Free Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryûnosuke Akutagawa

dressed in a rusty-black robe, was a scrawny old woman, white-haired and monkey-like. She held a burning pine stick in her right hand as she stared into the face of a corpse. Judging from the long hair, the body was probably a woman’s.
    Moved by six parts terror and four parts curiosity, the servant forgot to breathe for a moment. To borrow a phrase from a writer of old, 1 he felt as if “the hairs on his head were growing thick.” Then the crone thrust her pine torch between two floorboards and placed both hands on the head of the corpse she had been examining. Like a monkey searching for fleas on its child, she began plucking out the corpse’s long hairs, one strand at a time. A hair seemed to slip easily from the scalp with every movement of her hand.
    Each time a hair gave way, a little of the man’s fear disappeared, to be replaced by an increasingly violent loathing for the old woman. No, this could be misleading: he felt not so much a loathing for the old woman as a revulsion for all things evil—an emotion that grew in strength with every passing minute. If now someone were to present this lowly fellow again with the choice he had just been mulling beneath the gate—whether to starve to death or turn to thievery—he would probably have chosen starvation without the least regret, so powerfully had the man’s hatred for evil blazed up, like the pine torch the old woman had stood between the floorboards.
    The servant had no idea why the crone was pulling out thedead person’s hair, and thus could not rationally call the deed either good or evil. But for him, the very act of plucking hair from a corpse on this rainy night up here in the Rash ō mon was itself an unpardonable evil. Naturally he no longer recalled that, only moments before, he himself had been planning to become a thief.
    So now the servant, with a mighty thrust, leaped from the stairway and, grasping his sword by the bare hilt, he strode forcefully to where the old woman crouched. Terrified at the sight of him, the crone leaped up as if launched by a catapult.
    â€œWhere do you think you’re going?” he shouted, blocking her way. Panic-stricken, she stumbled over corpses in an effort to flee. She struggled to break past him, but he pushed her back. For a time, the two grappled in silence among the corpses, but the outcome of the struggle was never in doubt. The servant grasped the old woman’s arm—sheer skin and bone like the foot of a chicken—and finally twisted her to the floor.
    â€œWhat were you doing there?” he demanded. “Tell me now, or I’ll give you a piece of this.”
    Shoving her away, he swept his sword from its scabbard and thrust the white steel before her eyes. The old woman said nothing. Arms trembling, shoulders heaving, wide eyes straining from their sockets, she kept her stubborn silence and struggled to catch her breath. Seeing this, the servant realized that this old woman’s life or death was governed entirely by his own will. The new awareness instantly cooled the hatred that had been burning so violently inside him. All he felt now was the quiet pride and satisfaction of a job well done. He looked down at her and spoke with a new tone of gentleness.
    â€œDon’t worry, I’m not with the Magistrate’s Office. I’m just a traveler who happened to be passing beneath the gate. I won’t be tying you up or taking you away. I just want you to tell me what you’ve been doing up here at a time like this.”
    The old woman stretched her wide eyes still wider and stared hard at the servant. Her red-lidded eyes had the sharpness of a predator-bird’s. Then, as if chewing on something, she began to move her lips, which seemed joined with her nose by all her deep wrinkles. He could see the point of her Adam’s applemoving on her scrawny neck, and between her gasps the voice that issued from her throat reached the