She answered the Counselor, though, because he addressed her so soberly that she gave him back not-unfriendly replies. Once the mourning was over, he came himself. He approached the east aisle, where the sisters in their subdued dress occupied a lowered section,23 and called out the old woman.24 To those lost in the darkness of grief the fragrance that filled all the air around him was too much to bear, and neither could manage a reply.
“Such a conversation can be worthwhile only if you will be good enough to leave off treating me this way and assent to the wishes expressed by His Late Highness,” he said. “I am not accustomed to putting on airs and graces, and it is impossible to talk sensibly through someone else.”
“Alas,” the elder replied, “we may appear to live on, and yet, wandering as we do through a dream from which there is no waking, we shrink from allowing ourselves to look upon the light of day. I cannot approach the veranda.”
“I can only commend the depth of your boundless devotion, while as to the sun and moon, I agree that it might indeed be wrong of you to go forth blithely beneath their light; but I nonetheless find myself at a loss what to do. I long, you see, to relieve for a moment the sorrows that weigh upon you.”
“It really is awfully good of him, my lady, to wish to console you in the midst of your unspeakable misfortune,” her women assured her.
She herself, despite everything, slowly recovered her calm, and since her mind was perfectly clear, she must have understood the feelings that had brought him so far across moor and meadow, if only to honor the past. She slipped forward a little toward him. He spoke at length of their loss and of his promises to their father, and nothing about his presence repelled her, since his manner did not at all suggest a man's peremptory ways; yet it was painful, too, to allow someone wholly other to hear her and to reflect that these last days she had had no choice but to lean on him, and she kept her reserve. Her faint answers, each hardly more than a word, conveyed her sadness, and he felt extremely sorry. It was a thoroughly pathetic figure that he glimpsed through her gray curtains, and to imagine her more clearly he thought back to what he had once dimly seen in the dawn. As though to himself he said,
“I need only see the changed color of the reeds to know all too well
the sad color of your sleeves, deeply dyed in mourning gray.”25
She replied,
“Sleeves so changed in hue give a capacious welcome to abundant dews,
yet I myself, as I am, have no refuge in the world.
On the tangled threads…”26 But her voice broke, and she retired within, plainly overcome.
He could hardly detain her at such a moment, and he was therefore both moved and sorry. The old woman came forward assertively in her stead and told him a series of poignant stories about the old days and the recent past. She had witnessed many extraordinary things, and he could not simply dismiss her as ancient and unsightly; instead he engaged her in intent conversation.
“His Grace passed away when I was young,” he said, “and it was then that I understood life to be suffering; so that when in time I became a man, the rank and office prized by the world held no attraction for me. Now that I have seen His Highness go, too, when he was pleased enough just to live here in peace, I am more alive than ever to the truth that the world is dross; but while it might seem forward of me to describe those who sadly survive him as ties capable of detaining me, I am resolved for as long as I live to uphold the promise I made him and to remain in close touch. Even so, though, your astonishing story has made me want still less to leave my mark on the world.” He was in tears, and she was weeping too much to be able to answer. He so resembled him in manner that the quality of his presence, which she had long forgotten, now came back to her vividly and deprived her of speech.
She was a daughter of the Intendant's nurse. Her father, a Left Controller when he died, was the son of a maternal uncle of their mistresses' mother. After years of wandering distant provinces she had lost touch with the Grand Counselor's house once this lady died, and she had been taken in by His Highness. Although of no remarkable distinction in her own person and quite accustomed to such service, she understood things well enough that His Highness himself recognized her merit and put her in charge of his daughters. Concerning that incident long ago, she had kept the secret and breathed no word of it even to the young ladies with whom she had lived day and night for years, and from whom she kept nothing. The Counselor, however, assumed that since old women are always such gossips, she must at least have told the tale to her bashful mistresses, even if she had not simply blurted it out to everyone, and this was no doubt so galling and embarrassing that he considered it reason enough to make sure that neither sister went to anyone else.
He prepared to start back, since it no longer seemed right to spend the night. Why, when His Highness had said that this might be the last time, had he blithely believed there was really no reason to worry and so in the end never seen him again? Just this autumn it had been, not that many days earlier, and now His Highness was gone, he knew not where. Oh, the pity of it! His Highness had lived so simply, with none of the amenities most took for granted, but his residence nonetheless was always clean, swept, and perfectly kept. Now those going in and out were holy monks, and while in His Highness's part of the house, divided off from that of his daughters, the implements for his devotions remained as they had always been, the monks had informed his daughters that they would move all the images on the altar to their temple. At this news the Counselor well understood how the sisters would feel once they alone remained behind and even the monks were gone, and the thought was very painful indeed. “The sun set long ago!” his men warned him, and so he collected himself and set out. Just then a wild goose cried overhead.
“Geese passing aloft where unbroken autumn mists cover the heavens
bring it back to me again, that in this world nothing lasts.”27
The sisters were the first subject he mentioned when he met His Highness of War. Gathering that things would be easier now, His Highness wrote to them often. They shrank from giving such a correspondent the slightest reply. He was well known to be a gallant, and despite his apparently languishing thoughts about them, they knew with gloomy certainty that any letter from their remote and weedy fastness would look to him clumsy and out of date.
“Ah, how cruelly the months and days pass by!” they said to each other. “I never imagined that his life, fragile as it naturally was, might end yesterday or today, and while all I ever heard reminded me that nothing endures, I took it for granted that little time would separate his passing from mine. Looking back on the past now, I see how misplaced that trust was, yet I simply lived on vacantly from day to day, without fear or apprehension; whereas now a gust of wind, the sight of unknown visitors, or the sound of people clearing their throats sets my heart pounding and indeed fills me with helpless terror. Oh, it is too much to bear!” Their sleeves were never, never dry. Meanwhile the year drew to a close.
In the season of snow and hail, the sound of the wind, which blows just as mournfully everywhere, made them feel nonetheless as though they had only just withdrawn from the world into these hills. “Ah, the New Year is coming!” their women would sometimes exclaim bravely. “This one has been so lonely and sad. I can hardly wait for spring to make everything new!” They themselves, however, expected nothing of the kind. It was only because their father had gone into retreat from time to time on the mountain nearby that there had been any comings or goings at all from the house, apart from the Adept's occasional visits to inquire after His Highness's health; but what could bring anyone there now? This saddened them very much, even though they quite understood that visitors should be fewer than ever. It was a rare occasion for them, now that their father was gone, when a mountain rustic once beneath their notice arrived to look in on them. The people from the hills sometimes brought them nuts and firewood, the season being what it was, and the Adept sent them charcoal and so on. “I would be very sorry in
deed to give up serving His Highness in this manner, after having become accustomed to doing so over the years,” he wrote. They remembered how their father had always sent padded garments to the temple, to help those on retreat there ward off the mountain wind, and they therefore did so now; and with tears in their eyes they came forth to watch the priests and acolytes carry them away up the slope, in and out of view, through the deep snow.
“Even if Father had taken the tonsure, there would still have been lots of people calling here like that as long as he was alive,” they assured each other. “We might have been sad and lonely, but we would certainly have continued to see him.” The elder asked,
“Now that he is gone and no one treads anymore the rough hillside path,
what is it that your eyes see in the snow upon the pines?”
And the younger replied,
“How glad I would be to know at least that the snow on those mountain pines
is none other than the man whose loss leaves us desolate.
I envy the way new snow keeps falling!”
The Counselor now arrived, knowing that he would have no time to do so once the New Year came. The sisters fully understood what it meant for him to come casually calling then, incomparable as always, when the humblest gentlemen would no longer venture out into such snow, and they had a seat prepared for him with more than their usual care. The women found and dusted off a brazier that was not mourning gray, and they, too, recalled the pleasure with which His Highness had looked forward to these visits. The elder still hesitated to receive him, but she yielded to necessity, since she did not wish him to think her unkind. She did not drop her reserve, but she gave him somewhat fuller answers than before, conveying as she did so an imposing elegance. No, he thought, we cannot go on like this forever—but look what my mind is suddenly up to! How easily this sort of thing can change it!
“His Highness of War is extraordinarily annoyed with me,” he said. “I must once have happened to mention to him those most moving words that your late father left me, or perhaps his searching insight has guessed them, for he constantly complains that whereas he trusts me to speak to you for him, your cool response suggests that I do it very poorly. To my mind this is quite unfair, but I cannot very well just refuse to serve as his ‘village guide,’28 and I wonder why you must treat him this way. People seem often to talk about what a rake he is, but he really has remarkable depth of heart. I hear also that he is inclined to think little of anyone he gathers might give herself too easily. The yielding woman, quiet and unassuming, who sensibly winks at one thing and another and resigns herself if she feels a little hurt, is the one who actually inspires truly lasting devotion. Once a couple's mutual loyalty begins to crumble, mud soils the clear waters of her Tatsuta River,29 and all that she shared with him is lost. It happens all too often. His Highness is a man of deep feeling, you know, one who would never lightly waver in his devotion to someone who responded in kind and who seldom appeared to oppose his wishes. I am sufficiently close to him to know him as others do not, and if the idea strikes you as worth pursuing, I will do everything in my power to bring it to fruition. I shall wear myself out dashing back and forth!”
She did not see how so long and grave a speech could possibly refer to herself, and she considered replying as a mother might. However, no words came. “What can I say?” she answered. “So suggestive an appeal from you only leaves me at a loss how to respond.” Her light laugh sounded at once artless and delightful.
“I do not mean you to take what I say as being addressed necessarily only to yourself. I would be grateful if you would accept the goodwill that has brought me here through the snow in the spirit of an elder sister. It is someone else, I believe, who has particularly aroused His Highness's interest. He seems to have intimated as much to her, although unfortunately an outsider cannot easily judge these things. May I ask which one of you answered him?”
What a blessing that I never did, not even in a light moment! she said to herself. Not that it makes that much difference, but I would be mortified if he had said things like that! Not knowing what to say, she wrote,
“No brush but your own has marked the steep mountain trails buried deep in snow
with footprints, while back and forth letters go across the hills,”30
and slipped the note out to him.
“Your denial might only raise further doubts,” he said and replied,
“Then let it be I who first ride across these hills, though on his mission,
where ice under my horse's hooves crackles along frozen streams.
Then mine will be no shallow reward for the reflection in the water.”31
This unexpected turn to the conversation upset her, and she left the matter unanswered. Although she did not appear strikingly inaccessible or reserved, she affected none of the airs and graces so favored by modern young women, and what he gathered of her presence left an impression of admirably quiet poise. It seemed to him that she was indeed exactly what he wanted in a woman. She met his every hint with such well-feigned incomprehension that he turned in embarrassment to talking gravely of the past.
Bushy beard
His men cleared their throats and warned, “The snow will only be worse after sunset, my lord!” He therefore made ready to go back. “What I see of your house around me is distressing,” he said. “How happy I would be if you were inclined to favor another place I know, as quiet as any mountain village and just as deserted!”32
“What a lovely idea!” some of the women remarked, smiling, as they listened with half an ear; but the thought horrified their younger mistress nearby, and she resolved that such a thing should never be.
At the sisters' request their visitor was offered fruit and nuts, and his men, too, were served wine accompanied by handsomely arranged refreshments. There was the watchman with the unpleasantly bushy beard, whom a certain gentleman's scent had rendered notorious. The Counselor, who thought him a thoroughly dubious character, summoned him nonetheless. “How are you?” he asked. “You must miss His Highness now that he is gone.”
The man's face puckered up, and he shed feeble tears. “My lord, I who have nowhere else in all the world to go spent more than thirty years here, under His Highness's protection, and now that he has left me to wander moor and mountain, I can only wonder what tree will ever give me shelter again.”33 He made a more and more painful impression.
The Counselor had the rooms once occupied by His Highness opened for him. Dust lay thick everywhere; only the altar was adorned as before, and the low dais on which His Highness must have performed his devotions was swept clean. Remembering what he had promised to do once he had acted on his desire,34 he murmured,
“The oak tree I sought to give me happy refuge under spreading shade
is no more, and where he lived emptiness and silence reign.”35
He was leaning against a pillar, and the young women peeping in at him praised him to the skies.
By now the sun had set. He did not know that the stewards of his nearby estates had been summoned to bring fodder for the horses, and he was therefore unpleasantly surprised and embarrassed when a horde of rustic people noisily burst in on the place, but he disguised his presence there as having been intended as a visit to the old woman. Before he left, he ordered them to continue making themselves similarly useful.
The weather turned mild in the New Year, and the wondering sisters watched the ice melt from the edge of the river. “These were picked in patches free of snow,” said a message from the temple, accompanied by bracken shoots and also parsley from the low places. The women served them on stands for fasting fare, remarking to each other as they did so, “How pleasant it is in a place like this to follow the passage of the months and days in the plants and trees!” The sisters could not imagine what they meant.
“If only I saw the bracken shoots he brought down from the upper slopes,
then I, too, might know that spring really has come round again,”
“For whose pleasure now shall I gather by the river, from banks deep in snow,
the first parsley shoots of spring, now that our father is gone?”
So it was that they passed their days and nights, exchanging trifles like these.
There were constant messages from both the Counselor and His Highness of War. So little of what they said was worth retaining that it seems as usual not to have been passed on.
At the height of the cherry blossoms His Highness remembered that exchange about them, and all the young gentlemen who had been with him then expressed their regrets. “What a pity that we shall never again see the residence of so noble a Prince!” they said, and His Highness felt a keen wish to go back there.
“Those cherry blossoms I once spied, passing your home, now at last this spring
will be mine to pluck and wear; no mist will hide them from me,”
he wrote, with complete abandon.
They found the sentiment unacceptable, but the days were passing very slowly for them then, and it was such a pretty letter that they did not wish to ignore it completely. The younger replied,
“Where, then, will you go to pluck and claim such flowers, when it is in gray
that mist swathes every blossom on the trees around my home?”
His Highness was profoundly annoyed to note that she still refused to encourage him in any way.
The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji) Page 110
