The Tale of Genji

mple in the northern hills, someone reported, there lived a sage who was a most accomplished worker of cures. “During the epidemic last su

nd grasses which he could not identify spread like a tapestry before him. The deer that now paused to feed by the house and now wandered on were for him a strange and wonderful sight. He quite forgot his illness. Though it was not easy for the sage to leave his retreat, he made his way down for final services. His husky voice, emerging uncertainly from a toothless mouth, had behind it long years of discipline, and the mystic incantations suggested deep and awesome powers.An escort arrived from the city, delighted to see Genji so improved, and a message was delivered from his father. The bishop had a breakfast of unfamiliar fruits and berries brought from far down in the valley.“I have vowed to stay in these mountains until the end of the year, and cannot see you home.” He pressed wine upon Genji. “And so a holy vow has the perverse effect of inspiring regrets.”“I hate to leave your mountains and streams, but my father seems worried and I must obey his summons. I shall come again before the cherry blossoms have fallen.“I shall say to my city friends:‘Make haste to seeThose mountain blossoms. The winds may see them first.’”His manner and voice were beautiful beyond description.The bishop replied:“In thirty hundreds of years it blooms but once.My eyes have seen it, and spurn these mountain cherries.”“A very great rarity indeed,” Genji said, smiling, “a blossom with so long and short a span.”The sage offered a verse of thanks as Genji filled his cup:“My mountain door of pine has opened brieflyTo see a radiant flower not seen before.”There were tears in his eyes. His farewell present was a sacred mace which had special protective powers. The bishop too gave farewell presents: a rosary of carved ebony which Prince Shōtoku had obtained in Korea, still in the original Chinese box, wrapped in a netting and attached to a branch of cinquefoil pine; several medicine bottles of indigo decorated with sprays of cherry and wisteria and the like; and other gifts as well, all of them appropriate to the mountain setting. Genji’s escort had brought gifts for the priests who had helped with the services, the sage himself and the rest, and for all the mountain rustics too. And so Genji started out.The bishop went to the inner apartments to tell his sister of Genji’s proposal.“It is very premature. If in four or five years he has not changed his mind we can perhaps give it some thought.”The bishop agreed, and passed her words on without comment.Much disappointed, Genji sent in a poem through an acolyte:“Having come upon an evening blossom,The mist is loath to go with the morning sun.”She sent back:“Can we believe the mist to be so reluctant?We shall watch the morning sky for signs of truth.”It was in a casual, cursive style, but the hand was a distinguished one.He was about to get into his carriage when a large party arrived from the house of his father-in-law, protesting the skill with which he had eluded them. Several of his brothers-in-law, including the oldest, Tō no Chūjō, were among them.“You know very well that this is the sort of expedition we like best. You could at least have told us. Well, here we are, and we shall stay and enjoy the cherries you have discovered.”They took seats on the moss below the rocks and wine was brought out.1t was a pleasant spot, beside cascading waters. Tō no Chūjō took out a flute, and one of his brothers, marking time with a fan, sang “To the West of the Toyora Temple.” They were handsome young men, all of them, but it was the ailing Genji whom everyone was looking at, so handsome a figure as he leaned against a rock that he brought a shudder of apprehension. Always in such a company there is an adept at the flageolet, and a fancier of the shō pipes as well.The bishop brought out a seven-stringed Chinese koto and pressed Genji to play it. “Just one tune, to give our mountain birds a pleasant surprise.”Genji protested that he was altogether too unwell, but he played a passable tune all the same. And so they set forth. The nameless priests and acolytes shed tears of regret, and the aged nuns within, who had never before seen such a fine gentleman, asked whether he might not be a visitor from another world.“How can it be,” said the bishop, brushing away a tear, “that such a one has been born into the confusion and corruption in which we live?”The little girl too thought him very grand. “Even handsomer than Father,” she said.“So why don’t you be his little girl?”She nodded, accepting the offer; and her favorite doll, the one with the finest wardrobe, and the handsomest gentleman in her pictures too were thereupon named “Genji.”Back in the city, Genji first reported to his father upon his excursion. The emperor had never before seen him in such coarse dress.He asked about the qualifications of the sage, and Genji replied in great detail.“I must see that he is promoted. Such a remarkable record and I had not even heard of him.”Genji’s father-in-law, the Minister of the Left, chanced to be in attendance. “I thought of going for you, but you did after all go off in secret. Suppose you have a few days’ rest at Sanjō. I will go with you, immediately.”Genji was not enthusiastic, but he left with his father-in-law all the same. The minister had his own carriage brought up and insisted that Genji get in first. This solicitude rather embarrassed him.At the minister’s Sanjō mansion everything was in readiness. It had been polished and refitted until it was a jeweled pavilion, perfect to the last detail. As always, Genji’s wife secluded herself in her private apartments, and it was only at her father’s urging that she came forth; and so Genji had her before him, immobile, like a princess in an illustration for a romance. It would have been a great pleasure, he was sure, to have her comment even tartly upon his account of the mountain journey. She seemed the stiffest, remotest person in the world. How odd that the aloofness seemed only to grow as time went by.“It would be nice, I sometimes think, if you could be a little more wifely. I have been very ill, and I am hurt, but not really surprised, that you have not inquired after my health.”“Like the pain, perhaps, of awaiting a visitor who does not come?”She cast a sidelong glance at him as she spoke, and her cold beauty was very intimidating indeed.“You so rarely speak to me, and when you do you say such unpleasant things. ‘A visitor who does not come’— that is hardly an appropriate way to describe a husband, and indeed it is hardly civil. I try this approach and I try that, hoping to break through, but you seem intent on defending all the approaches. Well, one of these years, perhaps, if I live long enough.”He withdrew to the bedchamber. She did not follow. Though there were things he would have liked to say, he lay down with a sigh. He closed his eyes, but there was too much on his mind to permit sleep.He thought of the little girl and how he would like to see her grown into a woman. Her grandmother was of course right when she said that the girl was still too young for him. He must not seem insistent. And yet — was there not some way to bring her quietly to Nijō and have her beside him, a comfort and a companion? prince Hyōbu was a dashing and stylish man, but no one could have called him remarkably handsome. Why did the girl so take after her aunt? perhaps because aunt and father were children of the same empress. These thoughts seemed to bring the girl closer, and he longed to have her for his own.The next day he wrote to the nun. He would also seem to have communicated his thoughts in a casual way to the bishop. To the nun he said:“I fear that, taken somewhat aback by your sternness, I did not express myself very well. I find strength in the hope that something of the resolve demanded of me to write this letter will have conveyed itself to you.”With it was a tightly folded note for the girl:“The mountain blossoms are here beside me still.All of myself I left behind with them.“I am fearful of what the night winds might have done.”The writing, of course, and even the informal elegance of the folding, quite dazzled the superannuated woman who received the letter. Somewhat overpowering, thought the grandmother.She finally sent back: “I did not take your farewell remarks seriously; and now so soon to have a letter from you — I scarcely know how to reply. She cannot even write’Naniwa’ properly, and how are we to expect that she give you a proper answer?“Brief as the time till the autumn tempests comeTo scatter the flowers — so brief your thoughts of her.“I am deeply troubled.”The bishop’s answer was in the same vein. Two or three days later Genji sent Koremitsu off to the northern hills.“There is her nurse, the woman called Shōnagon. Have a good talk with her.”How very farsighted, thought Koremitsu, smiling at the thought of the girl they had seen that evening.The bishop said that he was much honored to be in correspondence with Genji. Koremitsu was received by Shōnagon, and described Genji’s apparent state of mind in great detail. He was a persuasive young man and he made a convincing case, but to the nun and the others this suit for the hand of a mere child continued to seem merely capricious. Genji’s letter was warm and earnest. There was a note too for the girl:“Let me see your first exercises at the brush.“No Shallow Spring, this heart of mine, believe me.And why must the mountain spring then seem so distant?”This was the nun’s reply:“You drink at the mountain stream, your thoughts turn elsewhere.Do you hope to see the image you thus disturb?”Koremitsu’s report was no more encouraging. Shōnagon had said that they would be returning to the city when the nun was a little stronger and would answer him then.Fujitsubo was ill and had gone home to her family. Genji managed a sympathetic thought or two for his lonely father, but his thoughts were chiefly on the possibility of seeing Fujitsubo. He quite halted his visits to other ladies. All through the day, at home and at court, he sat gazing off into space, and in the evening he would press Omyōbu to be his intermediary. How she did it I do not know; but she contrived a meeting. It is sad to have to say that his earlier attentions, so unwelcome, no longer seemed real, and the mere thought that they had been successful was for Fujitsubo a torment. Determined that there would not be another meeting, she was shocked to find him in her presence again. She did not seek to hide her distress, and her efforts to turn him away delighted him even as they put him to shame. There was no one else quite like her. In that fact was his undoing: he would be less a prey to longing if he could find in her even a trace of the ordinary. And the tumult of thoughts and feelings that now assailed him — he would have liked to consign it to the Mountain of Obscurity. It might have been better, he sighed, so short was the night, if he had not come at all.“So few and scattered the nights, so few the dreams.Would that the dream tonight might take me with it.”He was in tears, and she did, after all, have to feel sorry for him.“Were I to disappear in the last of dreamsWould yet my name live on in infamy?”She had every right to be unhappy, and he was sad for her. Omyōbu gathered his clothes and brought them out to him.Back at Nijō he spent a tearful day in bed. He had word from Omyōbu that her lady had not read his letter. So it always was, and yet he was hurt. He remained in distraught seclusion for several days. The thought that his father might be wondering about his absence filled him with terror.Lamenting the burden of sin that seemed to be hers, Fujitsubo was more and more unwell, and could not bestir herself, despite repeated messages summoning her back to court. She was not at all her usual self — and what was to become of her? She took to her bed as the weather turned warmer. Three months had now passed and her condition was clear; and the burden of sin now seemed to have made it necessary that she submit to curious and reproving stares. Her women thought her behavior very curious indeed. Why had she let so much time pass without informing the emperor? There was of course a crucial matter of which she spoke to no one. Ben, the daughter of her old nurse, and Omyōbu, both of whom were very close to her and attended her in the bath, had ample opportunity to observe her condition. Omyōbu was aghast. Her lady had been trapped by the harshest of fates. The emperor would seem to have been informed that a malign spirit had possession of her, and to have believed the story, as did the court in general. He sent a constant stream of messengers, which terrified her and allowed no pause in her sufferings.Genji had a strange, rather awful dream. He consulted a soothsayer, who said that it portended events so extraordinary as to be almost unthinkable.“It contains bad omens as well. You must be careful.”“It was not my own dream but a friend’s. We will see whether it comes true, and in the meantime you must keep it to yourself.”What could it mean? He heard of Fujitsubo’s condition, thought of their night together, and wondered whether the two might be related. He exhausted his stock of pleas for another meeting. Horrified that matters were so out of hand, Omyōbu could do nothing for him. He had on rare occasions had a brief note, no more than a line or two; but now even these messages ceased coming.Fujitsubo returned to court in the Seventh Month. The emperor’s affection for her had only grown in her absence. Her condition was now apparent to everyone. A slight emaciation made her beauty seem if anything nearer perfection, and the emperor kept her always at his side. The skies as autumn approached called more insistently for music. Keeping Genji too beside him, the emperor had him try his hand at this and that instrument. Genji struggled to control himself, but now and then a sign of his scarcely bearable feelings did show through, to remind the lady of what she wanted more than anything to forget.Somewhat improved, the nun had returned to the city. Genji had someone make inquiry about her residence and wrote from time to time. It was natural that her replies should show no lessening of her opposition, but it did not worry Genji as it once had. He had more considerable worries. His gloom was deeper as autumn came to a close. One beautiful moonlit night he collected himself for a visit to a place he had been visiting in secret. A cold, wintry shower passed. The address was in Rokujō, near the eastern limits of the city, and since he had set out from the palace the way seemed a long one. He passed a badly neglected house, the garden dark with ancient trees.“The inspector’s house,” said Koremitsu, who was always with him. “I called there with a message not long ago. The old lady has declined so shockingly that they can’t think what to do for her.”“You should have told me. I should have looked in on her. Ask, please, if she will see me.”Koremitsu sent a man in with the message.The women had not been expecting a caller, least of all such a grand one. For some days the old lady had seemed beyond helping, and they feared that she would be unable to receive him. But they could hardly turn such a gentleman away — and so a cushion was put out for him in the south room.“My lady says that she fears you will find it cluttered and dirty, but she is determined at least to thank you for coming. You must find the darkness and gloom unlike anything you have known.”And indeed he could not have denied that he was used to something rather different.“You have been constantly on my mind, but your reserve has it difficult for me to call. I am sorry that I did not know sooner of illness.”“I have been ill for a very long time, but in this last extremity — it was good of him to come.” He caught the sad, faltering tones as she gave the message to one of her women. “I am sorry that I cannot receive him properly. As for the matter he has raised, I hope that he will still count the child among those important to him when she is no longer a child. The thought of leaving her uncared for must, I fear, create obstacles along the road I yearn to travel. But tell him, please, how good it was of him. I wish the child were old enough to thank him too.”“Can you believe,” he sent back, “that I would put myself in this embarrassing position if I were less than serious? There must be a bond between us, that I should have been so drawn to her since I first heard of her. It all seems so strange. The beginnings of it must have been in a different world. I will feel that I have come in vain if I cannot hear the sound of her young voice.”“She is asleep. She did not of course know that you were coming.”But just then someone came scampering into the room. “Grandmother, they say the gentleman we saw at the temple is here. Why don’t you go out and talk to him?”The women tried to silence her.“But why? She said the very sight of him made her feel better. I heardThough much amused, Genji pretended not to hear. After proper statements of sympathy he made his departure. Yes, she did seem little more than an infant. He would be her teacher.The next day he sent a letter inquiring after the old lady, and with it a tightly folded note for the girl:“Seeking to follow the call of the nestling craneThe open boat is lost among the reeds.“And comes again and again to you?”He wrote it in a childish hand, which delighted the women. The child was to model her own hand upon it, no detail changed, they said.Shōnagon sent a very sad answer: “It seems doubtful that my lady, after whom you were so kind as to inquire, will last the day. We are on the point of sending her off to the mountains once more. I know that she will thank you from another world.”In the autumn evening, his thoughts on his unattainable love, he longed more than ever, unnatural though the wish may have seemed, for the company of the little girl who sprang from the same roots. The thought of the evening when the old nun had described herself as dew holding back from the heavens made him even more impatient — and at the same time he feared that if he were to bring the girl to Nijō he would be disappointed in her.“I long to have it, to bring it in from the moor,The lavender that shares its roots with another.”In the Tenth Month the emperor was to visit the Suzaku palace. -->From all the great families and the middle and upper courtly ranks the most accomplished musicians and dancers were selected to go with him, and grandees and princes of the blood were busy at the practice that best suited their talents. Caught up in the excitement, Genji was somewhat remiss in inquiring after the nun.When, finally, he sent off a messenger to the northern hills, a sad reply came from the bishop: “We lost her toward the end of last month. It is the way of the world, I know, and yet I am sad.”If the news shocked even him into a new awareness of evanescence, thought Genji, how must it be for the little girl who had so occupied the nun’s thoughts? Young though she was, she must feel utterly lost. He remembered, though dimly how it had been when his mother died, and he sent off an earnest letter of sympathy. Shōnagon’s answer seemed rather war