Blue Bamboo: Tales by Dazai Osamu by Dazaï Osamu Page B

sky like a stone. Blue Bamboo raced to him with lightning speed, caught him under one wing, and carried him back to the balcony of the King Wu Shrine, where she laid him down and clung to him, shedding a flood of tears as she tried to tend to his wound. The damage was too severe, however, and Blue Bamboo, seeing that her husband was beyond hope, let out a keening, mournful cry to summon the rest of the flock. Learning what had just occurred, the flock took to the air with a great flapping of wings to surround the soldiers’ ship and fan the water, roiling the surface with tremendous waves that in no time at all caused the vessel to capsize and sink. Thus avenged, the great flock of crows lifted their voices in a triumphant song that resounded across the entire lake. Blue Bamboo hurried back to Yu Jung’s side and gently pressed her cheek against his.
    “Do you hear that?” she whispered plaintively. “Do you hear the victory song of your comrades?”
    The pain in Yu Jung’s breast was insufferable. He opened his unseeing eyes and with his dying breath murmured:
    “Blue Bamboo...”
    And with that he awoke to find that he was once again a man, the same impoverished scholar as before, lying on the balcony of the King Wu Shrine. The setting sun burned brightly on the maple trees in the woods before him, where hundreds of crows were innocently hopping from twig to twig, playing and laughing.
    “Finally woke up, did you?”
    An old man dressed in peasant clothing smiled down at him.
    “Who... Who are you?” said Yu Jung.
    “Me? I’m just a farmer from down the road. I passed by here yesterday evening and found you lying there, dead to the world. I called out to you as loud as I could, but you wouldn’t wake up. Shook you by the shoulders and everything—you just snored away, smiling to yourself every now and then. I was worried even after I got home, so I kept coming back to check on you. You’re pale as a ghost, you know that? You sick or something?”
    “No. No, I’m not sick.” Nor, oddly enough, was he hungry now. “Sorry,” he said, apologizing as usual, then sat up on his knees and bowed politely to the farmer. “This is very embarrassing,” he began, and proceeded to explain how he’d come to be lying there asleep on the balcony, finishing with a final, “I’m terribly sorry.”
    The farmer gazed at Yu Jung with compassionate eyes, then took out his purse and handed him a small sum of money.
    “Inscrutable are the ways of heaven,” he said. “Bestir yourself and leap back into the fray. In our seventy years of life, no one knows what might occur. Every ebb has its flow. The heart of man is as changeable as the storm-tossed waves of Lake Tung-t’ing.”
    After offering this unexpectedly eloquent advice, the farmer turned and walked off. Yu Jung felt as if he were still dreaming. He stood and gazed vacantly after the old man, then turned to peer up at the crows assembled on the branches of the maple trees.
    “Blue Bamboo!” he shouted. Startled, the crows all sprang as one from their roosts with a great cacophony of cries. They briefly circled the sky over Yu Jung’s head, then sped out toward the lake and were gone.
    So it was just a dream, Yu Jung thought sadly. He shook his head, breathed a deep sigh, and dejectedly set out for home.
    No one there seemed to have missed him much. His cold-hearted wife lost no time in setting him to work, ordering him to haul some boulders to his uncle’s garden. Dripping with sweat, Yu Jung pushed, rolled, and carried any number of enormous rocks from the riverbed, mournfully recalling what Confucius had said: To be poor without resentment is difficult indeed . “Willingly would I die in the evening,” he muttered repeatedly to himself, nostalgic for the happy life he’d experienced in his dream, “could I but hear the voice of Blue Bamboo in the morning.”
    Po-i and Shu-ch’i did not keep the former wickedness of men in mind , Confucius tells us, and