18

All the ladies took great pains with their answers and with gifts for the messengers. The safflower lady, left behind in the east lodge at Nijo~, might have had certain feelings of deprivation, but she was not one to neglect ceremony. She gave the messenger a yellow lady's robe rather discolored at the sleeves—a hollow locust shell, so to speak. Her note was on official stationery, heavily scented and yellow with age.

“Your gifts bring boundless sorrow.

“Tearfully I don this Chinese robe,

And having dampened its sleeves, I now return it.”

The hand was very old-fashioned. Smiling, he read and reread the poem. Murasaki wondered what had so taken his fancy.

The messenger slipped away, fearing that Genji might be amused as well at the bounty he had received. The women were all whispering and laughing. The safflower princess, so inflexibly conservative in her ways, could be discommodingly polite.

“A most courtly and elegant lady,” said Genji. “Her conservative style is unable to rid itself of Chinese robes and wet sleeves. I am a rather conservative person myself, and must somewhat grudgingly admire this tenacious fidelity. Hers is a style which considers it mandatory to mention 'august company' whenever royalty is in the vicinity, and when the exchange is of a romantic nature a reference to fickleness can always be counted on to get one over the caesura.” He was still smiling. “One reads all the handbooks and memorizes all the gazetteers, and chooses an item from this and an item from that, and what is wanting is originality. She once showed me her father's handbooks. You can't imagine all the poetic marrow and poetic ills I found in them. Somewhat intimidated by these rigorous standards, I gave them back. But this does seem a rather wispy product from so much study and erudition.”

He was a little too amused, thought Murasaki, who answered most solemnly: “And why did you send them back? We could have made copies and given them to the little girl. I used to own some handbooks too, but I'm afraid I let the worms have them. I'm not the student of poetry some people are.”

“I doubt that they would have contributed to the girl's education. Girls should not be too intense. Ignorance is not to be recommended, of course, but a certain tact in the management of learning is.”

He did not seem disposed to answer the safflower princess.

“She speaks of returning your gifts. You must let her have something in return for her poem.”

Essentially a kind man, Genji agreed. He dashed off an answer. This would seem to be what he Lent:

“'Return,' you say—ah,'turn,' I set you mean,

Your Chinese robe, prepared for lonely slumber.*

“I understand completely.”

{The First Warbler}