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

by Murasaki Shikibu

  That night a howling wind brought with it a still-wintry chill, and the lamp kept blowing out. They could not bring themselves to break off their conversation despite such gloom as when darkness covers all,6 and they talked on until very late without yet finishing what they had to say. “Come now, that cannot be all!” His Highness exclaimed, for his friend had described a tender bond unexampled in all the world, and His Highness's own willful ways led him to press the matter on the assumption that there must be more. Still, he was a man of understanding, and he so skillfully offered now words of consolation and now appeals to deep feeling that his charm swept the Counselor on little by little to tell him all of the pent-up sorrows in his heart; and he felt much better for having done so.

  His Highness, for his part, described his plan to bring her closer. “That is very good news!” the Counselor replied. “Alas, I cannot help thinking that it is all my fault. She is now my only link to someone I will always miss, and I feel it is generally up to me to do for her whatever I possibly can—I hope you do not mind.” He touched a little on the elder sister's wish that he should accept the younger as herself, but he left out that night of, so to speak, birdcalls in Iwase Wood.7 At heart he increasingly regretted not having done with this token of his dear lost love exactly what she had said he should, but it was too late now, and he would only encourage inadmissible desires if he were to continue feeling this way. No, he rejected the thought as a foolish and reprehensible betrayal of both. There was her move to consider, though, and who else was there to take it in hand? He had the preparations for it begun.

  At Uji they brought in pretty young women and page girls, and the gentle-women merrily got themselves ready while their mistress, in despair that her Fushimi should go to ruin,8 spent her every moment grieving; not that she really could defiantly shut herself up there forever. Time and again he reproached her, “How can you even think of staying, when the precious bond we share must then fail?” and she could not wholly disagree. In sad confusion she wondered what to do.

  The day agreed was the first of the second month, and the closer it came, the more the budding trees' promise called out to her to linger for the blossoms; besides, it seemed to her that to give up watching the mists rise over the hills in order to travel to no eternal home would only invite shame and cruel laughter, until she shrank from the thought and spent day and night absorbed only in her cares. When the time came to put off her mourning, the purification seemed to her very shallow.9 Not having known her mother, she had never missed her, and to make up for it she had wanted this time to dye her clothes a very dark shade;10 but no, to her unending disappointment and sorrow that was not reason enough.

  The Counselor sent her carriage, her escort, the Doctor,11 and so on. He wrote,

  “Ah, how nothing lasts! Hardly have you cut yourself a garment of mist

  than the time comes round again for flowers to burst into bloom.”12

  And indeed, he had sent her also all sorts of bright and pretty clothes. The gifts for everyone who accompanied her, though never ostentatious, were plentiful and carefully gauged to the proper standing of each. “My lord's kindness is such a wonder, and the way he never forgets us—why, no brother would do as much!” the women reminded her. The older ones, who cared nothing for show, treasured his more practical help, while the younger, who saw him so often, were sorry that now he would be a stranger. “Ah, my lady,” they said, “you will miss him!”

  The Counselor himself arrived early in the morning on the day before she was to leave. He was installed in the guest room as usual, and there he gave himself over to bitter reflections. By now she and I would have been close after all, he said to himself, and I would have been the first to bring off this sort of move. He recalled the way she had looked, the things she had told him about herself. After all, he thought with a pang, she never rejected me outright or embarrassed me acutely; it was I who remained all too strangely aloof from her. He remembered the sliding panel through which he had peered and went for another look, but alas, the blinds on the other side were down and blocked his view.

  There, too, within, they were recalling her in great sorrow, and the young Princess especially lay with streaming eyes, absorbed in grief and lost to all thought of her journey tomorrow. A message then reached her from the Counselor: “It is not that I have anything in particular to say after my months away, but it would be a comfort to tell you a little of what has been on my mind. Please be less forbiddingly distant with me than you have been before. This house now seems more and more to me to be a different world.”

  “I would not wish you to think me forbidding,” she replied, “but I do not feel at all myself, and in my present troubled state, I am afraid that I cannot be certain what I might say.” She looked distressed, but her women insisted that he deserved better, and she received him at the sliding panel between the rooms.

  Such was the charm of his presence that she could hardly believe her eyes, for he was dauntingly elegant and by now seemed more fully a man. Yes, he had supreme poise, and how fine he looked! Seeing him this way brought most vividly to mind the image that in any case never left her, and she was deeply stirred.

  “Perhaps today I should refrain from going on and on about her,”13 he kept saying, and he remarked instead, “I myself shall soon be moving to near where you are going, and as good friends say, midnight or dawn, whenever you need anything, please do not hesitate to let me know, for as long as I live, I will always be at your disposal. I hope that that will be agreeable. People in this world feel very different about things, and the matter is not for me alone to decide, since I know that you may object.”

  “I would much, much rather never leave,” she replied, “and now that you say you will be nearby, I find myself very troubled and cannot answer.” At times her voice was inaudible, and in her mood of desperate sorrow she was so very like her sister that he rued the folly of letting her go, of his own will, to someone else. Still, it was now too late for regret, and he said nothing of that night, maintaining instead a manner so forthright that he seemed almost to have forgotten it.

  The red plum in the garden was so lovely in color and scent that even the warblers seemed unable to pass by without a song, and the moment especially touched those troubled, as they talked, by the thought that this spring was not at all the spring of old.14 A gust of the flowers' perfume mingled on the breeze with the visitor's own to recall the past more vividly than any fragrance of orange blossom. This tree meant so much to her, for the way it relieved monotony or gave comfort in sorrow! The thought was more than she could contain:

  “Soon all will be gone, who loved them, and leave to storms this mountain village

  where the plum tree in full bloom with its scent calls back the past.”15

  Her voice was so low, so faltering, that he could hardly tell whether or not she spoke, and he replied warmly,

  “Once these sleeves of mine brushed the blossoms of a plum that, sweet as before,

  must move away root and branch to a home no more my own!”

  Discreetly and decorously he dried his streaming tears and pursued their conversation no further. “I hope that we may meet like this again—you are so easy to talk to,” he said before he left.

  He gave out instructions for her journey and entrusted the men on his nearby estates with providing what the bearded watchman would need, since he was to stay on in charge of the house. Nothing, not even the most practical matters, escaped his attention.

  The old woman Ben had said to her mistress, “People might take it amiss if I were now to accompany you, my lady, because I have lived longer than I ever wished to do, and my life is a burden to me.” She had made herself a nun. The Counselor insisted that she come forth, and the sight of her moved him very much.

  As so often before, he had her talk about the past. “I shall still be back from time to time,” he said, “and the place will seem very empty and lonely. It will be such a pleasure to find you here after all!” Tear
s kept him from saying more.

  “The more I wish to be rid of my life, the longer I seem to live,” she answered. “I reproach my lady for leaving me—what would she have me do, once she is gone? I suppose my way of condemning all the world16 means that I am very sinful indeed.” It was rather selfish of her to pour out her complaint as she did, but he comforted her nicely.

  She was very old, but now that she had cut off what recalled her former beauty, her forehead looked younger than before,17 and to that extent she had gained a new refinement. He wondered desperately, Why did I not provide for her to do the same? After all, she might have lived longer that way, and just think how she and I could then have talked heart-to-heart! This absorbing fancy made him envy even the woman before him, and he set her standing curtain aside so that they might talk more easily. She seemed disconsolate, it was true, but her speech and her sense still had a good deal to commend them, and she had clearly had considerable distinction.

  “If I had instead drowned in the great stream of tears age so quickly sheds,

  I would never have lived on, once she whom I loved was gone,”

  she said and began to weep.

  “But that would have been a very great sin!” he protested. “How, then, could you ever have reached the other shore? It would be terrible to sink into the pit for such a dreadful deed. No, nothing matters but to see that all is vanity.”

  “Cast yourself away into that sad stream of tears where you wish to drown,

  and each shoal or shallow reach would undo your forgetting.18

  Ah, what life will ever bring consolation?” He felt as though his love could have no end.19 Lacking the courage to leave, he stayed on, sorrowing, until after sunset; but then he set off back to the City after all, since he disliked the thought that someone might note his casual overnight absence with disapproval.

  Ben reported to her mistress everything that he had said, and she felt still further removed from any possibility of comfort. The others were all sewing merrily away and getting themselves dressed up without a thought for their crabbed looks, while she felt more and more a nun.

  “Where on the long sweep of Sleeve Beach all busily cut themselves new clothes,

  one, a woman of the sea, weeps an old nun's bitter brine,”20

  she said to voice her complaint, and her mistress replied,

  “Are these sleeves of mine not a woman of the sea's, weeping drops of brine,

  when I toss upon the waves, wet with tears of bitter care?21

  I cannot imagine ever feeling at home where I am going,” she went on very kindly, “and you see, depending on how things turn out, I have in mind not to let this house go to rack and ruin after all, in which case you and I will meet again; but the thought of leaving you here like this, alone and forlorn, troubles me more and more. Those who lead this new life of yours need not simply shut themselves away. No, you must take the matter as anyone else would and come and see me often. She left the old woman all the furnishings she might need from among those that had once been her elder sister's. “When I see you like this, so much more downcast than the others,” she said, “it actually seems to me that you and I must share a tie from past lives, and I feel so much for you!” The old woman dissolved in tears like a little girl crying for her mother.

  Once everything was clean and tidy, the carriages were drawn up. The escort included many gentlemen of the fourth and fifth ranks. His Highness had wanted badly to come himself, but that would have meant an awkward degree of pomp and circumstance. He therefore arranged a discreet arrival that he awaited anxiously. The Counselor, too, sent many men to join her retinue, and although the main decisions seem to have been His Highness's, it was he who, with admirable thoroughness, saw to all the more modest details.

  She was flustered to hear voices within and without the house warning that the sun was setting, and the thought that she did not know where she was going made her feel pathetically vulnerable. A gentlewoman called Taifu, who was with her in her carriage, said with a smile,

  “Living after all has brought us at last today to a happy shoal—

  ah, but had I drowned myself, despairing, in the Uji!”22

  Her mistress did not like that at all, and she thought, How different she is from the nun Ben!

  Another added,

  “Not that one forgets the sadness of missing her, whom we all have lost,

  and yet today, even so, happy prospects lie ahead!”

  Both old women had been very fond of their elder mistress, but their resolute effort now to avoid dwelling on her memory struck the younger as very painful, and she found nothing further to say.

  Seeing for herself how far it was and how steep the pathways through the hills, she who had condemned him for his absences understood a little better why he had come so seldom. She gazed out at mists prettily illumined by a bright seventh-night moon, and the fatigue of the long, unfamiliar journey lulled her into troubled reverie:

  “Looking out, I see how the wandering moon as well rises from the hills,

  finds no solace in the world, and then to the hills returns.”23

  Filled with forebodings about what might await her once she entered her new state, she longed to cancel all that had happened, for it seemed to her that her cares all those years were nothing to what they might be soon.

  She arrived very late in the evening. They led her carriage in among the three- or fourfold pavilions24 of a dazzling residence unlike anything her party had ever seen, and His Highness, who had awaited her impatiently, came himself to help her alight. Her rooms were done up to perfection, and the care lavished even on those for her women made it clear that he had given everything his personal attention. Seeing him all at once settled with her, when it had never been clear what treatment she might expect from him, decided people that he must be very keen on her indeed, and they were astonished by her evident quality.

  Carriage with escort

  The Counselor, who planned to move to his Sanjō residence after the twentieth of the month, was going daily to look the place over, and since it was near Nijō, he got there well before midnight to find out how things had gone. The men he had sent to escort her from Uji then returned and reported to him. The news that His Highness had received her with every mark of attention naturally pleased him, but despite himself he also felt a keen but foolish pang of disappointment. “Ah, were there but a way,” he murmured again and again.25

  “Ah, glimmering waters! As across the Lake of Grebes one spies a shimmering sail,

  she and I though yet apart did once lie down together!”26

  he said to himself, to spoil their happiness.

  His Excellency of the Right, who planned to present His Highness with his Sixth Daughter that very same month, was outraged that as though to forestall the event His Highness should welcome someone wholly undeserving to his house and should now be avoiding him. His Highness was sorry to hear this, and now and again he sent the young lady a note. The preparations for her donning of the train had set all the world talking, and since he could no longer delay the event without courting ridicule, he performed the ceremony near the end of the month.

  The idea of letting the Counselor go to a complete outsider struck him as a great shame. So close a marriage might well be dull, but even so he thought, Well, then, perhaps that is what I should do! He seems so despondent after all, now that he has lost an old and secret love. He had someone sound out the young gentleman.

  “Having seen with my own eyes the fragility of life and suffered so greatly from it, I feel that my own existence is blighted, and for that reason I could not under any circumstances consider taking such a step”: that, he gathered, was the Counselor's thoroughly discouraging reply.

  “What? Even he turns up his nose at a perfectly straightforward proposal from me?” he exclaimed bitterly; but the young man, although a near relation, had such daunting dignity that he could not seek to persuade him further.

  In the season of blossoms th
e Counselor looked across to the cherry trees at Nijō and his thoughts went straight to the ones now abandoned at Uji. Do they scatter more blithely?27 he wondered; and he set off to see His Highness. His Highness now spent most of his time at home, where he had settled down so nicely that the prospect was gratifying to a dutiful eye, except that as usual it was now also strangely upsetting. Nonetheless, in sober truth he was both touched and pleased.

  They chatted about this and that until evening, when a large retinue gathered and His Highness's carriage was prepared to take him to the palace. The Counselor saw him to it and then went to her wing. No trace of the mountain village remained, for behind her blinds she lived amid elegant luxury. Noting through them the dim form of a pretty page girl, he asked her to let her mistress know that he was there, at which a cushion emerged, and someone who must have known him from before came out to give him the reply.

  “I should have been coming regularly all this time to call,” he began, “but no particular matter prompted me to do so, and I hesitated to presume on our acquaintance. How different things are now! The sight of your blossoming boughs through the mist stirs many poignant thoughts.”

  His pensive air aroused her sympathy, and she reflected that yes, if she had lived, they would now be visiting each other at will, and her life would offer the joy of exchanging with her, in season, tributes to the beauty of flowers or the songs of birds. She felt the present bitter sorrow of her loss far more keenly than their desolation during all the years they had lived shut away from the world.