Ohba Minako

這部短片小說(shuō)沒(méi)有在國(guó)內(nèi)發(fā)行，所以只有英文版。

I would like to tell you about a legendary witch who lives in the mountains. Her straggly gray hair tied with string, she waits there for a man from the village to lose his way, meaning to devour him. When an unknowing young man asks to be put up for the night, the owner of the house grins, a comb with teeth missing here and there clutched between her teeth. As he feels a cold chill run up and down his spine beholding this eerie hag of a woman, her yellowed teeth shining under the flickering lamp, she says, "You just thought 'What an uncanny woman she is! Like an old, monster cat!' didn't you?" Startled, the young man thinks to himself, "Don't tell me she's planning to devour me in the middle of the night!" Stealing a glance at her from under his brows, the man gulps down a bowl of millet porridge. Without a moment's hesitation she tells him, "You just thought in your mind, 'Don't tell me she's planning to devour me in the middle of the night!' didn't you!" The man, turning pale, quickly replies, "I was just thinking that with this warm bowl of porridge I finally feel relaxed, and that my fatigue is catching up with me." But with his body as hard as ice, he thinks to himself, "The reason she's boiling such a big pot of water must be because she is preparing to cook me in it in the middle of the night!" With a sly grin, the old witch says, "You just thought to yourself, 'The reason she's boiling such a big pot of water must be because she is Yamauba no bisho * (1976). Translated by Noriko Mizuta Lippit, assistedby Mariko Ochi, with the permission of the author.Page 195 preparing to cook me in it in the middle of the night!' didn't you!" The man becomes even more terrified. "You accuse me wronglyI was only thinking that I'm really fired from walking all day and that I ought to excuse myself and retire for the night while I'm still warm from the porridge, so that I may start early tomorrow morning." But he thinks to himself, "What a spooky old hag! This monster cat of a woman must be one of those old witches who live up in the mountains I hear so much about. Or else she wouldn't read my mind so well!" Without a moment's delay, the mountain witch says, "You just thought, 'What a spooky old hag! This monster cat of a woman must be one of those old witches who live up in the mountains I hear so much about. Or else she wouldn't read my mind so well!' " The man becomes so frightened that he can hardly keep his teeth from chattering, but he manages to shuffle his body along on his shaking knees. He says, "Well, let me excuse myself and retire" Practically crawling into the next room, the man lays his body down on a straw mat without even undoing his traveling attire. The old witch follows him with a sidelong glance and says, "You're thinking to yourself now that you'll wait to find the slightest chance to escape." Indeed, the man had lain down hoping to take her off her guard, so that he might find an opportunity to run away. In any case, these old mountain witches are able to read a person's mind every time, and in the end the victim runs for his life away from her abode. The old witch pursues him, and the man just keeps running for his life. At least this is the form the classic mountain-witch tales assume.But surely these old witches cannot have been wrinkled old hags from birth. At one time they must have been babies with skin like freshly pounded rice cakes and the faint, sweet-sour odor peculiar to the newborn. They must have been maidens seducing men with their moist, glossy complexions of polished silk. Their shining nails of tiny pink shells must have dug into the shoulders of men who suffocated in ecstasy between their lovers' plump breasts. For one reason or another, however, we never hear about young witches living up in the mountains. It seems that the young ones cannot bear to remain in their hermitage, and their stories become transformed into stories of cranes, foxes, snowy herons, or other beasts or birds. They then become beautiful wives and live in human settlements. These beasts that disguise themselves as human women invariably make extremely faithful spouses; they are very smart and full of delicatePage 196 sentiments. Yet their fate somehow is inevitably tragic. Usually by the end of their tales they run back into the mountains, their fur or feathers pitifully fallen. Perhaps these poor creatures, with all their bitterness and resentment, turn into mountain witches. After all, devouring may be an expression of ultimate affection. Does not a mother in an emotional moment often squeeze her child and exclaim, "You're so dear to me I could eat you up!"? Now, the woman about whom I am going to speak was a genuine mountain witch. She died at the age of sixty-two. At sixty-two, when her soulless body was cleansed with rubbing alcohol, her skin was bright and juvenescent like the wax figure of a goddess. Her hair was half-white, and on the mound at the end of her gently sloping belly were a few strands of silver. Yet around her calmly shut eyelids and her faintly smiling lips lingered a strange innocence and the bashfulness of a little girl who is forcing a smile even though she is about to burst out crying. Indeed, she was the mountain witch of mountain witches. But even though she often longed for a hermitage on the mountains, she never lived in one, and she spent her entire life in the dwellings of a human settlement. She had been a mountain witch ever since she could remember. When she was still at a tender age and had not yet quite learned to use the bathroom, she would be so engrossed in play that she often had accidents. She would say to her mother who came running, "Oh you naughty girl. You've got to tell Mommy on time before it's too late. Oh dear, and today we don't have any change left for you"As her mother burst out laughing, she would go on, saying, "Really I'm no match for this child! What can I say!" At night, when her father was late coming home and her mother glanced at the clock on the wall, she would immediately say, "What in the world is he up to, coming home late night after night! He says it's work but I know he's really staying out as late as possible because it's so boring at home. As if he's the only one who feels that way! Dear me" At that her mother would cast a wry grin and scowl at her. But before she could say anything, the little girl would exclaim, "You foolish girl! Come on, go to bed now. Little children who stay up late never grow, and they have to stay little for ever and ever." The mother, utterly amazed at her daughter reading her mind time after time, would give in, saying, "This child is very bright, but she really tires me out!"Page 197 When she was a little older and her mother bought her a new toy, she would say, "This will keep her quiet for a while." Her mother, no doubt a little irritated, looked at her daughter, who would then say, "Why in the world does this child read other people's minds all the time. She's like a mountain witch. I wonder if people will come to dislike her like a mountain witch." These are, of course, the kinds of things that her mother thought of often, and the child was merely verbalizing her mother's thoughts. When she started going to school, the mother was, to a certain extent, relieved that she had times of separation from her daughter. But when she began to notice that her daughter ceased to read people's minds and became quieter each day, she asked, "How come you are so quiet now that you go to school?" Her daughter replied, "When I say whatever is on my mind, people give me unpleasant looks, so I decided not to speak out any more. Grown-ups are happy when children act stupidlyas though they don't know anything. So from now on I've decided to keep grown-ups happy." The mother responded firmly in a manner befitting one who had borne a mountain witch. "You say whatever is on your mind. You don't have to pretend. You're a child, remember?" But the child merely regarded her mother with a disdainful smile. All in all, the child performed well at school. On the occasions when she did not do well in a test, she would tear it up without showing it to her mother. Her mother would complain when she did not finish the lunch she brought to school, so on days when she did not have much of an appetite, she threw the remaining contents of her lunchbox into a trashcan on her way home. But so that her mother would not becomesuspicious, she left a little portion of it every now and then and showed it to her mother, saying, "The teacher talked longer today, so I didn't have enough time to finish it." Time passed, and the child bloomed into maidenhood, but because her family was not well-to-do her mother could not afford to buy her expensive dresses. When the two went shopping together, the girl would purposely pick the dress her mother thought most adequate and pretended that she really liked it. She would say instead of her mother, "I think this is really sweet. If I wore something extravagant at my age, I would give people the impression that I'm someone like the mistress of a rich old man." On such occasions her mother would look at her with a slightly sad expression on her face. And on the way home, she would buy her daughter something way beyond her means. The girl would pretendPage 198 not to notice her mother's impulse and showed a happy face to her as though she was genuinely pleased by her new acquisition. The girl would assume whatever behavior was expected of her as though it was what came naturally to her, not only toward her family, but toward anyone by whom she wanted to be liked. When they wanted her to laugh, she read their minds and laughed. When they wanted her not to say anything, she remained silent. When talkativeness was desired, she chatted merrily. Toward a person who considered himself intelligent, she would act a little stupidshe did not overdo this, for usually this type of person thought it a waste of time to deal with stupid peopleand as for those who were stupid, she appreciated their simplicity. Perhaps because she demanded too much of herself and because she wanted too many people to like her, she had to spend an incredible amount of mental energy every day. So that before she realized it she had become antisocial, reading books in her room all day, avoiding being with others. When her mother asked, "Why don't you go out with your friends?" she would answer with few words, "Because I get tired" The mother, too, began to feel fatigued when she was with her daughter. When she was not around her, she felt relieved. She began to long for the day when her daughter would find an adequate young man and leave her. In other words, the mother and daughter came to the natural phase of life when they would part from each other. The daughter, too, knew that she was a burden to her motherin fact, she had sensed that she was a burden to her as far back as she could rememberand she wanted to free her mother, as well as herself. At the same time, somewhere in her heart she held a grudge against hermother, a grudge which was sometimes so strong that she would feel surges of inexplicable rage. That is to say, she was going through the short, rebellious phase of puberty, but when she realized that her hatred and anger were directed at the cunning ways of her mother who had become her competitor of the same sexthat is, at her dishonest ways like taking advantage of her authority as a mother and avoiding direct competitionshe became acutely aware that her mother had aged and that she herself had matured. As a mature girl, she naturally came to know a man. He was an ordinary, run-of-the-mill type of man. Typical for one who had been doted on by his mother, he firmly believed that because his mother was of the opposite sex, he was allowed beyond all reason to express himself as freely as he pleased. When one such as he matures physically, the woman he marries has to be a substitute for his mother. For him, shePage 199 has to be as magnanimous as a mother, as dignified as a goddess. She has to love him limitlessly and blindly like an idiot, yet at the same time have a spirit capable of being possessed by evil, like that of some sinister beast. Fortunately, however, he at least had the male characteristic of liking women. Since the woman was gratified by the man, she came to think that she would not mind making all kinds of efforts to keep him happy. But this turned out to be very hard labor, for after all, every comer of his mind was transparent to her. If only one could not see another's heart, one would not become weary and would be able to live happily. First of all, the man wanted the woman to be constantly jealous, so that she had to make every effort to appear that way. When another woman's shadow approached the man's life, she would act as though her presence made her competitive, and the man would be satisfied. "Please don't go away from me. I can't live without you, you know that. I can't do anything by myself and I'm helpless when you're gone," she would cry as she sobbed and clung to him. And as she said the words, she would have the illusion that she really was a weak and incompetent creature. Also, the man desired the woman to think of other men as something less than what they were, so that she had to close her eyes to the merits of other men and observe only their vices. But since the man was not excessively stupid, he did not allow her to denigrate others with idle speculation either. To please him, she had to make the right judgments, as well as be aware of all their vices, and indicate that even though they might have certain merits, these merits were certainly not to her liking. Thus every little opinion she expressed had to be well thought out.On top of that, the man had the strange tendency of feeling pleasure in possessing all to himself a woman who was constantly being pursued by other men. Thus he tended to encourage rather than endure her affected flirtations. Perhaps deep down, all men long to become a part of the species of men we term "pimps." To provide all the examples of this kind would take forever. In any case, at times the woman would forget to be jealous, or to flirt with other men. Or occasionally she was careless enough to express her true feelings about attractive men. At such times the man would become bored and think the woman lazy, thick-skinned, and lacking in sensitivity. Moreover, even when the woman succeeded in behaving perfectly to his liking, he would assert with the dignified tone of a sage who knew everything, "Women are utterly unmanageable creatures, so full of jealousy, capable of only shallow ideas and small lies. They are really justPage 200 timid and stupid. In English, the word man refers also to human beings, but I guess women are only capable of being human by adhering to men.'' Thanks to this irrational declaration of inequality, the two managed to live somewhat happily. Both the man and the woman grew old, and soon enough the man reached the age at which he would grumble all year long about something being wrong in this part of his body or that. He demanded that the woman worry about him all of the time and said that if anything happened to him he would be so concerned about her who would be left behind, that he would not die in peace. As she acted nervous and uneasy about him, she really became nervous and uneasy, until eventually she came to feel that he really was critically ill. For after all, unless she believed it he would not be at peace, and unless he were at peace, she could not feel that way either. Thus even though she hated nursing to such a degree that she thought she would die if she had to commit herself to it, she became a nurse just as a woman driven into a comer might sell her chastity. Observing the woman who now took up nursing, the man commended her, saying that nursing was an occupation truly in keeping with her instincts, and that as far as nursing was concerned, women were blessed with God-given talents against which no man could compete. Around that time, the woman became exceedingly fat, so much so that when she walked just a little her shoulders would heave with every breath just like those of a pregnant woman. The main reason for this was that she was the possessor of exceptionally healthy digestive organs and consequently was constantly plagued by enormous appetites. But on top of that, she had the pitiful characteristic of wanting to make others feel good; even if she did not like it, she would eat up whatever was offered to her in order not to disappoint the person. Since other people thought that she just loved to eat, theywould be terribly offended should she refuse the food that they offered her. On the other hand, her husband often boasted that he was a man of iron will. As she ate, saying, "Oh dear, here I go again" he would cast a ridiculing glance at her; "You're such a weak-willed woman" Even if someone put her heart into cooking something to please him, he would adamantly refuse if it was something that was not good for his health. In other words, his nerves were tenacious enough not to register shame at ignoring somebody else's feelings. Because his use of words such as strength of will, insensitivity, and laziness so differed from hers, she would at times be overwhelmed by a sense of acute loneliness. She would come to fear not only her husband but many of the others around her as well, feeling as though she werePage 201 surrounded by foreigners who did not speak the same language. Sometimes she thought she would rather live as a hermit in the depths of the mountains, just as she locked herself up in her room all day without playing when she was a little girl. Far off in the midst of the mountains there would be nobody to trouble her, and she would be free to think as she pleased. The thought of extorting all those who tormented her in the human world made her heart beat with excitement: all those dull-headed, slow-witted people who could walk around with the looks of smug, happy heroes just because they were not capable of reading other people's hearts. If only she could say out loud like the legendary witches, "You just thought didn't you!?" how relieved she would feel! It would be the sensation of slitting the skin around the temples in order to let horns grow, horns which are itching to grow out but cannot. When she imagined herself living alone in the mountains, she likened herself to a beautiful fairy, sprawled in the fields, naked under the benevolent sun, surrounded by trees and grasses and animals. But once a familiar human being appeared from the settlement, her face would change into that of an ogress. He would stare at her, mouth open like an idiot, and utter coarse, incoherent, conceited words, making her fly into a rage. On such occasions, her husband would appear, dressed shabbily like a beggar. He would wander about the abode of the woman who had now changed her appearance, and like a mischievous boy who had lost a fight he would mumble, "Without her to camouflage my unreasonable desires for me, I'd be done for" Listening to his voice, she would look at her face reflected in a clear spring. Then she would see that half her face was smiling like an affectionate mother, while the other half was seething with demonicrage. Blood would trickle down from half her mouth while it devoured and ripped the man's flesh apart. The other half of her lips was caressing the man who curled up his body in the shadow of one of her breasts, sucking it like a baby. Now, as she became fatter, she began to develop arteriosclerosis, for her veins were put under increasing pressure. She found numbness in various joints of her body and suffered from headaches and the sound of ringing in her ears. When she saw a physician, he diagnosed that she was merely going through menopause. She was told in her early forties that she was suffering from menopause, and since then for over twenty years she had continued to receive the same explanation. The man asserted that women were, as a rule, more durably constructed than men, their bodies and souls being more sturdily built. HePage 202 pointed to a statistic that showed how women outlive men, and insisted that between the two of them, he would be the first to go. The woman thought that perhaps the reason women live longer has something to do with the fact that men end their lives of their own accord at youth, owing to war and other violent behavior, but since it was bothersome for her to prove this statistically, she just did not bring it up. "That's right. Even though men are larger in build, they are actually sensitive at heart and more frail. That's why all women like men." As she said this, she told herself that the world would be a place of darkness without men, even though what she said was altogether fictitious, and continued stroking the man who complained that it hurt him here or there. In order to cook and feed him food as delicate as a little bird's, she spent hours day after day. She knew that her own fat body did not have long to last with hardened arteries, but she could think of no other way to live than to provide food for the little bird of a man who believed that he was frail. One morning, she examined herself thoroughly in the mirror. Her face was covered with wrinkles, giving her the appearance of a mountain witch. Her yellowed teeth were uneven and ugly like those of an aged cat. White frost had fallen on her hair and she felt chilling pain as though frost columns were noisily springing up all over her body. She felt a slight numbness as though her body belonged to someone else. It was a stiffness related to the vague memory of her mother, long gone, far away. Somewhere, her flowing blood ebbed, and she felt dizzy. Suddenly a slight drowsiness attacked her, and when she came to herself her limbs were paralyzed and her consciousness dimmed as she felt various parts of her body gradually grow colder.Customarily, she would have been up a long time ago preparing his meal. But finding her instead next to himself (they had slept alongside each other for forty years) face down and as stiff as a dead person, he became alarmed, and immediately straightening his body about which he had been complaining so much, he carried his wife to the hospital. Surprisingly enough, the physician who up until the day before had written her off as a case of menopause, now declared as if he were another man that she had the symptoms of cerebral thrombosis, and that if luck was against her she would only survive the next day or two. The man became totally confused, but he managed to pull himself together and decided that the first thing he should do was to send for their son and daughter, both of whom lived far away. The two children came immediately and with their father crouched around their mother who had now lost her speech. Probably the next two days were the best two days of her life. ThePage 203 three of them took turns rubbing her arms and legs, and they would not leave it to the nurse to take care of even her most basic needs. Even after two days, however, there was no drastic deterioration in their mother's condition; nor did it take a turn for the better. Her consciousness, however, became even dimmer, and she could no longer recognize the people around her. The uncertain physician said, "Considering her weight, her heart is strong. She may be able to hold on longer than expected." Soon the son claimed that he could not continue to stay away from work and that since it looked as though there would be no changes in the immediate future, he would return home for a while. With a gloomy look on her face, the daughter began to worry about her husband and children. The poor man became anxious that he would not know what to do if his daughter left, so he pleaded with her to stay on. He sounded so helpless that the daughter, as worried as she was about her own family, reluctantly agreed to remain. The daughter remembered the time when she had been critically ill as a child. Then her mother had stayed up for days watching over her. She thought that if not for this woman who lay in front of her unconscious, straying between life and death, she would not have been alive today. And this might be the last time she would be able to see her. Thinking through these matters, she hung on beside her. But when another two days passed, she began to wonder how long her mother would remain in her present condition, unable to converse and barely breathing, like a living corpse. She even thought that although the sixty-two years her mother had lived might be shorter than average, sooner or later everyone has to die, and that perhaps even if her mother went as she was from her present state, she would be considered fortunate that she could go watched over by her husbandand daughter. The daughter felt strangely uneasy when she remembered the story of the patient who survived for two years on intravenous feeding. She became worried whether her father's savings would be sufficient to pay the medical expenses should her mother survive as long. Even aside from the expenses, moreover, she thought that neither she nor her brother could afford to take care of her mother for such a long period of time, for they had their own families to consider. She happened to think of her five-year-old daughter whom she had left behind with her mother-in-law. She remembered that at that age she herself had fallen ill and run a high fever for days, nearly contracting meningitis. Vividly, she envisioned her mother becoming frantic with worry and sitting by her bedside, cowering over her in their housePage 204 which had become pitifully unkempt. Odd as it may seem, the impact of this memory led her thoughts away from her dying mother who lay moaning between life and death in front of her eyes, and made her concerned with the possibility of her own daughter falling ill while she was away. Unlikely as it may seem, she became plagued with fear at the thought of it. Unaware of her daughter's worries, the mother survived another two days, occasionally staring into space with empty eyes and moaning something incomprehensible. The daughter woke up the third morning, too weary to climb out of bed after a week of intensive nursing. It was a dull, gloomy morning, typical of a cloudy day in the cherry season. She looked vacantly at the profile of her unconscious mother, who was also breathing quietly and who, with hollower cheeks, looked younger and beautiful. When the morning round was over, the daughter, remembering that her mother's body was dirty, asked the physician if she could wash the patient. He instructed the nurse to do it and left the room. Soon the nurse came back, and in a very businesslike manner, carried out her duties as instructed, turning the patient over as though she were a log. Timidly, the daughter helped her. Just when the patient was rolled over, stripped of her nightclothes soiled with perspiration and excrement, her eyes suddenly opened wide, staring at her daughter who happened to be standing right in front of her, holding her. She smiled faintly at her as light returned to her eyes. The radiance was like that of a firecracker, bright yet sad and ephemeral. Soon the firecracker died. The invalid lost the light in her eyes, and the saliva which had gathered trickled down the side of her mouth. Her throat went into a momentary spasm. The pupils of her eyes stopped moving, and then she was still. It all happened in a single moment.At this sudden change, the nurse hurried off to call the physician. He rushed in and started to perform artificial respiration. He also injected cardiac medication through a thick needle into her heart. It looked more like shaking an animal that had failed in the middle of an experiment than dealing with a living human being. But in any case, it is certain that the people around her made various efforts to revive the pulse to her heart which had stopped. The woman died. No, it would be more truthful to say that she summoned up the last of her strength to suffocate her own self and body by washing down the accumulated saliva into her windpipe. In the last smile she exchanged with her daughter, she clearly read her daughter's mind. Her daughter's eyes said to her that she did notPage 205 want to be tied down by her any longer. "Mother, I don't need you to protect me any more. You've outlived your usefulness. If you have to be dependent on me, if you can't take care of yourself without being a burden to others, please, mother, please disappear quietly. Please don't torment me any longer. I, too, am preparing myself so that I won't trouble my daughter as I am being troubled by you. I'm willing to go easily. That's right. I ought to go easily. I never want to be the kind of parent who, just because she doesn't have the courage to come to terms with that resolution, continues to press her unwanted kindnesses upon her offspring." It seemed that her daughter, the product of her and her husband, possessed a strength of will that was twofold. Either she would overcome all temptation, exercise moderation, and live sturdily until the moment of her death at a hundred, or live haughtily and selfishly to the end, retaining the energy to kill herself at eighty. In either case, the woman was satisfied with the daughter she had borne and raised. Through her daughter's face, she saw the son who was not there, walking among the crowds of the metropolis. He was talking to her with a crooked smile on his face. "Mother, I have incessantly chirping chicks at home. I myself don't know why I have to keep on putting food in their mouths. But when I catch myself, I'm always flying toward my nest, carrying food in my beak. Before I even think about it, I'm doing it. If I were to stop carrying food to them and stay close by you all the time, the human race would have perished a long time ago. In other words, for me to do as I do for them is the only way in which I can prolong and keep the blood you gave me" Next she looked at her husband, who was standing around absentmindedly. This deranged old man, his head drooping, was touched by the beauty of his wife's naked body and absorbed self-righteously in the faithfulness that let him attend to his wife until the very end. Thegreatest happiness for a human being is to make another happy. She was satisfied with this man who had the capability to turn any situation into happiness, and she blessed the start of the second chapter of his life. At the same time, she thought she heard the pealing of her funeral bells. With her own hands, she arranged her white shroud, left side under the right. In a dry riverbed, when she happened to look behind her, she saw somebody running away with his hair disheveled in the rushing wind. When she asked another deceased traveler whom she had not noticed before, the traveler answered, "He's being chased by a mountain witch." Under the shroud which she had arranged, she felt the heartbeat of a mountain witch reviving, and she smiled. The heart of the mountainPage 206 witch was throbbing as sturdily as ever. Only the blood vessels to transmit her vitality were closed, tightly, harshly, never to open again. The time had come for the spirit of the mountain witch to return to the quiet mountains. The day had at last arrived when she would stand on a mountain ledge, her white hair swaying in the raging wind, sounding her eternal roar into the mountains. The transient dream of living in the human settlement disguised as an animal was now over. The days she spent dreaming of living alone in the mountains, the sorrow she felt as a little girl when she first began to dislike humans, all came back to her and she shook her head. Had she lived up in the mountains, she would have been the mountain witch who devours humans from the settlement. She wondered which would be the happier, to live in the mountains and become a man-eating witch, or to have the heart of a mountain witch and live in the settlement. But now she knew that either way it would not have made much difference. If she had lived in the mountains, she would have been called a mountain witch. Living in the settlement she could have been thought of as a fox incarnate or an ordinary woman with a sturdy mind and body who lived out her natural life. That was the only difference, and either way it would have been all the same. Just before she took her last breath, it crossed her mind that her own mother must have been a genuine mountain witch as well. Strangely enough, when she died she had a mysteriously naive face with the innocent smile of a newborn baby. Sobbing and clinging to this woman who died in peace, the daughter, with swollen eyes which told of her indescribable relief, said, "Such a beautiful death mask Mother, you really must have been a happy woman." Her husband cried silently with wide open eyes full of tears like a fish.