The tale of Genji
momentary beam to guide their steps, I pray you sometimes to visit me
of your own accord and when you are at leisure. In years past it was
at times of joy and triumph that you came to this house, and now this
is the news you bring! Foolish are they indeed who trust to fortune!
From the time she was born until his death, her father, who knew his
own mind, would have it that she must go to Court and charged me again
and again not to disappoint his wishes if he were to die. And so,
though I thought that the lack of a guardian would bring her into
many difficulties, I was determined to carry out his desire. At Court
she found that favours only too great were to be hers, and all the
while must needs endure in secrecy the tokens of inhuman malice; till
hatred had heaped upon her so heavy a load of cares that she died as
it were murdered. Indeed, the love that in His wisdom He deigned to
show her (or so sometimes it seems to me in the uncomprehending
darkness of my heart) was crueller than indifference.’
So she spoke, till tears would let her speak no more; and now the
night had come.
‘All this’ the girl answered ‘He himself has said; and further: “That
thus against My will and judgment I yielded helplessly to a passion so
reckless that it caused men’s eyes to blink was perhaps decreed for
the very reason that our time was fated to be so short; it was the
wild and vehement passion of those who are marked down for instant
separation. And though I had vowed that none should suffer because of
my love, yet in the end she bore upon her shoulders the heavy hatred
of many who thought that for her sake they had been wronged.”
‘So again and again have I heard the Emperor speak with tears. But now
the night is far spent and I must carry my message to the Palace
before day comes.’
So she, weeping too, spoke as she hurried away. But the sinking moon
was shining in a cloudless sky, and in the grass-clumps that shivered
in the cold wind, bell-crickets tinkled their compelling cry. It was
hard to leave these grass-clumps, and the quiver-bearer’s daughter,
loth to ride away, recited the poem which says ‘Ceaseless as the
interminable voices of the bell-cricket, all night till dawn my tears
flow.’ The mother answered ‘Upon the thickets that teem with myriad
insect voices falls the dew of a Cloud Dweller’s tears’; for the
people of the Court are called _dwellers above the clouds_. Then
she gave the messenger a sash, a comb and other things that the dead
lady had left in her keeping,—gifts from the Emperor which now, since
their use was gone, she sent back to him as mementoes of the past. The
nurse-maids who had come with the boy were depressed not so much at
their mistress’s death as at being suddenly deprived of the daily
sights and sensations of the Palace. They begged to go back at once.
But the mother was determined not to go herself, knowing that she
would cut too forlorn a figure. On the other hand if she parted with
the boy, she would be daily in great anxiety about him. That was why
she did not immediately either go with him herself or send him to the
Palace.
The quiver-bearer’s daughter found the Emperor still awake. He was,
upon pretext of visiting the flower-pots in front of the Palace which
were then in full bloom, waiting for her out of doors, while four or
five trusted ladies conversed with him.
At this time it was his wont to examine morning and evening a picture
of The Everlasting Wrong,[6] the text written by Teiji no In,[7] with
poems by Ise[8] and Tsurayuki,[9] both in Yamato speech, and in that
of the men beyond the sea, and the story of this poem was the common
matter of his talk.
Now he turned to the messenger and asked eagerly for all her news. And
when she had given him a secret and faithful account of the sad place
whence she had come, she handed him the mother’s letter: ‘His
Majesty’s gracious commands I read with reverence deeper than I can
express, but their purport has brought great darkness and confusion
to my mind.’ All this, together with a poem in which she compared
her grandchild to a flower which has lost the tree that sheltered it
from the great winds, was so wild and so ill-writ as only to be
suffered from the hand of one whose sorrow was as yet unhealed.
Again the Emperor strove for self-possession in the presence of his
messenger. But as he pictured to himself the time when the dead lady
first came to him, a thousand memories pressed thick about him, and
recollection linked to recollection carried him onward, till he
shuddered to think how utterly unmarked, unheeded all these hours and
days had fled.
At last he said ‘I too thought much and with delight how with most
profit might be fulfilled the wish that her father the Councillor left
behind him; but of that no more. If the young Prince lives occasion
may yet be found.... It is for his long life that we must pray.’
He looked at the presents she had brought back and ‘Would that like
the wizard you had brought a kingfisher-hairpin as token of your visit
to the place where her spirit dwells’ he cried, and recited the poem:
_Oh for a master of magic who might go and seek her, and by a message
teach me where her spirit dwells_.
For the picture of Kuei-fei, skilful though the painter might be, was
but the work of a brush, and had no living fragrance. And though the
poet tells us that Kuei-fei’s grace was as that of ‘the hibiscus of
the Royal Lake or the willows of the Wei-yang Palace,’ the lady in the
picture was all paint and powder and had a simpering Chinesified air.
But when he thought of the lost lady’s voice and form, he could find
neither in the beauty of flowers nor in the song of birds any fit
comparison. Continually he pined that fate should not have allowed
them to fulfil the vow which morning and evening was ever talked of
between them,—the vow that their lives should be as the twin birds
that share a wing, the twin trees that share a bough. The rustling of
the wind, the chirping of an insect would cast him into the deepest
melancholy; and now Kōkiden, who for a long while had not been
admitted to his chamber, must needs sit in the moonlight making music
far on into the night! This evidently distressed him in the highest
degree and those ladies and courtiers who were with him were equally
shocked and distressed on his behalf. But the offending lady was one
who stood much upon her dignity and she was determined to behave as
though nothing of any consequence had taken place in the Palace.
And now the moon had set. The Emperor thought of the girl’s mother in
the house amid the thickets and wondered, making a poem of the
thought, with what feelings she had watched the sinking of the autumn
moon: ‘for even we Men above the Clouds were weeping when it sank.’
He raised the torches high in their sockets and still sat up. But at
last he heard voices coming from the Watch House of the Right and knew
that the hour of the Bull[10] had struck. Then, lest he should be
seen, he went into his chamber. He found he could not sleep and was up
before daybreak. But, as though he remembered the words ‘he knew not
the dawn was at his window’ of Ise’s poem,[11] he showed little
attention to the affairs of his Morning Audience, scarcely touched his
dried rice and seemed but dimly aware of the viands on the great
Table, so that the carvers and waiting-men groaned to see their
Master’s plight; and all his servants, both men and women kept on
whispering to one another ‘What a senseless occupation has ours
become!’ and supposed that he was obeying some extravagant vow.
Regardless of his subjects’ murmurings, he continually allowed his
mind to wander from their affairs to his own, so that the scandal of
his negligence was now as dangerous to the State as it had been
before, and again there began to be whispered references to a certain
Emperor of another land. Thus the months and days passed, and in the
end the young prince arrived at Court. He had grown up to be a child
of unrivalled beauty and the Emperor was delighted with him. In the
spring an heir to the Throne was to be proclaimed and the Emperor was
sorely tempted to pass over the first-born prince in favour of the
young child. But there was no one at Court to support such a choice
and it was unlikely that it would be tolerated by the people; it would
indeed bring danger rather than glory to the child. So he carefully
concealed from the world that he had any such design, and gained great
credit, men saying ‘Though he dotes on the boy, there is at least some
limit to his folly.’ And even the great ladies of the Palace became a
little easier in their minds.
The grandmother remained inconsolable, and impatient to set out upon
her search for the place where the dead lady’s spirit dwelt, she soon
expired. Again the Emperor was in great distress; and this time the
boy, being now six years old, understood what had happened and wept
bitterly. And often he spoke sadly of what he had seen when he was
brought to visit the poor dead lady who had for many years been so
kind to him. Henceforward he lived always at the Palace. When he
became seven he began to learn his letters, and his quickness was so
unusual that his father was amazed. Thinking that now no one would
have the heart to be unkind to the child, the Emperor began to take
him to the apartments of Kōkiden and the rest, saying to them ‘Now
that his mother is dead I know that you will be nice to him.’ Thus the
boy began to penetrate the Royal Curtain. The roughest soldier,
the bitterest foeman could not have looked on such a child without a
smile, and Kōkiden did not send him away. She had two daughters who
were indeed not such fine children as the little prince. He also
played with the Court Ladies, who, because he was now very pretty and
bashful in his ways, found endless amusement, as indeed did everyone
else, in sharing his games. As for his serious studies, he soon learnt
to send the sounds of zithern and flute flying gaily to the clouds.
But if I were to tell you of all his accomplishments, you would think
that he was soon going to become a bore.
At this time some Koreans came to Court and among them a
fortune-teller. Hearing this, the Emperor did not send for them to
come to the Palace, because of the law against the admission of
foreigners which was made by the Emperor Uda.[12] But in strict
secrecy he sent the Prince to the Strangers’ quarters. He went under
the escort of the Secretary of the Right, who was to introduce him as
his own son. The fortune teller was astonished by the boy’s lineaments
and expressed his surprise by continually nodding his head: ‘He has
the marks of one who might become a Father of the State, and if this
were his fate, he would not stop short at any lesser degree than that
of Mighty King and Emperor of all the land. But when I look again—I
see that confusion and sorrow would attend his reign. But should he
become a great Officer of State and Counsellor of the Realm I see no
happy issue, for he would be defying those kingly signs of which I
spoke before.’
The Secretary was a most talented, wise and learned scholar, and now
began to conduct an interesting conversation with the fortune teller.
They exchanged essays and poems, and the fortune-teller made a
little speech, saying ‘It has been a great pleasure to me on the eve
of my departure to meet with a man of capacities so unusual; and
though I regret my departure I shall now take away most agreeable
impressions of my visit.’ The little prince presented him with a very
nice verse of poetry, at which he expressed boundless admiration and
offered the boy a number of handsome presents. In return the Emperor
sent him a large reward from the Imperial Treasury. This was all kept