62
tilting his bald head to one side. His eyes would wander up to the portrait
of the Bodhisattva Fugen
4
hanging beside him. And he would sink into
gloom, thinking about how it had been for him a few days earlier, when
he still had his long nose, “just as he who can now sink no lower fondly
recalls his days of glory.” The Naigu, unfortunately, lacked the wisdom
to find a solution to this problem.
The human heart harbors two conflicting sentiments. Everyone of course
sympathizes with people who suffer misfortunes. Yet when
those people
manage to overcome their misfortunes, we feel a certain disappointment.
We may even feel (to overstate the case somewhat) a desire to plunge
them back into those misfortunes. And before we know it, we come (if
only passively) to harbor some degree of hostility toward them. It was
precisely because he sensed this kind of spectator's egoism in both the lay
and the priestly communities of Ike-no-o that the Naigu,
while unaware
of the reason, felt an indefinable malaise.
And so the Naigu's mood worsened with each passing day. He could
hardly say a word to people without snapping at them – until finally,
even the disciple who had performed the treatment on his nose began to
whisper behind his back: “The Naigu will be punished for treating us so
harshly instead of teaching us Buddha's Law.” The one who made the
Naigu especially angry was that mischievous page. One day the Naigu
heard some loud barking, and
without giving it much thought, he stepped
outside to see what was going on. There, he found the page waving a
long stick in pursuit of a scrawny long-haired dog. The boy was not
4
Sanskrit: Samantabhadra. Often depicted riding a white elephant to the Buddha’s right, Fugen
symbolizes, among other things, the Buddha’s concentration of mind. The trunk of the
elephant might also have attracted the Naigu’s attention.
simply chasing after the dog, however. He was also
shouting as if for the
dog, “‘Can't hit my nose! Ha ha! Can't hit my nose!’” The Naigu ripped
the stick from the boy's hand and smacked him in the face with it. Then
he realized this “stick” was the slat they had used to hold his nose up at
mealtimes.
His nose had been shortened all right, thought the Naigu, but he hated
what it was doing to him.
And then one night something happened. The wind must have risen quite
suddenly
after the sun went down, to judge by the annoying jangle of the
pagoda wind chimes that reached him at his pillow. The air was much
colder as well, and the aging Naigu was finding it impossible to sleep.
Eyes wide open in the darkness, he became aware of a new itching
sensation in his nose. He reached up and found the nose slightly swollen
to the touch. It (and only it) seemed to be feverish as well.
“We took such drastic steps to shorten it: maybe that gave me some kind
of illness,” the Naigu muttered to himself, cupping
the nose in hands he
held as if reverentially offering flowers or incense before the Buddha.
When he woke early as usual the next morning, the Naigu found that the
temple's gingko and horse-chestnut trees had dropped their leaves
overnight, spreading a bright, golden carpet over the temple grounds.
And perhaps because of the frost on the roof of the pagoda, the nine-ring
spire atop it flashed in the still-faint glimmer of the rising sun. Standing
on the veranda where the latticed shutters had
been raised, Zenchi Naigu
took a deep breath of morning air.
It was at this moment that an all-but-forgotten sensation returned to him.
63
The Naigu shot his hand up to his nose, but what he felt there was not the
short nose he had touched in the night. It was the same old long nose he
had always had, dangling down a good six inches from above his upper
lip to below his chin. In the space of a single night,
his nose had grown as
long as ever. When he realized this, the Naigu felt that same bright sense
of relief he had experienced when his nose became short.
Now no one will laugh at me anymore, the Naigu whispered silently in
his heart, letting his long nose sway in the dawn’s autumn wind.
F
rom Ryūnosuke Akutagawa,
Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories, tr.
Jay Rubin (London: Penguin, 2006).
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
