It was late in the Third Month. Murasaki’s spring garden was coming ever more to life with blossoms and singing birds. Elsewhere spring had departed, said the other ladies, and why did it remain here? Genji thought it a pity that the young women should have only distant glimpses of the moss on the island, a deeper green each day. He had carpenters at work on Chinese pleasure boats, and on the day they were launched he summoned palace musicians for water music. Princes and high courtiers came crowding to hear.
Akikonomu was in residence at Rokujō. Now was the time, thought Murasaki, for a proper answer to the poem about the garden that “awaits the spring.” Genji agreed. It would have been good to show these spring blossoms to the empress herself, but casual visits were out of the question for one in her position. Numbers of her young women who were thought likely to enjoy such an outing were therefore rowed out over the south lake, which ran from her southwest quarter to Murasaki’s southeast, with a hillock separating the two. The boats left from the hillock. Murasaki’s women were stationed in the angling pavilion at the boundary between the two quarters.
The dragon and phoenix boats were brilliantly decorated in the Chinese fashion. The little pages and helmsmen, their hair still bound up in the page-boy manner, wore lively Chinese dress, and everything about the arrangements was deliciously exotic, to add to the novelty, for the empress’s women, of this southeast quarter. The boats pulled up below a cliff at an island cove, where the smallest of the hanging rocks was like a detail of a painting. The branches caught in mists from either side were like a tapestry, and far away in Murasaki’s private gardens a willow trailed its branches in a deepening green and the cherry blossoms were rich and sensuous. In other places they had fallen, but here they were still at their smiling best, and along the galleries wisteria was beginning to send forth its lavender. Yellow yamabuki reflected on the lake as if about to join its own image. Waterfowl swam past in amiable pairs, and flew in and out with twigs in their bills, and one longed to paint the mandarin ducks as they coursed about on the water. Had that Chinese woodcutter been present, he might well have gazed on until his ax handle rotted away. Presently it was evening.
“The breezes blow, the wave flowers brightly blossom.
Will it be the Cape of Yamabuki?”
“Is this the lake where flows the River of Ide,
That yamabuki should plunge into its depths?”
“There is no need to visit Turtle Mountain.
‘Ageless’ shall be the name of our pleasure boats.”
“Our boats row out into the bright spring sun,
And water drops from the oars like scattering petals.”
Poem followed poem. The young women seemed to forget that the day must end and they must go home.
In the gathering twilight, to the sonorous strains of “The Royal Deer,” the boats were pulled up once more at the angling pavilion and the women reluctantly disembarked. It was a building of simple but very great elegance. The lengths to which the competitive young women had gone with their dress and grooming made one think of a tapestry upon which blossoms had fallen. The music, all very novel, went on and on, for Genji had chosen musicians whose repertory did not permit of monotony.
It was night, and they seemed indefatigable. Flares having been put out in the garden, they were invited to the moss carpet below the verandas, and the princes and high courtiers had places above with the kotos and flutes in which they took such pride. The most accomplished of the professional flutists struck up a melody in the sōjō mode, in which the courtiers joined most brilliantly with their kotos, and as they moved on to “How Grand the Day” even the most ignorant of the footmen off among the horses and carriages seemed to respond. The sky and the music, the spring modes and echoes, all seemed better here — no one could fail to see the difference. The night was passed in music. With “Joy of Spring” the mode shifted to an intimate minor. Prince Hotaru twice sang “Green Willow,” in very good voice. Genji occasionally
Morning came. From behind her fences Akikonomu listened to the morning birds and feared that her autumn garden had lost the contest.
Though a perpetual spring radiance seemed to hang over this Rokujō mansion, there were those who had complained of a want of interesting young ladies. Now the rumors were of a new lady in the northeast quarter, and how pretty she was and how attentive Genji seemed to be. The anticipated stream of letters had commenced. Several of those whose sta- tion in life made them confident that their candidacy was acceptable already had their intermediaries at work. Others seemed to be keeping their ardor rather more to themselves. It is to be imagined that several of the suitors, Tō no Chūjō‘s son, for instance, would have dropped their suits if they had known who she really was.
Prince Hotaru, Genji’s brother, had lost his wife of some years and for three years had been living a lonely bachelor’s life. He was now quite open with his suit. Pretending to be hopelessly drunk, he was very amusing indeed as he gamboled about all willow-like with a spray of wisteria in his cap. Quite as expected, thought Genji, though he gave no sign that he noticed.
The wine flagon came around once more and the prince pretended to be in great discomfort. “If there were not something rather special to keep me here, I think I would be trying to escape. It is too much, oh, really too much.” He refused to drink any more.
“Lavender holds me and puts me in mind of things.
I mean, let them say what they will, to throw myself in.”
He generously divided his wisteria and put a sprig in Genji’s cap.
Genji smiled broadly.
“Please hold yourself in abeyance beneath these flowers,
To judge if the plunge would have the proper effect.”
The prince accepted this suggestion, it seemed, and stayed on. The morning concert was if anything livelier than the evening concert had been.
Today there was to be a reading of the Prajnapāramitā Sutra commissioned by Empress Akikonomu. Many of the guests had been given rooms in which to change to formal dress. Though some had previous engagements and excused themselves, Genji’s prestige had removed any doubt that it would be a grand and solemn occasion. He led the assembly to Akikonomu’s quarter at noon.
Murasaki had prepared the floral offerings. She chose eight of her prettiest little girls to deliver them, dressing four as birds and four as butterflies. The birds brought cherry blossoms in silver vases, the butterflies yamabuki in gold vases. In wonderfully rich and full bloom, they completed a perfect picture. As the party rowed out from the hillock to Akikonomu’s end of the lake, a breeze came up to scatter a few cherry petals. The skies were clear and happy, and the little girls were charming in the delicate spring haze. Akikonomu had declined Murasaki’s offer of awnings and had instead put out seats for the orchestra in one of the galleries adjoining her main hall. The little girls came to the stairs with their flowers. Incense bearers received them and set them out before the holy images.
Yūgiri delivered this poem from Murasaki:
“Low in your grasses the cricket awaits the autumn
And views with scorn these silly butterflies.”
Akikonomu smiled, recognizing an answer to her poem about the autumn leaves.
“No, Your Majesty, nothing surpasses that garden,” said one of the women, still drunk with the joys of the day before.
The music for the dance of the Kalavinka bird rang forth to the singing of warblers, to which the waterfowl on the lake added their clucks and chirps, and it was with very great regret that the audience saw the dance come to an end. The butterflies seemed to fly higher than the birds as they disappeared behind a low fence over which poured a cascade of yamabuki. Akikonomu’s assistant chamberlain asked that courtiers of appropriate rank distribute gifts: to the birds, white robes lined with red, and to the butterflies robes of pale russet lined with yellow. It would seem that Akikonomu had made careful preparations. Then came gifts for the musicians, white singlets and bolts of cloth. Yūgiri received a lady’s ensemble, most conspicuously a lavender robe lined with blue.
This was Akikonomu’s reply:
“I weep in my longing to follow your butterflies.
You put up fences of yamabuki between us.”
Are the grand ones of the realm consistently good at poetry? One is sometimes disappointed.
I had forgotten: Murasaki had had lavish gifts for her guests too. But I fear that the details would be tiresome. In any event, there were tasteful diversions morning and night to keep the least of the serving women happy, and there were these poetic exchanges.
Murasaki and Tamakazura sometimes wrote to each other, now that they had been introduced. It was too early perhaps to know whether Tamakazura was a comrade to turn to for help, but she did seem to be quietly good-natured and not the sort to cause trouble. People were on the whole favorably disposed towards her. She had many suitors by now, but it did not seem that Genji was ready for a decision. Perhaps not quite sure, indeed, that he wished to be consistent in the role of the good parent, he considered telling her father everything.
Yūgiri was permitted to approach her curtains and she favored him with direct replies. She was uncomfortable at the need to do so, but her Women quite approved. He was always very solemn and proper. Tō no Chūjō’s sons, who were his constant companions, were seen sighing and mooning about the house, and now and again they dropped hints of their interest. She was much disturbed, not because she disliked them but because they were victims of false appearances. It was not a matter she could discuss openly with Genji, however. He was charmed at the evidences, shy and girlish, that she considered him her guardian. He could not have said that she looked very much like her mother, but there was an indefinable resemblance in tone and manner. She was clearly the more intelligent of the two
The Fourth Month came, and the change to bright summer clothes. Even the skies seemed to favor the occasion. Genji passed his spare time, of which he had a great deal, in music and the like. It was as he had expected: the flood of love letters was rising. Looking them over as he visited her apartments, he encouraged her to answer the more likely ones. These promptings had the effect of putting her on guard.
Prince Hotaru was already describing the torments of unrequited love.
Genji smiled. “He was my favorite brother when we were boys. We kept nothing from each other. Or rather he kept one thing from me, his romantic life. He was very secretive about that. It is interesting and at the same time a little sad that he should still burn with such a youthful flame. You must answer. When a lady really matters to him, there is no one quite like him, I often think, for letting her know it. And he is most amusing company.”
He made his brother seem very attractive, but she looked away in embarrassment.
General Higekuro was on the whole a very earnest and serious man, but he seemed bent on illustrating the truth that even the most superior of men, even Confucius himself, can stumble as he makes his way through the wilderness of love. Yet his letters were interesting.
Genji’s attention was caught by a bit of azure Chinese paper gently but richly perfumed and folded into a tiny knot.
“You haven’t even opened it,” he said, undoing the knot himself. The hand was a strong one in the modern style. This was the poem:
“You cannot know how deep my feelings are.
Their colors are hidden, like waters among the rocks.”
“And whose feelings might they be?” he asked. Her answer was evasive.
He summoned Ukon. “You must rate them carefully and have her answer the ones that seem deserving. The dissolute gallants of our day are capable of anything, but sometimes they are not wholly to blame. My own experience has been that a lady can at the outset seem cold and unfeeling and unaware of the gentler things, and if she is of no importance I can call her impertinent and forget about her. Yet in idle exchanges about birds and flowers the lady who teases with silence can seem very interesting. If the man does forget, then of course pa............