Their mistress wept and refused to hear of it. “What a horrible idea! Besides, other people would draw their own conclusions. How, for as long I live, could I ever betray my father's memory? The place is in frighteningly poor repair, I know, but it is such a comfort to think that this house, where I still feel his presence, was his home!”
Some of her domestic furnishings, all antique in style and well used, remained as handsome as ever, and persons with tedious pretensions to elegance, eager to acquire them, made condescending approaches on the assumption that poverty left her no choice, invoking as they did so the special interest that attached to them because His Late Highness had commissioned them from so-and-so or so-and-so; and her gentlewomen tried now and again to bring her round in the hope of relieving the misery that faced them day after day. “What else is one to do?” they would say. “That is life, after all.” But her only response was sharp reproof. “My father left them to me on the understanding that I would look after them,” she would say. “How could I allow them to adorn the house of a nobody? It would be too sad to disobey his wishes.” She would not allow it.
It was her fortune never to receive a single visit, however casual. Only her most reverend brother looked in on her, on the rare occasions when he came to the City, but he, too, was so impossibly old-fashioned that even for a monk he made a strikingly impoverished, unworldly sort of hermit, and he hardly noticed having to struggle to her through dense grasses and weeds. The grounds had in truth vanished beneath scrubby reeds, thick wormwood towered to the eaves, and humulus blocked both gates, east and west, although horses and oxen had trodden paths over the crumbling earthen wall. Even the herd boys who freely grazed them there in spring and autumn allowed themselves outrageous behavior.
The galleries collapsed in the eighth month of the year of the great storm. The servants' halls, once pathetically roofed with boards, were stripped to bare frames, and of the servants themselves not a single one stayed on. Smoke rose no more from the cooking hearth, and one misery followed another. Those who live from thievery must lack imagination, because even they ignored the Hitachi residence, walking straight past it on the assumption that it had nothing to offer. The main house therefore remained, inside, just as it had always been, despite its thickets of weeds. Dust there was aplenty, since no one swept or cleaned, but here His Highness's daughter lived out her cheerless, perfectly appointed days.
Nun with rosary
Little amusements like tales or old poems are what help to pass the time in a house like that, and to take one's mind off life, but these things failed to interest her. No young woman need affect refinement in order to enjoy the consolation of conveying her feelings in terms of plants and trees,4 in correspondence with like-minded friends or when otherwise at leisure; but this lady was so afraid of the world, as her father had brought her up to be, that she made no gesture toward anyone with whom she might at least have exchanged the occasional note. Now and then she would only open an ancient cabinet to toy with pictures from tales like Karamori, Hakoya no toji, or Kaguya-hime.5
The pleasure of old poems has to do with enjoying picking ones with appealing topics6 and authors, ones simple to understand. Trite ones everyone already knows, written on solemn utility paper or puffy Michinokuni, are a perfect bore, but these are what she spread before her on the rare occasions when she looked at any at all. She shrank in embarrassment from chanting scriptures or performing devotions, as so many people do these days, and she never touched a rosary, even though no one would have seen her anyway.7 Such was her prim mode of life.
Her foster sister, known as Jijū, was the only one who in all these years had never actually left her service, but the passing of the Kamo Priestess, whom Jijū often visited, had left Jijū in such dire straits that she now called sometimes on a sister of her mistress's mother, a lady who had stooped to marry a provincial Governor. This lady was bringing up cherished daughters, and it occurred to Jijū that, among presentable young women, she might prefer to a perfect stranger one who had actually known her parents.
Jijū's mistress, as distant as ever, made her aunt no welcoming overtures. “I feel sorry for my niece,” the aunt would remark sourly to Jijū, “but I really cannot do anything for her, considering that her mother despised me and thought me an embarrassment.” Now and again, however, she would send her a note.
Most people born to this aunt's standing in life strive at heart to cultivate the attitudes of their betters, but falling that far from so lofty a station must really have been her destiny, for she had quite a common streak. She who had once been despised as inferior wanted her niece for her daughters' maid of all work. Yes, she reflected, my niece's manners are dated, but what a wonderful nanny she would make! “Do come and see me sometimes,” she wrote. “Some of us here long to hear your koto.” Jijū, too, kept trying to interest her mistress in going, but her mistress had no wish to confront anyone, and since she was impossibly shy, she refused to respond, which her aunt thought horrid.
Meanwhile the aunt's husband had been appointed Dazaifu Deputy, and she meant to see her daughters properly provided for before she went down there with him. “I am afraid I have done less for you than I should have,” she wrote ingratiatingly, still eager to have her niece with her, “but it was always a comfort to know you were nearby, and I worry about you so much, you know, now we are going far away.” She got no answer. “How revolting of her! What airs she puts on!” she railed malevolently. “Well, she can be as stuck-up as she likes; the Commander8 will hardly be impressed by someone who spends year after year living in a wilderness like that!”
Soon enough all the world was loudly rejoicing that Genji had indeed received his pardon and was coming back to the City. Ladies and gentlemen vied to convince him of their lasting devotion, and this evidence of everyone's regard, high or low, touched him in a great many ways. Amid all the excitement the days and months passed with no sign from him that he remembered His Highness of Hitachi's daughter.
This is the end, then, she told herself in black despair. I was shocked and saddened by the unforgivable treatment he received, and I always prayed that spring might come for him again, but in the end—when, I gather, the very tiles and pebbles were celebrating his promotion—I was to hear of it only as though it were no concern of mine. Now I know that my sorrow over his suffering was really for no one but myself.9 What a waste it has all been! She secretly spent her days in tears.
Sure enough! the Deputy's wife said to herself. Who on earth would give a thought to such a miserable pauper? Those whose sins are light, they say, are the ones the saints and buddhas lead to salvation, but in her present state it is too pathetic of her to look down on everyone else and to uphold a pride acquired in her father and mother's time! She felt more and more certain her niece was a fool.
“Do make up your mind to it, though,” she still sweetly insisted. “When life turns against you, it is time to seek a refuge in the mountains.10 I am sure you think the countryside unworthy of you, but I promise that no one there will treat you improperly.”
“Oh, I wish my lady would!” her niece's women muttered to each other in despair. How can she keep up these standards of hers when nothing about her situation encourages hope of anything much better?”
Jijū herself was involved by now with a young man who seemed to be the Deputy's nephew, and since he was unwilling to leave her behind, she prepared reluctantly to go. “I so hate to leave you, my lady,” she said, urging her mistress to join her; but even now her mistress pinned all her hopes on a man who had stopped coming long ago, and she said to herself, as she had all these years, One day, though, however distant, something will remind him of me. Despite all his dear and tender promises I am a creature of misfortune and yes, I have slipped his mind, but he will come forward to help me, I know he will, if a breath of wind brings him news of my desperate need. This was why, when her whole house was nearer than ever to falling down, she would not part with the least utensil and bravely pe
rsisted in living exactly as before. Given to frequent tears and increasingly to despair, she looked in profile as though a mountain rustic had stuck a red berry on her face—so much so that no casual suitor could have borne the sight. I will say no more, though, because that would be too unkind and too evil-tongued.
Winter came on, her destitution grew, and her mood gave way to blank despondency. All the world gathered eagerly to Genji's residence, to attend his Eight Discourses for His Late Eminence. Genji pointedly called in no ordinary monks, having chosen only the most learned and, by their long practice, the most saintly; and that meant that her brother was there, too.
He came to see her on his way home. “I have come from the Eight Discourses held by the Acting Grand Counselor,” he explained. “He did it all very nobly, with many touches as flawlessly beautiful as any in paradise. He himself seems to be a manifest buddha or bodhisattva. One wonders why he was ever born into a world so marred by the five defilements.”11 Straight after that he left. He was a man of few words, and he did not behave with his sister as anyone else might have done, for he never spoke to her about anything foolish or profane.
She took the news hard. Well, then, she thought, he is a most unkind buddha or bodhisattva, because here I am, condemned to misery while he cruelly ignores me; I suppose, then, that he really is gone for good. She was absorbed in such thoughts when the Dazaifu Deputy's wife arrived.
This lady was not normally given to such familiarity, but she had rushed off, all pride and high spirits, in a fine carriage and equipped with gifts of clothing and so on, to persuade her niece to come along after all. Ordering the gate opened, she saw before her at a glance boundless desolation. The doors of the gate, left and right, had tottered and slumped to such a degree that it took several of her men and much noise and commotion to help to move them. And where, she wondered when she entered, were the three trodden paths that she had heard should lead even to so wretched a dwelling?12
At last she managed to have her carriage drawn up at the raised lattice shutters on the south side, where to her niece's mounting horror13 Jijū came forth, thrusting an utterly filthy standing curtain ahead of her. Jijū's looks were not what they had once been, but despite the ravages of the years she retained genuine grace and distinction, and the visitor would have much preferred, alas, to see her in her mistress's place.
Lattice shutters
“I plan to leave soon,” she began, “but I simply cannot bear to abandon you in this dreadful condition! I have come for Jijū, you see. You have been too coldly reserved ever to come to see me, and I think you must at least allow me to have her. But what is the point of your staying behind in these pathetic surroundings?” At this point she should have burst into tears, but with her mind all on her journey she was actually quite cheerful. “We began drifting apart because your mother rejected me while His Late Highness was alive as a blot on the family, but I myself could not feel that way for long. I was awed to witness the good fortune that sanctioned your pride and allowed you to enjoy the Commander's attentions, and there was many a time over the years when I did not even dare to address you; but one never knows what life will bring, and now it is I, the nobody, who am comfortably off. It is very painful to see you suffering this way, when you used to seem so far beyond me, and although it gave me some peace of mind to live near you, even when I failed actually to keep in touch, I am sorry now that I am to go so far away, and I am worried about you, too.” Her speeches got her nowhere at all.
“This is very kind of you, but I am not like other people, and I do not see how… No, I just want to fade away as I am.” Her Highness said no more.
“You may feel that way, but I doubt that anyone else could give up all of life to stay on in this ghastly place. You would obviously have a proper palace instead if the Commander did it up for you, but I gather that for the time being he thinks of no one but the daughter of His Highness of War. They say he has given up all the ladies with whom his wandering fancy once got him involved in casual affairs. Surely you do not expect him to come calling on you just because here in this hopeless wilderness of yours you are chastely trusting him to do just that!”
She is quite right, her niece conceded before this barrage, and she quietly wept in bitter grief. However, she showed no sign of changing her mind, and after spending the day going over every argument, her aunt prepared to hurry off as the sun went down, saying, “Well, then, I shall at least take Jijū.”
Jijū, weeping with distress, said privately to her mistress, “Very well, I shall go just for today, since she wants me to, to see her safely on her way. There is some truth in what she says. But, my lady, I do not blame you for being so unwilling to leave, and it is very painful to be caught this way between you.”
So even she is to abandon me! her mistress thought, sad and angry; but she could say nothing to stop her, and she therefore only wept more loudly still.
The favorite robe that she might have given Jijū as a memento was too salt-stained14 to do. Lacking anything else to acknowledge Jijū's years of service, she took a pretty box and placed in it a fall that she had made of hair from her own head, over nine feet long and very beautiful, adding as well a jar of old and especially fragrant clothing incense.
“They would never break—so I once fondly believed—these long, shining strands
that now to my sad surprise fail me and will soon be gone,”15
she said. “I had thought you would always stay with me, however hopeless I may be, since after all Mama16 left you her last wishes. Not that I blame you for going, but who, I ask you, will take your place?” Her words gave way to a storm of tears.
Jijū could not speak. “Never mind Mama's last words, my lady, because I have lived with you through years of life's worst trials, and that I should now be drawn into a journey I never meant to take and leave you to go far, far away…
Though these shining strands fail you now, they will not break: that I swear to you
by the gods who deign to guard the road that lies before me.
What I cannot promise is that I myself will live.”
“Come along, it is getting dark,” the aunt whispered. Jijū boarded the carriage that was brought forward, hardly knowing what she was doing, and she looked back again and again as it drove away.
His Late Highness's daughter was heartsick at losing someone who had never left her in all these years, not even in the most desperate times. Meanwhile, her last, useless old women were saying “Well, she is quite right. How could she have stayed? Why, we ourselves can hardly bear it!” Each was considering the possibilities and planning to leave. Their mistress listened to them in despair.
In the eleventh month the weather turned to snow and sleet that sometimes melted elsewhere; but the Hitachi residence, buried in weeds that blocked the morning and afternoon sun, remained as deep in snow as White Mountain yonder in Etchū,17 until not even servants were seen abroad, and the mistress of the place languished in vacant apathy. She had no one even to comfort her with a light remark or to divert her with tears or laughter, and at night, in the grubby confines of her curtained bed, she tasted all the misery of sleeping alone.
Genji, at his residence, was more and more openly caught up in the rare pleasure of his darling's company, and he made no effort to call elsewhere unless he had the most pressing of reasons; still less was he moved to visit His Highness of Hitachi's daughter, although he sometimes thought of her enough to wonder whether she was still alive. Meanwhile the New Year came.
In the fourth month he remembered the village of falling flowers and set out quietly, bidding his love a brief farewell. The last light rain was falling after several wet days, and the moon came out at the perfect moment. His journey to her long ago returned to mind, and he was dwelling in memory on all of that deliciously moonlit night when he passed a shapeless ruin of a dwelling set amid a veritable forest of trees.
Rich clusters of wisteria blossoms billowed in the moonlight from a giant pine, their p
oignant, wind-borne fragrance filling all the air around him. It did so well for the scent of orange blossoms18 that he leaned out and saw a weeping will-low's copious fronds trailing unhindered across a collapsed earthen wall. I have seen this grove before, he thought; and he recognized His Late Highness's. Thoroughly moved now, he stopped his carriage. Koremitsu was with him on this as on all his secret expeditions, and he presented himself. Genji called him closer.
“This is His Highness of Hitachi's residence, is it not?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“I wonder whether the lady who once lived here is still lost in her sorrows. I ought to have visited her, but that sort of thing is such a bother. Go and make sure, though. I would look silly calling on the wrong person.”
His Late Highness's daughter, increasingly despondent, was nonetheless bearing up as well as she could. One day she dozed off and dreamed of her father, and such sadness lingered on after she awoke that she had the outer edge of the aisle cleaned, where water had come in through the eaves, had her rooms tidied, and murmured as anyone else might have done, though most unusually for her,
“When these sleeves of mine are forever wet with tears shed over my loss,
new drops from these ruined eaves must now flood them yet again!”
The moment was indeed heartrending in the extreme.