“My lady of Hitachi is going home,” came the report from the Hitachi party.
“My lady?” The young men in His Highness's escort all burst into laughter. The Governor's wife sadly recognized that it was rather an overstatement. She dearly wished to be as good as anyone else, though, for her daughter's sake, and of course by now the thought of her daughter lowering herself to a level as common as her own simply horrified her.
His Highness came in. “Are you receiving visits from someone associated with Hitachi?” he asked, still suspicious. “There seems to be something going on, with that carriage and all its attendants hurrying away like that in this beautiful dawn.”
This offended his wife, who objected. “It was a friend of Taifu's, from when Taifu was a girl,” she said. “There seemed to be nothing very interesting about her, but she talked as though she had something particular in mind. You are always insinuating that this or that will start unpleasant gossip. Please do not accuse me falsely.”22 The way she turned away from him was perfectly delightful.
He slept on, oblivious of the dawn,23 until people began gathering to wait upon him, and he went over to the main house. There he found the sons of His Excellency of the Right merrily playing Go or guessing rhymes. Her Majesty was not seriously ill, and she was feeling better.
When he returned late in the day, his wife was having her hair washed, and her women were all resting. There was practically no one with her. He sent her a little page girl with the remark, “You picked a fine time to wash your hair! Am I simply to languish here all by myself?”
“It is true, my lady usually does it while he is away,” Taifu replied. “For some reason, though, she has not felt like it lately, and I advised her that if she did not do it today, there would be no more days this month, and the ninth and tenth months are out of the question.”24 She felt very unhappy about it.
The little boy was in bed, and the women were all with him. His Highness went wandering aimlessly about until, toward the west,25 he glimpsed a page girl he did not know. She must be new, he thought, peering in at her. Between the sliding panels there was a narrow gap through which, a foot or so away, he saw a screen. At one end, against the blinds, stood a curtain with a single width of its material up over the crosspiece, and through this opening there spilled sleeves in bright aster and maidenflower layerings. The single folded-back panel of the screen thus offered a surprising view. For a newly arrived gentlewoman she looked thoroughly respectable.
He quietly opened the panel into the aisle and stole closer, but she did not hear him. She was leaning on an armrest near the veranda, gazing out at the lovely little garden before her, enclosed by the gallery, with its profusion of flowers in many colors and its tall rocks all along the brook. Then he slid the panel open a little wider and peered at her round the end of the screen, but it never occurred to her that it might be His Highness; she assumed that it must be someone else26 who often came that way. When she sat up, she made a picture so lovely that his usual proclivity kept him from allowing the moment to pass. He caught her skirts, slid the panel shut, and sat down in the space between two screens. In surprise she glanced back at him entrancingly from behind her fan.
He took the hand that held the fan. “Who are you? I long to know your name!” Now she was frightened. Preferring to be thoroughly cautious, he turned his face away from her to hide it behind a screen, and she wondered whether he was that Commander who had apparently expressed such an interest in her—his perfume suggested that he might be. Embarrassment overcame her.
This unexpected presence aroused her nurse's suspicion, and she opened a screen on the far side of the room and came in. “What is this?” she demanded to know. “These are strange goings-on!” However, it would have taken more than that to put him off. All this was no more than a whim, but his innate ease of speech gave him such eloquence that the sun soon set while he still insisted, “I shall not let you go till you tell me who you are!” and lay down quite naturally beside her. It was His Highness! Her nurse, speechless with horror, grasped that at last.
Lanterns were lit, and voices announced her ladyship's return. There were sounds of shutters being lowered everywhere but in her room. The visitor's, a space used for other purposes, was abandoned to considerable disorder, containing as it did a pair of tall cabinets with shelves and a scattering of screens stored in bags. One sliding panel's width had been cleared as a passageway when it turned out that someone would be staying there, and through this opening now came Ukon, Taifu's daughter, who also served in the house, to lower the shutters there as well. “It is so dark!” she exclaimed. “Why, the lamps are not yet lit! Dear me, your women were in such a hurry to get the shutters down—I know they are hard to manage—that now one cannot see a thing!” She raised one again, somewhat to His Highness's embarrassment.
That was too much for the nurse, an impatient and assertive woman. “I beg your pardon!” she said. “Something outrageous is going on here, and I am all worn out with keeping my eye on things. I simply cannot move.”
“What is it?” Ukon felt around until she touched a man without a dress cloak but deliciously perfumed lying next to a woman, and she understood that His Highness was back to his bad old habits. She took it for granted that the woman herself had nothing to do with it. “Oh. This is unfortunate, isn't it. What am I going to say to my lady? I suppose I must go straight to her and tell her privately all about it!” She started off.
Their shock and consternation left His Highness unfazed. What extraordinary distinction she has! But who is she? He was baffled. She can hardly be just any new gentlewoman, the way Ukon was talking. He reproached her in all sorts of ways. Nothing in her manner betrayed her revulsion; she simply seemed almost to be expiring, which made him so sorry for her that he kindly did his best to make her feel better.
Ukon reported to her mistress what His Highness was up to. “The poor dear!” she said. “She must be feeling awful!”
“Oh, no, there he goes again! Her mother will think the worst of me for having failed so dismally to look out for her daughter. She told me again and again that she knew she need not worry.” What can I say to him, though? she wondered to herself in dismay. He misses not a single woman in service here, as long as she has any youth or looks at all—he is just like that, unfortunately. How did he manage to come across her? The shock was too great. She had no words at all.
“His Highness amuses himself with the senior nobles on days when a lot of them come calling, and normally he gets back here quite late, so you see, all the women were resting,” Ukon explained unhappily to Shōshō.27 “What can you do, though? That nurse is a bold one! She stayed right with her—I thought she was going to drag him away from her!”
Just then a messenger came from the palace to announce that Her Majesty, who had begun feeling unwell at dusk, was now extremely ill. “She could have picked a better moment!” Ukon whispered. “I must tell him.” She moved to go.
“Now, now,” Shōshō answered, “don't reprimand him too severely—I imagine it's too late by now, and you would only waste your breath.”
“Oh, no, I'm sure she's still all right.”
Look at what horrid talk this quirk of his can start! their mistress said to herself. Anyone with any sense would despise me for it, too!
Ukon went to His Highness and conveyed the message to him somewhat more urgently than she had received it. “Who brought it?” he asked in a tone that suggested no intention of moving. “You are just trying to alarm me.”
“A retainer of Her Majesty's, Your Highness. He said his name is Taira no Shigetsune.”
He would have to go, like it or not, and since he cared nothing about being seen, Ukon went and got the messenger to come around to the west side so that he could question him further. The retainer28 who had first passed the message in came round as well. “Prince Nakatsukasa29 is with Her Majesty now,” he reported, “and the Commissioner has just gone. I saw his carriage setting out on the way here.”
True enough, His Highness reflected, she does have these sudden attacks sometimes. Suddenly embarrassed to imagine what other people might think of him, he left amid a flurry of reproaches and promises to return.
The visitor lay bathed in perspiration, feeling as though she had just awakened from a terrifying dream. Her nurse fanned her. “You cannot stay here,” she said; “it is too risky and too confining. Nothing good can happen now that he has come after you this way. The prospect is too frightening! I am sure that he is a very great lord, but such behavior is not acceptable. Someone unconnected with you could think whatever he liked, for good or ill, but I realized that the gossip could be devastating, and I glared at him like the Demon Queller.30 He thought I was some sort of frightening menial and pinched my hand hard—it really was very funny, as though he were making advances to the likes of me! At home today they had a big fight. He reprimanded her for paying no attention to anyone but you and forgetting all about his own children, and for being off somewhere just when a new bridegroom was coming to the house. It was a disgrace, he said. The whole staff heard it, and they all felt sorry for you. This Lieutenant of his is a loss, as far as I am concerned. If it were not for this marriage, they might have had their differences and disagreements sometimes, but they could have gone on perfectly well as they have always done so far.” She spoke in tears.
For the present her charge was in no condition to think about such things. She lay facedown, acutely mortified and weeping with despair not only at the strange experience she had just been through but at the thought of what His Highness's wife must think of her.
The sight alarmed her worried nurse. “But why are you so upset?” she asked. “A girl who has no mother, yes, she really is lost. It certainly does one no good in the wider world to have no father, but that is a lot easier to put up with than being hated by a spiteful stepmother. Your mother will do something for you. Please do not be so sad. The Kannon of Hatsuse is there, after all, and I am sure that he will take pity on you. You have made the pilgrimage over and over again by now, when you really are not used to such journeys, and I pray that you will have such fortune as to amaze everyone who has been looking down on you. Do you really think that you are going to have everyone laughing at you in the end?” Hers was an optimistic view of life.
Driving a horse
They heard His Highness hurrying away. He went out the gate on their side, presumably because it was closer to the palace, and his voice reached them. It had a superbly noble quality, but they found themselves wishing to stop their ears when he passed by humming some fine old poem. A ten-man escort went with him, mounted on horses from distant provinces.
The mistress of His Highness's wing at Nijō pitied her visitor and easily imagined how upset she must be, but she sent her a message as though she knew nothing about it. “Her Majesty is ill, and His Highness has gone to her,” she said. “He will not be back this evening. I am not feeling quite right—perhaps it was washing my hair—and I am still up. Do come and see me. You must be rather bored.”
“I am feeling very unwell just now. Perhaps later, when I feel better.” The nurse brought her the answer.
“What is the matter?” she immediately inquired.
“I do not know exactly. I just feel very ill.”
Ukon and Shōshō exchanged glances. “She must be feeling absolutely miserable.”
It was worse than if the young woman had been no concern of hers. The Commander is talking as though he had some interest in her, she reflected, but how shameless he will think her now! That man has no self-control whatever, and he loves to pour out false and offensive accusations, but he seems to take a wonderfully indulgent view of his own somewhat strange carryings-on. On the other hand, he, who is always so dauntingly judicious about declaring himself at all, seems now to be faced with yet another undeserved disappointment. I knew nothing about her for all those years, but she is so pretty and has so much character that I cannot abandon her now—she is too sweet and dear, and life is just too difficult and too full of trials. I know my own position leaves much to be desired as well, but although I might have had the same sort of trouble, I quite agree that I am indeed fortunate never to have fallen so far. I myself would have nothing to worry about if the Commander could only now safely give up his tiresome advances. Her abundant hair took a long time to dry, and she grew weary of having to stay up. In her plain white shift and gown31 she looked perfectly charming.
Her visitor really was not feeling well, but the nurse insisted on having her bestir herself. “This will not do! You must be sensible and go to see her, or she will think something actually happened. Let me tell Ukon and the others the whole story.”
She went to the sliding panel. “I should like to speak to Ukon,” she said. Ukon came. “There has been a most unpleasant incident here, and my mistress has a fever. The poor thing is seriously unwell. She says that she would be grateful for some words of comfort from Her Highness. She has done nothing wrong, but she still feels extremely bad. It would be one thing if she already knew a little of the world, but she does not, and I think that she is much to be pitied.” She got her mistress up and made her go.
Propelled by her nurse, she came to sit before Her Highness, hardly knowing where she was and ashamed of what everyone must be thinking of her, yet at the same time all too innocently docile. With her back to the lamp and hiding the soaking hair at her forehead, she had no less to commend her than did her half sister, whom the women thought peerless. In fact, she was quite lovely. Something dreadful will happen, Ukon and Shōshō realized, if he decides that he simply must have her. He is so quick to admire anyone new, even if she has nothing like these looks! They could see the young woman quite well, since in Her Highness's presence she could not always keep her face turned the other way.
Her Highness talked to her very kindly. “Please do not feel as though you are a stranger here,” she said. “I have so little forgotten my sister during all the time that has passed since she died that I wish I myself had never survived her; but it is a great comfort to see you, who look so like her. I have no one else who cares for me, you see, and I should be very happy if you were to think of me as fondly as she did.”
She was too overcome with shyness and too much from the country. The only reply she could manage was “All these years you seemed so far away, and seeing you now makes me feel much better.” Her voice was very youthful.
Her Highness had her women bring out pictures and looked at them while Ukon read the words. Her visitor could not remain shy forever, even when sitting straight across from her, and she gazed at them, too, her face flawlessly lovely in the lamplight. Her forehead and her eyes seemed fragrant with a sweet beauty, and her unaffected nobility of manner so precisely recalled the sister whom Her Highness had lost that Her Highness barely had eyes for the pictures at all. What a dear face! she thought. How can she possibly be so like her? She must take after our father. My sister took after our father and I after our mother, or so I gather the old women used to say. How extraordinary that someone else should so resemble her! Tears came to her eyes while she contemplated her visitor and recalled the image of those whom she had lost. She was sweetly pliant, too, despite her infinitely lofty distinction of manner; in fact, she was gentle and yielding to a fault. This young woman seems still to be shy and ill at ease about everything—perhaps that is why she seems on the whole to lack grace in comparison. With a little more polish she will not be at all unworthy of the Commander. She weighed the matter like an elder sister.
It was nearly dawn when they lay down to sleep after a long talk. Her Highness had her half sister lie next to her and touched a little on their father's life over the years. The young woman wished that she had known him and bitterly regretted never having seen him at all.
The women who knew about the evening before went on whispering commiseratingly about it. “I wonder what happened. She's awfully pretty. No good will come of this for her, no matter how fond of he
r Her Highness may be. The poor thing!”
“No, no, that cannot be right!” Ukon broke in. “Her nurse caught me and poured out the whole sad story, and, judging from what she said, nothing happened at all. His Highness went off humming and whistling in the mood of ‘together yet not together.’”32
“Oh, come. He probably did that on purpose. I just don't know.”
“She was quite cool and collected last night in the lamplight—she didn't look as though anything had happened.”
The nurse ordered a carriage and returned to the Hitachi residence, where she reported the incident to her charge's mother. The Governor's wife was devastated. People will make the worst of this, she said to herself, leaping to her own conclusions. And what can Her Highness be thinking? In a case like this, jealousy knows no rank.
She went there that same evening. Fortunately, His Highness was not at home. “I know that I brought you my impossibly childish daughter in the belief that she would be safe here, but I am afraid that I have a weasel-like turn of mind33—my household, such as it is, hates me for it.”
“She does not seem nearly as childish as you say.” Her Highness smiled. “What worries me, though, is that you should seem so anxious about her!” The superb look in her eyes pricked the woman's conscience. What is she thinking? she wondered. She could not broach what she really had to say.
“I take it as a great honor to have my daughter here with you,” she began; “I feel as though an old prayer of mine has been answered, and as far as others are concerned—those who may hear of it—it is all to her credit. Nonetheless, I can see that I should have refrained. I should have sent her off to the mountains, as I had first meant to do.” She was weeping piteously.
“Why need you worry so about her being here? I do not intend to reject her, whatever happens, and even if a certain gentleman misbehaves sometimes, everyone here knows about it and is on the lookout for it. I am sure that she will come to no harm. May I ask what it is that you fear?”
The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji) Page 128
