Tales grotesque and curious
“When you have lice, is it warm?” said the dumbfounded officers to
nobody in particular, all looking into each other’s faces.
Then Mori, adjusting with particularity the neck of his dress which had
received the lice, gave one triumphant look around at each of their
faces and proceeded to express himself to this effect:
“Each and every one of you caught cold in this recent snap, but what of
this Gonnoshin? He doesn’t sneeze. He doesn’t run at the nose. More,
not once has he felt feverish or cold in the hands or feet. Whose good
work do you s’pose this is? It’s all the good work of the lice.”
According to Mori’s explanation, it seems that when there are lice on
the body, they are bound to bite and make it itch. When they bite, one
is sure to want to scratch. Then, when the whole body is bitten all
over, one wants to scratch all over the whole body, too. But man is
wonderfully made, so that while he scratches where he feels himself
itch, the scratched places naturally get warm as with a fever. Then,
when he is warm, he gets sleepy. When he is sleepy, he no longer feels
the itch. In this way, if one but have many lice on one’s body, one
falls asleep easily and catches no colds. Wherefore, we should by all
means keep lice and by no means kill them out.
“Sure enough, it’s like that, ain’t it?” said several of his fellows
approvingly when they had heard Mori’s argument.
III
After that there came to be a group in that boat that followed the
example of Mori and kept lice. In the matter of going about in pursuit
of lice whenever they had leisure, this group was not different from
the rest of the party. The only difference was that all they caught,
they put one by one faithfully into their bosoms and carefully kept.
But it is seldom in any country in any age that the precursor’s
teaching is accepted in its first form by all the people. In this boat,
too, there were many Pharisees who set themselves up against Mori’s
doctrines on lice.
At the forefront of these stood a captain of foot called Inoue Tenzo.
He, too, was an eccentric, and he always ate all the lice he caught.
When he had finished his evening meal, he would place a teacup before
him and sit slowly munching something that was evidently delicious, so
somebody looked into the cup and saw that it was full of the lice he
had caught and asked,
“What do they taste like?”
“Let’s see. Like oily parched rice, I guess,” said he.
Those who use their mouths to crush lice are to be found everywhere,
but this man was not of their number. As light refreshment pure and
simple, he ate them every day. He was the first to oppose Mori.
There was not another soul who took after Inoue and ate lice, but a
considerable number joined him in his opposition. According to them,
men’s bodies certainly could not be warmed by the presence of lice.
Moreover, in the Book of Filial Piety, it is written that we receive
our bodies, hair and hide, from our fathers and mothers, and the very
beginning of filial duty lies in not injuring them. Of one’s own choice
to feed these bodies to such things as lice was egregiously unfilial.
Whence lice should by all means be hunted out. They should not be
raised.
Under these circumstances, disputes arose from time to time between the
Mori and Inoue groups. And so long as they simply ended in argument,
there was no harm. But in the end things developed unexpectedly from
such beginnings even unto the starting of an appeal to the sword.
It came about in this way. One day Mori received from the others a lot
of lice which he put into a teacup and set aside, intending to raise
them carefully as usual, when Inoue, taking advantage of his incaution,
ate them up before he noticed. When Mori came to look for them, there
was not one left. Then this precursor flared into anger.
“What’d you eat ’em for?” he demanded, edging up to Inoue with his arms
akimbo and his eyes blazing.
“Fact is, it’s idiotic to keep lice,” said Inoue indifferently, showing
absolutely no desire to take him up.
“It’s idiotic to eat ’em.”
Mori flew into a fury and, pounding the plank deck shouted,
“Look here! Is there anybody in this ship who isn’t indebted to lice?
Takin’ these lice an’ eatin’ ’em is just like payin’ kindness with
hate!”
“I haven’t the least recollection of ever receivin’ any favor from
lice.”
“Nay, even if you haven’t, to wantonly take the lives of livin’ things
is unspeakable.”
After two or three more remarks had been exchanged with increasing
vehemence, Mori suddenly saw red and put his hand on the hilt of his
maroon-sheathed sword. Of course Inoue did not back down. He quickly
snatched up his long blade in its cinnabar scabbard and sprang to
his feet. Had not the naked men who were going about catching lice
excitedly forced the two apart, it would probably have meant the life
of one or the other of them.
According to the story of one who saw this flurry with his own eyes,
the two men, held fast in the arms of the whole party, still foamed at
the mouth and shouted, “Lice--Lice--”
IV
And while the samurai in the ships thus came almost to bloodshed over
the lice, the 500-_koku_ Kompira vessels, as if alone indifferent
utterly to all this, ran on farther and farther west with their red
and white banners flapping in the cold wind under the snowy sky on the
long, long road leading to the chastisement of Chōshū.
THE SPIDER’S THREAD
I
One day the Buddha was sauntering alone on the brink of the lotus pond
of Paradise.
The lotus flowers in bloom in the pond were all as white as pearls, and
the golden pistils and stamens in their centers ceaselessly filled all
the air with ineffable fragrance.
It was morning in Paradise.
Presently the Buddha stood still on the brink of the pond, and through
an opening among the leaves which covered the face of the water,
suddenly beheld the scene below.
As the floor of Hell lay directly beneath the lotus pond of Paradise,
the Sanzu-no-Kawa and Hari-no-Yama were distinctly visible through the
crystal water, as through a sterioptiscope.
Then his eye fell on a man named Kandata, who was squirming with the
other sinners in the bottom of Hell.
This Kandata was a great robber who had done many evil things,
murdering and setting fire to houses, but he had to his credit one good
action. Once while on his way through a deep forest, he had noticed a
little spider creeping along beside the road.
So quickly lifting his foot, he was about to trample it to death, when
he suddenly thought, “No, no, as small as this thing is, it, too, has
a soul: it would be rather a shame to recklessly kill it,” and spared
the spider’s life.
As he looked down into Hell, the Buddha remembered how this Kandata had
spared the spider’s life. And in return for that good deed, he thought,
if possible, he would like to deliver him out of Hell. Fortunately when
he looked around, he saw a spider of Paradise spinning a beautiful
silvery thread on the halcyon-colored lotus leaves.
The Buddha quietly took up the spider’s thread in his hand. And he let
it straight down to the bottom of Hell far below through the opening
among the pearly white lotus flowers.
II
Here Kandata was rising and sinking with the other sinners in the Pond
of Blood on the floor of Hell.
It was pitch black everywhere, and when sometimes a glimpse was caught
of something rising from that darkness, it turned out to be the gleam
of the needle of the dread Hari-no-Yama, so it was inexpressibly
forbidding. Moreover the stillness of the grave reigned everywhere, and
the only thing that could at times be heard was the faint sighing of
the sinners.
This was because such sinners as had come down to this spot had already
been tired out by the other manifold tortures of Hell and had lost even
the strength to cry aloud.
So, great robber though he was, Kandata, also suffocated with the
blood, could do nothing but struggle in the pond like a dying frog.
But his time came. One day when Kandata lifted his head by chance and
looked up at the sky above the Pond of Blood, he saw a silver spider’s
thread slipping down toward him from the high, high heavens, glittering
slightly in the silent darkness just as if it feared the eyes of man.
When he saw this, his hands clapped themselves for joy. If, clinging to
this thread, he climbed as far as it went, he could surely escape from
Hell.
Nay, if all went well, he might even enter Paradise. Then he would
never be driven on to Hari-no-Yama nor sunk in the Pond of Blood.
As soon as these thoughts came into his mind, he grasped the thread
tightly in his two hands and began to climb up and up with all his
might.
Because he was a great robber, he had long been thoroughly familiar
with such things.
But Hell is nobody-knows-how-many myriads of miles removed from
Paradise and, strive as he might, he could not easily get out. After
climbing for a while, he was finally exhausted and could not ascend an
inch higher.
So since he could do nothing else, he stopped to rest and, hanging to
the thread, looked far, far down below him. Now since he had climbed
with all his might, the Pond of Blood where he had just been was
already, much to his surprise, hidden deep down in the darkness. And
the dread Hari-no-Yama glittered dimly under him. If he went up at this
rate, he might get out of Hell more easily than he had thought.
With his hand twisted into the spider’s thread, Kandata laughed and
cried out in a voice such as he had not uttered during all the years
since coming here, “Success! Success!”
But suddenly he noticed that below on the thread countless sinners were
climbing eagerly after him, up and up, just like a procession of ants.
When he saw this, Kandata simply blinked his eyes for a moment, with
his big mouth hanging foolishly open in surprise and terror.
How could that slender spider’s thread, which seemed as if it must
break even with him alone, ever support the weight of all those people?
If it should break in midair, even he himself, after all his effort
in reaching this spot, would have to fall headlong back into Hell. It
would be terrible if such a thing happened.
But meanwhile hundreds and thousands of sinners were squirming out of
the dark Pond of Blood and climbing with all their might in a line up
the slender glittering thread. If he did not do something quickly, the
thread was sure to break in two and fall. So Kandata cried out in a
loud voice,
“Here, you sinners! This spider’s thread is mine. Who on earth gave you
permission to come up it? Get down! Get down!”
Just at that moment, the spider’s thread, which had shown no sign of
breaking up to that time, suddenly broke with a snap at the point where
Kandata was hanging.
So he was helpless. Without time to utter a cry, he shot down and fell
headlong into the darkness, spinning swiftly round and round like a top.
Afterwards, only the spider’s thread of Paradise, glittering and
slender, hung short in the moonless and starless sky.
III
Standing on the brink of the Lotus Pond of Paradise, the Buddha watched
closely all that happened, and when Kandata sank like a stone to the
bottom of the Pond of Blood, he began to saunter again with a sad
expression on his face.
Doubtless Kandata’s cold heart that would have saved only himself from
Hell and his having received proper punishment and fallen back into
Hell, had appeared to the Buddha’s eyes most pitiful. But the lotuses
in the lotus pond of Paradise cared nothing at all about such things.
The pearly white flowers were swaying about the Buddha’s feet. As they
swayed, from the golden pistils in their centers, their ineffable
fragrance ceaselessly filled all the air.
It was near noon in Paradise.
THE WINE WORM
I