Her heart beat when she saw his retinue ride by all abreast, but his message, however brief, touched her deeply, and in her gratitude she wept.
“Lacking any worth, I have no title to claim any happiness;
what can have possessed me, then, so to give my all for love?”34
She sent it tied to a sacred streamer from her purification on the Isle of Tamino.35 Soon the sun would set. The scene's stirring mood, with the evening tide flooding in and the cranes along the inlet crying in full voice, must have been what made Genji long to be with her in defiance of prying eyes.
“As wet now with dew as in those days we once knew, my traveling clothes
find no shelter in the name of the Isle of Tamino.”36
All along the way he enjoyed the pleasures of the journey, to ringing music, but his heart was still with her after all. Singing girls crowded to his procession, and all the young gallants with him, even senior nobles, seemed to look favorably on them; but not Genji, for he thought, Come now, all delight, all true feeling spring from the quality of one's partner, and a little frivolity, even playfully meant, is quite enough to put one off. Their airs and graces served only to turn him away.
She who filled his thoughts let his procession pass, and she made her offerings the following day,37 since it was propitious. She had managed after all, as well as she was able, to put before the god prayers proper to her station. Then melancholy claimed her again, and she spent day and night lamenting the misery of her lot. A messenger from him reached her even before she imagined him reaching the City. I shall bring you here very soon, Genji had said, and yet she wavered, for although his words conveyed reassuring respect, she feared that troubling experiences might await her once she had rowed far away from the island.38 She knew that her father must be very apprehensive about letting her go, although it was also true that the thought of wasting her life here now distressed her more than it had ever done in years past. She gave Genji a cautious, irresolute answer.
Leaning on an armrest
Oh, yes! After the Rokujō Haven returned to the City, the time having come for a new Ise Priestess,39 Genji provided for her as generously as before and showed her such kindness that she was indeed grateful, although she did not encourage him; for she had no wish to test a devotion that had once proven doubtful and that, such as it might be by now, would only upset her again. For that reason he seldom actually called on her. He would never know how his own feelings might change, even if he were to go about winning her back, and besides, it seemed to him that clandestine expeditions no longer became him. What he longed to know was what the grown-up Ise Priestess was like.
The Haven led an elegant life once more in her old residence, for Genji still saw to having it done up and maintained. Her taste and flair had not deserted her, many distinguished gentlewomen and cultivated gentlemen gathered around her, and despite her apparent loneliness she was living very pleasantly when, all at once, she fell gravely ill and sank into such despair that alarm over her years in so sinful a place40 decided her to become a nun.
This news brought the astonished Genji to her, for even if they were no longer lovers, she was still to him someone to talk to, and he wished that she had not done it. His expressions of sympathy and concern were extremely moving. She gave him a seat near her pillow and answered him leaning on an armrest, but even this much made it clear how weak she was, and Genji wept bitterly, fearing that it might be too late for him to assure her of his enduring devotion.
Deeply affected to find that he cared so much, she began to speak of the Ise Priestess. “Please think of her whenever she may need you,” she said, “because she will now be left all alone. Hers is a perilous position, you see—she has no one else to turn to. I myself am no help, but I hope still to keep an eye on her, as long as I am able, until she can more or less look after herself.” Her breath all but failed her, and she wept.
“I would never abandon her, even if I had not heard you talk this way, and now I am resolved to do for her all I possibly can. On that score please set your mind at rest.”
“It is so very difficult,” she went on. “Even if she had someone like a father to trust perfectly naturally, the loss of her mother might well prove a great misfortune. And if her guardian were then to look on her with a lover's eyes, the consequences for her could sometimes be cruel, and for some she could become an object of dislike. I know it is unkind of me to imagine such things, but please, never allow yourself to think of her that way. My own life has taught me that a woman is born to endure many sorrows, and I should like somehow to spare her as many as I can.”
Chin in hand
Genji failed to see why she spoke as she did, but he replied, “Recent years have made me much wiser, and I am sorry to gather that you still believe I am given to the wanton ways of my past. Very well, all in good time…”
It was dark outside her curtains, but through them he caught the dim light of a lamp. I wonder…, he thought and peered stealthily in through a gap where the cloth failed to meet.41 There she was, her short hair very handsome and striking, leaning on an armrest and looking piercingly beautiful, just like a painting; and yes, the girl lying beside her along the curtains to the east must be the Priestess. With the standing curtain swept casually aside this way, he could see straight through to her. Chin in hand, she seemed very sad. By this faint light she looked extremely attractive. The way her hair fell across her shoulders and the shape of her head had great distinction, but she was still charmingly slight, and Genji felt a sharp surge of interest, although after her mother's speech he thought better of it.
“I am not feeling at all well,” the Haven said. “I hope that you will forgive me if I ask you to leave.” She lay down with a gentlewoman's help.
“I am so sorry,” Genji replied; “I would have been very glad if you had felt better with me near you. How are you feeling?”
She could tell he was watching. “I shudder to think what I must look like,” she said. “It has been extremely good of you to call on me now when, as you will have gathered, my illness is unlikely to trouble me much longer. Now that I have told you a little of what has been on my mind, I can, I think, go in peace.”
“I am moved and grateful that you should include me among those worthy to receive your last wishes. His Late Eminence had many other sons as well, but I have seldom felt close to them, and since he was pleased to count her as a daughter of his own, I shall look on her in the same spirit. Now that I am rather more grown-up, I am disappointed to have no one to look after.”
Their conversation was soon over, and Genji left. His generous attentions now increased somewhat, and he wrote to her often.
Seven or eight days later she was gone. The blow left him acutely aware of life's uncertainty and so grief-stricken that instead of going to the palace he busied himself only with the inevitable arrangements. There was not really anyone else to do it. The trusted members of the Ise Priestess's former staff were left with few decisions to make.
Genji went there himself and sent in greetings to Her Highness.
“I am afraid that I am in no condition…” she sent back through her Mistress of the Household.
“It would please me if you were to think of me as a friend,” he replied, “because your mother and I reached an agreement.” He called in her gentlewomen and instructed them on all there was to be done. His manner inspired complete confidence, and he seemed to have changed the attitude that had been his so long. He had the rite performed with the utmost solemnity, assisted by countless members of his own household.
He mourned, fasted, and practiced devotions behind lowered blinds; and he wrote often to Her Highness. Little by little she recovered her composure and began to answer him herself. Doing so made her shy, but her gentlewomen encouraged her with reminders that she must not disappoint him.
On a day of blowing snow and sleet he found himself imagining how sad and dispirited she must be, and he sent her a messenger. “How does our sky lo
ok to you just now, I wonder,” he had written on paper the dull color of the sky.
“Now the skies are filled with such swirling flakes of snow, I mourn to imagine
the departed roaming still the heavens above your home.”
He had done up his letter with particular care, so as to catch a young woman's eye, and it was dazzling. The Ise Priestess could not think what to answer, but her women insisted that it would be rude of her to give the task to anyone else, and so she wrote on gray, intensely perfumed paper, in strokes light or dark as the ground required,
“Like unmelted snow I linger reluctantly, and in my darkness
find that I cannot be sure who I am or where I go.”
Her cautious hand, innocent of pretense, was unremarkable, but he saw charm and dignity in it. Ever since she went down to Ise, he had felt that that was not to be all, and now it seemed to him that he might well decide to court her, although tact led him to restrain himself as before, since her mother the late Haven had anxiously given him her last wishes on the subject, and people at large—understandably, alas—might entertain similar suspicions; no, he thought, he would on the contrary see chastely to her needs, and when His Majesty was old enough to understand a little more, he would install her in the palace, for this sort of thing was otherwise missing from his life, and he would enjoy having her under his care.
He sent her long, impeccably earnest messages and called on her whenever the opportunity arose. “If I may be permitted to say so, it would give me great pleasure if you were to allow me into your confidence, in memory of your mother,” he would say; but she, by nature extremely reserved and shy, shrank from the thought of allowing him to hear her voice at all, however faintly, until her gentlewomen despaired of persuading her and could only deplore her disposition. Genji reflected, Some of them, for instance her Mistress of the Household, her Chief Lady in Waiting, and so on, are close relatives of hers in the imperial family, and most have a good deal of talent. If I do successfully place her as I hope, I see no reason why she should please him42 less well than any other. But if only I had had a better look at her face! His attitude may not have been wholly a devoted father's. Unable in the end to make up his mind, he told no one what future he planned for her. His special attentiveness to the funeral rites greatly surprised and pleased her staff.
Her loneliness increased as the months and days slipped by, a growing succession of miseries led those in her service to go their ways, and living near Kyōgoku in the lower district of the City meant deserted surroundings and a life often spent in tears amid the booming of the mountain temples' evening bells.43 Not every mother, however devoted, would have remained so completely inseparable from her daughter or have gone down with her against all precedent to Ise, and her bitter regret that after so insisting on her mother's company she had not after all taken that last journey with her left her inconsolable.
Her large household staff included people of ranks both high and low, but once Genji, like a dutiful father, had forbidden even her nurses to take it on themselves to convey approaches to her, his daunting authority assured general assent that nothing improper must be brought to Her Highness's attention, and no breath of courtship ever reached her.
His Eminence had never forgotten the Ise Priestess's almost disturbing beauty at that solemn farewell ceremony in the Great Hall of State. “Do enter my service, and join the Kamo Priestess and my other sisters,” he had urged her, and he had mentioned the subject to her mother as well. The idea had not appealed to her mother, however, because while he was indeed surrounded by very great ladies, she doubted that her daughter had adequate support, and moreover she feared that his exceedingly fragile health might burden her in the end with added cares. Now, when her gentlewomen could not imagine who might be willing to assist her, His Eminence was still pressing her to come.
Genji shrank, when he learned this, from the thought of brazenly crossing His Eminence and making off with her himself, but she was very attractive, and he was so reluctant to let her go that he broached the subject to Her Cloistered Eminence.
“I hardly know what to do about it, you see,” he said. “Her mother was a lady of great dignity and intelligence, and I deeply regret the way my self-indulgence earned me both an unfortunate name and her own rejection. While she lived, she never set aside her anger toward me, but since at the very end she talked about the Ise Priestess, she must have heard good things about me and decided she could be frank with me after all; and that is extremely sad. One could not ignore so distressing a matter even in the most commonplace circumstances, and I want to ensure that at least in death she can forget her bitterness; I wonder whether it might not be a good idea for His Majesty, who is still young although of course quite grown-up, to have in his service someone a little more mature. It is all up to you, you see.”
“That is an excellent idea. His Eminence's interest in her of course makes one hesitate to disappoint him, but you might simply invoke her mother's last wishes to bring her to the palace as though you knew nothing about it. By now this sort of thing preoccupies him less than his devotions, and I doubt that he really will be seriously put out when you tell him.”
“Very well,” Genji replied, “if you agree and are prepared to lend her your support, I shall have a few words with her and let her know. I have thought all this over very carefully, and I have been quite frank with you about my conclusion, but I am uneasy about what others may have to say.”
He thereupon decided that he would indeed feign ignorance and move her to Nijō.44 To his lady there he explained, “That, at any rate, is what I have planned. She is just the age to make you a good companion.” She was pleased and began preparing to receive her.
His Highness of War seemed to be grooming his daughter carefully in the hope of quickly achieving the same success, but Her Cloistered Eminence wondered unhappily how Genji would greet his ambition, in view of the rift between them. The Acting Counselor's daughter was now known as the Kokiden Consort. His Excellency had adopted her as his own daughter, and he maintained her in dazzling style.45 She made a fine playmate for His Majesty.46 Her Cloistered Eminence said to herself and others that His Highness of War's middle daughter would only be joining a game of dolls, as it were, since she was the same age, whereas having someone older to look after him would be extremely welcome; and she told His Majesty what he had to anticipate. Meanwhile Genji, needless to say, missed nothing in the service of the realm, and he showed her such complete and tactful devotion at all times that she came to trust him implicitly. Her Cloistered Eminence could not easily attend His Majesty even when she went to the palace, since her health was poor, so that he urgently needed beside him a guardian somewhat older than himself.
15
YOMOGIU
A Waste of Weeds
Yomogiu means a ruined house with grounds overgrown by plants like yomogi (Artemisia vulgaris)—weeds.
RELATIONSHIP TO EARLIER CHAPTERS
The time of “A Waste of Weeds” matches roughly “Suma” through “The Pilgrimage to Sumiyoshi”; the principal matter of the chapter overlaps with “The Pilgrimage to Sumiyoshi.”
PERSONS
Genji, the Commander, then the Acting Grand Counselor, age 28 to 29
The daughter of His Highness of Hitachi (Suetsumuhana)
Her brother, a monk
Jijū, her foster sister
Suetsumuhana's aunt, wife of the Dazaifu Deputy
Shōshō, Jijū's aunt and Suetsumuhana's gentlewoman
Koremitsu, Genji's confidant
In the days when salt, sea-tangle drops were falling,1 many in the City grieved as well, and the securely settled ones2 certainly seemed to miss him badly; but the mistress of Nijō could be at peace, because corresponding with him kept her abreast of his life, and the sad round of the seasons often brought her the comfort of making him such garments, stripped of any mark of rank, as he now wore. Others, though, unknown by anyone to count among his loves and who had witnessed his
departure only in imagination, suffered invisibly the most cruel of torments.
Water basin
His Highness of Hitachi's daughter had languished sadly after his death, having no one else to look after her, until Genji appeared from nowhere to see loyally to her needs; and although to him in his grandeur such attentions were no more than the least he could do, she, whose sleeves were really too narrow to receive them, had felt as though all the stars above now shone up from her water basin. Then came the upheaval at court, one that upset and embittered Genji until he seemed to forget all about her, having never in any case felt any deep attachment; and once he was far away, she never heard from him again. What remained of his largesse sustained her for a time, amid frequent tears, but the passing months and years consigned her to an ever more desperately lonely plight.
“Look at my lady's miserable luck!” the women long in her service whispered in despair. “His lordship's interest made it seem as though a god or buddha had suddenly come for her, till one happily believed in such alliances, and even if all this is only to be expected, it hurts to see her left with no one to provide for her!” Years of life very like this had once led their mistress to take desperate isolation for granted, but the better times that had followed must have made the present unbearably painful. Then, women with any quality to commend them had come naturally to join the household; but now, one by one, they drifted away. Some, too, simply died, and the number of women high and low dwindled with time until hardly any remained.
Her ever-ruinous house became more and more the lair of foxes; owls hooted day and night from the grimly forbidding groves,3 and horrid creatures—tree spirits and so on—once driven into hiding by human presence stalked abroad in full view, with many a distressing consequence, until the rare few who still served her exclaimed, “No, my lady, it is really too much! This provincial Governor, the one so keen on putting up a stylish house, is very taken with your groves, and he keeps approaching your staff to find out whether you might part with them; and we wish you would, my lady, and make up your mind to move somewhere less frightening! We who are still with you can bear no more!”