go on. It is the same with all great artists. They cannot perform unless they are in the right mood, and the right mood seldom comes. But later on you will, of course, certainly be hearing him….’ So saying, he began trying over a few usual chords and runs. Already she wondered how she had managed to tolerate the clumsy twanging of the island-professors. How exciting it would be to live with a father, who, according to Genji’s own showing, played far, far better even than this! It was intolerable to feel that all the while she might have been hearing him day after day, in his own home, with nothing to disturb or interrupt him. When, oh when would this new life begin?
Among other old ballads Genji now sang ‘Not softlier pillowed is my head,’ and when he came to the line ‘O lady parted from thy kin’ he could not help catching her eye and smiling. Not only did she find his voice very agreeable, but his improvisations between verse and verse delighted her beyond measure. Suddenly he broke off, saying: ‘Now it is your turn. Do not tell me you are shy; for I am certain that you have talent, and if that is so you will forget that there is any one here, once you have become interested in what you are playing. The lady[1] who was “too shy to do anything but go over the tune in her head” wanted all the time to sing the Sōfuren,[2] and that is a very different matter. You must get into the habit of playing with any one who comes along, without minding what he thinks of you….’ But try as he might, he could not persuade her to begin. She was certain that her teacher on the island, an old lady of whom it was reported that she had once been in some vague way connected with the Capital and even that she was distantly related to the Imperial Family, had got everything wrong from beginning to end.
