All the women were there to see him go. He looked more elegant and handsome than ever in the light of the setting moon, and his dejection would have reduced tigers and wolves to tears. These were women who had served him since he was very young. It was a sad day for them.
There was a poem from Princess Omiya:
“Farther retreats the day when we bade her goodbye,
For now you depart the skies that received the smoke.”
Sorrow was added to sorrow, and the tears almost seemed to invite further misfortunes.
He returned to Nijō. The women, awake the whole night through, it seemed, were gathered in sad clusters. There was no one in the guardroom. The men closest to him, reconciled to going with him, were making their own personal farewells. As for other court functionaries, there had been ominous hints of sanctions were they to come calling, and so the grounds, once crowded with horses and carriages, were empty and silent. He knew again what a hostile world it had become. There was dust on the tables, cushions had been put away. And what would be the extremes of waste and the neglect when he was gone?
He went to Murasaki’s wing of the house. She had been up all night, not even lowering the shutters. Out near the verandas little girls were noisily bestirring themselves. They were so pretty in their night dress — and presently, no doubt, they would find the loneliness too much, and go their various ways. Such thoughts had not before been a part of his life.
He told Murasaki what had kept him at Sanjō. “And I suppose you are filled with the usual odd suspicions. I have wanted to be with you every moment I am still in the city, but there are things that force me to go out. Life is uncertain enough at best, and I would not want to seem cold and unfeeling.”
“And what should be’odd’ now except that you are going away?”
That she should feel these sad events more cruelly than any of the others was not surprising. From her childhood she had been closer to Genji than to her own father, who now bowed to public opinion and had not offered a word of sympathy. His coldness had caused talk among her women. She was beginning to wish that they had kept him in ignorance of her whereabouts.
Someone reported what her stepmother was saying: “She had a sudden stroke of good luck, and now just as suddenly everything goes wrong. It makes a person shiver. One after another, each in his own way, they all run out on her.”
This was too much. There was nothing more she wished to say to them. Henceforth she would have only Genji.
“If the years go by and I am still an outcast,” he continued, “I will come for you and bring you to my’cave among the rocks.’ But we must not be hasty. A man who is out of favor at court is not permitted the light of the sun and the moon, and it is thought a great crime, I am told, for him to go on being happy. The cause of it all is a great mystery to me, but I must accept it as fate. There seems to be no precedent for sharing exile with a lady, and I am sure that to suggest it would be to invite worse insanity from an insane world.”
He slept until almost noon.
Tō no Chūjō and Genji’s brother, Prince Hotaru, came calling. Since he was now without rank and office, he changed to informal dress of unfigured silk, more elegant, and even somehow grand, for its simplicity. As he combed his hair he could not help noticing that loss of weight had made him even handsomer.
“I am skin and bones,” he said to Murasaki, who sat gazing at him, tears in her eyes. “Can I really be as emaciated as this mirror makes me? I am a little sorry for myself.
“I now must go into exile. In this mirror
An image of me will yet remain beside you.”
Huddling against a pillar to hide her tears, she replied as if to herself:
“If when we part an image yet remains,
Then will I find some comfort in my sorrow.”
Yes, she was unique — a new awareness of that fact stabbed at his heart.
Prince Hotaru kept him affectionate company through the day and left in the evening.
It was not hard to imagine the loneliness that brought frequent notes from the house of the falling orange blossoms. Fearing that he would seem unkind if he did not visit the ladies again, he resigned himself to spending yet another night away from home. It was very late before he gathered himself for the effort.
“We are honored that you should consider us worth a visit,” said Lady Reikeiden — and it would be difficult to record the rest of the interview.
They lived precarious lives, completely dependent on Genji. So lonely indeed was their mansion that he could imagine the desolation awaiting it once he himself was gone; and the heavily wooded hill rising dimly beyond the wide pond in misty moonlight made him wonder whether the “cave among the rocks” at Suma would be such a place.
He went to the younger sister’s room, at the west side of the house. She had been in deep despondency, almost certain that he would not find time for a visit. Then, in the soft, sad light of the moon, his robes giving off an indescribable fragrance, he made his way in. She came to the veranda and looked up at the moon. They talked until dawn.
“What a short night it has been. I think how difficult it will be for us to meet again, and I am filled with regrets for the days I wasted. I fear I worried too much about the precedents I might be setting.”
A cock was crowing busily as he talked on about the past. He made a hasty departure, fearful of attracting notice. The setting moon is always sad, and he was prompted to think its situation rather like his own. Catching the deep purple of the lady’s robe, the moon itself seemed to be weeping.
“Narrow these sleeves, now lodging for the moonlight.
Would they might keep a light which I do not tire of.”
Sad himself, Genji sought to comfort her.
“The moon will shine upon this house once more.
Do not look at the clouds which now conceal it.
“I wish I were really sure it is so, and find the unknown future clouding my heart.”
He left as dawn was coming over the sky.
His affairs were in order. He assigned all the greater and lesser affairs of the Nijō mansion to trusted retainers who had not been swept up in the currents of the times, and he selected others to go with him to Suma. He would take only the simplest essentials for a rustic life, among them a book chest, selected writings of Po Chü-i and other poets, and a seven-stringed Chinese koto. He carefully refrained from anything which in its ostentation might not become a nameless rustic.
Assigning all the women to Murasaki’s west wing, he left behind deeds to pastures and manors and the like and made provision for all his various warehouses and storerooms. Confident of Shōnagon’s perspicacity, he gave her careful instructions and put stewards at her disposal. He had been somewhat brisk and businesslike toward his own serving women, but they had had security — and now what was to become of them?
“I shall be back, I know, if I live long enough. Do what you can in the west wing, please, those of you who are prepared to wait.”
And so they all began a new life.
To Yūgiri’s nurse and maids and to the lady of the orange blossoms he sent elegant parting gifts and plain, useful everyday provisions as well.
He even wrote to Oborozukiyo. “I know that I have no right to expect a letter from you; but I am not up to describing the gloom and the bitterness of leaving this life behind.
“Snagged upon the shoals of this river of tears,
I cannot see you. Deeper waters await me.
“Remembering is the crime to which I cannot plead innocent.”
He wrote nothing more, for there