The Tale of Genji . Murasaki Shikibu
so, and our party has become so numerous that it would be out of the question to call on you. I shall hope to do so soon.”
His son, the governor of Chikuzen, brought the message. Genji had taken notice of the youth and obtained an appointment for him in the imperial secretariat. He was sad to see his patron in such straits, but people were watching and had a way of talking, and he stayed only briefly.
“It was kind of you to come,” said Genji. “I do not often see old friends these days.”
His reply to the assistant viceroy was in a similar vein. Everyone in the Kyushu party and in the party newly arrived from the city as well was deeply moved by the governor’s description of what he had seen. The tears of sympathy almost seemed to invite worse misfortunes.
The Gosechi dancer contrived to send him a note.
“Now taut, now slack, like my unruly heart,
The tow rope is suddenly still at the sound of a koto.
“Scolding will not improve me.”
He smiled, so handsome a smile that his men felt rather inadequate.
“Why, if indeed your heart is like the tow rope,
Unheeding must you pass this strand of Suma?
“I had not expected to leave you for these wilds.”
There once was a man who, passing Akashi on his way into exile, brought pleasure into an innkeeper’s life with an impromptu Chinese poem. For the Gosechi dancer the pleasure was such that she would have liked to make Suma her home.
As time passed, the people back in the city, and even the emperor himself, found that Genji was more and more in their thoughts. The crown prince was the saddest of all. His nurse and Omyōbu would find him weeping in a corner and search helplessly for ways to comfort him. Once so fearful of rumors and their possible effect on this child of hers and Genji’s, Fujitsubo now grieved that Genji must be away.
In the early days of his exile he corresponded with his brothers and with important friends at court. Some of his Chinese poems were widely praised.
Kokiden flew into a rage. “A man out of favor with His Majesty is expected to have trouble feeding himself. And here he is living in a fine stylish house and saying awful things about all of us. No doubt the grovelers around him are assuring him that a deer is a horse.
And so writing to Genji came to be rather too much to ask of people, and letters stopped coming.
The months went by, and Murasaki was never really happy. All the women from the other wings of the house were now in her service. They had been of the view that she was beneath their notice, but as they came to observe her gentleness, her magnanimity in household matters, her thoughtfulness, they changed their minds, and not one of them departed her service. Among them were women of good family. A glimpse of her was enough to make them admit that she deserved Genji’s altogether remarkable affection.
And as time went by at Suma, Genji began to feel that he could bear to be away from her no longer. But he dismissed the thought of sending for her: this cruel punishment was for himself alone. He was seeing a little of plebeian life, and he thought it very odd and, he must say, rather dirty. The smoke near at hand would, he supposed, be the smoke of the salt burners’ fires. In fact, someone was trying to light wet kindling just behind the house.
“Over and over the rural ones light fires.
Not so unflagging the urban ones with their visits.”
It was winter, and the snowy skies were wild. He beguiled the tedium with music, playing the koto himself and setting Koremitsu to the flute, with Yoshikiyo to sing for them. When he lost himself in a particularly moving strain the others would fall silent, tears in their eyes.
He thought of the lady the Chinese emperor sent off to the Huns. How must the emperor have felt, how would Genji himself feel, in so disposing of a beautiful lady? He shuddered, as if some such task might be approaching, “at the end of a frosty night’s dream.”
A bright moon flooded in, lighting the shallow-eaved cottage to the farthest corners. He was able to imitate the poet’s feat of looking up at the night sky without going to the veranda. There was a weird sadness in the setting moon. “The moon goes always to the west,” he whispered.
“All aimless is my journey through the clouds.
It shames me that the unswerving moon should see me.”
He recited it silently to himself. Sleepless as always, he heard the sad calls of the plovers in the dawn and (the others were not yet awake) repeated several times to himself:
“Cries of plovers in the dawn bring comfort
To one who awakens in a lonely bed.”
His practice of going through his prayers and ablutions in the deep of night seemed strange and wonderful to his men. Far from being tempted to leave him, they did not return even for brief visits to their families.
The Akashi coast was a very short distance away. Yoshikiyo remembered the daughter of the former governor, now a monk, and wrote to her. She did not answer.
“I would like to see you for a few moments sometime at your convenience,” came a note from her father. “There is something I want to ask you.
Yoshikiyo was not encouraged. He would look very silly if he went to Akashi only to be turned away. He did not go.
The former governor was an extremely proud and intractable man. The incumbent governor was all-powerful in the province, but the eccentric old man had no wish to marry his daughter to such an upstart. He learned of Genji’s presence at Suma.
“I hear that the shining Genji is out of favor,” he said to his wife, “and that he has come to Suma. What a rare stroke of luck — the chance we have been waiting for. We must offer our girl.”
“Completely out of the question. People from the city tell me that he has any number of fine ladies of his own and that he has reached out for one of the emperor’s. That is why the scandal. What interest can he possibly take in a country lump like her?”
“You don’t understand the first thing about it. My own views couldn’t be more different. We must make our plans. We must watch for a chance to bring him here.” His mind was quite made up, and he had the look of someone whose plans were not easily changed. The finery which he had lavished upon house and daughter quite dazzled the eye.
“He may be ever so grand a grand gentleman,” persisted the mother, “but it hardly seems the right and sensible thing to choose of all people a man who has been sent into exile for a serious crime. It might just possibly be different if he were likely to look at her — but no. You must be joking.”
“A serious crime! Why in China too exactly this sort of thing happens to every single person who has remarkable talents and stands out from the crowd. And who do you think he is? His late mother was the daughter of my uncle, the Lord Inspector. She had talent and made a name for herself, and when there wasn’t enough of the royal love to go around, the others were jealous, and finally they killed her. But she left behind a son who was a royal joy and comfort. Ladies should have pride and high ambitions. I may be a bumpkin myself, but I doubt that he will think her entirely beneath contempt.”
Though the girl was no great beauty, she was intelligent and sensitive and had a gentle grace of which someone of far higher rank would have been proud. She was reconciled to her sad lot. No one among the great persons of the land was likely to think her worth a glance. The prospect of marrying someone nearer her station in life revolted her. If she was left behind by those on whom she depended, she would become a nun, or perhaps throw herself into the sea.
Her father had done everything for her. He sent her twice a gear to the Sumiyoshi Shrine, hoping that the god might be persuaded to notice her.
The New Year came to Suma, the days were longer, and time went by slowly. The sapling cherry Genji had planted the year