Genji listened respectfully, but made no reply. The Emperor began to fear that his marriage with Aoi had proved a very unhappy one and was sorry that he had arranged it. ‘I do not understand you,’ he said. ‘You seem to have no taste for gallantry and do not, so far as I can see, take the slightest interest in any of the ladies-in-waiting whom one might expect you to find attractive, nor do you bother yourself about the various beauties who in one part of the town or another are now in request; but instead you must needs pick up some creature from no one knows where and wound the feelings of others by keeping her as your mistress!’
Though he was now getting on in years the Emperor had himself by no means ceased to be interested in such matters. He had always seen to it that his ladies-in-waiting and palace-servants should be remarkable both for their looks and their intelligence, and it was a time when the Court was full of interesting women. There were few among them whom Genji could not by the slightest word or gesture have made his own. But, perhaps because he saw too much of them, he did not find them in the least attractive. Suspecting this, they would occasionally experiment upon him with some frivolous remark. He answered so staidly that they saw a flirtation would be impossible and some of them came to the conclusion that he was rather a dull, prudish young man.
There was an elderly lady-of-the-bedchamber who, though she was an excellent creature in every other way and was very much liked and respected, was an outrageous flirt. It astonished Genji that despite her advancing years she showed no sign of reforming her reckless and fantastic behaviour. Curious to see how she would take it he one day came up and began joking with her. She appeared to be quite unconscious of the disparity between their ages and at once counted him as an admirer. Slightly alarmed, he nevertheless found her company rather agreeable and often talked with her. But, chiefly because he was frightened of being laughed at if anyone found out, he refused to become her lover, and this she very much resented. One day she was dressing the Emperor’s hair. When this was over his Majesty sent for his valets and went with them into another room. Genji and the elderly lady were left alone together. She was fuller than ever of languishing airs and poses, and her costume was to the last degree stylish and elaborate. ‘Poor creature,’ he thought, ‘How little difference it all makes!’ and he was passing her on his way out of the room when suddenly the temptation to give a tug at her dress became irresistible. She glanced swiftly round, eyeing him above the rim of a marvellously painted summer-fan. The eyelids beneath which she ogled at him were blackened and sunken; wisps of hair projected untidily around her forehead. There was something singularly inappropriate about this gawdy, coquettish fan. Handing her his own instead, he took it from her and examined it. On paper coated with a red so thick and lustrous that you could see yourself reflected in it a forest of tall trees was painted in gold. At the side of this design, in a hand which though out-of-date was not lacking in distinction was written the poem about the Forest of Oaraki.[13] He made no doubt that the owner of the fan had written it in allusion to her own advancing years and was expecting him to make a gallant reply. Turning over in his mind how best to divert the extravagant ardour of this strange creature he could, to his own amusement, think only of another poem[14] about the same forest; but to this it would have been ill-bred to allude. He was feeling very uncomfortable lest someone should come in and see them together. She however was quite at her ease and seeing that he remained silent she recited with many arch looks the poem: ‘Come to me in the forest and I will cut pasture for your horse, though it be but of the under leaf whose season is past.’ ‘Should I seek your woodland,’ he answered, ‘my fair name would be gone, for down its glades at all times the pattering of hoofs is heard,’ and he tried to get away; but she held him back saying: ‘How odious you are! That is not what I mean at all. No one has ever insulted me like this before,’ and she burst into tears. ‘Let us talk about it some other time,’ said Genji; ‘I did not mean ...’ and freeing himself from her grasp he rushed out of the room, leaving her in great dudgeon. She felt indeed after his repulse prodigiously old and tottering. All this was seen by His Majesty who, his toilet long ago completed, had watched the ill-assorted pair with great amusement from behind his Imperial screen. ‘I am always being told,’ he said, ‘that the boy takes no interest in the members of my household. But I cannot say that he seems to me unduly shy,’ and he laughed. For a moment she was slightly embarrassed; but she felt that any relationship with Genji, even if it consisted of being rebuffed by him in public, was distinctly a feather in her cap, and she made no attempt to defend herself against the Emperor’s raillery. The story soon went the round of the Court. It astonished no one more than Tō no Chūjō who, though he knew that Genji was given to odd experiments, could not believe that his friend was really launched upon the fantastic courtship which rumour was attributing to him. There seemed no better way of discovering whether it was conceivably possible to regard the lady in such a light than to make love to her himself.
The attentions of so distinguished a suitor went a long way towards consoling her for her late discomfiture. Her new intrigue was of course carried on with absolute secrecy and Genji knew nothing about it. When he next met her she seemed to be very cross with him, and feeling sorry for her because she was so old he made up his mind that he must try to console her. But for a long while he was completely occupied by tiresome business of one kind and another. At last one very dismal rainy evening when he was strolling in the neighbourhood of the Ummeiden[15] he heard this lady playing most agreeably on her lute. She was so good a performer that she was often called upon to play with the professional male musicians in the Imperial orchestra. It happened that at this moment she was somewhat downcast and discontented, and in such a mood she played with even greater feeling and verve. She was singing the ‘Melon-grower’s Song’[16]; admirably, he thought, despite its inappropriateness to her age. So must the voice of the mysterious lady at O-chou have sounded in Po Chü-i’s ears when he heard her singing on her boat at night[17]; and he stood listening. At the end of the song the player sighed heavily as though quite worn out by the passionate vehemence of her serenade. Genji approached softly humming the ‘Azumaya’: ‘Here in the portico of the eastern house rain splashes on me while I wait. Come, my beloved, open the door and let me in.’ Immediately, indeed with an unseemly haste, she answered as does the lady in the song ‘Open the door and come in,’[18] adding the verse: ‘In the wide shelter of that portico no man yet was ever splashed with rain,’ and again she sighed so portentously that although he did not at all suppose that he alone was the cause of this demonstration he felt it in any case to be somewhat exaggerated and answered with the poem: ‘Your sighs show clearly that, despite the song, you are another’s bride, and I for my part have no mind to haunt the loggias of your eastern house.’ He would gladly have passed on, but he felt that this would be too unkind, and seeing that someone else was coming towards her room he stepped inside and began talking lightly of indifferent subjects, in a style which though it was in reality somewhat forced she found very entertaining.
It was intolerable, thought Tō no Chūjō, that Genji should be praised as a quiet and serious young man and should constantly rebuke him for his frivolity, while all the time he was carrying on a multiplicity of interesting intrigues which out of mere churlishness he kept entirely hidden from all his friends. For a long while Chūjō had been waiting for an opportunity to expose this sanctimonious imposture, and when he saw Genji enter the gentlewoman’s apartment you may be sure he was delighted. To scare him a little at such a moment would be an excellent way to punish him for his unfriendliness. He slackened his pace and watched. The wind sighed in the trees. It was getting very late. Surely Genji would soon begin to doze? And indeed he did now look as though he had fallen asleep. Chūjō stole on tip-toe into the room; but Genji who was only half dreaming instantly heard him, and not knowing that Chūjō had followed him got it into his head that it was a certain Commissioner of Works who years ago had been supposed to be an admirer of the lady. The idea of being discovered in such a situation by this important old gentleman filled him with horror. Furious with his companion for having exposed him to the chance of such a predicament: ‘This is too bad,’ he whispered ‘I am going home. What possessed you to let me in on a night when you knew that someone else was coming?’ He had only time to snatch up his cloak and hide behind a long folding screen before Chūjō entered the room and going straight up to the screen began in a business-like manner to fold it up. Though she was no longer young the lady did not lose her head in this alarming crisis. Being a woman of fashion she had on more than one occasion found herself in an equally agitating position, and now despite her astonishment, after considering for a moment what had best be done with the intruder, she seized him by the back of his coat and with a practised though trembling hand pulled him away from the screen. Genji had still no idea that it was Chūjō. He had half a mind to show himself, but quickly remembered that he was oddly and inadequately clad, with his head-dress all awry. He felt that if he ran for it he would cut much too strange a figure as he left the room, and for a moment he hesitated. Wondering how much longer Genji would take to recognize him Chūjō did not say a word but putting on the most ferocious air imaginable drew his sword from the scabbard. Whereupon the lady crying ‘Gentlemen! Gentlemen!’ flung herself between them in an attitude of romantic supplication. They could hardly refrain from bursting into laughter. It was only by day when very carefully painted and bedizened that she still retained a certain superficial air of youth and charm. But now this woman of fifty-seven or eight, disturbed by a sudden brawl in the midst of her amours, created the most astonishing spectacle as she knelt at the feet of two young men in their ’teens beseeching them not to die for her. Chūjō however refrained from showing the slightest sign of amusement and continued to look as alarming and ferocious as he could. But he was now in full view and Genji realized in a moment that Chūjō had all the while known who he was and had been amusing himself at his expense. Much relieved at this discovery he grabbed at the scabbard from which Chūjō had drawn the sword and held it fast lest his friend should attempt to escape and then, despite his annoyance at having been followed, burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. ‘Are you in your right mind?’ said Genji at last. ‘This is really a very poor sort of joke. Do you mind letting me get into my cloak?’ Whereupon Chūjō snatched the cloak from him and would not give it back. ‘Very well then,’ said Genji; ‘if you are to have my cloak I must have yours,’ and so saying he pulled open the clasp of Chūjō’s belt and began tugging his cloak from his shoulders. Chūjō resisted and a long tussle followed in which the cloak was torn to shreds. ‘Should you now get it in exchange for yours, this tattered cloak will but reveal the secrets it is meant to hide,’ recited Tō no Chūjō; to which Genji replied with an acrostic poem in which he complained that Chūjō with whom he shared so many secrets should have thought it necessary to spy upon him in this fashion. But neither was really angry with the other and setting their disordered costumes to rights they both took their departure. Genji discovered when he was alone that it had indeed upset him very much to find his movements had been watched, and he could not sleep. The lady felt utterly bewildered. On the floor she found a belt and a buckle which she sent to Genji next day with a complicated acrostic poem in which she compared these stranded properties to the weeds which after their straining and tugging the waves leave upon the shore. She added an allusion to the crystal river of her tears. He was irritated by her persistency but distressed at the shock to which she had been subjected by Chūjō’s foolish joke, and he answered with the poem: ‘At the antics of the prancing wave you have good cause to be angry; but blameless indeed is the shore on whose sands it lashed.’ The belt was Chūjō’s; that was plain for it was darker in colour than his own cloak. And as he examined his cloak he noticed that the lower half of one sleeve was torn away. What a mess everything was in! He told himself with disgust that he was becoming a rowdy, a vulgar night-brawler. Such people, he knew, were always tearing their clothes and making themselves ridiculous. It was time to reform.
The missing sleeve soon arrived from Chūjō’s apartments with the message: ‘Had you not better have this sewn on before you wear your cloak?’ How had he managed to get hold of it? Such tricks were very tiresome and silly. But he supposed he must now give back the belt, and wrapping it in paper of the same colour he sent it with a riddling poem in which he said that he would not keep it lest he should make trouble between Chūjō and the lady. ‘You have dragged her away from me as in the scuffle you snatched from me this belt,’ said Chūjō in his answering poem, and added ‘Have I not good reason to be angry with you?’
Later in the morning they met in the Presence Room. Genji wore a solemn and abstracted air. Chūjō could not help recollecting the absurd scene of their last meeting, but it was a day upon which there was a great deal of public business to dispatch and he was soon absorbed in his duties. But from time to time each would catch sight of the other’s serious face and heavy official bearing, and then they could not help smiling. In an interval Chūjō came up to Genji and asked him in a low voice whether he had decided in future to be a little more communicative about his affairs. ‘No, indeed,’ said Genji; ‘but I feel I owe you an apology for preventing you from spending a happy hour with the lady whom you had come to visit. Everything in life seems to go wrong.’ So they whispered and at the end each solemnly promised the other not to speak of the matter to anybody. But to the two of them it furnished a constant supply of jokes for a long while to come, though Genji took the matter to heart more than he showed and was determined never to get mixed up with such a tiresome creature again. He heard however that the lady was still much ruffled, and fearing that there might be no one at hand to comfort her he had not the heart quite to discontinue his visits.
Chūjō, faithful to his promise, did not mention the affair to anyone, not even to his sister, but kept it as a weapon of self-defence should Genji ever preach high morality to him again.
Such marked preference did the Emperor show in his treatment of Genji that even the other princes of the Blood Royal stood somewhat in awe of him. But Tō no Chūjō was ready to dispute with him on any subject, and was by no means inclined always to let him have his own way. He and Aoi were the only children of the Emperor’s sister. Genji, it is true, was the Emperor’s son; but though Chūjō’s father was only a Minister his influence was far greater than that of his colleagues, and as the son of such a man by his marriage with a royal princess he was used to being treated with the greatest deference. It had never so much as occurred to him that he was in any way Genji’s inferior; for he knew that as regards his person at least he had no reason to be dissatisfied; and with most other qualities, whether of character or intelligence, he believed himself to be very adequately endowed. Thus a friendly rivalry grew up between the two of them and led to many diverting incidents which it would take too long to describe.
In the seventh month two events of importance took place. An empress was appointed[19] and Genji was raised to the rank of Counsellor. The Emperor was intending very soon to resign the Throne. He would have liked to proclaim his new-born child as Heir Apparent in place of Kōkiden’s son. This was difficult, for there was no political function which would have supported such a choice. Fujitsubo’s relations were all members of the Imperial family[20] and Genji, to whom he might have looked for help owing to his affiliation with the Minamoto clan, unfortunately showed no aptitude for political intrigue. The best he could do was at any rate to strengthen Fujitsubo’s position and hope that later on she would be able to exert her influence. Kōkiden heard of his intentions, and small wonder if she was distressed and astounded. The Emperor tried to quiet her by pointing out that in a short time her son would succeed to the Throne and that she would then hold the equally important rank of Empress Mother. But it was indeed hard that the mother of the Heir Apparent should be passed over in favour of a concubine aged little more than twenty. The public tended to take Kōkiden’s side and there was a good deal of discontent. On the night when the new Empress was installed Genji, as a Counsellor, was among those who accompanied her to the Middle Palace. As daughter of a previous Empress and mother of an exquisite prince she enjoyed a consideration at Court beyond that which her new rank would have alone procured for her. But if it was with admiring devotion that the other great lords of her train attended her that day, it may be imagined with what fond yet agonized thoughts Prince Genji followed the litter in which she rode. She seemed at last to have been raised so far beyond his reach that scarce knowing what he did he murmured to himself the lines: ‘Now upon love’s dark path has the last shadow closed; for I have seen you carried to a cloud-land whither none may climb.’