Many still mourned Kashiwagi, who had vanished before his time. Genji tended to feel very deeply the deaths even of people who had been nothing to him, and he had been fond of Kashiwagi and had made him a constant companion. It is true that he had good reason to be angry, but the fond memories were stronger than the resentment. He commissioned a sutra reading on the anniversary of the death. And he was consumed with pity for the little boy, whose agent he secretly thought himself as he made a special offering of a hundred pieces of gold. Tō no Chūjō was very grateful, though of course he did not know Genji’s real reasons.

Yūgiri too made lavish offerings and commissioned his own memorial services. He was especially attentive to the Second Princess, more so, indeed, than her brothers-in-law. How generous he was, said Kashiwagi’s parents, far more generous than they had any right to expect. But these evidences of the esteem in which the world had held their dead son only added to the bitterness of the regret.

The Suzaku emperor now worried about his second daughter, whose plight was no doubt the object of much malicious laughter. And his third daughter had become a nun, and cut herself off from the pleasures of ordinary life. The disappointment was in both cases very cruel. He had resolved, however, to concern himself no more with the affairs of this vulgar world, and he held his peace. He would think, in the course of his devotions, that the Third Princess would be at hers. Since she had taken her vows he had found numerous small occasions for writing to her. Thinking the mountain harvests rather wonderful, the bamboo shoots that thrust their way up through the undergrowth of a thicket near his retreat, the taro root from deeper in the mountains, he sent them off to the Third Princess with an affectionate letter at the end of which he said:

“My people make their way with great difficulty through the misty spring hills, and here, the merest token, is what I asked them to gather for you.

“Away from the world, you follow after me,

And may we soon arrive at the same destination.

“It is not easy to leave the world behind.”

Genji came upon her in tears. He wondered why she should have these bowls ranged before her, and then saw the letter and gifts. He was much moved. The Suzaku emperor had written most feelingly of his longing and his inability, when life was so uncertain, to see her as he would wish. “May we soon arrive at the same destination.” He would not have called it a notable statement, but the priestly succinctness was very effective all the same. Evidences of Genji’s indifference had no doubt added to the emperor’s worries.

Shyly the Third Princess set about composing her answer. She gave the messenger a figured blue-gray robe. Genji took up a scrap of paper half hidden under her curtains and found something written on it in a childlike, uncertain hand.

“Longing for a place not of this world,

May I not join you in your mountain dwelling?”

“He worries so about you,” said Genji. “It is not kind of you to say these things.”

She turned away from him. The still-rich hair at her forehead and the girlish beauty of her profile seemed very sad. Because the sadness was urging him towards something he might regret and be taken to task for, he pulled a curtain between them, trying very hard all the same not to seem distant or chilly.

The little boy, who had been with his nurse, emerged from her curtains. Very pretty indeed, he tugged purposefully at Genji’s sleeve. He was wearing a robe of white gossamer and a red chemise of a finely figured Chinese weave. All tangled up in his skirts, he seemed bent on divesting himself of these cumbersome garments and had stripped himself naked to the waist. Though of course it is the sort of thing all little children do, he was so pretty in his dishabille that Genji was reminded of a doll carved from a newly stripped willow. The shaven head had the blue-black tinge of the dewflower, and the lips were red and full. Already there was a sort of quelling repose about the eyes. Genji was strongly reminded of Kashiwagi, but not even Kashiwagi had had such remarkable good looks. How was one to explain them? There was scarcely any resemblance at all to the Third Princess. Genji thought of his own face as he saw it in the mirror, and was not sure that a comparison of the two was ridiculous. Able to walk a few steps, the boy tottered up to a bowl of bamboo shoots. He bit at one and, having rejected it, scattered them in all directions.

“What vile manners! Do something, someone. Get them away from him. These women are not kind, sir, and they will already be calling you a little glutton. Will that please you?” He took the child in his arms. “Don’t you notice something rather different about his eyes? I have not seen great numbers of children, but I would have thought that at his age they are children and no more, one very much like another. But he is such an individual that he worries me. We have a little princess in residence, and he may be her ruination and his Own. Will I live, I wonder, to watch them grow up? ‘If we wish to see them we have but to stay alive.’” He was gazing earnestly at the little boy.

“Please, my lord. That is as good as inviting bad luck,” said one of the women.

Just cutting his teeth, the boy had found a good teething object. He dribbled furiously as he bit at a bamboo shoot.

“I see that his desires take him in a different direction,” Genji said, laughing.

“We cannot forget unpleasant associations.

We do not discard the young bamboo even so.”

He parted child and bamboo, but the boy only laughed and went on about Iris business.

He was more beautiful by the day, so beautiful that people were a little afraid for him. Genji was beginning to think that it might in fact be possible to “forget unpleasant associations.” It had been predestined, no doubt, that such a child be born, and there had been no escaping them. But so often in his life thoughts about predestination had failed to make actual events more acceptable. Of all the ladies in his life the Third Princess had had the most to recommend her. The bitterness surged forward once more and the transgression seemed very hard to excuse.

Yūgiri still thought a great deal about Kashiwagi’s last words. He wanted to see how they might affect Genji. But of course he had very little to go on, and it would not be easy to think of the right questions. He could only wait and hope that he might one day have the whole truth, and a chance to tell Genji of Kashiwagi’s dying thoughts.

On a sad autumn evening he visited the Second Princess. She had apparently been having a quiet evening with her music. He was shown to a south room where instruments and music still lay scattered about. The rustling of silk and the rich perfume as a lady who had been out near the south veranda withdrew to the inner rooms had a sort of mysterious elegance that he found very exciting. It was the princess’s mother who as usual came out to receive him. For a time they exchanged reminiscences. Yūgiri’s own house was noisy and crowded and he was used to troops of unruly children. The Ichijō house was by contrast quiet and even lonely. Though the garden had been neglected, an air of courtly refinement still hung over house and garden alike. The flower beds caught the evening light in a profusion of bloom and the humming of autumn insects was as he had imagined it in an earlier season. He reached for a Japanese koto. Tuned now to a minor key, it seemed to have been much favored and still held the scent of the most recent player. This was no place, he thought, for the impetuous sort of young man. Unworthy impulses could too easily have their way, and the gossips something to amuse themselves with. Very competently, he played a strain on the koto he had so often heard Kashiwagi play.

“What a delight it was to hear him,” he said to the princess’s mother. “Dare I imagine that an echo of his playing might still be in the instrument, and that Her Highness might be persuaded to bring it out for us?”

“But the strings are broken, and she seems to have forgotten all that she ever knew. I am told that when His Majesty had his daughters at their instruments he did not think her the least talented of them. But so much time has gone by since she last had much heart for music, and I am afraid that it would only be cause to remember.”

“Yes, one quite understands. ‘Were it a world which puts an end to sorrow.’” Looking out over the garden, he pushed the koto towards the old lady.

“No, please. Let me hear more, so that I may decide whether an echo of his playing does indeed still remain in the instrument. Let it take away the unhappy sounds of more recent days.”

“But it is the sound of the middle string that is important. I cannot hope to have it from my own hand.”

He pushed the koto under the princess’s blinds, but she did not seem inclined to take it. He did not press her.

The moon had come out in a cloudless sky. And what sad, envious thoughts would the calls of the wild geese, each wing to wing with its mate, be summoning up? The breeze was chilly. In the autumn sadness she played a few notes, very faintly and tentatively, on a Chinese koto. He was deeply moved, but wished that he had heard more or nothing at all. Taking up a lute, he softly played the Chinese lotus song with all its intimate overtones.

“I would certainly not wish to seem forward, but I had hoped that you might have something to say in the matter.”

But it was a melody that brought inhibitions, and she kept her sad thoughts to herself.

“There is a shyness which is more affecting

Than any sound of word or sound of koto.”

Her response was to play the last few measures of the Chinese song. She added a poem:

“I feel the sadness, in the autumn night.

How can I speak of it if not through the koto?”

He was resentful that he had heard so little. The solemn tone of the Japanese koto, the melody which the one now gone had so earnestly taught her, were as they had always been, and yet there was something chilling, almost menacing in them.

“Well, I have plucked away on this instrument and that and kept my feelings no secret. My old friend is perhaps reproving me for having enjoyed so much of the autumn night with you. I shall come again, though you may be sure that I shall do nothing to upset you. Will you leave our koto as it is until then? People do have a way of thinking thoughts about a koto and about a lady.” And so he left hints, not too extremely broad, behind him.

“I doubt,” said the old lady, “that anyone could reprove us for enjoying ourselves this evening. You have made the evening seem short with honest talk of the old days. I am sure that if you were to let me hear more of your playing it would add years to my life.”

She gave him a flute as he left.

“It is said to have a rich past. I would hate to have it lost among these tangles of wormwood. You must play on it as you leave and drown out the calls of your runners. That would give me great pleasure.”

“Far too valuable an addition to my retinue.”

It did indeed have a rich past. It had been Kashiwagi’s favorite. Yūgiri had heard him say more than once that it had possibilities h............