The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji)

by Murasaki Shikibu

  He offered Genji wisteria for his headdress, too.

  Genji smiled warmly.

  “Then, while this spring lasts, take good care never to stray far from these flowers,

  and see whether you in truth will leap into the abyss,”

  he replied. He detained His Highness so pressingly that His Highness renounced his departure and so added further charm to the pleasures of the morning.

  Today was the first of Her Majesty's scripture reading. Many of those present for the music did not withdraw to attend it just as they were, but rather found a discreet corner to change into full civil dress. Some who had engagements elsewhere actually left. Everyone who planned to attend went there at the hour of the Horse,14 led by Genji himself. All the privy gentlemen came. Most of them joined Genji's entourage, and the event went forward with imposing splendor.

  The lady of spring graciously sent an offering of flowers. Eight page girls dressed as birds or butterflies appeared (she had made sure they were especially pretty ones), the birds bearing cherry blossoms in silver vases, the butterflies kerria roses in vases of gold; and the flowers were the most glowingly perfect of their kind. They rowed out from beside the knoll. A breeze sprang up as they came before Her Majesty, scattering a few cherry petals. The day was clear and calm, and the way they came forth from the mists was charmingly moving. The dancers' tent had been left purposely where it was, and the gallery between the two pavilions had been done up for the musicians and provided for the time being with folding chairs. The girls came up to the steps and presented their flowers. The incense bearers15 received the flowers and stood them beside the holy-water vessels. It was the Captain, Genji's son, who read out the donor's message:

  Dancer dressed as a bird

  “Will you look askance, O pine cricket in the grass, longing for autumn,

  even at these butterflies from my own flower garden?”16

  Her Majesty smiled, recognizing the reply to her poem about autumn leaves. “My lady,” the gentlewomen of the day before insisted, still intoxicated by the flowers, “you could have found no fault there with the beauty of spring!” “The Birds”17 resounded bravely amid warblers' sweet carolings, while here and there upon the lake waterbirds sang their own songs, and the effect of the rapid conclusion was endlessly delightful. How lightly, then, the butterflies flitted about, to flutter into the hedge at last among cascading kerria roses!

  Her Majesty's Household Deputy and the other privy gentlemen so entitled passed their rewards on one to the other18 and gave the page girls theirs. The birds got cherry blossom long dresses and the butterflies ones in kerria rose. It was just as though these had been prepared beforehand. The musicians,, according to rank, got a white layering or a roll of silk.19 The Captain had laid across his shoulders a wisteria long dress as well as a full set of women's robes.

  This was Her Majesty's reply: “Yesterday, you know, I could have cried aloud.20

  Come, they seemed to say, and your butterflies might well have lured me away,

  if between us did not grow bank on bank of kerria rose.”21

  It may be that despite their distinction and accomplishment they both found the effort too great, because their poems are hardly what one would wish to have from them.

  Oh, I had forgotten: Her Majesty's gentlewomen, the ones who had been on the excursion, all received token gifts, too.22 There were too many to describe. Little amusements like these went on day and night, since these ladies had no one to please but themselves, and those who served them therefore also lived untroubled lives. Both sides wrote back and forth to each other.

  The lady in the west wing and the mistress of the southeast had kept in touch ever since they met at the time of the mumming. No doubt the former lacked in some ways the fullest depth of character, but she had a quality born of wide experience, she seemed kind, and since there was nothing about her to dislike, all the ladies enjoyed friendly relations with her. A great many gentlemen were courting her, but Genji avoided any hasty decision, and for himself it was perhaps a certain reluctance always to behave paternally toward her that prompted him at times to consider informing His Excellency her father. It made her feel rather shy that Genji's son, the Captain, should come so close, right up to her blinds, and answer her remarks in person, but the women around her knew of no reason why he should not, and he himself was too serious ever to think of taking advantage of her.

  The Palace Minister's sons felt sufficiently encouraged by his example to let their interest in her be known, and they went about putting on tragic airs, which privately stirred her feelings, though not in that way,23 but because at heart she longed to come to her real father's attention. She gave no hint of this to Genji, though, instead behaving toward him with engagingly youthful familiarity and trust. He saw her mother in her quite clearly, despite the lack of obvious resemblance, but it was certainly she who displayed the greater wit.

  When the time came for the change to stylish new clothes for the new season,24 the very sky somehow acquired a curious charm. Genji was at leisure, and he spent his time at music making of all kinds. Meanwhile letters arrived in increasing numbers for the young lady in the west wing. This pleased him, since he had expected no less, but his habit of visiting her at odd moments for a look at them, and of then advising her on which ones she should answer, made life difficult for her, since it meant that she could never feel comfortably at home. She soon had a fine collection of ardently reproachful letters from His Highness of War, and Genji laughed heartily when he read them.

  “I have always been very close to him,” he said, “and among all the Princes it is he who most deserves my affection, but when it comes to things like this, he has kept his distance, which is why I find it at once so amusing and so touching at last to see these romantic outpourings of his. You simply must answer him. I can think of no more worthy correspondent for any moderately cultivated woman. Oh, yes, he has a great deal to recommend him!” He enlarged on the subject of his brother so as to make him seem desirable to a young woman, but he managed only to make her uncomfortable.

  The travails of the thoroughly stalwart and dignified Commander of the Right25 appeared to repeat the fall suffered by Confucius in the mountains of love,26 which struck Genji as comical in its way. Then, while examining the letters further, he came across one on blue Chinese paper, deliciously perfumed and folded very thin and small. “Why is this one so tied up in knots?”27 he asked, opening it. The hand was delightful.

  “You can hardly know that my thoughts are all of you, for the stealthy spring

  welling from among the rocks leaves no color to be seen.”

  The writing was fresh and exuberant.

  “Whose is this?” Genji asked, but she gave him no clear reply.28

  He summoned Ukon. “I want you to vet the authors of all these letters before they get an answer. A giddy young thing these days can make a great mistake, and it may not be all the man's fault. I, too, have often thought, How awful of her! I won't have it! and then called her obtuse or, if she happened to be a bit beneath me, simply rude; but when a man is not that keen anyway, and she still hatefully ignores a simple note on the theme of flowers and butterflies, it may only serve to spur him on; or else he may forget all about her, and who could blame him? It is no good either, making a glibly clever reply to what was merely a casual and quite functional note: that can lead to trouble later on. In general a woman is bound to suffer for it in the end if she is careless enough to indulge in showing off her delicate sensibility and her sparkling wit. His Highness and the Commander, though, are too passionate ever to express themselves casually, and it would ill become your mistress to treat them as though she accorded them less than their due. As for the others, who come below them, by all means be kind in proportion to what you gather of their own seriousness.”

  The lady sat turned away from him, revealing a striking profile. Over a long dress in a pink layering29 she wore a dress gown stylishly in harmony with the season's fl
ower.30 Her deportment, once marked after all by a sort of natural guilelessness—the only visible trace of her provincial upbringing—was by now impeccably pliant, as she came more and more to know how people really behaved, and her judicious use of makeup so heightened her already splendid looks that she was a dazzling pleasure to behold. What a terrible shame it would be, he thought, to let anyone else have her!

  Meanwhile, Ukon looked on, smiling and thinking to herself, No, really, he is much too young for her to call him her father! What a beautiful pair they make like that, side by side! “My lord,” she said, “you may rest assured that I give my lady no letters from any gentlemen. I suppose we let in the three or four you were looking at a moment ago—just the letters—because we hesitated to offend the senders by returning them, but my lady would never… At least, not without your express permission, and even then only most unwillingly.”

  “What about this one, then, tied up in these boyish knots? It certainly is very nicely written.” Genji gazed at it, smiling.

  “The messenger absolutely insisted on leaving that one, my lord. You see, His Excellency the Palace Minister's son, the Captain, already knows our Miruko,31 who is in service here, and she is the one who accepted it. No one else has seen it, I promise.”

  “How sweet of him! They are still junior, those young gentlemen, but one would certainly not wish to offend them that way. I doubt that there are many even among the senior nobles who can match the esteem he enjoys. None of his peers has as much sense as he does. Well, he is bound to find out in time. You must put him off, but of course not abruptly. What a beautiful letter it is, though!” For some time he could not put it down.

  “I am afraid you may have your own thoughts about my talking to you this way,” he said to the young lady, “but you are still too young and too poorly established to come to His Excellency's attention, and moreover, in my estimation it would be risky for you to go and join his family now, after all these years. I am sure there will be a suitable occasion for you to meet him in a dignified manner, once you have settled down as others do.

  “His Highness in principle lives alone, but he is very fond of the ladies; he frequents a good many different houses, or so I hear, and he keeps a large number of women unpleasantly called ‘concubines’32 or something. A wife able to cure him of that sort of thing without getting his back up would certainly do very well. Of course, a woman with a little quirk of her own33 can easily drive her husband to tire of her, and that is something for which you will need to look out.

  “The Commander is courting you because his wife of all these years is old now, and he is tired of her, but her family naturally objects. Nothing much can be done about that, so I have been quietly considering the matter myself, although I have not reached any conclusion. On this sort of subject it is not easy for a girl to tell her father frankly what she prefers to do, but you are past that age now, and I see no reason why you should not make up your own mind. You must think of me as you would have done of your late mother. I would hate to see you unhappy.”

  His grave speeches so confounded her that she could think of no reply. Still, she felt that it would be too girlishly silly of her to say nothing at all. “I have had no parents for as long as I can remember,” she ventured in all innocence, “and I am afraid that I can hardly have an opinion.”

  Genji sympathized. “Well, then, will you not accept your guardian as your father, as the saying enjoins, and acknowledge the very great depth of my concern for you?”34 The real nature of his interest in her was too shocking to confess. Now and again he admitted suggestive expressions into his speech, but she appeared not to notice, and he was sighing when at last he went away.

  Chinese bamboo grew in her garden, youthfully strong and green, and Genji, who missed its yielding pliancy, stopped to contemplate it.

  “Must that dear bamboo, so young when I planted her deep in my garden,

  grow up with the passing years to a life apart from mine?”35

  he said, lifting her blinds. “I believe that I will take that badly.”

  She slipped out toward him.36

  “Which of all those years will bring with it the right time for the young bamboo

  to seek out at last the root whence she first began to grow?

  No doubt it might not really work very well to try,” she replied, and his heart went out to her. Perhaps she did not really believe it, though. Oh, when, she wondered, worried and sad, will he ever bring up the subject with my father? And yet she certainly valued Genji's kindness, and she supposed that although she called that gentleman father, she could hardly be as close to him as to Genji himself, since she had never spent any time with him; in fact, the more her reading of old tales taught her what people are like and what the ways of the world are, the more timid she became, and the more she doubted that she could ever of her own will bring herself to her father's notice.

  Increasingly smitten, Genji even talked about her to the mistress of his house. “What an extraordinarily attractive person she is! Her mother all those years ago lacked a certain liveliness, but she, as far as I can tell, is quick, warm, and approachable, and there is no need whatever to worry about her.”

  To his lady, who knew him well, this sort of praise betrayed a heightened interest, and she understood. “She may be quick to grasp many things, but I pity her if in her innocence she ever trusts you too far.”

  “And what about me should encourage her not to?”

  “Oh, come now! Do I not remember the misery your ways have so often caused me?” She smiled.

  She misses nothing, does she! “But you have it all wrong!” he continued aloud. “She herself could hardly fail to notice!” He said no more, since he knew that he was in trouble, and now that she had seen through him, he struggled in vain to make up his mind what to do, meanwhile reflecting ruefully on his own warped and deplorable disposition.

  He thought constantly of the young lady and often went to fuss over her. One very damp evening after a spell of rain he looked out at the richly interlacing green of the oaks and young maples against a somehow encouraging sky, hummed “… pure and in harmony,”37 found his thoughts wandering to her deliciously fresh beauty, and stole off to her as usual.

  She was relaxing, practicing writing, and embarrassment lent delightful color to her face when she arose. His glimpse of her gentle grace suddenly swept him back to the past, and in an excess of emotion he began, “I am sure you yourself have never realized it, but ever since I first saw you, I have been strangely convinced, time after time, that I see her before me.38 It is very troubling. To my eye the Captain39 has none of the beauty I once knew, and I assumed that you would not resemble your mother that closely either, but now I know that such things happen after all!” His eyes filled with tears. Toying with an orange that happened to be among the fruit in a nearby box lid, he went on,

  “Now that this perfume calls to mind those sleeves of hers, fragrant with orange,

  I simply cannot believe that you are other than she!

  I could never, never forget her, and after remaining unconsoled for all these years, I cannot help asking myself when I see you this way whether I am dreaming. It is too much for me. Please do not turn me away.”

  She kept her composure when he took her hand, despite the revulsion that her inexperience naturally prompted her to feel.

  “If this present fruit so recalls the scent of sleeves you knew long ago,

  no doubt it, too, soon enough, will meet an untimely end,”

  she replied.

  With her eyes downcast in dread, she looked infinitely appealing. The delicious plumpness of her hands, the entrancing fineness of her skin, and her whole figure only stirred yet more troubled yearnings in him,40 and this time he spoke a little to her about his feelings. She wondered, aghast, what she was to do and began all too obviously to tremble, but he pressed on nevertheless. “Why must you dislike me so? I assure you that I have every intention of keeping all this so well hidden tha
t no one will ever find out. You need only betray nothing in your behavior. I am so deeply fond of you already that I know my renewed devotion will then rise beyond any in the world! Am I to be less to you than all these others from whom you have letters? I worry about you, you know, because there can hardly be anyone else, anywhere, as profoundly concerned with your welfare as I.” He had a very strange way of being a father.

  The rain had stopped, there was wind in the bamboo, and the bright moonlight on this lovely night encouraged the gentlest of moods; meanwhile, her women had withdrawn a certain distance, shy of intruding on an intimate conversation. He was always this way with her, but so rare an opportunity, and perhaps also the passion aroused by his own declarations, now moved him skillfully to disguise the rustling of his meltingly soft robe41 and to lie down beside her. Heartsick and appalled by what her women might imagine, she felt dreadful. She knew that no such a disaster could have overtaken her if she had been with her real father, whether he thought highly of her or not, and her tears spilled over despite her effort to hide them, until she made an extremely unhappy sight.

  “It is very unkind of you to feel this way. Any woman should properly yield, it seems to me, even a complete stranger, because that is the way of the world; and considering the long and close relationship between us, I cannot see why this degree of familiarity on my part should provoke such hostility. I will not trouble you again with my unwelcome attentions. All I desire is solace from the flood of memories that overwhelms me.” He said much more to her besides, kindly and tenderly—the more so since it was extraordinary how thoroughly he felt now as he had then. Despite himself he could not help remorsefully acknowledging his own wantonly foolish behavior, and he left before too much of the night had passed, since her women, too, would soon be wondering what he was doing there. “I will be very sorry indeed if henceforth you dislike me. Other people are not as easily swept away as I am! My boundless consideration for you would dissuade me from ever doing anything that might merit blame. I should like only to talk to you about this and that, to soothe my longing for what once was. I hope that you will answer me in the same spirit.” But despite his earnest entreaties she remained profoundly upset and disgusted with him. “I had no idea you felt so strongly about me. You really do seem to hate me,” he sighed. “Please make sure that no one suspects anything.” He went away.