The Tale of Genji

y. Yet there were affairs from which he could not withdraw. Among the old emperor’s ladies had been one Reikeiden. She had no children, and after his death her life was sa

be.This was the answer:“It seems to be a cuckoo we knew long ago.But alas, under rainy skies we cannot be sure.”Koremitsu saw that the bewilderment was only pretended.” Very well. The wrong trees, the wrong fence.” And he went out.And so the women were left to nurse their regrets. It would not have been proper to pursue the matter, and that was the end of it. Among women of their station in life, he thought first of the Gosechi dancer, a charming girl, daughter of the assistant viceroy of Kyushu. He went on thinking about whatever woman he encountered. A perverse concomitant was that the women he went on thinking about went on thinking about him.The house of the lady he had set out to visit was, as he had expected, lonely and quiet. He first went to Reikeiden’s apartments and they talked far into the night. The tall trees in the garden were a dark wall in the light of the quarter moon. The scent of orange blossoms drifted in, to call back the past. Though no longer young, Reikeiden was a sensitive, accomplished lady. The old emperor had not, it is true, included her among his particular favorites, but he had found her gentle and sympathetic. Memory following memory, Genji was in tears. There came the call of a cuckoo — might it have been the same one? A pleasant thought, that it had come following him. “How did it know?” he whispered to himself.“It catches the scent of memory, and favorsThe village where the ora