15

Promptly that evening he paid a visit. The Kyushu women had long known of “the shining Genji,” but his radiance had come to seem very far off. And here it was, dimming the lamplight through openings in curtains, almost frightening.

Ukon went to admit him. “One comes through this door,” he said, laughing, “with wildly palpitating heart.” He took a seat in an outer room. “A very soft and suggestive sort of light. I was told that you wished to see your father's face. Is that not the case?” He pushed the curtain aside.

She looked away, but he had seen enough to be very pleased.

“Can't we have a little more light? This is really too suggestive.”

Ukon trimmed a lamp and brought it near.

“Now we are being bold.”

Yes, she was very beautiful, and she reminded him of her mother.

“There was no time through all those years when you were out of my thoughts, and now that we are together it is all like a dream.” His manner was intimate, as if he were her father. “I am overwhelmed and reduced to silence.” He was in fact deeply moved, and he brushed away a tear as he counted up the years. “How very sad it has been. I doubt that many fathers and daughters are kept apart for so long. But come: you are too old for this d shfulness, and there are so many things we must talk about. You must not treat me like a stranger.”

She could not look at him. Finally she replied in a voice which he could barely hear but which, as it trailed off into silence, reminded him very much of her mother. “I was like the leech child when they took me away.* I could not stand up. Afterwards I was hardly sure whether it was happening to me or not.”

He smiled. It was a most acceptable answer. “And now who besides me is to pity you for all the wasted years?”

He gave Ukon various instructions and left.

Pleased that she had passed the test so nicely, he went to tell Murasaki. “I had felt for her, in a lofty, abstract sort of way; and now I find her so much in control of herself that she almost makes me uncomfortable. I must let everyone know that I have taken her in, and we shall watch the pulses rise as Prince Hotaru and the rest come peeking through my fences. We have seen composed and sedate countenances all around us, and tha has been because we have not had the means for creating disturbances. Now we shall improve our service and see who among them is the most unsettled.”

“What a very odd sort of father, thinking first how to lead them all into temptation.”

“If I had been sufficiently alive to these things,” he said, “I might have been similarly thoroughgoing in my management of your affairs. I did not consider all the possibilities.”

She flushed, as young and beautiful as ever.

He reached for an inkstone and jotted down a verse:

“With unabated longing I sought the other.

What lines have drawn me to the jeweled chaplet?*

“It is all so very affecting,” he added, as if to himself.

Yes, thought Murasaki, he would seem to have found a memento of someone very important to him.