Touched by her concern at his departure he felt that he must give her what she evidently expected,—some further message for her mistress, and he wrote: ‘There is much that I should like to say, but after all you will have little difficulty in imagining for yourself the perplexity and despair into which my present situation has plunged me. I should indeed dearly like to see the little prince before I go. But I fear that the sight of him might weaken my resolution to forsake the fleeting world, and therefore I must force myself to leave this house without further delay.’
The whole household was now awake and every one was on the watch to see him start. The moon shone red at the edge of the sky, and in its strange light he looked so lovely, yet so sad and thoughtful, that the hearts of wolves and tigers, nay of very demons, would have melted at the sight of him. It may be imagined then with what feelings those gentlewomen watched him drive away, many of whom had known and loved him since he was a child. But I had forgotten to say that Aoi’s mother replied with the poem: ‘Seek not another sky, but if you love her,[2] stay beneath these clouds with which her soul is blent.’ When he reached his own palace he found that none of the gentlewomen there had slept a wink. They were sitting a few here, a few there, in frightened groups, looking as though they would never lift their heads again. Those officers of his household and personal retainers who had been chosen to go with him to Suma were busy preparing for their departure or saying good-bye to their friends, so that the retainers’ hall was absolutely deserted; nor had the gentlewomen whom he was leaving behind dared to present themselves on the occasion of his departure, for they knew that any demonstration of good will towards an enemy of those in power would be remembered against them by the Government. So that instead of his doors being thronged, as once they had been, by a continual multitude of horsemen and carriages, he found them that morning utterly deserted and realized with bitterness how frail is the fabric of worldly power. Already his great guest-tables, pushed against the wall, were looking tarnished and dusty; the guest-mats were rolled up and stowed away in corners. If the house looked like this now, what sort of spectacle he wondered would it present when he had been absent for a few months?
On reaching the western wing he found the partition door still open. Murasaki had sat there watching till dawn. Some of the little boys who waited upon her were sleeping on the verandah. Hearing him coming they now shook themselves and rose with a clatter. It was a pleasant sight to see them pattering about in their little pages’ costumes; but now he watched them with a pang at his heart, for he could not help remembering that while he was away they would grow up into men and in the end have to seek service elsewhere. And indeed during those days he looked with interest and regret on many things which had never engaged his attention before. ‘I am so sorry about last night,’ he said. ‘One thing happened after another, and by the time I was free to come back it would not have been worth while. You must have thought it horrid of me. Now that there is so little time left, I hate to be away from you at all. But my departure from the Court naturally involves me in many painful duties, and it would be quite impossible for me to remain shut up here all the time. There are other people, some of whom I may very likely never see again, who would think it unkind of me if I did not even bid them good-bye....’ ‘It is your going away that matters,’ she answered; ‘nothing else is of any consequence now....’ She said no more, but sat staring before her in an attitude of the profoundest despair. And indeed, as Genji realized, she had every possible reason to dread his departure. Her father Prince Hyōbukyō had never put himself out for her, and since Genji’s disgrace he stopped writing and no longer even enquired about her. She was ashamed of his worldly caution and dreaded lest others should notice it. For her part she was resolved that, since he showed no interest in her, she would be the last to remind him of her existence. Some one told her that her step-mother[3] went about saying: ‘This is what comes of trying to get on too quickly in the world. Look how she has been punished! All her relatives expire and now her lover takes flight!’ She was deeply distressed and felt that she could not ever communicate with her step-mother again. There was indeed no one to whom she could turn for help, and her position was likely to be in every way unhappy and difficult. ‘I promise,’ said Genji to comfort her, ‘that if my exile seems likely to last for a considerable time, I will send for you to join me, even if I can offer you nothing better to live in than a hole in the rocks. But it would be considered most improper for me to take you with me now. People who are disapproved of by the Government are expected to creep about miserably in the dark, and if they try to make themselves happy and comfortable it is considered very wicked. I have not of course done anything wrong, but my misfortune must certainly be due to some sin in a previous life, and I am sure that if I did anything so unusual as to take my lady into exile with me, fate would find some yet more cruel way to punish me for the presumption.’
He then lay down and slept till noon. Later in the day his half-brother Prince Sochi no Miya and Tō no Chūjō called and offered to help him dress. He reminded them that he had resigned his rank and they brought him a cloak of plain silk without any crest or badge. This costume had an informal air which became him better than they had expected. When he went to the mirror that his servants might do his hair he could not help noticing how thin his face had lately grown, and he said ‘What a fright I look! Can I really be such a skeleton as this? It is indeed a bad business if I am.’ Murasaki, her eyes full of tears, came and peeped at the mirror. To distract her he recited the poem: ‘Though I wander in strange lands and far away, in this mirror let me leave my image, that it may never quit your side.’ ‘That, yes, even so little as that, would comfort me, if indeed this mirror might hold the image of your distant face.’ So she answered, and without another word sank into a seat behind the roof-pillar, that her tears might not be seen. His heart went out to her, and he felt at this moment that among all the women he had known she was indeed the most adorable.
His step-brother now fell to reminding him of scenes in their common childhood, and it was already growing dark when he left Genji’s room. The lady at the ‘village of falling flowers’ had written to him constantly since she heard the news of his approaching departure. He knew that she had many reasons for dreading his absence and it seemed unfeeling not to pay her one more visit before he left. But if he spent another evening away from his palace Murasaki would be very disappointed, and he therefore did not start till late in the night. He went first to the room of Princess Reikeiden, who was flattered and delighted beyond measure that hers should be the only house to which he paid the honour of a farewell visit. But what passed between them was not of sufficient interest to be recorded. He remembered that it was only through his help and protection that she had managed to overcome the difficulties and anxieties of the last few years. Now matters would go from bad to worse. In the house nothing stirred. The moon had risen and now shimmered faintly through the clouds. The lake in front of the building was large and wild, and dense thickets of mountain-trees surrounded it. He was just thinking that there could hardly in all the world be a lovelier, stranger place, when he remembered the rocky shore of Suma,—a thousand times more forbidding, more inaccessible!
The younger sister had quite made up her mind that Genji was going to leave the house without visiting her, and she was all the more surprised and delighted when at last, more lovely than ever by moonlight and in the grave simplicity of his exile’s dress, he stole into her room. At once she crept towards the window and they stood together gazing at the moonlight. They talked for a while, and found to their astonishment that it was nearly day. ‘How short the night has been,’ said Genji. ‘Yet even such a hasty meeting as this may never be ours again. Why did I not know you better in all those years when it would have been so easy to meet? Never have such misfortunes befallen an innocent man before, nor ever will they again. I go from torment to torment. Listen ...’ and he was beginning to recount to her the disasters and miscalculations of the past when the cock crowed, and fearing detection he hastened away.
The moon was like last night, just on the point of setting; it seemed to him a symbol of his own declining fortunes. Shining through the dark purple of her dress the moonlight had indeed, as in the old poem, ‘the leaden look of those who weep,’ and she recited the poem: ‘Though to the moonlight my sleeve but narrow lodging can afford, yet might it dwell there for ever and for ever, this radiance[4] of which my eyes can never tire.’ He saw that she was deeply moved by this parting and in pity sought to comfort her with the poem: ‘In its long journeying the moon at last shall meet a clearer sky; then heed not if for a while its light be dimmed.’ ‘It is foolish,’ he added, ‘to spoil the present with tears for sorrows that are still to come,’ and with that he hurried away, that he might be out of the house while it was still dark.
At home he had a great many things to arrange before his departure. First of all he had to give instructions concerning the upkeep of his palace to the few faithful retainers who had taken the risk of remaining in his service. When these had at last all been assigned their functions, difficulties arose about some of the attendants who were to have gone with him into exile, and a fresh choice had to be made. Then there was the business of deciding how much luggage he should take with him to his mountain fastness. Some things were obviously indispensable; but even when he cut down his equipment to the barest possible necessities there were still all kinds of odds and ends, such as writing-materials, poems, Chinese books, which all had to be fitted into the right sort of boxes. And then there was his zithern; he could not leave that behind. But he took no large objects of furniture nor any of his more elaborate costumes, having resigned himself to the prospect of a completely bucolic existence. Finally he had to explain to Murasaki all the arrangements he had made about the servants who were to stay behind, and a hundred other matters. Into her charge too he put all the documents concerning his various estates and grazing-lands in different parts of the country. His granaries and store-houses he put into the keeping of the nurse Shōnagon whose vigilance and reliability he had often noted, giving her the help of one or two trusted household officers. And here again there were numerous arrangements to be made.
With the gentlewomen of his palace he had never been on intimate terms. But he kept them in a good humour by sending for them occasionally to talk with him, and he now summoned them all, saying to them: ‘I am afraid it will be rather dull here while I am away. But if any of you care to stay in my service on the chance that I may one day return to the Court, which if I live long enough is indeed certain to happen sooner or later,—please consider yourselves at the disposition of the Lady in the western wing.’ So saying he sent for all the other servants, high and low, and distributed suitable keepsakes among them.
No one was forgotten; to the nurse of Aoi’s little son and even to the servants at the ‘village of falling flowers’ he sent tokens of his appreciation, chosen, you may be sure, with the greatest taste and care.