22

The Second Month came. It had been cruel of her, Genji was thinking. She had caught him off guard. He thought about her a great deal and wondered what people would be saying. It had all been fated, no doubt, and yet he could not help thinking that he had brought it on himself. Higekuro was so unsubtle a man that Genji feared venturing even a playful letter. On a night of boredom when a heavy rain was falling, however, he remembered that on other such nights he had beguiled the tedium by visiting her, and got off a note. He sent it secretly to Ukon. Not sure what view she would take of it, he limited himself to commonplaces.

“A quiet night in spring. It rains and rains.

Do your thoughts return to the village you left behind?

“It is a dull time, and I grumble—and no one listens.”

Ukon showed it to Tamakazura when no one else was near. She wept. He had been like a father, and she longed to see him. But it was, as he suggested, impossible. She had not told Ukon how unseemly his behavior had sometimes been and she now had no one with whom to share her feelings. Ukon had suspicions of the truth, but they were not very precise.

“It embarrasses me to write to you,” Tamakazura sent back, “but I am afraid that you might be worried. As you say, it is a time of rainy boredom.

“It rains and rains. My sleeves have no time to dry.

Of forgetfulness there comes not the tiniest drop.”

She concluded with conventional remarks of a daughterly sort.

Genji was near tears as he read it, but did not wish to treat these women to a display of jewel-like teardrops. As the rising waters threatened to engulf him, he thought of how, all those years ago, Kokiden had kept him from seeing her sister Oborozukiyo. Yet so novel was the Tamakazura affair that it seemed without precedents. Men of feeling did have a way of sowing bitter herbs. He tried to make himself accept the plain facts, that the lady was not a proper object for his affections and that these regrets came too late. He took out a japanese koto, and it too brought memories. What a gentle touch she had had! He plucked a note or two* and, trying to make it sound lighthearted, sang “The Jeweled Grasses” + to himself. It is hard to believe that the lady for whom he longed would not have pitied him if she could have seen him.