2

The chapel thus appointed, the officiants took their places and the procession assembled. Genji looked in upon the west antechamber, where the princess was in temporary residence. It seemed rather small, now crowded with some fifty or sixty elaborately dressed women, and rather warm as well. Indeed some of the little girls had been pushed out to the north veranda.

The censers were being tended so assiduously that the room was dark with their smoke. “An incense is sometimes more effective,” said Genji, thinking that these giddy novices needed advice, “when one can scarcely tell where it is coming from. This is like a smoldering Fuji. And when we gather for these ceremonies we like to get quietly to the heart of the matter, and would prefer to be without distractions. Too emphatic a rustling of silk, for instance, gives an unsettling awareness of being in a crowd.”

Tiny and pretty and overwhelmed by the crowd, the princess was leaning against an armrest.

“The boy is likely to be troublesome,” he added. “Suppose you have someone put him out of sight.”

Blinds hung along the north side of the room in place of the sliding doors, and it was there that the women were gathered. Asking for quiet, he gave the princess necessary instructions, politely and very gently. The sight of her bedchamber now made over into a chapel moved him to tears.

“And so here we are, rushing into monkish ceremonies side by side. Who would have expected it? Let us pray that we will share blossom-strewn lodgings in the next world.”

Borrowing her inkstone, he wrote a poem on her cloves-dyed fan:

“Separate drops of dew on the leaf of the lotus,

We vow that we will be one, on the lotus to come.”

She answered:

“Together, you say, in the lotus dwelling to come.

But may you not have certain reservations?”

“And so my proposal is rejected, and I am castigated for it?” He was smiling, but it was a sad, meditative smile.