Part Seven竹取物語 7

The Middle Counselor Isonokami no Maro said to the men who served in his house, "When a swallow builds a nest, tell me of it." They received his word and asked, "What is it for?" He answered, "It is to get the koyasugai shell that the swallow keeps."

The men answered, "We have killed a great many swallows and looked, and the thing is not in their bellies. Only when they bear their young do they put it out somehow, and the moment a man so much as looks, it is gone in a flash."

Another man said, "In every hole of the ridgepole of the cooking house of the Office of the Palace Kitchen the swallows build their nests. If you take trusty men there and tie up a scaffold and set them on it to watch, will not some of all those swallows bear their young? Then you may have them take it."

The Middle Counselor was glad and said, "This is an amusing thing. I did not know it at all. You have told me something of interest." He sent about twenty trusty men and had them set up on the scaffold. From his house he sent messengers without ceasing to ask, "Have you got the koyasugai shell?" The answer they sent back was to this effect: "The swallows too are afraid of so many men perched up here, and they do not come to the nests." When he heard it he was troubled in mind and said, "What is to be done?" Then an old man of that office, an official called Kuratsumaro, said to him,

"If you wish to get the koyasugai shell, I will tell you a plan." And he came forward, and the Middle Counselor sat facing him, forehead to forehead.

Kuratsumaro said, "You are trying to get this koyasugai shell of the swallows by a bad plan. That way you will not get it. Twenty men are up on the scaffold with a great noise, and the birds take fright and do not come near. What you should do is this. Pull down this scaffold, send all the men away, and set one trusty man in an open basket and tie a rope to it. When the bird is about to lay its egg, have the rope hauled up, and let him take the koyasugai shell quickly. That would be well."

The Middle Counselor said, "This is very good," and the scaffold was pulled down and all the men came back.

The Middle Counselor said to Kuratsumaro, "How is a man to know at what time the swallow bears its young, so that he may be sent up?"

Kuratsumaro said, "When the swallow is about to bear its young, it lifts its tail and turns about seven times, and then it seems to drop the young. So haul the man up when it turns the seventh time, and at that moment take the koyasugai shell."

The Middle Counselor was glad, and without letting anyone know he went secretly to the office and mingled with the men, and made night into day to get the thing. He was very glad that Kuratsumaro had told him this, and said, "You are not even one of the people who serve here, and yet you grant me what I desire. This is a joy to me." And he took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to him. He sent him away, saying, "Come to this office again when night falls."

When the day grew dark he went to that office and looked, and the swallows had indeed built nests. As Kuratsumaro had said, they lifted their tails and turned about. A man was set in the open basket and hauled up, and he put his hand into the swallow's nest and felt about, and he said, "There is nothing here." The Middle Counselor was angry and said, "It is not there because you grope for it so clumsily." And he said, "Whom am I to trust?" and, "I will go up and feel for it myself." So he got into the basket and was hauled up and hung there, and watched. As the swallow lifted its tail and turned hard about, he raised his hand and felt, and at the moment when something flat came into his hand he said, "I have hold of something. Now let me down. Old man, I have done it." The people gathered and said, "Let us bring him down quickly," and they pulled the rope too hard, and the rope broke, and he fell straight backward onto the great cauldron on the kitchen range.

The people were aghast, and came near and took him in their arms. His eyes had turned up white and he lay face down. They took up water in their hands and put it into his mouth. When at last his breath came out, they took him by the hands and by the feet and lifted him down from the cauldron. When at last they asked, "How does it feel with you?" he said under his breath, "I am a little aware of things, but my back will not move. Yet I caught up the koyasugai shell at once and I have it, so I am glad. First bring a light here. I will look on the face of this shell." He raised his head and opened his hand, and what he held was the old droppings the swallow had left there.

He looked at it and said, "Ah, this was a thing without worth." And from those words a thing that turns out otherwise than one hoped came to be called "kainashi." And while he was looking and saying, "It is not even a shell," his mind too went astray, and his back was broken so badly that he could not be laid in the lid of a Chinese chest. The Middle Counselor tried to keep men from hearing that he was ill of doing so childish a thing, but it turned into a sickness and he grew very weak.

More than the not getting of the shell, he thought day after day of how people would hear of it and laugh. It seemed to him a more shameful thing to be heard of by people than simply to sicken and die. Kaguya-hime heard of this, and the poem she sent to ask after him was this:

Though the years go by, where no wave comes to the shore, like the Suminoe pines, that your waiting was without worth: is it true, what I hear?

So it was, and they read it out to him. In his very weak state he raised his head, and had a man hold the paper, and in his pain he barely wrote this:

The shell, you see, was here for me after all, yet this life of mine, worn out with grief and fading, it does not save at all.

He finished writing, and his breath went out. Kaguya-hime heard of it and felt a little pity. From that time a thing that gives a little joy came to be called "kaiari."