The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji)
Page 62
“Now,” she went on to Gosechi, “he told me to take myself on over to the Consort, and he won't like it if I don't seem eager. I'll go tonight. Oh, His Excellency my daddy thinks the world of me, just the world, but what will I look like here if these ladies want nothing to do with me?” Her reputation was indeed in peril. She sent the Consort a letter immediately.34
“So near and yet so far from your reed fence,35 I lament not yet having enjoyed the privilege of walking in your shadow, and I fear that you may have preferred to erect a Come-Not-Hither Barrier.36 I know you not, and I therefore dare hardly presume to speak of Musashi Plain…37 Your very, very, very humble servant.”
There were lots of repetition dots38 and, on the back, “Oh, I forgot! I have decided to come to see you this evening—I am afraid that otherwise I may grow more fond of you the more you dislike me.39 Oh, dear, oh, dear, if only you would be kind enough to look on my writing as upon the Minase River!”40 And along the edge was this:
Reed fence
“Tender as she is, the plant from Hitachi Shore longs on Query Point
to see as soon as she can the billows on Tago Beach.41
The great river's waters…”42 It was on double-layered green paper, in an assertive hand crammed with cursive characters, wandering, unrecognizable, and with long tails everywhere, and it conveyed insufferable self-importance. The lines drifted off toward the edge and looked as though they might topple over at any moment. She contemplated her work with a smile of pleasure, at least rolled it up small,43 knotted it tight, and tied it to a pink in bloom.
A very pretty and self-assured chamber-pot girl,44 a new arrival, now turned up at the gentlewomen's sitting room in the Consort's residence. “Please give this to her ladyship,” she said. The servant she spoke to recognized her. “Why, you're a girl from the north wing, aren't you!” she exclaimed as she took it. The gentlewoman known as Taifu brought it to her mistress and opened it for her to look at. When her mistress smiled and put it down, Chūnagon, in close attendance nearby, got a look at it, too. “That is a stylish-looking letter if ever there was one, my lady,” she said, plainly curious.
“I can make neither head nor tail of it. I suppose I am simply no good at reading cursive characters.” The Consort gave it to her. “She will be disappointed in me if my answer is less grandiose. Draft something immediately.”
It was all so funny that the younger women laughed, though they could not do so openly.45
“And her ladyship's answer?” the messenger inquired.
“The letter has so many wonderful touches that we hardly know how to reply. It would be a shame if it appeared to be written by someone else,” Chūnagon answered. She made sure it seemed to come from her mistress herself.
She wrote, “It is a great pity that your being so nearby has brought us no closer together.
Then, O wave, arise, yonder along Suma Shore in far Suruga
on the sea of Hitachi: the Hakozaki Pine waits!”46
“Oh, no! What if people really think I wrote it?” the Consort protested when Chūnagon read it out to her.
“Those who hear it will know, my lady.” Chūnagon wrapped it up and sent it off.
“Beautifully put! And she says she's expecting me!” The young lady steeped her clothing again and again in the sweetest incense,47 put on the most brilliant rouge, combed her hair, primped and preened, and made herself quite attractive in her way. No doubt she did all sorts of extraordinary things when they were together.
27
KAGARIBI
The Cressets
Kagaribi means “cresset,” a fire held aloft in an iron cage and used for outdoor illumination. The word owes its function as the chapter title to its role in an exchange of poems between Genji and Tamakazura.
RELATIONSHIP TO EARLIER CHAPTERS
“The Cressets” directly follows “The Pink.” It takes place in the seventh month, which in the lunar calendar is the first of autumn.
PERSONS
His Grace, the Chancellor, Genji, age 36
The lady in the west wing, 22 (Tamakazura)
The Captain, 15 (Yūgiri)
The Secretary Captain, Tō no Chūjō's eldest son, 20 or 21 (Kashiwagi)
The Controller Lieutenant, Tō no Chūjōs second son, 19 or 20 (Kōbai)
The whole world was talking in those days, whenever the occasion arose, about His Excellency the Palace Minister's new daughter. “No,” Genji remarked, “I fail to understand how anyone, under any circumstances, could draw this much attention to a girl who presumably has so far been hidden away, and make such a spectacle of her just because she happened to come forward to put her claim. He is always so hasty—I suppose he took her in without finding out much about her, and this is what he did to her when she disappointed him. Remaining discreet is never more than a matter of how one goes about doing things.” He felt quite sorry for her.
Cresset
“I was lucky, then!” the young lady in the west wing said to herself when these goings-on made it clear what humiliation she might have suffered if she had sought out His Excellency, even if he was her father, without knowing what he was really like. Ukon had turned all her eloquence to encouraging this conclusion. Genji had that one unpleasant failing, but he did not actually seek to force himself on her as he might in fact have wished to do, and since otherwise his devotion to her continued to grow, she began little by little to respond.
It was autumn now. When that first, cool wind began to blow, he desperately missed “my true love's” tossing clothes,1 and he went constantly to see her and spend the day giving her music lessons and so forth. The evening moon of the fifth or sixth night2 had set very early. Clouds lightly covered the sky, reeds were rustling,3 and the moment was one for tender feelings. The two of them lay together, their heads pillowed on her koto. He knew that someone might notice them if he spent the night, and he sighed that such things should be possible. He was therefore preparing to leave when he summoned one of his escort, the Right Guards Commissioner, to light the cressets that by then were all but out.
The man placed the split pine fuel discreetly beneath the handsome, spreading branches of a spindle tree4 that grew beside the deliciously refreshing brook. Then he drew back to light the cressets, leaving the garden beside the house cool and filled with a lovely light that showed her off to wonderful advantage. Her hair was elegantly cold to the touch, and her manifestly thoughtful reserve gave her great appeal. Genji did not wish to leave.
“You should always have your staff keep cressets lit. A summer garden on a moonless night is disturbingly mysterious and foreboding.
With these cressets' smoke another rises, of desire, from such inner flames
as I know now will burn on for as long as this world lasts.
Ah, how long indeed!5 You do not see me smoking, perhaps, but I smolder so painfully underneath!”
This is all so strange! she thought.
“Let it then dissolve in the vastness of the sky, if the cressets' smoke
sets your own to smoldering from such other, unseen fires.
People will be wondering what we are up to!”
“Just look, though!”6 he said and started off. A flute rang out prettily from the east wing,7 accompanied by a sō no koto. “The Captain must be playing music with one of those inseparable friends of his—the Secretary Captain, I suppose.8 What a lovely sound!” He stood to listen.
“I am over here, detained by the cressets' beautifully cool light,” his message said.9 All three came immediately.
“That flute was too much for me; it sounded so much as though the song of the wind had turned to autumn.” Genji took out the koto to play some lovely music. The Captain played his flute very nicely in the banshiki mode, but the Secretary Captain was too nervous to sing. “Well?” Genji said. The Controller Lieutenant sang low, beating time and sounding just like a bell cricket.10 Genji put him through his song twice, then passed the koto to the Secretary Captain, whose brilliantly attrac
tive touch was, sure enough, hardly less good than his father's.
“Someone else is behind these blinds, I believe, someone who knows music, too. I must mind myself with the wine tonight. An old man weeping in his cups can be indiscreet.”
True enough, she thought, and she was touched. She secretly paid close attention to all she saw and heard of the young gentlemen, no doubt because her lasting tie with them was destined to be strong, but they themselves suspected nothing, and the Secretary Captain, who felt this time as though he would not be able to refrain from pouring out his heart, actually behaved extremely well and never even let himself go to play a piece straight through.
28
NOWAKI
The Typhoon
Nowaki (“tempest”) means the typhoon winds of early autumn. The chapter's key event is a typhoon.
RELATIONSHIP TO EARLIER CHAPTERS
“The Typhoon” takes place in the eighth month, immediately after the time of “The Cressets.”
PERSONS
His Grace, the Chancellor, Genji, age 36
Her Majesty, the Empress, 27 (Akikonomu)
The lady of the southeast quarter, 28 (Murasaki)
The Captain, 15 (Yūgiri)
Her Highness, Yūgiri's grandmother, about 70 (Ōmiya)
The lady of the northeast quarter (Hanachirusato)
The lady from Akashi, 27
The lady in the west wing, 22 (Tamakazura)
Genji's daughter, 8 (Akashi no Himegimi)
His Excellency, the Palace Minister (Tō no Chūjō)
His daughter, Yūgiri's love, 17 (Kumoi no Kari)
The flowers Genji had had planted in Her Majesty's garden flattered the eye this year as never before, for they were of every hue and kind, and they twined about low, handsome fences of barked or unbarked wood looking more perfect than the same ones elsewhere, even to the way dew gleamed on them morning and evening and made them shine like jewels. One forgot the spring hills before the skillful prospect of their many colors, and one's heart wandered forth among their cool delights. Autumn had always had more partisans than spring in the debate over which is to be preferred, and those who once favored that celebrated spring garden now turned, as people do, to look elsewhere.
Her Majesty stayed on at home in order to enjoy it all, and she would have liked meanwhile to call for music, but the eighth month was that of her father's death;1 and while she watched the flowers continue to grow more beautiful, rather than fade as she feared they soon might, the wind set in to blow, and changed skies threatened a worse tempest than any normally known. Those who did not much care that the flowers should suffer cried disaster nonetheless, and Her Majesty almost despaired as dewy pearls were swept, unstrung, from petal and leaf. She seemed to crave sleeves wide enough to cover the autumn sky.2 She lowered her shutters as night fell and the storm raged on unseen, since it was so frightening, but she continued even then to tremble for her flowers.
In the southeast quarter it had begun to blow just when work was being done on the garden, and this wind cruelly surprised the languishing hagi fronds.3 From near the veranda she watched the wind again and again sweep away every last drop of dew. Genji was with their daughter when his son, the Captain, came round. The Captain glanced absently over the standing panel4 on the eastern bridgeway and in through the open double doors, and he stood still to watch in silence when he noticed a crowd of gentlewomen. The screens had been folded up and moved aside because of the wind, and he could see straight through to a lady seated in the aisle room. There was no mistaking her nobly warm and generous beauty: she looked like a lovely mountain cherry tree in perfect bloom, emerging from the mists of a spring dawn. The breath of her enchantment seemed irresistibly to perfume his face even as he watched. She was nothing less than extraordinary. For some reason she smiled to devastating effect when the wind blew the blinds in and her women held them down; she was too worried about her flowers to leave them and come in. He could not take his eyes off her, despite also the varied charms of her women, and he knew now how right his father had been, in case precisely this should happen, to keep him well away from a lady who could not fail to trouble anyone who saw her.
The near garden
He was making off again for fear of being noticed when Genji, returning from his daughter's, opened the inner sliding panel and entered the room. “What a horrible, maddening wind! Get your shutters down. There must be men about, and anyone could see you.”
The Captain approached again and watched as she said something to Genji, who looked at her and smiled. He could not imagine that Genji was his father; he looked too glowingly young and graceful and handsome. She was in full flower, too, and he was deeply impressed by how perfect they both were; nonetheless, the shutter onto his bridgeway had blown open as well, and he, too, was in plain view. He retreated in terror and came forward toward the veranda, clearing his throat as though he had just arrived. I knew it! Genji said to himself. She must have been there to see: those double doors were wide open. He instantly realized what this must mean.
Nothing like this has ever happened before! the Captain exulted. The wind really can toss boulders into the sky! They are both extremely upset, despite their precautions, and I have seen a rare and wonderful sight!
Household retainers appeared. “The wind will be appalling, my lord,” they said. “It is mild here because it is blowing from the northeast. The riding ground pavilion and the southern fishing pavilion may go at any moment.” They noisily set about looking after one thing and another.
“Where have you come from?” Genji inquired.
“I was at Sanjō,” the Captain replied, “but people said it is going to blow such a storm that I came here—I was worried. It is Her Highness who is really afraid, though. The sound of the wind frightens her at her age as though she were a child, and I feel so sorry for her that I am going back there now.”
“That is a good idea. Age should not turn people into children again, but I am afraid that is what happens.” Genji expressed his sympathy for the lady in various other ways, and he had the Captain tell her, “I am confident that despite the commotion you are in good hands with this young lord to look after you.”
There was never a day when the always proper young man failed to present himself both at Sanjō and at Rokujō, even when buffeted all the way by the wind, and apart from those times when seclusion inevitably confined him to the palace, no press of official business, no lengthy or complex ceremonial duties could keep him from Rokujō first, then Her Highness, then on, and it was touching to see how today, in this weather, he went flying about even more swiftly than the wind.
Her Highness was very pleased to receive him and greatly reassured. “I have never in all my years seen such a terrible storm,” she said, trembling helplessly. “To think that you have come here through the crash of breaking tree limbs, while the wind seems to be stripping every tile from the roof!” Gone was that once brave and splendid show,5 and now the Captain was all she had in this shifting world. Not that on the whole she enjoyed less consideration now than then, but the Palace Minister remained quite distant.
The Captain lay all night amid the howling of the wind, under the spell of an indefinable sadness. Quite apart from the lady for whom he always longed, he could not forget the sight he had just seen, and such startlingly forbidden thoughts accompanied the vision that he roused himself in fright to turn his mind elsewhere; but they kept returning. There could never have been many like her, nor would there ever be. When his father had her, how could the lady of the northeast quarter6 possibly still stand beside her? Poor thing, he thought, there is just no comparison between them; and he wondered admiringly at his father's kindness. Serious as he was, it never occurred to him to entertain any culpable ambition, but he did want if he possibly could to spend his life with someone just like her, and he could not help feeling that doing so would help a little to prolong what years he had allotted to him.
The wind dropped somewhat toward da
wn, and rain began falling in heavy bursts. He had word that outbuildings had collapsed at Rokujō. While the wind raged, many people on that vast and proud estate gathered around the great lord and his lady, but he realized with a start that in the northeast quarter she must be very lonely, and he set out under a still barely lightening sky. A freezing, almost horizontal rain blew in7 all the way there. Under these troubled skies he felt strangely foreign to himself. What is this? Have I yet another sorrow to bear? No, it is unthinkable! I must be completely mad! He went straight to the northeast and found her terrified. Having done what he could to reassure her, he summoned people to put things right as needed and then went on to the southeast, where the shutters were still down. He leaned against the railing at the point where he judged them both to be and looked out over the garden. The trees on the hill were leaning with the wind, and many broken branches lay on the ground. Needless to say, the plants were in wild disorder, but so, too, were the bark shingles, the tiles, the standing shutters, the screening fences, and so on. A weak sun rose, and dew sparkled in the garden as on a grieving face, while the sky remained densely shrouded in fog. He wiped away his own unreasoning tears and cleared his throat.