He sent to his daughters to ask them to play, but they shrank from the idea, for the Captain had overheard them making music for themselves, and they knew that they would do badly. Both declined, and they responded to His Highness's repeated encouragement only with excuses. The Captain was very disappointed.
His Highness then felt ashamed of their strangely unworldly and, to him, most unfortunate mode of life. “I brought them up hoping that no one would ever know they were here,” he said, “but now that each day may be my last, I am afraid the only tie to keep me from leaving the world is the thought of how they, who have all their lives before them, may face abandonment and destitution.”
The Captain was pained to witness his predicament. “I am in no position to offer them properly reliable assistance,” he replied, “but I would be very grateful if you were not to consider me a stranger. I assure you that for as long as I live I will not go back on the undertaking I give you now, however briefly I may express it.” His Highness was very pleased and said so.
The Captain called for that old woman to come while His Highness went about his morning devotions. She was known as Mistress Ben, and her role was to look after the daughters. Her manner of addressing him retained its elegance and distinction, although she was nearly sixty years old. She wept endlessly as she told him how the Acting Grand Counselor25 had lapsed deeper and deeper into melancholy and of how he had then sickened and died. Yes, her talk of times gone by would touch anyone, the Captain reflected, but for me, after wondering for years what happened and how it began, and after begging the Buddha to clear up the matter, it is extraordinary to have this prayer unexpectedly answered—so it seems—in an account as disturbing as any dream! He could not stop his tears.
“So,” he said, “there is still someone living who knows what happened! Is it possible that this astonishing and shameful knowledge has passed on in the same way to anyone else? All this time I myself have heard nothing of the kind.”
“No, my lord, no one but Kojijū and I can have known. I have never breathed a word to anyone. I myself am nothing and no one, but I was beside him day and night, and once I began inevitably to grasp the truth, it was through us two, and only through us, that he sent her the occasional letter whenever the anguish was more than he could bear. I cannot tell you everything because I would not dare. At the end he entrusted me with a few words that have been a painful burden for someone like me, and also an anxiety so great that my longing to convey them to you led me to include the hope of doing so in all my poor prayers. Now at last I know that there really is a Buddha in this world. I have some things to show you. I used to tell myself that it was hopeless and that I might as well burn them, because I was afraid they might get out after all if I who may go at any moment were ever to leave them behind. Then you began calling now and then on His Highness, and I regained the courage to pray for this moment after all. That it has actually come must be a matter of destiny from past lives.” In tears she told him everything about how he came to be born.
“In the commotion surrounding the Acting Grand Counselor's death my mother immediately fell ill and soon passed away, which was another heavy blow. In my double mourning I knew only sorrow. Then a nobody who had been pursuing me for years persuaded me to accompany him to the most distant reaches of the western sea,26 so that I fell completely out of touch with the City. He died there, and I returned ten years later with the feeling that everything in the City had changed. I had been in and out of His Highness's residence ever since I was small, thanks to a connection on my father's side, and by then I certainly was not the sort of person any longer to go out among people. I should properly have appealed to her ladyship, the Consort of His Cloistered Eminence Reizei, since I had been an intimate of her household for so long, except that in truth I shrank from doing so and in the end never went there at all. Instead I have turned into a tree withering away deep in the mountains.27 When was it, I wonder, that Kojijū died? By now very few of those whom I knew then, in their youth, are left, and I cannot help lamenting a life during which so many have been taken from me. Still, here I am.” She talked on as before until it was day.
“Very well, then,” the Captain said, “I am sure that there is no end to all you could tell me about the past. I must speak to you again another time, in some quiet place where we cannot be overheard. I have a dim memory of the woman they called Kojijū I must have been five or six at the time. I gather that she suddenly caught a chest ailment and died. If it were not for our conversation, I would have spent the rest of my life deep in sin.”28
She gave him a collection of papers, tightly rolled and smelling of mold, sewn into a bag. “Please, my lord, have these burned in your presence. The Acting Grand Counselor collected them and gave them to me, assuring me that he could live no longer, and I thought then that the very next time I saw Kojijū, I would have her take them to where they should properly have gone,29 but she and I never met again, and I was left after all with the sad burden of this secret.”
The Captain's face betrayed nothing as he hid what he had just received. He wondered unhappily whether the old woman, like others, had simply indulged the urge to recount a piece of sensational gossip, but that seemed unlikely, considering the way she had promised over and over again never to tell anyone else.
He had some gruel and steamed rice. Offices had been closed yesterday, but today the seclusion at the palace would be over, and besides, he had to present his wishes for the recovery of His Eminence's First Princess,30 who was ill, and for both reasons he would be fully occupied. He assured his host that he would be back before the autumn leaves were gone from the hills.31 Pleased, His Highness replied, “For me, you know, your frequent visits bring a little light into the shadows of these mountains.”
The first thing he did when he got home again was to inspect the bag. It was sewn from Chinese brocade and had “For Her Highness” written on it. The knot of slender, braided cord that tied it shut bore his signature seal. To open it was terrifying. Inside, he found sheets of paper in various colors, including five or six replies from his mother. In his hand there were five or six sheets of Michinokuni paper that evoked at length, in letters like the tracks of some strange bird, how extremely ill he was; how he could no longer get the slightest message to her, which only made him yearn for her the more; how he supposed that by now she must have assumed the guise of a nun; and other such sorrowful topics.
“Still more than for you, who before my very eyes have renounced this world,
I grieve for this soul of mine, soon to leave you forever,”
he had written, and in the margin, “I have no reason to worry about the little shoot32 of whom I have had such marvelous news, and yet,
If I were to live, I would know that he was mine and watch from afar
how tall the pine tree will grow my secret leaves among the rocks.”
It was all quite untidy, and it just seemed to stop. On it was written “To Kojijū.” The paper was now inhabited by silverfish and smelled of age and mold, but the writing was still there, as fresh as though just set down, and the words stood out with perfect clarity. Yes, he thought, if this had ever gone astray…; and he trembled and ached for them both.
Could anything like this ever happen again? What he knew now so weighed on him that he renounced his intention of going to the palace. Instead he went to visit Her Cloistered Highness, whom he found, all youth and innocence, reading a scripture that she bashfully hid. What would be the point of telling her I know? No, he kept it to himself, to reflect on in every way.
46
SHIIGAMOTO
Beneath the Oak
Shiigamoto (“beneath the oak”) serves as the chapter title because of its presence in a poem by Kaoru, lamenting the death of Hachi no Miya:
“The oak tree I sought to give me happy refuge under spreading shade
is no more, and where he lived emptiness and silence reign.”
RELATIONSHIP TO EARLIER CHAPTERS
/> “Beneath the Oak” continues “The Maiden of the Bridge” and appears to overlap chronologically with the end of “Bamboo River.”
PERSONS
The Consultant Captain, then Counselor, age 23 to 24 (Kaoru)
His Highness of War, 24 to 25 (Niou)
His Highness, the Eighth Prince, around 60 (Hachi no Miya)
His elder daughter, 25 to 26 (Ōigimi)
His younger daughter, 23 to 24 (Naka no Kimi)
Ben, a gentlewoman of Hachi no Miya's daughters, around 60
The Adept (Uji no Ajari)
Niou's messenger
The watchman at Uji
On about the twentieth of the second month His Highness of the Bureau of War made a pilgrimage to Hatsuse. His vow to do so was already old, but years had passed while he failed to make up his mind to honor it, and no doubt the main reason why he did so now was the attraction of breaking his journey at Uji. It was hardly serious of him to feel so drawn to a place that others have called “detestable.”1 A great many senior nobles accompanied him, and needless to say the privy gentlemen did, too, so that practically no one remained behind.
Across the river there was a large and handsome property that His Excellency of the Right had inherited from His Grace of Rokujō, and His Excellency had arranged to have the party received there. He had even meant to go and greet the Prince there himself, on His Highness's way back, but, unfortunately, he received advice to confine himself in strict seclusion and so was unable to do so. His Highness was somewhat disappointed; but then, on that very day, the Consultant Captain arrived to meet him. This was an altogether more agreeable prospect, and he looked forward also to hearing from him about things on the other bank. He felt that His Excellency was much too grand and made rather demanding company. This gentleman's sons—the Right Grand Controller, the Adviser Consultant, the Acting Captain, the Secretary Lieutenant, the Chamberlain Second of the Watch— were there to attend him. His Highness was very highly regarded by all, for he was Their Majesties' favorite, and of course His Excellency and everyone else at Rokujō accorded him their personal allegiance.
The place was done up just right for what it was. They took out Go, backgammon, and tagi boards and spent the day enjoying themselves as they pleased. Worn out by the unfamiliar experience of travel, His Highness had other reasons as well to want very much to stay on there, and so toward evening, after a little rest, he called for instruments and music.
It seemed to him that in so remote a spot the noise of the water only helped the instruments to ring out more beautifully; while yonder, just across the river at the hermit Prince's house, the music carried there on the breeze reminded His Highness of days gone by.
“What a delightful tone the player gives that flute!” he murmured to himself. “Who can it be? Long ago I heard His Grace of Rokujō play the flute like that, and he gave the music great sweetness and charm. Whoever this is, though, he makes the heavens ring and gives the music a touch of grandeur; it sounds like the way His Excellency the late Chancellor2 and his sons play.” And he continued, “Ah, it has been so long, so long! All these years, half living and half dead, with never a moment of music like this—no, it would be meaningless to count them all!” While talking on this way, he thought what a shame it was for his daughters, and he longed that they might not forever be trapped in these hills. An eventual alliance with the Consultant Captain would be welcome, he sighed, but I see no likely prospect of it, and I cannot for a moment imagine accepting any of the light-minded young men so common nowadays. The sorrows besetting his house therefore made the spring night all too long,3 while for the travelers in their lodging across the river the giddiness of drink brought dawn surprisingly soon, and His Highness of War regretted having already to leave.
Beneath a sky veiled far and wide by the mists of spring, some cherry trees were shedding their petals while others were just coming into bloom, and one admired along the river a lovely prospect of wind-tossed willows reflected in the stream.4 His Highness of War, unaccustomed to such sights, was struck with wonder and found the scene very hard to leave.
The Captain did not wish to miss this opportunity to visit the residence across the river, but he hesitated to act because he felt that it might look frivolous of him to disappear from among all these people and row off by himself. Meanwhile a letter arrived from there.
“Winds from off the hills sweep away lingering mists with strains of music,
yet there still stretch between us distances of tossing waves,”
the gentleman had written. It was beautifully done in the running style.
His Highness was delighted when he understood that it came from the place already on his mind. “I shall answer it!” he declared:
“A great reach of waves stretches in truth between us, from this bank to yours,
yet blow greetings there from me, O wind across the river!”
The Captain went to deliver it and invited several young gentlemen keen on music to come with him. On the way across they played “Magic of Wine,” after which they all respectfully disembarked, pleased to find the steps down to the water from the riverside gallery so perfectly suitable in style. The place was different again from the one they had just left. Its basket-work screens, which were as utterly plain as any one might find in a mountain village, lent their own touch to the furnishings' particular charm, although His Highness had had them carefully cleared away in preparation for receiving his guests. He had most discreetly laid out venerable instruments, each with a magnificent tone, on which they played “Cherry Blossom Man” in the ichikotsu mode. Everyone had hoped that on such an occasion their host would play the kin, but instead he only touched now and again, quite casually, the strings of a sō no koto. The sound deeply impressed the younger gentlemen, perhaps because they so seldom heard anything like it. A very pleasant meal of local fare followed, served by attendants far more closely resembling imperial descendants than they had ever imagined, or by old, unrecognized princes of the fourth rank who with the prospect of these guests arriving had all come forward, no doubt eager to provide His Highness with much-needed help; and those charged with bearing the wine jars were so thoroughly presentable, too, that the Prince's welcome acquired from them all a wonderfully antique elegance. Meanwhile the guests strove to imagine how His Highness's daughters got on here, and some of them no doubt felt eager to try their luck.
Wine jars
His Highness of War, whose rank gave him much less than their freedom, now felt the constraint keenly and could not contain himself. He ordered a beautifully flowering branch picked and had it presented by a handsome privy page in his service. The note said,
“I have come to you seeking in all their beauty mountain cherry flowers,
and I myself have plucked a spray to set in my hair.5
In fondness for the meadow,…”6 or something of the sort.
His Highness's daughters had great difficulty contriving an answer. “People have always felt that at such a moment it does not do to take one's time and delay the reply,” their more experienced gentlewomen warned, and His Highness had the younger sister write,
“Those flowers you plucked for your hair have led you here to the rustic's hedge,
and you will pass swiftly by, O you who travel with spring.
What charm has the meadow?” Her hand was very pretty and accomplished.
The impartial river breeze did indeed carry back and forth the sound of music. The Fujiwara Grand Counselor7 arrived to give His Highness His Majesty's greetings. His large retinue joined His Highness's party, and it was a lively, contentious throng that returned from there to the City. The younger lords, who longed to stay, looked back again and again, while His Highness anticipated the next occasion of the kind. The blossoms were at their height, and the spring haze made a lovely view in all directions, inspiring them to compose verse after verse in Chinese and Japanese; but I did not bother to inquire about them.
His Highness remained disp
leased that in the confusion he had never managed to convey what he really had in mind, but his letters kept coming, even in the absence of anyone to present them for him.8 “You must answer him,” the young ladies' father explained, “although you should avoid any hint of courtship. That would just incite him more. He is a Prince much given to gallantry, and no doubt he has little intention of letting the matter rest now that he knows you are here.” His younger daughter was the one who wrote each time, at his urging; the elder was too prudent to engage in any such banter.
Their father, always so given to melancholy, found the empty calm of spring more and more difficult to endure and passed his time in vacant musing. It only made it worse that their looks had matured with the years into such flawlessly winning beauty, and he lamented day and night that his pain and regret might well have been less if they had been unsightly. The elder by now was twenty-five and the younger twenty-three.
For His Highness this year required great caution, and in his despondency he absorbed himself more than ever in his devotions. Since the world meant nothing to him, and his every thought was of preparing for the great departure, he seemed certain to set out along the serene path;9 and yet this single matter of his daughters was a growing worry, and it seemed to those who knew him that despite his staunch resolve he would waver when the time to leave them actually came. How gladly he would have winked at courtship from anyone, even if not ideal, who genuinely wished to take one in hand, provided only that he was acceptable enough not to cause unfavorable gossip! It would be such a comfort to approve any refuge that might afford each a place in the world; but alas, no one wanted them anything like that seriously. The rare approaches they received amounted to mere gallantry from young men intent only on passing the time on the way out and back from a pilgrimage, and His Highness, who recoiled from the thought that these might imagine his daughters' dreary life and despise them for it, never permitted the most perfunctory answer. It was His Highness of War who was absolutely determined to have them. Perhaps that was his destiny.
The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji) Page 108
