We did not meet often during the years my mother lived as a nun. My own career at court was developing moderately well, and I was then under the protection of Counselor Kanetaka, a nephew of Regent Michinaga. It was his child -- you -- I carried at the time of Murasaki's death.

I thought I should probably never marry. How was I to know the fated connections and promotions that were to come my way? I was not worried about my future, because my mother was not. She would not have abandoned me at sixteen unless she felt my prospects were secure.

The faint scent of cherry blossoms will always remind me of my mother's departing this world. As we left the sand-strewn funerary plain at dawn, we passed stands of blooming cherries in the morning fog. Then, as the sun warmed the earth and the fog melted away, a soft smell filled the air. No one thinks of sakura for its scent -- it hasn't the strong honey odor of plum -- but out in the countryside, in such masses, sakura seemed to have a subtle fragrance.

I was carrying the urn with Murasaki's ashes to take back to our family temple. My grandfather Tametoki should have been in charge, but, mortified at seventy-four to have outlived his children, he shrank from taking an official part in the ceremony. Shaking his gray head like one of the querulous macaque monkeys we saw on the mountain roads, my grandfather lamented the fortune of his continued good health as much as his daughter's death.

The following month I journeyed for the last time to my mother's retreat near Kiyomizu Temple to gather her things. I knew there would not be very much because she had already given away her musical instruments, her books, and -- of course, long since -- all of the fine silk clothing she had worn at court. There were some good padded winter robes, which I donated to the temple, as well as the sutras she had been copying in her graceful calligraphy. I managed to find the only things I wanted -- her dark purple inkstone, a set of writing brushes, and a Chinese celadon brush rest in the form of five mountains. As I knelt at her low writing table, I noticed another bundle of papers, rolled tightly and wrapped in a scrap of chartreuse silk. Thinking these to be old letters she had kept for the paper on which to copy more sutras, I decided to take them with me for my own writing practice. Paper is not cheap, and I thought I might as well put it to the use my mother intended. The priest was disappointed. These people are always on the lookout for extra paper.

What with one thing and another, and the weather turning hot after I returned to court, and the fact that my nausea did not pass as the older women said it would, I didn't happen to look at my mother's papers until the twelfth month, after you were born.

You must keep in mind what a fuss your grandmother's writing used to cause. It seemed that Murasaki was discussed after her death as much as when she had lived at court. Because people were still eagerly reading the story of Prince Genji, I would often be asked to arbitrate between two readers who had obtained different versions, usually because the court ladies had made mistakes in copying. I don't know how it happened, but entire chapters would get shuffled and occasionally be missing altogether from some texts. I tried to keep a full set of my own in proper order, letting people refer to it when questions arose. Then, too, there were my mother's poems, some of which had been selected for inclusion in imperial anthologies. I suppose it was not surprising that Murasaki should have continued to maintain a literary following, yet her reputation could not have rested on her poems. They are respectable, of course, but it was really Genji that set her apart from the others.

After giving birth I felt like myself again. You were a healthy infant, and I insisted on nursing you alongside the imperial prince I had been awarded the privilege of wet-nursing. With your birth, the torpor of pregnancy evaporated like a heavy cloud chased by a crisp autumn day. I felt the urge to pick up my brush and get back to my own diary again. I added my mother's fine old brushes to my collection and arranged them all in a large mottled-bamboo holder. The one I selected to use rested on the five-mountain brush rest Murasaki had kept until the end of her life.

My writing hand was stale, and as I looked around my room for some scrap paper to copy poems for exercise, I came upon the bundle of pale green silk that I had shoved into a chest during the nauseous days of pregnancy. I untied the knot and smoothed out the tightly rolled sheets. Some of it was old, some fresh. Much consisted of copies of the Lotus Sutra. I recognized my mother's handwriting and at first thought these were letters. Some indeed were letters, as it turned out, and other bits were from a journal. On the back of every sheet of paper was writing in Murasaki's hand. It was all a jumble and I could see no sense or order at first. Finally I found the scrap that made it clear. Near the end of her life, my mother seems to have rummaged through her diary, her poems, her Genji drafts, and her letters, and composed a reminiscence. Yet rather than put her thoughts down on fresh paper, she inscribed her last work upon the backs of the very journals upon which it was based. Now that I had the key, I began to read.

Over the following months I divided my time between milk and paper -- your greedy little plum-bud mouth and my voracious eyes. You sucked sustenance from me and I from those texts, so I am truly surprised at your lack of interest in literature now, since you must have absorbed so much of its savor in infancy.

Publicly I was the conservator of the true version of the Tale of Genji, my copy being the standard. Privately I became the guardian of my mother's reminiscences. I have already told you that Genji was like an older sibling. He received preferential treatment while I was growing up, but then helped me later, just as an older brother watches out for his sister. When she renounced the world, Murasaki let go of Genji even as she let go of her aging father. It fell to me to take care of both. If she resides now in Amida Buddha's paradise, I trust her soul is untroubled. I have done my best to watch over those she left behind.

People commended me for caring for my grandfather. Some thought it must have been onerous to be tied to an elderly relative, but I never felt that way. Tametoki was always a source of wisdom for me, never a trial. Always courteous, never presuming, he seemed anchored by a melancholy so deep it had, in a curious way, stabilized his life. In fact he always assumed that he was taking care of me.

Now that you are grown, you should read your grandmother's memoir in order to understand who you are by virtue of what you have come from. I suggest you keep it to yourself until you give it to your own literary descendant someday. In the future, if the Tale of Genji is still being read, sensitive people may find Murasaki's private thoughts of interest, and the gossip will be too old to do any harm.

A poem she once wrote for someone else comes unbidden to mind:

Tare ka yo ni nagaraete mimu kakitomeshi ato wa kiesenu katami naredomo

As life flows on, who ever will read it -- this keepsake to her whose memory will never die?

I can't help but think someone will.