Her parents, who saw their long-standing prayer close to fulfillment, began anxiously imagining the grief that would follow, now that they had rashly given him their daughter, if he were to scorn her, for however great a lord he might be, that would be a bitter blow. Yes, they constantly fretted, we trusted the invisible buddhas and gods in ignorance of his feelings and of our daughter's karma.30
“I so long to hear her music against the sound of the waves we have had lately,” Genji would often say. “It will be a great shame if I cannot.”
The Novice quietly chose a propitious day, ignored her mother's varied objections, all on his own and without a word to his acolytes did up her room until it shone, and once the almost full moon31 had risen in glory lightly remarked to his guest, “On so lovely a night…”32
You're a rascal, aren't you! thought Genji; but he put on a dress cloak, tidied himself up, and set out at a very late hour. His carriage was splendidly ready, but that seemed a little too much, and he rode instead. He took only Koremitsu and one or two others with him. It was quite a long way. From the path he looked out over distant stretches of shore, and the moon shining from waters dear to lovers of beauty33 only recalled the lady he missed, until he felt as though he would ride on by and go straight to her.
“On this autumn night, O steed with coat of moonlight, soar on through the skies,
that for just a little while I may be there with my love!”34
he murmured to himself.
The house, a fine one, was magnificently situated deep among the trees. The mansion by the sea was curious and imposing, but here, he felt with a pang, life would be lonely and one would know every shade of melancholy. The bell of the nearby meditation hall rang mournfully while the wind sighed among the pines, and the pines' roots gripping the rocks had a dignity all their own. Insects of many kinds were singing in the near garden. He looked carefully about him. The part where his host's daughter lived was done up with special care. The handsome door had let in the moonlight and still stood a little ajar.35
Standing curtain
Her reluctance to expose her person to any liberties from him ran so deep that his hesitant tries at conversation met only mournful resistance. What airs she puts on! he thought. The most inaccessibly grand lady would have yielded with good grace after all this courting, but no, not she. Does she despise me, then, for being out of favor? He was annoyed and pondered varied misgivings. Heartlessly to force her would confound good sense, but he would gain no credit from losing a contest of wills. One would have wished to show him off in his trouble and anger to someone who really did know something of beauty. A ribbon on a nearby standing curtain brushed the strings of a sō no koto, which called up a pleasant picture of her playing alone for her own pleasure. “Will you not at least allow me to hear your famous koto?” he asked, multiplying his attempts to draw her out.
“O for a dear friend to join me in the pleasure of sharing sweet talk,
that I might perhaps awake from the dream of this sad life.”
She answered,
“How could I who roam the long darkness of a night unbroken by dawn
even know what is a dream, that I should join in your talk?”
Her shadowy form was very like the Haven's at Ise. Having been comfortably alone, thinking no harm, she now found the surprise too great a shock; entering the neighboring room, she somehow fastened the sliding panel so securely that he made no move to force it open. Yet that could not very well be all.
Elegantly tall, she had daunting dignity. It greatly saddened him to consider the contrived character of their union.36 Now that he knew her, he surely felt still more deeply about her. The always tediously long night seemed to pass in an instant into dawn. Anxious to be gone before anyone should notice him, he left her with heartfelt assurances of love.
His letter came that day, very privately. Could he have been suffering, alas, from pangs of conscience? She did not wish anyone to know, and she gave his messenger no festive welcome. Her father could hardly bear it.
After that, Genji sometimes called on her in secret. Since her house was some way off, he restrained himself, lest gossiping seafolk turn up on his way, and this so sadly confirmed her fears that the Novice, too, in sympathy, forgot to long for paradise and waited only for signs of Genji's visits. It was a shame that his thoughts should be so troubled even now.
Genji suffered and smarted that his lady at Nijō might somehow catch wind of all this and be hurt to imagine his heart straying, even in a flight of folly; which no doubt gave the measure of his extravagant love. Whenever she had occasion to note and, in a manner quite unlike her, to protest goings-on of this kind, he would wonder why he had let a silly amusement provoke her, and want to undo it all. The thought of the lady at issue this time therefore only aroused a longing that nothing could slake, until he wrote to Nijō more expansively than usual and appended this note: “I should add that although it is agony to remember how my foolishness has sometimes earned me your displeasure, when it disappoints even me, I have again strangely enough dreamed a little dream. Please understand from this unprompted confession how wholly I am yours. ‘If my promise…’”37 And he continued, “At each thought of you,
Salty streams of brine spring to his eyes and he weeps: the man of the shore
harvesting seaweed pleasures followed just a passing whim.”
Her answer, written with engaging artlessness, had at the end, “The dream that you felt obliged to mention brings many thoughts to mind:
How innocently I let you have all my trust that once we were joined,
waves would never sweep across any height covered with pines.”38
This hint, piercing through the mildness of her tone, so affected him that he could not put her letter down. The mood lasted, and he renounced the traveler's secret nights.
The lady, who was not surprised, now really did feel like throwing herself into the sea. Lacking anyone but her aging parents, she had never expected to command the respect others enjoyed, but during the months and years that had drifted by, nothing after all had happened to cause her anguish. Now that she knew what cares life can bring, they seemed far worse than anything she had imagined, but she retained her composure and received Genji gracefully enough. She meant more to him as time went by, but he felt very sorry that a far greater lady should spend years of anxious waiting, tenderly thinking of him, and more often than not he slept alone.
He painted a varied collection of pictures and wrote his thoughts on them so that she could add her replies.39 No one who saw them could have failed to be moved. Across the heavens their hearts must somehow have touched, for at Nijō she, too, when excessively burdened by her sorrows, began to paint pictures of her own and to set straight down on them, as though in a diary, the telling moments of her life. What future did they have in store?
The New Year had come, and to the court's loud distress His Majesty required treatment. One of his children was a son born to the Shōkyōden Consort, a daughter of the current Minister of the Right; but the boy was now in his second year and still too young.40 His proper course was to abdicate in favor of the Heir Apparent, and when he pondered who might then govern in the service of the realm, Genji's disgrace so shocked and offended him that at last he ignored his mother's remonstrances and decreed that Genji was to be pardoned. The previous year the Empress Mother had begun to suffer from an afflicting spirit, and frequent oracles had disturbed the court, while recently the eye trouble that strict penances seemed to have relieved had worsened again, causing His Majesty such misery that after the twentieth of the seventh month he issued another decree recalling Genji to the City.
Genji had counted on this happening in time, although this treacherous world did not encourage him to look forward to what might follow, but the moment came so suddenly that his joy was mixed with sorrow at having now to give up this shore. The Novice, who wholly approved, still found his heart full at the news. He soon thought better of that, though, sin
ce the fulfillment of Genji's ambitions also meant success for what he himself desired.
By now Genji was with her every night. In the sixth month she began to look and to feel sadly unwell.41 Now that he was to leave her, he seemed unfortunately to value her more than before, and he was troubled to see her destined inexplicably for sorrow. Needless to say, she herself despaired, and for that no one could blame her. After undertaking this strangely melancholy journey Genji had always found comfort in the belief that he would return one day, but with that happy prospect now before him he reflected unhappily that he might never see the place again.
The men in his service rejoiced, each as his circumstances moved him to do. A party came from the City to greet him, which was pleasant, but the Novice wept and wept; and meanwhile the eighth month arrived. Under these autumn skies, sad enough in themselves, Genji wondered wretchedly why now as in the past he still gave himself up to these reckless adventures, until those who knew what the matter was grumbled, “Look at that! There he goes again!” Nudging each other, they went on, “All these months, without a word to anyone, he has been stealing off to see her, and now he has just made her unhappy after all.” To Yoshikiyo's great discomfort they whispered that he was the one who had first told Genji about her.
Saltmaking: raking up seaweed, salt-fire smoke
Genji went to her earlier than usual in the evening, since he was to leave the day after tomorrow. This was the first time he had seen her properly, and her poised dignity so impressed him that he found it very painful to leave her behind. He wished she would come and join him in some suitable manner and sought to console her with assurances to this effect. His looks and bearing needed no description, but his devotions had given him a fine leanness of feature that lent him inexpressible grace, and while he poured forth in tears the tenderest promises, she may even have wondered whether this was not happiness enough, and whether she should not now renounce the thought of more. His very beauty made her own insignificance painfully obvious.
The noise of the waves had changed in the autumn wind. Smoke from the salt fires drifted thinly by, and all that gave the place its character was present in the scene.
“Our parting has come, and for now I must leave you, but I pray the smoke
rising from your salt fires here may still lean the way I go.”
She replied,
“Sea-tangle sorrows the saltmaker gathers in to heap on her fires
are no more than what life brings; she has no wish to complain.”
Although hardly able to speak through her tears, she could still give him an eloquent reply when one was needed.
Genji, who had always longed to hear her play for him, was very disappointed that she had not done so. “Just a little, then,” he said, “to remember you by.” He sent for the kin he had brought from the City and softly plucked its strings in a lovely tune that ineffably filled the clear depths of the night. This was too much for the Novice, who took the sō no koto and slid it through the curtains to his daughter. His invitation must have elicited as well tears that flowed freely while her quiet playing revealed what she could do. Her Cloistered Eminence's touch struck him as peerless in his time, for her brilliance, which often gave the listener a thrill of pleasure, also conveyed an image of herself, and that made her music truly supreme. In contrast, this lady excelled thanks to unfailing mastery and an enviably absorbing tone. Her music, too, called up deep, fond feelings, and while she played pieces he had never heard before, pausing so often that he could hardly bear it, he longed for more and wondered bitterly why for months he had failed to insist on her giving him this pleasure.
He poured forth promises about the future. “You must have this kin until we can play together again,” he said.
Kin
“That casual gift you give to make me believe you will remain true
I shall honor in my thoughts with a long music of tears,”42
she replied, so low that he could hardly hear her; and he, nettled,
“This koto is yours, that you may remember me till we meet again,
and I hope you will not change the pitch of the middle string.43
We will see each other before it loses its tuning,” he went on, to encourage her trust; but she was understandably lost in tears of anguish at the prospect of his going.
On the day, he left her in the darkness before dawn. Even when caught up among those who had come to escort him, he still found a lull to send her,
“Alas that the wave is to rise now and withdraw, leaving you behind
to what sorrows of your own I imagine all too well.”
She answered,
“This house of rushes, where I have lived all these years, will be desolate—
ah, how I long to follow after the withdrawing wave!”44
The words said what she meant, and tears spilled from his eyes, though he tried to stop them. Those who did not know the circumstances thought this natural enough, despite the sort of place it was, considering that he had lived there a long time by now and that he was leaving forever. Such evidence of serious attachment did not at all please Yoshikiyo. The others were happy but also sad, for today really was to be their last by the sea, and their talk among themselves suggested that they, too, had their reasons to weep—not that one need go on about them, though.
The Novice's preparations for the day were grand indeed. Everyone, down to the least of Genji's men, had clothes of the best for the journey.45 One wondered when he could possibly have had them made. Genji's own costume was finer than words can describe, and uncounted chests of clothing joined his train. Each gift was worthy of presentation in the City, and each had its own merit, for the donor had neglected nothing.
On the hunting cloak given him to wear, Genji found,
“Perhaps you will spurn this travel cloak after all for its saltiness,
washed as it has often been by the brine of wave on wave.”
Despite his agitation he still managed to reply,
“Yes, let us exchange something to give each of us the other's presence:
a robe to be between us till the day we meet again”;46
and he put it on in acknowledgment of her kindness. He sent her the things he had been wearing, and they did indeed make a keepsake for her to remember him by just that much better. How could the fragrance suffusing his exquisite cloak not permeate her own thoughts as well?
“Having at last put this world behind me, I still regret that I cannot go with you today,” the Novice said. He made a sad sight, with his mouth turned down at the corners, but the younger people must have laughed.
“Weary of the world, I have lived by the salt sea many, many years,
yet it is true even now that I cannot leave this shore,”47
he said to Genji. “Perhaps to the border, at least, since the heart's darkness is certain to claim me…”48 And he went on ingratiatingly, “Please forgive my presumption, but if you ever chance to think of her…”49
Genji was very deeply moved, and the flush here and there on his face gave his looks an inexpressible charm. “I have good reason not to forget her, you know. You will very soon know me better than that. But it is so difficult for me to leave your house! What am I to do?” he said, and, wiping his eyes,
“Was that sorrow worse, setting out to go that spring far from the City,
than this one, when in autumn I leave a familiar shore?”
The Novice was beside himself and only wept the more. He could hardly even stand.
Garden stream
His daughter's state was beyond words. She calmed herself to keep it from showing, but fairly or unfairly, her plight drove her to helplessly bitter resentment at his leaving, and with his image always before her she could only collapse in tears after all.
Her mother did not know how to comfort her. “Why did we ever think of causing you this misery?” she said. “It is all my fault for having listened to anyone so mad.”
“Stop it!” her father
said. “He has every reason not to neglect her, and I am sure he still has something in mind for her”; and, to his daughter, “Take hold of yourself and drink your medicine. What a way to behave!” However, he himself was slumped in a corner.
Her nurses and her mother all condemned his delusions. “He has been so eager for years to see her as he wants her to be,” they said, “and we thought he had managed it this time, but no, it is a disaster already!” Their distress and hers upset him so much that he became more and more confused, sleeping through the day and rising briskly at night to sit there, praying and rubbing his hands together, muttering, “My rosary has just vanished!” One moonlit night, after the servants had mocked him, he went outside to do his circumambulations, fell into the garden brook, bumped his backside on a picturesque rock, and went to bed to recover, which at last gave him something else to think about.