Akihira se za las izogne smrti

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Akihira se za las izogne smrti

He borrowed a humble house nearby and persuaded the lady to come there and spend the night with him. The master of the house was away, and only his wife was there. She readily agreed, but as there was nowhere for them to lie except her own sleeping place, she gave it up, brought over some mats from the lady’s chamber, and lay down elsewhere. Now the master of the house had heard that his wife had a secret lover, and someone had told him that the man was arranging to meet her that very night. Determined to catch him and kill him, he had told his wife that he was going on a distant journey and would not return for four or five days. He had only pretended to leave, however, and was keeping watch that night. Late in the night he stood listening and heard a man and woman talking in hushed voices. “So her lover has come, just as I thought,” he said to himself, and slipped inside to look. There were a man and woman lying in his own sleeping place, but it was too dark to make them out clearly. He crept up on the side where he heard the man snoring, drew his sword in a backhand grip, and felt about for the place where he thought the man’s belly must be. Just as he raised his arm to plunge the blade in, a shaft of moonlight came through a gap between the boards, and he caught sight of the long ties of a pair of court trousers. It struck him then: “Surely no one who wears trousers like these would come to see my wife. If I have mistaken someone else for her lover, what a cruel and dreadful thing it would be!” He drew back his hand and was feeling the clothes the man wore when the lady suddenly woke. “Who is that? I hear someone here,” she whispered. Her voice was not his wife’s. “Just as I thought,” he told himself, and began to draw away. By then the man lying there had also awakened and was asking, “Who is it? Who is it?” The wife, lying farther down in the house, heard his voice. Remembering how strangely her husband had behaved, she thought, “Can he have slipped back and mistaken someone for my lover?” Alarmed, she began shouting, “Who’s there? Is it a thief?” Recognizing his wife’s voice, the husband realized that other people must be occupying his bed. He rushed out, went to his wife, seized her by the hair, dragged her down, and demanded, “What is the meaning of this?” “Just as I feared!” she cried. “You must have made some dreadful mistake, clever fellow that you are! A gentleman of high rank asked to borrow that place for this one night, so I let him have it and lay down here myself. What an outrageous fool you are!” Her shouting roused Akihira, who asked what had happened. The husband then came forward and said, “I am so-and-so, a servant in the household of the Lord of Kai. Not knowing that a gentleman of the family was here, I very nearly committed a terrible deed. By the merest chance I caught sight of the ties of your court trousers, and that set me thinking, so I stayed my hand.” He apologized most abjectly. The man he called the Lord of Kai was the husband of Akihira’s younger sister. Thus, thanks to the wholly unexpected service rendered by the ties of his trousers, Akihira escaped with his life. Such being the dangers, even when seeking a secret meeting, one should never resort to a disreputable place.