Bright spring was dark this year. There was no relief from the sadness of the old year. Genji had callers as always, but he said that he was not well and remained in seclusion. He made an exception for his brother, Prince Hotaru, whom he invited behind his curtains.
“And why has spring so graciously come to visit
A lodging where there is none to admire the blossoms?”
The prince was in tears as he replied:
“You take me for the usual viewer of blossoms?
If that is so, I seek their fragrance in vain.”
He went out to admire the rose plum, and Genji was reminded of other springs. And who indeed was there to admire these first blossoms? He had arranged no concerts this year. In very many ways it was unlike the springs of other years.
The women who had been longest in attendance on Murasaki still wore dark mourning, and acceptance and resignation still eluded them. Their one real comfort was that Genji had not gone back to Rokujō. He was still here at Nijō, for them to serve. Although he had had no serious affairs with any of them, he had favored one and another from time to time. He might have been expected, in his loneliness, to favor them more warmly now, but the old desires seemed to have left him. Even the women on night duty slept outside his curtains. Sometimes, to break the tedium, he would talk of the old years. He would remember, now that romantic affairs meant so little to him, how hurt Murasaki had been by involvements of no importance at all. Why had he permitted himself even the trivial sort of dalliance for which he had felt no need to apologize? Murasaki had been too astute not to guess his real intentions; and yet, though she had been quick to recover from fits of jealousy which were never violent in any event, the fact was that she had suffered. Each little incident came back, until he felt that he had no room in his heart for them all. Sometimes a woman would comment briefly on an incident to which she had been witness, for there were women still with him who had seen everything.
Murasaki had given not the smallest hint of resentment when the Third Princess had come into the house. He had known all the same that she was upset, and he had been deeply upset in his turn. He remembered the snowy morning, a morning of dark, roiling clouds, when he had been kept waiting outside her rooms until he was almost frozen. She had received him quietly and affectionately and tried to hide her damp sleeves. All through the wakeful nights he thought of her courage and strength and longed to have them with him again, even in a dream.
“Just see what a snow we have had!” One of the women seemed to be returning to her own room. It was snowy dawn, just as then, and he was alone. That was the tragic difference.
“The snow will soon have left this gloomy world.
My days must yet go on, an aimless drifting.”
Having finished his ablutions, he turned as usual to his prayers. A woman gathered embers from the ashes of the night before and another brought in a brazier. Chūnagon and Chūjō were with him.
“Every night is difficult when you are alone, but last night was worse than most of them. I was a fool not to leave it all behind long ago.”
How sad life would be for these women if he were to renounce the world! His voice rising and falling in the silence of the chapel as he read from a sutra had always had a strange power to move, unlike any other, and for the women who served him it now brought tears that were not to be held back.
“I have always had everything,” he said to them. “That was the station in life I was born to. Yet it has always seemed that I was meant for sad things too. I have often wondered whether the Blessed One was not determined to make me see more than others what a useless, insubstantial world it is. I pretended that I did not see the point, and now as my life comes to a close I know the ultimate in sorrow. I see and accept my own inadequacies and the disabilities I brought with me from other lives. There is nothing, not the slenderest bond, that still ties me to the world. No, that is not true: there are you who seem so much nearer than when she was alive. It will be very hard to say goodbye.”
He dried his tears and still they flowed on. The women were weeping so piteously that they could not tell him what sorrow it would be to leave him.
In sad twilight in the morning and evening he would summon the women who had meant most to him. He had known Chūjō since she was a little girl, and would seem to have favored her with discreet attentions. She had been too fond of Murasaki to let the affair go on for very long, and he thought of her now, with none of the old desire, as one of Murasaki’s favorites, a sort of memento the dead lady had left behind. A pretty, good-natured woman, she was, so to speak, a yew tree nearer the dead lady’s grave than most.
He saw only the closest intimates. His brothers, good friends among the high courtiers — they all came calling, but for the most part he declined to see them. Try though he might to control himself, he feared that his senility and his crankish ways would shock callers and be what future generations would remember him by. People might assume, of course, that his retirement was itself evidence of senility, and that would be a pity; but it could be far worse to have people actually see him. Even Yūgiri he addressed through curtains and blinds. He had decided that he would bide his time until talk of the change in him had stopped and then take holy orders. He paid very brief calls at Rokujō, but because the flow of tears was only more torrential he was presently neglecting the Rokujō ladies.
The empress, his daughter, returned to court, leaving little Niou to keep him company. Niou remembered the instructions his “granny” had left and was most solicitous of the rose plum at the west wing. Genji thought it very kind of him, and completely charming. The Second Month had come, and plum trees in bloom and in bud receded into a delicate mist. Catching the bright song of a warbler in the rose plum that had been Murasaki’s especial favorite, Genji went out to the veranda.
“The warbler has come again. It does not know
That the mistress of its tree is here no more.”
It was high spring and the garden was as it had always been. He tried not to remember, but everything his eye fell on brought such trains of memory that he longed to be off in the mountains, where no birds sing. Tears darkened the yellow cascade of yamabuki. In most gardens the cherry blossoms had fallen. Here at Nijō the birch cherry followed the double cherries and presently it was time for the wisteria. Murasaki had brought all the spring trees, early and late, into her garden, and each came into bloom in its turn.
“My cherry,” said Niou. “Can’t we do something to keep it going? Maybe if we put up curtains all around and fasten them down tight. Then the wind can’t get at it.”
He was so pretty and so pleased with his proposal that Genji had to smile. “You are cleverer by a great deal than the man who wanted to cover the whole sky with his sleeve.” Niou was his one companion.
“It may be that we can’t go on being friends much longer,” he continued, feeling as always that tears were not far away. “We may not be able to see each other, even if it turns out that I still have some life left in me.”
The boy tugged uncomfortably at his sleeve and looked down. “Do you have to say what Granny said?”
At a corner balustrade, or at Murasaki’s curtains, Genji would sit gazing down into the garden. Some of the women were still in dark weeds, and those who had changed back to ordinary dress limited themselves to somber, unfigured cloths. Genji was in subdued informal dress. The rooms were austerely furnished and the house was hushed and lonely.
“Taking the final step, I must abandon
The springtime hedge that meant so much to her.”
No one was hurrying him off into a cell. It would be his own doing, and yet he was sad.
With time heavy on his hands, he visited the Third Princess. Niou and his nurse came along. As usual, Niou was everywhere, and the company of Kaoru, the princess’s little boy, seemed to make him forget his fickle cherry blossoms. The princess was in her chapel, a sutra in her hands. Genji had never found her very interesting or exciting, but he had to admire this quiet devotion, untouched, apparently, by regrets for the world and its pleasures. How bitterly ironical that this shallow little creature should have left him so far behind!
The flowers on the altar were lovely in the evening light.
“She is no longer here to enjoy her spring flowers, and I am afraid that they do very little for me these days. But if they are beautiful anywhere it is on an altar.” He paused. “And her yamabuki— it is in bloom as I cannot remember having seen it before. The sprays are gigantic. It is not a flower that insists on being admired for its elegance, and that may be why it seems so bright and cheerful. But why do you suppose it chose this year to come into such an explosion of bloom? — almost as if it wanted us to see how indifferent it is to our sorrows.”
“Spring declines to come to my dark valley,” she replied, somewhat nonchalantly.
Hardly an appropriate allusion. Even in the smallest matters Murasaki had seemed to know exactly what was wanted of her. So it had been to the end. And in earlier years? All the images in his memory spoke of sensitivity and understanding in mood and manner and words. And so once again he was letting one of his ladies see him in maudlin tears.
Evening mists came drifting in over the garden, which was very beautiful indeed.
He went to look in on the Akashi lady. She was startled to see him after such a long absence, but she received him with calm dignity. Yes, she was a superior lady. And Murasaki’s superiority had been of a different sort. He talked quietly of the old years.
“I was very soon taught what a mistake it is to be fond of anyone. I tried to make sure that I had no strong ties with the world. There was that time when the whole world seemed to turn against me. If it did not want me, I had nothing to ask of it. I could see no reason why I should not end my days off in the mountains. And now the end is coming and I still have not freed myself of the old ties. I go on as you see me. What a weakling I do seem to be.”
He spoke only indirectly of the matter most on his mind, but she understood and sympathized. “Even people whom the world could perfectly well do without have lingering regrets, and for you the regrets must be enormous. But I think that if you were to act too hastily the results might be rather unhappy. People will think you shallow and flighty and you will not be happy with yourself. I should imagine that the difficult decisions are the firmest once they are made. I have heard of so many people who have thrown away everything because of a little surprise or setback that really has not mattered in the least. That is not what you want. Be patient for a time, and if your resolve has not weakened when your grandchildren are grown up and their lives seem in order — I shall have no objections and indeed I shall be happy for you.”
It was good advice. “But the caution at the heart of the patience you recommend is perhaps even worse than shallowness.”
He spoke of the old days as memories came back. “When Fujitsubo died I thought the cherry trees should be in black. I had had so much time when I was a boy to admire her grace and beauty, and it may have been for that reason that I seemed to be the saddest of all when she died. Grief does not correspond exactly with love. When an old and continuous relationship comes to an end, the sorrow is not just for the relationship itself. The memory of the girl who was presently a woman and of all the years until suddenly at the end of your own life you are alone — this is too much to be borne. It is the proliferation of memories, some of them serious and some of them amusing, that makes for the deepest sorrow.”
He talked on into the night of things old and new, and was half inclined to spend the night with her; but presently he made his departure. She looked sadly after him, and he was puzzled at his own behavior.
Alone once more, he continued his devotions on through the night, resting only briefly in his drawing room. Early in the morning he got off a letter to the Akashi lady, including this poem:
