woman to this my native village I return. But still unchanged the wind blows music through the trees.' So the mother sang, and the daughter: 'Far off is now the dear companion of my happier days, and none is here who comprehends the broken language of my lute.'
While things were going thus dismally at Ōi, Genji was feeling very uneasy. To have established the people from Akashi so close to the Capital and then neglect them entirely was indeed a monstrous way to behave; but circumstances made it very difficult for him to escape unobserved. He had not said anything to Murasaki about the move to Ōi, but such things have a way of getting round, and he decided that it would be better not to explain his absence in a note. He therefore wrote to her one morning as follows: 'There are various matters at Katsura[1] which I ought to have looked into a long while ago; but I did not at all want the bother of going there and have kept on putting it off. Some people whom I promised to visit have settled near by and I am afraid I shall have to go and see them too. Then I ought to go over to my hermitage at Saga and see the Buddha there before it is painted. So I am afraid I shall have to be away for two or three days.'
Some faint echo of the business at Ōi had reached her, but in a very garbled form. She heard that Genji was hurriedly building a large new mansion on his estate at Katsura. This was of course quite untrue. Murasaki at once concluded that the mansion at Katsura was intended for the Lady of Akashi and depressed by this she wrote in answer: 'Do you know the story of the woodman[2] who waited so long that leaves sprouted from the handle of his axe? Do
- ↑ Where Genji had an estate.
- ↑ A Chinese named Wang Chih. He watched a couple of hermits playing chess in a cave. The game absorbed his attention so completely that it seemed to him to last only a few minutes; but when it was over he found that years had elapsed and leaves had actually sprouted from the wood of his axe.
