“The Fifth Night” from Natsume Soseki’s “Ten Nights and Dreams”
This is a translation of “The Fifth Night” from Natsume Soseki’s 1908 work of short stories 夢å夜, also known as Yume Juuya, Ten Nights’ Dreams, and Ten Nights of Dream. I will refer to my own translation as Ten Nights and Dreams, to make it more original.
I had this dream.
Probably a very long time ago, I can imagine it being in antiquity near the age of the gods, I was warring. Because our luck went bad and we lost, I was captured, and made to sit in front of the enemy general.
Everyone in that time was tall. And they were all growing long beards. He had on a leather belt with a club-like sword suspended from it. His bow looked like a fat piece of wisteria that had been used as-is. If it wasn’t lacquered, it also hadn’t been polished. It was very austere.
The enemy general was sitting on something that looked like an upside down clay pot. He had pushed the bow into the grass, and his right hand was gripping the middle of it. When I looked at his face, above his nose, his left and right eyebrows were thickly connected. At that time, naturally, there wasn’t anything like a razor.
I couldn’t sit on a chair since I was a prisoner. I sat cross-legged on the grass. I was wearing large straw boots on my feet. The straw boots of this time were very long. When you stood they came up to your knee. At the tops of the boots, bits of straw were left over from the weaving, and they hung down like tassels. They were a decoration, each strand made to move separately when you walked.
The general looked at my face by the campfire and asked if I would live or die. It was the custom of the age to ask every prisoner that. If you answered to live it meant you had surrendered, to die meant you did not surrender. I replied in one word, “Death.†The general pitched his bow, which had been stuck in the grass, behind him, and started to slip out the club-like sword hanging from his waist. The fire, bent by the wind, blew against the sword from the side I opened my right hand like a maple leaf, turned my palm to face the general, and raised it up above my eyes. It was a sign that meant “Wait!†The general placed the thick sword back in the scabbard with a clink.
Even then there was love. I told him that before I die I wanted to see the woman I longed for. The general said he would wait if she came before dawn broke and the birds sang. He said she must be called here before the birds sang. Even if she didn’t come and the birds sang, I would be killed without seeing her.
The general sat and stared at the campfire. I sat with my large straw boots folded together, and waited for her on the grass. The night gradually wore on.
Now and then there was the sound of the fire dying down. Each time it would die down, the seemingly upset flames would start to reach out for the general. Below his jet-black eyebrows, his eyes sparkled. Then, someone would come and throw a bunch of new branches into the fire. After a bit, the fire would crackle. It was a brave sound. It sounded like the snapping back of the darkness.
At this time the woman led out a white horse that had been hitched to a Japanese oak behind our house. She stroked his mane three times and nimbly jumped on his tall back. It was a saddle-less, stirrup-less, bare horse. When she kicked him in the stomach with her long white legs he took off at a full gallop. The far sky looked faintly light, as if someone had attached the campfire to it. The horse aimed for this area of light and flew through the darkness. From his nose, breath like two columns of fire was being expelled while he ran. Nevertheless, she kept on kicking his stomach with her thin legs. The horse was running just as fast as if the sound of his hooves was being played on a flute. Her hair lingered in the darkness like a streamer. Yet she still couldn’t make it to the campfire.
Then, at the side of the pitch black road, a bird suddenly cried cock-a-doodle-doo. The woman turned her body toward the sky, and strongly pulled up on the reins she was gripping in both hands. The horse’s front legs cut into the top of a hard crag.
The rooster crowed out once again, cock-a-doodle-doo.
The woman cried out, and at the same time loosened up on the tight reins. The horse broke both of his knees. Both the rider and horse tumbled directly forward. Below the crag, there was a deep abyss.
The imprint of the horse’s hooves is still left on top of the crag. The thing that impersonated a crying bird is a devil. While the imprint of the hooves was being etched into the rock, the devil was my enemy.
