He conveyed her this message repeatedly; the gossip about her must have already reached him. It upset him to find it being said of her that she had acted from pique and disappointment, but while on the other hand it would do her no good to acknowledge her new state openly, he felt that it was no business of his to say so, since he did not wish to embarrass her, and he therefore never touched on the matter at all.
The Commander meanwhile saw no point in making any further vain attempt to persuade her. She will never give me her consent. I shall let it be known that I had the Haven's approval. What else can I do? I shall imply a mild lapse on her part and make sure that no one can tell exactly when it all began. It would be impossibly awkward to go back to plying her with a lover's tearful appeals. In this spirit he chose a suitable day for her return to Ichijō, summoned the Governor of Yamato to instruct him on the procedure he wanted followed, and had the house cleaned and done up. The ladies had been accustomed to living there among thickets of weeds, despite the best they could do, but he had the place made immaculate and personally saw to it that the Governor of Yamato should have all the required lintel curtains, screens, standing curtains, and mats made at his own house.
On the day, he went in person to offer her a carriage and an escort. Her women sought vigorously to change her mind when she insisted that she had no intention of going. “I cannot agree, Your Highness,” the Governor said. “I have served you so far as well as I could, out of compassion for your bereavement, but now I must go down to my province. I have business there. There is no one else to entrust with looking after your residence, and I have been feeling remiss at the thought of leaving things as they are. Now that the Commander has taken it all on, however, it seems to me that although you are not for that matter, strictly speaking, obliged to agree, this is by no means the first time a lady like you has had to put up with circumstances she disliked, and I see no reason why you should be singled out for any particular criticism. You are being quite childish. Whatever your pride may tell you, it is just not possible for a woman to manage entirely on her own. You might as well accept the help of a commoner who will respect and cherish you; that is the way for you to enjoy the sort of life that you quite properly desire. The trouble is that neither of you reminds your mistress of these things. No, instead you have taken it into your own hands to do just what you should not.” His last reproaches were addressed to Sakon and Koshōshō.64
The women gathered around their mistress to persuade her, and she helplessly allowed them to change her into brighter colors. Absently, she swept aside65 the hair that she yearned only to cut, and it turned out to be six feet long. They felt that she could be proud of it, though it had thinned a little, but to her it was ruined; she could not possibly show herself to anyone like this, and her cares so overwhelmed her that she lay down again. “It is late, my lady,” they cried. “The night is advancing!”
Gusting wind and rain compounded her misery.
“O to join her smoke that rose high above the hills and into the sky,
and never follow the wind where I have no wish to go!”
she murmured. She had the resolve, but her women had lately been keeping anything like scissors carefully hidden from her; and anyway, she wondered, what makes my fate so important that I am entitled to act in secret like a silly child or to shock those to whom I still matter with the news of what I have done? She therefore never carried out what she had planned.
Her women had already packed their combs, accessory boxes, clothing chests, and whatnot, however flimsily, in bags that had been sent on ahead, and she could hardly stay on alone. In tears she therefore entered her carriage, all too aware of the vacant place beside her, and mist clouded her eyes when she remembered how her mother, already ill, had tidied her hair for her when they arrived, and had helped her down. With her dagger66 she kept a scripture case from which she was never parted.
“O dear, pretty case, clouded though you are with tears!—for you still recall
someone whom I miss too much ever to forget her loss,”
she murmured. It was the one inlaid with mother-of-pearl that her mother had favored, for she had not yet managed to procure a black case67 of her own. She had retained it as a memento of her mother, even though her mother herself had wanted it to go for scripture readings. She felt like Master Urashima.68
There was nothing gloomy about the place when she reached it. She had never seen it so fully populated. The carriage was drawn up, and she prepared to alight, but then she hesitated because the house felt so upsettingly unlike home. Her gentlewomen thought it very childish of her and hardly knew what to do.
The Commander had had the south side of the east wing done up for himself for the time being, and he was now installed there with a proprietary air. Astonished people at Sanjō were muttering, “He is impossible all of a sudden! How long has he been this way?” He who had never countenanced anything languorous or suggestive now turned out to have an unfamiliar side, but they assumed nonetheless that this had been going on for years without his betraying it; no one imagined that Her Highness was still refusing him. Her position was detestable either way.
The unusual welcome meal was not exactly propitious for a new beginning,69 but once it was over and everyone had settled down for the night, he came and demanded satisfaction from Koshōshō. “My lord, if you really are devoted to my lady for all the years to come, please let a day or two pass before you approach her! It has only depressed her to come home, and she is lying there as though she were no longer among the living. She resents every effort to cheer her up, and that makes things very difficult for me. I can hardly talk to her at all.”
“I just do not understand her. She seems beyond reach, like a girl, which is not what I expected.” He protested at length that his intentions were such as to discredit neither himself nor her.
“Oh, no, my lord, what so worries me now, until I can hardly think straight, is the fear of losing her, too. Please, my dear lord, please do nothing too willful or assertive!” She rubbed her hands together.
“I have never known anything like this! What about me, then, whom she apparently despises as the most vulgar and odious of men? I should just like to see what someone else might have to say about that!” He so obviously thought Her Highness's treatment of him unconscionable that Koshōshō pitied him, too.
“You have never known anything like it, you say, my lord—perhaps that is because you have never really known that much of life. As to who is right and who is wrong,” she added, smiling, “I wonder what someone else would say.”
He had no intention of allowing any resistance, however concerted, to thwart him, and he therefore went straight off, ahead of Koshōshō, toward where he judged Her Highness to be. Shocked and horrified by his callous boorishness, Her Highness decided he could complain all he liked that she was acting childishly; she had a mat spread in the retreat, locked the door from the inside, and went to bed. How long would that save her, though? She bitterly deplored her women's mad indiscretion. As for the gentleman, despite his anger and outrage he quietly resolved that he would not let this deter him, and he spent the rest of the night considering what might follow. He felt like a mountain pheasant.70 At last dawn came, and he prepared to go, since it would soon be light enough for people to recognize him. “Please, at least open the door a crack!” he begged, but she ignored him.
“On this winter night, when my heart feels forever locked in agony,
ah, what new chains bar my way through your adamantine door!
Your attitude leaves me speechless.” He left in tears and went to rest at Rokujō.
“They are saying at His Excellency's that you have brought Her Highness back to Ichijō. What are you up to?” the lady of the northeast quarter inquired innocently. She had a standing curtain in front of her, too, but he could still see something of her past it.
“Yes, I imagine that they are talking about it. The late Haven strongly opposed the idea at first, but she
relented near the end—I suppose she was worried that she might not find anyone else—and she let me know that she hoped I would look after her daughter once she was gone; so for the sake of my old friend I decided that I would. I wonder how people are taking it. It is no great event, but they so love to gossip.” He smiled and went on, “She herself is determined to have no more to do with this world, and she seems to be in such despair, she wants to become a nun. What would she have me do, though? Yes, there may be unpleasant talk, but I do not intend to disappoint her mother, not even if she has decided to put herself above suspicion that way, and that is the simple reason I am doing all I can for her. Please explain that to His Grace the next time he comes, if you can find a moment to do so. I have not wanted to give him any reason to accuse me of folly at my age, but it is true that on this sort of matter one all too easily ignores not only the remonstrances of others but the warnings of one's own heart.”
“Then there really is something to it! I thought that people were making it all up. This sort of thing is certainly commonplace enough, but I am sorry to imagine what this must be doing to your young lady at Sanjō. She is used to feeling so secure.”
“You are too kind to refer to her as a young lady. A fiendish shrew, that is what she is. But anyway, why should I neglect her? Consider, if I may be so bold, the case of all of you who live here. People value peace above all. Ill temper and querulous ways may harry one into temporary retreat, but they cannot be allowed to rule one's life, and there is certain to be trouble between a couple when some sort of incident crops up. As far as that goes, the disposition of the lady in the southeast quarter71 is rare in many ways, and to my mind you are admirable as well.”
She smiled at his praise. “If you mean to cite me as a model, I am afraid that everyone will soon find out just how deficient I am. What is curious, you know, is the way His Grace makes so much of the least slip on your part so as to screen his own errant ways, and either lectures you or censures you in your absence. To my mind he is like someone who fancies himself wise and yet remains unaware of what he himself is doing.”
“True enough. He is always lecturing me about such things. I manage to look out for myself, though, even without his sage advice.” Yes, he thought, that was an amusing comment.
He next called on Genji, who saw no reason to let on that he knew, even though he had already heard all about it. Instead he complacently studied his son and said to himself, Handsome as he is, he seems lately to have acquired a new dignity and presence. Who could blame him for occasionally indulging himself a little? With that bright aura of youth and beauty, the very gods would forgive him. It is all quite natural, considering that he is no callow boy but a mature man in his best years! Why should a woman not be pleased with him? He may well take pride in what he sees in the mirror!
The sun was high when the Commander got home. His children were all over him as soon as he came in, each one more winning than the last. Their mother lay in the curtained bed. She did not meet his eyes when he entered. He understood that she might be angry with him, but his face showed no contrition when he pulled the bedclothes off her.
“Where do you think you are?” she said. “I'm dead. I thought I might as well be a demon, since you're always calling me one.”
“You may be a demon and worse at heart, but you're too pretty to dislike!”
His flippancy galled her. “You won't find me clinging forever to a handsome charmer like you! I'm going away somewhere, anywhere! I don't want you just happening to remember me now and again! Look at all these years! They've been nothing but a waste of time!” She was sitting up now, looking extremely alluring. Her flushed face had an enchanting glow.
“Now I feel at home—it must be this childish tantrum of yours. No, this is one demon I am not afraid of. In fact,” he joked, “I would like a little more of the real thing.”
“What are you talking about? Just oblige me and die! I'm going to! I can't stand to see you, and I don't want to hear about you. Who knows what you would be up to once I was gone?”
He chortled merrily, better and better pleased. “Perhaps you won't look at me while I am here, but why would you not want to hear about me when I am elsewhere? Anyway, you seem to want me to understand how close we are. And talk about us suddenly following each other off to the underworld, I have already promised you I would.” He refused to take her seriously, and he did so well at winning her over that she began to come round even though she knew perfectly well that he was joking, which he thought very dear of her. Still, he remained intensely uneasy. And she, he thought—I can hardly believe that she is capable of resisting me forever, but I will look a perfect idiot if she manages to become a nun after all. He felt that for the time being he could not afford to miss a single night, and he realized as evening came on that today, too, had passed without an answer from her, which made him thoroughly morose.
At last, after eating nothing that day or the one before, she took a light meal. “His Excellency did not at all approve of my always being so keen on you,” he said, “but I bore the unbearable, although everyone just thought I was being silly, and I ignored the approaches that I got from here and there. ‘Not even a woman would be that faithful!’ they used to laugh. When I think about it now, I wonder how I ever did it, and I realize how steady I was even then, though I say so myself. You may hate me, but we have a houseful of children by now, and you would never give them up; and so I trust that in your heart of hearts you do not really mean to leave me. And besides, look at me—it is life that is treacherous, not me!” He wept at times as he spoke. Thinking back, she, too, felt despite everything the wonderfully rare strength of the tie between them. He changed from his soft, rumpled clothes into particularly beautiful, perfumed new ones and set off, elegantly attired and made up. By the light of the lamp she watched him go, and when bitter tears started from her eyes, she caught the sleeve of the shift he had just removed, and murmured to herself,
“Rather than lament that for him my charm is lost, I might just as well
change into a quite new guise—a nun's at Matsushima.
I just cannot go on this way!”
He stopped. “You are so cruel!” he exclaimed.
“Is that what you think? That you may before the world wear the briny robe,
now you are fed up with me, they wear at Matsushima?”72
It was a hurried poem, and very trite.
At Ichijō, Her Highness was still shut up in her retreat. “Do you think that you can stay this way forever, my lady? Everyone will know you as impossibly childish. You must come out and talk to him properly.” Her women did all they could to persuade her, and she knew that they were perfectly right, but to her he was the hateful man to whom she owed both her future reputation and her suffering in the past, and she refused to receive him that night either.
“This is no joke!” he insisted repeatedly. “It is preposterous!”
Koshōshō pitied him. “My lord, I know that my lady will feel a little more herself in time, and if you have not forgotten her by then, I will talk to her again. She says that her greatest wish is to live without other distractions as long as she is in mourning, and she is still furious that by now everyone in the world unfortunately knows her situation.”
“But my intentions are not what she imagines! She need not be afraid!” He sighed and went on at great length, in an appeal to Her Highness. “If you will only come out to sit where you usually do, I shall explain my feelings to you, through blinds and so on if you wish, and disturb you no further. I am quite willing to be patient for years.”
“Your relentless pursuit is very painful,” she replied, “coming as it does after the blow that I have already suffered. Your attitude is thoroughly offensive, quite apart from my distress over the extraordinary things that people must be thinking and saying about me.” With such repeated expressions of her displeasure she continued to keep him as far from her as possible.
This cannot go on, he said to himse
lf. He felt trapped. People are obviously going to hear about it, and then there are these women, too. “I want to keep up a pretense for a time, even if nothing actually happens contrary to her wishes,” he insisted to Koshōshō. “The foolish position she has put me in is cruel, but at the same time, if I suddenly stop coming, her own reputation will suffer for it. It is pitiful, the way she indulges her own feelings and insists on being such a child.”
Koshōshō agreed. By now the very sight of him distressed her, and she deeply regretted what he was going through. She therefore introduced him into the retreat through its north door, the one that Her Highness had her women use. Her Highness was aghast to discover that even her gentlewomen were as worldly-minded as anyone else and that she might expect still worse from them henceforth; and she bewailed her misfortune now that she could no longer trust a single one.
At great length, and with endless moving or pleasant touches, he reminded her of what she should already know, but she remained as bitterly hostile as before. “That you find me unspeakable covers me with such shame that I regret the folly of ever having aspired to please you, but it is too late now, and your proud name will not come through this unscathed. It is no use. Give in. They say people sometimes drown themselves in disappointment: well, resign yourself to having leaped into the abyss of my devotion!”
The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji) Page 96
