The little prince[28] had grown into a handsome boy. His mother’s visit surprised and delighted him and he was soon telling her all his secrets. She looked at him sadly. The step that she contemplated seemed unendurably hard to take. Yet a glance at the Palace reminded her how great were the changes and upheavals that had taken place, how insecure had now become her own position at the Court. The Lady Kōkiden still showed the same unrelenting hostility, finding at every turn some means to inconvenience or humiliate her. Her high rank, so far from protecting her, now imperilled both herself and her son. For a long while she hesitated, torn by many conflicting feelings. At last she succeeded in saying to the child: ‘What would you think if I were to go away for a long while and, when at last I came back to see you, were to look quite different, almost as though it were another person?’ She watched his face while she spoke. ‘What would happen to you?’ he said, very much interested; ‘would you become like old Lady Shikibu? Why do you want to be like that?’ and he laughed. It was very difficult to tell him. She began again: ‘Shikibu is ugly because she is so old. That is not what I mean. I shall have even less hair than Shikibu and I shall wear a black dress, like the chaplain whom you have seen coming to say prayers here in the evenings; but it will be a long while before they let me come here to see you.’ He saw that she was crying and at once said very decidedly: ‘If you do not come for a long while, I shall miss you terribly.’ He too began to cry, and ashamed of his tears, turned his head away. As he did so his long hair fell rippling across his cheek. The eyes, the brow—all was as though a cast had been taken from the face she knew so well. He had not yet lost his baby-teeth. One or two of them were a little decayed, their blackness amid a row of white giving to his smile a peculiar piquancy and charm. As she watched him standing there in his half-girlish beauty and suddenly realized how like he was to his father, she became more than ever unhappy. But if the resemblance was painful to her and seemed to her at that moment almost to spoil his beauty, it was only because she dreaded the gossip to which this likeness would give rise.
Genji too was longing to see his son, but while Princess Fujitsubo was at Court he was resolved to keep away. Perhaps this would make her realize how completely he had been frustrated by her harshness; for she would certainly be expecting to meet him in the young prince’s apartments.
He was in very ill humour and the time hung heavily on his hands. It was now autumn and it seemed a pity not to be in the country. He decided to spend a little while at the Temple in the Cloudy Woods.[29] Here in the cell of his mother’s elder brother, a master of the Vinaya,[30] he spent several days reading the sacred texts and practising various austerities. During this time much happened both to move and delight him. The maple leaves in the surrounding forests were just turning and he remembered Sōjō’s song written in the same place: ‘Proud autumn fields....’ In a little while he had almost forgotten that this quiet place was not his home. He gathered about him a number of doctors famous for their understanding of the Holy Law and made them dispute in his presence. Yet even in the midst of scenes such as these, calculated to impress him in the highest degree with the futility of all earthly desires, one figure from the fleeting world of men still rose up importunately before him and haunted every prayer. One day at dawn by the light of a sinking moon the priests of the temple were making the morning offering of fresh leaves and flowers before an image that stood near by. He could hear the clink of the silver flower-trays as they scattered chrysanthemum and maple leaves of many hues around the Buddha’s feet. It seemed to him then that the life these people led was worth while, not merely as a means to salvation but for its own pleasantness and beauty. Again and again he marvelled that he could have for so long endured his own aimless existence. His uncle, the Vinaya-master, had an extremely impressive voice and when he came to the passage ‘None shall be cast out, but take unto him all living things that call upon his name,’ Genji envied him the assurance with which he uttered the Buddha’s promise. Why should not he too avail himself of this promise, why should not he too lead this sanctified existence? Suddenly he remembered Murasaki and his home. What must she be thinking of him? It was many days since he had seen her, and he hastened to repair this neglect: ‘I came here as an experiment,’ he wrote, ‘that I might decide whether it would not be better for me to withdraw forever from the world. Since I have been here it has been gradually becoming clearer to me that my present way of life can bring me nothing but misery; and to-day I heard something read out loud which made a deep impression upon me and convinced me that I ought not any longer to delay....’ The letter was written on sandalwood paper of Michinoku, informally but with great elegance. With it he sent the poem: ‘Because I left you in a home deep-girt with dewy sedge, with troubled mind I hear the wild winds blow from every side.’ This he said and much else beside. She cried when she read it. Her answer was written on a white slip: ‘First, when the wild wind blows, flutters the dewy web that hangs upon the wilting sedge-row in the fields.’ He smiled to himself with pleasure as he read it, noting how swiftly her hand had improved. He had written her so many letters that her writing had grown to be very like his, save that to his style she had added some touches of girlish delicacy and grace. In this as in all else she at least had not disappointed him.
It occurred to him that Kamo was not so very far off and he thought he would send a message to the Vestal Virgin.[31] To Chūjō her maid he sent the letter: ‘That here among strangers in deep affliction I languish unconsoled, your mistress cannot know.’ To this he added a long tale of his present woes and to the Virgin herself addressed the poem: ‘Goddess Immaculate, the memory of other days has made me bold to hang this token at thy shrine!’ And to this, quoting an old song, he added the words ‘Would that like a ring upon the hand I might turn Time around till “then” was “now.”’ He wrote on light green paper, and with the letter was a twig of the Sacred Tree festooned with fluttering tassels of white as befitted the holy place to which it was addressed. In answer the maid Chūjō wrote: ‘There is so little here to break the sameness of the long empty days that sometimes an idle memory of the past will for a moment visit the Virgin’s heavenly thoughts. Of you she has spoken now and again, but only to say that now all thought of you is profitless.’ The gentlewoman’s letter was long and written with great care. On a small strip tied to a white ritual tassel the Virgin herself had written the poem: ‘Full well you know that in those other days no secret was between us for you to hang as ritual-token at your heart.’ It was not written with much pains, but there was an easy flow in the cursive passages which delighted his eye and he realized that the Court had lost one who would in time have grown to be a woman of no ordinary accomplishments.
He shuddered. How pitiless is God! Suddenly he remembered that only last autumn the melancholy gateway of the Palace-in-the-Fields had filled him with just such an indignation and dismay. Why should these Powers be suffered to pursue their hideous exactions?
That strange trait of perversity, so often noted, was indeed at work again under the most absurd circumstances. For in all the years when Asagao was within reach he had not made one serious effort to win her, but had contented himself with vague protestations and appeals. But now that she was utterly unattainable he suddenly imagined that he had never really cared for anyone else! Believing him to be the victim of an inconsolable passion, the Virgin had not the heart to leave his letters unanswered, and a correspondence of a rather strange and unreal kind was for some while carried on between them.
Before he left the Temple in the Cloudy Woods he read the whole of the Sixty Chapters,[32] consulting his uncle on many obscure points. The delight of the priests, down to the humblest servitor, may well be imagined. It seemed as though the Lord Amida must hold their poor country temple in especial favour, or he would not have vouchsafed that such a radiance should shine among them.
But soon Genji began to grow restless. His mind strayed constantly to mundane affairs, and though he dreaded the return, there was one whom it was not in his heart any longer to neglect. Before his departure he ordered a grand chanting of the Scripture to be held and gave suitable presents to all the resident priests both high and low, and even to the peasants of the surrounding country. Then, after many other rituals and benefactions, he drove away. The country people from far and near crowded round the gates to see him go, uncouth figures strangely gnarled and bent. His carriage was draped with black and he himself was still dressed in the drab unbecoming robes of mourning. Yet even the momentary glimpse of him that they caught as he entered his carriage sufficed to convince them that a prince of no ordinary beauty had been dwelling near to them and many were moved to tears.
It seemed to him when he was back in his palace that Murasaki had in these last months become far less childish. She spoke very seriously of the changes at Court and showed great concern for his future. That in these last weeks his affections had been much occupied elsewhere could hardly have escaped her notice. He remembered with a pang that in the last poem she had sent him there was some reference to ‘the wilting sedge-row,’ and full of remorse he treated her with more than ordinary kindness. He had brought her a branch of autumn leaves from the country temple where he had been staying. Together they compared it with the trees in his palace garden, and found when they set them side by side that the country leaves were dyed to a yet deeper red. There was one who was at all times paramount in his thoughts, and the sight of these leaves, tinged with so strong a hue that they eclipsed whatever colours were set beside them, reminded him that to her alone he had given no token of his return. The desire to have news of her so tormented him that at last he wrote a letter to Ōmyōbu announcing that he had left the temple: ‘I heard with surprise and joy of your Lady’s visit to the Court. I longed for news both of her and of the young prince; but though I was uneasy on their account, I could not interrupt my appointed course of penance and study. Thus many days have passed since last I gave you any news. Here are some sprays of autumn leaf. Bid your Lady look at them when she feels so disposed, lest unregarded they should waste their beauty “like silken stuffs spread out by night.”’
They were huge, leaf-laden boughs, and when she looked closer, Fujitsubo saw that the usual tiny strip of paper, such as he always used in writing to her, was tied to one of them. Her gentlewomen were watching her, and as she examined the offering she felt herself blushing. So he was still in the same deplorable state of mind! Surely he must realize that it was very embarrassing for her to receive offerings of this kind from one who was known to be her admirer! Wishing that he would show more regard for her feelings and reputation she bade a servant put the boughs in a vase and stand it against one of the pillows on the verandah, as far out of the way as possible.