That autumn the Consultant Captain became a Counselor, but despite increased prestige and greater responsibility he still had many cares. After wanting to know the truth for so many years, he now pondered the gentleman who had died so tragic a death and longed by pious devotions to lighten his sin. He also took pity on the old woman from whom he had had the story, and did what he could for her as quietly and as invisibly as possible.
He remembered that he had not been to Uji for a long time and went straight there. It was the seventh month. Autumn had not yet come to the City, but near Mount Otowa one felt a sharp chill in the sound of the wind, and the wooded hills farther on were slightly tinged with color. The landscape when he arrived filled him with wonder and delight, but His Highness, still more delighted to greet him, now poured out at length the tale of his sorrows.
“I hope,” he ventured, “that after I am gone you will see your way to providing for my daughters' needs when they arise, and to count them as before among those who matter to you.”
“You were good enough to mention this matter earlier, and I have no intention of failing in the promise that I made you then,” the Counselor replied. “I who wish to reduce my attachment to the world have little time before me to be of service to them, but I hope to show you clearly that my feelings have not changed, as long as I have the capacity to do so.” His Highness was pleased.
Late that night the moon shone forth brilliantly, but one knew that it would soon be gone behind the crest of the hills. His Highness movingly chanted the Name and began to talk about the past. “What is the world like by now? I wonder,” he said. “When I joined in music making at the palace, under this sort of autumn moon, the recognized experts would do their best, and the effect in concert was certainly grand; but what generally caught one's interest more was the plaintive sound of a single instrument late at night, after everyone had retired, faintly heard here and there from the apartments of a Consort or an Intimate, those highly respected ladies so intent on their rivalry even while they maintain a surface regard for one another. Women are trifling creatures on the whole, good only for passing pleasures, but they arouse strong feelings. I suppose that that is why their sin is so profound. Parents feel deep concern for all their children, but a son is much less trouble. A daughter is a daughter,10 and she is likely to be a great worry even when one must acknowledge how little she is worth.” He put his own anxiety in general terms, and his visitor agreed sympathetically at heart that he had every reason to feel as he did.
“I have truly given up all those things, as you know, and, to speak of myself, that is no doubt why I know very little indeed about them,” the Counselor replied, “but however inconsequential music may be, the taste for it is indeed very difficult to renounce. That is why even the saintly Kashō rose to dance.”11 He seemed still to long for the sound of the koto he had once heard so briefly, and His Highness therefore went in person to his daughters to urge them to play, hoping perhaps to bring them and his visitor closer together. There came a very faint, brief passage on the sō no koto. In such a place, under a sky that increasingly evoked sorrow and desolation, this impromptu music pleased the Counselor well, but the sisters would certainly not agree to play freely together.
“Very well, now that I have managed this much, I leave the rest to you, who have your lives ahead of you.” His Highness disappeared into his altar room, saying,
“After I am gone, this grass hermitage of mine may well fall to ruin,
yet I know that you will be true as ever to your word.12
This meeting of ours may be the last, and sorrow has kept me from containing my-self; I have talked too much nonsense.” He was weeping.
His guest:
“In what age to come will that solemn promise fail, when I gave my word
for all time not to forsake this, the hermitage you made?13
I shall wait upon you once the wrestling tournament14 and other such distractions are over.”
Left to his own devices, the Counselor summoned the old woman who had so surprised him with her story and questioned her on many matters that remained to be told. The setting moon shone in brightly, lending his figure a wonderful grace,15 while the sisters kept to the inner recesses of the room. He addressed them so quietly and sincerely, in a tone free of any hint of common gallantry, that they answered him as the moment prompted them to do. Silently recalling how eager His Highness of War was to know them, he reflected that he was still unlike other men. Look how willingly His Highness encouraged me, he said to himself, and I still feel in no particular hurry! Not that it is really out of the question, as far as I can see. It will be very pleasant to talk to them this way and to exchange praise of the beauty of blossoms and autumn leaves, and yes, it will be a shame if they go to others. He felt as though they were his already.
Kashō
He returned to the City late at night. The figure of his host, who seemed so sadly convinced that he had not long to live, lingered in his mind, and he planned to return once the busy season was over. His Highness of War, too, was considering the right moment to go there that autumn on a trip to enjoy the leaves. He sent constant letters. The sister who answered them16 did not believe him for a moment to be serious, and she therefore took little trouble with her replies, but she kept up the exchange, however lightly.
As autumn advanced, His Highness's thoughts became still gloomier, until he decided as before to devote himself in peace to calling the Name, and with this in mind he spoke the inevitable words to his daughters. “Such is this life that no one escapes the final parting, but it helps to look forward to finding comfort. It is tragic that I should now have to leave you alone when you have no one else to look after you, and yet it will not help for me to wander for that reason the darkness of the eternal night. I cannot say what may happen after I am gone, in a world that I renounced even while I was still with you, but I warn you, do nothing ill considered that might bring shame not only on me but on your late mother. Never let yourselves be persuaded to leave this mountain village unless by someone worthy of you. Simply accept that your destiny is not that of others and decide to remain here all your lives. As long as you persist in that resolve, you will find that the months and years pass smoothly. What matters above all, particularly for a woman, is to remain unseen and never to arouse such criticism as to bring her to others' unfriendly attention.”
His daughters could picture no future at all for themselves, and they only wondered how they would survive his loss. Merely to imagine this dismal prospect troubled them beyond words. At heart he had indeed no doubt given them up, but he still had them with him day and night, and they could hardly help holding this abrupt separation against him, even though it had nothing to do with cruelty on his part.
The day before he was to go, he wandered about in his usual manner, having a last look at his house. It was a flimsy, insubstantial place that had been his home so long, and he wondered with tears in his eyes, meanwhile calling the Name, how his young daughters could possibly remain shut up here once he had left them. He was the picture of distinction and grace as he did so. Then he called the older gentle-women together. “Give your mistresses faithful service,” he said. “It is the way of things that those not born to come to the world's notice should in time decline unseen, but for such as they it is a sad offense against gentle birth to lapse into ignoble degradation. Most people lead unhappy, lonely lives. Loyalty to the dignity and customs of their house will make them blameless in their own and in others' eyes. Respectable prosperity may tempt them, but never, never urge any thoughtless imprudence on them if circumstances turn out not to promise it.”
He went once more to his daughters at dawn, when he was about to leave. “Do not be downcast while I am gone,” he said. “Be merry in spirit at least, and play music. This world is always so contrary—do not take it too seriously.” He looked back again and again as he left.
The sisters remained more disconsolate than ever, and they talked these thi
ngs over day and night. “How would life be possible at all if one of us were no longer to be here?” they asked each other. “There is no telling what awaits us now, and if by any chance we came to be parted…” Weeping and laughing, playful and serious, they sought with one mind each other's consolation.
A messenger arrived on the evening of the day when his retreat was over and they were expecting him home at any moment. “This morning I began to feel unwell and I am afraid that I cannot come,” he said, repeating His Highness's words. “I am having myself looked after, you see, on the assumption that it is a cold, but I long more than ever to be with you again.”
Shutter
Dismayed and anxious about what the matter could be, they had thick, padded robes made up and sent to him. Two or three days passed, and he never came down from the mountain. They sent again and again to find out how he was. “There is nothing that badly wrong with me,” he told the messenger “but I just do not feel well. I promise to come as soon as I am a little better.”
The Adept remained in close attendance on him. “You appear only to be slightly indisposed, but I believe that you may be setting out on your final journey,” he cautioned. “There is no reason you should mourn for your daughters. We each have our own distinct destiny, and you need not be concerned about them.” He urged His Highness more and more to give up every tie, and he warned, “Your Highness, you must not leave this temple.”
It was about the twentieth of the eighth month, and the sky was assuming a melancholy cast. The mists never cleared from morning to night, and the sisters mourned and sighed. Near dawn the moon came out, brightly illuminating the surface of the river, and they raised the shutters on that side to look out at the scene. The distant sound of the temple bell announced the coming of dawn. Several men arrived just then to inform them, weeping, that His Highness had died in the middle of the night.
They had never stopped thinking of him or wondering how he was, but the shock of this news deprived them of their senses, leaving them unable—for even their tears had vanished—to do anything but lie prostrate on the ground. When the greatest loss of all occurs, one is normally present and therefore in no doubt of what has transpired, but ignorance of how it had happened only added to their grief, and it is no wonder that they mourned. They who could hardly imagine living on after him wept with desperate longing to join him, but his time had come, and all their lamentations were in vain.
The Adept took in hand all that needed to be done, as he had always promised to do. “We would gladly see his face and form one last time, now that we gather he is gone,” his daughters said, but the Adept replied, “What good would that accomplish? His Highness himself had already cautioned you that you might not see him again, and for his sake you must now dispose yourselves no longer to cling to him.” That was all. When the sisters learned how their father had been accommodated, they bitterly condemned the Adept's excessively ascetic zeal.
His Highness had wanted for many, many years to take the vows of a Novice, but reluctance to abandon his daughters when there was no one else to look after them had prompted him to remain with them all his life, and they were such a comfort to him in his sad circumstances that he never really wished to leave them. Both he on his last journey and they who mourned his loss were therefore left unconsoled.
The news was a great blow to the Counselor, who felt as though he had still had many things to discuss a last time with His Highness, and he wept bitterly at this new reminder of what life brings. “I doubt that we shall meet again,” His Highness had said, but such remarks from him were all too common, since he always remained acutely aware that in this life each day or night may be one's last, and the Counselor had never imagined that what he foretold might come yesterday or today.17 Overcome with grief, he addressed long letters of condolence to His Highness's daughters through the Adept, and since they had had no word from anyone else, they understood even in their distraught condition the depth of his devotion through the years. The most ordinary parting of this kind affects everyone at the time as an unheard-of tragedy, and he could well imagine what their feelings might be when they had no other comfort at all. He therefore foresaw everything required for the necessary rites and sent suitable offerings also to the Adept. Through the older gentlewomen he provided what was needed for the scripture readings at His Highness's residence.
It felt as though the night would never dawn, but even so, the ninth month came. The cold rains of the season, so apt to start tears, lowered over meadow and mountain, and now and then the sound of falling leaves or the noise of the river seem to mingle with the flood of their weeping, until those who served them wondered miserably how their mistresses would ever live out their allotted years and strove in vain to comfort them. Priests were there, too,18 to call the Name, and those who visited the house to confine themselves in prayer before His Highness's altar, in the room where His Highness had done so himself, absorbed themselves in the rites of mourning.
Repeated messages came as well from His Highness of War. The sisters did not have the heart to answer them. Their silence, when as far as he could tell they responded quite differently to the Counselor, left him offended that they should seem to have forgotten him. He had meant to go there when the autumn leaves were in their glory and to have his party compose Chinese verses, but this was no time for such an excursion, and in disappointment he gave up the idea.
The period of mourning came to an end, and he sent them a long, long letter, for he guessed that since tears cannot flow forever, even theirs might now dry from time to time. It came one evening when rain was threatening:
“What can your life be, where the stag cries in autumn round your mountain village
and at dusk the dewdrops hang on the drooping hagi fronds?19
It would be too unkind of you to pretend that you do not share the mood of the sky this evening. This is after all just the season to contemplate the withering moors,”20 he wrote, and so on.
“It is true, we have ignored him repeatedly,” the elder said. “Do answer him.” She appealed as usual to her younger sister to write a reply.
How could I have imagined that I would live long enough ever to draw an inkstone to me again? the younger one asked herself. How bitter a time we have been through! Her eyes clouded once more, and it seemed to her that she could see nothing. She pushed the inkstone away. “I cannot write to him, not yet,” she said. “Here I am, beginning to stir myself again—yes, clearly, there is an end to mourning, but how hateful it is, and how distressing!” Her sweetly weeping figure made a very touching sight.
The messenger had set out from the City at dusk, and he arrived some way into the evening. “How can you possibly go straight back?” they had him asked. “You must spend the night.” However, he insisted that he must return immediately; at which the elder, who certainly did not yet feel herself, still felt sorry enough for her sister to write,
“Mists of endless tears shut this mountain village in, and there at the fence
the stag comes to cry aloud in concert with our sorrow.”
It was on gray paper, and in the dark her writing was uncertain, but nothing required her to make it clean and neat. She let her brush move as it would, then wrapped the letter and sent it out.
The messenger was alarmed by the prospect of passing Kohata in the rain,21 but His Highness had chosen no coward, and the man urged his horse so swiftly along narrow trails overgrown by dwarf bamboo that he arrived in no time at all. He appeared before his lord so soaking wet that His Highness gave him a reward. The letter was in a hand that His Highness had not seen before, one that suggested a somewhat greater maturity and distinction. Unable to put it down, he gazed at it, wondering which sister was which, and did not go to bed for some time. “He stayed up waiting and waiting, and now look at how long he has been staring at it!” his gentlewomen grumbled in whispers to each other. “Whatever it is must mean a lot to him!” They were probably complaining because they were sleepy.
/> He rose early the next morning while the mists were still thick to write his reply:
“Shall these ears then hear without heartfelt sympathy the stag's doleful cry
for a companion vanished into the mists of morning?22
‘In concert,’ you say—but I, too, and just as loudly!”
There will be trouble if I show him too great a warmth, she said to herself. We always managed well enough when we were safe beneath Father's shelter, but now that we unwillingly survive him, the slightest misstep, however little intended, could easily injure the spirit of a father whose only concern was to avoid precisely that. A comprehensive wariness and fear discouraged her from replying. It is not that she dismissed the Prince or thought him dull, for his slightest word or stroke of the brush testified to his wit and grace, and while she had not read many such letters, it struck her that this one was very pleasing; all the same, though, it would not do for either of them to enter into any such elegantly suggestive exchange. No, she decided, I shall simply continue on as the rustic I am.
The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji) Page 109
