5
A single progress by land, the escort said, would be unmanageable, and a succession of convoys would only invite trouble. So it had been decided that so far as possible the journey would be an unobtrusive one by boat. The party set sail at perhaps seven or eight in the morning.
The lady's boat disappeared among the mists that had so saddened the poet.* The old man feared that his enlightened serenity had left him forever. As if in a trance, he gazed off into the mists.
The old woman's thoughts upon leaving home were in sad confusion.
“I want to be a fisherwife upon
A far, clean shore, and now my boat turns back.”
Her daughter replied:
“How many autumns now upon this strand?
So many, why should this flotsam now return?”
A steady seasonal wind was blowing and they reached Oi on schedule, very careful not to attract attention on the land portion of the journey. They found the Oi villa very much to their taste, so like Akashi, indeed, that it soothed the homesickness, though not, of course, dispelling it completely. Thoughts of the Akashi years did after all come back. The new galleries were in very good taste, and the garden waters pleasant and interesting. Though the repairs and fittings were not yet complete, the house was eminently livable.
The steward, one of Genji's more trusted retainers, did everything to make them feel at home. The days passed as Genji cast about for an excuse to visit. For the Akashi lady the sorrow was yet more insistent. With little to occupy her, she found her thoughts running back to Akashi. Taking out the seven-stringed Chinese koto which Genji had left with her, she played a brief strain as fancy took her. It was the season for sadness, and she need not fear that she was being heard; and the wind in the pines struck up an accompaniment.
Her mother had been resting.
“I have returned alone, a nun, to a mountain village,
And hear the wind in the pines of long ago.”
The daughter replied:
“I long for those who know the country sounds,
And listen to my koto, and understand.”