Read Online The Diary of Lady Murasaki by Murasaki Shikibu - Free Book Online

library, both accompanied by retinues dressed in priestly robes, I follow them in my mind’s eye as they pass over the magnificent Chinese bridges and disappear into the trees. Preceptor Saigi remains prostrate before the statue of Daiitoku deep in prayer.
    As the maids and servants all assemble, dawn breaks.
    I look out from my room at the head of the corridor into the light morning mist. 2 Dew is still on the ground, but His Excellency is already out in the garden ordering his attendants to clear the stream of some obstruction. Plucking a sprig from a large cluster of maiden-flowers that blooms there on the south side of the bridge, he peers in over the top of the curtain frame. The sight of him, so magnificent, makes me conscious of my own dishevelled appearance, and so when he presses me for a poem, I use it as an excuse to move to where my inkstone is kept:
Now I see the colour of this maiden-flower in bloom,
I know how much the dew discriminates against me.
‘Quick, aren’t we!’ says he with a smile and asks for my brush:
It is not the dew that chooses where to fall:
Does not the flower choose the colour that it desires? 3
    One quiet evening as Lady Saishō and I are talking together, His Excellency’s eldest son pulls up the bottom of the blind and seats himself down. He is very grown-up for his age and looks most elegant. The earnestness with which he talks of love – ‘Ah women! Such difficult creatures at times!’ – it gives the lie to those who dismiss him as a callow youth; I find him rather unsettling. We are still talking in generalities when suddenly he is off, murmuring something about there being ‘too many maiden-flowers in the field’; I remember thinking how like the hero of a romance he seemed. 4
    How is it that a little incident like this suddenly comes back to one, whereas something that moved one deeply at the time can simply be forgotten with the passage of the years?
    I was absent from the mansion the day the Governor of Harima gave a banquet as a forfeit for losing a game of go , and it was only later that I was given the opportunity to see the tray made for the occasion. The Chinese stand was exquisitely fashioned, and at the edge of the water was written:
Picked up from the Shirara sands of Ki, they say,
May these pebbles grow to mighty rocks!
    The women had the most beautiful fans on that occasion. 5
    Sometime after the twentieth of the eighth month, those nobles and senior courtiers whose presence was required at the mansion started to stay the night. They would take naps on the bridge and the veranda of the east wing, and play music in desultory fashion until dawn. The younger members, who were as yet unskilled in either koto or flute, held competitions to see who was best at chanting sūtras and they practised the latest songs together; it was a perfect match for both place and occasion.
    There were also evenings when Tadanobu, Master of Her Majesty’s Household, Tsunefusa, Adviser of the Left, Norisada, Commander of the Military Guards, and Junior Captain Narimasa, Governor of Mino, sat and played music together. A formal concert was not held, however, presumably because His Excellency had decided it would have been inappropriate. Those who had left Her Majesty’s service some years ago were suddenly reminded of their long absence and crowded back, so with all the bustle and activity we could find not a moment to ourselves.
    On the twenty-sixth, the blending of the incense balls was finished and Her Majesty distributed them to her women. 6 Those who had helped prepare them all gathered round. Returning to my room, I looked in at Lady Saishō’s door, only to find her asleep. She lay with her head pillowed on a writing box, her face all but hidden by a series of robes – dark red lined with green, purple lined with dark red – over which she had thrown a deep crimson gown of unusually glossy silk. The shape of her forehead was enchanting and so delicate. She lookedjust like