Vehemently expressed fears of defilement that might affect her pregnant daughter in the City had prevented the grieving mother from going home, and she had had to make do with temporary lodgings, where she worried about the fate of this child, too. However, the birth went smoothly after all. She could not go to her yet, though, because the threat of pollution remained, and she was lamenting her unhappy circumstances, oblivious to any thought of her other children, when a messenger quietly arrived from the Commander. She was deliriously pleased and touched.
“I had wished straightaway to convey to you my deep sympathy over the tragedy that has touched us both,” he had written, “but I myself was too distraught to do so, and I seemed to see only darkness before my eyes, even while I knew that you were lost in sorrow blacker still. And yet how quickly the days have passed! The fleeting character of life is more intolerable than ever, but having somehow managed to survive this long, I look forward to hearing from you at your convenience, in memory of her.”
It was a long letter, and his messenger was the Treasury Commissioner, who now added this spoken message from him: “While I patiently allowed the months to pass and the New Year to arrive, you yourself may have come to doubt the sincerity of my intentions. Please know, however, that after this I shall never forget you. You may be privately certain of that. Moreover, I gather that you have several other children, and you may count on my support when they come to serve His Majesty.”
“My contact with defilement was actually rather slight,” she said, since there was indeed no great need for caution, and she insisted on inviting the Commissioner in. Then in tears she wrote her reply.
“I have lamented ever since the tragedy that I am still all too cruelly alive, but your kind words are what I have after all lived on to receive. Hitherto the spectacle of my daughter's unhappiness gave me cause to reflect that the fault was mine, considering how insignificant I am, but the wish you then expressed, to do her the honor of bringing her to the City, inspired great confidence in the future. That village means only misery and sorrow, now that all that has come to naught. Your most welcome communications have lightened the burden of my years, and the idea that I may continue to look to you, provided that my life is to last a little longer, brings such tears to my eyes that I can write no more.”
The sort of reward usually given a messenger might have seemed out of place at such a time, but she did not want to send him away empty-handed. Accordingly, she placed in a bag a handsome sword and a fine belt of mottled rhinoceros horn18 that she had meant to give her daughter, and she sent them out to him as he was boarding his carriage, with the message that her late daughter would have wished it.
“She should not have done it,” the Commander remarked when he examined them.
“She was kind enough to receive me in person, my lord,” the Commissioner reported, “and she wept a great deal as she spoke. She said that your words about her children did them far too much honor and that their lack of any merit could only discourage her from acting on your offer, but that she will send them all, such as they are, to serve you without revealing the reason why. That was her message to you.”
Yes, the Commander thought, relations like these certainly confer no luster on one, but have not even Emperors accepted the daughters of such people? And who would criticize their bestowing such favor, when in any case it was meant to be? As to commoners, many have accepted women low in rank or previously married. Never mind if the world at large assumes her to have been that Governor's daughter—it is not as though my own courtship of her was sullied at the start by any such understanding. What I want is to let her mother know that despite the sorrow of losing a daughter, her tie with me will honor her yet.
The Governor of Hitachi, her husband, turned up briefly, although he remained standing. “Look at you, off by yourself here at a time like this!” he exclaimed angrily. She had never told him where her daughter was or let him know anything about her circumstances, and he had therefore always assumed that the girl had come to grief, while she on her side had been planning to tell him in triumph once the Commander had brought her to the City. Now, though, it was pointless to remain silent any longer, and through her tears she told him everything. His provincial awe of the true nobility moved him to wonder and fear when she took out the Commander's letter and showed it to him, and he read it over and over again. “What grand good fortune she lost when she died!” he said at last. “I myself serve among his distant retainers, but he has never called me into his presence, for he is a very great and proud lord indeed. It means so much, you know, that he should have spoken that way of the children!”
Before the spectacle of his pleasure she could only writhe, weeping, on the floor, aching for her daughter still to be alive. Now the Governor shed a tear himself. Nonetheless, he doubted that a man like the Commander would really have taken much interest in her if she had lived. He probably feels guilty because it is his fault that she died, he told himself, and he just wants to make her mother feel better. That is why he does not too much mind putting up with a little disapproval.
What did happen to her, though? the Commander wondered when the time came to hold the forty-ninth-day rites. They could do her no harm either way, however, so he had them done quietly at the Master of Discipline's temple. He had arranged generous offerings for the sixty monks. The Governor's wife, who was present as well, added others of her own. Through Ukon, His Highness sent a silver jar filled with gold. Since he could not make his offering grandly, in a manner that might draw attention to himself, Ukon made it for him as though it were her own, at which those who did not know the truth wondered to each other how she could possibly afford it. His lordship sent all his closest retainers to assist. Many who had not known of the deceased before remarked how extraordinary it all was. “See how he honors the memory of somebody of whom no one has ever heard!” they said. “Who can she have been?” The Governor of Hitachi came, too, boorishly lording it about the place to general shock and dismay. Having seen the Lieutenant's19 child into the world, he was keen to celebrate the birth magnificently, and his house lacked very little in the way of adornments from Koma and Cathay; but there was only so much the likes of him could manage, and it made a poor show after all. These rites, he knew, were meant to be discreet, but when he saw with his own eyes their utter grandeur, he understood that if his wife's first daughter had lived, she would have been destined to heights far loftier than his own. His Highness's wife provided for the scripture readings and for the meals served the seven officiants. By now His Majesty himself had heard of this love of the Commander's, and he regretted that the Commander should have kept her concealed in deference to the Second Princess, his wife.
The sorrow of mourning remained ever fresh both for His Highness and for the Commander, and His Highness suffered especially from the pain of suddenly losing so perilous a passion, but his roving heart soon began to seek consolation elsewhere. As for the Commander, he continued as before his loyal solicitude toward all those left to claim his attention, though he did not for a moment forget what his loss meant to him.
Her Majesty remained at Rokujō during her light mourning,20 and meanwhile the Second Prince became Lord of the Bureau of Ceremonial. His now weighty position gave him little leisure to visit her. That other son of hers, His Highness of War, often sought refuge from loneliness and sorrow at the residence of his sister, the First Princess, where, to his regret, he had not yet quite managed to possess all of her beauties. One among them, a certain Kozaishō, with whom his lordship the Commander had succeeded at last in establishing secret relations, was particularly lovely and, to the Commander's mind, strikingly accomplished as well. Any stringed instrument in her hands yielded a superior tone. The letters she wrote, the little things she said, always had something memorable about them. His Highness had long been impressed with her, too, and he typically did his best to talk her into thinking less well of the Commander, but she saw no reason to give in like all the others, and
her maddening obstinacy convinced her more stalwart admirer that she was indeed a rather exceptional woman.
Knowing full well how deeply the Commander felt his loss, she wrote to him in a rush of emotion:
“Quick to sympathy: that my heart has always been, more than anyone's,
but I matter not at all, and silence must be my rule.
Had it been I, not she…”21
Her choice of paper was just right, and in the quiet of so melancholy a twilight he was touched by the precision with which she had gauged his mood.
“Schooled by misfortune, many and many a time, to learn nothing lasts,
I yet never meant to sigh so loudly that all might know.”
He went straight to thank her by telling her how particularly that word from her had pleased him at such a time. Dauntingly dignified as he was, he rarely called on a gentlewoman this way, and her room was unworthy of so great a lord, since it was really very small and had such a narrow door. This greatly embarrassed her; but she did not overdo her apologies, and she spoke to him very nicely indeed. She has a good deal more to her than she did, he thought—I wonder why she went into service like this. I would gladly have her all to myself! However, his manner betrayed nothing of these secret feelings.
In lotus blossom season Her Majesty held a Rite of the Eight Discourses. Each day was dedicated to His Grace of Rokujō, to Lady Murasaki, and so on, and the scriptures and images she had prepared for the occasion were extremely impressive. The day for the fifth scroll promised such a spectacle that people everywhere took advantage of their connection with one gentlewoman or another to come and see it.22
Once the rite was over, after the morning session on the fifth day, the household staff came straight in—the sliding panels between the chamber and the north aisle having been removed for the occasion—to take down the chapel adornments and change the room's furnishings. The First Princess repaired to the west bridgeway, and her gentlewomen retired to their own rooms, exhausted from listening to so much preaching. Very few were actually with her in the gathering dusk. Meanwhile the Commander had changed into a dress cloak and gone to the fishing pavilion to discuss something urgently with the monks, only to find them already gone; he was out over the lake, enjoying the cool. So few people were about that Kozaishō and the others had put up only standing curtains and so on to give themselves a place to rest. Ah, she must be there! he thought when he heard the rustling of silks, and he peeped in through a slender gap between the sliding panels off toward the passageway. So great a lady seldom sat in a place like that, and they had given her so much room that he could actually see straight in past the staggered curtains. Three women and a page girl were chipping with great animation at a block of ice that rested before them on a tray.23 Their attire was so casual, since they wore neither Chinese jackets nor dress gowns, that he did not see how they really could be with Her Highness, and yet there she was, in white silk gauze,24 holding a bit of ice and watching the fray with a slight smile on her enchantingly beautiful face. Her rich hair must have oppressed her on such an intolerably hot day, for she had swept it forward a little, toward him, and he felt as though he had never seen its like before. He had certainly known many beautiful women, but never one of this order. Her women seemed to him dirt before her, until he collected himself and noted one who was fanning herself in a gossamer shift of yellow raw silk and a pale gray-violet train. Ah, he thought, she has taste, that one!
“I should say all that work is just making you hotter!” she remarked. “Why not leave it for us to look at as it is?” Her laughing eyes were charming, and by her voice he recognized his friend Kozaishō.
At last they managed bravely to split it. Each took a piece that she put to her forehead or applied to her chest, and some no doubt got into a degree of mischief as they did so. Kozaishō wrapped a bit in paper to present to her mistress, but Her Highness just put out her lovely hands for Kozaishō to dry them. “No, thank you,” she said, “not for me. One gets so wet!” She spoke very low, but the sound of her voice gave him incomparable pleasure. Once, he said to himself, when she was just a little girl and I was equally young and innocent, I saw her and thought how very pretty she was, but I never again heard so much as the rustling of her sleeves. What god or buddha can have shown me this sight? That power, whatever it may be, must only have meant to throw my feelings into turmoil as usual!
While he stood there staring, troubled at heart, a junior gentlewoman who lived on the north side of the wing remembered withdrawing to her room in such haste that she had forgotten to close a sliding panel, and she now came hurrying toward him in fear of being scolded for having left them all in full view. Her heart beat fast when she spied his dress cloak, and she wondered who he was, but she was sufficiently anxious to keep coming, having forgotten that she herself ought not to be seen. He quickly slipped away and disappeared, for he did not want to be recognized in so compromising a posture.
Oh, no! she exclaimed to herself. Even the standing curtain is drawn aside, and anyone could see in! It must have been one of the sons of His Excellency of the Right. No one without any right to be here could possibly come in this far. If anyone ever hears of this, there will be questions about who left that panel open. His shift and trousers both looked like gossamer silk—it is quite possible that no one ever heard him. She hardly knew what to do.
The culprit meanwhile reflected ruefully, There was a time when I aspired to the holy life, but once I stumbled, I came to have so many, many cares! If I had left the world then, long ago, I would now be living in the depths of the mountains and would not be tormenting my heart this way! He was thoroughly upset. Why have I always wanted to see her again? It has only meant pain and can do me no good.
Her Highness his wife arose the next morning looking very handsome indeed—to his eye perhaps no less so than the Princess on whom he had spied the day before. Still, he reflected, they do not look in the least alike, and she is the one who conveys the most extraordinarily noble grace, unless I only imagined it or just got that impression because of the setting.
“It is so hot!” he said. “Do put on something thinner! It can be pleasant to see a woman wear something new for a change.” To a gentlewoman he added, “Go and ask Daini to make up a shift in silk gauze.” Her women were delighted to see him appreciate her so, for she was then at the very height of her looks.
He returned toward midday, after going back to his own rooms for his customary devotions, and there was the shift he had ordered, hanging over the crossbar of her standing curtain. “Why do you not have it on?” he asked. “I can understand your preferring not to wear anything transparent when many people can see you, but it is surely all right now!” He put the shift on her himself. Her trousers were crimson, as hers had been yesterday, and her abundant hair was as superbly long, but alas, the effect was not at all the same; perhaps they were really too unlike each other. He called for a block of ice that he had the women split, and he felt secretly amused with himself when he gave her a piece. Come, he thought, has no one ever painted his love so as to be able to contemplate her portrait? Surely the lady before me is worthy to afford me this consolation! Still, he only wished that he had been able to join Her Highness yesterday and to feast his eyes on her to his heart's content, and he could not help heaving a sigh.
“Do you ever write to Her Highness the First Princess?” he inquired.
“I did sometimes when I lived in the palace, because His Majesty asked me to, but I have not done so for a long time.”
“I suppose that she no longer writes to you because you are a commoner now. That is unkind of her. I shall tell Her Majesty that you say you are hurt.”
“But why should I be? No, please do not!”
“Yes, and that the reason why she never sends you a line is that she despises you for being too far beneath her!”
He spent the day at home and went to talk to Her Majesty the next morning. His Highness was there, too, as so often, looking very fine in
a dark dress cloak worn over deeply clove-dyed silk gauze. He was just as captivating as his elder sister had been, and his exquisitely white skin, together with his new slenderness of feature, made him a particular pleasure to see. His resemblance to her aroused fresh longing, and the effort to quell these outrageous feelings was more painful than ever before. His Highness had brought a large number of pictures with him, and he had the women take some to Her Highness's room before going there himself.
The Commander approached Her Majesty, told her how much her Eight Discourses had moved him, and talked a little with her about times gone by, glancing meanwhile at the pictures His Highness had left behind. “I am very sorry to see the Princess who resides with me so dispirited now that she is away from the palace,” he remarked. “She never has a word from Her Highness your daughter, and it saddens her to assume that Her Highness does not wish to be in touch with her because of the character of her marriage. It would be kind of you to allow her a look now and again at pictures like these.”
The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji) Page 138
