The Tale of Genji, Page 93

  The women gathered to the Haven, who apparently felt extremely ill. Not many had followed their mistress to the country, and Her Highness was therefore left all but alone with her thoughts. The moment struck the Commander as perfect for a quiet declaration. Mist now shrouded the house itself, and he said, “I shall not be able to see my way back. What am I to do?

  While such evening mists as bring a mountain village new melancholy

  veil the sky, I cannot wish to leave and set out for home.”

  “Even mists that rise and muffle a mountain rustic's humble garden fence

  surely need never detain one who hastens to be gone.”

  Sliding panel

  The faint murmur of her answer consoled him, and he really did forget all thought of leaving. “I hardly know what to do. I could not see the path home, yet you tell me that your mist-shrouded fence need not keep me. That is what I get for being so poor at this sort of thing.” Still reluctant to go, he began to touch on what threatened to burst from him, and she, who had always ignored his feelings even though she had not failed to note them through the years, wished bitterly that he would keep them to himself. He was very upset when she was troubled enough to lapse into almost complete silence, but he reflected that no such chance would ever come again. Never mind if she thinks me cruel and shallow, he said to himself; I must tell her what has been on my mind all this time.

  He called, and an intimate retainer—one of his own guardsmen, recently promoted from Aide13—presented himself. Quietly, he had the man approach. “I have something to discuss with the Master of Discipline. I know that his rites keep him busy, but just now he seems to be resting. I shall stay tonight and go to see him once the evening service is over. See that the right men remain on duty here. As for the rest, I believe that my Kurusuno estate is nearby. They are to go there and feed the horses. I do not want too many of them here, talking. People might feel that I have no business spending the night.” The man, who gathered that the Commander must have his reasons, assented and set off.

  “The way back will be too difficult. I shall find somewhere to stay nearby,” he then remarked with apparent unconcern. “I should appreciate your allowing me to remain here in front of your blinds just until His Reverence is finished.”

  Oh, no! He does not usually stay this late or act the gallant as he is doing now! Still, she did not think that it would look right for her to move too quickly or too obviously to join her mother, and she therefore sat in silence until he began to engage her in conversation; then he stole in behind the woman who took her his words. Night was falling, the mist was still thick, and all was dark inside the blinds. The woman glanced back in dismay, and Her Highness slipped in horror through the panel on the north side of the room while the Commander, in successful pursuit, seized her robe to stop her. She got through herself, but her skirts trailed behind her, and since the panel did not lock from that side, she gave up trying to shut it and simply sat there shaking, bathed in perspiration. Her shocked gentlewomen had no idea what to do. His side had a lock catch, but that hardly helped, and he was not a man whom they could drag roughly away.

  “This is awful! My lord, I would never have thought it of you!” The woman was almost in tears.

  “Why should Her Highness find it shocking or especially distasteful of me to wait upon her this way? No doubt I am unworthy, but she has been acquainted with me for years.” With unruffled composure he began to speak of what so burdened his heart. Her Highness was in no mood to listen; instead, she only rued her folly and shuddered at the idea that that was what he thought of her. The very notion of a reply was beyond her.

  “You have all the cruelty of a little girl,” he complained. “Yes, I confess to the wanton crime of secret longings that my heart can no longer contain, but as for permitting myself any greater liberty, I would never do so without your leave. In what unbearable turmoil I find myself! I have had every right to expect you to understand my feelings in time, and yet you have so willfully ignored them and remained so cold that I am at my wits' end for any way to approach you. You may find my sentimenments alien and repellent, but I assure you that my only wish is to tell you clearly what they are, for it would be very bitter to allow them to languish and die. I respect you too highly to do otherwise, despite your unspeakable treatment of me.” He spoke with exaggerated consideration.

  He did not open the panel, even though she had it only very approximately closed. “To think that you insist on keeping no more than this between us!” He laughed. “It is touching!” Still, he indulged in no worse outrage. He had not been prepared for such sweet nobility and grace. She seemed to him very thin and frail, perhaps because she had been in mourning so long, and the elegantly casual sleeves of her at-home dress, which she had not been able to change, as well as their inviting fragrance, together made her so appealing that his mood softened.

  The night had grown late, and a mournful wind was blowing. Cricket songs, a stag's belling, the noise of the waterfall—all blended to such wild and stirring effect that the dullest simpleton would have lain sleepless under these skies, for the shutters were still up, and the setting moon that hung above the rim of the mountains gave the scene a quality too poignant not to call forth tears. “Your complete failure to understand my feelings has at least taught me how sadly your own heart lacks depth,” he went on. “I cannot imagine another man sharing my degree of foolish, reassuring innocence; anyone able to do as he wished would laugh at an idiot like me and then, as I understand it, would act to please himself. I cannot promise to control myself indefinitely, considering how deeply you despise me. You cannot possibly be this ignorant of life.”

  He tried every kind of argument and threat, which left her miserable and at an utter loss how to respond. Shocked by his repeated intimations that her experience of life should have prepared her to yield, she reflected that her position was indeed a very great misfortune, and she wanted to die. “Unhappy as I am, I acknowledge my own shortcomings, but I hardly know what to think of your extraordinary behavior,” she replied very low, weeping piteously.

  “Must I be the one, just because life has taught me all love's cruelty,

  to have my name soiled again by the sorrows of wet sleeves?”14

  she added under her breath; whereupon to her consternation he pieced the poem together15 and repeated it softly to himself. She wished that she had never said it.

  “Indeed, I was wrong to say what I did.” He added with a smile,

  “I am not the kind who would ever willingly clothe you in wet robes,

  but sleeves soaking even now can hardly protect your name.16

  You might as well resign yourself to it.” To her consternation he invited her out into the moonlight, and he drew her to him easily, despite her brave resistance. “Please acknowledge my singular devotion and feel at ease with me,” he pleaded. “Without your leave I would never, never…” He made himself painfully clear. Meanwhile dawn came on.

  A brilliant moon shone in from on high, undimmed by mist. To Her Highness the aisle's light eaves seemed very narrow indeed. In her dismay and embarrassment she felt as though she and the moon were face-to-face, and her efforts to evade its light revealed an inexpressible grace. The Commander began to speak quietly and decorously of the late Intendant, but still he expressed resentment that she should think himself the lesser man.

  She recalled silently how all concerned had approved the match, although the Intendant had not yet risen as high as he might, and how he had taken a very distressing attitude toward her when in the natural course of things she came to know him fully. It is not as though this outrage concerns no one else close to me, she reflected—what will His Excellency think when he hears about it? Quite apart from the world's commonplace censure, how will the news affect His Cloistered Eminence? The more she imagined the way those near her would feel, the more she despaired. I may remain adamant, but people will talk nonetheless, and although it would be wrong for my mother not to know, she wi
ll certainly condemn my thoughtlessness when she finds out. The very idea was distressing. “Do at least leave before dawn,” she said. She could think of nothing else.

  “You are too cruel! Imagine what the morning dew will think of me when I leave you as though something had really happened! I warn you, then: if you believe that you have me outwitted, and you will have no more to do with me now that I have shown myself to be a fool, I shall no longer be able to contain myself, and since I have never felt like this before, I cannot answer for what I may do.” He was worried, too. He did not want to go yet, but he knew that in truth he had never before been in such a passion. Concern for her and fear that he might come to despise himself moved him for both their sakes to leave while the mist would still hide him.

  He was desperate.

  “I must leave you now to make my way through many veils of thick morning mists

  through fields of reeds, soaking wet with dew dripping from the eaves,”

  he said. “You will not get that wet robe of yours dry either.17 It is your fault for insisting that I go.”

  Yes, she thought, her name would be bandied about shamefully enough, but she meant to answer her own heart's questions with honor, and she therefore gave him a very distant answer indeed:

  “Is this your excuse, that you must now make your way through such dewy fields,

  to oblige me after all to wear culpably wet robes?

  What a thing to say!” Her severity gave her an air at once daunting and delightful. He had long been more loyal to her than anyone else might have been and had been kind to her in countless ways, and now all that was gone. He had erred, and his wanton behavior filled him with such shame and compunction that he bitterly rued what he had done, and yet he feared that meek acquiescence might only make him look a fool again. He set off with his mind in turmoil. Heavy dews attended him all along the way.

  Unaccustomed as he was to such expeditions, he found this one both intriguing and despairing. If he went home, his wife would wonder suspiciously how he had got himself so wet, so he went instead to the northeast quarter of Rokujō. The morning mist was not yet gone, and his thoughts went to her house, where it must be thicker still. The women whispered among themselves about this unusual outing of his. He rested and changed his clothes. The lady there always had beautiful things ready for him, summer or winter, and he took them from a fragrant chest.18 After breakfast he went to see Genji.

  She never glanced at the letter he sent her. His suddenly outrageous behavior had shocked and embarrassed her. It was reprehensible. She burned with shame to think that her mother might learn what had happened, because even if her mother could hardly imagine anything of the kind, she might still notice something amiss, and besides, gossip always got out in the end; she could easily put one clue and another together and decide that her daughter had been keeping the truth from her—the very idea was so painful that she wished the women would tell her the whole story now, and never mind how hateful she thought it. Even for mother and daughter the two were unusually close. In the old tales, yes, a daughter might sometimes hide from her mother things that outsiders knew, but for Her Highness that was out of the question.

  “No, no,” the gentlewomen decided, “my lady would only be upset to hear a rumor that makes it seem as though something happened when really it did not, and that would be too bad.” The ones who longed to find out what came next were curious about the letter and impatient when Her Highness made no move to open it. “He will wonder about you, my lady, and he will think you quite childish if you do not answer him at all.” They opened it themselves.

  “I know it is my own fault that I had such extraordinary behavior inflicted on me when I least expected it, but I simply cannot get over his offensive lack of consideration,” Her Highness replied. “Answer him that I will not read it.” She lay back with a look of stern displeasure.

  However, there was nothing objectionable about the letter, because he had written it with great goodwill.

  “I have helplessly left my soul all entangled in your cruel sleeves,

  and through no fault but my own I remain vacant and lost.19

  My heart is elsewhere, as others have said before, I know, but it is true: I find my love everywhere.”20

  There seemed to be a great deal more, but they could not see it properly. Although it did not resemble an ordinary morning letter, they could not make out just what the matter was. Her Highness's mood aroused their pity, and they watched her sadly. What could it possibly be? He had been so kind to her in so many ways, and for so long—was it possible that this new kind of dependence on him had given her reason to think less well of him? It was very worrying, and the ones who served her intimately were quite upset.

  Meanwhile, the Haven knew nothing at all. The spirit's attacks were serious, but at times she was still perfectly lucid. At midday, when the noon prayers were over, the Master of Discipline remained alone with her, reading the darani. “The Buddha Dainichi21 never lies,” he said, pleased to find her so well. “How could such prayers as mine, offered wholeheartedly, fail to have their effect? The evil spirit is indeed stubborn, but it is only a poor phantom caught in its own karmic impediments.”22 His hoarse voice was vehement, and his manner awesomely holy and severe.

  “Oh, yes!” he said abruptly. “The Commander: how long has he been a regular caller here?”23

  Double doors

  “But he is not. He and the late Intendant were close friends, and he has visited us now and again for a long time so as to keep the promise he made then. He has certainly become a familiar presence, but he came this time purposely to inquire after my health, for which I am very grateful.”

  “Now, now, that will not do. You must not keep it from me. This morning, on the way to the late-night service, I saw a very imposing gentleman come out through the double doors to the west, and my monks told me it was the Commander, although the mist was too thick for me to recognize him myself; they all said that he sent his carriage back yesterday evening and spent the night. The intense fragrance that lingered behind him on the air—it practically gave me a headache—convinced me that it must indeed have been he, since he is always perfumed that way. This is not good at all. He is highly accomplished, and at Her Late Highness's24 request I have performed rites for him ever since he was a boy, so I would gladly do anything proper for him, but this is unfortunate, to say the least. His wife is a woman to reckon with. Her family is extremely distinguished and has great influence, and she has given him seven or eight children. Her Highness cannot possibly stand beside her. This is exactly the sort of sin that leads to birth in an evil female body and endless wandering in the darkness of eternal night: that is the terrible retribution it calls down. She will suffer for it if his wife is ever angry with her. No, no, I cannot accept it.” He shook his head.

  “I do not know what you are talking about,” the Haven replied to this rush of plain speech. “Why, he has never shown any sign of such intentions. I was not feeling at all well, and he therefore waited here quietly for me to be able to receive him—that is what my women say, so I suppose that must be why he stayed on. He is always ever so serious and correct.” However, in her heart of hearts she wondered despite these assurances whether it might not be true. He has sometimes seemed a bit excited, she thought, but his manner is so intelligent and he is so obviously eager to avoid doing anything to provoke criticism that I have trusted him not to take any liberties. Perhaps he went straight in when he saw that there was practically nobody with her.

  Once the Master of Discipline had gone, she summoned Koshōshō and told her what she had just heard. “What happened? And why has she not told me? Not that I can believe it is true.”

  With great regret Koshōshō described to her exactly what had happened, including the letter this morning and the veiled statements made by Her Highness. “I suppose that all he meant to do was to let her know what he had kept shut up in his heart over the years,” she said. “Fortunately, he was disp
osed to restrain himself, and he left before it was day. Who can have told you, my lady?” The Master of Discipline had never occurred to her; she assumed that it must have been one of the women.

  The Haven said nothing, but she was shocked, and tears began streaming down her cheeks. Koshōshō was deeply sorry to see them. She wondered why she had ever told the plain truth and feared that her mistress's health would be more than ever affected. “The panel was locked, though,” she insisted soothingly.

  “Whether it was or not, it is disastrous that she should so imprudently have let him see her. Never mind how pure she may know herself to be: do you suppose that after talking so much already, the monks and the rascals who serve them will really say no more about it? What will gossip make of it? What lies will people invent? You are such innocents, the lot of you!” She could not go on, because this new crisis, added to her already painful condition, had put her in a thoroughly pathetic state. She who had always aspired to uphold her daughter's pride suffered profoundly to think that her daughter would now be known for her light and wanton ways. “Please ask her to come to me while my mind is more or less clear. I know that I should go to her, but I am afraid that I cannot move. I feel as though it is so long since I last saw her!” There were tears in her eyes.

  Koshōshō did as bidden. Her Highness tidied up the wet, tangled hair at her forehead and changed out of her torn shift in preparation for going, but she could not immediately find the strength to do so. What did the women think of her? How cruel my mother will feel I have been if she does not know yet, and she hears only some of the story later on! The thought filled her with shame, and she lay down again. “I feel extremely ill,” she said, “and it might just be for the better if it turns out that I do not recover. The vapors seem to have come up from my feet.”25 She had them massaged down again. The vapors had risen because of her intense distress.