“Well, I wish she'd give him his way,” said a last sleepy voice, “and be what we hope she'll be!” Distressing snores came from here and there.
This was no autumn night for “the one you spend it with” to shorten,25 but he felt even so that dawn came all too soon, and it occurred quite naturally to him that he was very sorry to leave her, for both were equally lovely. “Love me, too!” he said. “Please do not pattern yourself on someone else, who is very cruel!” He promised that they would meet once more. Despite himself he felt as though it had been strangely like a dream, but he was reassuring himself when he left to lie down, as he had done before, that another time he would try again with the one who spurned him.
Ben came in, saying, “This is so strange! Where can my young mistress be?” And there she was, lying there, baffled and mortified, wondering what it could all possibly mean. She was angry with her sister, remembering what she had said the previous day.
Only the coming light of day brought the cricket out from the wall.26 She could hardly bear to imagine how her younger sister was feeling, and they said not a word to each other. This is dreadful: now we have both lost our mystery! she lamented. After this we can never relax our vigilance for a moment!
Ben went to their visitor, from whom she learned all about Her Highness's extraordinary obduracy. The account left her seated before him dumbfounded and filled with pity, for she felt that this was simply too much and deserved no sympathy. “Until now I had felt that there might still be some remedy for her harshness,” he said bitterly, “and I did what I could to reassure her, but last night was thoroughly humiliating, and I wish I could die. All that dissuades me from doing so is the thought of how reluctant His Highness himself was to abandon them, loving them as dearly as he did. I shall not approach either of them, ever again, with courtship in mind. No, I shall not forget the anger and bitterness they have caused me. I gather that His Highness of War is unashamedly pursuing the younger, and I suppose she feels that she might as well reach as high as she can. That much I understand, and to my shame I can so little blame her that I would much rather never come here again for you all to see. At any rate, please say nothing to anyone about what a fool I am.” He left much sooner than usual.
“This is a disaster for them both,” the women whispered to one another.
Where will this lead? the elder wondered, despairing that he might now turn against them, and she condemned her women's hopelessly muddled officiousness. She was pondering these things when a letter came, and to her own surprise she was more pleased than usual to receive it. As though disdaining to notice the colors of autumn, he had tied it to a green bough of which just one twig sported deep red leaves.
“Goddess of the hills, who dyed one and the same branch in two different ways,
I would gladly ask of you: which has the deeper color?”27
Her heart beat when she understood that he had said little of his great indignation, concealing it28 so well that he seemed to wish to let the matter pass. Her women loudly insisted that she must answer it, and she knew that it would be quite wrong of her to leave the task to her sister, but she still found the reply a painful challenge to compose.29
“What the goddess means by the way she dyes the hills I could never guess.
but it seems to me perhaps the true color is the new.”30
She dashed it off rapidly, and he found it sufficiently handsome to doubt that he could remain angry with her forever.
This is not the first time I have gathered that she wants me to have herself in her sister, he reflected, and she must have planned this when I thwarted her by not acquiescing. I suppose that if her effort fails, my indifference will make her pity her sister, she will hate me for being cruel, and I will be less likely than ever to get what I have always actually wanted. That old woman who passes our messages back and forth must think me a bit frivolous, too. All in all, I wish I had never fallen in love with her—everyone will see far too clearly how I, who so longed to renounce the world, could not in the end bring it off, and I will resemble the little boat people laugh at so—the one that, like any common gallant, keeps rowing back and back to the same woman.”31 Such thoughts as these occupied him all night, and the sky was still lovely with dawn when he set off to call on His Highness of War.
He had not far to go, since to His Highness's great pleasure he had moved to Rokujō after his mother's Sanjō residence burned. His Highness, wholly at leisure, occupied an exquisite house where the near garden resembled no other, where the shapes even of familiar flowers or the swaying of trees and grasses seemed unique, and where the very moon, clean and bright in the garden brook, would have done for a painting. He was still up, as the Counselor assumed he would be. His Highness suddenly noted that unmistakable scent on the breeze, hastily donned a dress cloak, and came forward perfectly arrayed. The Counselor knelt halfway up the steps, and His Highness did not even invite him to come higher; he simply sat leaning against the railing while they chatted of this and that. Something recalled that place to His Highness, who then, to his visitor's consternation, proceeded to voice a bitter complaint. But even I am getting nowhere! the Counselor thought to himself. Nonetheless, he had reason to wish His Highness success, and he told him more carefully than usual what dispositions would be required.
Alas, fog arose as dawn came on, a chill spread across the sky, and, under a veiled moon, darkness lingered provocatively beneath the trees. “We must go there soon,” His Highness said, perhaps recalling the mountain village's melancholy charm; “I want you to take me with you.” And when his friend seemed to demur, he added lightly,
“When maidenflowers bloom on so broad a meadow, why need you keep watch
and stretch a rope around them to claim they are all your own?”
“These maidenflowers abloom among all the dews of the morning fields:
they are only for the eyes of the one whose heart is theirs—
not just anyone's, you know!” his visitor replied provokingly.
“Come, that is enough out of you!” His Highness exclaimed, properly annoyed at last.
His Highness had long been talking this way, but it had worried the Counselor that the looks of the lady in question might not please him. Now, however, he could hardly imagine his friend despising her beauty, and while he had always preferred caution, lest her wit not be found to improve on closer acquaintance, he now knew that there was no need for concern on that score either. He therefore decided silently that although it might be unkind of him to thwart what the elder herself was secretly plotting, he simply could not shift his affections that way from one to the other; no, he would cede the younger to His Highness, which would spare him the censure of both.32 His friend did not know this, however, and it amused the Counselor to be accused of wanting to keep the sisters for himself. “I should hate to see the habitual lightness of your ways cause her any distress,” he retorted in an avuncular tone.
“Very well, you will see. I have never been so keen on anyone in my life,” His Highness replied gravely.
“I see no indication that either has any thought of satisfying you. You have set me a very difficult task.” He described to His Highness exactly what he was to do when they were there.
The twenty-eighth, the last day of the equinox, was a lucky one, and with invisible precautions the Counselor took His Highness on a clandestine visit to Uji. He went to extraordinary lengths to make it appear that nothing in particular was afoot, for His Highness had his heart set on going, and it would be a catastrophe if Her Majesty were to learn of the expedition, since she was then certain to put a stop to it. They sought no imposing lodging33 because the boat crossing was too risky; instead the Counselor secretly left His Highness on an estate he owned nearby, at the house of his man there, and he went ahead by himself. No one was likely to notice His Highness in any case, but the Counselor presumably wished to avoid any possibility of detection even by the occasional watchman who might look round the house. He was gre
eted as always by cries of “Here is his lordship!” The sisters heard the news with little pleasure; but, the elder reflected, she had at least given him to understand that he must now aspire elsewhere, while the younger resigned herself to his presence in the knowledge that she could hardly be the one he had in mind. Still, that dreadful experience had left her angry with her sister, and she no longer thought of her as she had before. When her elder sister had something to say to the Counselor or a reply to receive, she insisted on having the message passed by one of the women, who wondered unhappily where it would all end.
The Counselor had His Highness ride to the house under cover of darkness and then summoned Ben. “There is just a word I would like to have with Her Highness,” he explained. “I am still extremely ashamed because she seemed not to want anything to do with me, but I simply must speak to her. Will you please take me to her as you did before, a little later on?” His speech was all innocence. One or another, then, thought Ben—it is all the same! She went to her mistress.
There! Her Highness said to herself when she heard the old woman. His affections have shifted! Pleased and reassured, she received him after firmly locking all the sliding panels onto the aisle except the one through which he would enter.
“I have something to tell you, and I would much rather not need to talk so loudly that others may hear me!” he began. “Please open the panel a little! I feel so awkward.”
“I am certain that I shall hear you quite well,” she replied, leaving it shut. I suppose he feels that he must at least acknowledge me, she mused, now that his feelings really are moving to her. Besides, it is not as though I have never met him before, or that I mean unkindly to let the night pass while he waits for my replies. She had come so far forward that he seized her sleeve through a crack between the panels and tugged at it, filling her ears with bitter reproaches. Oh, no! What can have induced me to listen to him? Bewildered and sorry, she nonetheless persisted gallantly in trying to bring him round to seeing her sister as herself and to get him to go to her.
Meanwhile His Highness of War, as instructed, went to the door the Counselor had passed through that other night and rustled his fan. Ben came and ushered him in, and he smiled to think that she had done the same more than once before.34 The elder Princess, still intent on redirecting her visitor, knew nothing of his coming; and the Counselor, touched and amused, saw that he would have no defense if she ever blamed him for having failed to give her any hint of the plot. “His Highness of War insisted on coming with me, and I could not refuse,” he therefore confessed. “He is here now, and he has got in without a sound. I imagine he has persuaded that officious old woman to help him. He has left me looking like a bumbling fool!”
Her Highness was speechless. “Well,” she said, “not for a moment did I ever expect anything so utterly extraordinary from you, and you are now free to despise me for a lapse that has betrayed the full extent of my deplorable innocence.”
“Alas, it is too late now. Pinch and scratch me if you like, if my repeated apologies will not suffice. It appears that you aspired higher than me, and yet the destiny ordained by karma never seems to match one's desires, and he turned out to have someone else in mind, for which you have my sympathy, although I am the one worse caught out and more bitterly disappointed. You might as well resign yourself to what must be. No one will really believe that you and I are immaculate, however admirably this panel may protect you. Do you suppose the gentleman who asked me to bring him here imagines the two of us spending the whole night like this, with nothing but anguish in our hearts?”
She strove to calm him, despite her inexpressible outrage, because he seemed ready at any moment to break the panel down. “The destiny you are pleased to mention is something no one can see, and I have no idea what it might be; I only feel tears of ignorance of what lies ahead35 envelop me like a mist. The thought of what you may do next disturbs me like a bad dream, and if in times yet to come people still talk about all this, I do not doubt they will cite the story as a model of how ridiculous someone can be. What do you suppose His Highness will make of all your scheming? Please, do not add more miseries to the ones you have already heaped upon me. If I survive this, as I hope I shall not, I may perhaps speak to you again after recovering some semblance of calm. I feel a darkness coming over me, and a great weakness, and I must rest. Let go of me.”
Her distress was so acute that he felt both shamed and charmed when he recognized despite himself the justice of her complaint. “Oh, my darling, respecting your wishes as no one else would have done is precisely what has made such a fool of me!” he said. “I have no reply, since you seem to find me unspeakably hateful and offensive. I know quite clearly now that the world will soon see no more of me.” And he continued, “Very well, I shall address you this way, from a distance. I beg you not to leave me!” He let go of her sleeve, and she slipped toward the inner room—and yet, he was deeply moved to find, not all the way. “Until day dawns, I shall take comfort from having you just that near,” he assured her. “I will do nothing more, I promise!” Sleep would not come, and he listened wide-eyed while the river roared ever louder. Midnight gales left him feeling like a solitary pheasant36 while the night dragged on.
Dawn came, and with it as always the sound of temple bells. His Highness seemed to be sleeping on and on, since there was no sign of him, and the annoyed Counselor cleared his throat. Yes, it was very strange.
“I who brought him here, am I now to be the one who must lose his way
in the dim twilight of dawn, on a road that I would shun?37
Has the like ever been seen before?”
In a low voice she replied,
“Give a thought to one whose heart so burdened with care is all in darkness,
on the road you must wander through no one's fault but your own.”
He just could not bear it. “Must you do this to me?” he complained bitterly. “You keep yourself so impossibly removed—it is too much, it really is!” Meanwhile day was slowly coming on, and they heard His Highness leave as he had entered the evening before. His soft, stealthy movements diffused the perfume that he had so beautifully burned, with fond anticipation, into his clothes. The astonished old women were all confused, for they could not make out how this could have happened, but they felt comforted to reflect that his lordship could never have meant any harm.
Both hastened back to the City while it was still dark. The return journey seemed very long indeed, especially to His Highness, who had lamented from the start that he could by no means go there whenever he wished, and who seemed to suffer from the thought of missing a single night.38 They arrived in the early morning, before people were up and about. His Highness had the carriage drawn up to the gallery39 before alighting. Both young gentlemen laughed to think how they had stolen in so strangely, in what looked like a woman's carriage.40 “I gather you are keen to be assiduous in your attentions,” the Counselor remarked. He said nothing of his own mishap, since he still rued the foolish part the guide had played. His Highness hastened to dispatch his letter.
The sisters yonder in the mountain village were so upset that they could hardly believe it had really happened. The younger now detested the elder—Why, she never gave me the slightest hint of what she was planning!—and would not even look her in the eye. The elder, who could not convince her that she had known nothing at all, sympathized with her completely. What can possibly have happened? the women wondered. They kept watching their mistresses for clues, but the one they looked to most was as though dazed, and they remained none the wiser.
The elder opened His Highness's letter and showed it to her sister, but she refused to get up at all. It seemed to the unfortunate messenger that it was taking a very long time indeed.
“Do I love you, then, only as might anyone? See how through thick dew
I came so far to find you, over wastes of sasa41 moors!”
His elegantly practiced hand had a marked allure that, all things being equ
al, Her Highness had once found quite pleasing, but now it upset and worried her, and she shrank from taking it upon herself to compose the reply. Instead she told her sister gravely what to write and sternly made sure that she actually did so. She presented the messenger with an aster layered long dress and triple-layered trousers,42 and since the gift seemed to embarrass him, she had it wrapped and then borne by one of the others with him.43 There was nothing imposing about him, he was simply the privy page His Highness usually sent. His Highness, who wished to avoid betraying his secret to anyone, heard of the messenger's reward with annoyance and assumed it had to do with that officious old woman of the evening before.
His Highness wanted his guide with him that evening, too, but the Counselor declined. “His Eminence Reizei has summoned me to wait upon him,” he explained, and stayed behind. His Highness was put out. There he goes again, he thought, treating this world as though it hardly mattered!
There is no help for it: this is not what we wanted, but that does not authorize us to ignore him, Her Highness assured herself in resignation. Their house was not one that lent itself to being decorated, but she did what she could to make it pretty in anticipation of his arrival. He had a long way to come, and she was startled to find herself pleased that he should be in such haste.
The younger Princess, the one affected, was in no condition to do more than allow herself to be dressed, and the sleeves of her deep pink robe were soaked with tears, until even her older and wiser sister began to weep. “I doubt that I will be with you much longer,” she said, “and while my whole concern is for you, day and night, these women keep dinning it into my ears that your new state will turn out for the best; and I expect they are right after all, since no doubt they have lived long enough to know what is what. Even I, who have so little sense, never imagined that I could insist on your always remaining the same, but it certainly did not occur to me that you might suffer at any moment, as now, so disturbing a shock. I suppose that this must be what they like to call destiny. It is so hard, you know. When you are feeling a little better, I will make you understand that I knew nothing about it. Please, please, do not hate me! It would be bad karma for you!” She was stroking and combing her sister's hair. Her sister, who did not reply, reflected nonetheless that what she had heard suggested only a wish to spare her distress and harm. Alas, she thought, the ridicule and contempt I now face mean misery for her, and all the while I have her looking after me!
The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji) Page 113
