Prevod

A traveler was looking for a place to spend the night when he came upon a large, rather dilapidated house. “Might you put us up here?” he called. A woman’s voice answered, “Certainly. You are welcome to stay,” and the whole party dismounted and went inside. Large though the house was, it seemed almost deserted; there was no sign of anyone but the woman. At daybreak they ate, made ready, and were about to leave when the woman came out and said, “No, you must not go. Stay where you are.” “What is the meaning of this?” the traveler asked. “You owe me a thousand ryō in gold,” she said. “You may leave only after you have settled the debt.” The traveler laughed. “It seems this is a den of robbers!” Then he said, “Wait a moment,” sat down again, and had his leather trunk brought to him. He drew a curtain around himself, remained behind it for a little while, and then called for the woman. When she appeared, he asked, “Did your father perhaps practice divination by the Book of Changes?” “I cannot say for certain,” she replied, “but he did do something like what you have just been doing.” “Just as I thought,” he said. “But why do you say that I owe you a thousand ryō and must settle the debt?” “When my father died,” she answered, “he left me enough possessions to live on, and told me, ‘Ten years from now, in a certain month, a traveler will come and ask to stay here. That man owes me a thousand ryō in gold. Demand the gold from him, and when you find it hard to make ends meet, sell some of it to live on.’ Until now I have managed by selling, little by little, the things my father left me. But this year I have nothing left to sell, and I have been longing for the day he spoke of to arrive. Today you came and asked to stay, so I took you for the man who owed him the gold. That is why I spoke as I did.” “What he said about the gold is true,” the traveler replied. “Such things do happen.” He drew the woman aside and had the pillars tapped. When one gave a hollow sound, he said, “Look, the gold you speak of is inside this pillar. Open it, take out a little at a time, and use it as you need.” Having shown her where it was, he went on his way. The woman’s father had been an accomplished diviner of the Book of Changes. When he divined his daughter’s future, he saw that in ten years she would fall into poverty, and that on a certain day of a certain month a man who practiced the same art would come to lodge at the house. He feared that if he told her where the gold was, she would take it out before she needed it and squander it, leaving herself destitute and at a loss when poverty came. So he had given her those instructions before he died. Because of them, she had kept the house instead of selling it, and had waited for that very day. When she pressed her demand upon the traveler, he too, being a diviner of the Book of Changes, had understood what lay behind it, cast a divination, and shown her the gold before taking his leave. Such was the art of divination by the Book of Changes: it could reveal the future as plainly as though it lay in the palm of one’s hand.