way of moving people who are as they were to each other, and this was no ordinary meeting. It was daylight. Omyōbu and Ben were insistent and Fujitsubo seemed barely conscious.
“I think I must die, “ he said in a final burst of passion.” I cannot bear the thought of having you know that I still exist. And if I die my love for you will be an obstacle on my way to salvation.
“If other days must be as this has been,
I still shall be weeping two and three lives hence.
And the sin will be yours as well.”
She sighed.
“Remember that the cause is in yourself
Of a sin which you say I must bear through lives to come.”
She managed an appearance of resignation which tore at his heart. It was no good trying her patience further. Half distraught, he departed.
He would only invite another defeat if he tried to see her again. She must be made to feel sorry for him. He would not even write to her. He remained shut up at Nijō, seeing neither the emperor nor the crown prince, his gloom spreading discomfort through the house and making it almost seem that he had lost the will to live. “I am in this world but to see my woes increase.” He must leave it behind — but there was the dear girl who so needed him. He could not abandon her.
Fujitsubo had been left a near invalid by the encounter. Omyōbu and Ben were saddened at Genji’s withdrawal and refusal to write. Fujitsubo too was disturbed: it would serve the drown prince badly if Genji were to turn against her, and it would be a disaster if, having had enough of the world, he were to take holy orders. A repetition of the recent incident would certainly give rise to rumors which would make visits to the palace even more distasteful. She was becoming convinced that she must relinquish the title that had aroused the implacable hostility of Kokiden. She remembered the detailed and emphatic instructions which the old emperor had left behind. Everything was changed, no shadow remained of the past. She might not suffer quite as cruel a fate as Lady Ch’i, but she must doubtless look forward to contempt and derision. She resolved to become a nun. But she must see the crown prince again before she did. Quietly, she paid him a visit.
Though Genji had seen to all her needs in much more complicated matters than this one, he pleaded illness and did not accompany her to court. He still made routine inquiries as civility demanded. The women who shared his secret knew that he was very unhappy, and pitied him.
Her little son was even prettier than when she had last seen him. He clung to her, his pleasure in her company so touching that she knew how difficult it would be to carry through her resolve. But this glimpse of court life told her more clearly than ever that it was no place for her, that the things she had known had vanished utterly away. She must always worry about Kokiden, and these visits would be increasingly uncomfortable; and in sum everything caused her pain. She feared for her son’s future if she continued to let herself be called empress.
“What will you think of me if I do not see you for a very long time and become very unpleasant to look at?”
He gazed up at her. “Like Shikibu?” He laughed. “But why should you ever look like her?”
She wanted to weep. “Ah, but Shikibu is old and wrinkled. That is not what I had in mind. I meant that my hair would be shorter and I would wear black clothes and look like one of the priests that say prayers at night. And I would see you much less often.”
“I would miss you,” he said solemnly, turning away to hide his tears. The hair that fell over his shoulders was wonderfully lustrous and the glow in his eyes, warmer as he grew up, was almost enough to make one think he had taken Genji’s face for a mask. Because his teeth were slightly decayed, his mouth was charmingly dark when he smiled. One almost wished that he had been born a girl. But the resemblance to Genji was for her like the flaw in the gem. All the old fears came back.
Genji too wanted to see the crown prince, but he wanted also to make Fujitsubo aware of her cruelty. He kept to himself at Nijō. Fearing that his indolence would be talked about and thinking that the autumn leaves would be at their best, he went off to the Ujii Temple, to the north of the city, over which an older brother of his late mother presided. Borrowing the uncle’s cell for fasting and meditation, he stayed for several days.
The fields, splashed with autumn color, were enough to make him forget the city. He gathered erudite monks and listened attentively to their discussions of the scriptures. Though he would pass the night in the thoughts of the evanescence of things to which the setting was so conducive, he would still, in the dawn moonlight, remember the lady who was being so cruel to him. There would be a clattering as the priests put new flowers before the images, and the chrysanthemums and the falling leaves of varied tints, though the scene was in no way dramatic, seemed to offer asylum in this life and hope for the life to come. And what a purposeless life was his!
“All who invoke the holy name shall be taken unto Lord Amitābha and none shall be abandoned,” proclaimed Genji’s uncle in grand, lingering tones, and Genji was filled with envy. Why did he not embrace the religious life? He knew (for the workings of his heart were complex) that the chief reason was the girl at Nijō.
He had been away from her now for an unusually long time. She was much on his mind and he wrote frequently. “I have come here,” he said in one of his letters, “to see whether I am capable of leaving the world. The serenity I had hoped for eludes me and my loneliness only grows. There are things I have yet to learn. And have you missed me? “ It was on heavy Michinoku paper. The hand, though casual, was strong and distinguished.
“In lodgings frail as the dew upon the reeds
I left you, and the four winds tear at me.”
It brought tears to her eyes. Her answer was a verse on a bit of white paper:
“Weak as the spider’s thread upon the reeds,
The dew-drenched reeds of autumn, I blow with the winds.”
He smiled. Her writing had improved. It had come to resemble his, though it was gentler and more ladylike. He congratulated himself on having such a perfect subject for his pedagogical endeavors.
The Kamo Shrines were not far away. He got off a letter to Princess Asagao, the high priestess. He sent it through Chūjō, with this message for Chūjō herself: “A traveler, I feel my heart traveling yet further afield; but your lady will not have taken note of it, I suppose.”
This was his message for the princess herself:
“The gods will not wish me to speak of them, perhaps,
But I think of sacred cords of another autumn.
‘Is there no way to make the past the present?’”
He wrote as if their relations might permit of a certain intimacy. His note was on azure Chinese paper attached most solemnly to a sacred branch from which streamed ritual cords.
Chūjō‘s answer was courteous and leisurely.” We live a quiet life here, and I have time for many stray thoughts, among them thoughts of you and my lady.”
There was a note from the princess herself, tied with a ritual cord:
“Another autumn — what can this refer to?
A secret hoard of thoughts of sacred cords?
And in more recent times?”
The hand was not perhaps the subtlest he had seen, but it showed an admirable mastery of the cursive style, and interested him. His heart leaped (most blasphemously) at the thought of a beauty of feature that would doubtless have outstripped the beauty of her handwriting.
He remembered that just a year had passed since that memorable night at the temporary shrine of the other high priestess, and (blasphemously again) he found himself berating the gods, that the fates of his two cousins should have been so strangely similar. He had had a chance of successfully wooing at least one of the ladies who were the subjects of these improper thoughts,