a certain young charm of her own, and presently he was deep in vows of love.
“The ancients used to say that a secret love runs deeper than an open one.” He was most persuasive. “Think well of me. I must worry about appearances, and it is not as if I could go where my desires take me. And you: there are people who would not at all approve. That is sad. But you must not forget me.”
“I’m afraid.” Clearly she was afraid. “I won’t be able to write to you.”
“You are right that we would not want people to know. But there is the little man I brought with me tonight. We can exchange notes through him. Meanwhile you must behave as if nothing had happened.” He took as a keepsake a summer robe the other lady seemed to have thrown off.
The boy was sleeping nearby. The adventure was on his mind, however, and Genji had no trouble arousing him. As he opened the door an elderly serving woman called out in surprise.
Who’s there?
“Just me,” replied the boy in some confusion.
“Wherever are you going at this time of the night?” The woman came out, wishing to be helpful.
“Nowhere,” said the boy gruffly. “Nowhere at all.”
He pushed Genji through the door. Dawn was approaching. The woman caught sight of another figure in the moonlight.
“And who is with you? Oh, Mimbu, of course. Only Mimbu reaches such splendid heights.” Mimbu was a lady who was the victim of much humor because of her unusual stature. So he was out walking with Mimbu, muttered the old woman. “One of these days you’ll be as tall as Mimbu yourself.” Chattering away, she followed after them. Genji was horrified, but could not very well shove her inside. He pulled back into the darkness of a gallery.
Still she followed. “You’ve been with our lady, have you? I’ve been having a bad time with my stomach these last few days and I’ve kept to my room. But she called me last night and said she wanted more people around. I’m still having a terrible time. Terrible,” she muttered again, getting no answer. “Well, goodbye, then.”
She moved on, and Genji made his escape. He saw more than ever how dangerous these adventures can be.
The boy went with him to Nijō. Genji recounted the happenings of the night. The boy had not done very well, he said, shrugging his shoulders in annoyance at the thought of the woman’s coldness. The boy could find no answer.
“I am rejected, and there is nothing to be done for me. But why could s e not have sent a pleasant answer? I’m no match for that husband of hers. That’s where the trouble lies.” But when he went to bed he had her cloak beneath his own. He kept the boy beside him, audience for his laments.
“It’s not that you aren’t a nice enough boy, and it’s not that I’m not fond of you. But because of your family I must have doubts about the durability of our relationship.”
A remark which plunged the boy into the darkest melancholy.
Genji was still unable to sleep. He said that he required an inkstone. On a fold of paper he jotted down a verse as if for practice:
“Beneath a tree, a locust’s empty shell.
Sadly I muse upon the shell of a lady.”
He wondered what the other one, the stepdaughter, would be thinking of him; but though he felt rather sorry for her and though he turned the matter over in his mind, he sent no message. The lady’s fragrance lingered in the robe he had taken. He kept it with him, gazing fondly at it.
The boy, when he went to his sister’s house, was crushed by the scolding he received. “This is the sort of thing a person cannot be expected to put up with. I may try to explain what has happened, but can you imagine that people will not come to their own conclusions? Does it not occur to you that even your good master might wish to see an end to this childishness?”
Badgered from the left and badgered from the right, the poor boy did not know where to turn. He took out Genji’s letter. In spite of herself his sister opened and read it. That reference to the shell of the locust: he had taken her robe, then. How very embarrassing. A sodden rag, like the one discarded by the fisherman of Ise.
The other lady, her stepdaughter, returned in some disorder to her own west wing. She had her sad thoughts all to herself, for no one knew what had happened. She watched the boy’s comings and goings, thinking that there might be some word; but in the end there was none. She did not have the imagination to guess that she had been a victim of mistaken identity. She was a lighthearted and inattentive creature, but now she was lost in sad thoughts.
The lady in the main hall kept herself under tight control. She could see that his feelings were not to be described as shallow, and she longed for what would not return, her maiden days. Besides his poem she jotted down a poem by Lady Ise:
The dew upon the fragile locust wing
Is lost among the leaves. Lost are my tears.
The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu
Chapter 4
Evening Faces
On his way from court to pay one of his calls at Rokujō, Genji stopped to inquire after his old nurse, Koremitsu’s mother, at her house in Gojō. Gravely ill, she had become a nun. The carriage entrance was closed. He sent for Koremitsu and while he was waiting looked up and down the dirty, cluttered street. Beside the nurse’s house was a new fence of plaited cypress. The four or five narrow shutters above had been raised, and new blinds, white and clean, hung in the apertures. He caught outlines of pretty foreheads beyond. He would have judged, as they moved about, that they belonged to rather tall women. What sort of women might they be? His carriage was simple and unadorned and he had no outrunners. Quite certain that he would not be recognized, he leaned out for a closer look. The hanging gate, of something like trelliswork, was propped on a pole, and he could see that the house was tiny and flimsy. He felt a little sorry for the occupants of such a place — and then asked himself who in this world had more than a temporary shelter. A hut, a jeweled pavilion, they were the same. A pleasantly green vine was climbing a board wall. The white flowers, he thought, had a rather self-satisfied look about them.
“‘I needs must ask the lady far off yonder,’” he said, as if to himself.
An attendant came up, bowing deeply. “The white flowers far off yonder are known as ‘evening faces,’” he said.” A very human Sort of name — and what a shabby place they have picked to bloom in.”
It was as the man said. The neighborhood was a poor one, chiefly of small houses. Some were leaning precariously, and there were “evening faces” at the sagging eaves.
“A hapless sort of flower. Pick one off for me, would you?”
The man went inside the raised gate and broke off a flower. A pretty little girl in long, unlined yellow trousers of raw silk came out through a sliding door that seemed too good for the surroundings. Beckoning to the man, she handed him a heavily scented white fan.
“Put it on this. It isn’t much of a fan, but then it isn’t much of a flower either.”
Koremitsu,
