“I shall call upon His Eminence, too, and then I shall be back very soon. I would gladly stay with you like this all the time, but Her Highness is always beside you, and I am afraid that I have held back so far for fear of being indiscreet. In your usual room, though, once you have gradually recovered your strength… One reason why you do not get better is that you treat yourself too much like a child.” When he had finished, he set out in his magnificent robes, while she lay there and watched him go for longer than ever before.
His Excellency, too, left for court, since the autumn appointments were to be announced,40 and all his sons, who had ambitions of their own and kept him close company, set off with him.
The residence was quiet, for there was hardly anyone about, when she was suddenly racked by a violent fit of retching. Before word could reach the palace, she was gone. All present there withdrew in shock. Appointments list evening or not, this disaster had clearly put an end to the proceedings. His Excellency could not call on the Abbot of the Mountain or on any other great monk because it was already night when the cry went up. The people of the household, who had thought the danger past, went stumbling about blindly in their horror. The messengers who crowded in from far and near found no one to talk to because all was turmoil, and the parents' desperate grief was truly frightening to see. The spirit had possessed her so often in the past that they watched for two or three days, leaving her pillow and so on undisturbed,41 until signs of change convinced them at last, in their misery, to give up hope.
Cremation
Genji had now suffered blow on blow, and life was intolerable to him. Condolences from those closest to him aroused only irritated impatience. The expressions of sorrow and sympathy from His Eminence were still a great honor, and His Excellency, who had also reason to rejoice, wept without end. At the urging of those around him he commissioned solemn rites of every kind, in case his daughter should revive, and in his anguish he persisted even when the workings of change had become all too plain, but after the vain passage of several days he resigned himself at last, and they took her to Toribeno amid scenes of heartrending grief.
The ground, though very broad, was still crowded with mourners from far and near, as well as with priests from temple after temple, who were there to chant the Name of Amida. Envoys from Her Majesty and the Heir Apparent, to say nothing of His Eminence, came and went among those from elsewhere, and all brought expressions of the deepest sorrow.
His Excellency could not rise. “Now that at my age I have lost a daughter in the flower of her youth,” he said, weeping in shame before many sympathetic mourners, “I can only writhe upon the ground.” All night the clamorous rites went on, but when he returned home, just before dawn, he took away with him only a few poor remains.42
Such losses strike often enough, but no doubt because Genji had known so few—perhaps only one43—he was consumed in his bereavement by the fires of longing.44 The moon still hung aloft in the dawn, since the twentieth of the eighth month was past, lending no little pathos to the lightening sky, when in keen agreement with the feelings of His Excellency, whom he saw wandering in the darkness of a father's grief, Genji gazed sorrowfully upward and murmured,
“No, I cannot tell where my eyes should seek aloft the smoke I saw rise,
but now all the skies above move me to sad thoughts of loss.”
When he returned to His Excellency's residence, sleep eluded him. Images of her as he had known her down the years ran through his mind, and he wondered in vain regret why she had taken such offense at each of his casual diversions, undertaken while he complacently assumed that she would eventually change her mind about him, and why she had persisted to the end in disliking him so. It seemed like a dream now to be wearing gray, and the thought that her gray would have been still darker if she had outlived him45 prompted,
“I may do no more, and the mourning I now wear is a shallow gray,
but my tears upon my sleeves have gathered in deep pools.”
He went on to call the Buddha's Name, looking more beautiful than ever, and his discreet chanting of the scripture passage, “O Lord Fugen who seest all the manifest universe,”46 outdid the most practiced monk's. The sight of his little son would start fresh tears for “the grasses of remembering”47 and yet without this reminder of her… The thought gave him some comfort.
Her Highness had been brought so low that she no longer rose at all, until she, too, seemed near death, and in great agitation His Excellency commissioned prayers for her as well. He ordered the memorial services,48 for the days were slipping by, and he made them very grand because it had all been so sudden. No wonder he mourned his daughter so, considering how a parent loves even the least favored child! He and his wife had been sorry to have no other daughter, and for them this tragedy surpassed the loss of the most priceless gem.
Genji went nowhere, not even to Nijō, but from the depth of his heartfelt grief he spent days and nights in earnest prayer. To his secret destinations he sent only letters. As to the Rokujō Haven, the Ise High Priestess had now taken up residence in the Headquarters of the Left Gate Watch,49 and he invoked the strict purity prevailing there to avoid corresponding with her at all. He now held the world and its ways, so distasteful already, in unqualified aversion, and he thought that without this fresh tie he would certainly assume the guise to which he aspired,50 except that every time his mind took this turn, he would straightaway start thinking how much his young lady in the west wing must miss him. He still felt a void beside him, however closely his women might gather around him while he lay at night alone in his curtained bed. Often he lay wakeful, murmuring, “Is autumn the time to lose one's love?”51 and listening, sick at heart, to the priests, whom he had chosen for their voices, calling the Name of the Buddha Amida.
Curtained bed
Oh, how sadly the wind moans as autumn passes! he thought as for once he lay alone and sleepless into a foggy dawn; but then a letter arrived on deep blue-gray paper, tied to chrysanthemums just now beginning to open and placed beside him by a messenger who left without a word.52 The delightful effect pleased him, and he noted that the writing was the Haven's.
“Have you understood my silence?
The sad news I hear, that a life can pass so soon, brings tears to my eyes,
but my thoughts go first of all to the sleeves of the bereaved.
My heart is so full, you know, beneath this sky.”
Her writing is more beautiful than ever! He could hardly put it down, but her pretense of innocence repelled him. Still, he had not the heart to withhold an answer, and he hated to imagine the damage to her name if he should do so. Perhaps the lady he had lost had indeed been destined somehow to meet this end, but why should he have seen and heard the cause so clearly? Yes, he was bitter, and despite himself he did not think that he could ever feel the same about the Haven again.
After long hesitation, since the Ise Priestess's purification might well present another difficulty,53 he decided that it would be cruel not to answer a letter so pointedly sent, and he wrote on mauve-gray paper, “My own silence has indeed lasted too long, but although I have thought of you, I knew that in this time of mourning you would understand.
Those who linger on and those all too swiftly gone live as dewdrops, all,
and it is a foolish thing to set one's heart on their world.
You simply must let these things go. I will close, since for all I know you may not read this.”
She happened to be at home, and she read his letter in private. By the pricking of her conscience she understood his cautious hints and saw with anguish that he was quite right. Hers was the greatest of misfortunes. How would His Eminence take it, when the rumor spread? He and the late Heir Apparent,54 among all the brothers, had been especially close, and he had gladly agreed when the Heir Apparent begged him to look after the present Ise Priestess. He had also pressed the Priestess's mother often to stay on at court, although she had rejected even that for fear of the consequenc
es; and now to her astonishment she found herself caught in love's toils like any girl and certain in the end to have her name bandied about invidiously. Such were the thoughts that whirled through her mind, leaving her as unwell as ever.
Renowned as she was for deep charm and rare taste, her fame had grown and grown until even after she moved to the Shrine on the Moor her wonderfully original ways inspired the most discriminating privy gentlemen to devote themselves morning and night to following the dewy path to her gate. News of this did not surprise Genji at all, considering her undoubted genius. He readily agreed that she would be sorely missed if she tired of the world and went down to Ise.
The memorial rites passed by one by one, but Genji remained secluded at His Excellency's until the last day. The Third Rank Captain55 visited Genji often, pained by the unfamiliar tedium of his existence, to discuss recent events or to distract him with the usual mischievous gossip; and then the notorious Dame of Staff generally provided the occasion for their mirth. “Why, the poor thing!” Genji cried reprovingly. “You must not make such fun of the Honorable Granny!”56 Still, he enjoyed every word. Tales of their romantic adventures, including the story of that cloudy sixteenth night in autumn, passed freely between them, until their rambling review of this world and its sad ways often ended in tears.
A cold rain57 was falling late one dreary afternoon when the Captain came in, looking jauntily splendid enough to put anyone to shame. He had changed to a dress cloak and gathered trousers of a gray lighter than the one he had worn in the season just past.58
Genji was leaning on the railing by the west door to his room, gazing out over the frost-withered garden. The wild wind blew, the rain poured down, and his tears, it seemed to him, vied with the rain as he murmured, chin in hand, “Did she turn to rain, to cloud? I shall never know…”;59 and the Captain, gazing at him with his mind as always on pleasure, knew that if he were a woman his soul would stay with Genji instead of setting off for the hereafter. Genji was in a very casual state of dress and he simply rethreaded the cords of his dress cloak when the Captain sat down beside him. It was a summer cloak, a little darker than his visitor's, worn over a perfectly plain scarlet gown.60 The Captain could hardly keep his eyes off him. He, too, gazed sorrowfully into space.
Summer dress cloak
“Among all these clouds that drift across the sodden skies, turning into rain,
which am I to look upon with the gaze of one who mourns?
No one will ever know where she has gone,” he went on, as though to himself.
“The very heavens where she who so long was mine turned to cloud and rain
darken, and winter showers deepen the skies' heavy gloom.”
Genji was obviously deeply afflicted.
The Captain did not quite understand, since Genji had never shown such devotion to his sister before. His Eminence had had to speak to him, and it was surely His Excellency's attentiveness, as well as the restraining influence of the exalted family connection with Her Highness,61 that had kept Genji in the end from simply leaving her, although the Captain had often had occasion to note his unhappiness with sympathy. He regretted her loss more than ever when he saw now that Genji must actually have held her in the highest regard. He felt in his great sorrow as though the light had gone from the world.
Gentians and pinks were blooming among the withered grasses. Genji had some picked, and after the Captain had gone, he sent Saishō (his little son's nurse) with one to Her Highness, with the poem,
“This dear little pink, lingering on after all in my wintry hedge,
shall be to me a token of the autumn that is gone.62
To you it can hardly be as pretty as the one you have lost.” The little boy was certainly very sweet, with all his innocent smiles.
Her Highness's tears fell more easily than leaves from gale-swept trees, and she could only weep to read it.
“I need only see that most lovely little pink in his wasted hedge
for these sleeves of mine again to melt in a rain of tears.”
It seemed to Genji, at loose ends, that Her Highness of the bluebells would understand how sad this day had been, and although it was dark by now, he sent her a note. The last one had come a long time ago, but his messages were like that now, and she had no qualms about reading it. On Chinese paper the color of today's sky he had written,
“Never have such dews as this evening come to fall on my moistened sleeves,
though I have known in my time many a somber autumn.
Cold rains always fall…”63
He had taken great care with his handwriting, which was finer than ever, and the Princess agreed with her gentlewomen that she could not fail to answer him. “My thoughts have often gone out to you,” she wrote, “but I could not very well…64
Ever since I heard that even as autumn mists rose you were left forlorn,
my sorrowing thoughts have gone to the rains from wintry skies.”
That was all, and to him the faint handwriting had a profound appeal. It was rare for a woman to improve in all ways on long acquaintance, and he was struck by how truly in her case “distance is the secret of lasting charm.”65 Distant she might be, but she never failed to respond just as she should, and this, he believed, was why their feeling for each other would endure, for surely the pretensions and affectations that put a woman on show for everyone only display her worst shortcomings. No, he said to himself, that was not how he meant to bring up the young lady in his west wing. He never forgot how much she must miss him, but he felt as though he had taken in a motherless child, and he was pleased that while away he at least did not need to wonder what doubts and misgivings she might have about him.
After dark he ordered the lamp brought up and called the best of the gentle-women to come and talk to him. For years he had had a weakness for the one called Chūnagon, but he had made no approaches to her during this time of sorrow. Chūnagon admired his tact. “Day after day now,” he began with blameless warmth, “I have been seeing more of you all than I ever used to, and you can be sure that I will miss you when we are no longer together. Quite apart from our loss, I find the thought of the future painful in many ways.”
“To say nothing of the darkness we feel since my poor lady's passing,” one answered with renewed tears, “the very idea that you, too, my lord, are now to leave us forever…” She could not finish.
He looked at them fondly. “Leave you forever? How cruel you must think me! If you can only be patient, you will soon see how wrong you are. Ah, life flees so quickly!” His tear-filled eyes as he gazed into the lamp were very beautiful.
A little girl, an orphan of whom their late mistress had been especially fond, was looking very sad. “Ateki,” he said, weeping bitterly in sympathy, “I must be the one you will have to love now.” She looked very sweet in a girlish gown dyed a darker gray than the others, a black overgown, and trousers of leaf gold.66
Page girl in a kazami dress gown
“I hope that those of you who wish to honor the past will stay on with our little son,” he went on, “even if that means putting up with a rather quiet life. I will feel even less like returning if you all leave and nothing remains of the household I once knew.” None doubted, though, that he would come only rarely, despite his talk of the future, and they were sadder than before.
His Excellency had given each gentlewoman very simply, as her rank and station deserved, the accessories that his daughter had favored in daily use, and to some, more substantial mementos.
Genji, who knew that he could not stay shut up like this forever, set off to call on His Eminence. A cold rain fell while they brought out his carriage and gathered his men, as though the very heavens were weeping, and the wind rustled the leaves so noisily on the trees that his gentlewomen were disconsolate. Even those whose sleeves sometimes dried lately now moistened them again. His people presumably went to Nijō to await his arrival, since that was where he was to spend the night, and although this would surely
not be his last time at His Excellency's, those who stayed behind were very downcast. To His Excellency and Her Highness his departure only meant fresh sorrow.
Genji addressed Her Highness in a letter. “I mean to wait upon His Eminence today, since he has graciously expressed anxiety about me. Dismayed as I am to have survived her all this time, I am shaken to have to go out at all, and conversation would be beyond me. For that reason I have refrained from saying good-bye to you in person.”
Tears blinded Her Highness when she read it, and she could not reply. It was His Excellency who came straight to him, too overcome to take his sleeve from his eyes. The gentlewomen present shared their grief. The sight of Genji weeping over his sorrows was extremely touching, but he also looked very beautiful as he did so.
For a time His Excellency struggled to master his feelings. “At my great age anything may bring tears to my eyes, and so of course it is more than I can do to calm the feelings that never leave my sleeves dry; that is why I cannot very well present myself before His Eminence, for I know how likely I am to make a spectacle of myself. Please explain this to him, if you find a moment to do so. It is very hard to lose a child this way, when one has so few years left.” The effort that it cost him to master himself was painfully obvious.
Standing curtains
“Indeed,” Genji answered, repeatedly blowing his nose, “one never knows who will go first and who last, but to experience such a loss is a trial unlike any other. I shall describe your condition to His Eminence, and I am sure that he will understand.”
The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji) Page 26