20

Genji's daughter, the crown princess,* had not yet been permitted to come home from court. Young and pampered, she needed a rest, and as the warm weather came she began feeling unwell and thought it unkind of the crown prince not to let her go. Her condition was for the crown prince a most interesting and indeed exciting one. She was still very young, rather too young, people thought, to have children. Finally her request was granted and she came home to Rokujo~.

She was given rooms on the east side of the main southeast hall, where the Third Princess was also living. Her mother, now blissfully happy, was with her.

Murasaki was to come calling. “Perhaps we might open the doors to the princess's rooms,” she suggested to Genji, “and I can introduce myself. I have been looking for an occasion. I do want to be friendly, and I think it might please her.”

Genji smiled. “Nothing could please me more. You will find her a mere child. Perhaps you can make us all happy by being her teacher.”

As she sat before her minor she was less worried about the princess than about the Akashi lady. She washed her hair and brushed it carefully and took very great pains with her dress. Genji thought her incomparably lovely.

He went to the princess's rooms. “The lady in the east wing will be going to see the lady who has just come from court, and she has said that she thinks it a good opportunity for the two of you to become friends. I hope you will see her. She is a very good lady, and so young that you

“I'm sure I will be very tongue-tied. Tell me what to say.”

“You will think of things. Just let the conversation take its course. You needn't feel shy.”

He wanted the two of them to like each other. He was embarrassed that the princess should be so immature for her years, but very pleased that Murasaki had suggested a meeting.

And so she was being received in audience, thought Murasaki—but was she really so much the princess's inferior? Genji had come upon her in unfortunate circumstances, and that was the main difference between them. Calligraphy was her great comfort when she was in low spirits. She would take up a brush and jot down old poems as they came to her, and the unhappiness in them would speak to her very directly.

Back from seeing the other two ladies, his daughter and his new wife

Genji was filled with wonder at this more familiar lady. They had been together for so many years, and here she was delighting him anew. She managed with no loss of dignity—and it was a noble sort of dignity—to be bright and humorous. He counted over the several aspects of beauty and found them here gathered together; and she was at her loveliest. But then she always seemed her loveliest, more beautiful each year than the year before, today than yesterday. It was her power of constant renewal that most filled him with wonder.

She slipped her jottings under an inkstone. He took them up. The writing was not perhaps her very best, but it had great charm and subtlety.

“I detect a change in the green upon the hills.

Is autumn coming to them? Is it coming to me?”

He wrote beside it, as if he too were at writing practice:

“No change do we see in the white of the waterfowl.

Not so constant the lower leaves of the _hagi_.”

She might write of her unhappiness, but she did not let it show. He thought her splendid.

Free this evening of obligations at Rokujo~, he decided to hazard another secret visit to Nijo~. Self-loathing was not enough to overcome temptation.

To the crown princess, Murasaki was more like a mother than her real mother. Murasaki thought her even prettier than when they had last met. They talked with all the old ease and intimacy.

Murasaki then went to see the Third Princess. Yes indeed—still very much a child. Murasaki addressed her in a motherly fashion and reminded her what close relatives they were.

She turned to the princess's nurse, Chu~nagon. “It will seem impertinent of me to say so, but we do after all 'wear the same garlands.'* I have been very slow about introducing myself, I am afraid, but I will hope to see a great deal of you, and I hope too that you will let me know immediately of any derelictions and oversights of which I am guilty.”

“You are very kind. My lady has been feeling rather disconsolate without her father, and nothing could be more comforting. It was his hope as he prepared to leave the world that you would not turn away from her, but would look upon her, still very much a child, as someone to educate and improve. My lady is being very quiet, but I know that she shares these hopes.”

“Ever since the Suzaku emperor honored me with a letter I have wanted to do something; but I have found, alas, that I am capable of so very little.”

Gently, she sought to draw the princess into conversation about illustrated romances and the like. Even at her age, she said, she still played with dolls. She left the princess feeling, in a childish, half-formed way, that this was a kind and gentle lady, not so old in heart and manner as to make a young person feel uncomfortable. Genji had been right. They frequently exchanged notes and from time to time Murasaki joined her in her games.

The world has an unpleasant way of gossiping about people in high places. How, everyone asked, was Murasaki responding to it all? Some lessening of Genji's affection seemed inevitable, and some loss of place and prestige. When it became clear beyond denying that his affection had if anything increased, there were those who said that he really ought to be nicer to his princess. Finally it became clear that the two ladies were getting on very well together, and the world had to look elsewhere for its gossip.