“Seriously, though,” Genji said, “are you sure you are in your right mind? What a joke to play on me! Anyway, I shall put on my cloak”; but the Secretary Captain got a grip on it and refused to let go.
“All right, you, too, then!” Genji undid the Captain's sash to strip the cloak off him. They wrestled back and forth while the Captain struggled to keep him from succeeding, until a seam gave way and Genji's cloak came apart.
“The misdeeds you hide may well soon be known to all, now our tug-of-war
has torn a rent in the cloak that covered so many sins!”
the Captain said. “Wear it now, and everyone will know!”41
“Such a summer cloak may hardly hide anything, that I know full well,
but what a poor friend you are to uncover me that way!”42
Genji retorted; and the two of them went off together, their garments trailing about them, the best of friends.
Genji lay down to nurse his vexation at having been found out. As for the outraged Dame of Staff, the following morning she sent back a pair of trousers and a sash they had left behind, with the message
“No complaint of mine could relieve my misery, now the double wave
that dashed itself on my shore has again slipped out to sea.43
The river is dry…”44
She has no shame! Genji's thought was unkind, but he was still sorry to have upset her, and he therefore answered simply,
“Never mind that wave and its boisterous assault—that I can let pass;
but I would lodge a complaint against the welcoming shore.”
The sash was the Secretary Captain's. He observed that it was darker than his own dress cloak, and he noted also that his cloak was missing the outer band of one sleeve.45 What a ridiculous business! he said to himself. He was beginning to feel better. I suppose you are bound to play the fool when you let yourself in for this sort of thing.
From his room at the palace the Secretary Captain now sent Genji the missing piece of sleeve, wrapped in paper, with the advice to have it sewn back on. How did he manage to make off with that? Genji grumbled to himself. If I had not got his sash… He wrapped the sash in matching paper and sent it to him with the verse,
“In fear of your blame, lest the sash should tear in two, and so you and she,
I have not once looked upon the bright color of its blue.”46
“Now that none but you has made off as you have done with that sash of mine,
I shall not spare you my blame for having torn us two apart.
My wrath will strike you in the end!” the Captain retorted.
Both set off when the sun was high to wait upon His Majesty. Genji cultivated a bland innocence that greatly amused his friend, but the day was crowded with memorials and decrees, and the sight of each other behaving with such punctilious gravity allowed them no more than an exchange of grins.
The Secretary Captain came up to Genji during a lull in the proceedings and said with a detestable leer, “I trust you have now learned not to keep secrets.”
“Why should I have? The fellow I pity is the one who got nothing for all his long wait. Seriously, though, rumor is rife!” The two of them swore each other to silence.47
Thereafter the Secretary Captain brought up the incident whenever he had a chance, thus impressing Genji ever more vividly with what he owed to that tiresome woman. Meanwhile Genji stayed out of her way, lest she subject him again to her tragic complaint that he had done her a grievous wrong.
The Secretary Captain kept all this from his sister, but he reserved the idea of telling her as a threat to hold over Genji when the occasion might warrant it. Even Genji's half brothers, born to the greatest of their father's ladies, held Genji in awe and deferred to him as His Majesty's favorite, but not so the Secretary Captain, who rose bravely to Genji's every challenge and clearly remained determined never to be outdone. Only the Secretary Captain was his sister's full brother. Yes, Genji was an Emperor's son, but he himself was the preferred son of His Majesty's foremost Minister and of a Princess, and for that reason he did not feel at all Genji's inferior. His person combined all desirable qualities, and there was no attribute of excellence that he lacked.
The rivalry between these two took some peculiar turns, though it would be a bore to describe them all.
It appears that in the seventh month Fujitsubo was elevated to Empress.48 Genji became a Consultant. Soon His Majesty would act on his desire to step down from the throne, and he had the little Prince in mind for the next Heir Apparent. However, there was no one suitably placed to look after him when that time came. The Prince's maternal relatives were all imperial, hence excluded from governing, and His Majesty had therefore wished at least to make his mother's standing unassailable in order to strengthen his position.
All this compounded the Kokiden Consort's agitation, as well it might, but His Majesty assured her, “The Heir Apparent's reign is coming soon, and you will then be the Empress Mother. You need not worry.” People had indeed been complaining, as one would expect, that His Majesty could not just set aside the lady who was the Heir Apparent's mother and who had been his Consort for twenty years in order to appoint someone else Empress over her.
Genji, the new Consultant, was in Her Majesty's escort on the night when she entered the palace in state. She whose own mother had been Empress glowed with the beauty of a jewel, even among the exalted company of past Empresses, and she enjoyed such unexampled esteem from His Majesty that everyone else, too, held her in the highest regard. No wonder, then, if the despairing Genji thought of her in her palanquin and knew that she had now well and truly passed beyond his reach. It was almost too much for him.
“There can be no end to a darkness in my heart that blots out all things,
now that I must watch her go off to live among the clouds,”49
he murmured to himself. For him it was a tragedy.
The more the little Prince grew, the less one could tell him apart from Genji, but although this tormented Her Majesty, no one else seems to have noticed. In truth, one wonders how anyone could be born as handsome as Genji and yet at the same time look unlike him. They were to all as the light of sun and moon coursing through the sky.
8
HANA NO EN
Under the Cherry Blossoms
This chapter begins with a party (en) to honor a blossoming cherry tree (hana).
RELATIONSHIP TO EARLIER CHAPTERS
The events in “Under the Cherry Blossoms” take place in the spring following those narrated in “Beneath the Autumn Leaves.”
PERSONS
Genji, a Consultant, age 20
His Majesty, the Emperor, Genji's father (Kiritsubo no Mikado)
Her Majesty, the Empress, 25 (Fujitsubo)
The Heir Apparent, 23 (Suzaku)
The Kokiden Consort, mother of the Heir Apparent
The Secretary Captain (Tō no Chūjō)
His Excellency, the Minister of the Left, 54 (Sadaijin)
A young woman, sixth daughter of the Minister of the Right (Oborozukiyo)
Koremitsu, Genji's foster brother and confidant
Yoshikiyo, son of the Governor of Harima and Genji's close retainer
Genji's young lady, 12 (Murasaki)
His Excellency, the Minister of the Right, grandfather of the Heir Apparent (Udaijin)
Alittle past the twentieth of the second month, His Majesty held a party to honor the cherry tree before the Shishinden.1 To his left and right were enclosures2 for the Empress and the Heir Apparent, whose pleasure it was to be present according to his wishes. The Kokiden Consort took offense whenever Her Majesty received such respect, but she came, for she would not have missed the event.
It was a lovely day, with a bright sky and birdsong to gladden the heart, when those who prided themselves on their skill—Princes, senior nobles, and all—drew their rhymes and began composing Chinese verses.3 As usual, Genji's very voice announcing, “I have received the character ‘spring,’” r
esembled no other. The Secretary Captain came next. He was nervous about how he might look, after Genji, but he maintained a pleasing composure, and his voice rang out with impressive dignity. Most of the rest appeared tense and self-conscious. Naturally, those belonging to the lesser ranks were even more in awe of the genius of His Majesty and the Heir Apparent, which stood out even then, when so many others excelled at that sort of thing. They advanced in dread across the immaculate expanse of the broad court, only to make a painful labor of their simple task. His Majesty was touched by seasoned performances from the shabby old Doctors, and he derived great pleasure from them, too.
He had of course arranged the dances perfectly. The one about the warbler in spring4 was charming as sunset approached, and after it the Heir Apparent, who remembered Genji under the autumn leaves, gave him his own blossom headdress and urged him to dance again. Genji, who could not refuse, rose and with casual ease went through the part where the dancer tosses his sleeves. The effect was incomparable. The Minister of the Left forgot all his displeasure and wept.
“Come, where is the Secretary Captain?” His Majesty said. And so beautifully did the Secretary Captain then dance “Garden of Flowers and Willows,” rather more intently than Genji and evidently well rehearsed in case of need, that to everyone's wonder he received His Majesty's gift of a robe. The senior nobles then danced on into the evening, in no particular order, but none stood out for better or worse. When the time came to declaim the poems, the Reader could not get on with Genji's because the gathering repeated and commented admiringly on every line. Even the Doctors were impressed. His Majesty was undoubtedly pleased, since to him Genji was the glory of every such occasion.
The Empress wondered while she contemplated Genji's figure how the Heir Apparent's mother could dislike him so, and she lamented that she herself liked him all too well.
“If with common gaze I could look upon that flower just as others do,
why should it occur to me to find in him any flaw?”
she murmured. One wonders how anyone could have passed on words meant only for herself.
The festival ended late that night. Once the senior nobles had withdrawn, once the Empress and the Heir Apparent were gone and all lay quiet in the beauty of brilliant moonlight, Genji remained drunkenly unwilling to grant that the night was over. His Majesty's gentlewomen all being asleep, he stole off toward the Fujitsubo, in case fortune should favor him at this odd hour, but the door through which he might have approached her5 was locked, and so he went on, sighing but undeterred, to the long aisle of the Kokiden, where he found the third door open.6 Hardly anyone seemed to be about, since the Consort had gone straight to wait on His Majesty. The door to the inner rooms was open, too. There was no sound.
This is how people get themselves into trouble,7 he thought, stepping silently up into the hall. Everyone must be asleep. But could it be? He heard a young and pretty voice, surely no common gentlewoman's, coming his way and singing, “Peerless the night with a misty moon…”8 He happily caught her sleeve.
“Oh, don't! Who are you?” She was obviously frightened.
“You need not be afraid.
That you know so well the beauty of the deep night leads me to assume
you have with the setting moon nothing like a casual bond!”
With this he put his arms around her, lay her down, and closed the door. Her outrage and dismay gave her delicious appeal.
“A man—there is a man here!” she cried, trembling.
“I may do as I please, and calling for help will not save you. Just be still!”
She knew his voice and felt a little better. She did not want to seem cold or standoffish, despite her shock. He must have been quite drunk, because he felt he must have her, and she was young and pliant enough that she probably never thought seriously of resisting him.
She pleased him very much, and he was upset to find daybreak soon upon them. She herself seemed torn. “Do tell me your name!” he pleaded. “How can I keep in touch with you? Surely you do not want this to be all!”
With sweet grace she replied,
“If with my sad fate I were just now to vanish, would you really come—
ah, I wonder!—seeking me over grassy wastes of moor?”9
“I understand. Please forgive me.
While I strove to learn in what quarter I should seek my dewdrop's dwelling,
wind, I fear, would be blowing out across the rustling moors.10
We might be frank with each other. Or would you prefer to evade me?”
He had no sooner spoken than gentlewomen began rising noisily, and there was much coming and going between the Kokiden and His Majesty's apartments.11 They were both in peril. He merely gave her his fan as a token, took hers, and went away.
Some of the many women at the Kiritsubo12 were awake. “He certainly keeps up his secret exploring, doesn't he!” they whispered, poking each other and pretending all the while to be asleep.
He came in and lay down, but he stayed awake. What a lovely girl! She must be one of the Consort's younger sisters—the fifth or sixth, I suppose, since she had not known a man before. He had heard that the wife of the Viceroy Prince13 and the fourth sister, who meant so little to the Secretary Captain, were both beauties, and it certainly would have been rather more of a lark if she had been either of them. As for the sixth, her father intended her for the Heir Apparent—yes, that would be unfortunate. It was all very difficult, and he was unlikely to find out which one she was even if he tried. She did not seem eager to break it off, though—so why did she not leave me any way to correspond with her? These ruminations of his no doubt confirmed his interest in her, but still, when he thought of her, he could not help admiring how superbly inaccessible she was in comparison.
The second party14 was to be today, and he was busy from morning to night. He played the sō no koto. The event was more elegant and amusing than the one the day before. Dawn was near when Fujitsubo went to wait on His Majesty.
Desperate to know whether she of the moon at dawn15 would now be leaving the palace, he set the boundlessly vigilant Yoshikiyo16 and Koremitsu to keep watch. When he withdrew from His Majesty's presence, they gave him their report. “Several carriages have just left from the north gate,17 where they were waiting discreetly,” they said. “Relatives of His Majesty's ladies were there, and when the Fourth Rank Lieutenant and the Right Controller18 rushed out to see the party off, we gathered that it must have been the Kokiden Consort who was leaving. Several other quite distinguished ladies were obviously in the party, too. There were three carriages in all.”
Genji's heart beat fast. How was he to learn which one she was? What if His Excellency her father found out and made a great fuss over him?19 That would be highly unwelcome, as long as he still knew so little about her. At any rate, he could not endure his present ignorance, and he lay in an agony of frustration about what to do. He thought fondly of his young lady. How bored she must be, and probably dejected as well, since he had not seen her for days!
The keepsake fan was a triple cherry blossom layered one20 with a misty moon reflected in water painted on its colored side—not an original piece of work but welcome because so clearly favored by its owner. Her talk of “grassy wastes of moor” troubled him, and he wrote on the fan, which he then kept with him,
“All that I now feel, I have never felt before, as the moon at dawn
melts away before my eyes into the boundless heavens.”
It had been too long since his last visit to His Excellency's, as he well knew, but anxiety over his young lady won out, and he went to Nijō to cheer her up. The more he saw of her, the lovelier she became, and she also had exceptional intelligence and charm. Her unblemished perfection certainly made her the right girl for him to bring up on his own, as he so longed to do. The only worry was that having a male teacher might make her a little too familiar with men. Genji spent the day telling her what he had been up to lately and giving her a koto lesson, and altho
ugh she was as sad as ever when he went out again, she was used to it now and did not cling to him as before.
At His Excellency's the lady refused as usual to see him straightaway. Caught up in his idleness by a swarm of thoughts, he toyed a while with a sō no koto and sang, “I never sleep at ease…”21
His Excellency joined him and told him how much he had enjoyed the other day. “At my advanced age I have witnessed the reigns of four enlightened Sovereigns,” he said, “and yet what with the quality of the verse and the harmony of the music and dances, the years never lay so lightly upon me. We have so many now who are expert in all the arts, and I am sure it was you who selected and guided them. Even I, an old man, felt like stepping out and stumbling through a dance.”
“I did nothing at all to prepare them. It was simply my duty to find them the best instructors, whoever that might be. To my eye, ‘Garden of Flowers and Willows' so far outshone the rest that the performance must stand for all time; and if you yourself had ventured to show off your skill, Your Excellency, in defiance of the years, the glory of His Majesty's reign would have shone more brightly still.”
The Left Controller, the Secretary Captain, and the others arrived. With their backs against the railing they tuned their instruments together and played away in concert very nicely indeed.