Pokojnica, ki se je vračala domov

Besedilo

Pokojnica, ki se je vračala domov

Long ago, a man who had once served as governor of Nagato had two daughters. The elder was married, while the younger entered court service when she was still very young, but later returned to live at home. She had no settled husband, though there were men who came to visit her from time to time. The house stood near Takatsuji and Muromachi. After their parents died, the elder sister occupied the rooms at the back. The younger sister habitually received visitors and talked with them at a doorway on the western side of the house’s south front. When she was about twenty-seven or twenty-eight, she fell gravely ill and died. As the inner rooms were cramped, her body was laid there by the doorway. But it could not be left so forever, and her elder sister and the others made the necessary preparations and took it out to Toribeno. There, as they lifted the coffin down from the carriage to perform the customary rites, they found it strangely light, with its lid a little ajar. Puzzled, they opened it and looked inside: there was nothing there, not the least trace of anything. The body could hardly have fallen out along the road, and they could not understand what had happened. Astonished and at a loss, they nevertheless could not simply leave matters as they were. They hurried back, searching the road on the chance of finding it, but there was no reason it should be there, and so they returned to the house. Looking inside, just in case, they found the body lying by the doorway exactly as before. In wonder and terror, her family and those close to her gathered and anxiously discussed what to do. By then the night was far advanced, and there was nothing to be done. When morning came, they put her into the coffin again, this time securing it thoroughly, intending to see the matter through that night. Toward evening, however, they noticed that the lid of the coffin stood slightly open. Though terrified and utterly bewildered, those close to her approached to look more carefully, and found that she had come out of the coffin and was once again lying by the doorway. More astonished than ever, they tried by every means to lift her back in, but she would not move in the slightest. It was like trying to wrench loose a great tree rooted in the earth. Helpless, they began to wonder whether she meant to remain in that very place. An older member of the household went up to her and said, “Is it your wish to stay here? If so, we shall lay you to rest here. But you cannot be left like this—it would be too unseemly.” They then broke up the floorboards by the doorway and tried to lower her beneath them. This time she could be lowered with perfect ease. With no other course left to them, they removed the flooring from that whole bay of the house, buried her there, and raised a high mound over her. The people of the household found it too unsettling to go on living beside it, and all moved away. As the years passed, the main hall fell into ruin and vanished. For some reason, it was said that even people of humble station could not settle near the mound, for uncanny things happened there. No one at all could make a home on the spot, and the mound alone remained. North of Takatsuji and west of Takaramachi, along the Takatsuji frontage, there was a stretch of some six or seven ken without even a small house, and there the single mound stood high. How it came about I do not know, but a shrine to a deity is said to have been consecrated on top of it. They say it is still there to this day.