In his twenty-sixth year Genji goes into exile at Suma, leaving Murasaki at home in charge of his affairs. Their three-year separation is painful (she is only nineteen when he returns), but it never occurs to her that he might not be faithful. Meanwhile, he misses her desperately and hesitates to take the opportunity that the Akashi lady’s father is so eager to press on him. Still, he yields in the end to the Akashi Novice’s urging, to the exotic enchantment of the place, and to the lady’s personal distinction, so unexpected in a provincial governor’s daughter. He returns from Akashi understandably full of his experience and especially of thoughts of the lady and the child she is soon to bear.
Genji feels “deeply content” once reunited with Murasaki, and he sees “that she would always be his this way.” At the same time, however, “his heart went out with a pang to [Akashi], whom he had so unwillingly left.”
He began talking about her, and the memories so heightened his looks that [Murasaki] must have been troubled, for with “I care not for myself” she dropped a light hint that delighted and charmed him. When merely to see her was to love her, he wondered in amazement how he had managed to spend all these months and years without her, and bitterness against the world rose in him anew.[41]
Despite the wonder of rediscovering Murasaki, anticipation of the birth and then the thought of his new daughter prolong the enchantment. A prophetic dream has already let him know that the little girl is a future empress and that in her his own fortunes are at stake.
However, Murasaki does not yet know about the birth, and Genji does not want her to hear of it from someone else. To mask all it means to him he behaves like a guilty husband, first claiming indifference and a commendable resolve to do his tedious duty, then passing to diversionary reproaches.
“So that seems to be that,” he remarked. “What a strange and awkward business it is! All my concern is for someone else, whom I would gladly see similarly favored, and the whole thing is a sad surprise, and a bore, too, since I hear the child is a girl. I really suppose I should ignore her, but I cannot very well do that. I shall send for her and let you see her. You must not resent her.”
She reddened. “Don’t, please!” she said, offended. “You are always making up feelings like that for me, when I detest them myself. And when do you suppose that I learned to have them?”
“Ah yes,” said Genji with a bright smile, “who can have taught you? I have never seen you like this! Here you are, angry with me over fantasies of yours that have never occurred to me. It is too hard!” By now he was nearly in tears.[42]
Fearing Murasaki’s rebuke, Genji takes the offensive and obliges her to defend herself instead. Still, it is true that she does not quite understand. The child means more to him than the mother, and in time he will have Murasaki adopt her for that reason. Meanwhile, Murasaki remembers “their endless love for one another down the years, …and the matter passed from her mind.”
In the ensuing silence Genji goes on, half to indulge his feelings and half to pursue loyal confidences. In so doing he manages to hurt Murasaki after all.
“If I am this concerned about her,” Genji said, “it is because I have my reasons.[43] You would only go imagining things again if I were to tell you what they are.” He was silent a moment. “It must have been the place itself that made her appeal to me so. She was something new, I suppose.” He went on to describe the smoke that sad evening, the words they had spoken, a hint of what he had seen in her face that night, the magic of her koto; and all this poured forth with such obvious feeling that his lady took it ill.
There I was, she thought, completely miserable, and he, simple pastime or not, was sharing his heart with another! Well, I am I! She turned away and sighed, as though to herself, “And we were once so happy together!”[44]
The pattern of this conversation recurs in the two other crisis passages yet to be discussed. There, too, once the danger seems to have passed Genji indulges in reminiscing about his women, especially Fujitsubo in the second and Rokujō in the third. In each case someone then becomes angry: Murasaki here, then the spirit of Fujitsubo, and finally the spirit of Rokujō. The role played by the three women in these scenes suggests their critical importance to Genji himself.
The injury Murasaki feels is of course painful, and her response springs from a fine quickness of spirit, but the scene is still touched by the lyrically beautiful anguish of those exile years. She is hurt but not yet in danger. No provincial governor’s daughter, not even one as unusual as Akashi, can really threaten her.