men in attendance sought to defend their places against the Sanjō invaders. “We aren’t the sort of people you push around.”
There had been too much drink in both parties, and the drunken ones were not responsive to the efforts of their more mature and collected seniors to restrain them.
The palm-frond carriages were from the Rokujō house of the high priestess of Ise. The Rokujō lady had come quietly to see the procession, hoping that it might make her briefly forget her unhappiness. The men from Sanjō had recognized her, but preferred to make it seem otherwise.
“They can’t tell us who to push and not to push,” said the more intemperate ones to their fellows. “They have General Genji to make them feel important.”
Among the newcomers were some of Genji’s men. They recognized and felt a little sorry for the Rokujō lady, but, not wishing to become involved, they looked the other way. presently all the Sanjō carriages were in place. The Rokujō lady, behind the lesser ones, could see almost nothing. Quite aside from her natural distress at the insult, she was filled with the bitterest chagrin that, having refrained from display, she had been recognized. The stools for her carriage shafts had been broken and the shafts propped on the hubs of perfectly strange carriages, a most undignified sight. It was no good asking herself why she had come. She thought of going home without seeing the procession, but there was no room for her to pass; and then came word that the procession was approaching, and she must, after all, see the man who had caused her such unhappiness. How weak is the heart of a woman! perhaps because this was not “the bamboo by the river Hinokuma,” he passed without stopping his horse or looking her way; and the unhappiness was greater than if she had stayed at home.
Genji seemed indifferent to all the grandly decorated carriages and all the gay sleeves, such a flood of them that it was as if ladies were stacked in layers behind the carriage curtains. Now and again, however, he would have a smile and a glance for a carriage he recognized. His face was solemn and respectful as he passed his wife’s carriage. His men bowed deeply, and the Rokujō lady was in misery. She had been utterly defeated.
She whispered to herself:
“A distant glimpse of the River of Lustration.
His coldness is the measure of my sorrow.”
She was ashamed of her tears. Yet she thought how sorry she would have been if she had not seen that handsome figure set off to such advantage by the crowds.
The high courtiers were, after their several ranks, impeccably dressed and caparisoned and many of them were very handsome; but Genji’s radiance dimmed the strongest lights. Among his special attendants was a guards officer of the Sixth Rank, though attendants of such standing were usually reserved for the most splendid royal processions. His retinue made such a fine procession itself that every tree and blade of grass along the way seemed to bend forward in admiration.
It is not on the whole considered good form for veiled ladies of no mean rank and even nuns who have withdrawn from the world to be jostling and shoving one another in the struggle to see, but today no one thought it out of place. Hollow-mouthed women of the lower classes, their hair tucked under their robes, their hands brought respectfully to their foreheads, were hopping about in hopes of catching a glimpse. plebeian faces were wreathed in smiles which their owners might not have enjoyed seeing in mirrors, and daughters of petty provincial officers of whose existence Genji would scarcely have been aware had set forth in carriages decked out with the most exhaustive care and taken up posts which seemed to offer a chance of seeing him. There were almost as many things by the wayside as in the procession to attract one’s attention.
And there were many ladies whom he had seen in secret and who now sighed more than ever that their station was so out of keeping with his. Prince Shikibu viewed the procession from a stand. Genji had matured and did indeed quite dazzle the eye, and the prince thought with foreboding that some god might have noticed, and was making plans to spirit the young man away. His daughter, Princess Asagao, having over the years found Genji a faithful correspondent, knew how remarkably steady his feelings were. She was aware that attentions moved ladies even when the donor was a most ordinary man; yet she had no wish for further intimacy. As for her women, their sighs of admiration were almost deafening.
No carriages set out from the Sanjō mansion on the day of the festival proper.
Genji presently heard the story of the competing carriages. He was sorry for the Rokujō lady and angry at his wife. It was a sad fact that, so deliberate and fastidious, she lacked ordinary compassion. There was indeed a tart, forbidding quality about her. She refused to see, though it was probably an unconscious refusal, that ladies who were to each other as she was to the Rokujō lady should behave with charity and forbearance. It was under her influence that the men in her service flung themselves so violently about. Genji sometimes felt uncomfortable before the proud dignity of the Rokujō lady, and he could imagine her rage and humiliation now.
He called upon her. The high priestess, her daughter, was still with her, however, and, making reverence for the sacred sakaki tree her excuse, she declined to receive him.
She was right, of course. Yet he muttered to himself: “Why must it be so? Why cannot the two of them be a little less prickly?”
It was from his Nijō mansion, away from all this trouble, that he set forth to view the festival proper. Going over to Murasaki’s rooms in the west wing, he gave Koremitsu instructions for the carriages.
“And are all our little ladies going too?” he asked. He smiled with pleasure at Murasaki, lovely in her festive dress. “We will watch it together.” He stroked her hair, which seemed more lustrous than ever. “It hasn’t been trimmed in a very long time. I wonder if today would be a good day for it.” He summoned a soothsayer and while the man was investigating told the “little ladies” to go on ahead. They too were a delight, bright and fresh, their hair all sprucely trimmed and flowing over embroidered trousers.
He would trim Murasaki’s hair himself, he said. “But see how thick it is. The scissors get all tangled up in it. Think how it will be when you grow up. Even ladies with very long hair usually cut it here at the forehead, and you’ve not a single lock of short hair. A person might even call it untidy.”
The joy was more than a body deserved, said Shōnagon, her nurse.
“May it grow to a thousand fathoms,” said Genji.
“Mine it shall be, rich as the grasses beneath
The fathomless sea, the thousand-fathomed sea.”
Murasaki took out brush and paper and set down her answer:
“It may indeed be a thousand fathoms deep.
How can I know, when it restlessly comes and goes?”
She wrote well, but a pleasant girlishness remained.
Again the streets were lined in solid ranks. Genji’s party pulled up near the cavalry grounds, unable to find a place.
“Very difficult,” said Genji. “Too many of the great ones hereabouts.”
A fan was thrust from beneath the blinds of an elegant ladies’ carriage that was filled to overflowing.
“Suppose you pull in here,” said a lady. “I would be happy to relinquish my place.”
What sort of adventuress might she be? The
