Читать книгу The Tale of Genji онлайн

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‘I thought I had managed matters very cleverly, though perhaps in the heat of the moment I might have spoken somewhat too roughly. She smiled faintly and answered that if it were only a matter of bearing for a while with my failures and disappointments, that did not trouble her at all, and she would gladly wait till I became a person of consequence. “But it is a hard task” she said “to go on year after year enduring your coldness and waiting the time when you will at last learn to behave to me with some decency; and therefore I agree with you that the time has come when we had better go each his own way.” Then in a fit of wild and uncontrollable jealousy she began to pour upon me a torrent of bitter reproaches, and with a woman’s savagery she suddenly seized my little finger and bit deep into it. The unexpected pain was difficult to bear, but composing myself I said tragically “Now you have put this mark upon me I shall get on worse than ever in polite society; as for promotion, I shall be considered a disgrace to the meanest public office and unable to cut a genteel figure in any capacity I shall be obliged to withdraw myself completely from the world. You and I at any rate shall certainly not meet again,” and bending my injured finger as I turned to go, I recited the verse “As on bent hand I count the times that we have met, it is not one finger only that bears witness to my pain.” And she, all of a sudden bursting into tears ... “If still in your heart only you look for pains to count, then were our hands best employed in parting.” After a few more words I left her, not for a moment thinking that all was over.