The tale of Genji
even the glimpse they had got from the window might easily have
revealed to them his identity. He could imagine the excitement with
which the fan had been despatched and the disappointment when for so
long a time no answer came. His somewhat rudely belated arrival would
seem to them to have been purposely contrived. They would all be agog
to know what was in the reply, and he felt very nervous as he
approached the house.
Meanwhile, lighted only by a dim torch, Genji quietly left his nurse’s
home. The blinds of the other house were now drawn and only the
fire-fly glimmer of a candle shone through the gap between them.
When he reached his destination[2] a very different scene met his
eyes. A handsome park, a well-kept garden; how spacious and
comfortable it all was! And soon the magnificent owner of these
splendours had driven from his head all thought of the wooden paling,
the shutters and the flowers.
He stayed longer than he intended, and the sun was already up when he
set out for home. Again he passed the house with the shutters. He had
driven through the quarter countless times without taking the
slightest interest in it; but that one small episode of the fan had
suddenly made his daily passage through these streets an event of
great importance. He looked about him eagerly, and would have liked to
know who lived in all the houses.
For several days Koremitsu did not present himself at Genji’s palace.
When at last he came, he explained that his mother was growing much
weaker and it was very difficult for him to get away. Then drawing
nearer, he said in a low voice ‘I made some further enquiries, but
could not find out much. It seems that someone came very secretly in
June and has been living there ever since; but who she really is not
even her own servants know. I have once or twice peeped through a hole
in the hedge and caught a glimpse of some young women; but their
skirts were rolled back and tucked in at their belts, so I think they
must have been waiting-maids. Yesterday some while after sunset I saw
a lady writing a letter. Her face was calm, but she looked very
unhappy, and I noticed that some of her women were secretly weeping.’
Genji was more curious than ever.
Though his master was of a rank which brought with it great
responsibilities, Koremitsu knew that in view of his youth and
popularity the young prince would be thought to be positively
neglecting his duty if he did not indulge in a few escapades, and that
everyone would regard his conduct as perfectly natural and proper
even when it was such as they would not have dreamed of permitting to
ordinary people.
‘Hoping to get a little further information,’ he said, ‘I found an
excuse for communicating with her, and received in reply a very
well-worded answer in a cultivated hand. She must be a girl of quite
good position.’ ‘You must find out more’ said Genji; ‘I shall not be
happy till I know all about her.’
Here perhaps was just such a case as they had imagined on that rainy
night: a lady whose outward circumstances seemed to place her in that
‘Lowest Class’ which they had agreed to dismiss as of no interest; but
who in her own person showed qualities by no means despicable.
But to return for a moment to Utsusemi. Her unkindness had not
affected him as it would have affected most people. If she had
encouraged him he would soon have regarded the affair as an appalling
indiscretion which he must put an end to at all costs; whereas now he
brooded continually upon his defeat and was forever plotting new ways
to shake her resolution.
He had never, till the day of his visit to the foster-nurse, been
interested in anyone of quite the common classes. But now, since that
rainy night’s conversation, he had explored (so it seemed to him)
every corner of society, including in his survey even those categories
which his friends had passed over as utterly remote and improbable. He
thought of the lady who had, so to speak, been thrown into his life as
an extra. With how confiding an air she had promised that she would
wait! He was very sorry about her, but he was afraid that if he wrote
to her Utsusemi might find out and that would prejudice his chances.
He would write to her afterwards....
Suddenly at this point Iyo no Suke himself was announced. He had
just returned from his province, and had lost no time in paying his
respects to the prince. The long journey by boat had made him look
rather swarthy and haggard. ‘Really’ thought Genji ‘he is not at all
an attractive man!’ Still it was possible to talk to him; for if a man
is of decent birth and breeding, however broken he may be by age or
misfortune, he will always retain a certain refinement of mind and
manners which prevent him from becoming merely repulsive. They were
beginning to discuss the affairs of Iyo’s province and Genji was even
joking with him, when a sudden feeling of embarrassment came over him.
Why should those recollections make him feel so awkward? Iyo no Suke
was quite an old man, it had done him no harm. ‘These scruples are
absurd’ thought Genji. However, she was right in thinking it was
too queer, too ill-assorted a match; and remembering Uma no Kami’s
warnings, he felt that he had behaved badly. Though her unkindness
still deeply wounded him, he was almost glad for Iyo’s sake that she
had not relented.
‘My daughter is to be married’ Iyo was saying ‘And I am going to take
my wife back with me to my province.’ Here was a double surprise. At
all costs he must see Utsusemi once again. He spoke with her brother
and the boy discussed the matter with her. It would have been
difficult enough for anyone to have carried on an intrigue with the
prince under such circumstances as these. But for her, so far below
him in rank and beset by new restrictions, it had now become
unthinkable. She could not however bear to lose all contact with him,
and not only did she answer his letters much more kindly than before,
but took pains, though they were written with apparent negligence, to
add little touches that would give him pleasure and make him see that
she still cared for him. All this he noticed, and though he was vexed
that she would not relent towards him, he found it impossible to
put her out of his mind.
As for the other girl, he did not think that she was at all the kind
of person to go on pining for him once she was properly settled with a
husband; and he now felt quite happy about her.
It was autumn. Genji had brought so many complications into his life
that he had for some while been very irregular in his visits to the
Great Hall, and was in great disgrace there. The lady[3] in the grand
mansion was very difficult to get on with; but he had surmounted so
many obstacles in his courtship of her that to give her up the moment
he had won her seemed absurd. Yet he could not deny that the blind
intoxicating passion which possessed him while she was still
unattainable, had almost disappeared. To begin with, she was far too
sensitive; then there was the disparity of their ages,[4] and the
constant dread of discovery which haunted him during those painful
partings at small hours of the morning. In fact, there were too many
disadvantages.
It was a morning when mist lay heavy over the garden. After being many
times roused Genji at last came out of Rokujō’s room, looking very
cross and sleepy. One of the maids lifted part of the folding-shutter,
seeming to invite her mistress to watch the prince’s departure. Rokujō
pulled aside the bed-curtains and tossing her hair back over her
shoulders looked out into the garden. So many lovely flowers were
growing in the borders that Genji halted for a while to enjoy them.
How beautiful he looked standing there, she thought. As he was nearing
the portico the maid who had opened the shutters came and walked by
his side. She wore a light green skirt exquisitely matched to the
season and place; it was so hung as to show to great advantage
the grace and suppleness of her stride. Genji looked round at her.
‘Let us sit down for a minute on the railing here in the corner,’ he
said. ‘She seems very shy’ he thought, ‘but how charmingly her hair
falls about her shoulders,’ and he recited the poem: ‘Though I would
not be thought to wander heedlessly from flower to flower, yet this
morning’s pale convolvulus I fain would pluck!’ As he said the lines
he took her hand and she answered with practised ease: ‘You hasten, I
observe, to admire the morning flowers while the mist still lies about
them,’ thus parrying the compliment by a verse which might be
understood either in a personal or general sense. At this moment a
very elegant page wearing the most bewitching baggy trousers came
among the flowers brushing the dew as he walked, and began to pick a
bunch of the convolvuli. Genji longed to paint the scene.
No one could see him without pleasure. He was like the flowering tree
under whose shade even the rude mountain peasant delights to rest. And
so great was the fascination he exercised that those who knew him
longed to offer him whatever was dearest to them. One who had a
favourite daughter would ask for nothing better than to make her
Genji’s handmaiden. Another who had an exquisite sister was ready for
her to serve in his household, though it were at the most menial
tasks. Still less could these ladies who on such occasions as this
were privileged to converse with him and stare at him as much as they
pleased, and were moreover young people of much sensibility—how could
they fail to delight in his company and note with much uneasiness that
his visits were becoming far less frequent than before?
But where have I got to? Ah, yes. Koremitsu had patiently continued
the enquiry with which Genji entrusted him. ‘Who the mistress is’ he
said, ‘I have not been able to discover; and for the most part
she is at great pains not to show herself. But more than once in the
general confusion, when there was the sound of a carriage coming along
past that great row of tenement houses, and all the maid-servants were
peering out into the road, the young lady whom I suppose to be the
mistress of the house slipped out along with them. I could not see her
clearly, but she seemed to be very pretty.
‘One day, seeing a carriage with outriders coming towards the house,
one of the maids rushed off calling out “Ukon, Ukon, come quickly and
look. The Captain’s carriage is coming this way.” At once a
pleasant-faced lady no longer young, came bustling out. “Quietly,
quietly” she said holding up a warning finger; “how do you know it is
the Captain? I shall have to go and look,” and she slipped out. A sort
of rough drawbridge leads from the garden into the lane. In her
excitement the good lady caught her skirt in it and falling flat on
her face almost tumbled into the ditch: “A bad piece of work His
Holiness of Katsuragi[5] made here!” she grumbled; but her curiosity
did not seem to be at all damped and she stared harder than ever at
the approaching carriage. The visitor was dressed in a plain, wide
cloak. He had attendants with him, whose names the excited
servant-girls called out as one after another they came near enough to
be recognized; and the odd thing is that the names were certainly
those of Tō no Chūjō’s[6] grooms and pages.’
‘I must see that carriage for myself’ said Genji. What if this should
be the very lady whom Chūjō, at the time of that rainy night’s
conversation, despaired of rediscovering? Koremitsu, noting that Genji
was listening with particular attention continued: ‘I must tell you
that I too have reason to be interested in this house, and while
making enquiries on my own account I discovered that the young lady
always addresses the other girls in the house as though they were her
equals. But when, pretending to be taken in by this comedy, I began