. The little girl she has now is of course extremely pretty, though, and His Grace looks after her beautifully, too, which makes it a special pleasure to see that my lady here, even so plainly dressed, is every bit as lovely. His Grace has been acquainted with every Consort, Empress, or lesser lady you can imagine ever since his father's reign, and as he tells my mistress, His Majesty's mother and that little girl I mentioned are the ones who remind him what 'a beauty’ really means. As to comparing them, I never knew Her Late Eminence, and his daughter is only half grown, so he is imagining what she will be like later on. I still want to know who could stand beside my mistress, though. His Grace, too, clearly feels she is exceptional, though he could not very well include her out loud in his list. ‘You are a bold one, staying with me!’ he teases her. Just the sight of those two adds years to one's life, and I never imagined that looking at anyone else could do the same, but what about our young lady here makes her less worthy? There is a limit, after all—I do think she is remarkable, even if she can hardly give off light from the crown of her head to announce that she is a wonder!”40 To the old nurse's delight, she contemplated the young lady wreathed in smiles.

  “I almost let her beauty go to waste in those thankless surroundings,” the nurse replied, “but that seemed too great a shame. I gave up house and hearth, left the sons and daughters who were my hope for the future, set out toward what for me might as well be the unknown, and came up to the City. My dear, do take her straight to where she belongs. You who serve in so great a house surely have opportunities to meet His Excellency her father. Please speak to him and see to it that he acknowledges her.”

  The embarrassed young lady remained turned away from them.

  “Goodness no, I am nobody myself, but when my lord calls me for one reason or another, I often wonder aloud to him what can have become of her, and he listens. He says, ‘I do want to find her, you know. If you happen to hear anything…’”

  “His Grace is of course a fine gentleman, but I gather he has some very distinguished ladies, and I wish you would get in touch with her actual father first.”

  In reply Ukon told her what had happened. “My lord mourned her too much to get over it, you know, and he has said ever since, ‘I should so love to have her instead! I regret having so few children, and I could put it about that I had found one of my own.’ My poor judgment made me overly cautious, and I let too much time go by without undertaking to look for her. Then I heard your husband's name mentioned in connection with an appointment as Dazaifu Assistant, and I actually caught a glimpse of him on the day when he went to take leave of His Grace, but I could not speak to him. I assumed, though, that you must have left her at the house on Gojō, the one with the twilight beauties. But how awful! To think she might have been condemned in the end to stay in the country!”

  They talked on through the day, now reminiscing, now calling the Name or chanting the sutras.

  They looked down from where they were on the throng of pilgrims. Before them ran the Hatsuse River.

  “If I had not come all this way to find the place where twin cedars stand,

  here by the Furu River, would I ever have met you?41

  How happy this has made me!” Ukon told the young lady, who replied through most becoming tears,

  “What in the old days the Hatsuse River was, that I hardly know,

  but my tears of joy flow on, meeting you this way today.”

  She really is quite lovely, but how blemished she would still be if she were boorishly inept! How did she manage to grow up this way? Ukon felt joy and gratitude toward the nurse. Her mother was all youth and innocence, ever pliant, ever yielding, but her manner shows daunting distinction and pride. She certainly gives one a high opinion of Tsukushi, although everyone else I know from there seems to be straight from the country. No, I just do not understand it!

  At dark they all went up to the temple, and they spent the next day there at their devotions. The autumn wind sweeping up from the valley below was chill against the skin, but their elated hearts teemed with many thoughts. They had feared they might never hold their heads high again, but now that they had heard from Ukon about their young lady's father, and about the way he assured success even for the least of his children, by any mother, they and especially the young lady herself had come to believe that even the lowliest need not be afraid.

  Before leaving they exchanged news about where they lived, since it would have been too awful to lose touch again. There was no great distance between them, since Ukon's house was close to the Rokujō estate, and they felt that this favored their keeping in touch.

  Ukon hurried to Rokujō in the hope of finding a moment to drop a hint of all this to His Grace. The vastness of the place struck her as soon as she drove in through the gate, and she saw a throng of carriages coming or going. This was a jade palace to daunt and dazzle a humble visitor. That night she did not go to her mistress but lay instead lost in thought.

  The next day she was flattered to be summoned specially, by name, from among all the women young or old who had returned from home the previous day. His Grace saw her as well. “What kept you away so long? It is not like you. Proper people sometimes turn about and kick up their heels, I suppose.42 You must have been having a good time.” He was teasing her mercilessly, as usual.

  “It has been seven days since I left, my lord, but I do not know very well how I could have been doing that. I came across someone I was glad to see, though, off in the mountains.”

  “And who was that?”

  Ukon hesitated to tell him straightaway, because she had not yet said anything to her mistress, and if she were to tell him in private and her mistress to hear of it later on, she might assume that Ukon no longer cared about her. “I shall tell you presently, my lord,” she replied, and new arrivals allowed her to break off their conversation.

  The lamps were lit. Genji and her mistress were well worth seeing this way, quietly together at home. She must have been twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and she had matured into all the fullness of her beauty. Ukon thought that she had acquired a new bloom even during this short absence. Having found this new young lady so pretty, she had not expected her to suffer from the comparison, and yet—or was she imagining it?—she seemed to see the difference between someone who had been blessed by fortune and another who had not.

  Genji was going to bed, and he called her to massage his legs. “I hear the young ones don't like doing this—it's too much work,” he remarked. “No, it takes a couple of old people really to get on together.”

  Everyone laughed discreetly. “That is right! Who could complain about His Grace asking a favor?”

  “I wish he were not such a tease, though!”

  “My lady might not like the old people getting too cozy with each other!” he joked to Ukon. “This could be trouble—if you ask me, it is not like her to let such a thing pass!” He was so charming and so amusing. His service to His Majesty did not occupy him unduly, and he therefore took life as easily as he pleased, joked a great deal, and so loved baiting the gentlewomen that he teased even his old intimates, like Ukon.

  “Who have you come across, then? Have you brought yourself back some sort of holy man?”

  “What a thing to say, my lord! No, the person I found is kin to the dew gone so soon from the twilight beauties.”

  “I see. Yes, you must have been very glad indeed. Where has she been all these years?”

  Ukon hesitated to tell him the whole truth. “In a poor mountain village, my lord.43 Her people are still more or
less the same, so we were able to talk over those times. I could hardly bear it.”

  “Wait, not here in front of somebody who knows nothing about any of this.” He was being discreet.

  “Oh, do not bother!” Ukon's mistress broke in. “I am much too sleepy to listen!” She put her sleeves over her ears.

  “Her looks now: surely she is not as pretty as her mother, is she?”

  “I had hardly thought that possible, my lord, but actually, to my eye she has grown to be much prettier.”

  “How wonderful! How pretty, do you think? As pretty as this one?”

  Dear me, no, my lord, not that pretty!

  “You seem remarkably pleased with her, though. Well,” he added paternally, “I shall not worry about her if she looks like me!”

  After receiving these first tidings Genji called Ukon back again and again. “Very well, then I shall bring her here. Through the years I have had occasion bitterly to regret losing track of her, and since your news pleases me so much, it would be awfully sad not to, considering that I have been out of touch with her all this time. Why tell His Excellency her father? He has quite enough children to keep him busy as it is, and it might easily turn out to be a mistake for her to join them now, as the least among them. I, on the other hand, have very few, and I can quite well say that I have unexpectedly discovered another. I shall make a great fuss over her and drive the gallants wild.”

  This sort of talk from him pleased Ukon very much. “As you wish, my lord. If His Excellency were to hear of her, who else but you would be the one to tell him? Your assisting her in one way and another can help redeem the fault of her mother's death.”

  “You still accuse me, don't you.” He smiled, but he was close to tears. “I have thought all these years what a terribly short time she and I had together. I have not loved one of the ladies gathered here as I did her, and I have so regretted that among the many who can still testify to my steadfastness, you were the only one left to remind me of her once she was gone. I never, never forget her, and I would be so happy if she were still alive!”

  He sent her daughter a letter. The memory of the hopeless safflower44 was not reassuring, considering how the young woman had grown up in the country, and he wanted first to see what a letter from her would be like. He adopted a serious, correct tone and wrote along the edge, “The one who so addresses you

  you do not yet know, but you need only ask and will quickly learn

  what lasting bond, stem by stem, the Mishima reeds proclaim.”45

  Ukon delivered it herself, and she also passed on what Genji had said. Clothing for the young lady and for all her people came with it. He must have discussed the whole thing with Ukon's mistress, because he had collected these gifts from his main wardrobe and had chosen items distinguished by their color and finish. To country people they were nothing short of astonishing.

  Woman in a kouchiki dress gown

  The least message from her father, even a simple excuse, would have made the young lady very happy, but she seemed distressed and let it be known that she could not possibly join the company of a man she did not even know. However, Ukon explained to her what her moving there would mean, and the others joined in, too, to encourage her.

  “His Excellency will hear about you, my lady, of course he will, once you are established there.”

  “The tie between parent and child is not so easily broken.”

  “Why, Ukon is no one, and she could not imagine how she would ever find you, and yet the buddhas and gods led her to you, did they not? Obviously, then, in your own case, as long as you and your father remain in good health…”

  The young lady was also reminded that she must lose no time composing an answer. The idea was mortifying, because she knew how countrified she must seem. Her nurse took out some highly perfumed Chinese paper and made sure she wrote:

  “Whence does her stem spring, this unhappy reed whose worth is so very small,

  that she has struck such deep root into the sorrows life brings?”

  That was all, in faint lines. Her hand was wandering and uncertain, but it had distinction. No, it was not contemptible. Genji felt reassured.

  He realized when he considered where she might live that there was no vacant wing in the southeast quarter, and besides, the particularly large staff there meant that she would be far too exposed. Her Majesty's quarter was certainly quiet enough, but there, it occurred to him, she might easily look as though she were in Her Majesty's service. No, the place was a little out of the way, but he decided to move the library in the west wing of the northeast quarter elsewhere. The lady there46 would then be sharing her house, but she was so kind and discreet that the two of them would certainly get on. Well, that was decided.

  At last Genji told the lady who reigned over his household the whole story of what had happened all those years ago. She reproached him for having kept it locked up in his heart so long.

  “You are unjust,” he replied. “Could I have simply volunteered a story like that, even about someone still alive? It is only because you are so special to me that I have been candid with you now.” The memory had visibly called up great sorrow.

  “I had often noted in the case of others, too, how deeply a woman may care, even when the sentiments involved are not that strong, and I had resolved never to indulge in gallantry; but of all the many women I came to know after all, when I ought not to have done so, she is the one I still remember as incomparable for her unfailing sweetness. If she were alive today I would certainly rank her with the lady in the northwest quarter.47 People are all so different. She lacked spirit and wit, it is true, but how noble and gentle she was!”

  “Still, I doubt that she would have held her own with Akashi.” She still felt a twinge of jealousy toward that lady; but then, the little girl listening with sweet innocence to their talk was so dear that she changed her mind again, and she decided that he was quite right.

  All this was in the ninth month, but the young lady could not possibly move that readily. Her nurse began looking for suitable page girls and young gentle-women. In Tsukushi she had been able to bring into her charge's service, as the opportunity arose, whatever acceptable women drifted down there from the City, but in the haste and confusion of her departure she had left them all behind, and she did not know any others. In the end the City was so large that she had women from the market find them and bring them to her. She did not tell them anything about whose daughter the young lady was.

  Ukon first moved her quietly to her own house on Gojō, where she selected her staff and prepared her wardrobe and so on. She moved to Rokujō in the tenth month.

  Genji entrusted her to the lady of the northeast. “Someone I was fond of lost faith in me and hid herself away in a poor mountain village,” he explained. “There was a little girl, too, though, and I spent years secretly looking for her, always in vain, until she grew into a woman and at last I had news of her from an unexpected source. I am moving her here, you see. Better late than never, after all.

  “Her mother is dead,” he continued earnestly. “I know that I asked you to look after the Captain,48 but surely it was not too great an inconvenience. Please treat her just as you do him. I assume that she shows her country upbringing in many ways. Do teach her what she should know, as the need arises.”

  “I see,” she answered mildly. “I had no idea that there was anyone like that. How nice! It has been so disappointing for you to have only one daughter.”

  “Her mother had an extraordinarily gentle character. I have great faith in yours, too, you see.”

  “It will be a pleasure. The young gentleman I quite properly look after gives me little enough to do.”

  The women had no idea the new arrival was Genji's daughter. “Who has he gone and rediscovered this time?” they asked each other. “What an impossible collector he is!”

  Her party came in three carriages, and having Ukon with them ensured that they did not look like rustics. Genji had provided th
em with variously patterned silks.

  He went straight to see her that evening. Long ago her women had heard often enough of the Shining Genji, but after all their years away from the world they expected nothing special, and the elusive glimpses they had of him through gaps in the curtains, by dim lamplight, left them all but terrified by the vision they saw.

  “I see this door is for special visitors only!” he joked to Ukon when she opened it for him. Then he sat down in the aisle room. “What a romantic light! They say a daughter likes to see her father's face—do you not agree?” He slid the standing curtain a little to one side. The young lady was extremely embarrassed and turned away, looking so lovely as she did so that he was very pleased.

  “Do give us a bit more light! This is all too genteel.”

  Ukon turned up the lamp and moved it closer. “You have no modesty!” he chuckled.

  Ah, yes, those eyes! How they put all else to shame!

  “I mourned you every moment of all the ages you were lost to me,” he began in a thoroughly fatherly way, showing no sign of keeping distance between them, “and I feel as though I am dreaming now that I actually have you before my eyes. The past comes flooding back so painfully that I find I do not know what to say.” He wiped his eyes. The memories really did affect him. He counted up the years. “Surely no parent and child have ever been parted for so long! What grief that bond brought me! You are no longer of an age to be girlishly shy, and I want to tell you everything that happened! Why are you so silent?” He spoke reproachfully.

  Too bashful to speak, she murmured in a youthful voice that reminded him vividly of her mother, “I vanished ‘before I could yet stand,’49 and since then I have never felt more than half alive.”

  Genji smiled. “Then who else but me will pity your sad fate?” he said. Her reply struck him as not at all unworthy.