“Among those in whom His Majesty has long placed his trust,” she said, “it is now, I think, to you above all that he looks for sure guidance toward the life to come.”
“I have little time left me, and I know from what the Buddha has kindly told me that I may well not live past this year or the next; and for that reason I have been on strict retreat, invoking the Buddha without interruption. Only this summons from you, Your Majesty, could have brought me down from the Mountain.”
He went on to speak of the spirit's stubbornness and of the terrifying things it had said, and in this connection he went on, “I recently witnessed the strangest thing. This third month past my aged mother made a pilgrimage to Hatsuse because of a vow, and on her way back she lodged at the place they call the Uji Villa. It is a large house, long uninhabited, and I was afraid that evil creatures might have taken it over and perhaps harm anyone gravely ill, and that fear proved to be well founded.” He described the discovery of the young woman.
“That is indeed extraordinary!” Her Majesty said. She was so frightened that she woke up her waiting women, who by now were asleep. Only Kozaishō, the one the Commander had been courting, had heard His Reverence's story; the others, whom she wakened, had heard nothing at all. His Reverence was disturbed that his account should have so alarmed Her Majesty, and he remained silent about what he had not yet told.
“On my way down this time I thought that I might call on the nuns at Ono, and when I did so, the young woman begged me in tears to satisfy her desire to leave the world; so I did as she asked. My younger sister, a nun once married to a late Intendant of the Gate Watch, has been happy to have her in place of the daughter she lost and has been looking after her extremely well. I gather that this has made her furious with me. For that matter, the young woman really is exceptionally beautiful, and it is certainly a shame to have her dressed as a nun. I wonder who she is.” He was a fluent talker, and he had gone on at some length.
“But why did the spirit take a wellborn girl to a place like that?” Kozaishō asked. “Anyway, you must know who she is by now.”
“No, I do not. Perhaps she has said something to my sister. If she really was of good birth, surely everyone would know. I do not doubt that even a peasant girl may have looks like hers. It is not as though no buddha is ever born among the dragons.43 She is just a common young woman with a particularly light burden of karmic sin.”
Her Majesty then remembered the young woman said to have died some time ago near there. Kozaishō, too, had heard from her sister about a young woman who had died under mysterious circumstances. That must be the one! she reflected, although she was not sure.
“I only mentioned the matter to you, Your Majesty, because I am so struck by the way she has been hiding in order to avoid letting anyone know that she is even alive, as though she felt pursued by a deadly enemy.” His Reverence seemed reluctant to pursue the matter, and Kozaishō therefore said no more.
“She must be the one!” Her Majesty said to Kozaishō. “I must tell the Commander about this.” She left it at that, though, because she did not wish to raise with so daunting a gentleman a matter of which she had no certain knowledge and which, moreover, he and His Reverence had no doubt both wished to conceal.
Once the First Princess was well, His Reverence returned to the Mountain. On the way he called at Ono, where his sister sternly reproved him. “I cannot understand why you never said a word to me about this, when her present state only invites worse sin!” But her complaint was too late.
“You need now only pursue your devotions,” His Reverence assured the young woman. “Life is as uncertain for the young as for the old. Your understanding that all is fleeting is entirely proper to your present state.” She felt abashed.
“Please have a new habit made,” he said, and he gave her damask, silk gauze, and plain silk.44 “I shall look after you as long as I live. You need not worry. No one born into this common life and still entangled in thoughts of worldly glory can help finding renunciation nearly impossible; but why should you, pursuing your devotions here in the forest, feel either bitterness or shame? After all, this life is as tenuous as a leaf.” And he added, “‘The moon roams till dawn over the gate among the pines’”;45 for although a monk, he was also a man of impressive elegance.
That is just the advice I wanted, she told herself.
The wind howled mournfully all day long, and she heard His Reverence murmur, “Ah, on a day like this the mountain ascetic can only weep!” I am a mountain ascetic, too, now, she thought. No wonder my tears flow on and on. She went out near the veranda and saw men in many-colored hunting cloaks at the distant mouth of the valley. They seemed to be going up the Mountain, although people very rarely went that way. One usually saw no more than the occasional monk coming from Kurodani,46 and this party in civil dress made a rather surprising sight.
It was the Captain who had been so angry with her. He was coming with yet another vain complaint, but the autumn leaves were so lovely here, and so much more richly red than elsewhere, that their beauty had captivated him as soon as he entered the valley. How extraordinary it would be to come across an especially attractive girl here!
“I was not on duty, and so I decided to have a look at the autumn leaves, since little else required my attention,” he explained. “These trees fairly invite one to spend a night beneath their spreading boughs!” He gazed at the view.
His Reverence's sister, as always ready with her tears, said,
“Alas, this mountain, swept by the withering winds that blow in autumn,
offers you upon its slopes no kind refuge from the storm,”
and he replied,
“Your mountain village, where as I know all too well no one awaits me,
called to me not to pass by when I saw these lovely trees.”
He talked on after all about the young woman who was now beyond his reach. “Please give me a glimpse of her as she is now,” he begged the nun Shōshō. “You can at least do that for me, after the promise you made me.”
Shōshō went inside, and what she saw convinced her that she did indeed want to show off that slight, graceful figure in refreshingly clear colors, light gray over leaf gold, with her rich hair spread out over her shoulders like a many-ribbed fan. Her exquisitely fine features glowed as though perfectly and tenderly powdered. Shōshō would have liked to paint her like that, caught up in her devotions, with her rosary hung on the nearby curtain crossbar, conscientiously reading the scriptures. The sight of her always makes me weep, she thought—what will she look like to the man who had his heart set on her? The moment was clearly at hand, for she was able to show him a little hole below a sliding-panel latch and to remove the standing curtain that might have blocked his view. Never had he imagined what he saw. Why, what an extraordinary beauty! He was so overcome by regret and sorrow, as though it had been all his fault, that he could not stop his tears, and he drew back for fear that the sound of his mad weeping might reach her.
Is it possible that whoever lost such a girl should not be trying to find her again? And surely everyone would know if this or that lord's daughter had disappeared or had renounced the world in a fit of jealousy. It was a complete mystery to him. A girl with her looks could not possibly put me off even as a nun, he reflected; in fact, she is all the prettier for it, and I am only going to find her more irresistible. Yes, I must secretly make sure I have her.
He therefore ventured a serious approach. “She was perhaps reluctant to permit a common courtship,” he said, “but surely I may address her without constraint now that she has entered her present state. Please be good enough to remind her of that. I can never forget the past that brought me to you, and she will give me one more reason to continue to come.”
His Reverence's sister replied, “The thought of what may await her in the future is a matter of painful concern, and I shall be very pleased indeed if you will continue your interest and your visits in that loyal spirit. Her plight will be a v
ery sad one once I am gone.”
He guessed from the way she wept that the two must be related, but he could not imagine who the young woman might be. “Regarding my attention to her future needs, I naturally cannot know how long a life awaits me, but once I have undertaken to provide for her, you may be sure that I will not change my mind. Does no one really come here for her? Not that that sort of uncertainty need deter me, but I wonder whether you are not keeping something back.”
“If her life were such as to encourage ordinary associations, I am sure that people would indeed be coming for her, but as she is now, you see, she has put all that behind her. That is all I can gather of her intentions.”
He sent the young woman a message:
“It is all the world you have turned your back upon, that I know full well,
yet that you should hate it so makes me hateful to myself.”
The woman who brought it to her also conveyed a long and earnest speech from him. “Please consider me your brother,” he had added. “It will be a great comfort to be able to talk to you about the little things that crop up in life.”
“Unfortunately, the deep significance of your conversation would be beyond me,” she answered. She did not even reply to his poem.
She wanted none of it, after the terrible things that had happened to her. As far as she was concerned, she preferred to be left as solitary as a stump. That was why for months she had been so gloomy and withdrawn. She cheered up a little now that she had at last done what she wished to do, exchanging pleasantries with His Reverence's sister and also playing Go. She was attentive to her devotions and quite apart from the Lotus Sutra read a great many other scriptures as well. Still, in the season of deep snows, when no one came to the house at all, she found very little to lighten her mood.
The New Year came, though with no sign of spring, and the very silence of the frozen streams inspired melancholy; until despite all she had against the man who said he had “never lost the way to be lost in you,”47 she found that she still could not forget that time.
“Gaze on though I may at snowy fields and mountains under a dark sky,
all those things of long ago sadden me again today,”
she wrote, as so often between her devotions seeking consolation in writing practice. She wondered whether anyone remembered her, now that a New Year had come since she vanished from the world.
Someone brought them new spring shoots in a rough basket, and the nun had them taken to her with,
“Spring shoots picked with joy between wastes of lingering snow among the mountains
in their own way give me hope for all your years yet ahead”;
to which she replied,
“From this very day, spring shoots from mountain meadows that lie deep in snow
are for you, that you yourself may yet enjoy long, long years.”
Why, I believe she really means it! the nun thought, very touched; but if only her state were such as to reward my care! She shed heartfelt tears.
In color and fragrance the red plum blossoms near her room were as they had always been. She had loved this flower more than any other, for the way it told her that spring was still spring,48 and perhaps she was still intoxicated by its beloved scent, for when she offered up the late-night holy water, she called a lesser nun, one a little younger than the rest, to pick her a branch,49 from which petals then scattered as though in complaint, broadcasting their delicious perfume.
“Him I do not see, whose sleeves long ago brushed mine, yet the blossoms' scent
calls his presence back again as the spring night yields to dawn.”
The Governor of Kii, the old nun's grandson, came up for a visit. He was a proud and handsome man of thirty. “Were you well last year and the year before?” he asked; but his grandmother appeared to be quite vague, and he therefore went to call on her daughter.
“The poor thing seems not to understand anything anymore,” he said. “I have been so far away, for so long, that I have not been able to visit her during these last years of her life. She was mother and father to me after my parents died. Is the Governor of Hitachi's wife ever in touch with you?” He presumably meant his younger sister.
“Year by year we are abandoned more and more to our solitude. No, we have not heard from Hitachi for ages. I doubt that my mother will last until her return.”
The young woman was surprised to hear the title that she knew as her mother's.
“I have been back in the City for some days now, but official matters have kept me all too busy, and I am afraid that I have neglected you. I had wanted to wait upon you yesterday, but I had to go to Uji instead with his lordship the Right Commander. He spent the whole day at the house where His Late Highness the Eighth Prince once lived. He used to visit His Late Highness's daughters there, but then some years ago one of them died. He had installed a younger sister of hers there in secret, but in the spring of last year she died, too, and so he had instructions for the Master of Discipline at the temple there about what he wants done for the anniversary. I need a set of women's clothes made.50 Could you possibly have that done for me? I shall have the necessary weaving done as quickly as possible.”
How could this not disturb the young woman? She sat bashfully facing the inner room, lest anyone suspect that something was wrong.
Making a robe
“I heard that the Eighth Prince had two daughters,” the nun replied. “Which one married His Highness of War?”
“The second one favored by his lordship the Commander was the daughter of a lesser mother, I believe. He did not honor her openly, but he was devastated when she died. The first was the one who really broke his heart, though. He very nearly renounced the world.”
He must be among his lordships intimates! Grasping that gave her a fright.
“It is strange that both should have died there at Uji. It was so sad to watch him again yesterday. He went to the river and stared at the water, and he wept and wept. Then he returned to her room in the house and wrote a poem that he attached to a pillar:
‘Upon these waters, where the image of my love lingers on no more,
the tears I shed in mourning fall in an unending stream.’
He actually said very little, but he seemed to me sadly downcast. Women must think the world of him. He has made a deep impression on me ever since I was young, so much so that I would rather entrust myself to him than to the most powerful lord in the land.”
He has no great depth to him, she thought, but even he is discerning enough to do his lordship justice!
“I doubt that he could stand beside His Grace of Rokujō, whom people called the Shining Lord,” the nun observed; “I gather that his descendants are doing very well indeed in our own time. And compared to His Excellency of the Right?”
“His Excellency is the more magnificently handsome, and he has a particularly grave dignity. His Highness of War is the one of really striking beauty, though. I would gladly be a woman in his intimate service.”
He talked as though discoursing on the subject, and it all seemed to her to concern another world. When his lecture was over, he went away.
She was moved that his lordship had not forgotten her, and she understood better how her mother must feel, but she still shrank from the thought of ever allowing her to see what she had become. It felt extremely strange to see the women dyeing the clothes the Governor had asked for, but she studiously avoided saying anything.
“Would you be kind enough to look after this?” the nun asked when they got to the sewing. “You are so good at doing a hem!” She held out a dress gown. That was too much, though. The young woman did not touch it. Instead she lay down, saying she was unwell.
The nun put her work down. “What is the matter?” she asked anxiously. A woman laid a scarlet shift over a gown in a cherry blossom layering. “This is the sort of thing you should be wearing,” she said. “What a shame you are in gray!”
“O nun's robes of gray: now that you are all I we
ar, how my former life
comes again to memory in the colors of these sleeves!”
she wrote, saddened that, the world being what it is, the nun would no doubt learn the truth if she should die and that she might well be hurt by the way her new daughter had kept her secret from her.
“I have forgotten everything about my past, but now that you are making these things I feel a few sad memories beginning to come back,” she said innocently.
“But you must remember lots of things!” the nun answered. “It is cruel of you never to tell me any of them. I myself had long forgotten these colors that people wear in the world, but dreary as I am, I cannot help wishing that my daughter were alive. Is there not still someone to whom you were as she was to me? Even I, whose daughter really did die, still wonder where she has gone and long to go and find her. There must be people who still think of you—after all, you only disappeared.”
“Yes, there actually was someone, but I am afraid that she may have died in the last few months.” She was crying, and to cover her tears she went on, “I can tell you nothing about all that, though; it hurts too much to try to remember it. I promise that I am not keeping anything from you.” Silent as ever, she said no more.
Now that the Commander had seen to the anniversary, he reflected how very fragile that bond had been. He had done all he could for the two Hitachi sons who were now of age, having made one a Chamberlain and the other an Aide in his own Palace Guards. He had decided to take the best-looking of them, still a boy, into his own intimate service.
The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji) Page 144