芋粥 English

This must have been a story from the end of Gankyo or the beginning of Ninna.

In either case, the era plays no very important role in this tale.

The reader need only know that the distant past called the Heian period forms the backdrop. ——

At that time, among the retainers serving the regent Fujiwara no Mototsune, there was a man of the Fifth Rank known as So-and-so.

I would prefer to give his full name clearly rather than write "So-and-so," but unfortunately the old records do not preserve it.

He was probably, in truth, so unremarkable a man that he had no right to be remembered.

The authors of old records seem to have had little interest in ordinary people or ordinary affairs.

In this respect, they differ considerably from the naturalist writers of Japan.

The novelists of the court age were, surprisingly, not men of leisure. ——

In any case, among the retainers serving the regent Fujiwara no Mototsune, there was a man of the Fifth Rank known as So-and-so.

He is the protagonist of this tale.

The Fifth Rank man was a person of exceedingly unprepossessing appearance.

To begin with, he was short.

Then there was his red nose and drooping eye-corners.

Needless to say, his mustache was thin.

Because his cheeks were sunken, his jaw looked unusually narrow.

His lips — if one were to list every feature in turn, there would be no end to it.

Our Fifth Rank man's appearance was so remarkably slovenly in its composition.

When and how this man came to serve Mototsune, no one knows.

But it is certain that for a good while now he had been wearing, day after day without weariness, a suikan of the same faded color, the same limp eboshi on his head, and performing the same duties.

As a result, it now seems inconceivable to anyone who sees him that this man ever had a youth.

(The Fifth Rank man was past forty.)

Rather, one feels as if he must have been exposing that cheerless red nose and the merest hint of a mustache to the winds of Suzaku Avenue since the day he was born.

From his master Mototsune at the top down to the ox-drivers' boys at the bottom, everyone unconsciously believed this without question.

The treatment such a man received from those around him scarcely needs to be written out.

The men at the retainers' hall paid the Fifth Rank man hardly any more attention than they would a fly.

Even his nearly twenty subordinates, ranked and unranked alike, were strangely indifferent to his comings and goings.

Whenever the Fifth Rank man gave an order, they never once stopped their own chatter among themselves.

Just as the existence of air is invisible, so the existence of the Fifth Rank man did not obstruct their eyes.

If even the subordinates behaved thus, it was only natural that superiors such as the chief steward and the head of the retainers' hall would dismiss him entirely.

When they had dealings with the Fifth Rank man, they concealed behind composed expressions an almost childish and senseless ill will, and for anything they wished to say they made do with gestures alone.

It is no accident that human beings possess language.

Consequently, there were times when gestures alone were not sufficient.

But they seemed to attribute this entirely to some deficiency in the Fifth Rank man's own understanding.

So when gestures failed, they would survey this man from the tip of his battered, crumpled eboshi down to the fraying heel of his straw sandals, looking him up and down all over, and then, laughing through their noses, would abruptly turn their backs on him.

Even so, the Fifth Rank man never grew angry.

He was so spiritless and timid a person that he could not even feel injustice as injustice.

Yet his fellow retainers actively sought to make sport of him.

The older colleagues seized on his wretched appearance as material for stale jokes, while the younger ones in turn used it as an occasion to practice what might be called their wit and wordplay.

They never tired of appraising to his very face his nose and mustache, his eboshi and his suikan.

That was not all.

The wife with the thick lips from whom he had parted five or six years before, and the drunken monk said to have been involved with that wife, were frequently the subject of their talk as well.

On top of that, they sometimes played pranks of a very malicious kind.

These cannot all be enumerated here.

But if I mention that they once drank his bamboo-branch flask of wine and refilled it with urine, the rest, I think, can be imagined.

Yet the Fifth Rank man was entirely insensible to all this mockery.

At least, to outside eyes, he appeared insensible.

Whatever was said to him, he never changed color.

Silently stroking his characteristic thin mustache, he would go quietly about whatever he had to do.

Only when his colleagues' pranks grew excessive — sticking scraps of paper in his topknot, or tying sandals to his sword scabbard — would he make a face that could not be told from a smile or a cry, and say: "That is too bad of you, gentlemen."

So he said.

Anyone who saw that face and heard that voice was for a moment struck by a strange kind of pathos.

(It was not this red-nosed Fifth Rank man alone who was being tormented; someone unknown to them — many unknown someones — had borrowed his face and voice to reproach them for their heartlessness.) ——

Such a feeling, vaguely, would seep into their hearts for one brief instant.

But very few were those who held onto that feeling for long.

Among those few there was one retainer of no rank.

He was a young man who had come from the province of Tanba, at an age where a still-soft mustache was just barely beginning to grow under his nose.

Of course, this man too had at first joined the others in looking down on the red-nosed Fifth Rank man for no reason at all.

But one day, on some occasion, when he heard the words "That is too bad of you, gentlemen,"

he found he could not get them out of his head.

From that time on, the Fifth Rank man appeared to this man's eyes as an entirely different person.

For in the Fifth Rank man's poorly nourished, sallow, vacant face, a "human being"

who had been reduced to tears by the world's persecution was peering out.

Whenever this unranked retainer thought of the Fifth Rank man, the whole of the world seemed to suddenly reveal its true baseness.

And at the same time the frost-chapped red nose and the few countable hairs of a mustache conveyed to his heart a kind of dim solace. ...

But that was confined to this one man alone.

Apart from this exception, the Fifth Rank man had no choice but to go on living the life of a dog amid the contempt of those around him.

For one thing, he had not a single piece of proper clothing.

He had one suikan of slate blue and one pair of sashinuki of the same color, but by now these had bleached so that they were neither blue nor indigo but some indeterminate color.

The suikan was not so bad — only the shoulders had dropped a little and the braided cords and chrysanthemum clasps had grown dubious in color — but the sashinuki were worn at the hem to no ordinary degree.

When one saw the thin legs emerging from those sashinuki, bare of even an undergarment, even someone not given to sharp words could not help feeling the same miserable sensation as watching an emaciated ox pulling the carriage of an emaciated court noble.

The sword he wore at his side was also a most uncertain thing, with questionable fittings on the hilt and the lacquer of the black scabbard peeling away.

Given that this red-nosed figure, shuffling along slovenly in sandals, was already stooped at the best of times and now hunched even further under the cold sky, peering hungrily to left and right as he crept along in short shuffling steps, it was no wonder that even passing street vendors looked down on him.

Indeed, there was even an incident like this. ...

One day, as the Fifth Rank man was heading from Sanjobomon toward the Shinsen-en garden, he noticed six or seven children gathered at the roadside doing something.

"Komatsuburi,"

he thought perhaps they were spinning a top, and looked over their shoulders, only to find that they had tied a rope around the neck of a shaggy mongrel dog that had wandered in from somewhere, and were beating and striking it.

The timid Fifth Rank man, even when he felt sympathy for something, had always been mindful of those around him and had never once expressed it in action.

But this time, since the other party were children, he mustered a degree of courage.

So, forming as cheerful a smile as he could, he tapped on the shoulder of what appeared to be the oldest child and said: "Come now, have mercy on it. A dog feels pain when it is beaten too, you know."

And he spoke those words.

Whereupon the child turned around and, looking up at him with upturned eyes, stared at the Fifth Rank man's figure with a look of contempt.

He looked at him with the same face that the chief steward of the retainers' hall made when his instructions failed to get through to this man.

"I don't need your meddling."

Stepping back a pace, the child raised his arrogant lip and said this.

"What do you want, Red-nose?"

The Fifth Rank man felt as if those words had struck him across the face.

But it was not in the least because he was angry at being cursed at.

It was because he felt wretched for having said what need not have been said and brought shame upon himself.

Hiding his embarrassment behind a forced smile, he turned without a word and began walking once more toward the Shinsen-en.

Behind him, the six or seven children huddled together making

faces and sticking out their tongues at him.

Of course he knew nothing of this.

And even if he had known, what would it have meant to this spiritless Fifth Rank man? ...

Now, one might wonder whether the protagonist of this tale was a man born only to be despised, with no hopes of his own whatsoever — but that is not quite right.

For five or six years the Fifth Rank man had harbored an extraordinary attachment to something called imogayu.

Imogayu is a gruel made by cutting mountain yam into it and simmering it in the juice of the amadu vine.

At that time this was regarded as a supreme delicacy, served even at the table of the emperor himself.

Accordingly, it reached the lips of a person of our Fifth Rank man's station only once a year, at the occasion of the special banquet.

Even then, what he could drink was only the barest sip, hardly enough to moisten his throat.

So the wish to drink imogayu to his fill had become, for a long time now, his one and only desire.

Of course he had never spoken of it to anyone.

Indeed, he himself had probably never clearly recognized it as a desire that ran through his entire life.

But in fact one might almost say that he lived for this. ——

There are times when a human being devotes a whole life to a desire whose satisfaction is uncertain.

Those who mock such folly are, in the end, no more than bystanders on the road of life.

But the thing the Fifth Rank man had been dreaming of — "to have his fill of imogayu" —

came to be realized as fact with surprising ease.

The intention of the story of imogayu is to recount that whole affair from beginning to end.

———————————————

It was the occasion of what is called the special banquet held at Mototsune's mansion on the second day of the new year in a certain year.

(The special banquet was a feast hosted by the household of the regent or chancellor on the same day as the grand banquet at the secondary imperial palace, at which ministers and courtiers below the rank of minister were invited, and it was not very different from the grand banquet itself.)

The Fifth Rank man also sat among the other retainers and partook of the leftovers.

This was because at that time the custom of taking food away had not yet developed, and the leftovers were consumed by all the retainers of the house gathered together in one room.

To be sure, even if it was said to be equivalent to a grand banquet, this was the old days, and for all the many courses there was nothing very worthy of the name: rice cakes, futo, steamed abalone, dried birds, sweetfish from Uji, carp from Omi, salt-dried sea bream, salmon roe, grilled octopus, large prawns, large citrus, small citrus, mandarin oranges, skewered persimmons, and the like.

But among these was the imogayu mentioned above.

Every year the Fifth Rank man looked forward to this imogayu.

But with so many people, there was always very little he could drink.

This year it was especially little.

And whether it was his imagination or not, it tasted considerably better than usual.

So, gazing intently at the bowl after he had finished it, wiping the drops clinging to his thin mustache with his palm, he said to no one in particular: "When will I ever have my fill of this?"

So he said.

"I hear the Daibu has never had his fill of imogayu."

Before the Fifth Rank man had even finished speaking, someone laughed in derision.

It was a deep, generous, soldierly voice.

The Fifth Rank man raised his stooped head and looked timidly toward that person.

The owner of the voice was Fujiwara no Toshihito, son of Tokihisa, Minister of Popular Affairs, at that time also an attendant of Mototsune.

He was a powerfully built large man of broad shoulders and outstanding stature, and was at the moment cracking boiled chestnuts with his teeth and refilling his cup of dark wine.

He was already fairly well drunk.

"What a pity."

When Toshihito saw the Fifth Rank man raise his face, he continued speaking in a voice that combined contempt and pity into one.

"If you wish, Toshihito will see that you have your fill."

A dog that has been tormented continuously will not easily approach even when it is given meat.

The Fifth Rank man wore that characteristic smile of his that could not be told from weeping, and looked alternately at Toshihito's face and the empty bowl in equal measure.

"Would you rather not?"

"......"

"What do you say?"

"......"

In the meantime the Fifth Rank man became aware that the eyes of the assembled company had gathered upon him.

Depending on his answer, he would have to suffer the mockery of all present once again.

He even felt that no matter what he answered, he was likely to be made a fool of in the end.

He hesitated.

Had the other man not then said in a slightly impatient voice, "If you'd rather not, I shan't press you,"

the Fifth Rank man would have gone on gazing back and forth between the bowl and Toshihito indefinitely.

Hearing that, he answered in haste.

"No ... I am most grateful."

All those who had been listening to this exchange burst into laughter at once.

"No ... I am most grateful."

There were even those who mimicked the Fifth Rank man's answer.

Above the stands piled with the so-called oranges and tangerines, a great many crumpled eboshi and tall-crowned eboshi swayed like waves all at once amid the sound of laughter.

Among them the one who laughed most loudly and most cheerfully was Toshihito himself.

"Then I shall invite you before long."

Saying this, he winced slightly.

The laughter welling up inside him and the wine he had just drunk had merged together in his throat.

"... You are quite sure, now?"

"I am most grateful."

The Fifth Rank man flushed red and, stumbling over his words, repeated his previous answer again.

Needless to say, the assembled company laughed once more.

And Toshihito himself, who had deliberately pressed him in order to make him say it, shook his broad shoulders with an even more amused air than before and roared with laughter.

This man of the northern wilderness knew only two methods of living.

One was drinking wine, and the other was laughing.

Fortunately, however, before long the center of conversation moved away from these two.

This may be because, whether it was mockery or not, the others found it disagreeable to have everyone's attention concentrated on this red-nosed Fifth Rank man.

In any case, the talk shifted from one thing to another, and by the time the wine and food were nearly depleted, the interest of the gathering had settled on the tale of a certain retainer-scholar who had put both legs into one leg of his riding leggings and tried to mount a horse.

But the Fifth Rank man alone seemed entirely unable to hear the other talk.

That was surely because the two characters "imogayu" dominated his every thought.

There was roasted pheasant before him, but he put no chopsticks to it.

There was a cup of dark wine, but he did not touch his lips to it.

He simply sat with both hands on his knees, blushing to the roots of his frost-touched hair like a daughter at a marriage meeting, and went on gazing vacantly at the empty lacquered bowl with a blissful smile that never left his face. ...

———————————————

Four or five days later, on a morning, two men were quietly urging their horses along the highway that ran along the bank of the Kamo River toward Awatagu-chi.

One was a man "with black beard and well-groomed sideburns," dressed in a deep blue kari-ginu and matching hakama, wearing a fine sword at his side,

a man.

The other was a retainer of about forty in a wretched slate-blue suikan, with two or three layers of thin-padded garments piled on, and everything about him was remarkably miserable — the slovenly way his sash was tied, the red nose whose nostrils were wet with a runny cold.

To be sure, both men rode fine horses — the first a pale dun, the second a blue-gray three-year-old colt — swift enough to make passing merchants and retainers turn to look.

Following behind them, two more men struggling not to fall behind the horses' pace were doubtless an armor-bearer and a groom. ——

That this party consisted of Toshihito and the Fifth Rank man scarcely needs to be stated here.

Though winter, it was a quietly clear day, with not enough wind to stir the leaves of the withered mugwort standing along the banks of the pale riverbed, beside the softly murmuring water.

The low willows facing the river, bare of leaves on their branches, receiving the smooth, candy-like light of the sun, cast even the movement of a wagtail's tail in their treetops as a clear and distinct shadow on the highway.

Rounding its full shoulder, like frost-scorched velvet, above the dark green of the Eastern Hills — that would be Mount Hiei.

The two made their way leisurely in the direction of Awatagu-chi, the mother-of-pearl inlay on their saddles glittering dazzlingly in the sun, without so much as a touch of the whip.

"Where exactly are you taking me?" the Fifth Rank man said, fumbling with the reins in his unaccustomed hands.

The Fifth Rank man said this, struggling with the reins in his unaccustomed hands.

"Just nearby. It is not so far as to worry you."

"Then, would it be around Awatagu-chi?"

"Well, you may as well think so."

That morning Toshihito had invited the Fifth Rank man out by saying there was a place near the Eastern Hills where hot springs welled up, and they should go there.

The red-nosed Fifth Rank man had taken this at face value.

He had not bathed for a long time, and his whole body had been itching these past days.

To be treated to imogayu and then be able to bathe as well would be more than he could have wished for.

Thinking this, he had climbed onto the blue-gray horse that Toshihito had brought for him in advance.

But now, riding side by side this far, it seemed clear that Toshihito had no intention of going anywhere in this neighborhood.

And indeed, while they were thus occupied, they passed right through Awatagu-chi.

"It is not Awatagu-chi, then."

"No, a bit farther, that way."

Toshihito was riding on quietly, a smile on his lips, deliberately avoiding looking at the Fifth Rank man's face.

The houses on either side gradually grew sparse, and now above the broad expanse of winter fields only crows could be seen foraging for food, while the snow color lingering in the mountain's shadow smoldered faintly blue.

Though the sky was clear, even the pointed tips of the wax-tree branches piercing the sky painfully to the eye gave a somehow chilly feeling.

"Then perhaps it is somewhere around Yamashina?"

"Yamashina is right here. A little farther still."

Indeed, as he spoke, Yamashina too was left behind.

That was not all.

Before they knew it, Sekiyama too was behind them, and by a little past noon they had at last arrived before Miidera temple.

At Miidera there was a monk with whom Toshihito was on familiar terms.

The two called on this monk and were treated to lunch.

When that was done, they mounted once more and pressed on in haste.

The road ahead was far more sparsely inhabited than the way they had come.

And this was an age when bandits roamed the roads in every direction, a dangerous time. ——

The Fifth Rank man hunched his stooped back even lower and, looking up at Toshihito's face, asked:

"Still farther ahead, is it?"

Toshihito smiled.

It was the smile of a child caught doing mischief who turns it on an elder.

The wrinkles gathered at the tip of his nose and the slack of muscle gathered at the corners of his eyes seemed to be hesitating whether to break into a full smile or hold back.

And then at last he said:

"The truth is, I intended to take you all the way to Tsuruga."

Laughing, Toshihito raised his whip and pointed to the distant sky.

Beneath that whip, shining brilliantly in the afternoon sun, was the lake of Omi.

The Fifth Rank man was thrown into confusion.

"Tsuruga, you say — that Tsuruga in Echizen? That Echizen —"

He had not been entirely unaware that Toshihito, having married into the family of Arihito of Tsuruga, mostly lived in Tsuruga.

But he had never until this very moment imagined that Toshihito intended to take him along to that Tsuruga.

In the first place, how could one possibly travel safely to the province of Echizen, separated by so many mountains and rivers, with only two attendants as they were?

Moreover, there were rumors in every quarter these days that travelers on the road had been killed by bandits. ——

The Fifth Rank man looked at Toshihito's face beseechingly.

"This is outrageous — when you said the Eastern Hills, it was Yamashina; when you said Yamashina, it was Miidera; and the end of it all turns out to be Tsuruga in Echizen — what is the meaning of this? If you had told me from the beginning, I could at least have brought along some servants. Tsuruga — this is outrageous."

The Fifth Rank man muttered, all but on the verge of tears.

"To have his fill of imogayu" —

had that not been spurring his courage, he would surely have parted from Toshihito there and returned to Kyoto alone.

"Count Toshihito alone as a thousand men. There is no need to worry about the road."

Seeing the Fifth Rank man's consternation, Toshihito laughed with a slight frown.

Then he called over the armor-bearer, slung on his back the quiver that had been brought along, took from the man's hands as well a black-lacquered bow of catalpa wood, and laying it across his saddle, rode out in front.

Now that it had come to this, the spiritless Fifth Rank man had no choice but to submit blindly to Toshihito's will.

And so, gazing anxiously at the desolate wilderness around him, mumbling half-remembered verses of the Kannon Sutra under his breath, he pressed his red nose down toward the saddle pommel and plodded on with his uncertain horse's gait, shuffling along as ever.

The plain echoing with hoofbeats was blanketed in a vast expanse of yellowed grass, and here and there the pools of standing water, coldly reflecting the blue sky, seemed likely to freeze just as they were in that winter afternoon before anyone noticed.

Beyond the plain, a range of mountains — perhaps because they lay in the shadow of the sun — showed no gleam of the snowfields that should have glittered there, and instead lay smeared with a long, dark purplish color; even that was frequently blocked from the view of the two attendants by the desolate clumps of withered miscanthus. ——

Then suddenly Toshihito turned toward the Fifth Rank man and called out.

"There comes a good messenger. I shall send word to Tsuruga."

Not fully understanding what Toshihito meant, the Fifth Rank man fearfully looked in the direction pointed out by the bow.

It was not a place where one would expect to see any human figure.

Only a fox was there, its warm-colored fur exposed to the slanting sun, moving at an unhurried pace through a thicket of bushes twined with what appeared to be wild vine. ——

In an instant the fox darted up in a panic and bolted away in a headlong dash to somewhere.

This was because Toshihito had suddenly cracked his whip and sent his horse flying in that direction.

The Fifth Rank man, forgetting himself, followed after Toshihito.

The attendants too, of course, could not fall behind.

For a while the clatter of hooves striking stones rang out, breaking the stillness of the open plain, and then when Toshihito reined in his horse, the fox was already caught — by its hind legs, swinging upside down beside the saddle — as if it had been snatched before anyone had noticed.

He must have run it down until it could run no more, then pinned it under his horse and taken it by hand.

The Fifth Rank man hurriedly wiped the sweat gathering in his thin mustache and at last brought his horse up alongside.

"Now then, fox, listen carefully."

Toshihito held the fox high before his eyes and spoke in a deliberately solemn voice.

"You are to go to Toshihito's manor in Tsuruga tonight and say this: 'Toshihito is at this moment about to descend with a sudden guest. Send the men to meet us around Takashima by around the Hour of the Snake tomorrow, and have two saddled horses brought along.' You understand? Do not forget — by the Hour of the Snake."

When he had finished speaking, Toshihito gave the fox a swing and flung it far into a nearby thicket.

"Look at it run! Look at it run!"

The two attendants who had just caught up clapped their hands and cheered as they watched the fleeing fox's course.

The creature's back, the color of fallen leaves, ran straight on through the setting sun, heedless of tree roots or stones, running without end.

It was visible in sharp detail from where the party stood.

For in chasing the fox, they had unwittingly emerged just above the spot where the open plain made a gentle slope and merged into a dry riverbed.

"A very capable messenger indeed."

The Fifth Rank man, with a naive admiration and wonder, looked up now with fresh eyes at the face of this rough-bred warrior who commanded even foxes.

There was no leisure to think about how great a distance lay between himself and Toshihito.

He only felt, with something like reassurance, that because Toshihito's will extended over such a wide range, his own will, encompassed within that will, had accordingly gained that much more freedom. ——

Flattery is perhaps most naturally born at such moments.

The reader should not, simply on account of finding something parasitic in the Fifth Rank man's behavior from this point on, rashly doubt this man's character.

The fox that had been flung away tumbled down the slope on a slant, leaped nimbly over the stones in the dry riverbed, and now charged diagonally up the opposite slope with great energy.

As it climbed, it looked back and saw the party that had caught it still standing with their horses lined up on the distant slope.

They all looked as small as fingers held together.

Above all the pale dun and blue-gray horses, bathed in the setting sun, stood out with striking clarity in the frost-laden air, sharper than any painting.

The fox turned its head and ran off again like the wind through the withered miscanthus.

———————————————

The party arrived, as planned, around the Hour of the Snake the following day at Takashima.

This was a small settlement on the shore of Lake Biwa, and unlike the previous day the sky was overcast and heavy; beneath it a few thatched farmhouses were scattered thinly, and between the pine trees growing along the bank the surface of the lake, opening up cold and gray-rippled like a mirror one has forgotten to polish. ——

When they reached this place, Toshihito turned to the Fifth Rank man and said:

"Look there — it seems the men have come to meet us."

Indeed, there were two or three dozen men leading two saddled horses, some on horseback and others on foot, all with the sleeves of their suikan flapping in the cold wind, hurrying toward the party along the pine-lined lakeshore.

When these drew near, those who had been on horseback hastily dismounted from their saddles, and those on foot crouched down by the roadside, and all waited reverently for Toshihito to arrive.

"It seems after all that the fox did serve as messenger."

"A beast gifted by nature with transformation, so a task of this sort is nothing to it."

While the Fifth Rank man and Toshihito were having this exchange, the party reached the place where the retainers were waiting.

"Well done."

Toshihito called out to them.

Those who had been crouching jumped to their feet and took hold of the two men's horses' bridles.

All at once everything became lively.

"Something most strange occurred last night, sir."

Just as the two dismounted and were about to seat themselves on the spread hides, a white-haired retainer wearing a bark-brown suikan came before Toshihito and said this.

"What is it?"

Toshihito asked with genial ease, gesturing for the Fifth Rank man to share the bamboo-flask wine and lacquered food boxes the retainers had brought.

"Well, sir — last night around the Hour of the Dog, the mistress suddenly lost her senses, and declared: 'I am the fox of Sakamoto. I have come to deliver a message from the master, so draw near and hear me well.' And when all of us assembled before her, the mistress said: 'The master is at this moment about to descend with a sudden guest. Send the men to meet them around Takashima by the Hour of the Snake tomorrow, and have two saddled horses brought along.' So she commanded."

"Now that is a most extraordinary thing."

The Fifth Rank man looked back and forth between Toshihito's face and the retainer's face with an air of great discernment, and offered an agreeable response that seemed to satisfy both parties.

"And it was not merely a calm pronouncement either — she trembled violently, as if terribly frightened, and kept weeping, saying over and over: 'Do not be late — if you are late, I shall receive the master's punishment.'"

"And then what happened?"

"After that she fell quietly asleep, and when we set out just now she had not yet awakened, sir."

"What do you make of that?"

When the retainer had finished his tale, Toshihito looked at the Fifth Rank man and said with an air of pride:

"Even animals can be made to serve Toshihito."

"I can only marvel, truly."

The Fifth Rank man scratched his red nose, bowed his head briefly, and then opened his mouth with an exaggerated look of astonishment.

On his mustache, the wine he had just drunk clung in drops.

———————————————

That night.

The Fifth Rank man lay wide-eyed in a room of Toshihito's manor, spending the long sleepless night gazing idly at the flame of a standing oil lamp.

And then, one by one, the pine groves, streams, withered fields, or the grasses, leaves, stones, and the scent of smoke from brush fires they had passed through on the way here that evening — all these things came drifting back to his mind.

In particular, the feeling of relief he had felt when, through the haze of twilight, he had at last found his way to this manor and seen the red flames of the charcoal fire set up in a long chest — that too, now as he lay here, seemed like something that had happened in a distant past.

The Fifth Rank man, lying comfortably stretched out under a yellow hitaire padded with four or five inches of cotton, gazed absently around at his own sleeping form.

Under the hitaire he was wearing two layers of the cream-colored, thickly padded robes Toshihito had lent him.

That alone was warm enough that sometimes he was on the verge of sweating.

Added to this was the help of the wine he had drunk at supper.

Just beyond the shutter at his pillow lay the wide courtyard chill with frost, but even this, in his pleasant languor, troubled him not at all.

Everything was a world apart from his quarters in Kyoto.

Yet even so, in our Fifth Rank man's heart there lurked a kind of ill-balanced unease.

For one thing, the passing of time seemed agonizingly slow.

And yet at the same time, the thought of dawn arriving — the thought of the moment for eating imogayu arriving — made him feel it should not come too soon.

And then again, in the wake of these two contradictory feelings warring with each other, a restless mood born of the sudden change in his circumstances hung over him, cool and unsettled like that day's weather.

All of this got in the way, so that the comfortable warmth was not likely to lull him to sleep easily.

Then, outside in the wide courtyard, someone was calling out in a loud voice, and it reached his ears.

By the sound of the voice it seemed to be the white-haired retainer who had come out to meet them that day on the road, announcing something.

That dry voice, perhaps because it echoed in the frost, rang out crisp as the winter wind, word by word, seeming to resonate in the Fifth Rank man's very bones.

"All servants of this district, hear this. By the master's order, each person, young and old alike, is to bring one piece of mountain yam cut to three sun at the mouth and five shaku in length, by the Hour of the Hare tomorrow morning. Do not forget — by the Hour of the Hare."

This was repeated two or three times, and then the sound of people faded, and before long the surroundings had returned to the stillness of a winter night as before.

In that stillness the oil of the standing lamp sputtered.

The flame, like red cotton, wavered and swayed.

The Fifth Rank man stifled a yawn and once more sank into rambling thoughts. ——

Since he had ordered mountain yam, it was obviously meant to be made into imogayu.

Thinking this, the unease that had momentarily left him while his attention was drawn outside came slipping back into his heart before he knew it.

In particular, the feeling that had grown stronger than before — the reluctance to obtain the imogayu too soon — clung stubbornly to the center of his thoughts and would not let go.

For all this "having his fill of imogayu"

to become reality so effortlessly made all the patient years of waiting seem, in the end, utterly pointless.

If it were possible, he wished that something would suddenly go wrong, that the imogayu would once be denied him, and then the obstacle would disappear and he would finally be able to have it at last — that was the kind of orderly sequence of events he wanted things to follow. ——

These thoughts, spinning like a top,

kept turning round and round in the same place, until at some point the Fifth Rank man, overcome by the fatigue of travel, fell into a sound, deep sleep.

The next morning, the moment he awoke, the matter of last night's mountain yam was on his mind, and before anything else the Fifth Rank man raised the shutter of his room and looked out.

It seemed that without his realizing it he had overslept, and the Hour of the Hare had already passed.

Upon the four or five long straw mats spread over the wide courtyard, something like logs — some two or three thousand of them — were piled up like a mountain, so high they nearly reached up to the protruding eaves of the bark-thatched roof.

Looking closer, every one of them was a mountain yam of preposterously large size, three sun at the cut end, five shaku in length.

The Fifth Rank man rubbed his just-awakened eyes and was seized by a consternation bordering on panic, gazing dumbfounded around him.

Here and there in the courtyard, five or six enormous caldrons each holding five koku were hung in a row on freshly driven stakes, and dozens upon dozens of young serving women dressed in white-cloth robes moved busily around them.

Some building up fires, some raking ashes, and others drawing the juice called "amadu vine extract"

into new unpainted wooden buckets and pouring it into the caldrons — all were frantically busy with the preparations for making imogayu.

The smoke rising from beneath the caldrons and the steam billowing from within them mingled with the mist of dawn that still lingered in the air, filling the entire courtyard with a gray murk through which things could hardly be distinguished; the only thing vivid in color was the roaring flame beneath the caldrons, and everything the eye could see and the ear could hear was a commotion like being at a battlefield or a fire.

The Fifth Rank man reflected, as if seeing it for the first time, that this enormous mountain yam was going to become imogayu in those enormous five-koku caldrons.

And he reflected that he had traveled all the way from Kyoto to Tsuruga in Echizen for the purpose of eating that imogayu.

The more he thought about it, the more wretched every single thing seemed.

Our Fifth Rank man's pitiable appetite had, in truth, by this point already lost half its force.

An hour later, the Fifth Rank man sat down at the morning meal table together with Toshihito and his father-in-law, Arihito.

Before him was the dreadful imogayu — brimming like a sea in a silver ewer that held nearly a full sho.

The Fifth Rank man had just watched as dozens of young men, wielding thin blades with dexterity, cut through that pile of mountain yam that reached up to the eaves, lopping one piece after another with great energy.

He had then watched as those serving women rushed back and forth, scooping every last piece of it into the five-koku caldrons, scoop by scoop, without a single one left behind.

And finally, when not one piece of mountain yam remained on the long straw mats, he had watched as multiple columns of steam carrying the mingled scents of yam and sweet vine rose with a great swelling surge from the caldrons up into the clear morning sky.

Having witnessed all this with his own eyes, it was perhaps only natural that when he now faced the imogayu set in the ewer, he already felt full before he had so much as put it to his lips. ——

The Fifth Rank man sat before the ewer and wiped the sweat from his brow with an awkward air.

"I hear you have never had your fill of imogayu. Please eat without reserve."

The father-in-law Arihito had the servants bring out several more silver ewers and arrange them on the table.

Each one was filled to the brim with imogayu.

The Fifth Rank man shut his eyes and, his nose — already red — growing even redder, scooped about half an ewer of imogayu into a large earthenware cup and drank it down unwillingly.

"Father says the same — please, there is no need for reserve at all."

Toshihito too pushed a fresh ewer toward him from the side and said this, laughing maliciously.

The one in a difficult position was the Fifth Rank man.

If the truth were told, he did not want to drink even one bowl of imogayu from the start.

Yet he had forced himself to finish half an ewer.

If he drank more, he would bring it back up before it passed his throat; and yet not to drink would be equally to spurn the kindness of Toshihito and Arihito.

So he shut his eyes again and drank down about a third of what remained.

Not another drop would go in after that.

"I am deeply, deeply grateful. I have had more than enough. — Truly, I cannot thank you enough."

The Fifth Rank man said this in confused rambling.

He seemed considerably worse for it — on his mustache and at the tip of his nose, sweat had beaded up and was dripping, which seemed incongruous for winter.

"You have eaten very little. The guest is being reserved, it seems. Come, come, you there — what are you about?"

At Arihito's words, the servants began to ladle imogayu from the fresh ewers into the earthenware cups.

The Fifth Rank man waved both hands as if shooing away flies, indicating as earnestly as he could that he declined.

"No, truly, I have had enough. ... Forgive me, but I have had quite enough."

If at this point Toshihito had not suddenly pointed toward the eaves of the house across the way and said, "Look there" —

Arihito might have continued pressing the imogayu on the Fifth Rank man without ceasing.

Fortunately, however, Toshihito's voice drew everyone's attention toward those eaves.

The bark-thatched eaves were at that moment bathed in the morning sun.

And in that dazzling light, washing its glossy fur, sat a creature, perfectly composed.

Looking closely, it was the wild fox of Sakamoto — the one that Toshihito had caught by hand two days before on the withered plain.

"The fox has come to call, wishing for imogayu as well, it seems. Men, give the creature something to eat too."

Toshihito's order was carried out on the instant.

The fox that had leaped down from the eaves was straightway treated to imogayu right there in the wide courtyard.

The Fifth Rank man gazed at the fox eating its imogayu and turned his thoughts back fondly, in his heart, to his former self — the self that had existed before coming here.

That was the self being made a fool of by the many retainers.

The self being jeered at even by Kyoto urchins — "What do you want,

Red-nose?"

The self, pitiful and solitary, wandering Suzaku Avenue in faded suikan and sashinuki like an ownerless mongrel.

But at the same time, also the happy self who had cherished alone, as his sole possession, the desire to have his fill of imogayu. ——

Together with the relief of knowing he need drink no more imogayu, he felt the sweat that had covered his face gradually drying, from the tip of his nose outward.

Clear as it was, the morning in Tsuruga was cold enough to pierce the bones.

The Fifth Rank man hastily pressed his hand to his nose and, facing the silver ewer, let out a tremendous sneeze.

(August, Taisho 5)