bishop brought out a seven-stringed Chinese koto and pressed Genji to play it. “Just one tune, to give our mountain birds a pleasant surprise.”
Genji protested that he was altogether too unwell, but he played a passable tune all the same. And so they set forth. The nameless priests and acolytes shed tears of regret, and the aged nuns within, who had never before seen such a fine gentleman, asked whether he might not be a visitor from another world.
“How can it be,” said the bishop, brushing away a tear, “that such a one has been born into the confusion and corruption in which we live?”
The little girl too thought him very grand. “Even handsomer than Father,” she said.
“So why don’t you be his little girl?”
She nodded, accepting the offer; and her favorite doll, the one with the finest wardrobe, and the handsomest gentleman in her pictures too were thereupon named “Genji.”
Back in the city, Genji first reported to his father upon his excursion. The emperor had never before seen him in such coarse dress.
He asked about the qualifications of the sage, and Genji replied in great detail.
“I must see that he is promoted. Such a remarkable record and I had not even heard of him.”
Genji’s father-in-law, the Minister of the Left, chanced to be in attendance. “I thought of going for you, but you did after all go off in secret. Suppose you have a few days’ rest at Sanjō. I will go with you, immediately.”
Genji was not enthusiastic, but he left with his father-in-law all the same. The minister had his own carriage brought up and insisted that Genji get in first. This solicitude rather embarrassed him.
At the minister’s Sanjō mansion everything was in readiness. It had been polished and refitted until it was a jeweled pavilion, perfect to the last detail. As always, Genji’s wife secluded herself in her private apartments, and it was only at her father’s urging that she came forth; and so Genji had her before him, immobile, like a princess in an illustration for a romance. It would have been a great pleasure, he was sure, to have her comment even tartly upon his account of the mountain journey. She seemed the stiffest, remotest person in the world. How odd that the aloofness seemed only to grow as time went by.
“It would be nice, I sometimes think, if you could be a little more wifely. I have been very ill, and I am hurt, but not really surprised, that you have not inquired after my health.”
“Like the pain, perhaps, of awaiting a visitor who does not come?”
She cast a sidelong glance at him as she spoke, and her cold beauty was very intimidating indeed.
“You so rarely speak to me, and when you do you say such unpleasant things. ‘A visitor who does not come’— that is hardly an appropriate way to describe a husband, and indeed it is hardly civil. I try this approach and I try that, hoping to break through, but you seem intent on defending all the approaches. Well, one of these years, perhaps, if I live long enough.”
He withdrew to the bedchamber. She did not follow. Though there were things he would have liked to say, he lay down with a sigh. He closed his eyes, but there was too much on his mind to permit sleep.
He thought of the little girl and how he would like to see her grown into a woman. Her grandmother was of course right when she said that the girl was still too young for him. He must not seem insistent. And yet — was there not some way to bring her quietly to Nijō and have her beside him, a comfort and a companion? prince Hyōbu was a dashing and stylish man, but no one could have called him remarkably handsome. Why did the girl so take after her aunt? perhaps because aunt and father were children of the same empress. These thoughts seemed to bring the girl closer, and he longed to have her for his own.
The next day he wrote to the nun. He would also seem to have communicated his thoughts in a casual way to the bishop. To the nun he said:
“I fear that, taken somewhat aback by your sternness, I did not express myself very well. I find strength in the hope that something of the resolve demanded of me to write this letter will have conveyed itself to you.”
With it was a tightly folded note for the girl:
“The mountain blossoms are here beside me still.
All of myself I left behind with them.
“I am fearful of what the night winds might have done.”
The writing, of course, and even the informal elegance of the folding, quite dazzled the superannuated woman who received the letter. Somewhat overpowering, thought the grandmother.
She finally sent back: “I did not take your farewell remarks seriously; and now so soon to have a letter from you — I scarcely know how to reply. She cannot even write’Naniwa’ properly, and how are we to expect that she give you a proper answer?
“Brief as the time till the autumn tempests come
To scatter the flowers — so brief your thoughts of her.
“I am deeply troubled.”
The bishop’s answer was in the same vein. Two or three days later Genji sent Koremitsu off to the northern hills.
“There is her nurse, the woman called Shōnagon. Have a good talk with her.”
How very farsighted, thought Koremitsu, smiling at the thought of the girl they had seen that evening.
The bishop said that he was much honored to be in correspondence with Genji. Koremitsu was received by Shōnagon, and described Genji’s apparent state of mind in great detail. He was a persuasive young man and he made a convincing case, but to the nun and the others this suit for the hand of a mere child continued to seem merely capricious. Genji’s letter was warm and earnest. There was a note too for the girl:
“Let me see your first exercises at the brush.
“No Shallow Spring, this heart of mine, believe me.
And why must the mountain spring then seem so distant?”
This was the nun’s reply:
“You drink at the mountain stream, your thoughts turn elsewhere.
Do you hope to see the image you thus disturb?”
Koremitsu’s report was no more encouraging. Shōnagon had said that they would be returning to the city when the nun was a little stronger and would answer him then.
Fujitsubo was ill and had gone home to her family. Genji managed a sympathetic thought or two for his lonely father, but his thoughts were chiefly on the possibility of seeing Fujitsubo. He quite halted his visits to other ladies. All through the day, at home and at court, he sat gazing off into space, and in the evening he would press Omyōbu to be his intermediary. How she did it I do not know; but she contrived a meeting. It is sad to have to say that his earlier attentions, so unwelcome, no longer seemed real, and the mere thought that they had been successful was for Fujitsubo a torment. Determined that there would not be another meeting, she was shocked to find him in her presence again. She did not seek to hide her distress, and her efforts to turn him away delighted him even as they put him to shame.
