The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji)

by Murasaki Shikibu

  Genji himself had a dream so strange that he summoned a dream reader. In answer to his questions he received an interpretation beyond the bounds of all plausibility.

  “I see, too, my lord, that you are to suffer a reverse and that something will require the most urgent caution.”

  Genji was troubled. “It is not my own dream. I have only described someone else's. Say not a word about it until it comes true.”

  He was wondering what it all meant when he heard about Her Highness and realized that he probably knew what the matter was. But despite his pleas, now more passionate than ever, Ōmyōbu was too cowed by fear and guilt to contrive anything for him. His love's rare, one-line replies to his letters now stopped altogether.

  She did not return to the palace until the seventh month. His Majesty, whose love was extraordinary, showed her renewed affection. A new roundness of figure and a face wasted by suffering gave her now a truly peerless beauty. As usual His Majesty spent all his time in her rooms, and since it was the season for music, he was always summoning Genji to attend him and perform on the kin or the flute. Genji struggled to conceal his feelings, but whenever he failed and betrayed a hint of his torment, Her Highness was overcome, despite her best efforts, by a host of disturbing thoughts.

  The nun at the mountain temple had recovered well enough to come down to the City. Genji discovered where she lived and sent her frequent messages. Not unnaturally, her position remained unchanged, and what with the more absorbing sorrows that had overtaken him during the last few months, he had no latitude to think of anything else.

  Late that autumn he was feeling very reduced and disheartened. One beautifully moonlit night he had at last made up his mind to visit a lady he had been seeing in secret when the weather turned and a cold rain began to fall. He was bound for the vicinity of Rokujō and Kyōgoku54 far, to his mind, since he was coming from the palace—when he caught sight of an unkempt house amid the darkness of ancient trees.

  “That is the house of the late Inspector Grand Counselor,” explained Koremitsu, who was with him as always. “I happened to call there the other day, and they told me that my lady the nun is very weak now, and they hardly know what to do.”

  “What sad news! I should really have called on her before. Why did they not let me know? Do go in and convey my greetings.”

  Koremitsu sent a man to tell the household of Genji's arrival, instructing him to say that Genji had come purposely to call. The man therefore announced when he entered that His Lordship had been pleased to pay them a visit.

  “This is most unfortunate!” The women were startled. “For days now my lady's health has been a great worry, and she is in no condition to receive him.” They could not just send him away, though, so they tidied up the south aisle room and invited him in. “This is most unworthy accommodation, my lord, but my lady wishes at least to thank you. It is unfortunately a very dreary room in which to receive you on so unexpected a visit.”55 Genji agreed that the room was indeed unusual for such an occasion.

  “I have often thought of calling on you,” he began, “but you have always given me so little hope that in the end I refrained. Your illness, of which I had not heard, troubles me very much.”

  The nun replied, “It is very good indeed of you to look in upon me now that I, who have never been a stranger to failing health, am at last nearing my end, and I apologize for not speaking to you myself. Do by all means approach her once she is no longer a child, if it happens that you remain disposed as you are now. I am afraid that leaving her this way without a protector may well hinder my progress on the path I so long to take.”56

  She was so near that Genji now and then caught her feeble voice. “There is every reason to be grateful for his interest, you know,” she was saying. “If only our little girl were just old enough to thank him properly!”57

  He was moved to answer, “But why would I exhibit my immodesty this way if I had taken only a passing fancy to her? There is an unfathomable bond between her and me, and my heart went out to her the moment I saw her—indeed, with such uncanny speed that I cannot believe this tie to be from this life alone.” And he continued, “I understand that any further pleading would be wasted, but if I might possibly just hear the sound of her voice…”

  “But, my lord, she does not know you are here, and she is in bed!”

  Just then footsteps approached from the depths of the house, and a little girl's voice called, “Grandma, they say Lord Genji is here, the gentleman at the mountain temple! Why are you not looking at him?”58

  “Hush!” said the shocked women.

  “But she said seeing him made her feel so much better!”

  This was welcome news, but in consideration for the women's embarrassment Genji pretended despite his pleasure not to have heard, and he brought his visit to a correct conclusion before leaving. Yes, he thought, she really is just a little girl, but I will teach her properly.

  The next day he sent the nun a courteous note with as usual a smaller one, tightly folded, inside it:

  “Ever since these ears listened to that single cry from the little crane,

  I have despaired that my boat should be caught among the reeds.

  ‘And ever to that same love…’” 59 He had purposely written in a youthful hand so appealing that all the gentlewomen urged the little girl to put it straight into her copybook.

  Shōnagon composed the reply: “The lady you visited seems unlikely to live many days longer, and she will therefore move presently to the temple in the mountains. She will wish to thank you for your kind letter even if she can no longer do so in this life.” Genji was deeply moved.

  His thoughts would turn of an autumn evening to the one who so constantly stirred his heart, and he surely thirsted more than ever for any relation of hers. He remembered that evening when the nun spoke of being unable to let the little plant go, and he yearned for her, although he also felt a pang of apprehension that if he did have her she might disappoint him; and he murmured,

  “How glad I would be to pick and soon to make mine that little wild plant

  sprung up from the very root shared by the murasaki.” 60

  In the tenth month His Majesty was to make a progress to the Suzaku Palace.61 He had chosen as dancers those sons of the greatest houses, senior nobles or privy gentlemen, who showed any aptitude for such things, and everyone from the Princes and Ministers on down was busy rehearsing his part.

  Genji remembered how long it had been since his last correspondence with the lady in the mountains, and he sent a messenger there. The only answer he received was from His Reverence, who wrote, “She breathed her last on the twentieth of last month, in my presence, and although death comes to us all, hers is a very great loss,” and so on. Genji felt the frailty of life sharply as he read it, and he wondered anxiously how the little girl whose future had so worried her was now getting on. Young as she was, did she miss her grandmother? He remembered losing his own mother, if only dimly, and he took care to keep in touch with her. The replies he had from Shōnagon were not unsympathetic.

  Once he heard that the mourning confinement62 was over and the household was back in the City, he let some time go by and then went in person one quiet night to call. It was a depressing, ruinous place, all but deserted, and he could easily imagine how it might frighten a child. He was shown into the same room as before, and there the weeping Shōnagon described to him how the end had come for her mistress, until his own sleeves were wet with tears.

  “I gather that she is to go to His Highness's,” Shōnagon went on, “but her mother always hated the cruelty she suffered there, and my mistress herself believed that although the child is certainly not a baby, at her awkward age, among all her father's other children, she might well be treated more as a nuisance than anything else, since she does not yet understand very well what is expected of her. There is good reason, in fact, to believe that my mistress was right, and at a time like this we should therefore welcome the interest you
have been kind enough to express, however casual it may be, and not insist too much on gauging your future feelings toward her. Even so, my lord, we are perplexed about what to do, because she is hopelessly unsuited to you and is actually even more of a child than she should be at her age.”

  “But why must you be so reluctant to accept the assurances that I have already given you repeatedly? That her very childishness should so attract me suggests—for I can make no other sense of it—that the tie between her and me really is unusual. I should like to tell her so, not indirectly but in person.

  Perhaps the young reed, where she grows on Waka Shore, is for no one yet,

  but, say, now the wave is high, can it slip back to the sea?

  That would not do at all.”63

  “Nor would I presume to ask it of you, my lord.

  Should the gleaming reed on Waka Shore lean to meet the approaching wave,

  never knowing what he means, hers no doubt would be light ways.

  How difficult this is!”

  Genji partly forgave her for thwarting him, since she spoke with a thoughtfulness born of experience. “Why does that day never come?”64 he sang to himself, dazzling the younger gentlewomen.

  The little girl was lying down, crying for her grandmother, when her playmates exclaimed, “A gentleman is here in a dress cloak! It must be His Highness!”

  She got up and called, “Shōnagon! Where is the gentleman in the dress cloak? Is Father here?” Her voice as she approached was very sweet.

  “No,” Genji said, “I am not His Highness, but that does not mean you should not like me, too. Come here!”65

  She recognized the voice of the gentleman who had overawed her, and she regretted having spoken. Instead, she went straight to her nurse. “Come,” she said, “I am sleepy!”

  “Why are you still hiding from me? Sleep on my lap, then! Do come a little closer!”

  “You see how little she understands yet at her age, my lord.” Shōnagon propelled her toward him.

  The little girl sat down innocently, and he reached under the blind to touch her. He felt a delicious abundance when his hand came to the end of her tresses, which spilled richly over her soft clothing, and he imagined the beauty of her hair. Next he took her hand, at which she bridled to have a stranger so close and drew back, complaining to Shōnagon, “But I want to go to sleep!”

  He slipped straight in after her. “But I am the one who is going to love you now. Be nice to me!”

  “My lord, what are you doing?” Shōnagon was appalled. “Oh, dear me! I assure you, it does not matter how you talk to her, you will get nothing from her at all!”

  “What do I care if she is still only a little girl? Just wait and see how much I love her: more than anyone, ever!”

  Hail was coming down hard, and it promised to be a bad night. “How can you live all by yourselves like this, when there are so few of you?” Genji began to weep. He could not possibly leave them. “Lower the lattice shutters! This looks to be an unpleasant night, and I mean to protect you. Gather near me, all of you!”

  With this he strode into the little girl's curtained bed as though it were the most natural thing in the world,66 leaving the shocked and astonished gentlewomen rooted to the spot. Shōnagon could not very well intervene with a sharp reproof, despite her anxiety, and she only sat there, sighing. The girl began to shiver with fright, and Genji, his heart melting to find her lovely skin so chilly, wrapped her in another shift.

  He knew perfectly well how outrageously he was behaving, but he began nonetheless to talk to her gently about things he thought might catch her fancy. “Come with me, and I will take you to where there are lots of pretty pictures and you can play with dolls!” He spoke so kindly that in her childish way she stopped being quite so afraid, but she never relaxed enough to sink into a sound sleep, and she continued to toss and turn.

  The wind roared all night long, while the gentlewomen whispered among themselves, “It's true, you know, we would have been miserable without him. Oh, if only she were old enough for him!” The anxious Shōnagon stayed very close to her charge.

  Genji left before daybreak, once the wind had dropped a little, looking quite pleased with himself. “She was already constantly on my mind,” he said, “and now I shall worry more than ever. I want to take her to where I myself spend my dreary nights and days. She cannot go on this way. It is a wonder she was not frightened half to death!”

  “His Highness seems to be talking about having her come to live with him as well,” Shōnagon answered. “I suppose he means to do it after my lady's forty-nine days are over.”

  “I am sure he will look after her, but he must be as much of a stranger to her as I am. She has never lived with him, after all. I myself have only just come to know her, but even so, I have no doubt that I am more attached to her than he.” He stroked her hair, and he looked back at her many times as he left the house.

  The sky, thick with fog, was unusually lovely, and all was white with frost: a scene to please the replete lover, but for Genji not quite enough. He remembered that someone he had been visiting secretly lived on his way, and he had a man of his knock at her gate. No one heard. He was reduced to having an attendant with a good voice sing twice over,

  “By the dawn's first light, while rising mists shroud the skies and confuse the gaze,

  I just cannot bring myself to pass by my darling's gate!”67

  At this, a nice-looking servant woman came out and replied,68

  “If it is so hard to pass straight on by a gate just glimpsed through the mist,

  surely its flimsy portal need not really bar your way!”69

  Then she went back in. No one came out again. He had no wish to retreat, but he felt exposed under the lightening sky, and he went his way.

  He lay smiling to himself in fond recollection of that delightful little girl. The sun was high by the time he arose to write the customary letter,70 and what he had to say was so unusual that he often laid down his brush and simply dreamed. With the letter he sent some pretty pictures.

  As it happened, this was the day when His Highness came to see his daughter. The house had deteriorated remarkably in recent years, and its being so big and old made it even more forbiddingly lonely. “How could a child spend a moment living in a place like this?” He contemplated the scene before him. “I must bring her home with me.71 There is no reason why you should be uncomfortable there. You will have your nurse, who will have a room of her own, and there are children for you to play with. You should be perfectly happy.”

  He had her come to him, and he caught the delicious scent her clothing had picked up from Genji's. “What a lovely smell!” he exclaimed, only to add ruefully, “Your clothes are all limp, though!”72 He went on, “What a pity she spent all those years with an old and ailing lady! I have urged her to come and get to know my household, but for some reason she has resisted the idea, and actually there has been some reluctance at my house as well.73 I am sorry she must move there at a time like this.”

  “But must she really, Your Highness? This house is certainly lonely for her, but she ought to stay a while longer. Surely it would be better for her to move after she has grown up a little more. She always misses her grandmother, and she will not eat.” It was true, too: the little girl was painfully thin, although this only gave her looks a more enchanting grace.

  “But why are you so upset?” His Highness hoped to make her feel better. “Your grandmother is gone, and no mourning will bring her back. You have me, after all.”

  When evening came and His Highness prepared to leave, the little girl was so unhappy that she cried. Tears sprang to his eyes as well. “Now, now, you must not be so sad,” he said comfortingly, over and over again. “I shall have you come to me very soon.”

  When he was gone, she wept inconsolably. What life might hold in store for her concerned her not at all; she knew only that the lady she had been with every moment through the years was now no more, and, child thoug
h she was, the pain of her loss consumed her. She no longer played as she used to, and if she forgot during the day, night returned her to her misery. Her women wondered how she could go on living this way, and they did all they could to comfort her, only to fail and burst into tears themselves.

  Toward evening Genji sent Koremitsu to the house with the message “I should come myself, but unfortunately His Majesty has summoned me. I was distressed to see her situation, and now it worries me very much.” Koremitsu was to guard the house.

  “This is too awful of him!” Shōnagon said. “It is a game to him, I am sure, but what a thing to do at the very start!74 If His Highness were to hear of it, he would accuse us in her service of sheer folly. Do not forget, you must never be foolish enough to give him any hint of what has happened!” Alas, to the little girl none of this meant anything at all.

  Shōnagon remarked while recounting their woes to Koremitsu, “When she is older, I doubt that she will escape the destiny he intends for her, but for the moment his proposition seems to me hopelessly unsuitable; in fact, I cannot even imagine what he means by all the extraordinary things he says. I do not know what to do. Just today His Highness was here, warning us to make sure that he need not worry about her and to keep a proper eye on her at all times. I hardly know which way to turn, and now I worry far more than before about the liberties someone might take with her.” Shōnagon refrained from complaining too pointedly, because she did not wish to give Koremitsu ideas. Koremitsu himself could not make out what she was talking about.