The Tale of Genji . Murasaki Shikibu
“It’s not that you aren’t a nice enough boy, and it’s not that I’m not fond of you. But because of your family I must have doubts about the durability of our relationship.”
A remark which plunged the boy into the darkest melancholy.
Genji was still unable to sleep. He said that he required an inkstone. On a fold of paper he jotted down a verse as if for practice:
“Beneath a tree, a locust’s empty shell.
Sadly I muse upon the shell of a lady.”
He wondered what the other one, the stepdaughter, would be thinking of him; but though he felt rather sorry for her and though he turned the matter over in his mind, he sent no message. The lady’s fragrance lingered in the robe he had taken. He kept it with him, gazing fondly at it.
The boy, when he went to his sister’s house, was crushed by the scolding he received. “This is the sort of thing a person cannot be expected to put up with. I may try to explain what has happened, but can you imagine that people will not come to their own conclusions? Does it not occur to you that even your good master might wish to see an end to this childishness?”
Badgered from the left and badgered from the right, the poor boy did not know where to turn. He took out Genji’s letter. In spite of herself his sister opened and read it. That reference to the shell of the locust: he had taken her robe, then. How very embarrassing. A sodden rag, like the one discarded by the fisherman of Ise.
The other lady, her stepdaughter, returned in some disorder to her own west wing. She had her sad thoughts all to herself, for no one knew what had happened. She watched the boy’s comings and goings, thinking that there might be some word; but in the end there was none. She did not have the imagination to guess that she had been a victim of mistaken identity. She was a lighthearted and inattentive creature, but now she was lost in sad thoughts.
The lady in the main hall kept herself under tight control. She could see that his feelings were not to be described as shallow, and she longed for what would not return, her maiden days. Besides his poem she jotted down a poem by Lady Ise:
The dew upon the fragile locust wing
Is lost among the leaves. Lost are my tears.
The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu
Chapter 4
Evening Faces
On his way from court to pay one of his calls at Rokujō, Genji stopped to inquire after his old nurse, Koremitsu’s mother, at her house in Gojō. Gravely ill, she had become a nun. The carriage entrance was closed. He sent for Koremitsu and while he was waiting looked up and down the dirty, cluttered street. Beside the nurse’s house was a new fence of plaited cypress. The four or five narrow shutters above had been raised, and new blinds, white and clean, hung in the apertures. He caught outlines of pretty foreheads beyond. He would have judged, as they moved about, that they belonged to rather tall women. What sort of women might they be? His carriage was simple and unadorned and he had no outrunners. Quite certain that he would not be recognized, he leaned out for a closer look. The hanging gate, of something like trelliswork, was propped on a pole, and he could see that the house was tiny and flimsy. He felt a little sorry for the occupants of such a place — and then asked himself who in this world had more than a temporary shelter. A hut, a jeweled pavilion, they were the same. A pleasantly green vine was climbing a board wall. The white flowers, he thought, had a rather self-satisfied look about them.
“‘I needs must ask the lady far off yonder,’” he said, as if to himself.
An attendant came up, bowing deeply. “The white flowers far off yonder are known as ‘evening faces,’” he said.” A very human Sort of name — and what a shabby place they have picked to bloom in.”
It was as the man said. The neighborhood was a poor one, chiefly of small houses. Some were leaning precariously, and there were “evening faces” at the sagging eaves.
“A hapless sort of flower. Pick one off for me, would you?”
The man went inside the raised gate and broke off a flower. A pretty little girl in long, unlined yellow trousers of raw silk came out through a sliding door that seemed too good for the surroundings. Beckoning to the man, she handed him a heavily scented white fan.
“Put it on this. It isn’t much of a fan, but then it isn’t much of a flower either.”
Koremitsu, coming out of the gate, passed it on to Genji.
“They lost the key, and I have had to keep you waiting. You aren’t likely to be recognized in such a neighborhood, but it’s not a very nice neighborhood to keep you waiting in.”
Genji’s carriage was pulled in and he dismounted. Besides Koremitsu, a son and a daughter, the former an eminent cleric, and the daughter’s husband, the governor of Mikawa, were in attendance upon the old woman. They thanked him profusely for his visit.
The old woman got up to receive him. “I did not at all mind leaving the world, except for the thought that I would no longer be able to see you as I am seeing you now. My vows seem to have given me a new lease on life, and this visit makes me certain that I shall receive the radiance of Lord Amitābha with a serene and tranquil heart.” And she collapsed in tears.
Genji was near tears himself. “It has worried me enormously that you should be taking so long to recover, and I was very sad to learn that you have withdrawn from the world. You must live a long life and see the career I make for myself. I am sure that if you do you will be reborn upon the highest summits of the Pure Land. I am told that it is important to rid oneself of the smallest regret for this world.”
Fond of the child she has reared, a nurse tends to look upon him as a paragon even if he is a half-wit. How much prouder was the old woman, who somehow gained stature, who thought of herself as eminent in her own right for having been permitted to serve him. The tears flowed on.
Her children were ashamed for her. They exchanged glances. It would not do to have these contortions taken as signs of a lingering affection for the world.
Genji was deeply touched. “The people who were fond of me left me when I was very young. Others have come along, it is true, to take care of me, but you are the only one I am really attached to. In recent years there have been restrictions upon my movements, and I have not been able to look in upon you morning and evening as I would have wished, or indeed to have a good visit with you. Yet I become very depressed when the days go by and I do not see you.‘Would that there were on this earth no final partings.’” He spoke with great solemnity, and the scent of his sleeve, as he brushed away a tear, quite flooded the room.
Yes, thought the children, who had been silently reproaching their mother for her want of control, the fates had been kind to her. They too were now in tears.
Genji left orders that prayers and services be resumed. As he went out he asked for a torch, and in its light examined the fan on which the “evening face” had rested. It was permeated with a lady’s perfume, elegant and alluring. On it was a poem in a disguised cursive hand that suggested breeding and taste. He was interested.
“I think I need not ask whose face it is,
So bright, this evening face, in the shining dew.”
“Who is living in the house to the west?” he asked Koremitsu. “Have you perhaps had occasion to inquire?”
At it again, thought Koremitsu. He spoke somewhat tartly. “I must confess that these last few days I have been too busy with my mother to think about her neighbors.”
“You are annoyed with me. But this fan has the appearance of something it might be interesting to look into. Make inquiries, if you will, please, of someone who knows the neighborhood.”
Koremitsu went in to ask his mother’s steward, and emerged with the information that the house belonged to a certain honorary vice-governor.