The tale of Genji
incompetence, he began to rail at the sister’s irritating prudishness.
The poor child felt very unhappy, but could think of nothing to say in
his own or his sister’s defence.
‘I am utterly wretched’ said Genji. ‘It is obvious that she would not
have behaved as she did last night unless she absolutely detested me.
But she might at least have the decency to send civil answers to my
letters. Oh, well, I suppose Iyo no Kami is the better man....’ So he
spoke, thinking that she desired only to be rid of him. Yet when
at last he lay down to rest, he was wearing her scarf hidden under his
dress. He had put the boy by his side, and after giving much vent to
his exasperation, he said at last ‘I am very fond of you, but I am
afraid in future I shall always think of you in connection with this
hateful business, and that will put an end to our friendship.’ He said
it with such conviction that the boy felt quite forlorn.
For a while they rested, but Genji could not sleep, and at dawn he
sent in haste for his ink-stone. He did not write a proper letter, but
scribbled on a piece of folded paper, in the manner of a writing
exercise, a poem in which he compared the scarf which she had dropped
in her flight to the dainty husk which the cicada sheds on some bank
beneath a tree.
The boy picked the paper up, and thrust it into the folds of his dress.
Genji was very much distressed at the thought of what the other lady’s
feelings must be; but after some reflection he decided that it would
be better not to send any message.
The scarf, to which still clung the delicate perfume of its owner, he
wore for long afterwards beneath his dress.
When the boy got home he found his sister waiting for him in very
ill-humour. ‘It was not your doing that I escaped from the odious
quandary in which you landed me! And even so pray what explanation can
I offer to my friend?’ ‘A fine little clown the Prince must think you
now. I hope you are ashamed of yourself.’
Despite the fact that both parties were using him so ill, the boy drew
the rescued verses from out the folds of his dress and handed them to
her. She could not forbear to read them. What of this discarded
mantle? Why should he speak of it? _The coat that the fishers of Iseo
left lying upon the shore ..._[3] those were the words that came into
her mind, but they were not the clue. She was sorely puzzled.
Meanwhile the Lady of the West[4] was feeling very ill at ease. She
was longing to talk about what had happened, but must not do so, and
had to bear the burden of her impatience all alone. The arrival of
Utsusemi’s brother put her into a great state of excitement. No letter
for her? she could not understand it at all, and for the first time a
cloud settled upon her gay confiding heart.
Utsusemi, though she had so fiercely steeled herself against his love,
seeing such tenderness hidden under the words of his message, again
fell to longing that she were free, and though there was no undoing
what was done she found it so hard to go without him that she took up
the folded paper and wrote in the margin a poem in which she said that
her sleeve, so often wet with tears, was like the cicada’s
dew-drenched wing.
[1] Ki no Kami’s sister, referred to later in the story as Nokiba no
Ogi.
[2] This name means ‘cicada ‘and is given to her later in the story in
reference to the scarf which she ‘discarded as a cicada sheds its
husk.’ But at this point it becomes grammatically important that she
should have a name and I therefore anticipate.
[3] Allusion to the old poem, ‘Does he know that since he left me my
eyes are wet as the coat that the fishers ... left lying upon the
shore?’
[4] The visitor.
CHAPTER IV
YŪGAO
It was at the time when he was secretly visiting the lady of the Sixth
Ward.[1] One day on his way back from the Palace he thought that he
would call upon his foster-mother who, having for a long while been
very ill, had become a nun. She lived in the Fifth Ward. After many
enquiries he managed to find the house; but the front gate was locked
and he could not drive in. He sent one of his servants for Koremitsu,
his foster-nurse’s son, and while he was waiting began to examine the
rather wretched looking by-street. The house next door was fenced with
a new paling, above which at one place were four or five panels of
open trellis-work, screened by blinds which were very white and bare.
Through chinks in these blinds a number of foreheads could be seen.
They seemed to belong to a group of ladies who must be peeping with
interest into the street below.
At first he thought they had merely peeped out as they passed; but he
soon realized that if they were standing on the floor they must be
giants. No, evidently they had taken the trouble to climb on to some
table or bed; which was surely rather odd!
He had come in a plain coach with no outriders. No one could possibly
guess who he was, and feeling quite at his ease he leant forward
and deliberately examined the house. The gate, also made of a kind of
trellis-work, stood ajar, and he could see enough of the interior to
realize that it was a very humble and poorly furnished dwelling. For a
moment he pitied those who lived in such a place, but then he
remembered the song ‘Seek not in the wide world to find a home; but
where you chance to rest, call that your house’; and again, ‘Monarchs
may keep their palaces of jade, for in a leafy cottage two can sleep.’
There was a wattled fence over which some ivy-like creeper spread its
cool green leaves, and among the leaves were white flowers with petals
half unfolded like the lips of people smiling at their own thoughts.
‘They are called Yūgao, “Evening Faces,”’ one of his servants told
him; ‘how strange to find so lovely a crowd clustering on this
deserted wall!’ And indeed it was a most strange and delightful thing
to see how on the narrow tenement in a poor quarter of the town they
had clambered over rickety eaves and gables and spread wherever there
was room for them to grow. He sent one of his servants to pick some.
The man entered at the half-opened door, and had begun to pluck the
flowers, when a little girl in a long yellow tunic came through a
quite genteel sliding door, and holding out towards Genji’s servant a
white fan heavily perfumed with incense, she said to him ‘Would you
like something to put them on? I am afraid you have chosen a
wretched-looking bunch,’ and she handed him the fan. Just as he was
opening the gate on his way back, the old nurse’s son Koremitsu came
out of the other house full of apologies for having kept Genji waiting
so long—‘I could not find the key of the gate’ he said. ‘Fortunately
the people of this humble quarter were not likely to recognize you and
press or stare; but I am afraid you must have been very much bored
waiting in this hugger-mugger back street,’ and he conducted Genji
into the house. Koremitsu’s brother, the deacon, his brother-in-law
Mikawa no Kami and his sister all assembled to greet the Prince,
delighted by a visit with which they had not thought he was ever
likely to honour them again.
The nun too rose from her couch: ‘For a long time I had been waiting
to give up the world, but one thing held me back: I wanted you to see
your old nurse just once again as you used to know her. You never came
to see me, and at last I gave up waiting and took my vows. Now, in
reward for the penances which my Order enjoins, I have got back a
little of my health, and having seen my dear young master again, I can
wait with a quiet mind for the Lord Amida’s Light,’ and in her
weakness she shed a few tears.
‘I heard some days ago’ said Genji ‘that you were very dangerously
ill, and was in great anxiety. It is sad now to find you in this
penitential garb. You must live longer yet, and see me rise in the
world, that you may be born again high in the ninth sphere of Amida’s
Paradise. For they say that those who died with longings unfulfilled
are burdened with an evil Karma in their life to come.’
People such as old nurses regard even the most blackguardly and
ill-favoured foster-children as prodigies of beauty and virtue. Small
wonder then if Genji’s nurse, who had played so great a part in his
early life, always regarded her office as immensely honourable and
important, and tears of pride came into her eyes while he spoke to her.
The old lady’s children thought it very improper that their mother,
having taken holy orders, should show so lively an interest in a human
career. Certain that Genji himself would be very much shocked, they
exchanged uneasy glances. He was on the contrary deeply touched. ‘When
I was a child’ he said ‘those who were dearest to me were early
taken away, and although there were many who gave a hand to my
upbringing, it was to you only, dear nurse, that I was deeply and
tenderly attached. When I grew up I could not any longer be often in
your company. I have not even been able to come here and see you as
often as I wanted to. But in all the long time which has passed since
I was last here, I have thought a great deal about you and wished that
life did not force so many bitter partings upon us.’
So he spoke tenderly. The princely scent of the sleeve which he had
raised to brush away his tears filled the low and narrow room, and
even the young people, who had till now been irritated by their
mother’s obvious pride at having been the nurse of so splendid a
prince, found themselves in tears.
Having arranged for continual masses to be said on the sick woman’s
behalf, he took his leave, ordering Koremitsu to light him with a
candle. As they left the house he looked at the fan upon which the
white flowers had been laid. He now saw that there was writing on it,
a poem carelessly but elegantly scribbled: ‘The flower that puzzled
you was but the _Yūgao_, strange beyond knowing in its dress of
shining dew.’ It was written with a deliberate negligence which seemed
to aim at concealing the writer’s status and identity. But for all
that the hand showed a breeding and distinction which agreeably
surprised him. ‘Who lives in the house on the left?’ he asked.
Koremitsu, who did not at all want to act as a go-between, replied
that he had only been at his mother’s for five or six days and had
been so much occupied by her illness that he had not asked any
questions about the neighbours. ‘I want to know for a quite harmless
reason’ said Genji. ‘There is something about this fan which raises a
rather important point. I positively must settle it. You would oblige
me by making enquiries from someone who knows the neighbourhood.’
Koremitsu went at once to the house next door and sent for
the steward. ‘This house’ the man said ‘belongs to a certain
Titular-Prefect. He is living in the country, but my lady is still
here; and as she is young and loves company, her brothers who are in
service at the Court often come here to visit her.’ ‘And that is about
all one can expect a servant to know’ said Koremitsu when he repeated
this information. It occurred at once to Genji that it was one of
these Courtiers who had written the poem. Yes, there was certainly a
self-confident air in the writing. It was by someone whose rank
entitled him to have a good opinion of himself. But he was
romantically disposed; it was too painful to dismiss altogether the
idea that, after all, the verses might really have been meant for him,
and on a folded paper he wrote: ‘Could I but get a closer view, no
longer would they puzzle me—the flowers that all too dimly in the
gathering dusk I saw.’ This he wrote in a disguised hand and gave to
his servant. The man reflected that though the senders of the fan had
never seen Genji before, yet so well known were his features, that