Hand torches were lit, and the company presented His Majesty with poems. Each gentleman seemed pleased enough with himself as he approached the desk,103 but one easily imagines what crabbed, trite efforts they were, and I made no effort to hear them all and write them down. I just got one or two from the greatest lords present—not that these seemed likely to be any better than the others. This, I gather, is the Commander's, when he stepped down to pick a cluster of blossoms for His Majesty's headdress:
“When I went to pluck for our august Sovereign's hair wisteria blossoms,
ah, how far above my head was the branch that caught my sleeve!”104
He was quite full of himself, the rascal.
His Majesty replied,
“Flowers such as these will grace the world with their scent for ten thousand years,
and to us their hue today shall ever be a pleasure.”
“Blossoms such as these, plucked to grace our Sovereign's hair, to the wondering eye
offer in present vision beauty of the purple clouds.”105
“Nothing in their hue calls to mind the common world, for unto the skies
in a mighty surge they rise, these wisteria blossom waves!”
This last one seems to have been that angry Grand Counselor's. I may have got some of them wrong. Obviously, none of them had anything in particular to say for itself.
The music got better and better as the night wore on. The Commander's voice was quite lovely as he sang “Ah, Wondrous Day!” The Grand Counselor sang with him, and most impressively, because his voice retained its great beauty of long ago. His Excellency of the Right's seventh son, still a boy, accompanied them on the shō. He was so sweet that His Majesty bestowed a robe on him, and His Excellency descended the steps to dance his obeisance. It was nearly dawn when His Majesty took his leave. The gifts for the senior nobles and Princes were from him, while those for the privy gentlemen and the palace musicians, graduated according to rank, came from Her Highness.
The following night the Commander took Her Highness out of the palace, and she went amid exceptional splendor. His Majesty sent all his gentlewomen to see her to her new home. Her carriage with its broad eaves was accompanied by three gaily colored ones without eaves and by six trimmed with gold, as well as by twenty palm-leaf and two basket-work carriages, with eight pages and servants attending each; and twelve display carriages filled with gentlewomen came forward from Sanjō to greet her train. Her escort of senior nobles, privy gentlemen, gentlemen of the sixth rank, and so on was indescribably magnificent.
Display carriage
Now that he could look at her at his ease, he found her thoroughly pleasing. She was slight but quietly poised and noble in her bearing, and he could find no fault at all with her, at which he congratulated himself on his really quite good fortune. And yet, he told himself, if only I could forget my loss; but I cannot, for nothing ever distracts me from my longing, and it appears that in this life I will never be consoled. Enlightenment alone will give me the insight to know what retribution caused this strangely painful bond, so that I can let it go. Absorbed in such thoughts as these, he gave all his attention to building the temple.
After the twentieth of the month, once the commotion of the Kamo Festival was past, he set off to Uji as so often before. He looked over the temple then under construction and issued orders about the work to done, and he was on his way to visit the old nun—for it would be unkind to pass straight on by those withered boughs106—when he spied a quite modest woman's carriage just now crossing the bridge, securely accompanied by a band of rough warriors from the East with quivers at their backs and a throng of servants. How provincial! he thought and went in. His own escort was still standing about, making a good deal of noise, and meanwhile he saw the carriage start toward the house. Suppressing his escort's chatter, he sent to find out who it was. “The daughter of my lord the former Governor of Hitachi is back from a pilgrimage to the temple at Hatsuse,” the answer came in a rich brogue. “She stayed here on the way there, too.”
Astonishing! It was the young woman of whom he had heard! He asked his men to disappear and sent the party the message “Bring the carriage straight in! There is someone else staying here, too, but only on the north.”107 His men had nothing imposing about them, since they were all in hunting cloaks, but the new arrivals felt awkward and remained discreet, leading their horses round a good distance from the house.
They brought the carriage in and drew it up to the west end of the gallery. No blinds yet hung in the main house, so that it was open to all eyes. He peered at the party through a hole in the sliding panel that closed off that part of the south aisle, which was otherwise protected by lowered shutters. When his outer robes rustled, he took them off and stayed on in only dress cloak and trousers.
She did not alight immediately; instead she sent someone to the nun, no doubt to ask who the other, apparently exalted visitor might be. However, the moment he learned whose carriage it was, he let it be known that no one under any circumstances was to reveal his identity, and the women understood him well enough. The reply came back, “Please alight. There is another guest, but he is in another part of the house.”
The first to get out was a young woman who lifted the carriage blind. She was far more polished and presentable than the escort of guards. Then another appeared, a little older. “Quickly, my lady!” she said.
“But I feel strangely exposed.” The voice was low but certainly distinguished.
“You keep saying that! The shutters were all down last time, too, though. From where else could anyone be watching?” The speaker felt quite at ease. Her mistress cautiously alighted from the carriage, and his first glimpse of her head and her slender, noble figure must have brought back vivid memories. It was a bitter disappointment when she immediately hid behind her fan, for he could not then see her face. She had to step down from the carriage, which the first two women had done with ease, but she herself could not work out how to follow them, and she took a very long time about it. Once she was down, she slipped inside. Over a deep scarlet gown she had on, as far as he could tell, a pink long dress and over that a spring green dress gown. A four-foot folding screen stood against the panel, but he had a full view of her nonetheless, since his hole was higher than that. Apparently worried about the direction from which he was looking, she lay down facing the other way.
“What a time you had, my lady! The ferry across the Izumi River108 was just terrifying today!”
“It was a lot easier in the second month, when the river was lower. Talk about travel, though, what is there anywhere here to be frightened about, compared to the East?” The two women sat chatting with no sign of fatigue while their mistress lay there in silence. Her extended arm was too plump and pretty to belong to any daughter of a Hitachi Governor. She had true distinction.
His back was beginning to hurt from standing so still, but he stayed that way lest they notice his presence.
“What a lovely smell!” the young one exclaimed. “There's some delicious incense in the air. It must be something the nun is burning, I suppose.”
“Yes, it's wonderful, it certainly is,” the older one rejoined enthusiastically. “People from the City are so stylish and elegant! Her ladyship109 is ever so proud of what she can do, but out in the East she never managed to blend anything like this. This nun may have vanished from the world, and she dresses as she should in her gray and blue-gray, but she lives very well!”
A page girl came from the opposite direction along the veranda. “Please give your mistress some hot water,” she said; and in came a series of trays.
They brought their mistress some fruit. “Excuse me, my lady—will you not have some?” They tried to rouse her, but when she failed to stir, they both gobbled up chestnuts and such.
He at first recoiled, never having heard the like before, but then curiosity got the better of him, and he crept up for another look. Here and there, in Her Majesty's household or elsewhere, he had
seen any number of bright and pretty women who outranked this one, and ordinarily they meant nothing to him. How strange he was, when he who struck many people as far too serious should now be unable to tear his eyes from anyone so wholly unremarkable!
A message came from the nun, but his alert men answered that he was feeling unwell and was resting. She never imagined that he might be spying; instead she assumed that he was waiting for evening to approach the new arrival, since he had already made it clear that he wanted to meet her. Men from his estates had as usual brought partitioned boxes and so on, and they had left some with her. She fed the Easterners from them, looked after this and that, then tidied herself up and went to call on her guest. The costume the gentlewomen had praised was indeed very fresh and neat, and she still had some of her looks.
“I was expecting you yesterday,” he heard her say. “How did you come to arrive today, when the sun is already high?”
“For some strange reason my lady was so exhausted that we stopped by the Izumi River yesterday, and this morning it was ages before she felt able to go on,” an elderly gentlewoman explained. This time the young lady sat up when roused, and when she looked shyly away from the nun, he got a perfect view. Her beautiful eyes and the line of the hair at her forehead irresistibly recalled that face that he had never actually seen very well, and he wept as so often before. Her voice when she answered the nun was very like her half sister's at Nijō.
What a dear, dear girl! he exclaimed to himself. To think that I have gone so long without even knowing about her! I could not be indifferent to any relative, even one still lower in station, whose looks were so similar, and this one, although unrecognized, is most certainly His Late Highness's daughter! He was filled with boundless love and happiness now that his own eyes had told him so. He wanted to go to her, right now, to taste the joy of saying, “But there you are! You are alive!” No wonder that Emperor was disappointed, the one who sent the wizard to Hōrai and got back only a hairpin;110 but he knew that this girl, even if not the same, promised real consolation. He and she must have shared a bond of destiny from the past. The nun soon left, after a short chat. She had apparently decided against sharing any confidences, having grasped from the scent the women had noticed that he must be peering in from nearby.
When the sun was low, he stole away, dressed again, called the nun to her usual doorway, and asked for news of the visitor. “I am very fortunate indeed to have come when I did,” he said. “Tell me—have you done as I asked?”
“I waited all last year to pass on the message you gave me, my lord, after you asked me to, and in the second month of this year I finally met her and her mother when they were on their way to Hatsuse. Her mother was shocked when I gave her some intimation of what you wish—the resemblance in question did her daughter far too much honor, she said—so I preferred not to mention it, since I gathered that you were then rather preoccupied. Then, this month, the young lady made the same pilgrimage, and today she is here on her way back. I suppose that she breaks her journey here in memory of her father. Something detained her mother, and I cannot very well say anything to her when she is here like this by herself.”
“I asked everyone to keep her people from knowing that I am here, because on a private trip like this I do not wish to be recognized, but I wonder—servants can never keep a secret. What should I do, though? Surely her being alone makes it easier to talk to her. Do assure her that the strong tie between us is what has brought us together here.”
“That tie certainly took you little enough time to discover!” she said with a smile. “Very well, I shall tell her.” She slipped inside.
“Does that lovely bird sing, too, in the lovely voice I heard long ago?
Wondering, I came today to seek her through the grasses,”111
he hummed casually, as though to himself. She heard him and went off to pass it on.
50
AZUMAYA
The Eastern Cottage
Azumaya (“eastern cottage”) refers to a modest sort of thatched dwelling mentioned in the saibara song by that name. As the chapter title, it comes from a poem by Kaoru:
“Are the weeds so thick that they wholly bar your gate, O eastern cottage—
too long, too long I waited while the pouring rain came down!”
RELATIONSHIP TO EARLIER CHAPTERS
“The Eastern Cottage” roughly overlaps with the end of “The Ivy” and extends slightly beyond it, into Kaoru's twenty-sixth year.
PERSONS
The Commander, age 26 (Kaoru)
Ben a nun at Uji (Ben no Ama)
The wife of the Governor of Hitachi (Chūjō no Kimi)
A young woman, her favorite daughter, half sister of Naka no Kimi, about 21 (Ukifune)
The Governor of Hitachi
The young lady, his favorite daughter, 15 or 16
A Lieutenant of the Left Palace Guards, 22 or 23 (Sakon no Shōshō)
His intermediary
Ukifune's nurse
The wife of His Highness of War, 26 (Naka no Kimi)
Her gentlewoman, Taifu
His Highness of War, 27 (Niou)
Ukon, Taifu's daughter, Naka no Kimi's gentlewoman
Shōshō, Naka no Kimi's gentlewoman
Jijū, Ukifune's gentlewoman
He refrained from exploring the fastnesses of Mount Tsukuba, despite his desire to do so, because considering what she was, he would make himself perfectly ridiculous by insisting on sallying forth come what may into the thickets of her foothills.1 He did not even write. The old nun sent her mother more than one hint of what he had told her, but that lady could not imagine him to be seriously interested, and she was merely intrigued that he should take such trouble to seek out her daughter. His distinction, so rare in this day and age, set her dreaming of what might have been if her daughter had been more worthy of him.
The Governor2 had a good many children by the wife he had lost, a daughter he specially favored by his present one, and five or six younger children of varying ages, all of whose care so preoccupied him that his stepdaughter was almost a stranger. The young woman's mother, who resented this frequently and bitterly, longed day and night to marry her to particularly striking advantage. She would have had less reason to take it so hard if this daughter had belonged with the others in looks, in which case she could have let people assume that they were all one and the same, but the girl did not belong in the same company, having grown up to be impossibly superior, and it struck her that it would be a very great shame to do so.
The news of all these daughters brought courting letters from a great many scions of more or less reputable families, and the Governor managed well enough to settle the two or three from his first wife. Now his second spent every moment on watch for an opportunity to do as she hoped for hers, and she looked after her very tenderly indeed.
The Governor was no churl. Descended from the senior nobility, he had thoroughly respectable relatives and great wealth as well. He also had pride to match, and he lived a life of ostentatious refinement, but for all his fastidious ways, he remained at heart strangely crude and countrified. No doubt because he had been buried so long, ever since his youth, in the distant wilds of the East, peculiar sounds crept into his voice, and he spoke with something of an accent; and for this reason he feared and shunned the company of the mighty. In all things he was quick to assure his own advantage. As to pretty accomplishments, he knew nothing of flutes or strings, being instead very good with a bow. His wealth attracted nice young women to his household, common though it might be, to dress in the height of fashion, to vie with one another over broken-backed poems, to amuse themselves with tales and Kōshin vigils,3 and generally to immerse themselves in deplorably vain tastes and amusements.
“She's clever, I'm sure, and they say she's a real beauty”: so the suitors maintained with optimistic ardor. Particularly assiduous in his courtship was a certain Lieutenant of the Left Palace Guards, a quiet young man of twenty-two or -three who, al
though known to be good at his books, could never manage much sparkle or animation; which may explain why whatever women he had once been accustomed to visit no longer received him.
The young woman's mother told herself of him especially, among all those from whom she had such approaches: I hear that he is of good family, he seems to be settled in his ways and to know what is what, and he has some distinction of his own. All things considered, I cannot imagine anyone grander than he taking much interest in her. She passed his notes to her daughter and made sure as necessary that he got attractive answers. All on her own she decided that however little the girl might mean to the Governor, she would give her life to doing her best for her, and she felt certain that no one who had actually seen how perfectly lovely the girl was could then possibly neglect her. She set the date for the eighth month and began collecting the trousseau of furnishings and accessories. After having the least little trinket she ordered given a fresh, amusing touch and done in an intricate, tasteful design of painted lacquer or mother-of-pearl, she would put it away for her daughter and show the Governor something less good, remarking, “This should do very well.” The Governor, who hardly knew one thing from another, collected it all, worthless or not, as long as it might fill out a trousseau, and laid it out until his daughters were fairly buried in it. He brought in teachers of koto and biwa from the Women's Music Pavilion to give them lessons, and whenever one actually mastered a piece, he would all but fall at the teacher's feet; after which, with much fuss and bluster, he would deluge him with gifts. When one was learning some lively piece and sat there in the lovely half-light of dusk playing it with her teacher, he would weep without shame and heap her with grotesque praise. To his wife, who had some discrimination, this was all quite painful, and she avoided chiming in. “You do not think much of my little girl, do you!” he would complain.
The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji) Page 125