Sōseki: Ten Nights' Dreams - The Ninth Dream

The world has somehow become unsettled. A battle may break out at any moment. There is panic in the air, as though an unbridled horse has plunged wildly from a burning stable and is day and night running amok, round and round the house and grounds, raucous grooms in pursuit. Yet within the house all was still.

In the house were a young mother and a three-year-old child. The father had gone away somewhere. It was on a midnight dark and moonless that the father had gone away. He had put on straw sandals and his black hood as he sat on the bed, and then he had left by the backdoor. The flame of the lantern that the mother held cut a narrow strip of light into the thick darkness and shone momentarily on an old cypress tree by the hedge.

The father had not returned since that time. Every day the mother would ask the three-year-old child, where is Father? At first the child would not answer, but then would say, over there. Even when the mother asked, when will Father be back home?, the child only smiled and again answered, over there. Then the mother would smile, too. The mother tried again and again to teach the child the words, Father will be back in a minute. However, the child only learned to repeat, in a minute. After that, every once in a while, when asked, where is Father? the child would answer, in a minute.

Every night, when it began to grow dark and still, the mother retied her obi sash and put into it a dagger in a shark-skin sheath. Then she tied the child to her back with a narrow obi, and went out softly through the wicket. The mother always wore straw sandals. The child was sometimes lulled to sleep on her back, listening to the rhythmic padding of those sandals.

Going west along the adobe walls of the neighboring estates and down a gentle incline, there stands a big gingko tree. A turn to the right at the gingko tree leads one to a torii arch of stone, the gateway to a shrine a hundred meters beyond. With rice fields on one side and a low patch of dwarf bamboo on the other, one reaches the torii. Beyond the torii is a clump of black cedars. Walking alone the stone-paved path for another forty meters, one comes upon the stairs leading to the old shrine. Above the offertory box, weathered gray by the sun and rain, a pull-rope hangs down from the big wishing bell. In the daytime, one can see the wooden plaque inscribed with the name Hachiman-guu, the shrine of the god of war. The Japanese figure hachi (eight) is curiously formed, like two doves beak to beak. Nearby there are framed pictures, mostly records of famous marksmen and their prowess with the arrow, plus an occasional sword, in dedication to the shrine.




Every time when the child passes through the torii, it can hear an owl hooting in the top of a cedar. The child also hears the slap-slap of the mother’s straw sandals on the paving stones. Then the sound stops as she rings the wishing bell and stoops down to clap her hands in the ritual way. Even the owl stops hooting. Then the mother prays to the gods with all her heart for her husband’s safety. She has no doubt that Hachiman, the god of bow and arrow, will not leave unanswered her urgent prayer for her warrior husband.

At the sound of the bell the sleeping child often wakes up, and looks around, startled. Then it starts to cry on the mother’s back, there in the darkness. She dandles the child, still murmuring her prayer. At times the crying stops, but sometimes it continues, loud and terrible. But the mother does not yet stand up.

On finishing her prayer at last, she walks up to the holly place, unties the narrow obi and slides the baby around from her back into her arms. She rubs her check tightly against the child’s, saying, you’re such a good baby. Wait here for a moment. After straightening out the tangles in the narrow obi, the mother ties one end around the child’s waist and the other to the balustrade of the oratory. Then she goes down the stairs and paces back and forth a hundred times along the 40-metre stone-paved path, offering prayers.

It is lucky for the mother that her child, tied to the balustrade, can creep around the terrace of the oratory as far as the obi reaches. If the child sets up a cry, she tries to finish the prescribed hundred prayers quickly in her anxiety, but she loses her breath. When there is no other way, she interrupts herself, climbs up to the oratory where she hushes the child, and then starts over again from the beginning.

The father, whose safety the mother is so concerned about each night, has already been killed by a lordless warrior.

Such is the sad story that I heard from my mother in my dream.



(Natsume Sōseki)

My comment:

Such a delicate elegy! For Father, for the memory of Mother, for the memory of your own childhood... and for prayers going apparently nowhere. Are prayers and rituals useful? Yes, says the story, yes, at least for us, for our memories, for our elegies. As long as we have faith we live.

(Sōseki)