池尾の禅智内供の鼻と言えば、その地方でそれを知らない者はいないというほどの有名な鼻だった。長さは五、六寸ほどあり、唇の上から顎の下まで、ソーセージのようにぶら下がっていた。色は付け根の方も先端の方も同じく赤く、ふやけたような艶を放っていた。
As for the nose of Zenchi Naigu of Ike-no-o, it was a thing famous enough that not a soul in the region failed to know of it. It was five or six inches long and hung from above the upper lip down past the chin, like a sausage. Its color was red from base to tip alike, with a sheen as of something pickled.
内供は五十歳を過ぎた身だった。年老いてもなお、その鼻のせいで、心の奥に深い悩みを抱えていた。表向きには、僧侶の身でそんなことを気に病むのは恥ずべきことだとして、プライドの手前、平気な顔をして暮らしていた。
Naigu was past his fiftieth year. Yet even in his age, this nose remained the source of a deep distress in the bottom of his heart. On the surface, he held that for one of his priestly station to fret over such a matter would be shameful — and so, for the sake of his pride, he kept up the appearance of indifference.
しかし、内供の苦痛は、まず食事のときに表れた。鼻があまりに長いものだから、椀の汁を飲もうとすれば、鼻の先が口より早く汁に浸ってしまう。それを避けるために、弟子の一人が、鼻の下に細長い板をあてがって、汁を飲み終わるまで支えていなければならなかった。
But the distress that the nose brought him showed itself first at his meals. Because the nose was so very long, when he tried to drink the broth from his bowl, the nose would dip into the broth before his mouth could. To prevent this, one of his disciples had to hold a thin slat of wood beneath the nose, supporting it until the bowl was finished.
第二には、見た目の悩みがあった。鼻を見て笑う者がいるのを、内供はひそかに屈辱として感じていた。「同じ姿の者がいれば、心がいくらか楽になるのに」と、彼は経の中に出てくる人物の中にも、自分と同じ鼻を持つ者を探したが、ついにそれを見つけることはできなかった。
The second was the embarrassment of how it looked. Naigu felt the laughter that came at the sight of his nose as a private humiliation. "If only there were someone with the same shape — my heart would be eased," he thought, and he searched even through the figures in the Buddhist scriptures for one whose nose was like his own, but he could never find such a person.
そこで内供は、鼻を縮めるためのありとあらゆる方法を試してみた。ぐみの皮を煮出した汁を飲んでみたり、ねずみの尿を鼻に塗ってみたり、奇怪な手段はいくつもあった。しかし、いずれも効果はなく、彼の鼻は相変わらず五、六寸の長さで、椀の上に垂れ下がっていた。
So Naigu tried, by every conceivable means, to make his nose smaller. He drank decoctions of the bark of the dogwood; he rubbed mouse urine onto his nose — all sorts of strange remedies. None of it worked, and his nose remained the same five or six inches, hanging down over the rim of his bowl.
ある日のこと、内供に仕える弟子が、新しい方法を仕入れて戻ってきた。それは中国から渡ってきた医者が伝えた方法であり、まず鼻を熱湯でゆで、それから人に踏ませて毛穴から脂を出させるという、奇妙な処方だった。
Then one day, a disciple of his came back with word of a new method. It had been passed down by a doctor newly arrived from China: first the nose was to be boiled in hot water, and then someone was to trample on it, to press out the grease from the pores — a strange treatment, this.
半信半疑ではあったが、内供は試してみることに決めた。表向きは弟子のために試してやるという体裁を取りながら、内心では、ようやく長年の悩みが解決するのではないかという期待を抱いていた。
Half-believing, half-doubting, Naigu decided to try it. On the surface he made out that he was doing it as a favor to the disciple, but inwardly, he was nourishing the hope that at long last his old affliction might find its cure.
熱湯を入れたたらいが用意された。内供は穴のあいた板に鼻を通して、湯にしっかりと浸した。鼻はみるみる赤くなり、しばらくすると、表面にぽつぽつと脂のつぶが浮かんできた。
A basin of hot water was made ready. Naigu put his nose through a hole in a board and dipped it firmly into the water. The nose grew red and red, and after a little while, droplets of grease rose up over its surface.
次に、弟子が内供の鼻を、ゆっくりと足で踏み始めた。「お痛みになりませんか」と問う弟子に、内供は「いや、痛くはない」と顔をしかめながら答えた。脂は次々と毛穴から押し出され、しばらく踏み続けるうちに、鼻はみるみる縮んでいった。
Then, slowly, the disciple began to trample on Naigu's nose with his feet. "Does it pain you?" the disciple asked; "No, it does not hurt," Naigu answered, his face contorted. Grease was forced out of the pores one bead after another, and as the trampling continued, the nose visibly shrank.
処置が終わった後、内供が鏡をのぞき込むと、そこには見違えるほど短くなった鼻があった。彼の鼻はもはや、唇の上にちんまりと収まる、ごく普通の長さになっていた。これでようやく長年の悩みから解放されたと、内供はひそかに喜びに浸った。
When the treatment was done and Naigu peered into a mirror, he found a nose so shortened that he scarcely recognized it. His nose now sat trimly above his upper lip, in altogether ordinary proportion. At long last, Naigu thought, he had been delivered from the trouble of all these years, and he quietly tasted his delight.
翌朝、内供がいつものとおりに本堂へ向かおうとすると、廊下ですれ違う弟子たちが、彼の顔を見て、奇妙な含み笑いを浮かべるのを目にした。最初のうちは、鼻が短くなったので見間違えているのだろうと、内供は思い込もうとした。
The next morning, as Naigu set out for the main hall as usual, the disciples he passed in the corridor took one look at his face and broke into a strange suppressed laughter. At first, Naigu told himself it must be that they were taking him for someone else, because his nose had grown shorter.
しかし、本堂の門の前で立ち話をしていた信徒たちまでもが、彼を一目見るなり、なぜか含み笑いをしながら去っていく。それは以前、鼻が長かった頃の、あからさまなあざ笑いとは、明らかに違う性質の笑いだった。
But when even the lay people standing in conversation before the gate of the main hall caught sight of him, they too, for some reason, turned away with the same stifled laughter. It was a laughter clearly different in nature from the open scorn of the days when his nose was long.
内供は急に不審に思い始めた。「そもそも、鼻が短くなってめでたいはずの私を、なぜ彼らは笑うのか」と、彼は心の中で繰り返し問うた。鼻が長かった頃よりも、今のほうがかえって居心地が悪いとは、いったいどういうわけだろうか。
Naigu began, all of a sudden, to grow uneasy. "By all rights, my having a shorter nose should be a thing for congratulation — and yet, why do they laugh at me?" he asked, over and over, in his heart. How could it be that he was less comfortable now than he had been when his nose was long?
人は他人の不幸に、どこかで安らぎを覚えるものだという。そして、その他人が不幸から救われ、幸福に転じたときには、こんどはなぜか物足りなさを覚え、再びその者を不幸の中に引きずり戻したいと思うものだという。
People, it is said, find some kind of peace in the misfortunes of others. And when such a person is rescued from misfortune and turned to happiness, they feel — somehow — disappointed, and find themselves wishing to drag that person back into misfortune once more.
つまり、長年の同情と哀れみを向けてきた内供の鼻が、突如として普通になってしまったがゆえに、人々は、自分の中の優越感が脅かされたと感じていた。そして、その不快感は、新たな笑いとなって、内供へと向けられていた。
Thus the nose of Naigu, on which they had so long poured out their pity, had suddenly become ordinary — and the people felt the sense of superiority within them threatened. That displeasure took the new form of a fresh laughter, directed now at Naigu.
内供もまた、知らず知らずのうちに、自分の周囲の空気が変わってしまったことを感じ取っていた。短い鼻を得たはずの彼は、かえって以前にもまして沈んだ気分に落ち込むようになっていった。
Naigu, too, sensed without quite knowing it that the air around him had changed. The very man who had won a shorter nose now sank into a gloom heavier even than before.
ある夜のこと、内供は鼻の付け根あたりに、強いかゆみを覚えて目を覚ました。「これは熱が出てきたのではないか」と心配しながら、彼はそのまま再び眠りに落ちた。
One night, Naigu awoke to a sharp itching at the root of his nose. "Perhaps I am running a fever," he thought with some anxiety, and slipped back into sleep just as he was.
翌朝、目覚めた内供が鏡をのぞき込むと、なんと鼻は、以前の長さに戻っていた。すなわち、唇の上から顎の下まで、ソーセージのようにぶら下がる、あの五、六寸の鼻だった。
The next morning, when Naigu peered into the mirror, his nose — to his amazement — had returned to its old length. That is to say, it hung once more from above his upper lip down past his chin, the five or six inches of sausage-like flesh that he had known.
内供は一瞬、深い落胆に襲われた。しかし、不思議なことに、その心の奥には、ある言いがたい安心の念が、ひそかに湧き上がっていた。「もうこれで、誰にも笑われることはないだろう」と、彼は朝の光に長い鼻をさらしながら、独りつぶやいた。
For an instant, Naigu felt a deep disappointment. Yet — strangely — in the very bottom of his heart, a kind of relief he could hardly name was secretly rising up. "Now no one will have anything to laugh at," he murmured to himself, alone, holding his long nose out to the morning light.