10

Kokiden too wanted to see him, but she did not want to see Fujitsubo. She hesitated, and then, peacefully, he died. The court was caught quite by surprise. He had, it was true, left the throne, but his influence had remained considerable. The emperor was young and his maternal grandfather, the Minister of the Right, was an impulsive, vindictive sort of man. What would the world be like, asked courtiers high and low, with such a man in control?

For Genji and Fujitsubo, the question was even crueler. At the funeral no one thought it odd that Genji should stand out among the old emperor's sons, and somehow people felt sadder for him than for his brothers. The dull mourning robes became him and seemed to make him more deserving of sympathy than the others. Two bereavements in successive years had informed him of the futility of human affairs. He thought once more of leaving the world. Alas, too many bonds still tied him to it.

The old emperor's ladies remained in his palace until the forty-ninthday services were over. Then they went their several ways. It was the twentieth of the Twelfth Month, and skies which would in any case have seemed to mark the end of things were for Fujitsubo without a ray of sunlight. She was quite aware of Kokiden's feelings and knew that a world at the service of the other lady would be difficult to live in. But her thoughts were less of the future than of the past. Memories of her years with the old emperor never left her. His palace was no longer a home for his ladies, however, and presently all were gone.

Fujitsubo returned to her family palace in Sanjo~. Her brother, Prince Hyo~bu, came for her. There were flurries of snow, driven by a sharp wind. The old emperor's palace was almost deserted. Genji came to see them off and they talked of old times. The branches of the pine in the garden were brown and weighed down by snow.

The prince's poem was not an especially good one, but it-suited the occasion and brought tears to Genji's eyes:

“Withered the pine whose branches gave us shelter?

Now at the end of the year its needles fall.”

The pond was frozen over. Genji's poem was impromptu and not, perhaps, among his best:

“Clear as a mirror, these frozen winter waters.

The figure they once reflected is no more.”

This was Omyo~bu's poem:

“At the end of the year the springs are silenced by ice.

And gone are they whom we saw among the rocks.”

There were other poems, but I see no point in setting them down.

The procession was as grand as in other years. Perhaps it was only in the imagination that there was something forlorn and dejected about it. Fujitsubo's own Sanjo~ palace now seemed like a wayside inn. Her thoughts were on the years she had spent away from it.