This story in the original Japanese can be found here.
***
Childbirth*
for Hagiwara Sakutaro**
The man returned from the river with the reeds he had cut and with them thatched the roof for the room in which the woman would have her baby. He then again returned to the shore of the river from before. There, he knelt among the remaining reeds and prayed to Amaterasu for the happiness of the mother and the child.
When it began to get dark, the woman left the room, and came to the man among the reeds.
Then she said: “In seven days’ time please return. I will show you my child.”
The man wanted to come and see the child a day earlier. But like a father, he obediently acceded to the mother’s request.
Night had fallen. The man got in the canoe he had tied up in the reeds and returned by himself to the village downstream.
But when he returned to the village, he thought that waiting seven days was not so much cruel as heartbreaking.
So, every day, he removed one of the seven ornaments hanging around his neck. The increasing number of these ornaments he held was of minimal comfort.
Every day, he left from the east and came from the west. The ornaments around his neck had grown fewer every day. But on the sixth day his patience at last failed him.
That night, the man tied his canoe among the reeds and he crept silently to the woman’s room.
When he looked in, it was so silent that it was as if no one was there. It was just a normal room. The reeds of the thatched roof had the scent of a warm autumn day.
The man opened the door quietly.
On the floor of reed leaves, he could see babies, faintly moving.
The man stepped into the room even more quietly than before. Then, he stooped down timidly.
Then, down at the river, a horrifying scream shook the roots of the reeds.
The man’s scream was understandable. What the woman had given birth to were seventy-four small white snakes…
- - -
Recently, I have come to look on my own works with the same feelings that the man in the fairy-tale holds.
***
*The title of this story translates directly to “Delivery Room.” I decided that this sounded too hospital-y.
**I have not read any of Hagiwara’s work, but a cursory Googling tells me that he and Akutagawa were once neighbors and that Akutagawa was an admirer of his work.