Read Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories Online
Authors: Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories (20 page)
That same day, at the residence of Itakura Shikibu, Tanaka Usaemon was punished with strangulation. The bill of indictment against him read as follows: “Although Itakura Sado-nokami had expressly ordered Usaemon to enforce the domiciliary confinement of Shuri due to the latter's illness, Usaemon, at his own discretion, allowed Shuri to enter the Castle, thus bringing about the present calamity, leading to the confiscation of Shuri's 7,000-
koku
estate. This is an inexcusable offense.”
Needless to say, other Itakura relatives such as Itakura Su
Å
-no-kami, Itakura Shikibu, Itakura Sado-no-kami, Sakai Saemon-no-j
Å
, and Matsudaira Ukon Sh
Å
gen were ordered to
undergo a period of house arrest. In addition, Kuroki Kansai, the Buddhist attendant who had abandoned Etch
Å«
-no-kami at the time of the attack, was deprived of his stipend and banished from the capital.
Itakura Shuri might have killed Hosokawa Etch
Å«
-no-kami by mistake. The nine-circle crest on formal clothing of the Hosokawa family so closely resembled the nine-circle crest worn by members of the Itakura family that Shuri may have meant to kill Itakura Sado-no-kami. Precisely this kind of mistaken identity had occurred in the slashing of M
Å
ri Mondo-no-sh
Å
by Mizuno Hayato-no-sh
Å
.
16
Such an error would have been particularly easy to commit in the dark lavatoryâor so went the most widely-held opinion at the time.
Only Itakura Sado-no-kami objected to this view. Whenever the subject came up, he would fume, “Shuri had absolutely no reason to kill me. He was a madman. He killed Etch
Å«
-no-kami for nothing at all. This wild speculation about a mistaken identity I find deeply offensive. How much more proof do you need that he was mad? What did he talk about when he appeared before the Chief Inspector? Cuckoos! Maybe he thought he was killing a cuckoo!”
(February 1917)
THE STORY OF A HEAD THAT FELL OFF
1
Xiao-er threw his sword down and clutched at his horse's mane, thinking
I'm sure my neck's been cut
. No, perhaps the thought crossed his mind only
after
he started hanging on. He knew that something had slammed deep into his neck, and at that very moment he grabbed hold of the mane. The horse must have been wounded, too. As Xiao-er flopped over the front of his saddle, the horse let out a high whinny, tossed its muzzle toward the sky, and, tearing through the great stew of allies and enemies, started galloping straight across the corn field that stretched as far as the eye could see. A few shots might have rung out from behind, but to Xiao-er they were like sounds in a dream.
Trampled by the furiously galloping horse, the man-tall corn stalks bent and swayed like a wave, snapping back to sweep the length of Xiao-er's pigtail or slap against his uniform or wipe away the black blood gushing from his neck. Not that he had the presence of mind to notice. Seared into his brain with painful clarity was nothing but the simple fact that he had been cut.
I'm cut
.
I'm cut
. His mind repeated the words over and over while his heels kicked mechanically into the horse's lathered flanks.
Ten minutes earlier, Xiao-er and his fellow cavalrymen had crossed the river from camp to reconnoiter a small village when, in the yellowing field of corn, they suddenly encountered a mounted party of Japanese cavalry. It happened so quickly that neither side had time to fire a shot. The moment the Chinese
troops caught sight of the enemy's red-striped caps and the red ribbing of their uniforms, they drew their swords and headed their horses directly into them. At that moment, of course, no one was thinking that he might be killed. The only thing in their minds was the enemy: killing the enemy. As they turned their horses' heads, they bared their teeth like dogs and charged ferociously toward the Japanese troops. Those enemy troops must have been governed by the same impulse, though, for in a moment the Chinese found themselves surrounded by faces that could have been mirror images of their own, with teeth similarly bared. Along with the faces came the sound of swords swishing through the air all around them.
From then on, Xiao-er had no clear sense of time. He did have a weirdly vivid memory of the tall corn swaying as if in a violent storm, and of a copper sun hanging above the swaying tassels. How long the commotion lasted, what happened during that interval and in what orderânone of that was clear. All the while, Xiao-er went on swinging his sword wildly and screaming like a madman, making sounds that not even he could understand. His sword turned red at one point, he seemed to recall, but he felt no impact. The more he swung his sword, the slicker the hilt grew from his own greasy sweat. His mouth felt strangely dry. All at once the frenzied face of a Japanese cavalryman, eyeballs ready to pop from his head, mouth straining open, flew into the path of Xiao-er's horse. The man's burred scalp shone through a split in his red-striped cap. At the sight, Xiao-er raised his sword and brought it down full force on the cap. What his sword hit was not the cap, though, nor the head beneath it, but rather the other man's steel slashing upward. Amid the surrounding pandemonium, the clash of swords resounded with a terrifying transparency, driving the cold smell of filed iron sharply into his nostrils. Just then, reflecting the glare of the sun, a broad sword rose directly above Xiao-er's head and plunged downward in a great arc. In that instant, a thing of indescribable coldness slammed into the base of his neck.
The horse went on charging through the corn field with Xiao-er on its back, groaning from the pain of his wound. The densely planted corn would never give out, it seemed, no matter how long the horse kept running. The cries of men and horses, the clash of swords had faded long before. The autumn sun shone down on Liaodong just as it does in Japan.
Again, Xiao-er, swaying on horseback, was groaning from the pain of his wound. The noise that escaped his firmly gritted teeth, however, was more than a groan: it carried a somewhat more complex meaning. Which is to say that he was not simply moaning over his physical pain. He was wailing because of his psychological pain, because of the dizzying ebb and flow of his emotions, centering on the fear of death.
He felt unbearable sorrow to be leaving this world forever. He also felt deep resentment toward the men and events that were hastening his departure. He was angry, too, at himself for having allowed this to happen. And thenâeach one calling forth the nextâa multitude of emotions came to torment him. As one gave way to another, he would shout, “I'm dying! I'm dying!”, or call out for his father or mother, or curse the Japanese cavalryman who did this to him. As each cry left his lips, however, it was transformed into a meaningless, rasping groan, so weak had he become.
I'm the unluckiest man alive, coming to a place like this to fight and die so young, killed like a dog, for nothing. I hate the Japanese who wounded me. I hate my own officer who sent me out on this reconnaissance mission. I hate the countries that started this warâJapan and China. And that's not all I hate. Anyone who had anything to do with making me a soldier is my enemy. Because of all those people, I now have to leave this world where there is so much I want to do. Oh, what a fool I was to let them do this to me!
Investing his moans with such meaning, Xiao-er clutched at the horse as it bounded on through the corn. Every now and then a flock of quail would flutter up from the undergrowth, startled by the powerful animal, but the horse paid them no heed. It was unconcerned, too, that its rider often seemed ready to slide off its back, and it charged ahead, foaming at the mouth.
Had fate permitted it, Xiao-er would have gone on tossing back and forth atop the horse all day, bemoaning his misfortune to the heavens until that copper sun sank in the western sky. But when a narrow, muddy stream flowing between the corn stalks opened in a bright band ahead of him where the plain began to slope gently upward, fate took the shape of two or three river willows standing majestically on the bank, their low branches still dense with leaves just beginning to fall. As Xiao-er's horse passed between them, the trees suddenly scooped him up into their leafy branches and tossed him upsidedown onto the soft mud of the bank.
At that very instant, through some associative connection, Xiao-er saw bright yellow flames burning in the sky. They were the same bright yellow flames he used to see burning under the huge stove in the kitchen of his childhood home.
Oh, the fire is burning
, he thought, but in the next instant he was already unconscious.
Was Xiao-er entirely unconscious after he fell from his horse? True, the pain of his wound was almost gone, but he knew he was lying on the deserted river bank, smeared in mud and blood, and looking up through the willow leaves caressing the deep blue dome of the sky. This sky was deeper and bluer than any he had ever seen before. Lying on his back, he felt as if he were looking up into a gigantic inverted indigo vase. In the bottom of the vase, clouds like massed foam would appear out of nowhere and then slowly fade as if scattered by the ever-moving willow leaves.
Was Xiao-er, then, not entirely unconscious? Between his eyes and the blue sky passed a great many shadow-like things that were not actually there. First he saw his mother's slightly grimy apron. How often had he clung to that apron in childhood, in both happy times and sad? His hand now reached out for it, but in that instant it disappeared from view. First it grew thin as gossamer, and beyond it, as through a layer of mica, he could see a mass of white cloud.
Next there came gliding across the sky the sprawling sesame field behind the house he was born inâthe sesame field in midsummer, when sad little flowers bloom as if waiting for the sun to set. Xiao-er searched for an image of himself or his brothers standing in the sesame plants, but there was no sign of anything human, just a quiet blend of pale flowers and leaves bathed in pale sunlight. It cut diagonally across the space above him and vanished as if lifted up and away.
Then something strange came slithering across the skyâone of those long dragon lanterns they carry through the streets on the night of the lantern festival. Made of thin paper glued to a bamboo frame a good thirty feet long, it was painted in garish greens and reds, and it looked just like a dragon you might see in a picture. It stood out clearly against the daytime sky, lighted from within by candles. Stranger still, it seemed to be alive, its long whiskers waving freely. Xiao-er was still taking this in when it swam out of his view and quickly vanished.
As soon as the dragon was gone, the slender foot of a woman came to take its place. A bound foot, it was no more than three inches long. At the tip of its gracefully curved toe, a whitish nail softly parted the color of the flesh. In Xiao-er's heart, memories of the time he saw that foot brought with them a vague, far-off sadness, like a fleabite in a dream. If only he could touch that foot againâbut no, that would never happen. Hundreds of miles separated this place from the place where he had seen that foot. As he dwelt on the impossibility of ever touching it again, the foot grew transparent until it was drawn into the clouds.
At that point Xiao-er was overcome by a mysterious loneliness such as he had never experienced before. The vast blue sky hung above him in silence. People had no choice but to go on living their pitiful lives beneath that sky, buffeted by the winds that blow down from above. What loneliness! And how strange, he thought, that he had never known this loneliness until now. Xiao-er released a lengthy sigh.
All at once the Japanese cavalry troops with their red-striped caps charged in between his eyes and the sky, moving with far greater speed than any of the earlier images, and disappearing
just as quickly.
Ah yes, those cavalrymen must be feeling a loneliness as great as mine
. Had they not been mere apparitions, he would have wanted to comfort them and be comforted by them, to forget this loneliness if only for a moment. But it was too late now.
Xiao-er's eyes overflowed with tears. And when, with those tear-moistened eyes, he looked back on his life, he recognized all too well the ugliness that had filled it. He wanted to apologize to everyone, and he also wanted to forgive everyone for what they had done to him.
If I escape death today, I swear that I will do whatever it takes to make up for my past
.
Xiao-er wept as he formed these words deep in his heart. But, as if unwilling to listen, the sky, in all its infinite depth, in all its infinite blueness, slowly began to press down upon him where he lay, foot by foot, inch by inch. Faintly sparkling points in the vast blue expanse were surely stars visible in daylight. No longer did he see shadowy images passing before him. Xiao-er sighed once more, felt a sudden trembling of the lips, and, in the end, let his eyelids slowly close.
