Tales grotesque and curious
her conduct should be set down as good or evil. But to him the pulling
of hair from the heads of the dead on that rainy night up in Rashōmon
was, on the face of it, an unpardonable crime. Naturally he had already
forgot that a little before he had had half a mind to turn thief
himself.
So, bracing his two feet firmly, he suddenly sprang from the ladder
up into the room. Then, grasping the plain handle of his sword, he
advanced with great strides up to the hag. Naturally she was startled
out of her wits.
With a glance at the lackey, she sprang up as if shot from a catapult.
“Wretch! Where are you going?” cursed the man, blocking her way, as she
stumbled among the corpses in a panic-stricken effort to escape.
All the same, she struggled to push him aside and get by. But
peremptorily he forced her back. For a moment, the pair scuffled in
silence among the corpses. But from the first there was no doubt of the
victor.
In the end, seizing one of her arms, the lackey twisted it and threw
her violently down. It was nothing but skin and bone, just like the leg
of a hen.
“What are you up to? Look you, what are you up to? Out with it! If you
don’t speak, you get this, see!”
And casting her away, he suddenly unsheathed his sword and brandished
the white flash of steel before her eyes. But the old hag held her
tongue. Her hands trembling, her shoulders heaving as she gasped for
breath, and her eyes so wide open that it seemed the balls must burst
from their sockets, she persisted in her silence like a mute. At this,
the lackey realized clearly for the first time that this old woman’s
life and death depended entirely upon his will. And before he was
aware, this realization had cooled the fires of detestation that up to
this time had blazed so fiercely in his heart. What remained was simply
that comfortable pride and satisfaction that follow upon a piece of
work wholly carried to completion. Then, looking down upon her, he said
in a slightly milder tone:
“I’m no official from the police commissioner’s office. I’m a wanderer
who happened to pass under this gate a little while ago. So you won’t
be tied with a rope and arrested. All I demand is that you tell me what
you’re doing up in this gate at this hour.”
At this, the old hag’s wide-staring eyes grew all the larger, and she
fastened them intently on the face of the lackey. They were sharp
red-lidded eyes like those of some bird of prey. Then she moved her
lips, practically one with her nose among the wrinkles, as if she were
chewing something. A sharply projecting Adam’s apple slid up and down
in her skinny throat. And at the same time, a voice like the croak of a
raven came pantingly from that throat and struck harshly upon his ears.
“I’m pulling out hair, pulling out this woman’s hair, because I’m going
to make wigs.”
The servant was disappointed at the unexpected ordinariness of her
answer. And at the same time, the hatred he had felt before, mingled
with a cold disdain, crept back into his heart again. And its
manifestations probably transmitted themselves to the hag. For still
holding in one hand the long hair she had pulled from the corpse’s
head, she mumbled her case in the croaking voice of a toad.
To be sure, it might be wicked to pull hair from dead bodies, for all
she knew. But these dead were mostly people who could well be treated
in such a way. For instance, this woman from whose head she had just
been pulling hair had cut snakes up into four-inch lengths and sold
them for dried fish in the military camps. Had she not fallen prey to
the epidemic and died, she might have been selling them yet. What was
more, the samurai had found her dried fish tasty and bought them all
up to eat with their rice. The hag did not find the woman’s conduct
blameworthy. Since she must otherwise have starved to death, she could
not well have helped it. Therefore, what she herself now did could
not be called bad either. Since this, too, must be done or she would
starve, it could not well be helped, and she thought this woman, who
well knew her dilemma, would surely forgive her for what she did. Thus,
by the large, ran the old hag’s explanation.
The lackey sheathed his sword and, with his left hand on the hilt,
listened in cold blood to her recital. Of course, his right hand was
busy fingering the festering carbuncle on his fiery cheek. But as he
listened, a certain courage was born within him. It was the courage
he had lacked under the gate a while before. And, moreover, it was a
courage tending to move in just the opposite direction from the courage
with which he had a little before mounted up into the gate and seized
the old woman. It was not only that he was no longer at a loss whether
to starve or turn thief. His emotions were now such that the idea of
starving to death had been driven from his consciousness as well-nigh
unthinkable.
“Really? Is that true?”
When the old woman had finished her tale, he questioned her in a
sneering voice. Then advancing one step forward, he suddenly removed
his right hand from his carbuncle and, seizing the hag by the collar,
said,
“Then I guess you won’t blame me for turning highwayman, will you? I,
too, must starve else.”
Like a flash he stripped off her kimono. Then, as she tried to cling
to his legs, he violently kicked her down upon the corpses. It was but
five paces to the head of the ladder. With the dark brown kimono under
his arm, he ran in a twinkling down the steep steps into the depths of
the night.
It was not long before the old woman, who had lain for a space like
one dead, raised her naked body up from among the corpses. Murmuring
and groaning, she crawled by the help of the light that still burned
to the top of the ladder. And from there, with her short white hair
hanging about her face, she peered down under the gate. Outside there
was nothing but black and cavernous night.
The lackey had already braved the rain and hurried away into the
streets of Kyōto to rob.
LICE
I
On the twenty-sixth day of the eleventh month of the first year of
Genji (Dec. 25, 1864), the followers of the daimyō of Kaga, who had
been engaged in the safeguarding of Kyōto, put to sea under the
leadership of Chō Osumi-no-kami, from the mouth of the Ajikawa in
Ōsaka, to take part in the impending chastisement of Chōshū.
There were two sub-commanders, Tsukuda Kyudayu and Yamagishi Sanjurō,
and white standards were set up in Tsukuda’s boats and red in
Yamagishi’s. History records that it was a most brave scene as their
Kompira vessels, each of 500 _koku_ burden, left the estuary for
the deep, all with their red and white banners flapping in the wind.
But the men in the boats did not feel at all gallant. In the first
place, every boat was loaded with thirty-four of the party and four
sailors, a total of thirty-eight men. Wherefore, they were so closely
packed together that free movement was impossible. Moreover, in the
waist of each vessel stood so many loach tubs full of pickled radishes
that there was almost no place left to step. Until they got used to it,
the evil odor of the things filled every man who breathed it with a
sudden nausea. Finally, as it was the end of the eleventh month of the
old calendar (December), the wind blowing on the sea was so cold that
it seemed to fairly cut their flesh. Especially when the sun had set,
what with the winds blowing down from Maya and the chill of the sea,
the teeth of most even of these young samurai from the north chattered.
Moreover, in the boats there was an abundance of lice. And they were
not the simple sort of lice that hide themselves in the seams of
garments. They swarmed upon the sails. They swarmed upon the masts.
They swarmed upon the anchors. To exaggerate slightly, it was hard to
tell whether the boats were for men or for lice. Of course in such a
plethora, scores of the pests swarmed upon their clothes. And whenever
they so much as touched the skin of a man, they were straightway elated
and fell to till he tingled. Had there been but some five or ten of the
vermin, they might somehow or other have been brought under control,
but since, as already stated, there were so many that they looked like
a sprinkling of white sesame, there was no possible hope of cleaning
them out. Wherefore, in the Tsukuda party and the Yamagishi party
alike, the bodies of all the samurai in the boats swelled red with
bites all over on breast and abdomen and everywhere, just as if they
had the measles.
But impossible as it was to bring the lice under control, it was still
more impossible to let them go on unmolested. So the people in the
boats spent their leisure time hunting. All of them, from the chief
retainers to the sandal bearers, stripped themselves and went about,
each with a teacup, picking up the ubiquitous lice and putting them
into it. Were he to imagine thirty-odd samurai, each dressed in but a
loin-cloth, with his teacup in his hand, searching with all his might
here and there under the rigging and beneath the anchor in each Kompira
boat with sails alight in the winter sunshine of the Inland Sea, any
man in these days would at once think it a great joke, but it was no
less true before the Restoration than it is now that in the face of
necessity everything becomes serious. So these boats full of naked
samurai, each one himself like a great louse, abode the cold and went
about patiently day after day diligently crushing the lice on the decks.
II
But there was one odd fellow on the Tsukuda boat. He was an eccentric
middle-aged man named Mori Gonnoshin, an officer of foot with an
allowance of seventy bales of rice and rations for five men. Strangely
this man alone did not catch lice. Therefore, of course, he was covered
with them all over. While some mounted to the knot on his queued hair,
others crossed over on the edge of the plate at the back of his divided
skirt. Yet he paid no special attention to them.
Then if you think that this man alone was not bitten by the lice, still
you are mistaken. Just like the rest, he was covered with so many red
blotches all over his body that he might well be described as spotted
with coins. Moreover, from the way he scratched them, it did not look
as if they were itchless. But no matter whether they itched or what
they did, he affected utter indifference.
If it had all been affectation, it would not have been so strange, but
when he saw the others diligently gathering lice, he called to them,
“If you catch ’em, don’t kill ’em. Put ’em in teacups alive, an’ I’ll
take ’em.”
“When you get ’em, what’ll you do with ’em?” asked one of his fellows,
with a look of surprise.
“When I get ’em? Then I’ll go so far as to raise ’em,” Mori calmly
replied.
“Then we’ll take ’em alive and give ’em to you.”
The officer, because he thought it a joke, worked half a day with
two or three others and collected several cupfuls of living lice. He
thought in his heart that if he handed them over thus and said, “Well,
raise ’em,” even Mori, despite his contrariness, would be stumped.
Then, before he had time to utter a word, Mori spoke up and said,
“You’ve got ’em, haven’t you? Then I’ll take ’em.”
His fellows were all taken aback.
“Then put ’em in here,” said Mori calmly, opening the neck of his
garment.
“Don’t go makin’ yourself put up with it now and afterwards gettin’
into trouble for it,” said the others, but he would not listen.
Then one at a time, they turned their teacups upside down, like ricemen
measuring rice in half-gallon measures, and poured the lice down Mori’s
neck, whereupon he, maintaining his composure and carefully picking up
those that had spilled outside, said, as if to himself,
“Thanks. With these I can sleep warm from this night on.”