Ukon to summon his man, who got the carriage ready. The women of the house, though uneasy, sensed the depth of his feelings and were inclined to put their trust in him.
Dawn approached. No cocks were crowing. There was only the voice of an old man making deep obeisance to a Buddha, in preparation, it would seem, for a pilgrimage to Mitake. He seemed to be prostrating himself repeatedly and with much difficulty. All very sad. In a life itself like the morning dew, what could he desire so earnestly?
“Praise to the Messiah to come,” intoned the voice.
“Listen,” said Genji. “He is thinking of another world.
“This pious one shall lead us on our way
As we plight our troth for all the lives to come.”
The vow exchanged by the Chinese emperor and Yang Kuei-fei seemed to bode ill, and so he preferred to invoke Lord Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future; but such promises are rash.
“So heavy the burden I bring with me from the past,
I doubt that I should make these vows for the future.”
It was a reply that suggested doubts about his “lives to come.”
The moon was low over the western hills. She was reluctant to go with him. As he sought to persuade her, the moon suddenly disappeared behind clouds in a lovely dawn sky. Always in a hurry to be off before daylight exposed him, he lifted her easily into his carriage and took her to a nearby villa. Ukon was with them. Waiting for the caretaker to be summoned, Genji looked up at the rotting gate and the ferns that trailed thickly down over it. The groves beyond were still dark, and the mist and the dews were heavy. Genji’s sleeve was soaking, for he had raised the blinds of the carriage.
“This is a novel adventure, and I must say that it seems like a lot of trouble.
“And did it confuse them too, the men of old,
This road through the dawn, for me so new and strange?
“How does it seem to you?”
She turned shyly away.
“And is the moon, unsure of the hills it approaches,
Foredoomed to lose its way in the empty skies?
“I am afraid.”
She did seem frightened, and bewildered. She was so used to all those swarms of people, he thought with a smile.
The carriage was brought in and its traces propped against the veranda while a room was made ready in the west wing. Much excited, Ukon was thinking about earlier adventures. The furious energy with which the caretaker saw to preparations made her suspect who Genji was. It was almost daylight when they alighted from the carriage. The room was clean and pleasant, for all the haste with which it had been readied.
“There are unfortunately no women here to wait upon His Lordship.” The man, who addressed him through Ukon, was a lesser steward who had served in the Sanjō mansion of Genji’s father-in-law. “Shall I send for someone?”
“The last thing I want. I came here because I wanted to be in complete solitude, away from all possible visitors. You are not to tell a soul.”
The man put together a hurried breakfast, but he was, as he had said, without serving women to help him.
Genji told the girl that he meant to show her a love as dependable as “the patient river of the loons.” He could do little else in these strange lodgings.
The sun was high when he arose. He opened the shutters. All through the badly neglected grounds not a person was to be seen. The groves were rank and overgrown. The flowers and grasses in the foreground were a drab monotone, an autumn moor. The pond was choked with weeds, and all in all it was a forbidding place. An outbuilding seemed to be fitted with rooms for the caretaker, but it was some distance away.
“It is a forbidding place,” said Genji. “But I am sure that whatever devils emerge will pass me by.”
He was still in disguise. She thought it unkind of him to be so secretive, and he had to agree that their relationship had gone beyond such furtiveness.
“Because of one chance meeting by the wayside
The flower now opens in the evening dew.
“And how does it look to you?”
“The face seemed quite to shine in the evening dew,
But I was dazzled by the evening light.”
Her eyes turned away. She spoke in a whisper.
To him it may have seemed an interesting poem.
As a matter of fact, she found him handsomer than her poem suggested, indeed frighteningly handsome, given the setting.
“I hid my name from you because I thought it altogether too unkind of you to be keeping your name from me. Do please tell me now. This silence makes me feel that something awful might be coming.”
“Call me the fisherman’s daughter.” Still hiding her name, she was like a little child.
“I see. I brought it all on myself? A case of warekara?”
And so, sometimes affectionately, sometimes reproachfully, they talked the hours away.
Koremitsu had found them out and brought provisions. Feeling a little guilty about the way he had treated Ukon, he did not come near. He thought it amusing that Genji should thus be wandering the streets, and concluded that the girl must provide sufficient cause. And he could have had her himself, had he not been so generous.
Genji and the girl looked out at an evening sky of the utmost calm. Because she found the darkness in the recesses of the house frightening, he raised the blinds at the veranda and they lay side by side. As they gazed at each other in the gathering dusk, it all seemed very strange to her, unbelievably strange. Memories of past wrongs quite left her. She was more at ease with him now, and he thought her charming. Beside him all through the day, starting up in fright at each little noise, she seemed delightfully childlike. He lowered the shutters earl y and had lights brought.
“You seem comfortable enough with me, and yet you raise difficulties.”
At court everyone would be frantic. Where would the search be directed? He thought what a strange love it was, and he thought of the turmoil the Rokujō lady was certain to be in. She had every right to be resentful, and yet her jealous ways were not pleasant. It was that sad lady to whom his thoughts first turned. Here was the girl beside him, so simple and undemanding; and the other was so impossibly forceful in her de mands. How he wished he might in some measure have his freedom.
It was past midnight. He had been asleep for a time when an exceedingly beautiful woman appeared by his pillow.
“You do not even think of visiting me, when you are so much on my mind. Instead you go running off with someone who has nothing to recommend her, and raise a great stir over her. It is cruel, intolerable.” She seemed about to shake the girl from her sleep. He awoke, feeling as if he were in the power of some malign being. The light had gone out. In great alarm, he pulled his sword to his pillow and awakened Ukon. She too seemed frightened.
“Go out to the gallery and wake the guard. Have him bring a light.”
“It’s much too dark.”
He forced a smile. “You’re behaving like a child.”
He clapped his hands and a hollow echo answered. No one seemed to hear. The girl was trembling violently. She was bathed in sweat and as if in a trance, quite bereft of her senses.
“She is such a timid little thing,” said Ukon, “frightened when there is nothing at all to be frightened of. This must be dreadful for her.”
Yes, poor thing, thought Genji. She did seem so fragile, and she had spent the whole day gazing up at the sky.
“I’ll go get someone.