topers we. Our springtime cups flow with tears.”
The tears were general, for it had been too brief a meeting.
A line of geese flew over in the dawn sky.
“In what spring tide will I see again my old village?
I envy the geese, returning whence they came.”
Sorrier than ever that he must go, Tō no Chūjō replied:
“Sad are the geese to leave their winter’s lodging.
Dark my way of return to the flowery city.”
He had brought gifts from the city, both elegant and practical. Genji gave him in return a black pony, a proper gift for a traveler.
“Considering its origins, you may fear that it will bring bad luck; but you will find that it neighs into the northern winds.”
It was a fine beast.
“To remember me by,” said Tō no Chūjō, giving in return what was recognized to be a very fine flute. The situation demanded a certain reticence in the giving of gifts.
The sun was high, and Tō no Chūjō‘s men were becoming restive. He looked back and looked back, and Genji almost felt that no visit at all would have been better than such a brief one.
“And when will we meet again? It is impossible to believe that you will be here forever.”
“Look down upon me, cranes who skim the clouds,
And see me unsullied as this cloudless day.
“Yes, I do hope to go back, someday. But when I think how difficult it has been for even the most remarkable men to pick up their old lives, I am no longer sure that I want to see the city again.”
“Lonely the voice of the crane among the clouds.
Gone the comrade that once flew at its side.
“I have been closer to you than ever I have deserved. My regrets for what has happened are bitter.”
They scarcely felt that they had had time to renew their friendship. For Genji the loneliness was unrelieved after his friend’s departure.
It was the day of the serpent, the first such day in the Third Month.
“The day when a man who has worries goes down and washes them away,” said one of his men, admirably informed, it would seem, in all the annual observances.
Wishing to have a look at the seashore, Genji set forth. Plain, rough curtains were strung up among the trees, and a soothsayer who was doing the circuit of the province was summoned to perform the lustration.
Genji thought he could see something of himself in the rather large doll being cast off to sea, bearing away sins and tribulations.
“Cast away to drift on an alien vastness,
I grieve for more than a doll cast out to sea.”
The bright, open seashore showed him to wonderful advantage. The sea stretched placid into measureless distances. He thought of all that had happened to him, and all that was still to come.
“You eight hundred myriad gods must surely help me,
For well you know that blameless I stand before you.”
Suddenly a wind came up and even before the services were finished the sky was black. Genji’s men rushed about in confusion. Rain came pouring down, completely without warning. Though the obvious course would have been to return straightway to the house, there had been no time to send for umbrellas. The wind was now a howling tempest, everything that had not been tied down was scuttling off across the beach. The surf was biting at their feet. The sea was white, as if spread over with white linen. Fearful every moment of being struck down, they finally made their way back to the house.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, “ said one of the men. “Winds do come up from time to time, but not without warning. It is all very strange and very terrible.”
The lightning and thunder seemed to announce the end of the world, and the rain to beat its way into the ground; and Genji sat calmly reading a sutra. The thunder subsided in the evening, but the wind went on through the night.
“Our prayers seem to have been answered. A little more and we would have been carried off. I’ve heard that tidal waves do carry people off before they know what is happening to them, but I’ve not seen anything like this.”
Towards dawn sleep was at length possible. A man whom he did not recognize came to Genji in a dream.
“The court summons you.” He seemed to be reaching for Genji. “Why do you not go?”
It would be the king of the sea, who was known to have a partiality for handsome men. Genji decided that he could stay no longer at Suma.
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The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu
Chapter 13
Akashi
The days went by and the thunder and rain continued. What was Genji to do? People would laugh if, in this extremity, out of favor at court, he were to return to the city. Should he then seek a mountain retreat? But if it were to be noised about that a storm had driven him away, then he would cut a ridiculous figure in history.
His dreams were haunted by that same apparition. Messages from the city almost entirely ceased coming as the days went by without a break in the storms. Might he end his days at Suma? No one was likely to come calling in these tempests.
A messenger did come from Murasaki, a sad, sodden creature. Had they passed in the street, Genji would scarcely have known whether he was man or beast, and of course would not have thought of inviting him to come near. Now the man brought a surge of pleasure and affection — though Genji could not help asking himself whether the storm had weakened his moorings.
Murasaki’s letter, long and melancholy, said in part: “The terrifying deluge goes on without a break, day after day. Even the skies are closed off, and I am denied the comfort of gazing in your direction.
“What do they work, the sea winds down at Suma?
At home, my sleeves are assaulted by wave after wave.”
Tears so darkened Iris eyes that it was as if they were inviting the waters to rise higher.
The man said that the storms had been fierce in the city too, and that a special reading of the Prajñāpāramitā Sutra had been ordered. “The streets are all closed and the great gentlemen can’t get to court, and everything has closed down.”
The
