Musashi: Bushido Code (114 page)

"Did Lord Tadatoshi say anything?"

"Nothing in particular."

"Come now, he must have said something."

"No; he left the archery range without a word."

"Hmm." Kojirō looked disappointed but said, "Oh, it doesn't matter. He impressed me as a greater man than he's usually made out to be. I was thinking if I had to serve anyone, it might as well be him. But of course I have no control over how things turn out." He didn't reveal how carefully he had thought about the situation. After the Date, Kuroda, Shimazu and Mōri clans, the Hosokawa was the most prestigious and secure. He felt sure this would continue to be true so long as Lord Sansai held the Buzen fief. And sooner or later, Edo and Osaka would clash once and for all. There was no way of predicting the outcome; a samurai who had chosen the wrong master might easily find himself a rōnin again, his whole life sacrificed for a few months' stipend.

The day after the bout, word came that Gorōji had survive& though his pelvis or left thighbone had been smashed. Kojirō accepted the news calmly, telling himself that even if he did not receive a position, he had given a good enough account of himself.

A few days later he abruptly announced he was going to pay a call on Gorōji. Offering no explanation for this sudden display of kindness, he set out alone and on foot for Gorōji's house near Tokiwa Bridge.

The unexpected visitor was received cordially by the injured man.

"A match is a match," said Gorōji, a smile on his lips and moistness in his eyes. "I may deplore my own lack of skill, but I certainly hold nothing against you. It was good of you to come to see me. Thank you."

After Kojirō left, Gorōji remarked to a friend, "Now, there's a samurai I can admire. I thought he was an arrogant son of a bitch, but he turns out to be both friendly and polite."

This was precisely the reaction Kojirō had hoped for. It was part of his plan; other visitors would hear him praised by the defeated man himself. Calling once every two or three days, he made three more visits to Gorōji's house. On one occasion he had a live fish delivered from the fish market as a get-well present.

Green Persimmons

In the dog days after the summer rainy season, the land crabs crawled sluggishly in the parched street, and the signs taunting Musashi to "come out and fight" were no longer visible. The few that hadn't fallen in the rain-softened earth or been stolen for firewood were obscured by weeds and tall grass.

"There must be something somewhere," thought Kojirō, looking around for a place to eat. But this was Edo, not Kyoto, and the cheap rice-and-tea shops so common in the older city had not yet made their appearance here. The only likely place stood in a vacant lot, screened off with reed blinds. Smoke rose lazily from behind the blinds, and on a vertical banner was the word "Donjiki." The word immediately reminded him of
tonjiki,
which in the distant past had meant the rice balls used as military rations.

As he approached, he heard a masculine voice ask for a cup of tea. Inside, two samurai were energetically gobbling rice, one from an ordinary rice bowl, the other from a sake bowl.

Kojirō seated himself on the edge of a bench across from them and asked the proprietor, "What do you have?"

"Rice dishes. I also have sake."

"On the banner it says 'Donjiki.' What does that mean?"

"As a matter of fact, I don't know."

"Didn't you write it?"

"No. It was written by a retired merchant who stopped in to rest." "I see. Good calligraphy, I must say."

"He said he was on a religious pilgrimage, said he'd visited Hirakawa Tenjin Shrine, Hikawa Shrine, Kanda Myōjin, all sorts of places, making big contributions to each of them. Very pious and generous, he seemed."

"Do you know his name?"

"He told me it was Daizō of Narai."

"I've heard the name."

"Donjiki—well, I don't understand it. But I figured if a fine man like him wrote it, it might help keep the god of poverty away." He laughed.

After a look into several large china bowls, Kojirō took some rice and fish, poured tea over the rice, brushed a fly away with his chopsticks and began eating.

One of the other customers stood up and peered through a broken slat in the blind. "Take a look out there, Hamada," he said to his companion. "Isn't that the watermelon vendor?"

The other man went quickly to the blind and looked out. "Yeah, that's him all right."

The vendor, shouldering a pole with baskets at either end, was walking languidly past the Donjiki. The two samurai ran out of the shop and caught up with him. Drawing their swords, they cut the ropes supporting the baskets. The vendor stumbled forward, along with the melons.

Hamada yanked him up by the scruff of his neck. "Where did you take

her?" he demanded angrily. "Don't lie. You must be hiding her somewhere."

The other samurai thrust the tip of his sword under the captive's nose. "Out with it! Where is she?"

The sword blade tapped menacingly against the man's cheek. "How could anybody with a face like yours think of going off with somebody else's woman?"

The vendor, cheeks flushed with anger and fear, shook his head, but then, seeing an opening, shoved one of his captors out of the way, picked up his pole and took a swing at the other one.

"So you want to fight, do you? Careful, Hamada, this guy's not just an ordinary melon vendor."

"What can this ass do?" sneered Hamada, snatching the pole and knocking the vendor to the ground. Straddling him, he used the ropes to tie him to the pole.

A cry like that of a stuck pig went up behind him. Hamada turned his face around, right into a spray of fine red mist. Looking totally dumbfounded, he jumped up, screaming, "Who are you? What—"

The adderlike blade moved directly toward him. Kojirō laughed, and as Hamada shrank back, followed him relentlessly. The two moved in a circle through the grass. When Hamada moved back a foot, Kojirō moved forward the same distance. When Hamada leapt to one side, the Drying Pole followed, pointing unwaveringly at its prospective victim.

The melon vendor cried out in astonishment, "Kojirō! It's me. Save me!" Hamada blanched with terror and gasped, "Ko-ji-rō!" Then he wheeled around and tried to flee.

"Where do you think you're going?" barked Kojirō. The Drying Pole flashed through the sultry stillness, lopping off Hamada's ear and lodging deep in the flesh under the shoulders. He died on the spot.

Kojirō promptly cut the melon vendor's bonds. Rearranging himself into a proper sitting posture, the man bowed, and stayed bowed, too embarrassed to show his face.

Kojirō wiped and resheathed his sword. Amusement playing faintly around his lips, he said, "What's the matter with you, Matahachi? Don't look so miserable. You're still alive."

"Yes, sir."

"None of this 'yes, sir' business. Look at me. It's been a long time, hasn't it?"

"I'm glad you're well."

"Why wouldn't I be? But I must say you've taken to an unusual trade." "Let's not talk about it."

"All right. Pick up your melons. Then—I know, why don't you leave them at the Donjiki?" With a loud shout, he summoned the proprietor, who helped them stack the melons behind the blinds.

Kojirō took out his brush and ink and wrote on one of the shoji: "To whom it may concern: I certify that the person who killed the two men lying on this vacant lot was myself, Sasaki Kojirō, a rōnin residing at Tsukinomisaki."

To the proprietor, he said, "This should fix it so no one'll bother you about the killings."

"Thank you, sir."

"Think nothing of it. If friends or relatives of the dead men should come around, please deliver this message for me. Tell them I won't run away. If they want to see me, I'm ready to greet them anytime."

Outside again, he said to Matahachi, "Let's go."

Matahachi walked beside him but would not take his eyes off the ground. Not once since coming to Edo had he held a steady job. Whatever his intention—to become a
shugyōsha
or to go into business—when he found the going rough, he changed jobs. And after Otsū slipped away from him, he felt less and less like working. He'd slept in first one place, then another, sometimes at flophouses populated by hoodlums. The past few weeks, he had been making his living as a common peddler, trudging from one part of the castle wall to another, hawking watermelons.

Kojirō wasn't particularly interested in what Matahachi had been doing, but he had written the sign at the Donjiki and he might later be questioned about the incident. "Why did those samurai have it in for you?" he asked.

"To tell the truth, it had to do with a woman...."

Kojirō smiled, thinking wherever Matahachi went, there soon arose some difficulty connected with women. Perhaps this was his karma. "Mm," he IT ambled. "The great lover in action again, eh?" Then, more loudly, "Who is the woman, and what exactly happened?"

It took some prodding, but eventually Matahachi gave in and told his tale, or part of it. Near the moat, there were dozens of tiny tea shops catering to construction workers and passersby. In one of these there had been a waitress who caught everybody's eyes, enticing men who did not want tea to step in for a cup and men who were not hungry to order bowls of sweet jelly. One regular customer had been Hamada; Matahachi, too, dropped in occasionally.

One day this waitress whispered to him that she needed his help. "That rōnin," she had said. "I don't like him, but every night after the shop closes, the master orders me to go home with him. Won't you let me come and hide in your house? I won't be a burden. I'll cook for you, and mend your clothes."

Since her plea seemed reasonable, Matahachi had agreed. That was all there was to it, he insisted.

Kojirō was unconvinced. "It sounds fishy to me."

"Why?" Matahachi asked.

Kojirō could not decide whether Matahachi was trying to make himself appear innocent or whether he was bragging about an amorous conquest. Without even smiling, he said, "Never mind. It's hot out here under the sun. Let's go to your house, and you can tell me about it in more detail."

Matahachi stopped in his tracks.

"Is there anything wrong with that?" asked Kojirō.

"Well, my place is—it's not the sort of place I'd want to take you to."

Seeing the distressed look in Matahachi's eyes, Kojirō said lightly, "Never mind. But one of these days soon you must come to see me. I'm staying with Iwama Kakubei, about halfway up Isarago Hill."

"I'd like that."

"By the way, did you see the signs posted around the city recently, the ones addressed to Musashi?"

"Yes."

"They said your mother was looking for him too. Why don't you go to see her?"

"Not the way I am now!"

"Idiot. You don't have to put on a great show for your own mother. There's no way of knowing just when she might find Musashi, and if you're not there at the time, you'll lose the chance of a lifetime. You'd regret that, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, I'll have to do something about that soon," Matahachi said noncommittally, thinking resentfully that other people, including the man who had just saved his life, did not understand the feelings between mothers and their offspring.

They parted, Matahachi ambling down a grassy lane, Kojirō ostensibly setting out in the opposite direction. Kojirō soon doubled back and followed Matahachi, taking care to stay out of sight.

Matahachi arrived presently at a motley collection of "long houses," one-story tenements, each containing three or four small apartments under a single roof. Since Edo had grown rapidly and not everybody could be choosy about where he lived, people cleared land as the necessity arose. Streets came into existence afterward, developing naturally from pathways. Drainage, too, came about by accident, as waste water cut its own path to the nearest stream. Had it not been for these jerry-built slums, the influx of newcomers could not have been absorbed. The majority of the inhabitants of such places were, of course, workmen.

Near his home, Matahachi was greeted by a neighbor named Umpei, the boss of a crew of well diggers. Umpei was seated cross-legged in a large wooden tub, only his face showing above the rain shutter placed sideways in front of the tub for privacy.

"Good evening," said Matahachi. "I see you're having your bath."

"I'm about to get out," replied the boss genially. "Would you like to use it next?"

"Thanks, but I think Akemi's probably heated water for me."

"You two are very fond of each other, aren't you? Nobody around here seems to know whether you're brother and sister or husband and wife. Which is it?"

Matahachi giggled sheepishly. The appearance of Akemi saved him from having to answer.

She placed a tub under a persimmon tree and brought pailfuls of hot water from the house to fill it. When she was done, she said, "Feel it, Matahachi. See if it's hot enough."

"It's a little too hot."

There was the squeaking of the well pulley, and Matahachi, stripped to his loincloth, brought up a bucket of cold water and poured it into the bath before climbing in himself. "Ah-h-h," he sighed contentedly. "This feels good."

Umpei, wearing a cotton summer kimono, placed a bamboo stool under a gourd trellis and sat down. "Did you sell lots of melons?" he inquired.

"Not many. I never sell very many." Noticing dried blood between his fingers, he hastily wiped it off.

"I don't imagine you would. I still think your life would be easier if you went to work on a well-digging gang."

"You're always saying that. Don't think I'm ungrateful, but if I did that, they wouldn't let me off the castle grounds, would they? That's why Akemi doesn't want me to take the job. She says she'd be lonesome without me."

"Happily married couple, eh? Well, well."

"Ouch!"

"What's the matter?"

"Something fell on my head."

A green persimmon landed on the ground just behind Matahachi.

"Ha, ha! Punishment for bragging about your wife's devotion, that's what it is." Still laughing, Umpei rapped his tannin-coated fan on his knee.

Over sixty years old, with a shaggy, hemplike mane of white hair, Umpei was a man who enjoyed the respect of his neighbors and the admiration of the young people, whom he bigheartedly treated as his own children. Each morning he could be heard chanting
Namu Myōhō Rengekyō,
the sacred invocation of the Nichiren sect.

A native of Itō in Izu Province, he had a sign in front of his house saying: "Idohori no Umpei, Well Digger for the Shōgun's Castle." To build the many wells necessary for the castle involved technical skills beyond those of ordinary laborers. Umpei had been hired as a consultant and recruiter of workers because of his long experience in the gold mines of Izu Peninsula. He enjoyed nothing more than sitting under his beloved gourd trellis, spinning yarns and drinking his nightly cup of cheap but potent
shōchū,
the poor man's sake.

After Matahachi emerged from the bath, Akemi surrounded the washtub with rain shutters and had hers. Later, the matter of Umpei's proposal came up once again. Besides having to stay on the castle grounds, the workers were watched very closely, and their families were virtually hostages of the bosses of the areas where they lived. On the other hand, the work was easier than on the outside and paid at least twice as much.

Leaning over a tray on which there was a dish of cold bean curd, garnished with fresh, fragrant basil leaf, Matahachi said, "I don't want to become a prisoner just to earn a little money. I'm not going to sell melons all my life, but bear with me a little longer, Akemi."