astonishingly proud beauty. He comforted her with promises that he would choose an opportune time to bring her to the city. I shall not comment again upon his own good looks. He was thinner from fasting, and emaciation seemed to add the final touches to the picture. He made tearful vows. The lady replied in her heart that this small measure of affection was all she wanted and deserved, and that his radiance only emphasized her own dullness. The waves moaned in the autumn winds, the smoke from the salt burners’ fires drew faint lines across the sky, and all the symbols of loneliness seemed to gather together.
“Even though we now must part for a time,
The smoke from these briny fires will follow me.”
“Smoldering thoughts like the sea grass burned on these shores.
And what good now to ask for anything more?”
She fell silent, weeping softly, and a rather conventional poem seemed to say a great deal.
She had not, through it all, played for him on the koto of which he had heard so much.
“Do let me hear it. Let it be a memento.”
Sending for the seven-stringed koto he had brought from the city, he played an unusual strain, quiet but wonderfully clear on the midnight air. Unable to restrain himself, the old man pushed a thirteen-stringed koto toward his daughter. She was apparently in a mood for music. Softly she tuned the instrument, and her touch suggested very great polish and elegance. He had thought Fujitsubo’s playing quite incomparable. It was in the modern style, and enough to bring cries of wonder from anyone who knew a little about music. For him it was like Fujitsubo herself, the essence of all her delicate awareness. The koto of the lady before him was quiet and calm, and so rich in overtones as almost to arouse envy. She left off playing just as the connoisseur who was her listener had passed the first stages of surprise and become eager attention. Disappointment and regret succeeded pleasure. He had been here for nearly a year. Why had he not insisted that she play for him, time after time? All he could do now was repeat the old vows.
“Take this koto,” he said, “to remember me by. Someday we will play together.”
Her reply was soft and almost casual:
“One heedless word, one koto, to set me at rest.
In the sound of it the sound of my weeping, forever.”
He could not let it pass.
“Do not change the middle string of this koto.
Unchanging I shall be till we meet again.
“And we will meet again before it has slipped out of tune.”
Yet it was not unnatural that the parting should seem more real than the reunion.
On the last morning Genji was up and ready before daybreak. Though he had little time to himself in all the stir, he contrived to write to her:
“Sad the retreating waves at leaving this shore.
Sad I am for you, remaining after.”
“You leave, my reed-roofed hut will fall to ruin.
Would that I might go out with these waves.”
It was an honest poem, and in spite of himself he was weeping. One could, after all, become fond of a hostile place, said those who did not know the secret. Those who did, Yoshikiyo and others, were a little jealous, concluding that it must have been a rather successful affair.
There were tears, for all the joy; but I shall not dwell upon them.
The old man had arranged the grandest of farewell ceremonies. He had splendid travel robes for everyone, even the lowliest footmen. One marveled that he had found time to collect them all. The gifts for Genji himself were of course the finest, chests and chests of them, borne by a retinue which he attached to Genji’s. Some of them would make very suitable gifts in the city. He had overlooked nothing.
The lady had pinned a poem to a travel robe:
“I made it for you, but the surging brine has wet it.
And might you find it unpleasant and cast it off?”
Despite the confusion, he sent one of his own robes in return, and with it a note:
“It was very thoughtful of you.
“Take it, this middle robe, let it be the symbol
Of days uncounted but few between now and then.”
Something else, no doubt, to put in her chest of memories. It was a fine robe and it bore a most remarkable fragrance. How could it fail to move her?
The old monk, his face like one of the twisted shells on the beach, was meanwhile making some of the younger people smile. “I have quite renounced the world,” he said, “but the thought that I may not see you back to the city —
“Though weary of life, seasoned by salty winds,
I am not able to leave this shore behind,
and I wander lost in thoughts upon my child. Do let me see you at least as far as the border. It may seem forward of me, but if something should from time to time call up thoughts of her, do please let her hear from you.”
“It is an impossibility, sir, for very particular reasons, that I can ever forget her. You will very quickly be made to see my real intentions. If I seem dispirited, it is only because I am sad to leave all this behind.
“I wept upon leaving the city in the spring.
I weep in the autumn on leaving this home by the sea.
“What else can I do?” And he brushed away a tear.
The old man seemed on the point of expiring.
The lady did not want anyone to guess the intensity of her grief, but it was there, and with it sorrow at the lowly rank (she knew that she could not complain) that had made this parting inevitable. His image remained before her, and she seemed capable only of weeping.
Her mother tried everything to console her. “What could we have been thinking of? You have such odd ideas,” she said to her husband, “and I should have been more careful.”
“Enough, enough. There are reasons why he cannot abandon her. I have no doubt that he has already made his plans. Stop worrying, mix yourself a dose of something or other. This wailing will do no good.” But he was sitting disconsolate in a corner.
The women of the house, the mother and the nurse and the rest, went on charging him with unreasonable methods. “We had hoped and prayed over the years that she might have the sort of life any girl wants, and things finally seemed to be going well — and now see what has happened.”
It was true. Old age suddenly advanced and subdued him, and he spent his days in bed. But when night came he was up and alert.
“What can have happened to my beads?”
Unable to find them, he brought empty hands together in supplication. His disciples giggled.
