こんな 夢を 見た
After Babel Japan の Mami ですwordファイルを探していたら昔書いた懐かしい原稿を見つけましたお気に入りの日本語の短編小説やら詩なんかを英語に翻訳していた時期がありました（趣味でね）その中で一番のお気に入りは日本文学の中で特に大好きな二つの短編坂口安吾の『桜の森の満開の下』と夏目漱石の『夢十夜』漱石の『夢十夜』の中でも、ほんとに大好きな『第一夜』何年ぶりに見つけた記念にちょっと貼り付けてみます原文の幻想的で美しい情景と言葉のリズムうまく訳しだせたと自分で思っているのですがTens Nights of Dreams = First Night = Soseki NatsumeI had a dream. In the dream,I was sitting with my arms folded,while a woman, lying on her back,said in a silent tone,that she was soon dying.The woman, with her long hair spread on the pillow,was laying her softly-outlined oval face in the hair.On the bottom of her white cheeks,was a blush with warm blood shade,and her lips were naturally red.She could hardly look dying.The woman, however,clearly said “I’m dying” in a gentle voice.I was also sure of her death.Then, I asked, looking down into her face,“Are you? Now you are dying?” “So I am,” replying to me,the woman broadly opened her eyes.They were big, moist eyes,the center of which,surrounded with long lashes,was black sea of darkness.In the bottom of her dark eyes,I saw vivid picture of myself floating.Staring this shine in her dark-black eyes,which looked so deep as to see through,I doubted that she could be still dying.So, I intimately came close to her pillow,asked again, “You aren’t dying? You are all right?”The woman, keeping the dark eyes open in a dozy look,insisted in the same silent tone,“But, as I’m dying, I have no choice”.“Then, can you see my face?” I intently asked,and she replied with a smile“Can I see you? Here are you, in my eyes.”Without a word, I lifted my face back from her pillow.Folding my arms, I wondered if she must die.After a while, she said like this.“After I die, bury me in the ground,dug with a large pearl shell.Put, as the marker, a star debris fallen from the sky.Then wait for me by the tomb.I’ll come again to meet you.”I asked when she would come.“The sun will rise, and the sun will set.And then rise, again set……While the red sun, coming up from east to west,going down from east to west……Can you keep on waiting for me?”I nodded in silenceThe woman, making clearer her gentle tone,“Keep on waiting for me for a hundred years,”spoke up to say.“Wait for me, by my tomb, for a hundred years.I’ll be sure to come to meet you, I promise.”I answered I would just be waiting.That caused the image of me,which had looked vivid in the darkness of her eyes,to collapse in vague.Just as a movement disturbs an image on still water,no sooner did it flow over than the woman closed her eyes.Through her long lashes, a tear dropped onto her cheek……..She had already passed away.I went down to the garden and made a hole with a pearl shell.It was a big and smooth pearl shell with sharp edge.Every time I scooped the soil,the backside of the shell glittered with moon light.There was also a smell of wet soil.After a while, I could finish a hole.I put her body into it.And I gently covered her with soft soil.Every time I put the soil on her,the pearl shell reflected moon light on its back.After that, I fetched a fallen star debrisand lightly put it on the mound.It was a round fragment of a star.While falling in the sky for a long time,it must have been rounded off to get smooth, I imagined.When I was picking it up and putting it on the mound,my bosom and hands became a little bit warm.I sat on the moss.Thinking that from now on, for a hundred years,I would be waiting for her like this,I was staring at her round tomb markerwith my arms folded.Before long, the sun came up in the east as the woman had told.It was a red sun.Also as the woman had told, it set in the west.It went down heavily still in red.I counted, one.After a while, a crimson sun rose slowly.And set in silence.I counted, two.Counting, one, two, in this way,I saw so many red suns as I couldn’t tell how many.Even after counting and counting again,countless red suns passed by above my head.Still, it had not been a hundred years yet.At length, staring the round stone covered with moss,I began to suspect that I might have been deceived by the woman.It was just then that from underneath of the stone,did a green stem grow out crossly toward me.It grew long as I watched it, to stop at my bosom.At the same moment, on the top of the lithely swaying stem,a narrow bud that had been leaning a shade opened its pedals.A pure-white lily smelled at my nose so stronglyas to give a pain to my bone.There came a drop of dew from far away up above onto the flower,and it swung loosely with its own weight.I threw my head forwardto kiss the cold-dew-dripping white pedals.On the moment I lifted up my face from the lily,I automatically looked up to the distant skyand found a dawn star twinkling alone there.It was not until this moment thatI got aware a hundred years had passed now.
