Akutagawa

The Great Earthquake


The odor was something close to overripe apricots.  Catching a hint of it as he walked through the charred ruins, he found himself thinking such thoughts as these: The smell of corpses rotting in the sun is not as bad as I would have expected.  When he stood before a pond where bodies were piled upon bodies, however, he discovered that the old Chinese expression, 'burning the nose,' was no mere sensory exaggeration of grief and horror.  What especially moved him was the corpse of a child of twelve or thirteen.  He felt something like envy as he looked at it, recalling such expressions as 'Those whom the gods love die young.'  Both his sister and his half-brother had lost their houses to fire.  His sister's husband, though, was on a suspended sentence for perjury.

Too bad we didn't all die.

Standing in the charred ruins, he could hardly keep from feeling this way.




- from, Life of a Stupid Man

trns. by Jay Rubin


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