Chapter 32 female

female Akutagawa Ryunosuke The female spider is bathing in the midsummer sunshine, thinking about something under the red rose flowers. At this time, there was a sound of flapping wings in the air, and suddenly a bee seemed to fall and landed on the rose flower.The spider looked up sharply.In the still daytime air, the lingering sound of the bee's wings was still trembling slightly. The female spider crept out from under the rose flower at some point.At this time, the bee is covered with pollen, and inserts its mouth into the honey hidden in the stamen. A few brutally dull seconds passed.

On the petals of the red rose, behind the bees almost intoxicated in the nectar, the body of the female spider is slowly revealed.At that moment the spider jumped on the bee's head.While flapping its wings desperately, the bee stings the enemy fiercely.Pollen is flying in the sun due to the bee's swat.However, the spider bites tightly and does not let go. Fights are short lived. Soon the bee's wings failed, and then its feet became paralyzed. Finally, its long beak stabbed two or three times into the sky with convulsions, and this was the end of the tragedy.It is the end of a cruel tragedy no different from human death. ——After a moment, the bee fell down under the red rose flower with its mouth stretched out.The wings and feet are covered with fragrant pollen...

The female spider's body remained motionless, and began to suck the bee's blood quietly. The shameless sunlight, through the rose flowers, shines on the body of this spider that has won the slaughter and plunder in the restored silence of the day.Gray satin-like belly, black glass-like eyes, and what seems to be suffering from leprosy.Ugly, stiff jointed feet--spiders are almost the embodiment of "evil", crawling creepily on dead bees. This extremely cruel tragedy has happened many times in the future.However, in the breathless sunshine and scorching heat, the red rose is still in full bloom every day...

Not long after, in broad daylight, the spider suddenly crawled into the gap between the rose leaves and flowers and climbed up a branch as if remembering something.The flower buds on the branches are about to wither due to the scorching air from the ground, while the petals shrink in the scorching heat, while emitting a faint fragrance.After the female spider climbs here, it keeps going back and forth between the flower buds and the flower branches.At this time, countless white and lustrous spider silks entangle the half-withered flower buds, and gradually entangle the branches again. After a while, a spider sac that looked like a cone made of silk appeared here, dazzlingly white, reflecting the midsummer sun.

After the spider has finished making the nest, it lays countless eggs in this gorgeous nest.Then we wove a thick silk cushion at the mouth of the pouch, sat on it, and then stretched out a gauze-like curtain similar to the ceiling.The curtain was exactly like a cupola, save for a window, which screened the fierce gray spiders from the daytime sky.However, the spider—a postpartum emaciated spider, lying in the middle of the white hall, the rose flower, the sun, and the sound of the bee's wings—seemed to have forgotten all of them, and was just concentrating on contemplating. Weeks passed.

At this time, in the spider sac nest, the new life sleeping in countless spider eggs woke up.The first thing to notice about this was the now old female spider who was fasting and lying still in the middle of the white hall.The spider sensed the new life writhing unknowingly under the silk mat, so it slowly moved its limp feet, biting open the top of the sac nest that separates the mother from the offspring.Countless little spiders kept running into the hall from here.Or rather, the silk mat has become a hundred tiny particles that are moving. The little spiders immediately went through the windows of the cupola, and rushed to the airy and light-transmitting red rose branches.Some of them are crowded on the leaves of roses that are enduring the scorching heat.Some of them crawled curiously into the layers of rose petals that smelled of honey.Another part has already criss-crossed among the rose branches in the clear sky, and began to stretch out filaments that are invisible to the naked eye.If they could sing, on the red rose flowers in the daytime, they would surely sing like a violin hanging on a branch singing in the wind.

However, in front of the cupola window, the she-spider, as thin as a shadow, crouched there lonely and alone.Not only that, but after a long time, I didn't even move my feet.The solitude of the white hall, the smell of withered rose buds—the mother spider, who gave birth to countless little spiders, fulfilled her bounden duty as a mother under the veil-like ceiling that was both a delivery room and a cemetery. With infinite joy, he died without knowing it. ——This is the woman who was born in the scorching heat of nature and killed bees, almost the embodiment of "evil". Made in April 1920

Translated by Lu Yuanming