“Fine weather, Sir,” said the man to me, taking off a towel from his head. He made a bow, and as he did so, a flash from a sharpened hatchet, stuck in his belt, caught my eyes. He was a sturdily built men of about forty, with a face I remembered seeing somewhere. He spoke to me familiarly:
“Danna paints, too?” I had my colour-box open by me.
“Yes, I have come out here, thinking I might make a picture of this pond. This is a very lonely place; nobody comes round.”
“Yes, it is very much in the mountain. … Danna, you had a time of it in rain, on that pass. I am sure, it was a bad toiling along you had that time.”
“Eh? why, yes, you are the mago-san I saw, then?”
“Yes. I gather faggots as you see and take them down to the town to sell.” Gembey took his load down from his back and sat on it. His hand brought out a tobacco pouch, a very ancient affair, that refused to tell whether it was of leather or of imitation leather. I gave him a lighted match and said:
“It must be a great job for you to cross a place like that, every day?”
“No, Danna, I am used to it. Besides I don’t do it every day, but only once in three days, and sometimes four days.”
“For myself, I should be excused even for once in four days.”
“Aha, ha, ha, ha. It is hard on my pony, and I generally make it four days or so.”
“That is, you think more of your horse than yourself, eh? Ha, ha, ha, ha!”
“Not quite that. …”
“By the way, this pond looks very old. Have you any idea, how old it is?”
“This has been here from olden times.”
“From olden times? How old?”
“Well, from a very long time ago.”
“From a very long time ago, I see.”
“A very long time ago, anyway, from the time when the Jo-sama of Shiota threw herself into it.”
“Shiota? That spa-hotel you mean?”
“Yes.”
“You say the O-Jo-san drowned herself here? But she is alive, very much alive there?”
“No, not that Jo-sama, but a Jo-sama of long, long ago.”
“Long, long ago? About when?”
“Well, a Jo-sama of very great long ago. …”
“What made that Jo-sama of so long ago throw herself into water?”
“That Jo-sama was, it is said, as beautiful as the present Jo-sama, Danna-sama.”
“Yes?”
“One day there came along a bonroji. …”
“Bonroji? You mean that begging minstrel that used to come round of old, playing his shakuhachi pipe?”
“Yes, that shakuhachi bonroji. While this bonroji was stopping at Squire Shiota’s house, the beautiful Jo-sama took a fancy to him. Would you call it fate or what? Anyhow, she said she must have him, and cried.”
“Cried? You don’t say!”
“But the Squire would not have a bonroji for his son-in-law, and drove away the party.”
“Drove away the bonroji?”
“Yes. The Jo-sama ran out of the house after him, and coming here, she threw herself into the water from where that yonder pine tree is standing. The whole place went into an awful excitement then. It is said that the young Jo-sama had, at the time, a mirror with her, and the pond has since come to be called Kagamiga Ike. We still call this the Mirror Pond.”
“Oh, the pond has made a grave, already, at least for one person?”
“A very scandalous affair, indeed.”
“This was about how many Squires back, do you know?”
“It is said to be a very long time back, and … it is between you and I, Danna-san.”
“What?”
“Every generation has had its mad one born in that Shiota family.”
“Oh?”
“A curse must be on that house. They are all saying that the present Jo-sama is getting queer of late.”
“Ha, ha, ha, ha. That seems improbable.”
“You don’t think so? But let me tell you that her mother had a touch of it, too.”
“Is the old lady there?”
“No, she died last year.”
“Hum,” I said, looking at a thin cord of smoke rising from live tobacco ashes, Gembey emptied on the ground, and then closed my mouth. The man went away with the faggots on his back.
I had come out on my unhuman tour to do some painting. But what with my thinking and musing, what with being made to listen to old tales, I knew there would be no picture, no matter how many days I might be at it. This very day I was at the pond with my colour-box and tripod, and I thought I owed it to myself to make a picture of the place, somehow or other. I sat on my tripod and began to make a visual survey of the pool and its surroundings, to make up my mind, on how much of the scenery I should take into my picture. I knew my materials were pine trees, giant-leaved creeping bamboos, rocks and a mirror-like pool of water.
The question was, how much of them should be covered in my canvas. The creeping bamboos were growing quite close to the edge of the water, and some of the rocks were ten feet high, while the pine trees were scraping the sky and cast their shadows into the water far and long, so much so that I could not see how I might take them
