underbrush. At last they climbed a high peak, and looking back whence they had come, reflected on the terrors of their journey. It was, to be sure, the lot they had chosen; still, there was little pleasure in living on in the role of the dead. They were lost souls, miserably lost, on a route that was not even marked by a woodsman’s footprints. Osan stumbled feebly along, so wretched that she seemed to be gasping for what might be her last breath, and her face lost all its color. Mōemon tried every means to revive and sustain his beloved, even catching spring water in a leaf as it dripped from the rocks. But Osan had little strength left to draw on. Her pulse beat more and more faintly; any minute might be her last.
Mōemon could offer nothing at all in the way of medicine. He stood by helplessly to wait for Osan’s end, then suddenly bent near and whispered in her ear, “Just a little farther on we shall come to the village of some people I know. There we can forget all our misery, indulge our hearts’ desire with pillows side by side, and talk again of love!”
When she heard this, Osan felt better right away. “How good that sounds! Oh, you are worth paying with one’s life for!”
A pitiful woman indeed, whom lust alone could arouse, Osan was carried by Mōemon pickaback into the fenced enclosure of a tiny village. Here was the highway to the capital, and a road running along the mountainside wide enough for two horses to pass each other. Here, too, was a teahouse thatched with straw built up of cryptomeria branches woven together. A sign said “Finest Home Brew Here,” but the rice cakes were many days old and dust had deprived them of their whiteness. On a side counter were tea-brushes, clay dolls, and dancing-drummer dolls-all reminiscent of Kyoto and therefore a tonic to the weary travelers, who rested there a while. Mōemon and Osan enjoyed it so much that upon leaving they offered the old innkeeper a gold piece. But he scowled unappreciatively, like a cat that is shown an umbrella.[1] “Please pay me for the tea,” he demanded, and they were amused to think that less than fifteen miles from the capital there should be a village which had not yet heard of gold pieces.
- ↑ Roughly equivalent to “casting pearls before swine.”
