はるか昔、武蔵の国のとある山里に、茂作と巳之吉という二人の木こりが住んでいた。茂作はもう髪が真っ白に近い老人であったが、弟子の巳之吉はまだ十八の血気盛んな若者であった。
Long, long ago, in a mountain village in the old province of Musashi, there lived two woodcutters named Mosaku and Minokichi. Mosaku was an old man whose hair was already nearly white, but his apprentice Minokichi was a hot-blooded youth of just eighteen.
ある冬の日のことであった。二人がいつものように奥山で木を切っていると、午後遅くから空模様が急に怪しくなり、たちまち吹き荒れる猛烈な吹雪に見舞われてしまった。
It happened on a winter's day. The two of them were at work up in the depths of the mountains as usual when, late in the afternoon, the sky abruptly turned strange, and in no time at all they were caught in a fierce, raging blizzard.
帰ろうにも、視界はわずか数歩先までしか効かず、道はすっかり雪に埋もれていた。仕方なく、二人は山道の途中にあった渡し守の粗末な小屋に転がり込み、嵐をやり過ごすことにしたのである。
They tried to start home, but visibility extended only a few paces ahead, and the path was wholly buried in snow. There was nothing for it but to tumble into a ferryman's rough hut beside the trail and wait out the storm there.
小屋には火の気もなく、外と変わらぬほど冷たかったが、もはやそれ以上のぜいたくは言えなかった。二人は身を寄せ合うようにして横になり、長い一日の疲れに身を任せて深い眠りに落ちていった。
There was no fire in the hut, and within it was as bitterly cold as outside, but they could no longer afford any more luxury than this. Drawing close to one another, the two of them lay down, surrendered to the weariness of the long day, and dropped into deep sleep.
夜中、ふと巳之吉は、自分の頬に氷のように冷たい息が吹きかかるのを感じて目を覚ました。半分眠ったままぼんやり目を開けると、すぐそばに、見たこともない白い装束をまとった一人の女の姿があった。
In the middle of the night, Minokichi awoke at the sensation of a breath cold as ice playing over his cheek. Half asleep, opening his eyes to a dim half-vision, he saw, right beside him, a woman in a white robe such as he had never seen before.
髪は深い黒、肌は雪のように白く、何より目を奪われたのは、その口から漏れる息が音もなく白く凍りついていくさまであった。女は茂作の上にすうっとかがみ込み、長い長い白い息を、まるで霜のように吹きかけていた。
Her hair was a deep, cold black, her skin white as snow, and what most of all riveted his gaze was the way the breath escaping from her mouth froze silently into white vapor in the air. She had leaned down softly over Mosaku and was breathing upon him, a long, long white stream of breath like frost.
巳之吉が声を上げる間もなく、茂作は身じろぎひとつしないまま、すでにこと切れていた。
Before Minokichi could so much as cry out, Mosaku, without a single twitch, was already dead.
ようやく気づいた女が振り返り、巳之吉と目が合った瞬間、彼の血は全身から引いていくようであった。「お前にも同じようにしてやろうかと思ったものの、見れば、まだ若い体つきをしておる」と、女は静かな声で言った。
At last the woman noticed him; she turned, and the moment their eyes met, the blood seemed to drain from every part of his body. "I had thought to do the same to you," she said in a quiet voice, "but seeing you, I find your body still very young."
「ゆえに今宵だけは命を助けてやろう。だが、今夜ここで見たことを、たとえ実の母にであれ、決して他言してはならぬ。もし一言でも口外しようものなら、その時には必ず命をもらいに参るぞ」
"And so for tonight only I shall spare your life. But of what you have seen here this night, you must speak to no one — not even to your own mother. Should so much as a word of it pass your lips, in that very moment I will come for your life."
そう冷たく言い残すと、女は戸の隙間から白い吹雪の中へ、煙のようにすうっと姿を消した。気がつくと外はすでに白々と夜が明けかかっており、雪はいつの間にかぴたりとやんでいた。
With those cold words still hanging in the air, she slipped out through a gap in the door and vanished, like smoke, into the white blizzard. By the time he came to his senses, the eastern sky was already pale with dawn, and the snow, at some point or other, had quite stopped.
茂作の弔いを済ませた巳之吉は、それ以来、その一夜の出来事については誰にも一言も漏らさずに胸の奥にしまい込んだ。月日が流れるにつれて、悲しみも次第に薄れていったのである。
After he had seen Mosaku properly laid to rest, Minokichi kept the events of that night sealed deep within his heart and never breathed a word of them to anyone. As the months and years passed, even the grief of Mosaku's death gradually grew dim within him.
あくる年の春先のこと、山道を歩いていた巳之吉は、たまたま同じ方角へ向かう一人の若い旅の娘と道連れになった。彼女はお雪と名乗り、両親を亡くしたばかりで、江戸の親類のもとへ身を寄せる途中であるのだという。
Early in the spring of the following year, Minokichi happened to fall in with a young woman traveling the mountain road in the same direction as himself. She gave her name as Oyuki and said that, her parents having only just died, she was on her way to take refuge with relatives in Edo.
雪のように白い肌と、すらりとした姿に、巳之吉はたちまち心を奪われた。話を聞けば、お雪のほうも宿のあてが心もとないという。そこで巳之吉は思いきって彼女を自分の家に連れ帰り、そのまま住まわせることにしたのである。
Her skin as white as snow, her figure tall and slender — Minokichi was taken with her at once. As they talked, it turned out that Oyuki herself was uncertain where she might find shelter for the night. Resolving to take a chance, Minokichi brought her back to his own house, and there he settled her in for good.
お雪は気立てが優しく、家事の腕にかけては並ぶ者がないほど見事であった。やがて二人は所帯を持ち、その後の十数年の間に、お雪は男女合わせて十人もの子をもうけた。不思議なのは、それほどの年月が経っても、彼女が一向に年を取らないことであった。村の人々はみな、「巳之吉は、あれほどの別嬪さんを妻にできて、世にもまれな果報者だ」と口々に羨んだ。
Oyuki was gentle of disposition, and in the running of a household she had no equal in the village. Before long the two of them set up house together, and over the next dozen or more years Oyuki bore him ten children, sons and daughters alike. The strange thing was that, no matter how the years went by, she did not seem to age in the least. "Minokichi has been able to take a beauty like that for his wife — what a rare lucky man he is in this world!" everyone in the village said, one and all envying him.
ある冬の晩のことであった。子どもたちがすっかり寝静まった後、巳之吉は囲炉裏のそばで針仕事をしている妻の横顔を、行灯の灯りの中でぼんやりと眺めていた。
It happened one winter night. Long after the children had all fallen fast asleep, Minokichi sat by the sunken hearth and gazed in the dim light of an andon lamp at the profile of his wife as she did her needlework.
雪のように白い頬と、髪に映る影とを見るうちに、彼の胸の中には、もう何十年も封じ込めていた一夜の記憶が、不意によみがえってきた。
As he watched her cheek white as snow and the shadow her hair cast against the lamplight, the memory of that one night, which he had kept sealed away for tens of years, suddenly came welling up in his breast.
「お前さんのその横顔を見ていると、若い時分に山で出会ったある女のことを思い出すよ。あれは夢だったのか、それとも本当に起きたことだったのか、今となってもよく分からないのだが」と、彼はついうっかり、永年守ってきた約束を破って口にしてしまった。
"When I look at your face like this," he said, "it puts me in mind of a woman I once met in the mountains, back when I was a young man. Whether that night was a dream or whether it really happened, I still cannot say to this day." Without quite meaning to, he had broken the promise he had kept for all those years.
それまでうつむいて針を動かしていたお雪は、すうっと顔を上げ、巳之吉の顔をまっすぐ見据えた。その目はもはやふだんの優しいお雪のものではなく、あの吹雪の夜の冷たい雪女のそれにほかならなかった。
Oyuki, who until that moment had been bent over her sewing, drew herself slowly upright and looked Minokichi straight in the face. Her eyes were no longer the gentle eyes of the Oyuki he knew; they were nothing other than the cold eyes of the snow-woman from that blizzard-blown night.
「あの時、確かに『誰にも話すな、話せば命をもらう』と申し渡しましたね。今すぐお前を殺してしまおうかと思う反面、残された子どもたちのことを思うと、それもあまりに不憫でなりません。子どもたちのことだけは、決して粗末になさいますな」と、お雪は震えるような声で言った。
"I did tell you then, did I not — 'speak of this to no one; if you do, your life is mine.' I had a mind to take it from you this very moment, but when I think of the children we have been left with, even that is more than I can bear. Above all things, never neglect those children for a single moment," she said in a voice that shook.
最後の言葉を言い終えるか終わらないかのうちに、彼女の体は白い冷気となり、屋根の隙間からすうっと夜の闇へと消えていった。それ以来、お雪の姿を見たという者は、村のどこにも一人として現れなかったという。
Before her last words were quite out of her mouth, her body turned to a white cold mist and slipped away through a chink in the roof into the darkness of the night. From that day forward, not a single soul in the village ever again laid eyes on Oyuki.