That night Genji goes to the Third Princess, and to pass the lonely time Murasaki has her gentlewomen read her tales. The atmosphere is heavy with a crisis that comes quickly.
These old stories are all about what happens in life, she thought, and they are full of women involved with fickle, wanton, or treacherous men, and so on, but each seems to find her own in the end. How strange it is, the unsettled life I have led! Yes, it is true, as he said, that I have enjoyed better fortune than most, but am I to end my days burdened with these miseries that other women find hateful and unendurable? Oh, it is too hard![110] She went to bed very late and as dawn came on, she began to suffer chest pains. Her women did what they could for her. “Shall we inform His Grace?” they asked, but she would not have it and bore her agony until it was light. She became feverish and felt extremely ill, but no one told Genji as long as he failed to come on his own.[111]
Once, long ago, Murasaki thought, “I am I!”, turned away from Genji, and sighed. A few years later she said, “Familiarity often breeds contempt” and lay down with her back to him. This time, when he has really done what she feared, and she is sick with hurt and anger, she will not even tell him. Let him return when he pleases!
Murasaki’s illness will last off and on until her death four years later. Soon, Genji moves her to Nijō, where they first lived together, and all but abandons the Third Princess (at Rokujō) in order to be with Murasaki while the priests pursue their rites.
In lucid moments Murasaki only spoke to reproach him, saying, “You are so cruel not to grant me what I ask!”; but for Genji the sorrow and pain of seeing her one instant, with his very eyes, wearing by her own wish the habit of renunciation, rather than parting from her at the end of life itself, would be more than he could ever bear. “It is exactly what I have always longed to do,” he said, “but worry about how you would feel, once you were left alone, has constantly detained me. Do you mean to say that you would now abandon me?” That was his only response.[112]
Nothing has changed. What she asks is more than he can give. He cannot allow her an independent existence and feel that he remains himself. For love of her, he cannot bear her to have a will, a life of her own. At least her illness has led Genji for now to forget the duties of his political marriage, which would be all very well, were it not that during his absence from the Rokujō estate Kashiwagi violates the Third Princess and precipitates another tragedy.
[110] The passage on tales in “Hotaru” deserves its fame, but the way Murasaki turns to tales here, in despair, is very moving. They are her only resource. She cannot seek solace and guidance from the histories of China and Japan, as Reizei did after learning that he was Genji’s son.
[111] TTG, 647; GM 4:212.
[112] TTG, 648; GM 4:214–15.