Song’110; admirably, he thought, despite its inappropriateness to her age. So must the voice of the mysterious lady at O-chou have sounded in Po Chü-i’s ears when he heard her singing on her boat at night111; and he stood listening. At the end of the song the player sighed heavily as though quite worn out by the passionate vehemence of her serenade. Genji approached softly humming the ‘Azumaya’: ‘Here in the portico of the eastern house rain splashes on me while I wait. Come, my beloved, open the door and let me in.’ Immediately, indeed with an unseemly haste, she answered as does the lady in the song ‘Open the door and come in,’112 adding the verse: ‘In the wide shelter of that portico no man yet was ever splashed with rain,’ and again she sighed so portentously that although he did not at all suppose that he alone was the cause of this demonstration he felt it in any case to be somewhat exaggerated and answered with the poem: ‘Your sighs show clearly that, despite the song, you are another’s bride, and I for my part have no mind to haunt the loggias of your eastern house.’ He would gladly have passed on, but he felt that this would be too unkind, and seeing that someone else was coming towards her room he stepped inside and began talking lightly of indifferent subjects, in a style which though it was in reality somewhat forced she found very entertaining.
It was intolerable, thought Tō no Chūjō, that Genji should be praised as a quiet and serious young man and should constantly rebuke him for his frivolity, while all the time he was carrying on a multiplicity of interesting intrigues which out of mere churlishness he kept entirely hidden from all his friends. For a long while Chūjō had been waiting for an opportunity to expose this sanctimonious imposture, and when he saw Genji enter the gentlewoman’s apartment you may be sure he was delighted. To scare him a little at such a moment would be an excellent way to punish him for his unfriendliness. He slackened his pace and watched. The wind sighed in the trees. It was getting very late. Surely Genji would soon begin to doze? And indeed he did now look as though he had fallen asleep. Chūjō stole on tip-toe into the room; but Genji who was only