2

Murasaki's southeast garden had been pruned and otherwise readied for winter, but the wind was more than “the little _hagi_” * had been waiting for. Its branches turned and twisted and offered no place for the raindrops. Murasaki came out to the veranda. Genji was with his daughter. Approaching along the east gallery, Yu~giri saw over a low screen that a door was open at a corner of the main hall. He stopped to look at the women inside. The screens having been folded and put away, the view was unobstructed. The lady at the veranda—it would be Murasaki. Her noble beauty made him think of a fine birch cherry+ blooming through the hazes of spring. It was a gentle flow which seemed to come to him and sweep over him. She laughed as her women fought with the unruly blinds, though he was too far away to make out what she said to them, and the bloom was more radiant. She stood surveying the scene, seeing what the winds had done to each of the flowers. Her women were all very pretty too, but he did not really look at them. It almost frightened him to think why Genji had so kept him at a distance. Such beauty was irresistible, and just such inadvertencies as this were to be avoided at all costs.

As he started to leave, Genji came through one of the doors to the west, separating Murasaki's rooms from his daughter's.

“An irritable, impatient sort of wind,” he said. “You must close your shutters. There are men about and you are very visible.”

Yu~giri looked back. Smiling at Murasaki, Genji was so young and handsome that Yu~giri found it hard to believe he was looking at his own father. Murasaki too was at her best. Nowhere could there be a nearer approach to perfection than the two of them, thought Yu~giri, with a stabbing thrill of pleasure. The wind had blown open the shutters along the gallery to make him feel rather exposed. He withdrew. Then, going up to the veranda, he coughed as if to announce that he had just arrived.

“See,” said Genji, pointing to the open door. “You have been quite naked.”

Nothing of the sort had been permitted through all the years. Winds can move boulders and they had reduced the careful order to disarray, and so permitted the remarkable pleasure that had just been Yu~giri's.

Some men had come up to see what repairs were needed. “We are in for a real storm,” they said. “It's blowing from the northeast and you aren't getting the worst of it here. The stables and the angling pavilion could blow away any minute.”

“And where are you on your way from?” Genji asked Yu~giri.

“I was at Grandmother's, but with all the talk of the storm I was worried about you. But they're worse off at Sanjo~ than you are here. The roar of the wind had Grandmother trembling like a child. I think perhaps if you don't mind I'll go back.”

“Do, please. It doesn't seem fair that people should be more childish as they get older, but it is what we all have to look forward to.”

He gave his son a message for the old lady: “It is a frightful storm, but I am sure that Yu~giri is taking good care of you.”