The lady of the falling flowers (Hanachirusato)
Her Cloistered Eminence, 31 to 32 (Fujitsubo)
Genji's son, 5 to 6 (Yūgiri)
His Excellency, formerly the Minister of the Left, 60 to 61 (Sadaijin)
The Captain, also appointed a Consultant (Tō no Chūjō)
Chūnagon, a gentlewoman at His Excellency's
Her Highness, the mother of Aoi and Tō no Chūjō (Ōmiya)
Saishō, Yūgiri's nurse
His Late Eminence, Genji's father, after his death (Kiritsubo In)
His Highness, the Viceroy Prince, Genji's brother (Hotaru or Sochi no Miya)
The former Reikeiden Consort
Shōnagon, Murasaki's nurse
The Mistress of Staff (Oborozukiyo)
An Aide of the Right Palace Guards, brother of the Governor of Kii
Ōmyōbu, one of Fujitsubo's gentlewomen
His Highness, the Heir Apparent, Fujitsubo's son, 8 to 9 (Reizei)
Yoshikiyo, a son of the Governor of Harima and Genji's retainer
The Governor of Settsu, one of Genji's retainers
His Reverence, Murasaki's great-uncle (Kitayama no Sōzu)
The Rokujō Haven, 33 to 34 (Rokujō no Miyasudokoro)
His Excellency, the Minister of the Right (Udaijin)
His Majesty, the Emperor, 28 to 29 (Suzaku)
The Commissioner of Civil Affairs (probably Koremitsu)
The Dazaifu Deputy
The Gosechi Dancer, his daughter
The Governor of Chikuzen, a Chamberlain, son of the Dazaifu Deputy
The Novice, around 59 to 60 (Akashi no Nyūdō)
His daughter, 17 to 18 (Akashi no Kimi)
His daughter's mother, early 50s (Akashi no Amagimi)
He faced mounting unpleasantness in a hostile world, and he knew that to ignore it might well provoke still worse. There was Suma, yes, but while someone had lived there long ago, he gathered that the place was now extremely isolated and that there was hardly a fisherman's hut to be seen there—not that he can have wished to live among milling crowds. On the other hand, merely being away from the City would make him worry about home. His mind was in undignified confusion.
He reflected at length on what was past and what was yet to come, and the effort brought many sorrows to mind. Now that he was considering actually removing himself from the world he rejected, a great deal of it seemed impossible to give up, especially his darling, who suffered more with each passing night and day. A day or two away made him anxious about her, even when he had faith that “time once more would join them,”1 and she herself was forlorn; and now they despaired that he would be gone for years and years and that despite their longing to be reunited, life might play them false and he might be setting out for good. He therefore wondered sometimes whether he should quietly take her with him; but it would be wrong of him to bring anyone so lovely to so dreary a seaside, where she would have no company but the wind and the waves, and he knew that he, too, would only worry if he did. “Never mind the terrors of the journey,” she would hint, clearly hurt, “if only I could be with you!”
He rarely called on the lady of the falling flowers, but of course she grieved as well, since only his generosity sustained her depressing life. Many of the ladies he had known even in passing suffered secret heartbreak at the prospect of his departure.
He had constant private messages from Her Cloistered Eminence as well, despite her desire to avoid damaging rumors. He wished that she had shown him such fond consideration long ago; but no, he reflected bitterly, his love for her had been meant only to acquaint him with every variant of pain.
It was just after the twentieth of the third month when he set out from the City. He told no one the hour of his departure but left almost invisibly, with a mere seven or eight intimate retainers. To those due something from him he merely sent discreet letters, some of which, in the moving fullness of their eloquence, must have been well worth reading; but it was all so upsetting that I never inquired about them properly.
Two or three days before, Genji had called at His Excellency's under cover of darkness. His furtive entrance in a common basketwork carriage that looked like a woman's2 was sad and might have been a dream. In her rooms he felt only loneliness and desolation. His son's nurses and the women who had stayed on to serve him gathered to see him, wondering at his visit, and the younger, giddier ones wept at this evidence of fortune's fickle ways. The little boy ran about very prettily. “How dear of him not to have forgotten me after all this time!” Genji said, taking him on his lap and struggling visibly to control his feelings.
His Excellency came to receive him. “I had hoped to come and rattle on to you about this and that while you were idle at home,” he said, “but my poor health now keeps me from serving at court and has obliged me to resign my office, so I thought it might not be well received if I were to go about on business of my own— I need no longer defer to the world, but I do fear the evil temper of the times. Seeing you this way reminds how much I wish I had never lived to see so corrupt an age. My wildest fancies could not have led me to imagine this. I am appalled.” He wept bitterly.
“They say that whatever happens to us is our reward from past lives, which means in short that all this springs from my own failings,” Genji answered. “I gather that in the other realm,3 too, it is considered quite wrong for anyone whom a small lapse has earned his Sovereign's displeasure to live as do the just, even if he has not been stripped like me of rank and office. The decision to send me into distant exile—for I hear one has been taken—only shows how exceptional an offense is imputed to me. I dare not ignore such censure merely because my heart is pure, and I have therefore resolved to remove myself from the world before I face still greater dishonor.” He went on at some length in this vein.
His Excellency then spoke of the past, and of His Late Eminence and his express wishes concerning Genji; and he never took the sleeve of his dress cloak from his eyes. Genji did not manage to be any braver himself. It tore at his heart to see his little boy tripping innocently in and out, snuggling up now to one grown-up, now to another.
“She is gone, I know, but I never, never forget her,” His Excellency said. “Yes, I still mourn her, but I take comfort from considering how your present circumstances would upset her if she had lived, and I am relieved that her passing spared her this nightmare. The saddest thing of all, for me, is to reflect on how her son, who is so young, is left with an old couple, and on how long it will be until he has his father again. In the old days even a man who had misbehaved was spared this. Yes, it is all destiny, and many in other lands have suffered like you. They, however, were victims of slander. No, to me, all this is simply inconceivable.” He spoke for a long time.
Veranda, railing, double doors
The Captain4 then joined them, and they drank together so late that Genji stayed on, gathered the gentlewomen around him, and engaged them in conversation. Chūnagon, whom he secretly favored, was mute with sorrow, and he silently commiserated with her. When all was quiet at last, he devoted himself solely to her. That must be why he had stayed on in the first place.
He left very late indeed, with dawn coming on and a lovely moon lingering in the sky. The cherries' great flowering was over; mist trailed through a garden pale beneath thinning branches, to merge here and there with the blossoms and yield a scene more beautiful than any autumn night. He watched it for a time, leaning on the railing. Chūnagon, who no doubt wanted to see him go, opened the double doors and sat looking out.
“We may never meet again, you know,” he said. “I did not know what the world was like, and I never tried hard enough to see you, when all this time it would have been so easy.” She wept in silence.
A message came from Her Highness through his son's nurse, Saishō: “I had wished to speak to you in person, but in my trouble and sorrow I wavered; and I hear that you are now leaving late in the night and, it seems to me, in a manner quite unlike your old wa
ys.5 You do not even stay your departure while one dear to you still sleeps.”
Genji wept and murmured as though not meaning an answer,
“Now I go to see whether yonder on that shore where seafolk burn salt
their fires send such smoke aloft as rose at Toribeno.”
And he went on, “Is this then the pain of parting at dawn?6 Oh, to have beside me one who knew it, too!”
Saishō replied with tears in her voice, “The word ‘parting’ is always cruel, but, my lord, this morning it is surely unlike any other.” There was no mistaking her genuine depth of feeling.
Serving table
Genji said in answer to Her Highness, “I had many things to tell you, and I beg you to understand what anguish has silenced me. To see the little sleeper would only make this world more difficult for me to leave, and I have therefore resolved to go quickly.”
Ladies peeped at him as he left. The renewed beauty and grace of his sorrowing form, seen by the light of the sinking moon, would have moved a wolf or tiger to weep; no wonder those privileged to have known him since his boyhood were shocked to see him so changed.
Oh, yes, Her Highness had answered,
“Between you and her there will spread as time goes by wider distances,
for you will no longer see the skies that received her smoke.”
After a departure that added new woes to old, the gentlewomen abandoned all dignity and wept.
At home again he found his own gentlewomen, who seemed not to have slept, clustered here and there in acute distress. There was no one in his household office; the men in his intimate service were no doubt busy with their own farewells, in preparation for accompanying him. It amounted to grave misconduct for anyone to visit him, and to do so more and more to risk reprisal, so that where once horses and carriages had crowded to him, a barren silence now reigned, and he felt the treachery of life. Dust had gathered here and there on the serving tables, some of the mats had been rolled up, and he was not even gone yet. He could imagine the coming desolation.
He crossed to the west wing. Her page girls had dropped off to sleep on the veranda and elsewhere, for she had spent a sad, sleepless night with the lattice shutters open, and they were only now bustling about getting up. He watched them sadly, so pretty in their night service wear, when otherwise he might not have given them a glance, and he reflected that with the years they would all drift away.
“I stayed very late, you see, what with one thing and another,” he said. “You must be imagining strange things as usual. I would much prefer not to leave you at all at a time like this, but now that I am going so far away I naturally have many urgent concerns, and I cannot be here all the time. The world is cruel enough as it is, and I could not bear to have anyone think me unkind.”
“Strange things? Could anything be stranger than what is happening already?” She said no more.
Mirror on its stand
No wonder she grieved more than anyone else. His Highness her father was so distant that she had long loved Genji instead, and now fear of rumor discouraged him from ever writing or visiting, which shamed her before her women and made her sorry that he had ever found out where she was. She happened to know that her stepmother had remarked, “Her luck did not last, did it! She is accursed! She loses anyone who loves her, every time.” This hurt her so badly that she then gave up all communication with her father. She really was in a sad plight, since Genji was all she had.
“If years from now there is still no pardon for me, I will bring you to join me, yes, even ‘among the rocks,’”7 Genji went on. “It would start unwelcome gossip, though, if I were to do so now. A man suffering his Sovereign's displeasure shuns the light of sun and moon, and it would be a serious offense for him to live as he pleases. I am blameless, but I know that this is the sort of trial destiny brings, and no precedent allows me to take someone I love with me; no, in a world evermore gone mad that would only make things worse.”8 After he had spoken, they slept until the sun was high in the sky.
The Viceroy Prince9 and the Captain came. Genji put on a dress cloak to receive them: an unpatterned one, since he had no rank, but which by its very plainness showed him off to still better advantage. Approaching the mirror stand to comb his sidelocks, he noted despite himself the noble beauty of the wasted face he saw. “I am so much thinner now!” he said. “Just look at my reflection! It really is too hard!” She turned on him eyes brimming with tears. He could not bear it.
“I may have to go and wander far, far away; yet, forever near,
this your mirror will retain the presence I leave with you.”
“Were it only true that the image may linger when the person goes,
then a glance in this mirror would be comforting indeed.”
She was sitting behind a pillar to hide her weeping. The sight reminded him afresh that she alone, among all the women he had known, was beyond compare.
His Highness pursued their melancholy conversation until he left at dusk.
The village of falling flowers was desolate. The former Consort there understandably wrote to him often, and he knew that her sister would be hurt if he failed to call on her a last time; and so that night he reluctantly set out again. It was very late by the time he arrived.
The Consort was extremely pleased. “It is too kind of you to honor us with your visit,” she said; however, it would be tedious to convey her remarks at length. She owed the sad succession of her days to him alone, and he foresaw the greater ruin that might now await her. The house was very still. The lake's broad expanse in muted moonlight, the trees' shadowy depths on the garden hill, all spoke to him of forlorn despair, and his thoughts went to his own future existence far away among the rocks.
The lady on the west side of the house was wondering sadly whether he really would come, when through the poignant flood of moonlight she caught the singular fragrance that wafted before him, and he stole in to her. She slipped out toward him and lifted her gaze to the moon. Dawn came on while they still talked.
“What a short night it has been!” Genji exclaimed. “And when I think that we may never be together like this again! What a waste these years have been, with nothing passing between us! My story, past and future, will be on everyone's lips, and meanwhile I seem in the end never to have found a quiet time…” He spoke of days gone by until cockcrows came often; then he prepared to leave for fear of being seen.
Alas, the setting moon meant as always that he was going. “A face wet with tears”10 shone indeed from her deep purple sleeves, and she said,
“Narrow they may be, these sleeves of mine that welcome the face of the moon,
yet I so long to detain the light I shall always love!”11
The strength of her feelings moved Genji to compassion. Troubled as well, he tried to console her.
“There will come a time when as this life turns and turns the moon will shine forth:
for a while avert your eyes from an all too cloudy sky.
I am sad, too, though, because ‘tears of ignorance’,12 darken my heart as well.” He left as day began to break.
He put his affairs in order. Among the close retainers who resisted the trend of the times he established degrees of responsibility for looking after his residence. He also chose those who would follow him. The things for his house in the mountain village,13 items he could not do without, he kept purposely simple and plain, and he added to his baggage a box of suitable books, including the Collected Poems, 14 as well as a kin. He took no imposing furnishings with him and no brilliant robes, for he would be living as a mountain rustic. To the mistress of his west wing he entrusted his staff of gentlewomen and everything else as well, and he also gave her the deeds to all his significant properties—estates, pastures, and so forth. As to his storehouses and repositories, Shōnagon struck him as reliable, and he therefore instructed her on their care, assigning her for the purpose a staff of close retainers.
He had never been attentive to Nakatsukasa,
Chūjō, or other such gentle-women of his own, but it was comfort enough for them to see him, and they wondered where they would turn for solace now. “I will certainly be back, if only I live long enough,” he said, “and those of you who wish to wait must serve your mistress.” He had them all, high or low, go to join her.
He naturally sent pretty gifts to his little son's nurses and to the village of falling flowers, but he did not fail to be generous with welcome necessities as well.
He managed to get a message to the Mistress of Staff.15 “I am not surprised to have heard nothing from you,” he wrote, “but I am sorrier and more disappointed than words can say now that I am leaving all my world behind.
Did the way I drowned in a sad river of tears that we could not meet
set running the mighty flood that has now swept me away?
I know when I look back that I must take the consequences.” He wrote little, for the letter would have a perilous journey.
She was very upset, and the tears overflowed her sleeves despite her attempt at self-control.
“Ah, river of tears! The froth floating on that stream will vanish quite soon,
long before the current runs laughing over happier shoals.”16
What she had written through her tears was very beautiful. He wondered whether he might not try to see her again after all, but then he thought better of the idea, and since she was surrounded by relatives who detested him and was herself keeping very quiet, he renounced any heroic attempt to correspond with her further.
The evening before he was to leave he went to the Northern Hills to salute His Late Eminence's tomb, but first he visited Her Cloistered Eminence, since at this time of the month the moon would still be up at dawn. She seated him directly before her blinds and spoke to him in person. The Heir Apparent worried her acutely. The conversation of a pair so deeply engaged with one another must have been extremely moving.