Then came the New Year’s Day celebrations; and this year there was also to be the New Year’s mumming, a band of young noblemen going round dancing and singing in various parts of the Palace. After the festival of the White Horse on the seventh day Genji left the Emperor’s presence at nightfall and went to his own apartments in the Palace as though intending to stay the night there. But later he adjourned to the Hitachi Palace which had on this occasion a less forbidding appearance than usual. Even the princess was rather more ordinary and amenable. He was hoping that like the season she too had begun anew, when he saw that sunlight was coming into the room. After hesitating for a while, he got up and went out into the front room. The double doors at the end of the eastern wing were wide open, and the roof of the verandah having fallen in, the sunshine poured straight into the house. A little snow was still falling and its brightness made the morning light yet more exquisitely brilliant and sparkling. She watched a servant helping him into his cloak. She was lying half out of the bed, her head hanging a little downwards and her hair falling in great waves to the floor. Pleased with the sight he began to wonder whether she would not one day outgrow her plainness. He began to close the door of the women’s apartments, but suddenly feeling that he owed her amends for the harsh opinion of her appearance which he had formed before, he did not quite shut the door, but bringing a low stool towards it sat there putting his disordered head-dress to rights. One of the maids brought him an incredibly battered mirror-stand, Chinese combs, a box of toilet articles and other things. It amused him to discover that in this household of women a little male gear still survived, even in so decrepit a state.
He noticed that the princess, who was now up and dressed, was looking quite fashionable. She was in fact wearing the clothes which he had sent her before the New Year, but he did not at first recognize them. He began however to have a vague idea that her mantle, with its rather conspicuous pattern, was very like one of the things he had given her. ‘I do hope,’ he said presently, ‘that this year you will be a little more conversational. I await the day when you will unbend a little towards me more eagerly than the poet longs for the first nightingale. If only like the year that has changed you too would begin anew!’ Her face brightened. She had thought of a remark and trembling from head to foot with a tremendous effort she brought out the quotation ‘When plovers chirp and all things grow anew.’ ‘Splendid,’ said Genji, ‘This is a sign that the new year has indeed begun’ and smiling encouragingly at her he left the house, she following him with her eyes from the couch on which she lay. Her face as usual was half covered by her arm; but the unfortunate flower still bloomed conspicuously. ‘Poor thing, she really is very ugly,’ thought Genji in despair.
When he returned to the Nijō-in he found Murasaki waiting for him. She was growing up as handsome a girl as one could wish, and promised well for the future. She was wearing a plain close-fitting dress of cherry colour; above all, the unstudied grace and ease of her movements charmed and delighted him as he watched her come to meet him. In accordance with the wishes of her old-fashioned grandmother her teeth were not blackened, but her eyebrows were delicately touched with stain. ‘Why, when I might be playing with a beautiful child, do I spend my time with an ugly woman? ‘Genji kept on asking himself in bewilderment while they sat together playing with her dolls. Next she began to draw pictures and colour them. After she had painted all sorts of queer and amusing things, ‘Now I am going to do a picture for you,’ said Genji and drawing a lady with very long hair he put a dab of red on her nose. Even in a picture, he thought pausing to look at the effect, it gave one a most uncomfortable feeling. He went and looked at himself in the mirror and as though dissatisfied with his own fresh complexion he suddenly put on his own nose a dab of red such as he had given to the lady in the picture. He looked at himself in the mirror. His handsome face had in an instant become ridiculous and repulsive. At first the child laughed. ‘Should you go on liking me if I were always as ugly as this?’ he asked. Suddenly she began to be afraid that the paint would not come off. ‘Oh why did you do it?’ she cried. ‘How horrible!’ He pretended to rub it without effect. ‘No,’ he said ruefully, ‘it will not come off. What a sad end to our game! I wonder what the Emperor will say when I go back to the Palace?’ He said it so seriously that she became very unhappy, and longing to cure him dipped a piece of thick soft paper in the water-jug which stood by his writing-things, and began scrubbing at his nose. ‘Take care,’ he cried laughing, ‘that you do not serve me as Heichū[15] was treated by his lady. I would rather have a red nose than a black one.’ So they passed their time, making the prettiest couple.
In the gentle spring sunshine the trees were already shimmering with a haze of new-grown buds. Among them it was the plum-trees that gave the surest promise, for already their blossoms were uncurling, like lips parted in a faint smile. Earliest of them all was a red plum that grew beside the covered steps. It was in full colour. ‘Though fair the tree on which it blooms, this red flower fills me with a strange misgiving,’[16] sang Genji with a deep sigh.
We shall see in the next chapter what happened in the end to all these people.
[1] The events of this chapter are synchronous with those of the last.
[2] Wine, zithern and song—in allusion to a poem by Po Chü-i.
[3] Evidently a quotation.
[4] Chūjō’s child by Yūgao.
[5] Used to scent clothes with.