“Who's that?” an old woman's voice called as he softly opened the door.
Bother! “It's me!”
“Where are you off to in the middle of the night?” She started for the door.
He hated her. “No, no, I'm just going out a little!” He thrust Genji before him.
The moon, still bright in the dawn sky, suddenly revealed a second figure.
“Who's that with you?” the old woman said. “Ah, it must be Mimbu. You just go up and up, Mimbu, don't you!” The woman she thought he had with him was always being teased about her height. “And in no time you'll be just as tall as she is!” she muttered, emerging through the door.
He thought he was in for it, but he could not very well push her back in. Genji flattened himself against the door onto the bridgeway to hide.
“Were you waiting on her ladyship yesterday evening?” The old woman came straight up to him. “I've been down in my room14 with a bad tummyache that started the day before yesterday, but she called me anyway because she wanted more of us with her, so last night I went after all, and it was too much for me.” Without pausing for an answer, she groaned, “Oh, it hurts, it hurts! I'll talk to you later!” And off she went.
At last Genji managed to leave. The night must have taught him properly that gadding about like this was a perilous folly.
He returned to Nijō with her little brother riding in the back of his carriage and described what had happened, ruing his trust in one so young and snapping his fingers in irritation at her perverseness. The boy was crushed and said not a word.
“She seems to hate me so much that I, too, am disgusted with myself,” Genji pursued his complaint. “Why, when I write, will she not at least give me a civil answer? I cannot get from her even the courtesy she extends to the Iyo Deputy!” Still, he put her gown under his robe for the night. He had her brother lie beside him and talked on, now about the injury he had suffered, now about intimate concerns of their own. “You are very nice,” he said gravely, “but that sister of yours is so hateful that I may not be able to go on liking you.” The boy was miserable.
Writing box
For a time Genji tried unsuccessfully to sleep. Then he called hastily for an inkstone and wrote on folding paper,15 more in the manner of writing practice than of a proper letter,
“Underneath this tree, where the molting cicada shed her empty shell, my longing still goes to her, for all I knew her to be. ”16
Her brother put it in the front fold of his robe and took it to her. Genji did not like to imagine that other young woman's feelings, but after considering the matter, he sent her nothing. He kept the gown, which was redolent of her, next to his body and sat contemplating it.
The boy's sister was waiting for him when he reached the house, and she gave him a piece of her mind. “Look what you did! I may have managed to cover it up somehow, but nothing can be done about people's suspicions. You have me in a fine fix! And what on earth can he be thinking of the childish way you botched this?”
Her brother, caught painfully in the middle, brought out Genji's letter nonetheless. She took it and read it after all. That cicada shell she had shed: she wondered anxiously whether it had been salty like the Ise fisherman's,17 and she sank into confusion.
As for the young woman from the west wing, she had no one in whom to confide, so she went back there in shame and sank into secret gloom. She waited anxiously while the boy roamed about, but he brought her nothing. Although she could hardly know just how badly he had behaved, she must still have suffered a degree of wounded pride.
Meanwhile, despite her show of indifference, Genji's tormentor lingered in memory over his apparent devotion to her, and although the past was beyond recall, she so wished to be once more as she had been that she wrote along the edge of his letter,
“Just as drops of dew settle on cicada wings, concealed in this tree, secretly, O secretly, these sleeves are wet with my tears.”
4
YŪGAO
The Twilight Beauty
The yūgao (“twilight beauty”; more literally, “evening face”) is a vine that the chapter introduces this way: “A bright green vine, its white flowers smiling to themselves, was clambering merrily over what looked like a board fence.” Near the start of the chapter a mysterious woman sends Genji a fan to go with some yūgao flowers that he has just had picked. Written on the fan he finds a poem:
“At a guess I see that you may indeed be he: the light silver dew
brings to clothe in loveliness a twilight beauty flower.”
He answers:
“Let me then draw near and see whether you are she, whom glimmering dusk
gave me faintly to discern in twilight beauty flowers.”
RELATIONSHIP TO EARLIER CHAPTERS
The story in “The Twilight Beauty” begins in the summer when Genji is seventeen and continues up to the tenth month. Genji seems to have been inspired to pursue both Utsusemi and Yūgao by the “rating women on a rainy night” conversation in “The Broom Tree.”
PERSONS
Genji, a Captain in the Palace Guards, age 17
Genjis nurse, the Dazaifu Deputy's wife, now a nun (Daini no Menoto)
Koremitsu, Genji's foster brother and confidant
The Adept, Koremitsu's elder brother
A young woman, about 19 (Yūgao)
The lady of the cicada shell (Utsusemi)
The daughter of the Iyo Deputy (Nokiba no Ogi)
The Iyo Deputy (Iyo no Suke)
The Rokujō Haven, widow of a former Heir Apparent (Rokujō no Miyasudokoro)
Chūjō, a gentlewoman in the Rokujō Haven's service
Ukon, Yūgao's nurse
The steward
His son, a member of the Palace Guards
The Secretary Captain, Genji's friend and brother-in-law (Tō no Chūjō)
His wife, daughter of the Minister of the Right (Shi no Kimi)
His daughter with Yūgao, the “pink,” 3 (Tamakazura)
A Doctor, Genji's former teacher
In the days when Genji was calling secretly at Rokujō, he decided to visit his old nurse, the Dazaifu Deputy's wife, on the way there, since she was seriously ill and had become a nun. Her house was on Gojō.1
When he found the gate that should have admitted his carriage locked, he sent for Koremitsu,2 and while he waited he examined the unprepossessing spectacle of the avenue. Next door stood a house with new walls of woven cypress, surmounted by a line of half-panel shutters. Four or five of these were open, and through very pale, cool-looking blinds he saw the pretty foreheads of several young women who were peering out at him.3 They seemed oddly tall, judging from where the floor they were standing on ought to be. He wondered who they were, to be gathered there like that.
Having kept his carriage very modest and sent no escort ahead, he was confident of remaining unrecognized, and he therefore peered out a little.4 The gate, propped open like a shutter panel,5 gave onto a very small space. It was a poor little place, really. Touched, he recalled “What home is ours forever?”6 and saw that the house might just as well be a palace.7
A bright green vine, its white flowers smiling to themselves, was clambering merrily over what looked like a board fence. “A word I would have with you, O you from afar,”8 he murmured absently, at which a man of his went down on one knee and declared, “My lord, they call that white flower ‘twilight beauty.’9 The name makes it sound like a lord or lady, but here it is blooming on this pitiful fence!”
The neighborhood houses were certainly cramped and shabby, leaning miserably in every direction and fringed with snaggle-toothed eaves, but the vine was climbing all over them. “Poor flowers!” Genji said. “Go and pick me some.”
His man went in the open gate and did so, whereupon a pretty little servant girl in long trousers of sheer yellow raw silk stepped out through a plain but handsome sliding door and beckoned to him. “Here,” she said, “give them to him on this—their stems are so hopeless.” She
handed him a white, intensely perfumed fan.
The other gate opened just then, and out came Lord Koremitsu. The man had him give Genji the flowers. “My lord,” Koremitsu apologized, “we had unfortunately mislaid the key, and so we have caused you a great deal of trouble. No one in this neighborhood could possibly know you, but still, the way your carriage is standing out here in this grubby avenue…” He brought the carriage in, and Genji alighted.10
Koremitsu's elder brother the Adept, his brother-in-law the Governor of Mikawa, and his sister were all gathered in the house. Genji's arrival pleased them and made them very grateful.
The nun sat up. “For me it no longer matters,” she said tearfully, “but what made it difficult to renounce the world was the thought that you would then have to see me in so strange a guise. I feel much better, though, now that have received the Precepts and have had the joy of this visit from you, and I can look forward in peace to the light of Lord Amida.”11
“It has worried and saddened me that your illness has continued so long unrelieved, but I deeply regret that you have now visibly renounced the world. Please live on to see me rise higher still. Once I have done so, you may achieve as swiftly as you wish the loftiest of the nine births in Paradise. They say one should retain no attachment to the world.” Genji, too, spoke in tears.
The eyes of one as fond as a nurse will see implausible perfection even in the least gifted child; no wonder, then, that she felt honored to have been in his intimate service and wished to avoid causing him the pain of her loss. This was why she could not keep from weeping. Her acutely embarrassed children darted each other sidelong glances before so unbecoming a show of emotion in Genji's presence, as though their mother could not after all give up the world that she was supposed to have renounced.
He was very moved. “When I was little, everyone who should have loved me left me.12 Of course I had people to look after me, but you were then the one to whom I felt especially close. Now that I am grown up and can no longer always be with you or visit you as I please, I still miss you when I have been away from you too long. How I wish that there were no final parting!”13 He talked on tenderly, and the scent of the sleeves with which he wiped his eyes meanwhile perfumed the whole room, until the children, who just now had deplored their mother's behavior, willingly granted that she had indeed enjoyed great good fortune in her life, and they all dissolved in tears.
Hand torch
After ordering further rites for her, he had Koremitsu bring in a hand torch in preparation for leaving. On inspecting the fan presented to him earlier, he found it to be deeply impregnated with the scent favored by its owner and delightfully in-scribed with this poem:
“At a guess I see that you may indeed be he: the light silver dew
brings to clothe in loveliness a twilight beauty flower.”14
The writing was disguised, but its grace and distinction pleasantly surprised him.
“Who lives in that house to the west?” he asked Koremitsu. “Have you inquired?”
Here he goes again! thought Koremitsu, but he kept his peace and only answered a little curtly, “My lord, I have been here five or six days, it is true, but I have been too occupied caring for my mother to learn anything about next door.”
“You dislike my asking, don't you. Still, I believe I have reason to look further into this fan, and I want you to call in someone acquainted with the neighborhood and find out.”
Koremitsu went inside and questioned the caretaker. “The place apparently belongs to an Honorary Deputy Governor,” he eventually reported. “He says the husband has gone to the country and that the wife, who is young and likes pretty things, often has her sister visiting her, since the sister is in service elsewhere. That is probably all a servant like him can be expected to know.”
I see, Genji thought, it must be the young woman in service. She certainly gave me that poem of hers as though she knew her way about! She cannot be anyone in particular, though.
Still, he rather liked the way she had accosted him, and he had no wish to miss this chance, since in such matters it was clearly his way to be impulsive. On a piece of folding paper he wrote in a hand unlike his own,
“Let me then draw near and see whether you are she, whom glimmering dusk
gave me faintly to discern in twilight beauty flowers.”
He had it delivered by the man who had received the fan.
Folding paper
She had known his profile instantly, despite never having seen him before, and she had not let pass this chance to approach him, but his prolonged silence upset her, and she was thrilled when his reply arrived. She then took so long discussing her answer with her women that Genji's messenger was offended and returned to his lord.
Genji set off very discreetly. His escort carried only weak torches. The house next door had its half-panel shutters down. The lamplight filtering through the cracks was more muted by far, and more moving, than the glow of fireflies.
There was nothing common about the groves or the garden at the residence where Genji was bound, and the lady there lived a life of supreme elegance and ease. Her distant manner, never more marked than now, obliterated for him all memory of the vine-covered fence he had just left. He slept quite late the next morning and left at sunrise, his looks in the early light making it clear why everyone sang his praises.
Today again he passed those shutters. No doubt he had come that way before, but now, with that little encounter lingering in his mind, he wondered whenever he went by just who it was who lived there.
Koremitsu appeared a few days later and came straight up to Genji. “My mother is weaker than ever, and I have been doing what I can for her. After you last spoke to me, I called in someone who knows the house next door and questioned him, but he told me nothing clear. Someone seems to have come in the fifth month to live there incognito, but he said the household has been told nothing about her. Now and again I have a look through the fence, and I have indeed seen young women wearing a sort of apron, which suggests they are serving a lady. Yesterday the late afternoon sun was shining into the house, and I clearly saw a pretty woman sitting down to write a letter. She looked sad, and the others around her were quietly weeping.” Genji smiled and thought how much he would like to know who she was.
Koremitsu felt that despite the weight of Genji's exalted station it would be a shame if he did not take some liberties, considering his age and the admiring response he received from women; after all, those too low to be granted such freedom by the world at large fancied attractive women nonetheless. “I thought up a little pretext and sent over a note in case I might discover anything,” he continued. “I got an answer straight back, written in a practiced hand. As far as I can tell, there are some quite nice young women there.”
“Keep at it, then. It would be very disappointing not to find out who she is.” This was the sort of house Genji had heard dismissed as inhabited by “the lowborn,” but it excited him to imagine himself finding an unexpected treasure of a woman there.
Genji's astonishing rejection by the lady of the cicada shell had led him to think her hardly human, but if only she had given him a better hearing he might have contented himself with that one unfortunate misdeed, whereas under the circumstances he dwelled incessantly and with keen irritation on his dislike for giving up in defeat. He had never before set his heart on anyone so ordinary, but after that rainy night spent talking over the different levels of women, curiosity seemed to have inspired in him an inclusive interest in them all. He certainly felt sorry for that other girl, the one who was so innocently expecting him back, but it embarrassed him to imagine the first one listening quite coolly to what had passed between them, and he preferred to know her real intentions first.
Meanwhile the Iyo Deputy returned to the City and hastened to present Genji his respects. Naturally somewhat tanned from his sea voyage, he cut a thoroughly distasteful figure in Genji's eyes. Still, he was of quite good birth and handsome enough, though
he looked his age, and he certainly carried himself well. Genji wanted to ask him when he spoke of his province how many hot-spring tubs he had found there, but he felt strangely awkward instead, and many memories came to him. It was odd and foolish of him to feel this way before a staid, mature man, and he remembered the Chief Equerry's warning, apt enough in his own case, about getting in too deep with a woman. Guilt toward the Iyo Deputy taught him that from her husband's standpoint her rejection of him had been admirable, however annoying it might have been to him.
On learning that the Iyo Deputy now meant to give his daughter to a suitable husband and then to go down again to his province, this time with his wife, Genji lost his head and enlisted her little brother in a plot against all odds to bring off one more meeting with her. Alas, considering who he was, he was unlikely even with her help to reach her undetected, and in reality she objected to the mismatch between them and found the very idea so demeaning as to be out of the question. Still, she knew how painfully disappointing it would be if he simply forgot her. She therefore answered him warmly whenever he wrote to her, adorning the poems she put in the least of her messages with ingeniously appealing expressions for him to remember her by and presenting herself to him as someone worthy of his love, until despite anger over her rejection he found her impossible to forget after all. As to the other girl, he took it for granted that she would welcome him even if she acquired a stalwart lord and master in the meantime, and various rumors on that topic therefore failed to upset him.
It was autumn now. Troubles for which he had only himself to blame weighed upon him and discouraged all but the most sporadic visits to His Excellency's, inviting further resentment from the lady there.
The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji) Page 11
