Page:Anthology of Japanese Literature.pdf/280

276 To what avail was my troth plighted? Now death has cut the ties which bound me to my husband. And this beloved child, left behind him like a footstep at the parting, only makes my grief more endless…. Oh, how can a mother’s heart endure such sorrow?


 * (The Wife makes a gesture of weeping. The Monk has put the sleeve which he held into the breastfold of his kimono and has been advancing slowly toward the stage. Reaching the Shite’s Pillar, he stops and turns toward the Wife, indicating he has reached the house.)

Pray let me in.

Who is there?

I am a wandering monk, making a pilgrimage throughout the provinces. While I was practicing religious austerities upon Tateyama there came a weird old man and said, “If you are going down to Michinoku, please take a message. I am one who was a hunter of Soto no Hama and who died in the past year’s autumn. Visit the home of my wife and child and tell them to offer up for me the cloak of straw and sedge-hat which are there.” I replied, “If I address her thus without any proof, out of a clear sky, she surely will not believe.” Thereupon he loosened and gave to me a sleeve of the hempen kimono he wore. I have journeyed and carried it with me until now. Perchance it is a token which will call memories to your heart.

Surely this is a dream. Or else a piteous thing. Like unto the song of the cuckoo, heard at early morning, bringing back from Hell a last message from the dead, so now with these tidings that I hear from my departed one. And even as I listen, the tears are springing in my eyes.


 * (Making gesture of weeping.)

Nevertheless, it is too strange a thing, passing all belief. And therefore, crude though it be and lowly as cloth woven of wistaria bark, I will bring out his kimono….