Page:Anthology of Japanese Literature.pdf/356

352 Overhearing this, Mōemon swore to himself, “That’s the voice of the scoundrel Kisuke, of the Daimonjiya. What a heartless, faithless fellow to be so outspoken against me. Why, I lent him eighty ounces of silver on an I.O.U.! But I’ll get even for what he just said: I’ll get that money back if I have to wring his neck.” Mōemon gnashed his teeth and stood up in a rage. Still there was nothing a man hiding from the world could do about the insults offered him, and while he suppressed his outraged feelings another man started to speak. “Mōemon’s not dead. He’s living with Mistress Osan somewhere around Ise, they say, having a wonderful time.”

This shook Mōemon and sent chills through his body. He left in all haste, took a room in a lodging house along Third Street, and went to bed without even taking a bath. Since it was the night of the seventeenth, he wrapped up twelve copper coins in a piece of paper and handed it to a beggar who would buy some candles and keep the vigil for him that night. Then he prayed that people would not discover who he was. But could he expect that even Atago-sama, the patron of lovers, would help him in his wickedness?

In the morning, as a last memory of the capital before leaving it, he stole down Higashiyama to the theatre section at Shijō-gawara. Someone told him that it was the opening day of a three-act play by Fujita. “I must see what it is like and tell Osan when I return.” He rented a cushion and sat far back to watch from a distance, uneasy at heart lest someone recognize him. The play was about a man whose daughter was stolen away. It made Mōemon’s conscience hurt. Then he looked down to the front rows. There was Osan’s husband himself; at the sight Mōemon’s spirit almost left him. He felt like a man with one foot dangling over Hell, and the sweat stood like pearls on his forehead. Out he rushed through an exit to return to the village in Tango, which he did not think of leaving again for Kyoto.

At that time, when the Chrysanthemum Festival was almost at hand, a chestnut peddler made his annual trip to the capital. While speaking of one thing and another at the house of the