[18] From Tō no Chūjō’s wife, who was the daughter of the Minister of the Right.
[19] Cicada.
[20] ‘Sedge upon the eaves ‘is Nokiba no Ogi, and it is by this name that the lady is generally known.
[21] Gwammon.
[22] For forty-nine days the spirit of the dead leads the intermediate existence so strangely described in the Abhidharma Kośa Śāstra; then it begins its new incarnation.
CHAPTER V
MURASAKI
HE fell sick of an ague, and when numerous charms and spells had been tried in vain, the illness many times returning, someone said that in a certain temple on the Northern Hills there lived a wise and holy man who in the summer of the year before (the ague was then rife and the usual spells were giving no relief) was able to work many signal cures: ‘Lose no time in consulting him, for while you try one useless means after another the disease gains greater hold upon you.’ At once he sent a messenger to fetch the holy man, who however replied that the infirmities of old age no longer permitted him to go abroad. ‘What is to be done?’ said Genji; ‘I must go secretly to visit him’; and taking only four or five trusted servants he set out long before dawn. The place lay somewhat deep into the hills. It was the last day of the third month and in the Capital the blossoms had all fallen. The hill-cherry was not yet out; but as he approached the open country, the mists began to assume strange and lovely forms, which pleased him the more because, being one whose movements were tethered by many proprieties, he had seldom seen such sights before. The temples too delighted him. The holy man lived in a deep cave hollowed out of a high wall of rock. Genji did not send in his name and was in close disguise, but his face was well known and the priest at once recognized him.
‘Forgive me’ he said; ‘it was you, was it not, who sent for me the other day? Alas, I think no longer of the things of this world and I am afraid I have forgotten how to work my cures. I am very sorry indeed that you have come so far,’ and pretending to be very much upset, he looked at Genji, laughing. But it was soon apparent that he was a man of very great piety and learning. He wrote out certain talismans and administered them, and read certain spells. By the time this was over, the sun had risen, and Genji went a little way outside the cave and looked around him. From the high ground where he was standing he looked down on a number of scattered hermitages. A winding track led down to a hut which, though it was hedged with the same small brushwood as the rest, was more spaciously planned, having a pleasant roofed alley running out from it, and there were trim copses set around. He asked whose house it was and was told by one of his men that a certain abbot had been living there in retirement for two years. ‘I know him well’ said Genji on hearing the abbot’s name; ‘I should not like to meet him dressed and attended as I am. I hope he will not hear....’ Just then a party of nicely dressed children came out of the house and began to pluck such flowers as are used for the decoration of altars and holy images. ‘There are some girls with them’ said one of Genji’s men. ‘We cannot suppose that His Reverence keeps them. Who then can they be?’ and to satisfy his curiosity he went a little way down the hill and watched them. ‘Yes, there are some very pretty girls, some of them grown up and others quite children,’ he came back and reported.
During a great part of the morning Genji was busy with his cure. When at last the ceremony was completed his attendants, dreading the hour at which the fever usually returned, strove to distract his attention by taking him a little way across the mountain to a point from which the Capital could be seen. ‘How lovely’ cried Genji ‘are those distances half lost in haze, and that blur of shimmering woods that stretches out on every side. How could anyone be unhappy for a single instant who lived in such a place?’ ‘This is nothing,’ said one of his men. ‘If I could but show you the lakes and mountains of other provinces, you would soon see how far they excel all that you here admire’; and he began to tell him first of Mount Fuji and many another famous peak, and then of the West Country with all its pleasant bays and shores, till he quite forgot that it was the hour of his fever. ‘Yonder, nearest to us’ the man continued, pointing to the sea ‘is the bay of Akashi in Harima. Note it well; for though it is not a very out-of-the-way place, yet the feeling one has there of being shut off from everything save one huge waste of sea makes it the strangest and most desolate spot I know. And there it is that the daughter of a lay priest who was once governor of the province presides over a mansion of quite disproportionate and unexpected magnificence. He is the descendant of a Prime Minister and was expected to cut a great figure in the world. But he is a man of very singular disposition and is averse to all society. For a time he was an officer in the Palace Guard, but he gave this up and accepted the province of Harima. However he soon quarrelled with the local people and, announcing that he had been badly treated and was going back to the Capital, he did nothing of the sort, but shaved his head and became a lay priest. Then instead of settling, as is usually done, on some secluded hillside, he built himself a house on the seashore, which may seem to you a very strange thing to do; but as a matter of fact, whereas in that province in one place or another a good many recluses have taken up their abode, the mountain-country is far more dull and lonely and would sorely have tried the patience of his young wife and child; and so as a compromise he chose the seashore. Once when I was travelling in the province of Harima I took occasion to visit his house and noted that, though at the Capital he had lived in a very modest style, here he had built on the most magnificent and lavish scale; as though determined in spite of what had happened (now that he was free from the bother of governing the province) to spend the rest of his days in the greatest comfort imaginable. But all the while he was making great preparations for the life to come and no ordained priest could have led a more austere and pious life.’
‘But you spoke of his daughter?’ said Genji. ‘She is passably good-looking,’ he answered, ‘and not by any means stupid. Several governors and officers of the province have set their hearts upon her and pressed their suit most urgently; but her father has sent them all away. It seems that though in his own person so indifferent to worldly glory, he is determined that this one child, his only object of care, should make amends for his obscurity, and has sworn that if ever she chooses against his will, and when he is gone flouts his set purpose and injunction to satisfy some idle fancy of her own, his ghost will rise and call upon the sea to cover her.’