Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories (23 page)
Read Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories Online
Authors: Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Hanzabur
Å
's sudden resurrection caused a sensation, of course. The
Shuntian Times
2
ran a three-column article with a big photo of him. Tsuneko in her mourning outfit was smiling even more than usual, said the report. And, instead of “wasting” the traditional monetary offerings that had been donated for the funeral, a company executive and colleague of Hanzabur
Å
's used the substantial sum to hold a “Resurrection Celebration” for the would-be mourners. Dr. Yamai's credibility came dangerously close to collapsing, to be sure, but he resuscitated it with great skill, blowing cigar smoke rings in a lordly manner. Hanzabur
Å
's resurrection, he insisted, was a mystery of nature that transcended the powers of medicine. Which is to say, he restored his own personal credibility by sacrificing that of the medical profession.
The only person without a smile at Hanzabur
Å
's “Resurrection Celebration” was Hanzabur
Å
himself. And no wonder: with his resurrection his legs had changed to horse legsâchestnut horse legs with hooves instead of toes. Every time he saw them, he felt an indescribable wave of self-pity. For he knew that the day his legs were discovered, the company would let him go, his colleagues would turn their backs on him, and Tsunekoâoh, “Frailty, thy name is woman!”âTsuneko would almost certainly refuse to stay married to a man who
had suddenly grown two horse legs. Whenever such thoughts crossed his mind, he resolved anew to keep his legs hidden. He gave up wearing Japanese clothing. He started wearing boots. He always locked the bathroom window and door. Yet despite such precautions, he was continually anxious. And not without reason:
Hanzabur
Å
had to remain on guard, first of all, against arousing the suspicions of his colleagues. This was perhaps among the less taxing of his efforts, but if we examine his diary, we find that he was continually struggling with some threat.
July â. Damn that young Chinese guy for sticking me with these damn legs. I'm walking around on two fleas' nests! The itching drove me crazy today at work. I can see all my energy going into this for a while: I have to rig up something to get rid of these fleas.
August â. Went to the manager's office to talk about sales today. Manager sniffing the whole time. I guess the smell is seeping out of my boots.
September â. Controlling horse legs is a lot harder than horseback riding itself. Had a rush job before noon today, trotted down the stairway. Like anyone at a time like this, I was only thinking about the job, forgot about my horse legs. Next thing I know, my hoof goes straight through the seventh step.
October â. I'm finally getting my horse legs to behave the way I want them to. It's all in the balance of the hips. I botched things today, though. Not that it was entirely my fault. I caught a rickshaw to work around nine o'clock this morning. The fare should have been 12 sen, but the rickshaw man insisted on 20. Then he grabbed me and wouldn't let me go in through the company gate. I got furious and gave him a quick kick. He flew through the air like a football. I was sorry about that, of course, but at the same time I couldn't help laughing. I really have to be more careful when I use my legsâ¦.
Avoiding Tsuneko's suspicions, however, provided far greater sources of hardship than deceiving his colleagues, as Hanzabur
Å
continually lamented in his diary:
July â. My greatest enemy is Tsuneko. I finally managed to convince her that we should be living a “modern, cultured” life, so we turned our only Japanese matted room into a wood-floored Western room. That way, I can get by without taking my shoes off in front of her. She's upset at the loss of the tatami, but there is no way I can walk on a matted floor with these legsâeven with socks on.
September â. Sold our double bed to a used-furniture dealer today. I remember the day I bought it at an American's auction. On the way home, I walked under the row of pagoda trees in the foreign settlement. The trees were in full bloom. The soft glow of the canal was beautiful. Butâ No, this is no time for me to be clinging to such memories. I almost kicked Tsuneko in the side last nightâ¦.
November â. Took the washing to the laundry myself today. Not our usual laundry: the one over by Dongan Market. This is a chore I will have to take care of from now on. There's always horse hair stuck to my long johns, underpants, and socks.
December â. I'm constantly wearing holes in my socks. It's not easy putting together the money to buy new socks without Tsuneko finding out.
February â. I never take off my socks or underclothes, even in bed. Plus it's always a risky venture to keep my legs hidden from Tsuneko with a blanket. Before we got in bed last night, Tsuneko said, “I never realized how sensitive you are to cold! Have you got a pelt wound all the way up to your hips?” Maybe the time has come for the secret of my horse legs to come out.
Hanzabur
Å
encountered many other threats besides these. Recounting each of them would be more than I can manage. Here, though, I will record the one event in his diary that shocked me the most:
February â. Went to have a look at the used-bookstore near Longfu Temple today on my lunch break. A horse-drawn cart was parked in a sunny spot in front of the shop. This was not a Western-type horse cart, but a Chinese cart with an indigo canopy. The driver must have been resting up there, but I didn't
pay that any mind as I started into the bookstore. And then it happened. The driver snapped his whip and yelled to the horse, “Suo! Suo!” “Suo” is the word that Chinese use to make a horse back up. Even before the driver's words had ended, the wagon started creaking backward. Andâcould I have been any more shocked at what happened at that very moment?âwith my eyes on the bookstore in front of me, I, also, started backing up a step at a time! There is no way I can describe here what I felt then: Terror? Horror? I tried without success to move forwardâeven a single step if I couldâbut under the influence of some terrifying, irresistible power, I could only move backward. Then, fortunatelyâfor me, at leastâthe driver gave a long “Suooo!” When the cart came to a stop, I was finally able to stop moving backward. But this was not the only amazing thing that happened. With a sigh of relief, I half-consciously turned toward the cart. At that moment the horseâthe dapple-gray horse that was pulling the cartâcame out with an indescribable whinny. Indescribable? No, it was not indescribable. When I heard that shrill whinny, I knew without a doubt that the horse was laughing. And it was not alone: I felt something like a whinny rising in my own throat. I knew I could
not
allow this sound to emerge from my throat. I slapped my hands over my ears and ran away as fast as I could.
But destiny was still preparing its final blow for Hanzabur
Å
. One noontime near the end of March, he noticed that his legs were suddenly beginning to dance and leap. Why, at this time, should his horse legs have suddenly started acting up? To find the answer to that question, we would have to examine Hanzabur
Å
's diary. Unfortunately, however, the diary ends on the day before Hanzabur
Å
suffered the final blow. We can, however, make an informed guess based upon events immediately preceding and following the day in question. Having examined the leading Chinese source books in the field (
Annals of Horse Governance
;
Horse Records
;
Yuan and Heng's Collection of Cures for Cows, Horses, and Camels
; and
Bo Le's Manual for Judging the Quality of Horses
),
3
I believe I know exactly what caused his horse legs to become excited when they did.
That day, there was a terrible Yellow Dust, the notorious storm that blows into Beijing from Mongolia every year at springtime. According to the
Shuntian Times
, that day's Yellow Dust was the worst in well over a decade: “Walk five steps from the Zhengyang Gate, look up, and you can no longer see the gate's superstructure.” In other words, it must have been an exceptionally severe storm. Hanzabur
Å
's legs had originally been attached to a horse that died at the market in Desheng Menwai. The animal must have been a Mongolian Kulun horse that came through Zhangjiakou and Jinzhou on its way to Beijing. The conclusion seems almost inescapable, then, that Hanzabur
Å
's horse legs began to dance and leap the moment they sensed the Mongolian air moving in. This was the season when horses beyond the Great Wall begin galloping around in all directions, frantic to mate. Hanzabur
Å
's horse legs thus were incapable of remaining still, for which Hanzabur
Å
surely merits our sympathy.
Whether or not the reader finds my interpretation persuasive, we know from his colleagues that, at work that day, Hanzabur
Å
was continually leaping about as if in a dance. And that in a mere three-block stretch on his way back to his house, he trampled seven rickshaws to bits. Things were no better when he reached home. According to Tsuneko, Hanzabur
Å
staggered in, panting like a dog. And when he finally managed to stretch out on the sofa, he ordered his dumbfounded wife to bring him a length of cord. Tsuneko of course imagined from his appearance that something terrible had happened to him. His color was bad, for one thing. And he kept moving his boot-shod legs as if he found something unbearably irritating. Even Tsuneko forgot her usual smile, and she begged him to tell her what he was planning to do with the cord, but he would only wipe the sweat from his brow in apparent agony and repeat over and over, “Do it. Hurry. Hurry. You have to do it
now
.”
Tsuneko had no choice but to bring her husband a bunch of the cords she used for tying packages. Boots and all, he started winding a cord around his legs. It was then that the fear began to germinate in her heart that Hanzabur
Å
might be going mad. She stared at her husband and, with a quavering voice, urged
him to call Dr. Yamai. He ignored her entreaties and went on winding the cord.
“What the hell does that quack know? That bandit! That swindler! Forget about him. Just come over here and hold me down.”
They locked their arms around each other on the sofa. The Yellow Dust that blanketed Beijing seemed to be growing ever more intense. Now even the setting sun could do no more than lend a lightless muddy redness to the air beyond the window. Hanzabur
Å
's legs were never still throughout this time, of course. Bound as they were, they continued to move as if pumping invisible pedals. Tsuneko tried to soothe him and encourage him as best she could:
“Hanzabur
Å
, Hanzabur
Å
, why are you shaking like this?”
“It's nothing. It's nothing.”
“But look how you're sweating. âLet's go home to Japan this summer, Hanzabur
Å
. Please, we've been away so long.”
“Good. We'll do that. We'll go back to live in Japan.”
Five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes: time moved over the couple in slow, painful steps. Tsuneko later told a woman reporter for the
Shuntian Times
that she felt all the while like a prisoner in chains. After thirty minutes, however, the chains were ready to snapânot Tsuneko's chains but the human chains that bound Hanzabur
Å
to the household. Fanned, perhaps, by the flowing wind, the window with its muddy red view began to rattle. At that moment Hanzabur
Å
released some kind of enormous cry and flew three feet into the air. Tsuneko says that she saw his bonds snap in that instant. Hanzabur
Å
thenânow, this is no longer Tsuneko's account. The last thing she saw was her husband flying up into the air, after which she fainted on the couch. Their Chinese houseboy, however, told the same reporter what happened next. Hanzabur
Å
leaped to the entryway as if something were pursuing him. For a brief moment, he stood outside the door, but then, with a great shudder, he let out a long, eerie cry like the whinnying of a horse as he plunged straight into the Yellow Dust that enveloped the street.
What became of Hanzabur
Å
after that? Even now, no one
knows for sure. The journalist from the
Shuntian Times
reported that sometime around eight o'clock that evening, in the smoky moonlight of the Yellow Dust, a man without a hat was seen galloping along the railroad tracks below Mt. Badaling, famous for its view of the Great Wall. This article, however, may not be entirely reliable. For in fact another journalist for the same newspaper reported that sometime around eight o'clock that evening, in the rain drenching the Yellow Dust, a man without a hat was seen galloping past the rows of stone men and animals on the Sacred Way to the thirteen Ming Tombs. This leads us to the inescapable conclusion that we have no idea where Hanzabur
Å
went or what he did after he ran away from his company house on XX Lane.
Needless to say, Hanzabur
Å
's disappearance caused as great a sensation as his resurrection had. Tsuneko, the company manager, Hanzabur
Å
's colleagues, Dr. Yamai, and the editorin-chief of the
Shuntian Times
all ascribed his disappearance to sudden insanity. No doubt this was simpler than blaming it on horse legs. For such is the Way of the World: to reject the difficult and go with the easy. One representative of this Way, Editor-in-Chief Mudaguchi of the
Shuntian Times
, brandished his lofty pen in the following editorial:
Yesterday at 5:15 p.m. Mitsubishi employee Oshino Hanzabur
Å
appears to have gone suddenly insane and, ignoring his wife Tsuneko's attempts to hold him back, ran away from home alone. According to Dr. Yamai, director of the Universalist Hospital, Mr. Oshino has been exhibiting somewhat abnormal psychological symptoms ever since he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage last summer and remained unconscious for three days. Judging also from a diary discovered by Mrs. Oshino, Mr. Oshino was continually experiencing strange obsessions. What we would like to ask, however, is not “What is the name of Mr. Oshino's malady?” but rather “What is Mr. Oshino's responsibility to his wife?”