Short Fiction

here, “Success! Success!”

But suddenly he noticed that below on the thread countless sinners were climbing eagerly after him, up and up, just like a procession of ants.

When he saw this, Kandata simply blinked his eyes for a moment, with his big mouth hanging foolishly open in surprise and terror.

How could that slender spider’s thread, which seemed as if it must break even with him alone, ever support the weight of all those people?

If it should break in midair, even he himself, after all his effort in reaching this spot, would have to fall headlong back into Hell. It would be terrible if such a thing happened.

But meanwhile hundreds and thousands of sinners were squirming out of the dark Pond of Blood and climbing with all their might in a line up the slender glittering thread. If he did not do something quickly, the thread was sure to break in two and fall. So Kandata cried out in a loud voice,

“Here, you sinners! This spider’s thread is mine. Who on earth gave you permission to come up it? Get down! Get down!”

Just at that moment, the spider’s thread, which had shown no sign of breaking up to that time, suddenly broke with a snap at the point where Kandata was hanging.

So he was helpless. Without time to utter a cry, he shot down and fell headlong into the darkness, spinning swiftly round and round like a top.

Afterwards, only the spider’s thread of Paradise, glittering and slender, hung short in the moonless and starless sky.

III

Standing on the brink of the Lotus Pond of Paradise, the Buddha watched closely all that happened, and when Kandata sank like a stone to the bottom of the Pond of Blood, he began to saunter again with a sad expression on his face.

Doubtless Kandata’s cold heart that would have saved only himself from Hell and his having received proper punishment and fallen back into Hell, had appeared to the Buddha’s eyes most pitiful. But the lotuses in the lotus pond of Paradise cared nothing at all about such things.

The pearly white flowers were swaying about the Buddha’s feet. As they swayed, from the golden pistils in their centers, their ineffable fragrance ceaselessly filled all the air.

It was near noon in Paradise.

Story of a Fallen Head

Part I

Khashoji, a Chinese cavalryman, throwing aside his sabre, clung to the head of his horse in panic. He was sure that his neck had been badly slashed. He remembered having been struck with something, and at the same time he had frantically clung to his horse’s neck. The animal may also have been wounded, for the very moment when Khashoji bent his body upon his saddle, the animal gave a loud neigh, tossed its muzzle in the air, and immediately charged into the centre of the enemy’s cavalry, and began to gallop furiously across the wide Manchurian high-growing millet-fields. A few gunshots came from behind, but Khashoji seemed to hear them as in a dream.

The millet-stalks, which were taller than a man, were trampled down by the madly-galloping horse, and as he rushed through them, they rose and fell like the waves of an angry sea. From right and left they swept Khashoji’s pigtail from side to side. They struck his uniform, and smeared him with the dark-red blood which ran from his neck. But his brain was too confused to notice these things clearly. Only the simple fact that he had been wounded was branded upon his consciousness with a terrible certainty. “I’m wounded! I’m wounded!” he repeated mechanically over and over again to himself, and he wildly kicked at his horse which was already covered from head to foot with sweat.

Only ten minutes before, Khashoji, starting from a Chinese encampment, had been reconnoitering with some of his fellow-soldiers in the vicinity of a hamlet beyond a river, and as they were crossing a field of already-yellowing giant millet, they came upon a troop of Japanese horsemen. The encounter was so sudden that both sides had scarcely time to raise their guns or sabres. The Chinese perceiving a number of caps and uniforms decorated with red-ribbed lines⁠—which distinguish the Japanese soldiers⁠—drew their sabres immediately, and instantly their horses were charging into the enemy’s line. Naturally, under such sudden circumstances, the thought of being killed never entered their heads. “The enemy!” or “Kill them!” was their only idea. Turning their horses suddenly roundabout, and grinding their teeth like angry wolves, they furiously charged the Japanese cavalry. The enemy must have felt the same impulse, for in an instant the Chinese found themselves surrounded with a host of terrible-looking faces. With them were intermingled numberless swords, flashing and hissing in every direction.

From that moment Khashoji lost all sense of time. He remembered strangely and clearly that the tall millet-stalks had swayed beneath his charging horse as if in a storm, and that red-hued sun was glaring down above their waving ears. But how long the noise of the battle had continued, or what losses had occurred, he could not remember at all.

He also recollected that in the confusion of the moment he had shouted madly and had frantically brandished his sabre. Once it had glittered with the colour of fire, but he could not remember whether it had struck anything. The hilt of his sword had become grimy and greasy with sweat. At the same time he felt a terrible thirst in his throat. Then all of a sudden there appeared right in front of him, a threatening-looking Japanese horseman, with his mouth wide open, and with eyes so dilated that his eyeballs seemed to be jumping out of their sockets. From a big rip in his redlined cap peeped the top of a head shaped like a chestnut.

Instinctively Khashoji raised his sabre and drove it down upon the ugly head and cap with all his strength. But what resisted his stroke was not the cap or the head beneath