15

At Suma, melancholy autumn winds were blowing. Genji's house was some distance from the sea, but at night the wind that blew over the barriers, now as in Yukihira's day, seemed to bring the surf to his bedside. Autumn was hushed and lonely at a place of exile. He had few companions. One night when they were all asleep be raised his head from his pillow and listened to the roar of the wind and of the waves, as if at his ear. Though he was unaware that he wept, his tears were enough to set his pillow afloat.* He plucked a few notes on his koto, but the sound only made him sadder. “The waves on the strand, like moans of helpless longing.

The winds—like messengers from those who grieve?”

He had awakened the others. They sat up, and one by one they were in tears.

This would not do. Because of him they had been swept into exile, leaving families from whom they had never before been parted. It must be very difficult for them, and his own gloom could scarcely be making things easier. So he set about cheering them. During the day he would invent games and make jokes, and set down this and that poem on multicolored patchwork, and paint pictures on fine specimens of figured Chinese silk. Some of his larger paintings were masterpieces. He had long ago been told of this Suma coast and these hills and had formed a picture of them in his mind, and he found now that his imagination had fallen short of the actuality. What a pity, said his men, that they could not summon Tsunenori and Chieda* and other famous painters of the day to add colors to Genji's monochromes. This resolute cheerfulness had the proper effect. His men, four or five of whom were always with him, would not have dreamed of leaving him. There was a profusion of flowers in the garden. Genji came out, when the evening colors were at their best, to a gallery from which he had a good view of the coast. His men felt chills of apprehension as they watched him, for the loneliness of the setting made him seem like a visitor from another world. In a dark robe tied loosely over singlets of figured white and astercolored trousers, he announced himself as “a disciple of the Buddha” and slowly intoned a sutra, and his men thought that they had never heard a finer voice. From offshore came the voices of fishermen raised in song. The barely visible boats were like little seafowl on an utterly lonely sea, and as he brushed away a tear induced by the splashing of oars and the calls of wild geese overhead, the white of his hand against the jet black of his rosary was enough to bring comfort to men who had left their families behind.

“Might they be companions of those I long for?

Their cries ring sadly through the sky of their journey.”

This was Yoshikiyo's reply:

“I know not why they bring these thoughts of old,

These wandering geese. They were not then my comrades.”

And Koremitsu's:

“No colleagues of mine, these geese beyond the clouds.

They chose to leave their homes, and I did dot.”

And that of the guards officer who had cut such a proud figure on the day of the Kamo lustration:

“Sad are their cries as they wing their way from home.

They still find solace, for they still have comrades. It is cruel to lose one's comrades.”

His father had been posted to Hitachi, but he himself had come with Genji. He contrived, for all that must have been on his mind, to seem cheerful.

A radiant moon had come out. They were reminded that it was the harvest full moon. Genji could not take his. eyes from it. On other such nights there had been concerts at court, and perhaps they of whom he was thinking would be gazing at this same moon and thinking of him.

“My thoughts are of you, old friend,” he sang, “two thousand leagues away.” * His men were in tears.

His longing was intense at the memory of Fujitsubo's farewell poem,

and as other memories came back, one after another, he had to turn away

to hide his tears. It was very late, said his men, but still he did not come

inside.

“So long as I look upon it I find comfort,

The moon which comes again to the distant city.”

He thought of the emperor and how much he had resembled their father, that last night when they had talked so fondly of old times. “I still have with me the robe which my lord gave me,” + he whispered, going inside. He did in fact have a robe that was a gift from the emperor, and he kept it always beside him.

“Not bitter thoughts alone does this singlet bring.

Its sleeves are damp with tears of affection too.”