The Tale of Genji . Murasaki Shikibu
row the waves, and avoided dark sea tangles.
“How long, dripping brine on driftwood logs,
On logs of lament, must I gaze at this Suma coast?
“I cannot know when I will see you again.”
But at least his letters brought the comfort of knowing that he was well.
There came letters, sad and yet comforting, from the lady of the orange blossoms and her sister.
“Ferns of remembrance weigh our eaves ever more,
And heavily falls the dew upon our sleeves.”
There was no one, he feared, whom they might now ask to clear away the rank growth. Hearing that the long rains had damaged their garden walls, he sent off orders to the city that people from nearby manors see to repairs.
Oborozukiyo had delighted the scandalmongers, and she was now in very deep gloom. Her father, the minister, for she was his favorite daughter, sought to intercede on her behalf with the emperor and Kokiden. The emperor was moved to forgive her. She had been severely punished, it was true, for her grave offense, but not as severely as if she had been one of the companions of the royal bedchamber. In the Seventh Month she was permitted to return to court. She continued to long for Genji. Much of the emperor’s old love remained, and he chose to ignore criticism and keep her near him, now berating her and now making impassioned vows. He was a handsome man and he groomed himself well, and it was something of an affront that old memories should be so much with her.
“Things do not seem right now that he is gone,” he said one evening when they were at music together. “I am sure that there are many who feel the loss even more strongly than I do. I cannot put away the fear that I have gone against Father’s last wishes and that it is a dereliction for which I must one day suffer.” There were tears in his eyes and she too was weeping. “I have awakened to the stupidity of the world and I do not feel that I wish to remain in it much longer. And how would you feel if I were to die? I hate to think that you would grieve less for me gone forever than for him gone so briefly such a short distance away. The poet who said that we love while we live did not know a great deal about love.” Tears were streaming from Oborozukiyo’s eyes. “And whom might you be weeping for? It is sad that we have no children. I would like to follow Father’s instructions and adopt the crown prince, but people Will raise innumerable objections. It all seems very sad.”
There were some whose ideas of government did not accord with his own, but he was too young to impose his will. He Passed his days in helpless anger and sorrow.
At Suma, melancholy autumn winds were blowing. Genji’s house was some distance from the sea, but at night the wind that blew over the barriers, now as in Yukihira’s day, seemed to bring the surf to his bedside. Autumn was hushed and lonely at a place of exile. He had few companions. One night when they were all asleep be raised his head from his pillow and listened to the roar of the wind and of the waves, as if at his ear. Though he was unaware that he wept, his tears were enough to set his pillow afloat. He plucked a few notes on his koto, but the sound only made him sadder. “The waves on the strand, like moans of helpless longing.
The winds — like messengers from those who grieve?”
He had awakened the others. They sat up, and one by one they were in tears.
This would not do. Because of him they had been swept into exile, leaving families from whom they had never before been parted. It must be very difficult for them, and his own gloom could scarcely be making things easier. So he set about cheering them. During the day he would invent games and make jokes, and set down this and that poem on multicolored patchwork, and paint pictures on fine specimens of figured Chinese silk. Some of his larger paintings were masterpieces. He had long ago been told of this Suma coast and these hills and had formed a picture of them in his mind, and he found now that his imagination had fallen short of the actuality. What a pity, said his men, that they could not summon Tsunenori and Chieda and other famous painters of the day to add colors to Genji’s monochromes. This resolute cheerfulness had the proper effect. His men, four or five of whom were always with him, would not have dreamed of leaving him. There was a profusion of flowers in the garden. Genji came out, when the evening colors were at their best, to a gallery from which he had a good view of the coast. His men felt chills of apprehension as they watched him, for the loneliness of the setting made him seem like a visitor from another world. In a dark robe tied loosely over singlets of figured white and aster-colored trousers, he announced himself as “a disciple of the Buddha” and slowly intoned a sutra, and his men thought that they had never heard a finer voice. From offshore came the voices of fishermen raised in song. The barely visible boats were like little seafowl on an utterly lonely sea, and as he brushed away a tear induced by the splashing of oars and the calls of wild geese overhead, the white of his hand against the jet black of his rosary was enough to bring comfort to men who had left their families behind.
“Might they be companions of those I long for?
Their cries ring sadly through the sky of their journey.”
This was Yoshikiyo’s reply:
“I know not why they bring these thoughts of old,
These wandering geese. They were not then my comrades.”
And Koremitsu’s:
“No colleagues of mine, these geese beyond the clouds.
They chose to leave their homes, and I did dot.”
And that of the guards officer who had cut such a proud figure on the day of the Kamo lustration:
“Sad are their cries as they wing their way from home.
They still find solace, for they still have comrades.
It is cruel to lose one’s comrades.”
His father had been posted to Hitachi, but he himself had come with Genji. He contrived, for all that must have been on his mind, to seem cheerful.
A radiant moon had come out. They were reminded that it was the harvest full moon. Genji could not take his. eyes from it. On other such nights there had been concerts at court, and perhaps they of whom he was thinking would be gazing at this same moon and thinking of him.
“My thoughts are of you, old friend,” he sang, “two thousand leagues away.” His men were in tears.
His longing was intense at the memory of Fujitsubo’s farewell poem, and as other memories came back, one after another, he had to turn away to hide his tears. It was very late, said his men, but still he did not come inside.
“So long as I look upon it I find comfort,
The moon which comes again to the distant city.”
He thought of the emperor and how much he had resembled their father, that last night when they had talked so fondly of old times. “I still have with me the robe which my lord gave me,” he whispered, going inside. He did in fact have a robe that was a gift from the emperor, and he kept it always beside him.
“Not bitter thoughts alone does this singlet bring.
Its sleeves are damp with tears of affection too.”
The assistant viceroy of Kyushu was returning to the capital. He had a large family and was especially well provided with daughters, and since progress by land would have been difficult he had sent his wife and the daughters by boat. They proceeded by easy stages, putting in here and there along the coast. The scenery at Suma was especially pleasing, and the news that Genji was in residence produced blushes and sighs far out at sea. The Gosechi dancer would have liked to cut the tow rope and drift ashore. The sound of a koto came faint from the distance, the sadness of it joined to a sad setting and sad memories. The more sensitive members of the party were in tears.
The assistant viceroy sent a message. “I had hoped to call on you immediately upon returning to the city from my distant post, and when, to my surprise, I found myself passing your house, I was filled with the most intense feelings