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

by Murasaki Shikibu

  Ukon wept bitterly when she opened her mistress's note to her mother, written the evening before. There it is, then! She told her mother that she felt she had no hope! Why did she say nothing to me? She was never displeased with me, not once, since we were children, and I never kept anything from her, but she has gone off on her last journey without a hint to me of what she meant to do! It is too cruel! Ukon stamped her feet and wept like a little child. She had certainly seen her mistress despondent day after day, but nothing about her had ever suggested that she could conceive anything so utterly horrible. What had happened to her, though? Ukon was desperate to know. Meanwhile the shock had left her mistress's nurse unable to do more than mutter, “What are we to do? What are we to do?”

  That last reply's most unusual character had seriously alarmed His Highness as well. What can she possibly mean? Has she gone off to hide somewhere, even though she seems to love me, because she is too afraid of just being an amusement of mine? His messenger arrived to find everyone in the household wailing and distraught, and he could not even deliver his letter. “What has happened?” he asked a maid. “Our mistress suddenly died last night,” she replied, “and her women are all beside themselves. We have no one here now to look to, and for the moment no one in her service knows quite what to do.” The man knew little about His Highness's interest in the matter, and he returned to the City without inquiring further.

  His Highness felt that he must be dreaming when the man brought him the news. How very strange! I never heard that she was seriously ill, and although I keep being told that she has been unwell lately, that answer I had from her yesterday showed no sign of it; in fact, it was even prettier than usual. At a loss what to think, he ordered Tokikata to go there and find out exactly what was going on.

  “But, Your Highness, his lordship the Commander seems to have heard something, because I gather that he has sternly reprimanded the guards for being lax, and they now challenge anyone who turns up there, even an underling. If I were to go there without a proper excuse, and his lordship were then to hear of it, he might well understand everything. Besides, any house where someone has died suddenly like that is bound to be in an uproar and full of people.”

  “No doubt, but do you really expect me to bear the uncertainty? Just do whatever you must to talk to Jijū or to someone else who knows, and find out exactly what that story my man brought back means. Servants sometimes talk complete nonsense.”

  Tokikata pitied him in his obvious distress and set off that evening. Being unencumbered, he traveled swiftly. For the moment it was not raining, but he had dressed for a difficult journey, and he arrived in very humble guise to hear many voices loudly lamenting that the funeral was to be that very night. This was a great shock. He sent in a message to Ukon but was unable to talk to her. “I am afraid that I am too dazed to be able to see you,” she sent back. “I am sorry that I cannot meet you, though, because I do not suppose you will be back after this evening.”

  “Yes, but how can I return to His Highness without learning what happened? May I not at least talk to someone else, then?”

  His insistence won him a meeting with Jijū. “It is too awful!” she said. “Surely she herself never imagined going so suddenly, and there are just no words to describe the horror of it. It is like a nightmare. Tell His Highness that we are all stunned. I will tell you about her despair, and about how sorry she felt that night for His Highness, but not until I have composed myself a little. Please come again once the normal mourning confinement is over.” She was weeping bitterly.

  Inside the house, too, he heard nothing but weeping voices, among which he thought he recognized the nurse's. “Oh, my darling,” she was crying, “where have you gone? Oh, come back, come back! It is too hard not even to have your body! I never tired of seeing you, morning or evening, and I always looked forward so much to your being well settled! That is what I have lived for all this time! To think that you have now left me, and that you never even told me where you were going! No god or demon could take you, my darling! Why, they say Taishaku himself sends back those who are too sorely missed!1 Whoever you are who took my darling, human or demon, oh, give her back! Let me at least see her body!” She went on like this, sometimes not even making sense.

  “Please tell me more. Can someone have made off with her? His Highness sent me here to represent him in an effort to find out exactly what happened. There is no help for it now, whatever the truth may be, and he will only blame me, his messenger, if later on he hears anything that suggests I misinformed him. I am sure that you understand how much it means to him to know, since he sent me here to talk to you in full faith that you would tell me. There are old instances in the other realm,2 too, of men lost because of love for a woman, but I doubt that any man has ever been as much in love as he.”

  Yes, Jijū thought, it is remarkable to see his messenger here, and anything this unusual will certainly come out in the end, whatever one may do to hide it. “Do you think that the whole household would be this upset if there were the slightest reason to believe someone made off with her? She was suffering a great deal lately, and then, as luck would have it, his lordship dropped her a very troubling hint as well. Her mother and her nurse—the one you hear wailing that way—were getting her ready to go to the gentleman who knew her first, but in the secret of her own thoughts she felt a more tender leaning toward His Highness, and I expect that that is what made her so unhappy. I am afraid that she does seem to have purposely done away with herself, and I am sure that that is why her nurse is babbling all sorts of things that hardly make sense.”

  In this circuitous manner she conveyed some of what had happened, but Tokikata found that he did not yet quite understand. “Very well, then, I shall be back in due course. It is so frustrating to remain standing this way.3 I expect that next time His Highness will come himself.”

  “Oh, no, that would be too good of him! As things are now, it would only honor her memory if people were to learn what she meant to him, but it was a secret after all, and I am sure he would agree that it should remain one.” She cautioned him this way before he left because the household was doing everything to avoid revealing that its mistress had died so strangely, and he had of course gathered what the real situation was.

  Their mistress's mother now arrived, too, in pouring rain. Lacking words to express her feelings, she murmured confusedly, “It is a great sorrow actually to see someone die, but at least such things are common enough. What can have happened, though, in her case?” The idea that her daughter might have drowned herself had not occurred to her, since she knew nothing about her anguish over what had been going on, and she could only suppose that a demon had devoured her or that some foxlike creature had made off with her—she remembered strange things just like that turning up in old tales;4 or perhaps an evil-minded nurse, for example, someone close to the great lady who frightened her so much,5 had learned that his lordship planned to bring her daughter to the City and had felt sufficiently offended to enlist someone's help in plotting her abduction.

  “Is there anyone new here?” she asked, suspecting a servant, but the women said, “No, this place is so isolated that no one unused to it ever manages to stay on. They always go home again to the City, saying they will come straight back and taking with them everything they need to remain away.” Half even of those who had long served her daughter were now gone, and in fact the household had very few people in it.

  Jijū, remembering those last days, thought how often her mistress had wept bitterly and said that she only wanted to die. She found beneath her mistress's inkstone a piece of paper bearing the scribbled words “mark me when I am gone,” and this turned her gaze toward the river, whose loud roar was now dreary and hateful. “It is so difficult,” she said, “having everyone imagining this and that about what happened, doubting all we say, and wondering what has really become of her.”

  “It was a secret, of course,” Ukon replied, “but it is not as though she started
it, and considering who His Highness is, there is really no reason now that she is gone why her mother should be ashamed to hear of it. I think we might just tell her what happened and relieve some of the agony she is going through, including these particular little fears of hers that worry her so. The usual thing when someone has died is to lay out the body and proceed with what follows, and there will be no hiding the truth if the strange situation we have now continues day after day. Yes, we should tell her and at least keep up appearances for the world at large.”

  They agreed to do so and privately told their mistress's mother everything, although as they spoke, the terrible words died on their lips. She thought as she listened in consternation, Why, then, my daughter drowned in the current of that fearsome river! and she wanted only to throw herself in after her. “But we must go and look for her and at least dispose of her body properly!”

  “No,” Ukon answered, “it would be useless to try. She must be out to sea by now. Besides, that would just start even worse talk.”

  This sort of idea just made the poor lady feel sick, and she asked the two women to have her carriage brought up, since she had not the faintest idea what else to do. They placed in it the mats and bedding from their mistress's room,6 as well as all the accessories she had used daily and the bedclothes that still lay there as though she had just thrown them off. Then they sent the carriage on its way exactly as when someone has died, accompanied by the reverend monk their mistress's foster brother, by her uncle the Adept, and by his close disciples as well as by the other monks with whom she had long been acquainted—in short, by all those who would be present during the mourning confinement. Meanwhile their mistress's mother and nurse writhed in paroxysms of disturbing grief.

  The Commissioner,7 the Constable, and other such menacing characters arrived. “You should inform his lordship about the funeral, set a date for it, and do the thing properly,” they said, but Ukon told them that the household wanted particularly to have it over with tonight. “We have reasons for keeping it extremely discreet,” she explained. She directed the carriage to the meadow below the hill opposite, kept everyone at a distance, and had the monks called in to proceed with the cremation. The smoke died out distressingly soon.

  The country people, who take such things particularly seriously and who carefully observe the injunction against ill-omened speech, were shocked. “How very strange!” they complained. “They are not doing it right at all! They are just rushing through it as though she were a worthless menial!”

  “I hear people from the City do it this way on purpose when there are surviving brothers or sisters.” Such were the dubious comments exchanged on the subject.

  Even these people's talk is a worry, Jijū and Ukon said to themselves, and if out there in the wider world his lordship the Commander learns that she left no corpse when she died, he will certainly have grave doubts about the whole thing. For a while he may wonder whether she is with His Highness, who is at least a relative of his, but in the end he will discover the truth about that. And he may not suspect only His Highness; he will start wondering who else could have stolen her from him. Dreadful suspicions may well indeed mark her when she is gone, despite the good fortune she enjoyed while she lived. They took care to seal the lips of all the household servants who had witnessed this morning's commotion and to make sure that they did not discuss it with outsiders. “All in good time we will quietly tell everyone concerned what really happened,” they assured each other, “but for the moment it would be too awful if people were suddenly to learn anything that distracted them from mourning her.” Guilt made them both eager to keep the secret.

  It was a busy time for his lordship the Commander, because Her Cloistered Highness his mother was ill, and he had therefore gone on retreat to Ishiyama. Being away only heightened his concern about Uji, but no one actually told him what had happened, and as a result the household there felt shamed before everyone that even so great a misfortune had failed to elicit a messenger from him. A man from one of his estates brought him the news at last. He was shocked, and a messenger from him reached Uji early the next morning.

  “Word of this tragedy should have brought me straight to you in person,” his message went, “but my mother is unwell, and for that reason I have undertaken to remain on retreat here for a certain number of days. Why did you proceed with the ceremony in haste yesterday evening, when you could perfectly well have got in touch with me and postponed it for some time? It is all over now, of course, but it is also very painful for me to have the rustics of your hills criticizing the way the last rites were done.”

  This was delivered by his intimate retainer the Treasury Commissioner,8 whose arrival provoked a fresh outburst of grief. They could not possibly tell him what had actually happened, though, and they avoided giving any proper answer by taking refuge in a flood of tears.

  What a pathetic end! the Commander thought when he heard his messenger's report. And what an awful place it is! There must be a demon living there. What can have possessed me, to leave her so long in a place like that? As to that most unfortunate business of His Highness, no doubt my complacent way of all but abandoning her there is what gave him the chance to impose himself on her in the first place! He felt a sharp pang of regret over his own strangely nonchalant manner. It was too deplorable of him to be preoccupied by an affair of this kind when his mother was ill, and he returned to the City.

  He did not go to see Her Highness when he arrived; instead he sent her a message that he had just had some disastrous news about someone close to him, though of no great rank, and that for the moment he was too upset to present himself. Then he gave himself up to lamenting his tragic loves. Why, when I now desperately miss those looks of hers, and her sweet charm, and all the delight of her presence, why did I not wholeheartedly love her while she lived, and instead let time slip carelessly by? Countless regrets tormented him now that he could no longer assuage them. Ah, how thoroughly in such things I am destined for the blackest sorrow! I whose aspiration always lay in another direction have ended up to my own surprise living as all men do, until the very Buddha must have had enough of me! He must have smothered his compassion and devised just this sort of trial as an expedient means to lead people's hearts toward higher things. So his thoughts ran on, while he gave himself over entirely to holy devotions.

  His Highness meanwhile was still more deeply affected. For two or three days he seemed completely to have lost his senses, causing frenzied anxiety that some sort of spirit might have possessed him, until at last his tears ceased to flow and he regained a measure of calm, although even then he dwelled on her memory with desperate longing. For the benefit of those around him he skillfully pretended to suffer only from a grave illness, lest they note his inexplicably tear-swollen eyes, but the nature of his trouble was nonetheless plain to see, and some of his people wondered aloud what woman could possibly have reduced him to such an extremity of distress that his very life seemed in danger.

  The Commander of course had reports of all this. I was right, then, he said to himself. They were not just exchanging letters. Once he had seen her, he would certainly have wanted her—that is just what she was like. I would not have gone unscathed if she had lived; something would undoubtedly have happened to make me look a fool. Reflections of this kind seemed to him to quell somewhat the flames that burned in his breast.

  Day after day the whole court came calling to inquire after His Highness's health, and the Commander therefore decided to do so, too, since with all the world in such an uproar it might have seemed strange if mourning for someone inconsequential were to detain him. He was wearing blue-gray anyway in mourning for an uncle, His Highness of Ceremonial, who had recently died, and this suited him perfectly, for in the depths of his heart he felt as though he were wearing it for her. He was a little thinner than he had been, which only enhanced his elegant looks.

  It was a quiet dusk, after all the other visitors had gone. His Highness, who did not really
feel like keeping entirely to his bed, received personally only those close to him, and he could not very well turn away someone who was accustomed to coming straight in through his blinds. He shrank from the thought of seeing him, since he did not doubt that doing so would bring on fresh tears, but he nonetheless composed himself sufficiently to say, “There is really nothing seriously wrong with me, but everyone is talking as though I were in serious danger, and I am sorry that Their Majesties should be so alarmed. It is true, though, that life is very uncertain, and I wonder what is to become of me.” He wiped away tears meant only to divert his visitor's attention, but to his acute embarrassment they flowed on and on. Still, he said to himself, he can hardly know why; he probably just thinks me weak and unmanly.

  Sure enough! thought the Commander. All this misery of his is over her! When can it have begun? He must have been laughing at me for months!

  The grief vanished so visibly from his expression that His Highness exclaimed to himself how cold the fellow was. When something is seriously troubling me, even something far short of this, the mere cry of a bird passing overhead can overwhelm me.9 Here I am, obviously very upset, and if he knows what the matter is, which he must, he cannot be that impervious to human feelings! How detached a man can be when he really knows that all things pass! He both envied and admired his visitor's composure, but he was touched as well to remember the stalwart support he had been to the Uji house.10 He is a token of her, after all! he thought, gazing at the Commander and imagining the two of them together.

  After some time spent chatting about this and that, the Commander decided that he could no longer remain silent. “In the old days,” he began, “I never felt at ease with myself as long as I kept anything from you, however briefly, although by now, what with the rank to which I have risen and the many preoccupations that leave you so little leisure, I am unable to wait upon you at night, say, as I used to, in the absence of any particular pressing need, so that I cannot keep in touch with you as well as I would like. Some time ago I happened to hear that a relative of the young woman who passed away in that mountain village—the one where you used to call—lived where I would not have expected to find her, and it occurred to me that I might see her now and again, if it had not been that at the time I might unfortunately have risked a degree of criticism by doing so. I therefore installed her there, in that distant and lonely place, and I managed to visit her all too rarely. Meanwhile I gathered that she was not especially eager to rely solely on me. However, that would have mattered only if I had meant to treat her with high honor, which I did not, and it was of little consequence as long as my main wish was simply to provide for her welfare; and now it has come to pass that this young person, whose sweetness and charm I found engaging, has tragically died. It is very sad indeed to have to contemplate in her example all the treachery of life. I expect that you may have had word of this yourself.” Now, at last, he wept. These were not tears that he had wished His Highness to see, but once they began to flow, he was powerless to stop them.