He would summon Ukon on quiet evenings. “I don’t understand it at all. Why did she so insist on keeping her name from me? Even if she was a fisherman’s daughter it was cruel of her to be so uncommunicative. It was as if she did not know how much I loved her.”
“There was no reason for keeping it secret. But why should she tell you about her insignificant self? Your attitude seemed so strange from the beginning. She used to say that she hardly knew whether she was waking or dreaming. Your refusal to identify yourself, you know, helped her guess who you were. It hurt her that you should belittle her by keeping your name from her.”
“An unfortunate contest of wills. I did not want anything to stand between us; but I must always be worrying about what people will say. I must refrain from things my father and all the rest of them might take me to task for. I am not permitted the smallest indiscretion. Everything is exaggerated so. The little incident of the ‘evening faces’ affected me strangely and I went to very great trouble to see her. There must have been a bond between us. A love doomed from the start to be fleeting — why should it have taken such complete possession of me and made me find her so precious? You must tell me everything. What point is there in keeping secrets now? I mean to make offerings every week, and I want to know in whose name I am making them.”
“Yes, of course — why have secrets now? It is only that I do not want to slight what she made so much of. Her parents are dead. Her father was a guards captain. She was his special pet, but his career did not go well and his life came to an early and disappointing end. She somehow got to know Lord Tō no Chūjō— it was when he was still a lieutenant. He was very attentive for three years or so, and then about last autumn there was a rather awful threat from his father-in-law’s house. She was ridiculously timid and it frightened her beyond all reason. She ran off and hid herself at her nurse’s in the western part of the city. It was a wretched little hovel of a place. She wanted to go off into the hills, but the direction she had in mind has been taboo since New Year’s. So she moved to the odd place where she was so upset to have you find her. She was more reserved and withdrawn than most people, and I fear that her unwillingness to show her emotions may have seemed cold.”
So it was true. Affection and pity welled up yet more strongly.
“He once told me of a lost child. Was there such a one?”
“Yes, a very pretty little girl, born two years ago last spring.”
“Where is she? Bring her to me without letting anyone know. It would be such a comfort. I should tell my friend Tō no Chūjō, I suppose, but why invite criticism? I doubt that anyone could reprove me for taking in the child. You must think up a way to get around the nurse.”
“It would make me very happy if you were to take the child. I would hate to have her left where she is. She is there because we had no competent nurses in the house where you found us.”
The evening sky was serenely beautiful. The flowers below the veranda were withered, the songs of the insects were dying too, and autumn tints were coming over the maples. Looking out upon the scene, which might have been a painting, Ukon thought what a lovely asylum she had found herself. She wanted to avert her eyes at the thought of the house of the “evening faces.” A pigeon called, somewhat discordantly, from a bamboo thicket. Remembering how the same call had frightened the girl in that deserted villa, Genji could see the little figure as if an apparition were there before him.
“How old was she? She seemed so delicate, because she was not long for this world, I suppose.”
“Nineteen, perhaps? My mother, who was her nurse, died and left me behind. Her father took a fancy to me, and so we grew up together, and I never once left her side. I wonder how I can go on without her. I am almost sorry that we were so close. She seemed so weak, but I can see now that she was a source of strength.”
“The weak ones do have a power over us. The clear, forceful ones I can do without. I am weak and indecisive by nature myself, and a woman who is quiet and withdrawn and follows the wishes of a man even to the point of letting herself be used has much the greater appeal. A man can shape and mold her as he wishes, and becomes fonder of her all the while.”
“She was exactly what you would have wished, sir.” Ukon was in tears. “That thought makes the loss seem greater.”
The sky had clouded over and a chilly wind had come up. Gazing off into the distance, Genji said softly:
“One sees the clouds as smoke that rose from the pyre,
And suddenly the evening sky seems nearer.”
Ukon was unable to answer. If only her lady were here! For Genji even the memory of those fulling blocks was sweet.
“In the Eighth Month, the Ninth Month, the nights are long,” he whispered, and lay down.
The young page, brother of the lady of the locust shell, came to Nijō from time to time, but Genji no longer sent messages for his sister. She was sorry that he seemed angry with her and sorry to hear of his illness. The prospect of accompanying her husband to his distant province was a dreary one. She sent off a note to see whether Genji had forgotten her.
“They tell me you have not been well.
“Time goes by, you ask not why I ask not.
Think if you will how lonely a life is mine.
“I might make reference to Masuda Pond.”
This was a surprise; and indeed he had not forgotten her. The uncertain hand in which he set down his reply had its own beauty.
“Who, I wonder, lives the more aimless life.
“Hollow though it was, the shell of the locust
Gave me strength to face a gloomy world.
“But only precariously.”
So he still remembered “the shell of the locust.” She was sad and at the same time amused. It was good that they could correspond without rancor. She wished no further intimacy, and she did not want him to despise her.
As for the other, her stepdaughter, Genji heard that she had married a guards lieutenant. He thought it a strange marriage and he felt a certain pity for the lieutenant. Curious to know something of her feelings, he sent a note by his young messenger.
“Did you know that thoughts of you had brought me to the point of expiring?
“I bound them loosely, the reeds beneath the eaves,
And reprove them now for having come undone.”
He attached it to a long reed.
The boy was to deliver it in secret, he said. But he thought that the lieutenant would be forgiving if he were to see it, for he would guess who the sender was. One may detect here a note of self-satisfaction.
Her husband was away. She was confused, but delighted that he should have remembered her. She sent off in reply a poem the only excuse for which was the alacrity with which it was composed:
“The wind brings words, all softly, to the reed,
And the under leaves are nipped again by the frost.”
It might have been
