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.