at their best, to a gallery from which he had a good view of the coast. His men felt chills of apprehension as they watched him, for the loneliness of the setting made him seem like a visitor from another world. In a dark robe tied loosely over singlets of figured white and aster-colored trousers, he announced himself as “a disciple of the Buddha” and slowly intoned a sutra, and his men thought that they had never heard a finer voice. From offshore came the voices of fishermen raised in song. The barely visible boats were like little seafowl on an utterly lonely sea, and as he brushed away a tear induced by the splashing of oars and the calls of wild geese overhead, the white of his hand against the jet black of his rosary was enough to bring comfort to men who had left their families behind.
“Might they be companions of those I long for?
Their cries ring sadly through the sky of their journey.”
This was Yoshikiyo’s reply:
“I know not why they bring these thoughts of old,
These wandering geese. They were not then my comrades.”
And Koremitsu’s:
“No colleagues of mine, these geese beyond the clouds.
They chose to leave their homes, and I did dot.”
And that of the guards officer who had cut such a proud figure on the day of the Kamo lustration:
“Sad are their cries as they wing their way from home.
They still find solace, for they still have comrades.
It is cruel to lose one’s comrades.”
His father had been posted to Hitachi, but he himself had come with Genji. He contrived, for all that must have been on his mind, to seem cheerful.
A radiant moon had come out. They were reminded that it was the harvest full moon. Genji could not take his. eyes from it. On other such nights there had been concerts at court, and perhaps they of whom he was thinking would be gazing at this same moon and thinking of him.
“My thoughts are of you, old friend,” he sang, “two thousand leagues away.” His men were in tears.
His longing was intense at the memory of Fujitsubo’s farewell poem, and as other memories came back, one after another, he had to turn away to hide his tears. It was very late, said his men, but still he did not come inside.
“So long as I look upon it I find comfort,
The moon which comes again to the distant city.”
He thought of the emperor and how much he had resembled their father, that last night when they had talked so fondly of old times. “I still have with me the robe which my lord gave me,” he whispered, going inside. He did in fact have a robe that was a gift from the emperor, and he kept it always beside him.
“Not bitter thoughts alone does this singlet bring.
Its sleeves are damp with tears of affection too.”
The assistant viceroy of Kyushu was returning to the capital. He had a large family and was especially well provided with daughters, and since progress by land would have been difficult he had sent his wife and the daughters by boat. They proceeded by easy stages, putting in here and there along the coast. The scenery at Suma was especially pleasing, and the news that Genji was in residence produced blushes and sighs far out at sea. The Gosechi dancer would have liked to cut the tow rope and drift ashore. The sound of a koto came faint from the distance, the sadness of it joined to a sad setting and sad memories. The more sensitive members of the party were in tears.
The assistant viceroy sent a message. “I had hoped to call on you immediately upon returning to the city from my distant post, and when, to my surprise, I found myself passing your house, I was filled with the most intense feelings of sorrow and regret. Various acquaintances who might have been expected to come from the city have done so, and our party has become so numerous that it would be out of the question to call on you. I shall hope to do so soon.”
His son, the governor of Chikuzen, brought the message. Genji had taken notice of the youth and obtained an appointment for him in the imperial secretariat. He was sad to see his patron in such straits, but people were watching and had a way of talking, and he stayed only briefly.
“It was kind of you to come,” said Genji. “I do not often see old friends these days.”
His reply to the assistant viceroy was in a similar vein. Everyone in the Kyushu party and in the party newly arrived from the city as well was deeply moved by the governor’s description of what he had seen. The tears of sympathy almost seemed to invite worse misfortunes.
The Gosechi dancer contrived to send him a note.
“Now taut, now slack, like my unruly heart,
The tow rope is suddenly still at the sound of a koto.
“Scolding will not improve me.”
He smiled, so handsome a smile that his men felt rather inadequate.
“Why, if indeed your heart is like the tow rope,
Unheeding must you pass this strand of Suma?
“I had not expected to leave you for these wilds.”
There once was a man who, passing Akashi on his way into exile, brought pleasure into an innkeeper’s life with an impromptu Chinese poem. For the Gosechi dancer the pleasure was such that she would have liked to make Suma her home.
As time passed, the people back in the city, and even the emperor himself, found that Genji was more and more in their thoughts. The crown prince was the saddest of all. His nurse and Omyōbu would find him weeping in a corner and search helplessly for ways to comfort him. Once so fearful of rumors and their possible effect on this child of hers and Genji’s, Fujitsubo now grieved that Genji must be away.
In the early days of his exile he corresponded with his brothers and with important friends at court. Some of his Chinese poems were widely praised.
Kokiden flew into a rage. “A man out of favor with His Majesty is expected to have trouble feeding himself. And here he is living in a fine stylish house and saying awful things about all of us. No doubt the grovelers around him are assuring him that a deer is a horse.
And so writing to Genji came to be rather too much to ask of people, and letters stopped coming.
The months went by, and Murasaki was never really happy. All the women from the other wings of the house were now in her service. They had been of the view that she was beneath their notice, but as they came to observe her gentleness, her magnanimity in household matters, her thoughtfulness, they changed their minds, and not one of them departed her service. Among them were women of good family. A glimpse of her was enough to make them admit that she deserved Genji’s altogether remarkable affection.
And as time went by at Suma, Genji began to feel that he could bear to be away from her no longer. But he dismissed the thought of sending for her: this cruel punishment was for himself alone. He was seeing a little of plebeian life, and he thought it very odd and, he must say, rather dirty. The smoke near at hand would, he supposed, be the smoke of the salt burners’ fires. In fact, someone was
