地獄変 English

I

Never before, I daresay, and never again in ages to come, shall there be such a man as my late lord of Horikawa.

They say that before his birth, the god Daitoku Myoo appeared in a vision to his lady mother as she slept — and indeed, from his very birth, he seems to have been utterly unlike ordinary men.

And so there was nothing he ever did that did not confound our every expectation.

To give but one example, the very scale of his mansion at Horikawa — magnificent, one might call it, or bold — had about it something so far beyond our humble understanding that it left us at a loss for words.

There are some, indeed, who seize upon this and that to compare his lordship's conduct to that of Emperor Shih Huang or Emperor Yang — but this, I think, is rather like the blind men in the proverb feeling at an elephant.

For his lordship's intentions were never, as such comparisons suggest, merely to seek splendor and glory for himself alone.

Rather, he possessed a largeness of spirit that took thought even for those far beneath him — one might say he wished to share his joy with the whole realm.

That, I believe, is why even when he encountered the Night Procession of the Hundred Demons at Nijo Omiya, no particular harm came to him.

And even the ghost of the Minister of the Left, Toru, said to appear night after night at the Higashi Sanjo Kawara Palace — that mansion famed for its garden modeled on the scenery of Shiogama in Michinoku — must surely have vanished at a single word of reproof from his lordship.

With such majesty about him, it was no wonder that the men and women of the capital, young and old alike, spoke of his lordship in those days as though he were the reincarnation of some divine being.

Once, I recall, when he was returning from a plum-blossom banquet at the Palace, the ox drawing his carriage broke loose and injured an old man who happened to be passing by — and yet even then, they say, the old man pressed his palms together in gratitude, thankful to have been struck by his lordship's own ox.

Such being the case, there occurred, over the course of his lordship's lifetime, no end of happenings that will surely be told and retold for generations to come.

There was the time he bestowed thirty white horses as gifts at a great banquet; the time he had a favorite page boy set up as a human pillar beneath the piers of Nagara Bridge; the time he had a monk from China, versed in the arts of the physician Hua Tuo, cut open the boil upon his own thigh — but were I to recount them one by one, there would be no end to it.

Yet among all these many anecdotes, none, I think, is so terrible a tale as the story behind the Hell Screen, that treasured heirloom now kept within the household.

Even his lordship, who was not one to be easily disturbed by anything, seemed truly astonished on that occasion, if nothing else.

As for us who served at his side, it goes without saying that we felt as though our very souls had left our bodies.

I myself, who had served his lordship these twenty years and more, can say that never before or since have I encountered so dreadful a sight.

But before I tell that tale, I must first speak of the painter named Yoshihide, who painted the Hell Screen.

II

Speak the name Yoshihide, and there may still be some among you, even now, who remember the man.

He was, in those days, so famed a painter that it was said no one could surpass him with a brush.

At the time of the events I speak of, he must have been close upon fifty years of age.

To look at him, he was nothing but a short, spare old man, wasted to skin and bone, with the air of an ill-tempered fellow.

Whenever he came to his lordship's mansion, he would generally be dressed in a clove-dyed hunting cloak and a soft, wrinkled cap, yet his bearing was thoroughly mean and low; and, for all his years, his lips were oddly and conspicuously red, giving one an uncanny, almost bestial impression.

Some said this was because he licked his brushes and so the red pigment stained his lips — but who can say if that were true?

There were others, sharper of tongue still, who said that Yoshihide's every movement and gesture put them in mind of a monkey, and went so far as to nickname him 'Saruhide' — Monkey-hide.

Ah, speaking of Saruhide, there is a tale that goes with it.

At that time, Yoshihide's only daughter, a girl of fifteen, was in service at his lordship's mansion as a young lady-in-waiting — and she, quite unlike the father who begot her, was a most winsome girl.

Perhaps because she had lost her mother young, she was deeply considerate, precocious beyond her years, and clever by nature; and being so thoughtful and attentive despite her youth, she was much loved, not only by her ladyship but by the other women of the household as well.

Now it happened that, on some occasion, a tame monkey was presented as a gift from the province of Tamba, and the young master, who was then at the very height of his mischievous years, gave it the name Yoshihide.

The monkey's appearance was comical enough on its own, and with such a name given to it besides, there was not a soul in the whole mansion who did not laugh.

Had it stopped at laughter, that would have been well enough, but half in jest everyone would cry out 'Yoshihide, Yoshihide!' whenever the creature climbed up the garden pine or soiled the mats of someone's chamber, and seemed determined, one way or another, to torment it.

Then one day, as Yoshihide's daughter — the one I mentioned before — was passing along the long corridor carrying a branch of winter plum with a letter tied to it, from beyond a distant sliding door came the little monkey Yoshihide, running headlong toward her, limping badly — he must have twisted his foot somehow — and quite without his usual spirit for scrambling up a pillar.

And close behind him, brandishing a switch, came the young master, crying, 'You mandarin-orange thief! Stop! Stop!'

— was he not chasing after him, shouting so as he ran?

Seeing this, Yoshihide's daughter seemed to hesitate for a moment — but just then the fleeing monkey clung to the hem of her skirt, crying out most piteously, and all at once, it seems, her pity got the better of her.

Still holding the plum branch aloft in one hand, she lightly parted the sleeve of her lavender-scented robe with the other, gently gathered the monkey into her arms, and, bowing low before the young master, said, 'Forgive me, but he is only a dumb beast. Pray show him mercy.'

— so she said, in a cool, clear voice.

But the young master, having come running in the heat of the chase, only frowned and stamped his foot two or three times, and said—

'Why do you shield him? That monkey is a mandarin-orange thief!'

'But he is only a dumb beast...'

The girl repeated this once more, but then, smiling a little sadly, she said—

'And besides, when I hear the name Yoshihide, it is as though my own father were being punished — I cannot simply stand by and watch it.'

So she said, as though summoning her courage.

At this, even the young master must have relented, for all his willfulness.

'Is that so. Well, if it is your father's life you are begging for, I shall bend my will and let him off.'

So he said, with poor grace, and threw down his switch, then turned and went back the way he had come, toward the sliding door.

III

It was from that day that Yoshihide's daughter and the little monkey grew so fond of each other.

The girl hung a golden bell she had received from her young mistress on a beautiful crimson cord and fastened it round the monkey's neck, and the monkey, for its part, would scarcely stir from her side whatever might happen.

Once, when the girl took to her bed with something of a cold, the little monkey sat itself down beside her pillow and, wearing what looked for all the world like a forlorn expression, gnawed constantly at its nails.

Strange as it may seem, once matters had come to this, no one troubled the little monkey as they had before.

On the contrary, they came little by little to dote on it, until at last even the young master would sometimes toss it a persimmon or a chestnut, and once, when some samurai or other kicked at the creature, he is said to have flown into a great rage.

They say that it was after his lordship heard of the young master's anger over this that he expressly commanded Yoshihide's daughter to come before him with the monkey in her arms.

And in the course of it, the reason for the girl's fondness for the monkey must naturally have reached his ears as well.

'A dutiful creature indeed. I shall reward you for it.'

With these words, the girl was given a crimson under-robe as a token of his favor.

And when the monkey, aping what it saw, reverently pressed the robe to its forehead in turn, his lordship's good humor is said to have been redoubled.

And so his lordship's favor toward Yoshihide's daughter arose entirely from his admiration of the dutiful, loving heart she had shown in caring for the monkey, and was never, as the world would have it, a matter of any amorous fancy.

To be sure, there was reason enough behind the rise of such rumors, but of that I shall tell you at leisure, later on.

Here it will suffice to say only that his lordship was not the sort of man to set his heart upon the daughter of a mere painter, however lovely she might be.

Now Yoshihide's daughter withdrew from his lordship's presence with her honor much enhanced, but being clever by nature, she never once incurred the unseemly jealousy of the other women.

On the contrary, from that time on she was cherished all the more, together with the monkey, and one might almost say she never once left her young mistress's side, never failing to attend her even when she rode out in her carriage to view the sights.

But let me set the daughter's story aside for now, and speak once more of her father, Yoshihide.

True enough, the monkey came in this way, before long, to be loved by everyone — but Yoshihide himself remained as disliked as ever by all, and behind his back people still went on calling him Saruhide.

And this was by no means confined to the mansion alone.

Indeed, the Bishop of Yokawa himself, whenever the name Yoshihide was spoken, would change countenance as though he had encountered some evil spirit, and would speak of him with the greatest loathing.

(Though this, they say, was because Yoshihide had once drawn a satirical sketch of the Bishop's conduct — but as it is no more than a low sort of gossip, I cannot vouch that it is so.)

In any case, wherever one inquired, the ill repute of that man ran in this same vein, and no other.

If there were any who did not speak ill of him, they would be two or three fellow painters, or else those who knew only his pictures and nothing of the man himself.

But in truth, Yoshihide's failings went beyond his mean appearance; he had habits far more apt to earn him men's dislike, so that one can only call it a matter of his own making.

IV

These habits, I mean, were miserliness, harshness, shamelessness, idleness, and greed — but worst of all, I think, was his arrogance and conceit, forever dangling before everyone's nose the boast that he was the foremost painter in the land.

Had this been confined to matters of his art, it would have been bearable enough, but such was the man's stubborn pride that he could not help holding even the ordinary customs and conventions of the world in contempt.

According to a man who had long been Yoshihide's pupil, once, at a certain house, when the famed shrine-maiden Higaki became possessed by a vengeful spirit and delivered some terrible oracle, Yoshihide let the words go in one ear and out the other, and instead, with whatever brush and ink lay at hand, set about carefully sketching the medium's ghastly, contorted face.

To his eyes, no doubt, even the curse of a vengeful spirit seemed no more than a trick to frighten children.

Being such a man, when he painted the goddess Kichijoten, he would model her face upon that of some lowly puppeteer, and when he painted Fudo Myoo, he would take for his model the figure of some disreputable ex-convict turned constable, committing all manner of irreverence in this way — and yet, when reproached for it, he would only say, with a mocking air, 'A strange thing indeed, to hear that the gods and buddhas Yoshihide himself painted should strike Yoshihide down with divine punishment.'

— was he not forever putting on such an air of feigned indifference?

At this, even his own pupils could only stand aghast, and not a few of them, I gather, fearing what might befall them in the life to come, hastily took their leave of him. —

In a word, one might call it a towering accumulation of the sin of pride.

In any case, he was a man who believed that, under all heaven, there was no one so great as himself.

And so it goes without saying how loftily he held himself, even in matters of his art.

To be sure, even his paintings — in brushwork as in coloring — were utterly unlike those of any other painter, so that among fellow painters who bore him ill will, there was considerable talk of him as little better than a charlatan.

According to these people, when it came to works by the old masters — Kawanari, say, or Kanaoka, and the rest — one heard graceful tales indeed: how the plum blossoms painted on a wooden door gave off their fragrance every moonlit night, or how one could even hear the sound of a flute played by a court noble depicted on a screen. But of Yoshihide's paintings, only uncanny, strange rumors of this sort were ever handed down.

For example, they say that with the painting of the Five Realms of Transmigration he made for the gate of Ryugai-ji temple, if one passed beneath that gate late at night, one could hear the sighs and sobbing of the heavenly beings depicted there.

Indeed, there were even those who claimed to have caught the stench of rotting corpses.

And as for the portraits he painted, by his lordship's own command, of the ladies of the household — is it not said that every one of those whose likeness he captured fell, within three years, into some soul-draining illness, and died?

According to those who spoke ill of him, this was proof enough, beyond all else, that Yoshihide's art had fallen into a heretical way.

But being, as I have already told you, a man who cared nothing for going against the grain, Yoshihide only took great pride in it; and once, when his lordship remarked, half in jest, 'It would seem you have rather a taste for ugly things,'

— Yoshihide, grinning uncannily with those red lips of his that so belied his age, replied, 'Just so, my lord. Ordinary, run-of-the-mill painters could never hope to understand the beauty that lies in ugly things.'

So he answered, with the greatest insolence.

However much he might be the foremost painter in the land, it is a wonder he dared utter such boastful words before his lordship himself — small wonder, then, that the pupil I mentioned before privately called his master 'Chira Eiju'—

— giving him that nickname to mock his overweening pride, and one can hardly blame him for it.

As you may well know, 'Chira Eiju'

is the name of a tengu that, long ago, came over from China.

And yet even this Yoshihide — this Yoshihide so utterly beyond description in his perversity — had one single trait that was truly human, truly tender.

V

I mean the fact that Yoshihide doted upon that one daughter of his, the young lady-in-waiting, almost to the point of madness.

As I told you before, the girl herself was a gentle-hearted, devoted daughter — but her father's doting fondness for his child was surely no less than hers for him.

For when it came to matters of the girl's clothing or hair ornaments, this man — who had never once given so much as an alms to any temple's charitable collection — would spend money without the least reluctance to provide for her, which seems almost too strange to believe, does it not?

Yet Yoshihide's love for his daughter was love and nothing more; he never so much as dreamed of taking a fine son-in-law for her in due course.

Quite the contrary — had anyone approached the girl with dishonorable intentions, Yoshihide seemed just the sort to gather up a band of street ruffians and have the man set upon in the dark.

And so, when the girl entered service as a young lady-in-waiting at his lordship's own bidding, the old man was greatly displeased, and for a time, even when he came before his lordship, wore nothing but a sour, bitter face.

The rumor that his lordship, drawn by the girl's beauty, had taken her into service against her father's wishes, most likely arose from the idle speculation of those who observed this sourness of his.

Though that rumor was false, it is certainly true that, out of sheer doting love for his child, Yoshihide constantly prayed for her release from service.

Once, when he painted, at his lordship's command, a picture of the Bodhisattva Monju as a child, taking for his model the face of a favorite page boy, the result was so splendid that his lordship was exceedingly pleased, and said—

'As your reward, I shall grant you whatever you desire. Ask without reserve.'

— so ran his gracious words.

At this, Yoshihide bowed low, and one wondered what he would ask for—

'I beg that you release my daughter from her service.'

— so he said, without the least shame.

In any other household it might have been one thing, but where in the whole land would you find another man who, serving at the very side of the great Lord of Horikawa himself, would dare, however dear his own child, to beg her release so rudely?

Even his lordship, magnanimous as he was, seemed somewhat put out by this, and for a while merely gazed in silence at Yoshihide's face, until at last—

'That I will not grant.'

— so he said, spitting out the words, and rose abruptly and left, just as he was.

Such a scene occurred, I believe, some four or five times in all.

Looking back on it now, it seems to me that his lordship's regard for Yoshihide grew colder, little by little, with each such occasion.

And the daughter, for her part, worried perhaps for her father's sake, was often to be found, when off duty in her chamber, biting the sleeve of her robe and weeping softly to herself.

And so it was, no doubt, that the rumor of his lordship's having fallen in love with Yoshihide's daughter came to spread all the more widely.

There are some who say that even the origin of the Hell Screen lay in the daughter's having refused to submit to his lordship's wishes — but of course no such thing could ever have been.

To our eyes, his lordship's refusal to release Yoshihide's daughter arose entirely from his compassion for the girl's own situation; rather than send her back to so obstinate a father, he thought it kinder, we believed, to keep her in the mansion and let her want for nothing.

There is no doubt, of course, that he favored the girl for her gentle disposition.

But to say that he desired her as a woman is, I think, most likely a forced and far-fetched notion.

Indeed, it would be better to call it an utter falsehood, without the least foundation.

Be that as it may, it was just at this time, when Yoshihide had fallen considerably out of favor on account of his daughter, that—

— for reasons known only to himself, his lordship suddenly summoned Yoshihide and commanded him to paint a screen depicting the transformations of Hell.

VI

Even now, whenever the Hell Screen is spoken of, I feel as though that dreadful scene rises up vividly before my very eyes.

Though it went by the same name as other such paintings, Yoshihide's Hell Screen bore no resemblance to the work of other painters, even in its basic composition.

In one corner of the screen, he had painted, small, the figures of the Ten Kings of Hell and their attendants, and had covered all the rest with the raging fires of the Crimson Lotus and Great Crimson Lotus hells, swirling so fiercely that they seemed almost to melt the very mountains of swords and forests of blades.

And so, apart from the flecks of yellow and indigo scattered here and there in the Chinese-style robes of the underworld officials, everywhere one looked there was nothing but the fierce color of flame, within which black smoke flung out in swirling strokes of ink and sparks fanned up in gold dust danced and raged like some whirling wheel of fire.

This alone would be brushwork startling enough to any eye, but beyond that, among the sinners writhing and rolling in torment as they burned in the fires of retribution, there was scarcely a single figure such as one finds in the ordinary depictions of Hell.

For among this multitude of sinners, Yoshihide had painted people of every rank and station, from the highest courtiers and nobles down to beggars and outcasts.

A dignified courtier in formal ceremonial robes; a young lady-in-waiting, alluring in her five-layered gown; a monk chanting the Buddha's name with his rosary about his neck; a young samurai scholar upon high wooden clogs; a little girl in a long, trailing robe; a diviner brandishing his sacred wand — were I to count them one by one, there would truly be no end to it.

In any case, all these various people, amid the raging swirl of fire and smoke, tormented by demon jailers with the heads of oxen and horses, fled in confusion this way and that, scattered like fallen leaves before a great wind.

A woman with her hair caught in a steel trident, her limbs drawn in tighter than a spider's — she might, perhaps, have been some kind of shrine medium.

A man run through the breast with a hand-spear, hanging upside down like a bat — he must surely have been some provincial governor still living out his term.

And besides these, some were struck with iron whips, some crushed beneath boulders too heavy for a thousand men to draw, some seized in the beaks of monstrous birds, some bitten in the jaws of venomous dragons — the torments, indeed, were as manifold as the sinners themselves, past all counting.

But among all these, the single most strikingly terrible sight was surely the ox-drawn carriage falling headlong from midair, grazing as it fell the tops of the sword-trees whose blades bristled like the fangs of some beast (and upon whose branches, too, the bodies of many of the dead hung pierced through, one after another).

Within the carriage's blinds, blown up by the winds of Hell, a lady dressed in such splendor as to be mistaken for an imperial consort or a lady of the bedchamber writhed in agony, her long black hair streaming in the flames, her white throat arched back — and in that lady's very figure, no less than in the blazing carriage itself, there was nothing that did not call to mind the torments of the Hell of Burning Heat.

It was as though the whole terror of that vast painted scene had gathered itself, one might say, into this single figure.

So masterly was the execution that anyone gazing upon it might almost fancy they heard, deep in their own ears, some ghastly cry of anguish carried down to them.

Ah, it was this — this very thing — for the sake of painting which that dreadful event came to pass.

For how else, even for Yoshihide, could the agonies of the underworld have been painted so vividly, so alive?

In exchange for completing this screen, that man met with a fate so pitiless that he lost even his life.

One might say that the Hell depicted in that painting was, in truth, the very Hell into which Yoshihide, the foremost painter in the land, was himself, before long, to fall...…

In my haste to tell you of that extraordinary Hell Screen, I may perhaps have told my tale out of order.

But let me now go on and return to Yoshihide, from the moment he received his lordship's command to paint the picture of Hell.

VII

From that time, for five or six months together, Yoshihide scarcely came to the mansion at all, so entirely was he absorbed in the painting of the screen.

Strange, is it not, that a man so doting on his own child should, once he had set himself to painting, lose all desire even to look upon his daughter's face?

According to the pupil I mentioned earlier, once that man set to work, he seemed to become as one possessed by a fox spirit.

Indeed, there was talk in those days that Yoshihide had made his name in painting by offering prayers and vows to the god of wealth and fortune, and that, as proof of it, if one stole a glance at him from some hidden corner while he painted, one would surely see, dim and shadowy, the forms of spirit foxes gathered about him, not one but many, before and behind and on every side.

Being such a man, once he had taken up his brush, he must have forgotten everything else in the world save the single aim of completing his painting.

Day and night alike he shut himself up in a single room, and scarcely ever saw the light of the sun. —

And this rapt absorption of his seems to have been most extreme of all when he was painting the Hell Screen.

I do not mean merely that, even by day, he shut himself in a room with the lattice shutters lowered, mixing his secret pigments by the light of a standing lamp, or dressing his pupils, one after another, in various costumes — hunting cloaks, ceremonial robes, and the like — and carefully sketching each of them in turn.

Such peculiarities as these he was quite capable of at any time he was at work, quite apart from the painting of the Hell Screen.

Indeed, when he painted the picture of the Five Realms of Transmigration for Ryugai-ji temple, he once sat himself down at his leisure before a corpse lying by the roadside — the very sort of thing any ordinary person would deliberately avert their eyes from — and copied its half-rotted face and limbs down to the very last hair, without the least deviation.

Now, as to just what this extreme absorption of his actually amounted to, there may well be some among you who cannot quite picture it.

I have no time now to tell you every detail, but let me relate the main points, which ran, roughly, as follows.

One of Yoshihide's pupils — the very same man I mentioned before — was mixing pigments one day when his master suddenly came to him and said—

'I mean to take a short nap. But my dreams have been troubling me of late.'

— so he said.

This being nothing out of the ordinary, the pupil did not even pause in his work, but only said—

'Is that so.'

— offering this much by way of reply.

But Yoshihide, wearing an unaccustomedly forlorn expression, said—

'And so I would like you to sit by my pillow the whole while I am napping.'

— so he asked, with a diffidence quite unlike himself.

The pupil thought it strange that his master should be so troubled by mere dreams, which was not his way at all — but it was no great trouble to grant the request, and so—

'Very well.'

— he said; whereupon his master, still looking uneasy, added—

'Come to my inner room at once, then. And mind that no other pupil is let in where I lie sleeping, even should one come along later.'

— so he directed, hesitating even as he spoke.

The inner room was the chamber where the man did his painting, and that day too, shut up as dark as night with the doors all closed, a lamp burned dimly within, and around it stood the screen, on which as yet only the outlines had been sketched in charred stick.

Once there, Yoshihide, pillowing his head on his elbow, fell fast asleep at once, like a man utterly worn out — but before half an hour had passed, the pupil sitting by his pillow began to hear a voice, indescribably eerie, reach his ears.

VIII

At first it was no more than a sound, but before long it broke, little by little, into fragments of words, as though a drowning man were groaning beneath the water, saying something like this—

'What, you say I am to come? — Where — where am I to come? Come to the underworld. Come to the Hell of Burning Heat. — Who are you, to say such a thing? — Who are you — who could you be—'

The pupil could not help but stop mixing his pigments, and, peering fearfully into his master's face, saw that his wrinkled countenance had turned pale, and, beaded with great drops of sweat, his cracked lips were open wide over his sparse teeth, gasping for breath.

And within that mouth something moved with such dizzying quickness that it seemed almost as if a thread were pulling at it — and was it not, of all things, his own tongue?

It was from that tongue, naturally, that the broken, fragmentary words came forth.

'Who could you be — ah, yes, it is you. I thought it might be you. What, you have come to fetch me? Then come. Come to the underworld. In the underworld — in the underworld my daughter is waiting.'

At that moment, so uncanny was the feeling that came over the pupil, it seemed to his very eyes as though some dim, monstrous shadow were drifting down and grazing the face of the screen itself.

Naturally, the pupil at once laid hands on Yoshihide and shook him with all his strength, but his master, still caught between dream and waking, went on muttering to himself, and showed no sign of waking easily.

At this, the pupil, making up his mind, took the water from the brush-washing bowl beside him and dashed it full in the man's face.

'I am waiting, so come — ride in this carriage — ride in this carriage and come to the underworld—'

— even as these words changed into a groan, as of a man being throttled by the throat, Yoshihide at last opened his eyes and, more startled than if pricked by a needle, sprang bolt upright on the spot; yet the monstrous shapes of his dream had evidently not yet left the backs of his eyelids.

For a while he only stared into empty space with a look of terror in his eyes, his mouth still gaping wide, until at last, seeming to come to himself, he said—

'That will do now. Go on, leave me.'

— so he ordered, this time with the utmost curtness.

The pupil, knowing that to defy his master at such times always brought a great scolding upon him, hastily withdrew from the room — but he said that when he saw the bright light of day still shining outside, he felt as relieved as though he himself had just awoken from a nightmare.

Yet this was, if anything, one of the milder incidents; for about a month later, another pupil was specially summoned to the inner room, where Yoshihide, gnawing at his brush by the same dim lamplight as before, suddenly turned to face him and said—

'I am sorry to trouble you, but would you strip yourself bare again?'

— so he said.

This was something his master had, from time to time, already asked of him before, and so the pupil at once threw off his clothes and stood there stark naked, whereupon the man, frowning strangely, said—

'What I wish to see is a man bound in chains — I am sorry to ask it of you, but would you not, for a little while, let me do with you as I please?'

— so he said, though for all his words of apology he showed not the slightest sign of pity, but spoke with the utmost coldness.

This pupil, by nature the sort of stalwart young man who looked far more suited to gripping a sword than a paintbrush, was nonetheless plainly astonished by this, and to this day, whenever he tells the tale, he says, 'I thought my master had gone mad, and meant to kill me.'

— so he is said to have repeated, again and again.

But Yoshihide, for his part, must have grown impatient with the man's slowness.

From wherever he had produced it, a thin iron chain came clattering out as he drew it toward him, and, with an almost pouncing violence, he leapt onto the pupil's back, and without so much as a by-your-leave, twisted both his arms up and bound him round and round.

And when he then gave the end of that chain a rough, merciless yank, there was no bearing it.

The pupil's body, thrown off balance, went crashing down onto the floor with a loud thud, rolling over onto its side.

IX

His shape at that moment, one might say, was like nothing so much as a wine jar rolling on its side.

With his arms and legs so cruelly bent and twisted, only his head could still move at all.

And with the circulation of blood through his stout body stopped up by the chain, was not the color of his skin — face, trunk, everywhere — turning a deep, angry red?

But Yoshihide, seeming not to trouble himself over this in the least, walked round and round that wine-jar of a body, studying it from every angle, and sketched study after study of the same likeness.

How much agony the bound pupil suffered all the while, I need hardly go out of my way to tell you.

And had nothing else intervened, this suffering would no doubt have gone on longer still.

Fortunately (though perhaps it would be more accurate to say unfortunately)

— after a while, from behind a jar in the corner of the room, something like a thin, black thread of oil came winding slowly out.

At first it moved slowly, as though quite viscous, but little by little it began to glide more smoothly, and when at last, glinting faintly, it had crept as far as the tip of his very nose, the pupil, catching his breath, could not help but cry out—

'A snake — a snake!'

— so he screamed.

He said that at that moment the blood in his whole body seemed to freeze at once, and small wonder.

For the snake had, in fact, come within a hair's breadth of touching the tip of its cold tongue to the very flesh of his neck, where the chain bit into it.

At this wholly unforeseen turn of events, even the perverse Yoshihide must surely have been given a start.

Flinging aside his brush in his haste, he bent down in an instant and, with a swift motion, seized the snake by the tail and dangled it upside down in the air.

The snake, even as it hung there, lifted its head and coiled itself tightly around its own body, straining, yet never quite able to reach the man's hand.

'Because of you, I've spoiled a fine stroke I can never get back.'

So Yoshihide muttered, with an air of vexation, and, tossing the snake straight back into the jar in the corner of the room, then set about untying the chain from the pupil's body, though with the greatest reluctance.

And even then, he did no more than untie him; he offered the pupil himself not so much as a single kind word.

No doubt it galled him far more that he had spoiled a stroke of his sketch than that his pupil had very nearly been bitten by a snake. —

I heard afterward that this snake, too, was one the man kept expressly for the purpose of copying its likeness.

From this much alone, I think you may already have some sense of just how mad, how uncannily obsessive, Yoshihide's absorption in his art could become.

But there is one last incident to tell — this time, a pupil of only thirteen or fourteen years met with a terror, on account of that same Hell Screen, that very nearly cost him his life.

This pupil was, by nature, a fair-skinned boy who looked almost like a girl, and one night, when he was summoned quite casually to his master's room, he found Yoshihide there beneath the light of a standing lamp, feeding some strange, unfamiliar bird, a piece of raw, bloody meat resting in the palm of his hand.

In size, it was about as large as an ordinary cat, I should say.

And now that I mention it, with its tufts of feathers sticking out on either side like ears, and its large, round eyes the color of amber, it did indeed, in its very appearance, put one somehow in mind of a cat.

X

Yoshihide, by nature, hated above all else having anyone meddle in whatever he was doing — the snake I told you of before being a case in point — and so he never once let even his own pupils know what might be kept within his room.

And so, at times a human skull might be found sitting upon his desk, and at other times silver bowls or lacquered stands might be arrayed there instead, all manner of unlikely things appearing according to whatever painting he happened to be at work on.

But where he kept such things ordinarily, no one, it seems, could ever say.

No doubt this was one of the very things that gave rise to the rumor that the man enjoyed the hidden favor of the god of wealth and fortune.

And so the pupil, thinking to himself that this strange bird upon the desk too must surely be needed for the painting of the Hell Screen, knelt respectfully before his master and said, 'Did you wish something of me?'

— so he asked, most deferentially; but Yoshihide, as though he had not heard him at all, licked his red lips and said—

'Well, is he not wonderfully tame?'

— so he said, nodding toward the bird.

'What sort of creature is this? I have never once seen its like before.'

So the pupil said, eyeing this cat-like, eared bird with an uneasy stare, and Yoshihide, with his usual mocking tone, said—

'What, you have never seen one? That is just the trouble with those raised in the capital. This is a bird called a horned owl, given to me two or three days ago by a hunter from Kurama. Though there are few, I daresay, as tame as this one.'

So saying, the man slowly raised his hand and gently stroked, from below upward, the feathers on the back of the owl, which had just finished eating.

And it was in that very instant—

— that the bird, letting out a single sharp, piercing cry, sprang at once from the desk and, spreading wide the talons of both feet, flew straight at the pupil's face.

Had the pupil not, in that moment, hastily raised his sleeve and hidden his face, he would surely have come away with a wound or two.

Crying out, he shook his sleeve, trying to drive the creature off, but the owl only pressed harder still, clacking its beak and striking again — and the pupil, forgetting even that his master stood before him, stood to fend it off, crouched to escape it, and fled helplessly this way and that about the cramped little room.

The uncanny bird, for its part, wheeled and dove after him, now high, now low, and at the least opening came flying straight for his eyes.

Each time, the fierce beating clatter of its wings seemed to stir up some strange, uncanny presence — was it the smell of fallen leaves, or the spray of a waterfall, or perhaps the sour reek of fermenting monkey-wine — I cannot say, but the eeriness of it was beyond all telling.

And indeed, the pupil said, even the dim light of the oil lamp came to seem to him like the faint glow of a hazy moon, and his master's room felt to him, in that moment, like nothing so much as some deep, remote mountain valley sealed off by uncanny mists, and he was filled with a helpless, forlorn dread.

Yet it was not the mere attack of the owl alone that frightened the pupil.

No — what made his hair stand on end far more was the sight of his master Yoshihide, coolly watching this whole commotion, calmly spreading out a sheet of paper and moistening his brush with his tongue, all the while sketching the ghastly spectacle of a girlish boy being tormented by a monstrous bird.

The pupil said that the moment he caught sight of this, he was seized at once by an indescribable terror, and for a time he truly believed his own master meant to kill him.

XI

And indeed, one cannot say that the possibility of being killed by his own master was altogether out of the question.

Indeed, it seems that the very reason he had summoned the pupil that night in the first place was his design to set the owl upon him and sketch the sight of him fleeing about in terror.

And so, the moment the pupil caught sight of his master's manner, he hid his head at once in both sleeves and, letting out a scream whose very words he himself could not afterward recall, cowered stock-still at the foot of a sliding door in the corner of the room.

At just that moment, Yoshihide too let out some sort of startled cry and seemed to spring to his feet, and all at once the beating of the owl's wings grew even fiercer than before, and was there not, amid it all, a clamor of things falling and breaking?

At this the pupil, losing his composure a second time, could not help but raise the head he had been hiding, only to find the room had gone quite dark, and within that darkness he heard his master's voice, calling impatiently for his pupils.

Before long, another pupil answered from some distance off, and came hurrying in, holding up a lamp — and by that sooty light, one could see that the standing lamp had been knocked over, so that both floor and mats were smeared all over with oil, and there, in the midst of it, the owl from before lay thrashing about, flapping one wing alone in agony.

Yoshihide, half risen from behind his desk, wore for once a look of sheer bewilderment on his face, and muttered on and on about something no one else could understand. —

And small wonder.

For wound tightly about the owl's body, from its neck to one of its wings, was a single jet-black snake.

No doubt it had come about in this way: when the pupil had cowered down, he must have knocked over the jar that stood there, and the snake within had crawled out, whereupon the owl, rashly trying to seize it, had at last brought on this whole great commotion.

The two pupils exchanged glances and, for a while, only stared blankly at this strange scene, but at last bowed silently to their master and stole quietly out of the room.

What became of the snake and the owl afterward, no one has ever known. —

There were, besides this, any number of other incidents of the same kind.

I neglected to mention it before, but the command to paint the Hell Screen had come at the beginning of autumn, so that from that time until the very end of winter, Yoshihide's pupils lived in constant dread of their master's uncanny behavior.

But toward the end of that winter, something in the painting of the screen must have gone against Yoshihide's will, for his manner grew gloomier than ever, and his speech, too, visibly rougher and more violent.

At the same time, the underdrawing of the screen, though it had reached perhaps eight-tenths completion, showed no sign of progressing any further.

Indeed, he even seemed, at times, on the verge of painting out and destroying all he had done so far.

And yet what it was, exactly, in the screen that would not go as he wished, no one could say.

Nor, indeed, did anyone particularly wish to find out.

For his pupils, having learned their lesson from those various earlier incidents, felt as though they were caged together with a tiger or a wolf, and thereafter took great care to keep as far as possible from their master's presence.

XII

And so, of what passed during that time, there is little worth relating in particular.

If I must tell you something, it would only be that the stubborn old man, for some strange reason, grew oddly given to tears, and was sometimes found weeping alone when no one else was about.

Once, in particular, when a pupil went out to the garden on some errand, he found his master standing on the veranda, gazing vacantly up at the sky, which spoke of spring's approach — and his master's eyes, they say, were brimming with tears.

Seeing this, the pupil felt, rather, a kind of embarrassment on his own account, and silently withdrew — but is it not a strange thing indeed, that a man so arrogant as to sketch even a corpse lying by the roadside for his picture of the Five Realms of Transmigration should weep like a child merely because a screen would not paint itself as he wished?

But while Yoshihide was, on the one hand, thus absorbed in the painting of the screen to a degree scarcely conceivable in a sane man, on the other hand his daughter, for some reason, grew steadily more melancholy, and it became plain even to us that she was constantly holding back tears.

Being by nature a pale, modest girl with something already sorrowful about her face, once it came to this, her eyelashes seemed to grow heavy and dark rings appeared about her eyes, giving her an air of all the more forlorn sadness.

At first, various people speculated that it was on account of her worry for her father, or perhaps that she was suffering from lovesickness; but partway through, the rumor began to spread that it was his lordship who was trying to force her to submit to his will, and from that time on, everyone, as though by common consent, fell entirely silent and ceased speaking of the girl at all.

It must have been just about that time.

One night, late in the watches, as I was passing alone along the corridor, that monkey Yoshihide came bounding out of nowhere and began tugging insistently at the hem of my trousers — it was, I recall, a warm night, faintly lit by a thin moon, the sort of night that already seemed to carry the scent of plum blossoms, and by that light, when I peered closely, I saw the monkey baring its white teeth, its nose wrinkled up, crying out so wildly it seemed almost to have lost its wits.

Being some three parts uneasy and seven parts irritated at having my new trousers tugged at, I thought at first of simply kicking the creature away and walking on — but then I recalled the case of that samurai who had once mistreated this same monkey and thereby incurred the young master's displeasure.

And besides, the monkey's behavior did not seem to me like an ordinary thing at all.

And so, at last, I made up my mind and let myself be led, walking some five or six paces in the direction it pulled me.

Just as the corridor turned a corner, at the very spot from which, even by night, one could see the pale, whitish water of the garden pond spreading wide beyond a gracefully branching pine—

— from some room nearby came a sense of people struggling, hurried yet oddly hushed, which struck my ears with alarm.

All around lay hushed in perfect stillness, and amid something that might have been moonlight or might have been mist, not a single voice could be heard, save for the occasional splash of a fish leaping.

And into that silence came this sound.

I could not help but stop short, and, thinking that should it prove some ruffian at his mischief I would show him what was what, I stole up silently, holding my breath, to the outside of that sliding door.

XIII

But the monkey, it seems, found my manner far too slow.

Yoshihide, with an air of the utmost impatience, circled two or three times about my feet, and then, crying out in a voice as though its very throat were being strangled, sprang all at once, in a single bound, onto my shoulder.

I instinctively arched my neck back, trying to avoid its claws, while the monkey clung all the harder to the sleeve of my robe, trying not to slip from my body — and in the midst of this, before I knew it, I staggered back two or three paces and struck my body soundly against that very sliding door.

There was no longer any time to hesitate.

I threw the door open at once and made to leap into the darkness beyond, where the moonlight could not reach.

But what met my eyes in that instant — no, more than that, I was startled all the more by a woman who, at that very same moment, came bursting out of the room as though flung forth.

The woman, nearly colliding with me head-on, tumbled straight out into the corridor, and then, for some reason, sank to her knees there, and, gasping for breath, stared trembling up into my face as though gazing upon something terrible.

That it was Yoshihide's daughter, I need hardly go out of my way to tell you.

But that night, she appeared before my eyes as though she were an altogether different person, so vividly alive did she seem.

Her eyes were wide and shining.

Her cheeks, too, must have burned red.

And her trousers and robe, disheveled in disarray, lent her, quite unlike her usual childlike air, a certain seductive charm besides.

Could this truly be that frail, ever-reticent daughter of Yoshihide's? —

Bracing myself against the sliding door, I gazed at the beautiful figure of the girl there in the moonlight, and, gesturing as though to point after the hurried, retreating footsteps of another person, I asked her silently, with my eyes alone, who it had been.

At this the girl, biting her lip, only shook her head in silence.

And her manner, too, seemed filled with mortification.

So I bent down, putting my mouth close to the girl's ear, and asked once more, 'Who was it?'

— so I asked, in a low voice.

But the girl only shook her head again, and gave no answer at all.

Indeed, at the same moment, tears welled up at the tips of her long lashes, and she bit her lip even more tightly than before.

Being dull-witted by nature, there was nothing at all I could grasp, unluckily, beyond what was already only too plain to see.

And so, not knowing what words to offer, I only stood there rooted to the spot for a while, as though straining my ears to catch the very beating of the girl's heart.

Though this was also, in part, because I felt, for some reason, a pang of conscience at pressing her any further with questions. —

How long this went on, I cannot say.

But at last, closing the sliding door I had thrown open, I turned back to the girl, whose flush seemed by then to have somewhat faded, and said, 'You had best return to your chamber now.'

— so I said, as gently as I was able.

And I myself, troubled by an uneasy feeling that I had seen something I ought never to have seen, and feeling somehow ashamed before no one in particular, quietly began walking back the way I had come.

But before I had gone ten paces, was not the hem of my trousers again timidly plucked at from behind by someone?

I turned around in surprise.

And what do you suppose it was?

Looking down, I found it was that monkey Yoshihide, at my very feet, bowing its head again and again most politely, its hands pressed to the ground like a man's, the golden bell ringing softly as it did so.

XIV

It was about half a month, then, after that night's events.

One day Yoshihide suddenly came to the mansion and requested a direct audience with his lordship.

Though he was of humble station, this was no doubt because he had always enjoyed his lordship's particular favor.

His lordship, who was not one to grant an audience readily to just anyone, consented willingly enough that day, and at once summoned him into his presence.

The man, dressed as usual in an incense-dyed hunting cloak with a soft, wrinkled cap upon his head, wearing an even more sour and difficult expression than usual, prostrated himself reverently before his lordship, and presently, in a hoarse voice, said—

'As for the Hell Screen you commanded me to paint some time ago, I have devoted myself to it day and night, and my efforts have not been in vain, for the whole is now, one might say, all but complete.'

'That is welcome news indeed. I too am well satisfied.'

Yet, for some reason, his lordship's voice, as he said this, had a strangely lifeless, deflated quality about it.

'No, my lord — it is not welcome news at all.'

So Yoshihide said, with an air of some vexation, keeping his eyes fixed downward. 'The whole is nearly done, but there remains one single thing that, even now, I find myself unable to paint.'

'What — there is something you cannot paint?'

'Just so, my lord. I can never paint anything, as a rule, unless I have seen it with my own eyes. And even should I manage to paint it without having seen it, I could never be satisfied with the result. Is that not, in effect, the same as being unable to paint it at all?'

Hearing this, a mocking smile rose to his lordship's face.

'Then, if you mean to paint the Hell Screen, I suppose you must first see Hell itself.'

'Just so, my lord. But some years ago, when there was a great fire, I saw with my own eyes flames that might well have been mistaken for the raging fires of the Hell of Burning Heat. It was, in fact, having witnessed that very fire that I was able to paint the flames of my "Twisting Fudo." Your lordship, I think, is familiar with that painting.'

'But what of the sinners? You cannot have seen a demon jailer.'

His lordship pressed him further with this question, as though Yoshihide's answer had not entered his ears at all.

'I have seen a man bound in an iron chain. I have also captured, in full detail, the sight of a man tormented by a monstrous bird. And so it cannot be said that I do not know how a sinner suffers under torment. And as for the demon jailers—'

— so he said, with an uncanny, bitter laugh escaping him. 'As for the demon jailers, they have appeared before my eyes, again and again, between dream and waking. Whether ox-headed, or horse-headed, or three-faced and six-armed, such demon shapes come to torment me, clapping their soundless hands and opening their voiceless mouths — I might say this happens to me almost every day and every night. It is not things of that kind that I try and fail to paint.'

At this, even his lordship must surely have been astonished.

For a while he only glared at Yoshihide's face with an air of impatience, but at last, his brows knitting sharply, he said—

'Then what is it you say you cannot paint?'

— so he demanded, flinging the words out.

XV

'I mean to paint, at the very center of the screen, a betel-palm carriage falling from the sky.'

So Yoshihide said, and for the first time gazed sharply into his lordship's face.

I had heard that the man became something like a madman whenever it came to matters of painting, and indeed, the look in his eyes at that moment surely carried something of that same terrible quality.

'Within that carriage a lady of high rank and rare beauty writhes in agony, her black hair disheveled amid the raging flames. Her face, choking on the smoke, brows knit in anguish, is turned upward toward the carriage roof above. Her hands, perhaps, have torn away the inner blind, struggling to shield herself from the falling rain of sparks. And all around her, birds of prey, uncanny and monstrous, ten of them, twenty of them, wheel about in confusion, their beaks clacking. — Ah, but that lady within the carriage — her, I cannot, no matter what I do, bring myself to paint.'

'And so — what of it?'

His lordship, for some reason, wearing a strangely pleased expression, urged Yoshihide on with these words.

But Yoshihide, his red lips trembling as though he were in the grip of a fever, said, in a tone as though he were speaking in a dream—

'That is the thing I cannot paint.'

— so he repeated once more, but then, suddenly, with a snapping, almost biting vehemence—

'I beg you, set fire to a betel-palm carriage before my very eyes. And if it could be done—'

His lordship's face darkened for a moment, and then all at once he burst into loud, startling laughter.

And, choking on his own laughter, he said—

'Oh, I shall have everything done exactly as you ask. It is idle to debate whether it can or cannot be done.'

Hearing these words, I felt, whether by some premonition or not, a strange sense of dread come over me.

And indeed, his lordship's own appearance was far from ordinary: white foam had gathered at the corners of his mouth, and something like flickering lightning seemed to twitch about his brows, so much so that one might almost have thought he had caught the very madness of Yoshihide himself.

Having paused for a moment in his speech, he at once, as though something had burst within him, broke into peal after peal of unrestrained laughter, his throat rattling without end, and said—

'Very well, I shall set fire to a betel-palm carriage. And within it I shall place a beautiful woman, dressed in the robes of a lady of high rank. Assailed by flame and black smoke, the woman within the carriage shall writhe and die in agony — that you should conceive of painting such a thing marks you, truly, as the foremost painter under heaven. I commend you for it. Oh, I commend you indeed!'

On hearing his lordship's words, Yoshihide suddenly went pale, and, gasping, could only move his lips without a sound — but presently, as though every sinew in his body had gone slack, he pressed both hands flat against the tatami, and—

'This is a most gracious favor, my lord.'

— so he said, offering his thanks most reverently, in a voice so low it was scarcely audible.

This was no doubt because the very horror of the scheme he himself had conceived rose up, vivid and unmistakable, before his own eyes as his lordship spoke.

That once, and only once, in my whole life — it was at this moment that I found myself pitying Yoshihide.

XVI

It was on a night some two or three days later.

His lordship, true to his word, summoned Yoshihide and had him witness, close at hand, the burning of the betel-palm carriage.

This, however, did not take place at the Horikawa mansion.

It was carried out instead at what was commonly called the Snow-Melt Villa, a mountain retreat outside the capital where his lordship's younger sister had once resided.

This Snow-Melt Villa was a place no one had inhabited for many years, its broad garden left to run entirely wild — and it was, I imagine, from the idle speculation of those who beheld this deserted, untenanted air that—

— there arose this and that manner of rumor about the fate of the younger sister who had died there, and there were even those who claimed that, on every moonless night, even now, the uncanny crimson of her trouser-skirt could be seen gliding along the corridor, never once touching the floor. —

And it was no wonder.

For this villa, lonely even by day, became, once the sun had set, a place where the sound of the garden stream echoed with an especially eerie resonance, and even a heron flying by starlight looked so uncanny that one might have taken it for some monstrous apparition.

That night too happened to be moonless, utterly dark, but by the light of the great standing lamps one could see his lordship, seated near the veranda, dressed in a pale blue informal robe and deep purple divided trousers patterned with a raised design, sitting cross-legged, high and imposing, upon a round cushion edged with white brocade.

That some five or six attendants sat respectfully arrayed before, behind, and on either side of him, I need hardly go out of my way to tell you.

But one among them stood out as marking something momentous afoot: a samurai of prodigious strength who, having once, in the fighting years before in Michinoku, been so starved that he ate human flesh, had ever since been able to tear apart even the fresh-grown antler of a live deer with his bare hands — he crouched, imposing, beneath the veranda, wearing beneath his robes a suit of armor, his sword slung and curved at his hip in the gull-tail fashion. —

All of them, lit now brightly, now dimly, by the lamplight flickering in the night wind, seemed scarcely distinguishable between dream and waking, and for some reason the whole scene appeared terrible to behold.

And beyond that, when one looked upon the betel-palm carriage set out in the garden, its tall roof pressing down heavily upon the darkness, its black shafts, unhitched from any ox, resting slantwise upon their stand, its gilded fittings glinting here and there like stars — even though it was spring, one could not help but feel an inexplicable chill upon the skin.

To be sure, the interior of that carriage was sealed heavily behind blue blinds trimmed with a floral damask border, so that what lay within its body could not be known.

And all around it stood attendants, each holding a blazing torch, standing by with an air of grave watchfulness, mindful of the smoke drifting toward the veranda.

Yoshihide himself knelt somewhat apart, directly facing the veranda, dressed as usual in what looked to be an incense-dyed hunting cloak with a soft, wrinkled cap upon his head, and he appeared even smaller and more wretched than usual, as though crushed beneath the very weight of the starry sky.

Behind him crouched another figure, similarly capped and cloaked, most likely one of the pupils he had brought along with him.

As both of them were crouching there in the dim, distant darkness, from where I stood beneath the veranda I could not even make out clearly the color of their cloaks.

XVII

The hour, I should think, was drawing near to midnight.

The darkness enfolding the wooded garden held its breath in perfect silence, as though listening for the very breathing of everyone gathered there, and amid it one heard only the faint passage of the night wind, which, with each gust, sent the sooty smell of the torch-smoke drifting toward us.

His lordship remained silent for a while, gazing fixedly upon this strange scene, but presently he leaned forward, and—

'Yoshihide,'

— so he called out sharply.

Yoshihide seemed to make some manner of reply, but to my own ears it sounded like nothing more than a low groan.

'Yoshihide. Tonight, as you have wished, I shall set fire to the carriage before your very eyes.'

So his lordship said, and cast a sidelong glance toward those attending him.

At that moment, it seemed to me that some meaningful smile passed between his lordship and one or another of his attendants, though this may only have been my own imagination.

Yoshihide, it seemed, timidly raised his head and looked up toward the veranda, but still said nothing, and remained waiting in silence.

'Look well. That is the very carriage I ride in every day. You will surely recognize it. — I mean now to set it aflame, and to make manifest before your eyes the Hell of Burning Heat itself.'

His lordship paused again in his speech, and exchanged a glance with those attending him.

Then, in a sudden bitter tone, he said, 'Within it a sinful woman is bound and seated. And so, once the carriage is set alight, that woman shall surely burn her flesh and char her bones, and meet an end of the most terrible agony. It will make you a model such as you shall never find again for completing your screen. Do not fail to watch her snow-white skin blister and burn. Mark well, too, how her black hair turns to sparks and dances upward into the air.'

His lordship fell silent a third time, but then, for some reason of his own, his shoulders began to shake, and, laughing now without a sound, he said—

'This is a spectacle the likes of which will never be seen again in all the ages to come. I too shall watch it from here. Come, come — raise the blind, and let Yoshihide see the woman within.'

At this command, one of the attendants, holding a blazing torch high in one hand, strode briskly up to the carriage, and, reaching out at once with his other hand, threw open the blind.

The crackling light of the blazing torch, flickering red for a moment, at once lit up clearly the cramped interior of the carriage's body — and there, cruelly bound in chains upon the seat within, the woman — ah, who could ever have mistaken her?

In a splendidly embroidered cherry-blossom robe, her sleek black hair hanging lustrous down her back, a golden hairpin, tilted askew, glinting beautifully — yet however different her attire, that small, slight frame, that fair-skinned nape of the neck, and that profile of hers, modest almost to the point of sorrow, could belong to none other than Yoshihide's daughter.

I very nearly cried out aloud.

It was at that very moment—

— that the samurai seated facing me rose hastily to his feet, and, gripping the pommel of his sword with one hand, fixed Yoshihide with a piercing stare.

Startled, I looked, and saw that the man had, no doubt, half lost his senses at this sight.

He who had until then been crouching on the ground suddenly leapt to his feet, and, both hands outstretched before him, seemed about to rush headlong toward the carriage, quite beyond his own control.

Unfortunately, however, as I told you before, being far off in the shadows, I could not make out his features clearly.

But that was true only for the briefest of instants; for Yoshihide's ashen face — no, his entire figure, as though some invisible force had hoisted him bodily into the air — at once cut through the surrounding darkness and rose up, vivid and unmistakable, before my very eyes.

At this moment, the betel-palm carriage bearing the girl — at the words 'Set it alight!'—

— spoken by his lordship, was showered with the torches flung by the attendants, and burst all at once into raging flame.

XVIII

The fire, before one's very eyes, wrapped itself around the carriage roof.

The purple tassels hanging from the eaves streamed out at once as though fanned by some great gust, and from beneath them billowed thick white smoke, plainly visible even in the night, swirling upward — while the blinds, the panels, the metal fittings on the roof-ridge all seemed to shatter and fly apart at once, as sparks danced up like driving rain — the sheer terribleness of it defies all telling.

Indeed, more terrible still was the color of those fierce flames, licking out their tongues and coiling about the lattice of the carriage's side windows as they climbed up into the very midst of the sky — one might almost have said the sun itself had fallen to earth and burst into a torrent of celestial fire.

I, who had very nearly cried out before, now found my very soul had left me entirely, and could do nothing but stand there, mouth agape in blank astonishment, watching this dreadful spectacle.

But as for her father, Yoshihide—

— the look upon his face at that moment, I have never forgotten to this day.

The man, who had rushed forward toward the carriage quite beyond his own will, stopped short the very instant the fire burst into flame, and, his hands still outstretched before him, gazed with an almost devouring intensity, as though drawn and fixed by some irresistible force, upon the smoke and flame that engulfed the carriage — and by the light of the fire bathing his whole body, one could see clearly, down to the very tips of his whiskers, that wrinkled, ugly face of his.

But in his wide-staring eyes, in the twist of his contorted lips, in the ceaseless trembling of the flesh of his convulsing cheeks, one could read, plain and unmistakable, the fear and grief and horror that surged, one after another, through Yoshihide's very heart.

Not even a thief about to have his head struck off, nor a sinner guilty of the ten cardinal and five deadly transgressions dragged before the tribunal of the Ten Kings of Hell, could have worn so agonized a face as that.

At this, even that samurai of prodigious strength could not help but change color, and looked up timidly toward his lordship's face.

But his lordship, biting his lip tightly, laughed now and again with an eerie sound, and, without once turning his eyes away, kept them fixed steadily upon the carriage.

And within that carriage — ah, what manner of sight I beheld of the girl within it at that moment, I do not think I could ever summon the courage to describe to you in full.

The whiteness of her upturned face, choking on the smoke; the length of her disheveled hair, sweeping through the flames; and the beauty of her cherry-blossom robe, turning to fire before one's very eyes — what a pitiless, ghastly sight it was.

Above all, when a gust of night wind blew down and the smoke swept away to one side, and she rose up out of the flames — red, as though scattered over with gold dust — biting her own hair between her teeth, writhing so violently it seemed the very chains that bound her must snap, one could almost believe that the very torments of Hell had been made manifest before one's eyes, and I, no less than the mighty samurai himself, felt my hair stand on end of its own accord.

Then, when that same night wind passed once more, sweeping suddenly through the treetops of the garden — everyone, I imagine, must have thought it was only that.

For such a sound seemed to race across the dark sky, coming from no one knew where — and then, all at once, something black, neither touching the ground nor truly flying through the air, came bounding like a ball, straight as an arrow, from the roof of the villa down into the very midst of the blazing carriage.

And there, amid the vermilion-lacquered lattice of the side window as it crumbled and fell away in burning pieces, it clasped the shoulders of the girl as she arched backward, and let out, long and unbearably anguished, a shriek as sharp as tearing silk, which carried far out beyond the smoke.

And then again, a second cry, a third — and we, quite without meaning to, cried out together, all at once, in a single voice.

For there, with a wall of flame behind it, clinging to the girl's shoulder, was none other than that monkey nicknamed Yoshihide, the one kept at the Horikawa mansion.

How, and by what road, the monkey had made its way, unseen, all the way to this villa, no one, of course, could say.

But it was surely because the girl who had loved and doted on it so was there that the monkey, too, threw itself into the fire alongside her.

XIX

But the sight of the monkey lasted only the briefest of instants.

A shower of sparks, gleaming like gold-flecked lacquer, burst upward into the sky, and in that same instant both the monkey and the girl were swallowed up beneath the black smoke, so that in the middle of the garden there remained only a single carriage of fire, roaring and seething with a terrible sound.

Indeed, rather than a carriage of fire, it might be more fitting to call it a pillar of fire, so terribly did those flames boil and surge up, piercing the very starry sky.

And Yoshihide, standing rooted as though frozen solid before that pillar of fire — what a strange thing it was to behold.

For Yoshihide, who only a moment before had seemed tormented by the very agonies of Hell itself, now stood there, his whole wrinkled face suffused with an indescribable radiance — a radiance as of one lost in the ecstasy of religious rapture — his arms folded tightly across his chest, seemingly forgetful even that his lordship stood before him.

It seemed, somehow, that within that man's eyes there was no reflection at all of his own daughter dying in agony.

It appeared, rather, that only the beautiful color of the flames, and the figure of the woman suffering within them, brought him boundless delight of heart.

And yet what was strangest of all was not merely that the man watched his own only daughter's death agony with such apparent joy.

There was, about Yoshihide at that moment, something one could scarcely believe belonged to a human being at all — an uncanny majesty, not unlike the wrath of some lion-king glimpsed in a dream.

And so, even the countless nightbirds that, startled by the sudden blaze, flew shrieking about in confusion, seemed, perhaps only in my imagination, to keep their distance from the very cap upon Yoshihide's head.

No doubt even to the eyes of those unthinking birds, there was visible, hovering above the man's head like some halo of light, a mysterious and awesome dignity.

And if even the birds felt this—

— how much more did we ourselves, down to the very menial attendants among us, hold our breath, our bodies trembling, filled with a strange and rapturous awe, and gaze upon Yoshihide without ever turning our eyes away, as though beholding the newly consecrated eyes of some living Buddha.

The roaring fire of the carriage, filling the whole sky with its clamor, and Yoshihide, standing transfixed, his very soul stolen away by it — what solemn majesty, what rapture, it was.

Yet amid all this, his lordship alone, there upon the veranda, seemed so changed as to be almost another man entirely — his face gone pale, foam gathering at the corners of his mouth, both hands clutching tightly at the knees of his purple trousers, gasping on and on like some beast parched with thirst.……

XX

What his lordship did that night at the Snow-Melt Villa, burning the carriage as he did, leaked out into the world through no one knew whose mouth, and it seems there were, in consequence, no small number of people who passed all manner of judgment upon it.

First of all, as to why his lordship had had Yoshihide's daughter burned to death — the rumor most commonly heard was that he had done it out of resentment for a love that could never be fulfilled.

But his lordship's true intention, I am certain, was solely to punish the perversity of a painter's spirit so twisted that it would burn a carriage and take a human life, all for the sake of a picture on a screen.

Indeed, I myself once heard his lordship say as much, in his own words.

And people seem also to have made much talk of that stony, wood-like heart of Yoshihide's, that even as he watched his own daughter burned to death before his very eyes, still wished only to go on painting his screen.

There were some who reviled the man, calling him a monster with the face of a man and the heart of a beast, who would forget even the bond between parent and child for the sake of his painting.

The Bishop of Yokawa, for one, was among those who sided with this view, and would often say, 'However much a man may excel at some single art or skill, if he does not know the five cardinal virtues proper to a human being, he can only fall into Hell.'

— such were the words he was fond of saying.

But then, about a month later, when the Hell Screen was at last completed, Yoshihide brought it to the mansion at once and reverently presented it for his lordship's inspection.

The Bishop happened to be present at that very time, and no sooner had he glimpsed the painting on the screen than he too, no doubt, was struck with astonishment at the terrible fire-storm raging through that whole painted world.

He who, until that moment, had worn a sour face and glared unrelentingly at Yoshihide, now struck his knee without meaning to, and exclaimed, 'Well done!'

— so he said.

And the look upon his lordship's face as he heard these words, breaking into a bitter smile, is something I have never forgotten to this day.

From that time on, there was scarcely anyone left, at least within the mansion, who spoke ill of the man.

Perhaps it was because anyone who looked upon that screen, however much he might ordinarily despise Yoshihide, could not help but be struck by a strange and solemn feeling, and to sense, as though it were real, the great agony of the Hell of Burning Heat.

But by the time matters had come to this, Yoshihide had already joined the ranks of those no longer of this world.

For on the very night following the completion of the screen, he hanged himself, with a rope slung over the beam of his own room.

Having seen his only daughter go before him in death, the man could not bear, I imagine, to go on living out his days in ease and quiet.

His body lies buried, even now, on the site where his house once stood.

Though the small marker stone there, having been exposed to decades of wind and rain since then, must by now be so overgrown with moss that no one could any longer tell whose grave it marks.

— April, Taisho 7 (1918) —