New Year’s Day was cloudless. There is joy inside the humblest of hedges as the grass begins to come green among patches of snow and there is a mist of green on the trees while the mists in the air tell of the advent of spring. There was great joy in the jeweled precincts of Genji’s Rokujō mansion, where every detail of the gardens was a pleasure and the ladies’ apartments were perfection.
The garden of Murasaki’s southeast quarter was now the most beautiful. The scent of plum blossoms, wafting in on the breeze and blending with the perfumes inside, made one think that paradise had come down to earth. Murasaki may have had her small worries, but she lived in peace and security. She had assigned the prettier of her young women to the service of Genji’s little daughter, and kept in her own service older women whose beauty was in fact of a statelier sort and who were extremely particular about their dress and grooming. They were gathered in little groups, helping the New Year with its “teething,” taking New Year’s cakes, and otherwise welcoming another year of the thousand which they laughingly appropriated for themselves. Genji came in. They had been caught with their ribbons undone, so to speak, and they quickly brought themselves to order.
“And are all these congratulations for me?” He smiled. “But you must have little wishes of your own. Tell me what they are, and I will then think of some that you forgot.” He seemed the very incarnation of New Year gladness.
Chūjō thought herself privileged to speak. “Assured by the mirror cake that ten centuries are in store for your august lordship, how should I think of anything for myself?”
All morning, callers streamed in and out of the Rokujō mansion. Genji dressed with great care for a round of calls upon his ladies. One would not have easily wearied of looking at him when his preparations were finished. “Your women were having such a good time that they made me envious?” he said to Murasaki. “Let us now have a congratulatory note for ourselves.
“The mirror of this lake, now freed from ice,
Offers an image of utter peace and calm.”
And indeed it did reflect an image of very great beauty and felicity.
“Upon the cloudless mirror of this lake,
Clear is the image, for ten thousand years.”
Everything about the scene seemed to make manifest a bond that was meant to last a thousand years — and New Year’s Day this year fell on the Day of the Rat.
He went to his daughter’s rooms. Her page girls and young serving women were out on the hill busying themselves with seedling pines, too intoxicated with the occasion, it would seem, to stay inside. The Akashi lady — it was clear that she had gone to enormous trouble — had sent over New Year delicacies in “bearded baskets” and with them a warbler on a very cleverly fabricated pine branch:
“The old one’s gaze rests long on the seedling pine,
Waiting to hear the song of the first warbler, in a village where it does not sing.”
Yes, thought Genji, it was a lonely time for her. One should not weep on New Year’s Day, but he was very close to tears.
“You must answer her yourself,” he said to his daughter. “You are surely not the sort to begrudge her that first song.” He brought ink and brush.
She was so pretty that even those who were with her day and night had to smile. Genji was feeling guilty for the years he had kept mother and daughter apart.
Cheerfully, she jotted down the first poem that came to her:
“The warbler left its nest long years ago,
But cannot forget the roots of the waiting pine.”
He went to the summer quarter of the lady of the orange blossoms. There was nothing in her summer gardens to catch the eye, nothing that was having its moment, and yet everything was quietly elegant. They were as close as ever, she and Genji, despite the passage of the years. It was an easy sort of intimacy which he would not have wished to change. They had their talks, pleasant and easy as talks between husband and wife seldom are. He pushed the curtain between them slightly aside. She made no effort to hide herself. Her azure robe was as quietly becoming as he had hoped it would be. Her hair had thinned sadly. He rather wished she might be persuaded to use a switch, though not so considerable a one as to attract notice. He knew that no other man was likely to have been as good to her, and in the knowledge was one of his private pleasures. What misfortunes might she not have brought upon herself had she been a less constant sort! Always when he was with her he thought first of his own dependability and her undemanding ways. They were a remarkable pair. They talked quietly of the year that had passed, and he went on to see Tamakazura.
She was not yet really at home, but her rooms were in very good taste. She had a large retinue of women and pretty little girls. Though much still needed to be done by way of furnishing and decorating, the rooms already wore an air of clean dignity. Even more striking was the elegance of their occupant. She seemed to enhance the glow of her yellow dress and send it into the deepest corners of the room, taking away the last gloomy shadow. It was a scene, he thought, which could never seem merely ordinary Perhaps because of her trials, her hair was just a little sparse at the edges. The casual flow drew wonderfully clean lines down over her skirts. And what might have happened to her if he had not brought her here? (The question may have suggested that he was already thinking of certain changes.) There was no barrier between them, though she was very much on her guard. It was a strange situation with a certain dreamlike quality about it that both interested and amused him.
“I feel as if you had been with us for years. Everything seems so cozy. I could not wish for more. I hope that by now you are feeling quite at home. Today you might just possibly want to go over to the southeast quarter, where you will find a young lady at her New Year’s music lesson. You need not have the slightest fear that anyone will say anything unpleasant about you.”
“I shall do exactly as you wish me to.”
In the circumstances, a most acceptable answer.
He went in the evening to the northwest quarter and called on the Akashi lady. He was greeted by the perfume from within her blinds, a delicate mixture that told of the most refined tastes. And where was the lady herself? He saw notebooks and the like disposed around an inkstone. He took one up, and another. A beautifully made koto lay against the elaborate fringe of a cushion of white Loyang damask, and in a brazier of equally fine make she had been burning courtly incenses, which mingled with the perfume burnt into all the furnishings to most wonderful effect. Little practice notes lay scattered about. The hand was a superior and most individual one, in an easy cursive style that allowed no suggestion of pretense or imposture. Pleased at having heard from her daughter, it would seem, she had been amusing herself with jottings from the anthologies.
And there was a poem of her own:
“Such happiness! The warbler among the blossoms
Calls across the glen to its old nest.”
“I had waited so long,” she had added; and, to comfort herself:”‘I dwell upon a hill of blossoming plums.’”
He smiled one of his most radiant smiles.
He had just taken up a brush when the lady came in. Luxury had not made her any less modest or retiring. Yes, she was different. Her dark tresses gleamed against the white of her robe, not so thick that they might have seemed assertive. He decided to spend the night with her, though sorry indeed if in other quarters the New Year must begin with spasms of jealousy. She was dear to him in a very special way, he thought somewhat uneasily. In Murasaki’s quarter he may have been the object of sterner reproaches than he had for himself.
It was not yet full daylight when he left. He might, thought the Akashi lady, have awaited a more seemly hour. In the southeast quarter he sensed that the welcome was mixed.
“I dozed off, and there I was sleeping like a baby, and no one woke me.” He was charmingly ingenuous, but Murasaki pretended to be asleep.
He lay down beside her. The sun was high when he arose.
New Year’s callers kept him busy that day and were his excuse for avoiding a confrontation. The whole court came. There was music and there were lavish gifts. Each of the guests was determined to cut the finest figure, though in fact (I say it regretfully) no one could challenge the host. By themselves they were strong enough lights, but Genji dimmed them all. The lowliest among them made sure that he was looking his best when he............