The Tale of Genji, Page 86

  He still thought often of the Nijō Mistress of Staff,107 but by now he had learned for himself what grief this sort of hazardous affair can cause, and her susceptibility made him think somewhat less well of her than before. The news that she had finally done what she had long wished to do108 moved him to deep pity and regret, and he immediately sent her a letter. He was extremely put out to have had no word from her to suggest that she meant to act.

  “Am I not to care that your life is now a nun's? For you, after all,

  for you alone I dripped brine far away on Suma Shore.

  You have left me to lament that you have gone before me, when my heart is already so full with life's many treacheries, but I trust that you will put me first among those to whom I am certain you will dedicate the merit of your prayers.” He wrote a great deal else besides.

  She had decided on this step long ago, but his opposition in the past had detained her, and she had therefore said nothing to anyone about actually taking it. Still, doing so meant a secret wrench, for the old and painful bond between them was no trifle to her even now, and she remembered the good as well as the bad. She wrote an intent, heart-felt reply, knowing as she did that this sort of letter hardly became her any longer and that there would be no more. Her writing was very beautiful. “I thought that life's vagaries might have touched me alone, but your talk of my going before you makes me wonder,

  Nun

  Why is it you failed in your time to sail away on a pious craft,

  you who were a fisherman along the Akashi coast?109

  As to my prayers, which are for all beings, how could they fail to include you?”

  The letter, on dark blue-gray paper and tied to a branch of star anise,110 offered nothing unusual beside the supreme elegance of the writer's brush, of which he felt that he would never tire. He showed it to his love, too, while he was at Nijō, since all that was really over now. “I feel quite ashamed of myself,” he said. “No, I do not like it at all. I have seen a good many troubles in my time, although, happily, I have survived them, and she and the former Kamo Priestess111 were the only women left with whom I could still freely discuss the little things of life and exchange an uncomplicated friendship—the only ones who understood the mood of every season and who never missed the point. Now they have both renounced the world, and the Priestess has become particularly caught up in her devotions. Among all the women I have known, I have never otherwise seen her like, because she was profoundly thoughtful and yet at the same time warm and kind. It must be so difficult to bring up a girl! It is not only up to her parents to have her turn out as they wish, since she has the destiny her karma gives her, which remains unseen; but even so, it takes a great effort to rear her properly. Happily, it was my good fortune to escape having too many to worry about. That was a disappointment to me in my younger days, and I often sighed to myself that I wanted more. Please give the greatest care to bringing up our Princess! There are many things the Consort does not understand yet, and she probably worries a great deal, since she is never away from His Majesty. Princesses need to be instilled with the proper disposition to escape tedious criticism and make their way smoothly through life. A commoner woman of limited rank, of course, has a husband to look after her, so she gets help with that sort of thing.”

  “My assistance may not do her much good, but I will not neglect her as long as I draw breath,” she replied. “I wonder, though…” She was still unhappy, and she envied those who could give themselves without hindrance to their devotions.

  “I should do something for the Nijō Mistress of Staff in the way of the clothing she needs now, as long as she is not yet used to making it herself. How do you sew a stole anyway? Do have one made. I shall ask the lady of the northeast at Rokujō to look after a set of robes. She cannot very well feel comfortable with proper vestments, but whatever you do for her should still have an ecclesiastical feel to it.” He asked her for a set of blue-gray robes. Then he summoned people from the Crafts Workshop and quietly ordered first a set of the implements that a nun might need and then cushions, sleeping mats, screens, standing curtains, and so on; and with the greatest discretion he saw to the execution of all these things.

  The jubilee event for His Cloistered Eminence on his mountain thus continued to be put off. Autumn came, but for the Commander the eighth month was one of mourning112 and therefore unsuitable, since he was to supervise the musicians, while the ninth was the one in which the Empress Mother had passed away. Genji therefore considered the tenth, but Her Highness by then felt so unwell that the event was postponed again. In that month the Intendant's Princess went to visit her father. His Retired Excellency saw to it that the accompanying ceremonies should be as solemnly perfect and splendid as possible, and the Intendant roused himself to be present for the occasion. He was still in quite uncharacteristic ill health.

  Her Highness remained as stricken as ever with shame and remorse, which is perhaps why her condition only worsened as the months went by, until she was in such a state that Genji, who wanted nothing to do with her, still grieved at the same time to see anyone so sweet and frail endure such suffering, and he sighed many a time over what was to become of her. He spent the year preoccupied by healing prayers.

  His Eminence, cloistered on his mountain, heard about her condition and thought of her with tender longing. People told him that Genji had been away for months and hardly visited her at all, at which he wondered despairingly what had happened and resented more than ever the vagaries of conjugal life. He felt uneasy when that other was seriously ill and Genji, so he heard, spent all his time looking after her. Moreover, he reflected, His Grace seems not to have changed his ways since then. Did something unfortunate occur while he was elsewhere? Did those hopeless women of hers take some sort of initiative without her knowledge or consent? I hear that even the elegant banter two people may naturally exchange at court can give rise to scurrilous rumor. This line of thought made it impossible for him to give up his fatherly concern, despite his having renounced engagement with the things of this world, and he sent his daughter a long, earnest letter. She read it while Genji was with her.

  “I have seldom written to you, having had little reason to do so, and I can hardly bear to recall how long it has been since we were last in touch. News of your poor health has reached me, and I regret to say113 that you are always in my prayers. You must bear up, whatever loneliness or sorrow life may bring. It would not become you to show resentment in your expression or to betray any knowledge that you have reason to be displeased.” Such were his admonitions to her.

  Genji, pained and sorry, assumed that His Eminence could hardly know of the secret disaster and that his displeasure must therefore have to do with news of Genji's neglect. “How do you mean to answer him?” he asked. “This distressing letter troubles me very much. Despite the shock of what has happened, I do not want anyone to think I am failing you. Who can have been talking to him? I wonder.” She looked very sweet, turned away from Genji in shame, and the melancholy of her drawn features gave her a new distinction.

  “I quite understand that His Eminence should be disappointed to find you so childish and that he should worry so much about you, and I hope that in a great many ways you will be more cautious in the future. I had not meant to say this, but I do not at all like His Eminence gaining from other people the impression that my conduct is not what he would wish, and I think that I should at least mention this to you now. To you I may seem no more than shallow and indifferent, since you grasp so little on your own and are swayed only by what others tell you, and perhaps in your eyes I am merely a tiresome and contemptible old man; either thought is cruel and bitter. Do at least contain yourself while His Eminence is still alive, though, since this appears to be what he wanted. Resign yourself to humoring an old man and spare me the worst of your scorn. I am forever irresolute, and even on the path I have long yearned to take I now lag behind women who properly speaking should understand little of these things, when in
reality I have no reason to hesitate. It touched and pleased me, though, you know, that he should turn to me to look after you, and I have not wanted to disillusion him by then leaving you in my turn, as though all I had in mind was to keep up with others. The women I have loved hardly stand in my way any longer. One never knows how the Consort may get on in the end, but she seems to be having lots of children, and I think I can trust that she will manage at least as long as I am alive. As for the others, I feel less burdened by them now, since at their age nothing need keep them from giving up worldly life with me. I doubt that His Eminence has much longer to live; his health continues to decline, and his spirits are very low. You must not allow unfortunate rumors about yourself to disturb him. This world is dross. It is nothing. It would be a terrible sin to stand in his way on the path toward the life to come.”

  He said nothing pointed, but she wept as he spoke, and was so undone that he, too, shed tears. “Look what an old busybody I am,” he said self-deprecatingly, “talking about people in just the way that once so annoyed me in others! Why, you must be more than ever fed up with me for being such a mean old fool!”

  He drew her inkstone to him, ground ink himself, put the paper before her, and set her to writing, but her hand shook, and she could not do it. She cannot have been this slow to answer that ardent letter I read, he thought bitterly, feeling no sympathy for her; but he nonetheless told her what to write.

  So it was that the month when she had been supposed to go to her father passed on by. The Second Princess's visit had been magnificent, but Her Highness had lost the freshness of youth and was reluctant now to invite any comparisons.

  “The eleventh month is one of mourning for me,”114 Genji remarked, “and the end of the year is always frantically busy. It also worries me that he should be so eager to see you when you are becoming less and less presentable. Can we really put it off that long, though? Please cheer up, be more lively, and do something about those haggard looks of yours!” He found her very appealing even so.

  He had always made sure that the Intendant of the Gate Watch was beside him whenever an occasion promised particularly well, but that was all over now, and contact between them ceased. He imagined people wondering why, but the shame of looking like a decrepit old fool to the Intendant when they met, and of losing his own composure at the same time, dissuaded him from doing anything about it, and soon months had passed without a murmur of protest from him. As far as most people were concerned, the Intendant was merely in poor health, and in any case there had been no concerts at Rokujō this year, but the Commander suspected that there was more to it than that. That glimpse we both had of her must have been too much for so impressionable a man, the Commander reflected, but it never occurred to him that Genji already knew everything.

  The twelfth month came. The date was set for just after the tenth, and the entire estate rang with music and dances. The lady at Nijō was not back yet, but she returned when the prospect of the grand rehearsal proved to be too tempting. Her ladyship the Consort was at home as well. Her most recent child was another boy. Her children were all so dear that Genji played with them day and night, delighted by the blessing that the years had brought him. The wife of His Excellency of the Right came for the rehearsal, too. The Commander spent morning and evening holding so many preparatory rehearsals in the northeast quarter that the lady there never even attended the main one in Genji's presence.

  Genji felt that it would cast a pall over the occasion if he issued no invitation even now to the Intendant of the Gate Watch, and that moreover people would wonder at the omission. He therefore let the Intendant know that he was expected, but the gentleman pleaded grave illness and failed to appear. Still, there was nothing in particular actually wrong with him. Genji wondered sympathetically whether he might not just be feeling guilty, and he sent him a message to press him further. The gentleman's father, too, was meanwhile urging him to accept. “Why did you decline?” he asked. “Your refusal must sound quite strange to His Grace, and you really are not so very ill. Do pull yourself together and go!” Genji's second invitation then arrived, and the Intendant went after all, over his own inner protests.

  The senior nobles had not yet assembled. Genji seated the Intendant near him as always, inside the blinds, 115 with the lowered blinds of the chamber between them. Yes, he really was very thin and wan, and in bold pride of manner his brothers overshadowed him as usual. What singled him out instead was his thoughtful poise. His present exceptionally quiet demeanor commended him to Genji as a highly suitable match for a Princess, were it not that those two had been too unforgivably tactless.

  “Things have been quiet lately, and it has been a long time since we last saw each other,” Genji began warmly, as though nothing were wrong. “Spending these last months tending the sick has given me little time to myself. Her Highness here was to have arranged the events for His Eminence's jubilee, but it has had to be put off again and again, and now that the end of the year is coming, I can after all offer only a token meal of fasting fare. A proper jubilee is of course a much greater occasion, but with all the children there are here, I thought that I might at least have them learn some dances and so on to show them off; and then, you see, I could think of no one but you to set the rhythm, so I decided to give up blaming you for your months of silence.”

  He spoke affably enough, but the Intendant felt his face change color, and he was too acutely ashamed to find an immediate reply. “I was very sorry to learn that certain ladies have been unwell all these months, but this spring I myself began suffering from an old complaint of mine that affects my legs and makes me unsteady on my feet, and this condition has continued in so disturbing a manner that I no longer go to court. I prefer instead to remain at home as though the world had ceased to exist for me. His Retired Excellency observed to me that this is His Eminence's jubilee year and that he feels it behooves him more than anyone else to acknowledge it properly. ‘It would be awkward for me to put myself forward, though,’ he said, ‘now that I have hung up my hat and put away my carriage. You are still junior, I know, but you understand things as well as I do, and you should make that clear to His Grace.’ His encouragement was what roused me sufficiently from my grave condition to come. If I may venture to express my humble opinion, now that His Eminence has settled into so quiet and pious a mode of life, he may well prefer to forgo any grandly ceremonial event, and I believe that your proposal to keep things simple and to satisfy his longing for a quiet talk with Her Highness is greatly preferable.”

  Genji silently commended him for not mentioning the jubilee event the Second Princess had given her father, considering his relationship to her, for he gathered that it had been splendid. “Quite so,” he replied. “Most people would take this simplicity for mere indifference, but you understand, and you have reassured me that I am right. The Commander is fully competent by now to serve the realm, but he seems not to have much of a gift for the finer things of life, few of which are foreign to His Eminence. His Eminence is particularly fond of music, at which he is expert, and I expect that despite his appearance of renunciation he is looking forward to enjoying it in peace. Do take care of things, you and the Commander, and make sure that the children who will dance know what to do and how to behave. Their teachers may be very good at what they know, but they are hopeless otherwise.”

  The Intendant found the warmth of Genji's manner encouraging, but he also felt painfully constrained and had little to say, and he wanted to get away as quickly as possible. He left at last without ever engaging in his usual intent conversation.

  In the northeast quarter the Intendant added further touches to the musicians and dancers, for whom the Commander had provided the costumes. The Commander had dressed them magnificently, but the Intendant's finer discernment showed him indeed to be a master in these matters.

  Today was the day for the rehearsal, and Genji wanted to be sure that it was worth watching, since all the ladies of Rokujō were to see it. For th
e jubilee proper the children would wear red over a grape layering, but today they had on leaf green over sappan. The thirty musicians, in white layerings for the occasion, performed in the gallery leading out to the southeast fishing pavilion. They came round the garden hill to appear before Genji playing “Immortal in the Mist,”116 while a sprinkling of snow fell to confirm that spring was not far away and plum buds swelled on the bough. Genji sat inside the blinds of the aisle, attended only by His Highness of Ceremonial and His Excellency of the Right. The lesser senior nobles occupied the veranda and served them their meal without ado, for the day's event was purely informal.

  The fourth son of His Excellency of the Right, the Commanders third son, and two grandsons of His Highness of War danced “Ten Thousand Years,” and they looked very attractive indeed despite still being so small. None of these sons of the great houses stood out above the others; all were handsome and beautifully turned out, and each had the distinction one expected of him. The Commander's second son from the Dame of Staff, and the son of the Minamoto Counselor— himself His Highness of Ceremonial's son and formerly the Intendant of the Watch—danced “The Royal Deer,” while His Excellency of the Right's third son did “The Warrior King” and the Commander's eldest, “Twin Dragons.” “Great Peace” and “The Return of Spring” were performed by the men and boys of the same families. When twilight came on, Genji had his blinds raised, and the pleasures of the moment mounted. His grandsons were so dear and so handsome, their dancing offered such novel delights, and their teachers had taught them so fully all they knew that their own native talent added to all the rest made their dancing a wonder. Genji looked on each with delight, and the older senior nobles shed tears. His Highness of Ceremonial, whose thoughts were on his own grandsons, wept till his nose was red.