Musashi: Bushido Code (23 page)

The old woman blinked her eyes and shook her head. Then she looked at the bearers and snapped angrily, "Shut up! I just want you as witnesses. If the two of us should happen to be killed, I want you to send our bodies back to Miyamoto. Otherwise I don't need your talk, and I don't want your help!" Pulling her short sword partway out of its scabbard, she took a couple of steps in Musashi's direction.

"Takezō!" she said again. "Takezō was always your name in the village, so why don't you answer to it? I've heard you've taken a fine new name—Miyamoto Musashi, is it?—but you'll always be Takezō to me! Ha, ha, ha!" Her wrinkled neck quivered as she laughed. Evidently she hoped to kill Musashi with words before swords were drawn.

"Did you think you could keep me from tracking you down just by changing your name? How stupid! The gods in heaven have guided me to you, as I knew they would. Now fight! We'll see whether I take your head home with me, or you manage somehow to stay alive!"

Uncle Gon, in his withered voice, issued his own challenge. "It's been four long years since you gave us the slip, and we've been searching for you all this time. Now our prayers here at the Kiyomizudera have brought you into our grasp. Old I may be, but I'm not going to lose to the likes of you! Prepare to die!" Whipping out his sword, he cried to Osugi, "Get out of the way!"

She turned on him furiously. "What do you mean, you old fool? You're the one who's shaking."

"Never mind! The bodhisattvas of this temple will protect us!"

"You're right, Uncle Gon. And the ancestors of the Hon'idens are with us too! There's nothing to fear."

"Takezō! Come forward and fight!"

"What are you waiting for?"

Musashi did not move. He stood there like a deaf-mute, staring at the two old people and their drawn swords.

Osugi cried, "What's the matter, Takezō! Are you scared?"

She edged sideways, preparing to attack, but suddenly tripped on a rock and pitched forward, landing on her hands and knees almost at Musashi's feet. The crowd gasped, and someone screamed, "She'll be killed!"

"Quick, save her!"

But Uncle Gon only stared at Musashi's face, too stunned to move.

The old woman then startled one and all by snatching up her sword and walking back to Uncle Gon's side, where she again took a challenging stance. "What's wrong, you lout?" Osugi cried. "Is that sword in your hand just an ornament? Don't you know how to use it?"

Musashi's face was like a mask, but he spoke at last, in a thunderous voice. "I can't do it!"

He started walking toward them, and Uncle Gon and Osugi instantly fell back to either side.

"Wh-where are you going, Takezō?"

"I can't use my sword!"

"Stop! Why don't you stop and fight?"

"I told you! I can't use it!"

He walked straight ahead, looking neither right nor left. He marched directly through the crowd, without once swerving.

Recovering her senses, Osugi cried, "He's running away! Don't let him escape!"

The crowd now moved in on Musashi, but when they thought they had him hemmed in, they discovered he was no longer there. Their bewilderment was acute. Eyes flared in surprise, then became dull patches in blank faces.

Breaking up into smaller groups, they continued until sunset to run about, searching frantically under the floors of the temple buildings and in the woods for their vanished prey.

Still later, as people were going back down the darkened slopes of Sannen and Chawan hills, one man swore that he had seen Musashi jump with the effortlessness of a cat to the top of the six-foot wall by the western gate and disappear.

Nobody believed this, least of all Osugi and Uncle Gon.

The Water Sprite

In a hamlet northwest of Kyoto, the heavy thuds of a mallet pounding rice straw shook the ground. Unseasonal torrents of rain soaked into the brooding thatched roofs. This was a sort of no-man's-land, between the city and the farming district, and the poverty was so extreme that at twilight the smoke of kitchen fires billowed from only a handful of houses.

A basket hat suspended under the eaves of one small house proclaimed in bold, rough characters that this was an inn, albeit one of the cheapest variety. The travelers who stopped here were impecunious and rented only floor space. For pallets they paid extra, but few could afford such luxury.

In the dirt-floored kitchen beside the entranceway, a boy leaned with his hands on the raised tatami of the adjoining room, in the center of which was a sunken hearth.

"Hello! . . . Good evening! . . . Anybody here?" It was the errand boy from the drinking shop, another shabby affair just down the road.

The boy's voice was too loud for his size. He could not have been more than ten or eleven years old, and with his hair wet from the rain and hanging down over his ears, he looked no more substantial than a water sprite in a whimsical painting. He was dressed for the part too: thigh-length kimono with tubular sleeves, a thick cord for an obi, and mud splattered clear up his back from running in his wooden clogs.

"That you, Jō?" called the old innkeeper from a back room.

"Yes. Would you like me to bring you some sake?"

"No, not today. The lodger isn't back yet. I don't need any."

"Well, he'll want some when he does come back, won't he? I'll bring the usual amount."

"If he does, I'll come get it myself."

Reluctant to leave without an order, the boy asked, "What are you doing in there?"

"I'm writing a letter, going to send it by the packhorse up to Kurama tomorrow. But it's a bit difficult. And my back's getting sore. Be quiet, don't bother me."

"That's pretty funny, isn't it? You're so old you're beginning to stoop, and you still don't know how to write properly!"

"That's enough out of you. If I hear any more sass, I'll take a stick of firewood to you."

"Want me to write it for you?"

"Ha, as if you could."

"Oh, I can," the boy asserted as he came into the room. He looked over the old man's shoulder at the letter and burst into laughter. "Are you trying to write 'potatoes'? The character you've written means 'pole.'"

"Quiet!"

"I won't say a word, if you insist. But your writing's terrible. Are you planning to send your friends some potatoes, or some poles?"

"Potatoes."

The boy read a moment longer, then announced, "It's no good. Nobody but you could guess what this letter's supposed to mean!"

"Well, if you're so smart, see what you can do with it, then."

"All right. Just tell me what you want to say." Jōtarō sat down and took up the brush.

"You clumsy ass!" the old man exclaimed.

"Why call me clumsy? You're the one who can't write!"

"Your nose is dripping on the paper."

"Oh, sorry. You can give me this piece for my pay." He proceeded to blow his nose on the soiled sheet. "Now, what is it you want to say?" Holding the brush firmly, he wrote with ease as the old man dictated.

Just as the letter was finished, the lodger returned, casually throwing aside a charcoal sack he had picked up somewhere to put over his head.

Musashi, stopping by the door, wrung the water out of his sleeves and grumbled, "I guess this'll be the end of the plum blossoms." In the twenty-odd days Musashi had been there, the inn had come to seem like home. He was gazing out at the tree by the front gate, where pink blossoms had greeted his eye every morning since his arrival. The fallen petals lay scattered about in the mud.

Entering the kitchen, he was surprised to catch a glimpse of the boy from the sake shop, head to head with the innkeeper. Curious as to what they were doing, he stole up behind the old man and peered over his shoulder.

Jōtarō looked up into Musashi's face, then hastily hid the brush and paper behind him. "You shouldn't sneak up on people like that," he complained.

"Let me see," said Musashi teasingly.

"No," said Jōtarō with a defiant shake of his head.

"Come on, show me," said Musashi.

"Only if you buy some sake."

"Oh, so that's your game, is it? All right, I'll buy some."

"Five gills?"

"I don't need that much."

"Three gills?"

"Still too much."

"Well, how much? Don't be such a tightwad!"

"Tightwad? Now, you know I'm only a poor swordsman. Do you think I have money to throw away?

"All right. I'll measure it out myself, give you your money's worth. But if I do, you have to promise to tell me some stories."

The bargaining concluded, Jōtarō splashed cheerfully off into the rain. Musashi picked up the letter and read it. After a moment or two, he turned to the innkeeper and asked, "Did he really write this?"

"Yes. Amazing, isn't it? He seems very bright."

While Musashi went to the well, poured some cold water over himself and put on dry clothes, the old man hung a pot over the fire and set out some pickled vegetables and a rice bowl. Musashi came back and sat down by the hearth.

"What's that rascal up to?" muttered the innkeeper. "He's taking a long time with the sake."

"How old is he?"

"Eleven, I think he said."

"Mature for his age, don't you think?"

"Mm. I suppose it's because he's been working at the sake shop since he was seven. He runs up against all kinds there—wagon drivers, the paper-maker down the way, travelers, and what have you."

"I wonder how he learned to write so well."

"Is he really that good?"

"Well, his writing has a certain childish quality, but there's an appealing—what can I say?—directness about it. If I had a swordsman in mind, I would say it shows spiritual breadth. The boy may eventually be somebody."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean become a real human being."

"Oh?" The old man frowned, took the lid off the pot and resumed his grumbling. "Still not back. I'll bet he's dawdling somewhere."

He was about to put on his sandals and go for the sake himself when Jōtarō returned. "What have you been up to?" he asked the boy. "You've been keeping my guest waiting."

"I couldn't help it. There was a customer in the shop, very drunk, and he grabbed hold of me and started asking a lot of questions."

"What kind of questions?"

"He was asking about Miyamoto Musashi."

"And I suppose you did a lot of blabbering."

"It wouldn't matter if I did. Everybody around here knows what happened at Kiyomizudera the other day. The woman next door, the daughter of the lacquer man—both of them were at the temple that day. They saw what happened."

"Stop talking about that, won't you?" Musashi said, almost in a pleading tone.

The sharp-eyed boy sized up Musashi's mood and asked, "Can I stay here for a while and talk with you?" He started washing off his feet, preparing to come into the hearth room.

"It's all right with me, if your master won't mind."

"Oh, he doesn't need me right now."

"All right."

"I'll warm up your sake for you. I'm good at that." He settled a sake jar into the warm ashes around the fire and soon announced it was ready.

"Fast, aren't you?" said Musashi appreciatively.

"Do you like sake?"

"Yes."

"But being so poor, I guess you don't drink very much, do you?" "That's right."

"I thought men who were good at the martial arts served under great lords and got big allowances. A customer at the shop told me once that Tsukahara Bokuden always used to go around with seventy or eighty retainers, a change of horses and a falcon."

"That's true."

"And I heard that a famous warrior named Yagyū, who serves the House of Tokugawa, has an income of fifty thousand bushels of rice."

"That's true too."

"Then why are you so poor?"

"I'm still studying."

"How old will you have to be before you have lots of followers?" "I don't know if I ever will."

"What's the matter? Aren't you any good?"

"You heard what the people who saw me at the temple said. Any way you look at it, I ran away."

"That's what everybody's saying: that
shugyōsha
at the inn—that's you—is a weakling. But it makes me mad to listen to them." Jōtarō's lips tightened in a straight line.

"Ha, ha! Why should you mind? They're not talking about you."

"Well, I feel sorry for you. Look, the paper-maker's son and the cooper's son and some of the rest of the young men all get together sometimes behind the lacquer shop for sword practice. Why don't you fight one of them and beat him?"

"All right. If that's what you want, I will."

Musashi was finding it difficult to refuse anything the boy asked, partly because he himself was in many ways still a boy at heart and was able to sympathize with Jōtarō. He was always looking, mostly unconsciously, for something to take the place of the family affection lacking from his own boyhood.

"Let's talk about something else," he said. "I'll ask you a question for a change. Where were you born?"

"In Himeji."

"Oh, so you're from Harima."

"Yes, and you're from Mimasaka, aren't you? Somebody said you were." "That's right. What does your father do?"

"He used to be a samurai. A real honest-to-goodness samurai!"

At first Musashi looked astonished, but actually the answer explained several things, not the least of which was how the boy had learned to write so well. He asked the father's name.

"His name is Aoki Tanzaemon. He used to have an allowance of twenty-five hundred bushels of rice, but when I was seven he left his lord's service and came to Kyoto as a rōnin. After all his money was gone, he left me at the sake shop and went to a temple to become a monk. But I don't want to stay at the shop. I want to become a samurai like my father was, and I want to learn swordsmanship like you. Isn't that the best way to become a samurai?"

The boy paused, then continued earnestly: "I want to become your follower—go around the country studying with you. Won't you take me on as your pupil?"

Having blurted out his purpose, Jōtarō put on a stubborn face reflecting clearly his determination not to take no for an answer. He could not know, of course, that he was pleading with a man who had caused his father no end of trouble. Musashi, for his part, could not bring himself to refuse out of hand. Yet what he was really thinking of was not whether to say yes or no but of Aoki Tanzaemon and his unfortunate fate. He could not help sympathizing with the man. The Way of the Samurai was a constant gamble, and a samurai had to be ready at all times to kill or be killed. Mulling over this example of life's vicissitudes, Musashi was saddened, and the effect of the sake wore off quite suddenly. He felt lonely.

Jōtarō was insistent. When the innkeeper tried to get him to leave Musashi alone, he replied insolently and redoubled his efforts. He caught hold of Musashi's wrist, then hugged his arm, finally broke into tears.

Musashi, seeing no way out, said, "All right, all right, that's enough. You can be my follower, but only after you go and talk it over with your master." Jōtarō, satisfied at last, trotted off to the sake shop.

The next morning, Musashi rose early, dressed, and called to the innkeeper, "Would you please fix me a lunch box? It's been nice staying here these few weeks, but I think I'll go on to Nara now."

"Leaving so soon?" asked the innkeeper, not expecting the sudden departure. "It's because that boy was pestering you, isn't it?"

"Oh, no, it's not his fault. I've been thinking about going to Nara for some time—to see the famous lance fighters at the Hōzōin. I hope he doesn't give you too much trouble when he finds out I'm gone."

"Don't worry about it. He's only a child. He'll scream and yell for a while, then forget all about it."

"I can't imagine that the sake man would let him leave anyway," said Musashi as he stepped out onto the road.

The storm had passed, as if wiped away, and the breeze brushed gently against Musashi's skin, quite unlike the fierce wind of the day before.

The Kamo River was up, the water muddy. At one end of the wooden bridge at Sanjō Avenue, samurai were examining all the people who came and went. Asking the reason for the inspection, Musashi was told it was because of the new shōgun's impending visit. A vanguard of influential and minor feudal lords had already arrived, and steps were being taken to keep dangerous unattached samurai out of the city. Musashi, himself a rōnin, gave ready answers to the questions asked and was allowed to pass.

The experience set him to thinking about his own status as a wandering masterless warrior pledged neither to the Tokugawas nor to their rivals in Osaka. Running off to Sekigahara and taking sides with the Osaka forces against the Tokugawas was a matter of inheritance. That had been his father's allegiance, unchanged from the days when he served under Lord Shimmen of Iga. Toyotomi Hideyoshi had died two years before the battle; his supporters, loyal to his son, made up the Osaka faction. In Miyamoto, Hideyoshi was considered the greatest of heroes, and Musashi remembered how as a child he had sat at the hearth and listened to tales of the great warrior's prowess. These ideas formed in his youth lingered with him, and even now, if pressed to say which side he favored, he'd probably have said Osaka.