Prevod

This, too, happened long ago. Some twenty horses laden with salmon from Echigo Province were being driven into the capital through Awataguchi. Near the place where the Awataguchi smiths lived, a big lad with a bald crown, a scowling face, and a thoroughly disagreeable air darted in among the salmon-laden horses. The road was narrow, and as the animals jostled together, the lad ran alongside them, pulled out two salmon, and slipped them inside his robes. Then he ran on ahead as though nothing had happened. But the man accompanying the salmon had seen him. Running ahead, he caught the lad by the scruff of the neck, pulled him to a halt, and said, “You wretch! What do you mean by stealing these salmon?” “I did no such thing,” the lad replied. “What proof have you to make such an accusation? You stole them yourself and are trying to lay it on me.” As they wrangled, people going up and down the road gathered in a crowd, stopping to watch instead of continuing on their way. The salmon carrier insisted, “I saw you take them and tuck them inside your robes!” But the lad retorted, “You’re the one who stole them!” At last the man accompanying the salmon said, “Very well, then. Let us both show what we have inside our clothes.” “Surely there’s no need to go that far,” said the lad. But the man took off his trousers, spread open his robes, and said, “Here, have a good look!” He shook his clothes vigorously, then seized the lad and said, “Now you, fellow! Take your clothes off, and be quick about it!” “This is disgraceful! Must you really go to such lengths?” the lad protested. But the man made him strip all the same, and when he pulled open the front of the lad’s robes, there were the two salmon, tucked against his belly at the waist. “There! There!” cried the man, hauling them out. The lad looked down and said, “Well, what an outrageous fellow you are! Strip a person naked and rummage about like that, and what lady of the court, what empress even, would you find without a foot or two of salmon at her waist?” At this, they say, the whole crowd that had stopped to watch burst out laughing.