Buenos Aires rapture

裏山の雑木の繁みを風が渡り戸板に当って音を立てているのを耳にするとオリュウノオバはいつもこの狭い井戸のようにぬるんだ路地に冬が来たと知り、路地に子を置いて新天地に出ていった者らの住みついたブエノスアイレスにも冬が来て路地と同じだというゲットウでも、風が葉を吹き散らし舞い上げ、一瞬の幻の黄色の鳥のように日に輝き眩ゆくぎらめく葉を嬲るように飛ばしているのだろうと思うのだった。オリュウノオバは眼を閉じ、風の音に耳を傾けてさながら自分の耳に舞い上った葉のように風にのって遠くとこまでも果たしなく浮いたまま飛んでいくのだと思った。

中上健次『千年の愉楽』1982年

When she heard the wind crossing the grove from the back mountain and hitting the door and make a sound, Oryū-no-Oba knew that winter had come again to the lukewarm, narrow-as-water-well alleyways. She thought that winter had probably come as well to a ghetto similar to the roji but in Buenos Aires, where now lived many who had left their children behind and had traveled to a new world; a place where the wind also blew up the foliage and played with the fluttering dazzling leaves under a sun that shone as the momentary illusion of a yellow bird. Oryū-no-Oba closed her eyes and, letting the sound of the wind pour into herself, imagined that she was riding on the wind too, soaring aimlessly as far away as possible, just as one of the leaves in her ears.

ーNakagami Kenji, Sennen no yuraku [Pleasures of a Thousand Years] (1982)