The Tale of Genji . Murasaki Shikibu
that is hardly an appropriate way to describe a husband, and indeed it is hardly civil. I try this approach and I try that, hoping to break through, but you seem intent on defending all the approaches. Well, one of these years, perhaps, if I live long enough.”
He withdrew to the bedchamber. She did not follow. Though there were things he would have liked to say, he lay down with a sigh. He closed his eyes, but there was too much on his mind to permit sleep.
He thought of the little girl and how he would like to see her grown into a woman. Her grandmother was of course right when she said that the girl was still too young for him. He must not seem insistent. And yet — was there not some way to bring her quietly to Nijō and have her beside him, a comfort and a companion? prince Hyōbu was a dashing and stylish man, but no one could have called him remarkably handsome. Why did the girl so take after her aunt? perhaps because aunt and father were children of the same empress. These thoughts seemed to bring the girl closer, and he longed to have her for his own.
The next day he wrote to the nun. He would also seem to have communicated his thoughts in a casual way to the bishop. To the nun he said:
“I fear that, taken somewhat aback by your sternness, I did not express myself very well. I find strength in the hope that something of the resolve demanded of me to write this letter will have conveyed itself to you.”
With it was a tightly folded note for the girl:
“The mountain blossoms are here beside me still.
All of myself I left behind with them.
“I am fearful of what the night winds might have done.”
The writing, of course, and even the informal elegance of the folding, quite dazzled the superannuated woman who received the letter. Somewhat overpowering, thought the grandmother.
She finally sent back: “I did not take your farewell remarks seriously; and now so soon to have a letter from you — I scarcely know how to reply. She cannot even write’Naniwa’ properly, and how are we to expect that she give you a proper answer?
“Brief as the time till the autumn tempests come
To scatter the flowers — so brief your thoughts of her.
“I am deeply troubled.”
The bishop’s answer was in the same vein. Two or three days later Genji sent Koremitsu off to the northern hills.
“There is her nurse, the woman called Shōnagon. Have a good talk with her.”
How very farsighted, thought Koremitsu, smiling at the thought of the girl they had seen that evening.
The bishop said that he was much honored to be in correspondence with Genji. Koremitsu was received by Shōnagon, and described Genji’s apparent state of mind in great detail. He was a persuasive young man and he made a convincing case, but to the nun and the others this suit for the hand of a mere child continued to seem merely capricious. Genji’s letter was warm and earnest. There was a note too for the girl:
“Let me see your first exercises at the brush.
“No Shallow Spring, this heart of mine, believe me.
And why must the mountain spring then seem so distant?”
This was the nun’s reply:
“You drink at the mountain stream, your thoughts turn elsewhere.
Do you hope to see the image you thus disturb?”
Koremitsu’s report was no more encouraging. Shōnagon had said that they would be returning to the city when the nun was a little stronger and would answer him then.
Fujitsubo was ill and had gone home to her family. Genji managed a sympathetic thought or two for his lonely father, but his thoughts were chiefly on the possibility of seeing Fujitsubo. He quite halted his visits to other ladies. All through the day, at home and at court, he sat gazing off into space, and in the evening he would press Omyōbu to be his intermediary. How she did it I do not know; but she contrived a meeting. It is sad to have to say that his earlier attentions, so unwelcome, no longer seemed real, and the mere thought that they had been successful was for Fujitsubo a torment. Determined that there would not be another meeting, she was shocked to find him in her presence again. She did not seek to hide her distress, and her efforts to turn him away delighted him even as they put him to shame. There was no one else quite like her. In that fact was his undoing: he would be less a prey to longing if he could find in her even a trace of the ordinary. And the tumult of thoughts and feelings that now assailed him — he would have liked to consign it to the Mountain of Obscurity. It might have been better, he sighed, so short was the night, if he had not come at all.
“So few and scattered the nights, so few the dreams.
Would that the dream tonight might take me with it.”
He was in tears, and she did, after all, have to feel sorry for him.
“Were I to disappear in the last of dreams
Would yet my name live on in infamy?”
She had every right to be unhappy, and he was sad for her. Omyōbu gathered his clothes and brought them out to him.
Back at Nijō he spent a tearful day in bed. He had word from Omyōbu that her lady had not read his letter. So it always was, and yet he was hurt. He remained in distraught seclusion for several days. The thought that his father might be wondering about his absence filled him with terror.
Lamenting the burden of sin that seemed to be hers, Fujitsubo was more and more unwell, and could not bestir herself, despite repeated messages summoning her back to court. She was not at all her usual self — and what was to become of her? She took to her bed as the weather turned warmer. Three months had now passed and her condition was clear; and the burden of sin now seemed to have made it necessary that she submit to curious and reproving stares. Her women thought her behavior very curious indeed. Why had she let so much time pass without informing the emperor? There was of course a crucial matter of which she spoke to no one. Ben, the daughter of her old nurse, and Omyōbu, both of whom were very close to her and attended her in the bath, had ample opportunity to observe her condition. Omyōbu was aghast. Her lady had been trapped by the harshest of fates. The emperor would seem to have been informed that a malign spirit had possession of her, and to have believed the story, as did the court in general. He sent a constant stream of messengers, which terrified her and allowed no pause in her sufferings.
Genji had a strange, rather awful dream. He consulted a soothsayer, who said that it portended events so extraordinary as to be almost unthinkable.
“It contains bad omens as well. You must be careful.”
“It was not my own dream but a friend’s. We will see whether it comes true, and in the meantime you must keep it to yourself.”
What could it mean? He heard of Fujitsubo’s condition, thought of their night together, and wondered whether the two might be related. He exhausted his stock of pleas for another meeting. Horrified that matters were so out of hand, Omyōbu could do nothing for him. He had on rare occasions had a brief note, no more than a line or two; but now even these messages ceased coming.
Fujitsubo returned to court in the Seventh Month. The emperor’s affection for her had only grown in her absence. Her condition was now apparent to everyone. A slight emaciation made her beauty seem if anything nearer perfection, and the emperor kept her always at his side. The skies as autumn approached called more insistently for music. Keeping Genji too beside him, the emperor had him try his hand at this and that instrument. Genji struggled to control himself, but now and then a sign of his scarcely bearable feelings did show through, to remind the lady of what she wanted more than anything to forget.
Somewhat improved, the nun had returned to the city. Genji had someone make inquiry about her residence and wrote from time to time. It was natural that her replies should show no lessening of her opposition, but it did not worry Genji as it once had. He had more considerable worries. His