The Tale of Genji, Page 94

  “Someone has already spoken to my lady,” Koshōshō explained, “and when she asked me what it was all about, I told her exactly what happened, except that I added a bit about the sliding panel having been locked. Please tell her the same thing, my lady, if you tell her about it yourself.” She said nothing about how hard the Haven had taken the news.

  Then that was it! Her Highness was miserable, and drops spilled from the pillow where she lay in silence. And this is not all, since I have done nothing but cause her grief ever since that first, unforeseen change in my fortunes.26 I cannot now feel that my life is worth living. It will end painfully and badly if this gentleman refuses to give up and continues to insist on pursuing me. And just imagine what damage my reputation might have suffered if I had weakly given him his will! That thought, at least, was a comfort, but she despaired of the detestable fate that had led so great a lady as herself carelessly to expose herself to a man's gaze.

  Toward evening Her Highness received another appeal from her mother to come and see her, and so she had the retreat between them opened and stepped through.27 The Haven greeted her despite her suffering with great affection and respect, sitting up and observing every customary mark of politeness. “I am so sorry that my poor health should oblige you to come to me,” she said. “It feels like ages since we last met, although it is really only two or three days. I know that it is foolish of me, but you know, this may be the last time you and I are together, and what good will it do us to meet again only in a future life?28 How I now wish that I had never allowed affection to bind me to this one, when I must leave it so soon!” She was weeping.

  Her Highness was too weighed down by her sorrows to do more than watch in silence. Too profoundly reserved by nature ever to speak up in her own defense, she merely sat there in shame, and her mother refrained out of pity from questioning her. She quickly had a lamp lit and meal trays brought in. Having heard that her daughter was not eating, she did what she could to encourage her, but Her Highness would not touch anything. The only ray of comfort for her was that her mother seemed a little better.

  Another letter arrived. Someone unfamiliar with the circumstances received it and announced a letter from the Commander for Koshōshō. Her Highness's heart sank. Koshōshō took it. “What does it say?” the Haven allowed herself to ask. Privately, she had begun to accept the idea after all and had been expecting the Commander's visit, and she was troubled by his apparent failure to appear. “You must answer it, you know,” she said. “You have no choice. No one speaks up to redress a reputation. You yourself may know that you are pure, but hardly anyone will ever believe it. The best thing would be to correspond nicely with him and to go on with him as before. Not to answer would only seem like provocation on your part.” She asked for the letter, and most unwillingly Koshōshō gave it to her.

  “Experiencing the full force of your cruelty has only confirmed me in the conviction that I shall soon be in no mood to tolerate further delay.

  Your damming the stream only betrays your shallows, for the mountain brook

  even now runs babbling on, till nothing can hide your name.”29

  It was a long letter, but she did not read it all. It, too,30 failed to make his intentions clear, and his insufferable self-satisfaction, together with his indifference this evening,31 struck her as extremely offensive. It is thoroughly disappointing, she reflected, when the late Intendant's devotion fell short of what one might have hoped, and despite the reassurance of knowing that she did not actually have any rival, her position was never a pleasant one. This is dreadful, though. I wonder what they can be saying at His Excellency's.

  She resolved to press the Commander further. Wiping eyes dimmed by illness, she wrote as though in the strange tracks of a bird, “Her Highness is with me now, since the state of my health gives reason for concern, and I have urged her to send you an answer; but she is so downcast that the sight is more than I can bear.

  What is it to you, this meadow where a forlorn maidenflower weeps,

  that you should have wished to spend no more than a single night?”32

  That was all she could manage; she twisted the ends33 and sent it off. Just then, as she lay there, she had a very severe attack. Her women cried out that the spirit must have purposely put them off their guard. All the tested healers again raised their clamor. The women urged Her Highness to leave, but she had no wish to survive her mother, and she refused.

  The Commander, who had returned to Sanjō34 at about midday, had refrained from going back that very evening because it would start premature and unfortunate gossip to leave the impression that something had really happened. His distress was great enough to be a thousand times worse than anything he had been through in the last few years. His wife had heard a little about his stealthy expedition and did not like the news at all, but she feigned ignorance and lay down in her day sitting room, where she distracted herself by playing with her children.

  Kumoi no Kari steals a letter

  The Haven's answer came in the evening. The writing was so unusual that he could not immediately make it out and drew up a lamp for a better look. His wife had seemed to be safely behind a curtain, but she now slipped up to him and seized it from behind.

  “Oh, no! What are you doing? You should be ashamed of yourself! It is from the lady in the northeast at Rokujō. She was suffering from a cold this morning. I was worried about her because I came straight home from seeing His Grace, so I sent to ask how she is. Read it if you like! Does it look like a love letter? What a way to behave! It is infuriating, the way you treat me more like an idiot with every passing year! My feelings mean nothing to you, do they!”

  He showed no visible alarm and did not try to snatch it back, so even though she kept it, she did not read it immediately after all. “If anyone is treating anyone more and more like an idiot, I should say it is you!” she retorted, dampened by his composure, in such a delightfully youthful manner that he laughed.

  “Either way, then! Quarrels like this happen all the time anyway. What must be unique is a husband who seeks no diversion elsewhere, even after he reaches a certain level of prominence, but remains as tremulously faithful to his one and only wife as a hawk to his mate.35 People must be laughing their heads off at me. It is hardly to your credit, either, that you command such loyalty from anyone so dull. What really sets off a woman is to stand out among a range of others and be honored above them all. It keeps her young at heart, too, and it prolongs all the pleasures and tender moments of life. I am very sorry that you have an old fool like me hanging on to you, the way that one did in the story!36 What pleasure is there in that?” The only object of this speech was somehow to get the letter out of her after all, without seeming to care whether he did or not.

  “It is a bit hard on your old woman if you are out for pleasure,” she said with a dazzling smile. “This new gaiety of yours is strange to me. I am not used to it, and it upsets me. You should have accustomed me to it sooner.” It was rather a fetching complaint.

  “Where on earth did you get the idea I have suddenly changed? You are so quick to nurse a grudge! Somebody must have been telling you unpleasant rumors— no doubt someone who for some reason never approved of me in the first place. I expect that she invokes those miserable light blue sleeves of mine37 even now to convince you. She must whisper all sorts of awful things. There is someone else, though, who has nothing to do with any of this, and I feel sorry for her, too.”38 He talked on this way, but he was too certain of eventual success really to argue the matter. Her nurse, Taifu, listened in pained silence.39

  The Commander made no effort to look for the letter, since his wife had hidden it after their little spat, and he went to bed as though it made no difference to him. His heart was racing. It had seemed to be from the Haven; he simply had to get it back. What could the matter possibly be? He lay there wide-eyed. Once his wife was asleep, he felt casually around where she had sat during the evening, but it was not there. This was extremely
annoying, because she could not have hidden it anywhere else. He did not get up immediately when daybreak came, and only started hunting everywhere, as though he had just woken up, after the children woke her and she slipped out.40 He could not find it. She had decided that it was not a love letter and so had dismissed it, since he seemed so little interested in searching for it himself, and what with all the children's commotion—their busy games dressing and playing with their dolls, their reading and writing practice, and so on, as well as the baby crawling around tugging at her skirts—the letter she had taken had slipped her mind completely. Her husband meanwhile could think of nothing else. He considered replying immediately but then hesitated, because his answer would probably show that he had not read yesterday's properly, and she might assume that he had lost it.

  It was near midday, after their meal, when his anxiety got the better of him. “What did you do with that letter yesterday evening? You never let me read it at all, you know. I should get in touch with her today, too. I do not feel up to visiting Rokujō, though—well, I shall send a note. I wonder what it was about.”

  He spoke with such apparent lack of interest that she said nothing, since by now she felt foolish for having taken it at all. “Why not give her an amusing excuse about not feeling quite well because you let the mountain wind get at you the other night?” she suggested.

  “Please do not always talk such nonsense. What is so amusing about that? It is embarrassing, the way you make me out to be just like anyone else. For all I know, these women can hardly hear you without a rueful smile, talking as you do about someone so hopelessly dull.”

  After this banter he returned to the subject. “That letter, though—where is it?” When she still made no move to produce it, he continued chatting and then lay down a little41 until sunset.

  He awoke to the singing of cicadas and thought how thick the mist must be below the hills. What a miserable business! Impatient to reply at least today, he casually ground some ink and then sat wondering vacantly how to explain what had happened to the letter. Then he noticed a slight bulge near the back of his cushion and decided that he might as well have a look. When he turned up the cushion, there it was: she must have slipped it in there! Feeling both pleased and silly, he read it with a smile, only to discover how disturbing it was. His heart sank. It really hurt to see that she had pointedly brought up that single night. How she must have watched and waited for me yesterday evening! And today again I have not even managed to get a letter to her! His dismay was indescribable. The letter, which was pitifully difficult to decipher, had clearly cost her a great effort. She must have written this in terrible anguish, and now I have failed her for a second night! He was at a loss for words and very angry indeed with his wife. This nonsense of hers, hiding it that way—why, I must not have trained her properly! He blamed himself bitterly for many things and all in all felt very close to tears.

  He made ready to set off straightaway, but he knew that despite what her mother had written she would not willingly receive him. What to do? Besides, he reminded himself, today is a pitfall day,42 and it might not be a good idea even if she did give in. I must think of something better. His punctiliousness was showing.

  He hastened to compose his reply. “Your rare letter has pleased me greatly for many reasons, but I do not understand your reproach, and I wonder what you may have heard.

  Yes, I went to her through the dense and tangled growth of autumn meadows,

  but I made no pillow there to rest on in fleeting sleep.43

  It may make little sense for me to seek to excuse myself, but I hope that I may explain my delinquency of yesterday.” After writing to Her Highness at great length, he had a swift horse from his stables saddled and dispatched the Commissioner of the other night. “Tell them I have been at Rokujō since yesterday evening and have only just come home,” he whispered to the man.

  When that day, too, ended in the hills without any answer to the letter that the Haven, angrily careless of rumor, had felt compelled to write by the Commander's failure to appear the evening before, she despaired of him. With every hope dashed, she lapsed from her recent respite back into acute suffering. Privately, Her Highness was neither surprised nor particularly upset, and although she regretted having exposed herself so unexpectedly under intimate circumstances, she did not take the outcome that hard; instead, the agony she had caused her mother filled her with such shame that she could not offer a word in her own defense. Her mother found her unusually bashful, guilty manner very painful, and she grieved with all her heart to see care piled for her this way upon care.

  “I have no wish to dwell on an unhappy subject,” she said, “but I must say that although your destiny has undoubtedly played its part in all this, your surprising naiveté is likely to earn you considerable disapproval. There is no help for it now, but please be more careful in the future. Of course I myself hardly matter, but having done for you what I could, I trusted that by now you must know what you need to know and that you must have made your own sense of the vagaries to which life subjects us, whereas to my dismay I find you still a girl and so lacking in the firmness you require that I only wish I had a little longer to live. It is unfortunately true that no woman of respectable standing can decently give herself to two men, even as a commoner, and you can still less afford to allow one to approach you this way. It was your destiny, I suppose, but it saddened me to see what those years were like for you. His Eminence himself had consented, the gentleman's father was plainly disposed to agree, and I yielded because I did not see how I could very well hold out alone. I could only complain before Heaven when I saw you caught after that, through no fault of your own, in so distressing a position. Now I am afraid that there will be new rumors damaging to both sides. Well, as long as you ignore the gossip and keep up perfectly ordinary appearances, I expect that time will do the rest— though I must say, he seems to be most extraordinarily callous!” Her tears flowed freely.

  She had not allowed Her Highness a single word, nor did Her Highness have any with which to defend herself; she merely wept, looking as she did so the picture of innocence and sweetness. Her mother gazed at her. “Alas,” she said, “what is it that makes you worth less than anyone else? What destiny requires you to suffer so?”

  She talked on like this until she became acutely ill. The spirit had seized upon her weakness: suddenly, she fainted away and began to grow cold. The Master of Discipline arose in agitation and prayed noisily. He did so with all his heart, because after swearing to confine himself for life to the Mountain, he surely dreaded the shame of breaking up his altar44 and returning there, now that he had bravely left, and he must have been angry with the Buddha, too. Her Highness wept in utter misery.

  The Commander's letter arrived in the midst of this confusion, and the Haven knew when she heard of it that they could not expect him that evening either. How cruelly people will be talking about her! Why did I ever write as I did?45 Amid such thoughts as these, she breathed her last that very moment. “Undeserved” and “cruel” are pale words for such a passing. She had suffered from this spirit off and on in the past, and since this was not the first time she had seemed lost, the monks redoubled their prayers on the assumption that it had taken her as before. However, there could be no doubt that now she really was gone.

  Her Highness's only thought was to go, too, and she lay close beside her. Her women came. “It is too late, my lady,” they protested tritely. “This is her last journey, and she cannot come back from it. How could you possibly follow her as you wish?”

  “No, my lady, you must not!46 It is a grave offense for you both! Oh, please leave her!” They tried dragging her away, but she was as though rigid and unconscious. The priests broke up their altar and drifted off, leaving behind the few still needed.47 It was all over, and only grief and desolation remained.

  Messages of condolence soon began to arrive. The Commander was astonished by the news and wrote immediately. Many other expressions of sorr
ow came from Rokujō, His Excellency, and elsewhere. His Eminence on his mountain learned of the event as well, and he wrote his daughter a very touching letter. Not until it came did she raise her head at last. “I was told often enough during the past days that your mother was gravely ill,” he had written, “but I regret to say that I assumed it to be her usual complaint, and I gave the matter little thought. Quite apart from our mutual loss, it pains me deeply to imagine how you must be grieving. Please take comfort from the thought that such misfortunes visit us all.” Through the tears that blinded her she wrote him a reply.

  The Haven had often spoken of what she wanted done, and her nephew, the Governor of Yamato,48 now arrived to see to all the arrangements for the funeral, which was to take place without delay, that very day. Her Highness wished to contemplate the remains a little longer, but there would be no comfort in that, and the preparations therefore went forward in haste. At the most upsetting moment49 the Commander arrived.

  He vividly realized how deeply Her Highness must be grieving. “The next several days are all wrong,50 you see,” he had declared for everyone to hear.

  “But, my lord, there is no need for you to go there in such haste!” his women had protested.

  Nevertheless, he went.

  It was a long way, and he was overwhelmed, as soon as he entered, by the immediacy of the tragedy. The ceremony itself was discreetly hidden behind curtains. They admitted him to the west side of the house, and the Governor of Yamato emerged in tears to thank him for coming. He sat on the veranda beside the double doors, leaned against the railing, and called for a gentlewoman, but they were too upset just then to know what was going on. Koshōshō came at last, somewhat comforted by his arrival. He could not speak. He was not usually given to tears, but the character of the setting and the atmosphere of mourning so powerfully conveyed by those around him sadly reminded him that the passing away of all things touched him as well.