The tale of Genji
mind it gave him great delight. To-day the crowds were as thick
as ever. With great difficulty he managed to wedge in his carriage
close to the Royal Stables. But here they were surrounded by somewhat
turbulent young noblemen and he was looking for a quieter place when a
smart carriage crammed full of ladies drew up near by and some one in
it beckoned with a fan to Genji’s servants. ‘Will you not come over
where we are?’ said one of the ladies. ‘We will gladly make room for
you.’ Such an offer was perhaps somewhat forward, but the place she
had indicated was such a good one that Genji at once accepted the
invitation. ‘I am afraid it is very unfair that we should take your
place like this ...’ Genji was beginning to say politely, when one of
the ladies handed him a fan with the corner bent down. Here he found
the poem: ‘This flower-decked day of meeting when the great god
unfolds his portents in vain have I waited, for alas another is at thy
side.’ Surely the handwriting was familiar. Yes, it was that of the
ancient lady-of-the-bedchamber. He felt that it was time she should
give up such pranks as this and answered discouragingly: ‘Not ours
this day of tryst when garlanded and passionate the Eighty Tribes
converge.’ This put the lady out of countenance and she replied: ‘Now
bitterly do I repent that for this cheating day my head is decked with
flowers; for in name only is it a day of meeting.’
Their carriages remained side by side, but Genji did not even draw up
the side-curtains, which was a disappointment to more persons than
one. The magnificence of his public appearance a few days ago was
contrasted by everyone with the unobtrusive manner in which he now
mingled with the crowd. It was agreed that his companion, whoever she
might be, must certainly be some very great lady. Genji was afraid
that his neighbour was going to prove troublesome. But fortunately
some of her companions had more discretion than their mistress,
and out of consideration for the unknown sharer of Genji’s coach
persuaded the voluble lady to restrain herself.
Lady Rokujō’s sufferings were now far worse than in previous years.
Though she could no longer endure to be treated as Genji was treating
her, yet the thought of separating from him altogether and going so
far away agitated her so much that she constantly deferred her
journey. She felt too that she would become a laughingstock if it was
thought that she had been spurred to flight by Genji’s scorn; yet if
at the last moment she changed her plans and stayed behind everyone
would think her conduct extremely ill-balanced and unaccountable. Thus
her days and nights were spent in an agony of indecision and often she
repeated to herself the lines ‘My heart like the fishers’ float on Ise
shore is danced from wave to wave.’[10] She felt herself indeed
swirled this way and that by paroxysms that sickened her but were
utterly beyond her control.
Genji, though it pained him that she should feel it necessary to go so
far away did not attempt to dissuade her from the journey. ‘It is
quite natural’ he wrote, ‘that tiresome creature as I am you should
want to put me altogether out of your head. I only beg that even
though you see no use in it, you will let me see you once more before
you go. Were we to meet, you would soon realize that I care for your
happiness far more than you suppose.’ But she could not forget how
when at the River of cleansing she sought a respite from the torture
of her own doubt and indecision, rough waves had dashed her against
the rocks,[11] and she brooded more and more upon this wrong till
there was room for no other thought in all her heart.
Meanwhile Princess Aoi became strangely distraught, and it seemed at
times as though some hostile spirit had entered into her. The whole
household was plunged into such a state of anxiety and gloom that
Genji had not the heart to absent himself for more than a few hours.
It was only very occasionally that he got even as far as his own
palace. After all, she was his wife; moreover, despite all the
difficulties that had risen between them he cared for her very much
indeed. He could no longer disguise from himself that there was
something wrong with her in addition to the discomfort which naturally
accompanied her condition, and he was in a state of great distress.
Constant rituals of exorcism and divination were performed under his
direction, and it was generally agreed that all the signs indicated
possession by the spirit of some living person. Many names were tried
but to none of them did the spirit respond, and it seemed as though it
would be impossible to shift it. Aoi herself felt that some alien
thing had entered into her, and though she was not conscious of any
one definite pain or dread the sense that the thing was there never
for a moment left her. The greatest healers of the day were powerless
to eject it and it became apparent that this was no ordinary case of
‘possession’: some tremendous accumulation of malice was discharging
itself upon her. It was natural that her friends should turn over in
their minds the names of those whom Genji had most favoured. It was
whispered that only with Lady Rokujō and the girl at the Nijō-in was
he on terms of such intimacy that their jealousy would be at all
likely to produce a fatal effect. But when the doctors attempted to
conjure the spirit by the use of these names, there was no visible
response. She had not in all the world any enemy who might be
practising conscious[12] witchcraft against her. Such indispositions
were sometimes attributed to possession by the spirit of some
dead retainer or old family-nurse; or again the malice of someone whom
the Minister, Aoi’s father, had offended might, owing to her delicate
condition, have fastened upon her instead of him. Conjecture after
conjecture was accepted and then falsified. Meanwhile she lay
perpetually weeping. Constantly, indeed, she would break out into fits
of sobbing so violent that her breath was stopped, while those about
her, in great alarm for her safety, stood by in misery not knowing
what to do.
The ex-Emperor enquired after her continually. He even ordered special
services to be said on her behalf, and these attentions served to
remind her parents in what high estimation she was held at the Court.
Not among her friends only but throughout the whole country the news
of her illness caused great distress. Rokujō heard of her sufferings
with deep concern. For years they had been in open rivalry for Genji’s
favours, but even after that wretched affair of the coaches (though it
must be admitted that this had greatly incensed her) she had never
gone so far as to wish evil against the Princess. She herself was very
unwell. She began to feel that the violent and distracting emotions
which continually assailed her had in some subtle way unhinged her
mind and she determined to seek spiritual assistance at a place some
miles distant from her home. Genji heard of this and in great anxiety
concerning her at once set out for the house where she was reported to
be staying. It lay beyond the City precincts and he was obliged to go
with the greatest secrecy.[13] He begged her to forgive him for not
having come to see her for so long. ‘I have not been having a very
cheerful time’ he said and gave her some account of Aoi’s condition.
He wanted to make her feel that if he had stayed away it had been
from a melancholy necessity and not because he had found more amusing
company elsewhere. ‘It is not so much my own anxiety that unnerves me
as the spectacle of the appalling helplessness and misery into which
her illness has plunged her wretched parents, and it was in the hope
of forgetting for a little while all these sickroom horrors that I
came to see you here to-day. If only just for this once you could
overlook all my offences and be kind to me....’
His pleading had no effect. Her attitude was more hostile than before.
He was not angry with her, nor indeed was he surprised. Day was
already breaking when, unsolaced, he set out for home. But as she
watched him go his beauty suddenly made havoc of all her resolutions
and again she felt that it was madness to leave him. Yet what had she
to stay for? Aoi was with child and this could only be a sign that he
had made his peace with her. Henceforward he could lead a life of
irreproachable rectitude and if once in a way he came to make his
excuse as he had come to-day, what purpose would that serve, save to
keep ever fresh the torment of her desires? Thus when his letter came
next day it found her more distraught than before: ‘The sick woman who
for a few days past had shown some improvement is again suffering
acutely and it is at present impossible for me to leave her.’ Certain
that this was a mere excuse she sent in reply the poem ‘The fault is
mine and the regret, if careless as the peasant girl who stoops too
low amid the sprouting rice I soiled my sleeve in love’s dark road.’
At the end of her letter she reminded him of the old song: ‘Now
bitterly do I repent that ever I brought my pitcher to the mountain
well where waters were but deep enough to soil my sleeve.’ He looked
at the delicate handwriting. Who was there, even among women of her
high lineage and breeding, that could rival the ineffable grace
and elegance with which this small note was penned? That one whose
mind and person alike so strongly attracted him must now by his own
act be lost to him forever, was a bitter thought. Though it was almost
dark, he sat down and wrote to her: ‘Do not say that the waters have
but wetted your sleeve. For the shallowness is in your comparison
only; not in my affections!’ And to this he added the poem: ‘’Tis you,
you only who have loitered among the shallow pools: while I till all
my limbs were drenched have battled through the thickets of love’s
dark track.’ And he ended with the words: ‘Had but a ray of comfort
lighted the troubles of this house, I should myself have been the
bearer of this note.’
Meanwhile Aoi’s possession had returned in full force; she was in a
state of pitiable torment. It reached Lady Rokujō’s ears that the
illness had been attributed by some to the operation of her ‘living
spirit.’ Others, she was told, believed that her father’s ghost was
avenging the betrayal of his daughter. She brooded constantly upon the
nature of her own feelings towards Aoi, but could discover in herself
nothing but intense unhappiness. Of hostility towards Aoi she could
find no trace at all. Yet she could not be sure whether somewhere in
the depths of a soul consumed by anguish some spark of malice had not
lurked. Through all the long years during which she had loved and
suffered, though it had often seemed to her that greater torment could
not anywhere in the world exist, her whole being had never once been
so utterly bruised and shattered as in these last days. It had begun
with that hateful episode of the coaches. She had been scorned,
treated as though she had no right to exist. Yes, it was true that
since the Festival of Purification her mind had been buffeted by such
a tempest of conflicting resolutions that sometimes it seemed as
though she had lost all control over her own thoughts. She
remembered how one night she had suddenly, in the midst of agonizing
doubts and indecisions, found that she had been dreaming. It seemed to
her that she had been in a large magnificent room, where lay a girl
whom she knew to be the Princess Aoi. Snatching her by the arm she had
dragged and mauled the prostrate figure, with an outburst of brutal
fury such as in her waking life would have been utterly foreign to
her. Since then she had had the same dream several times. How
terrible! It seemed then that it was really possible for one’s spirit