28

Though Genji was in a fever of impatience to be back at Nijo~, he so seldom visited Rokujo~ that it would be bad manners to leave immediately.

A messenger came. “Our lady has expired.”

He rushed off. The road was dark before his eyes, and ever darker. At Nijo~ the crowds overflowed into the streets. There was weeping within. The worst did indeed seem to have happened. He pushed his way desperately through.

“She had seemed better these last few days,” said one of the women, “and now this.”

The confusion was enormous. The women were wailing and asking her to take them with her. The altars had been dismantled and the priests were leaving, only the ones nearest the family remaining behind. For Genji it was like the end of the world.

He set about quieting the women. “Some evil power has made it seem that she is dead. Nothing more. Certainly this commotion does not seem called for.”

He made vows more solemn and detailed than before and summoned ascetics known to have worked wonders.

“Even if her time has come and she must leave us,” they said, “let her stay just a little longer. There was the vow of the blessed Acala.* Let her stay even that much longer.”

So intense and fevered were their efforts that clouds of black smoke seemed to coil over their heads.

Genji longed to look into her eyes once more. It had been too sudden, he had not even been allowed to say goodbye. There seemed a possibility —one can only imagine the dread which it inspired—that he too was on the verge of death.

Perhaps the powers above took note. The malign spirit suddenly yielded after so many tenacious weeks and passed from Murasaki to the little girl who was serving as medium, and who now commenced to thresh and writhe and moan. To Genji's joy and tenor Murasaki was breathing once more.

The medium was now weeping and flinging her hair madly about. “Go away, all of you. I want a word with Lord Genji and it must be with him alone. All these prayers and chants all these months have been an un-relieved torment. I have wanted you to suffer as I have suffered. But then I saw that I had brought you to the point of death and I pitied you, and so I have come out into the open. I am no longer able to seem indifferent, though I am the wretch you see. It is precisely because the old feelings have not died that I have come to this. I had resolved to let myself be known to no one.”

He had seen it before. The old terror and anguish came back. He took the little medium by the hand lest she do something violent.

“Is it really you? I have heard that foxes and other evil creatures sometimes go mad and seek to defame the dead. Tell me who you are, quite plainly. Or give me a sign, something that will be meaningless to others but unmistakable to me. Then I will try to believe you.”

Weeping copiously and speaking in a loud wail, the medium seemed at the same time to cringe with embarrassment.

“I am horribly changed, and you pretend not to know me. You are the same. Oh dreadful, dreadful.”

Even in these wild rantings there was a suggestion of the old aloof-ness. It added to the horror. He wanted to hear no more.

But there was more. “From up in the skies I saw what you did for my daughter and was pleased. But it seems to be a fact that the ways of the living are not the ways of the dead and that the feeling of mother for child is weakened. I have gone on thinking you the cruelest of men. I heard you tell your dear lady what a difficult and unpleasant person you once found me, and the resentment was worse than when you insulted me to my face and finally abandoned me. I am dead, and I hoped that you had forgiven me and would defend me against those who spoke ill of me and say that it was none of it true. The hope was what twisted a twisted creature more cruelly and brought this horror. I do not hate her; but the powers have shielded you and only let me hear your voice in the distance. Now this has happened. Pray for me. Pray that my sins be forgiven. These services, these holy texts, they are an unremitting torment, they are smoke and flames, and in the roar and crackle I cannot hear the holy word. Tell my child of my torments. Tell her that she is never to fall into rivalries with other ladies, never to be a victim of jealousy. Her whole attention must go to atoning for the sins of her time at Ise, far from the Good Law. I am sorry for everything.”

It was not a dialogue which he wished to pursue. He had the little medium taken away and Murasaki quietly moved to another room.