Musashi: Bushido Code (71 page)

"Are you joining your friends for a snow-viewing party?"

"Something like that," said the other man with a slight laugh.

Putting out the candle, the priest said, "I suppose I needn't say this, but if you build a fire near the temple, as those men did earlier, please be careful and extinguish it when you leave."

"I'll do so without fail."

"Very well, then. Please excuse me."

The priest went back through the gate and shut it. The man on the veranda stood still for a time, looking intently toward Denshichirō.

"Hyōsuke, who is it?"

"I can't tell, but he came from the kitchen."

"He doesn't seem to belong to the temple."

The two of them walked about twenty paces nearer the building. The shadowy man moved to a point near the middle of the veranda, stopped and tied up his sleeve. The men in the courtyard unconsciously approached close enough to see this, but then their feet refused to go any nearer.

After an interval of two or three breaths, Denshichirō shouted, "Musashi!" He was well aware that the man standing several feet above him was in a very advantageous position. Not only was he perfectly safe from the rear, but anyone trying to attack him from either the right or the left would first have to climb up to his level. He was thus free to devote his entire attention to the enemy before him.

Behind Denshichirō was open ground, snow and wind. He felt sure Musashi would not bring anyone with him, but he could not afford to ignore the wide space to his rear. He made a motion as though brushing something off his kimono and said urgently to Hyōsuke, "Get away from here!" Hyōsuke moved to the back edge of the courtyard.

"Are you ready?" Musashi's question was calm but trenchant, falling like so much ice water on his opponent's feverish excitement.

Denshichirō now got his first good look at Musashi. "So this is the bastard!" he thought. His hatred was total; he resented the maiming of his brother, he was vexed at being compared with Musashi by the common people, and he had an ingrained contempt for what he regarded as a country upstart posing as a samurai.

"Who are you to ask, 'Are you ready'? It's well past the hour of nine!" "Did I say I'd be here exactly at nine?"

"Don't make excuses! I've been waiting a long time. As you can see, I'm fully prepared. Now come down from there!" He did not underestimate his opponent to the extent of daring to attack from his present position. "In a minute," answered Musashi with a slight laugh.

There was a difference between Musashi's idea of preparation and his opponent's. Denshichirō, though physically prepared, had only begun to pull himself together spiritually, whereas Musashi had started fighting long before he presented himself to his enemy. For him, the battle was now entering its second and central phase. At the Gion Shrine, he had seen the footprints in the snow, and at that moment his fighting instinct had been aroused. Knowing that the shadow of the man following him was no longer there, he had boldly entered the front gate of the Rengeōin and made a quick approach to the kitchen. Having wakened the priest, he struck up a conversation, subtly questioning the man as to what had been going on earlier in the evening. Disregarding the fact that he was a little late, he had had some tea and warmed himself. Then when he made his appearance, it was abrupt and from the relative safety of the veranda. He had seized the initiative.

His second opportunity came in the form of Denshichirō's attempt to draw him out. One way of fighting would be to accept this; the other would be to ignore it and create an opening of his own. Caution was in order; in a case like this, victory is like the moon reflected on a lake. If one jumps for it impulsively, one can drown.

Denshichirō's exasperation knew no bounds. "Not only are you late," he shouted; "you aren't ready. And I haven't got a decent footing here."

Musashi, still perfectly calm, replied, "I'm coming. Just a minute."

Denshichirō did not have to be told that anger could result in defeat, but in the face of this deliberate effort to annoy him, he was unable to control his emotions. The lessons he had learned in strategy deserted him.

"Come down!" he screamed. "Here, into the courtyard! Let's stop the tricks and fight bravely! I am Yoshioka Denshichirō! And I have nothing but spit for makeshift tactics or cowardly attacks. If you're frightened before the match begins, you're not qualified to confront me. Get down from there!"

Musashi grinned. "Yoshioka Denshichirō, eh? What do I have to fear from you? I cut you in half in the spring of last year, so if I do it again tonight, it's only repeating what I've done before."

"What are you talking about? Where? When?"

"At Koyagyū in Yamato."

"Yamato?"

"In the bath at the Wataya Inn, to be exact."

"Were you there?"

"I was. We were both naked, of course, but with my eyes I calculated whether I could cut you down or not. And with my eyes I slew you then and there, in rather splendid fashion, if I may say so myself. You probably didn't notice, because there were no scars left on your body, but you were defeated, no question about it. Other people may be willing to listen to you brag about your ability as a swordsman, but from me you'll get nothing but a laugh."

"I was curious as to how you'd talk, and now I know—like an idiot. But your babbling intrigues me. Come down from there, and I'll open your conceited eyes for you!"

"What's your weapon? Sword? Wooden sword?"

"Why ask when you don't have a wooden sword? You came expecting to use a sword, didn't you?"

"I did, but I thought if you wanted to use a wooden sword, I'd take yours away from you and fight with that."

"I don't have one, you fool! Enough big talk. Fight!"

"Ready?"

"No!"

Denshichirō's heels made a black slanted line about nine feet long as he opened a space for Musashi to land in. Musashi quickly sidestepped twenty or thirty feet along the veranda before jumping down. Then when they had moved, swords sheathed, eyeing each other warily, about two hundred feet from the temple, Denshichirō lost his head. Abruptly he drew and swung. His sword was long, just the right size for his body. Making only a slight whistling sound, it went through the air with amazing lightness, straight to the spot where Musashi had been standing.

Musashi was faster than the sword. Even quicker was the springing of the glittering blade from his own scabbard. It looked as though they were too close together for both of them to emerge unscathed, but after a moment of dancing reflected light from the swords, they backed off.

Several tense minutes passed. The two combatants were silent and motionless, swords stationary in the air, point aimed at point but separated by a distance of about nine feet. The snow piled on Denshichirō's brow dropped to his eyelashes. To shake it off, he contorted his face until his forehead muscles looked like countless moving bumps. His bulging eyeballs glowed like the windows of a smelting furnace, and the exhalations of his deep, steady breathing were as hot and gusty as those from a bellows.

Desperation had entered his thinking, for he realized how bad his position was. "Why am I holding the sword at eye level when I always hold it above my head for the attack?" he asked himself. He was not thinking in the ordinary sense of the word. His very blood, palpitating audibly through his veins, told him that. But his whole body, down to his toenails, was concentrated in an effort to present an image of ferocity to the enemy.

The knowledge that the eye-level stance was not one in which he excelled nagged him. Any number of times he itched to raise his elbows and get the sword above his head, but it was too risky. Musashi was on the alert for just such an opening, that tiny fraction of a second when his vision would be blocked by his arms.

Musashi held his sword at eye level too, with his elbows relaxed, flexible and capable of movement in any direction. Denshichirō's arms, held in an unaccustomed stance, were tight and rigid, and his sword unsteady. Musashi's was absolutely still; snow began to pile up on its thin upper edge.

As he watched hawklike for the slightest slip on his opponent's part, Musashi counted the number of times he breathed. He not only wanted to win, he
had
to win. He was acutely conscious of once again standing on the borderline—on one side life, on the other, death. He saw Denshichirō as a gigantic boulder, an overpowering presence. The name of the god of war, Hachiman, passed through his mind.

"His technique is better than mine," Musashi thought candidly. He had had the same feeling of inferiority at Koyagyū Castle, when he had been encircled by the four leading swordsmen of the Yagyū School. It was always this way when he faced swordsmen of the orthodox schools, for his own technique was without form or reason, nothing more, really, than a do-or-die method. Staring at Denshichirō, he saw that the style Yoshioka Kempō had created and spent his life developing had both simplicity and complexity, was well ordered and systematic, and was not to be overcome by brute strength or spirit alone.

Musashi was cautious about making any unnecessary movements. His primitive tactics refused to come into play. To an extent that surprised him, his arms rebelled against being extended. The best he could do was to maintain a conservative, defensive stance and wait. His eyes grew red searching for an opening, and he prayed to Hachiman for victory.

With swelling excitement, his heart began to race. If he had been an ordinary man, he might have been sucked into a whirlpool of confusion and succumbed. Yet he remained steady, shaking off his sense of inadequacy as if it were no more than snow on his sleeve. His ability to control this new exhilaration was the result of having already survived several brushes with death. His spirit was fully awake now, as though a veil had been removed from before his eyes.

Dead silence. Snow accumulated on Musashi's hair, on Denshichirō's shoulders.

Musashi no longer saw a great boulder before hint. He himself no longer existed as a separate person. The will to win had been forgotten. He saw the whiteness of the snow falling between himself and the other man, and the spirit of the snow was as light as his own. The space now seemed an extension of his own body. He had become the universe, or the universe had become him. He was there, yet not there.

Denshichirō's feet inched forward. At the tip of his sword, his willpower quivered toward the start of a movement.

Two lives expired with two strokes of a single sword. First, Musashi attacked to his rear, and Otaguro Hyōsuke's head, or a piece of it, sailed past Musashi like a great crimson cherry, as the body staggered lifelessly toward Denshichirō. The second horrendous scream—Denshichirō's cry of attack—was cut short midway, the broken-off sound thinning out into the space around them. Musashi leapt so high that he appeared to have sprung from the level of his opponent's chest. Denshichirō's big frame reeled backward and dropped in a spray of white snow.

Body pitifully bent, face buried in the snow, the dying man cried, "Wait! Wait!"

Musashi was no longer there.

"Hear that?"

"It's Denshichirō!"

"He's been hurt!"

The black forms of Genzaemon and the Yoshioka disciples rushed across the courtyard like a wave.

"Look! Hyōsuke's been killed!"

"Denshichirō!"

"Denshichirō!"

Yet they knew there was no use calling, no use thinking about medical treatment. Hyōsuke's head had been sliced sideways from the right ear to the middle of the mouth, Denshichirō's from the top down to the right cheekbone. All in a matter of seconds.

"That's ... that's why I warned you," sputtered Genzaemon. "That's why I told you not to take him lightly. Oh, Denshichirō, Denshichirō!" The old man hugged his nephew's body, trying in vain to console it.

Genzaemon clung to Denshichirō's corpse, but it angered him to see the others milling about in the blood-reddened snow. "What happened to Musashi?" he thundered.

Some had already started searching; they saw no sign of Musashi. "He's not here," came the answer, timid and obtuse.

"He's around somewhere," barked Genzaemon. "He hasn't got wings. If I don't get in a blow of revenge, I can never again hold my head up as a member of the Yoshioka family. Find him!"

One man gasped and pointed. The others fell back a pace and stared in the direction indicated.

"It's Musashi."

"Musashi?"

As the idea sank in, silence filled the air, not the tranquility of a place of worship, but an ominous, diabolical silence as though ears, eyes and brains had ceased to function.

Whatever the man had seen, it was not Musashi, for Musashi was standing under the eaves of the nearest building. His eyes fixed on the Yoshioka men and his back pressed to the wall, he edged his way along until he reached the southwest corner of the Sanjūsangendō. He climbed onto the veranda and crept, slowly and quietly, to the center.

"Will they attack?" he asked himself. When they made no move in his direction, he continued stealthily on to the north side of the building and, with a bound, disappeared into the darkness.

The Elegant People

"No impudent nobleman's going to get the best of me! If he thinks he can put me off by sending a blank piece of paper, I'll just have to have a word with him. And I'll bring Yoshino back, if only for the sake of my pride."

It is said that one need not be young to enjoy playing games. When Haiya Shōyū was in his cups, there was no holding him back.

"Take me to their room!" he ordered Sumigiku. He put a hand on her shoulder to prop himself into a standing position.

In vain, Kōetsu admonished him to be calm.

"No! I'm going to get Yoshino.... Standard bearers, ho! Your general is moving into action! Those with heart, follow!"

A peculiar characteristic of the inebriated is that though they appear to be in constant danger of falling, or suffering some worse mishap, if left alone they usually escape harm. Still, if no one took measures to protect them, it would be a cold world indeed. With all his years of experience, Shōyū was able to draw a fine line between amusing himself and entertaining others. When they thought him tipsy enough to be easy to handle, he would contrive to be as difficult as possible, staggering and tottering until someone came to his rescue, at which point there would be a meeting of spirits on the boundary where drunkenness evokes sympathetic response.

"You'll fall," cried Sumigiku, rushing to prevent this.

"Don't be silly. My legs may wobble a bit, but my spirit's firm!" He sounded peevish.

"Try walking alone."

She let go, and he immediately slumped to the floor.

"I guess I'm a little tired. Someone'll have to carry me."

On the way to Lord Kangan's parlor, appearing to know nothing, yet perfectly conscious of everything, he staggered, swayed, turned into jelly, and otherwise kept his companions on edge from one end of the long hallway to the other.

At stake was whether or not "insolent, half-baked noblemen," as he called them, were going to monopolize Yoshino Dayū. The great merchants, who were nothing more than rich commoners, did not stand in awe of the Emperor's courtiers. True, they were appallingly rank-conscious, but this counted for little because they had no money. By spreading around enough gold to keep them happy, participating in their elegant pastimes, making a show of deference to their status and allowing them to maintain their pride, it was possible to manipulate them like puppets. No one knew this better than Shōyū.

Light danced gaily on the shoji of the anteroom to Lord Karasumaru's parlor as Shōyū fumbled to open it.

Abruptly the door was opened from inside. "Why, Shōyū, it's you!" exclaimed Takuan Sōhō.

Shōyū's eyes widened, first in astonishment, then in delight. "Good priest," he sputtered, "what a pleasant surprise! Have you been here all along?"

"And you, good sir, have you been here all along?" mimicked Takuan. He put his arm around Shōyū's neck, and the two drunkenly embraced like a pair of lovers, cheek against stubbled cheek.

"Are you well, you old scoundrel?"

"Yes, you old fraud. And you?"

"I've been hoping to see you."

"And I you."

Before the maudlin greeting had run its course, the two were patting each other on the head and licking each other on the nose.

Lord Karasumaru turned his attention from the anteroom to Lord Konoe Nobutada, who sat opposite him, and said with a sardonic grin, "Ha! Just as I expected. The noisy one has arrived."

Karasumaru Mitsuhiro was still young, perhaps thirty. Even without his impeccable dress, he would have had an aristocratic air about him, for he was handsome and light-complexioned, with thick eyebrows, crimson lips and intelligent eyes. While he gave the impression of being a very gentle man, beneath the polished surface lurked a strong temper, fed by pent-up resentment against the military class. Often he had been heard to say, "Why, in this age when only the warriors are deemed to be full-fledged human beings, did I have to be born a nobleman?"

In his opinion, the warrior class should concern itself with military matters and nothing else, and any young courtier with intelligence who did not bridle at the current state of affairs was a fool. The warriors' assumption of absolute control reversed the ancient principle that government should be carried on by the Imperial Court with the aid of the military. The samurai no longer made any attempt to maintain harmony with the nobility; they ran everything, treating members of the court as though they were mere ornaments. Not only were the ornate headdresses the courtiers were allowed to wear meaningless, but the decisions they were allowed to make could have been made by dolls.

Lord Karasumaru considered it a grave mistake on the part of the gods to have made a man like himself a nobleman. And, though a servant of the Emperor, he saw only two paths open to him: to live in constant misery or to spend his time carousing. The sensible choice was to rest his head on the knees of a beautiful woman, admire the pale light of the moon, view the cherry blossoms in season and die with a cup of sake in his hand.

Having advanced from Imperial Minister of Finance to Assistant Vice Minister of the Right and then to Imperial Councilor, he was a high official in the Emperor's impotent bureaucracy, but he spent a great deal of time in the licensed quarter, where the atmosphere was conducive to forgetting the insults he had to endure when attending to more practical affairs. Among his habitual companions were several other disgruntled young noblemen, all of them poor in comparison with the military rulers but somehow able to raise the money for their nightly excursions to the Ōgiya—the only place, they averred, where they were free to feel human.

Tonight he had as his guest a man of another sort, the taciturn, well-mannered Konoe Nobutada, who was about ten years older. Nobutada, too, had an aristocratic demeanor and a grave look in his eyes. His face was full and his eyebrows thick, and though his darkish complexion was marred by shallow pockmarks, the pleasant modesty of the man made the blemishes seem somehow appropriate. In places like the Ōgiya, an outsider would never have guessed he was one of Kyoto's highest-ranking noblemen, the head of the family from which imperial regents were chosen.

Smiling affably by Yoshino's side, he turned to her and said, "That's Mr. Funabashi's voice, isn't it?"

She bit her lips, already redder than plum blossoms, and her eyes betrayed embarrassment at the awkwardness of the situation. "What shall I do if he comes in?" she fretted.

Lord Karasumaru commanded, "Don't stand up!" and grasped the hem of her kimono.

"Takuan, what are you doing out there? It's cold with the door open. If you're going out, go, and if you're coming back, come back, but close the door."

Swallowing the bait, Takuan said to Shōyū, "Come on in," and pulled the old man into the room.

Shōyū walked over and sat down directly in front of the two noblemen. "My, what a pleasant surprise!" exclaimed Mitsuhiro with feigned sincerity. Shōyū, on his bony knees, edged closer. Sticking his hand out toward Nobutada, he said, "Give me some sake." Having received the cup, he bowed with exaggerated ceremony.

"Good to see you, Old Man Funabashi," said Nobutada with a grin. "You always seem to be in high spirits."

Shōyū drained the cup and returned it. "I didn't dream that Lord Kangan's companion was your excellency." Still pretending to be drunker than he actually was, he shook his thin, wrinkled neck like an ancient manservant and said in mock fear, "Forgive me, esteemed excellency!" Then, in a different tone, "Why should I be so polite? Ha, ha! Isn't that so, Takuan?" He put his arm around Takuan's neck, pulled the priest toward him and pointed a finger at the two courtiers. "Takuan," he said, "the people in this world I feel sorriest for are the noblemen. They bear resounding titles like Councilor or Regent, but there's nothing to go with the honors. Even the merchants are better off, don't you think?"

"I do indeed," replied Takuan, contriving to disengage his neck.

"Say," said Shōyū, placing a cup directly beneath the priest's nose. "I haven't received a drink from you yet."

Takuan poured him some sake. The old man drank.

"You're a wily man, Takuan. In the world we live in, priests like you are cunning, merchants smart, warriors strong and noblemen stupid. Ha, ha! Isn't that so?"

"It is, it is," agreed Takuan.

"The noblemen can't do as they please because of their rank, but they're shut out of politics and the government. So all that's left for them to do is compose poetry or become experts at calligraphy. Isn't that the truth?" He laughed again.

Though Mitsuhiro and Nobutada were as fond of fun as Shōyū, the bluntness of the ridicule was embarrassing. They responded with stony silence.

Taking advantage of their discomfort, Shōyū pressed on. "Yoshino, what do you think? Do you fancy noblemen, or do you prefer merchants?"

"Hee-hee," tittered Yoshino. "Why, Mr. Funabashi, what a strange question!"

"I'm not joking. I'm trying to peer deep into a woman's heart. Now I can see what's there. You really prefer merchants, don't you? I think I'd better take you away from here. Come with me to my parlor." He took her by the hand and stood up, a shrewd look on his face.

Mitsuhiro, startled, spilled his sake. "A joke can be carried too far," he said, yanking Yoshino's hand from Shōyū's and pulling her closer to his side.

Caught between the two, Yoshino laughed and tried to make the best of it. Taking Mitsuhiro's hand in her right hand and Shōyū's in her left, she put on a worried look and said, "What am I ever going to do with you two?"

For the two men, though they neither disliked each other nor were serious rivals in love, the rules of the game dictated that they do everything in their power to make Yoshino Dayū's position more embarrassing.

"Come now, my good lady," said Shōyū. "You must decide for yourself. You must choose the man whose room you will grace, the one to whom you will give your heart."

Takuan jumped into the fray. "A very interesting problem, isn't it? Tell us, Yoshino, which one is your choice?"

The only person not participating was Nobutada. After a time, his sense of propriety moved him to say, "Come now, you're guests; don't be rude. The way you're acting, I daresay Yoshino would be delighted to be rid of you both. Why don't we all enjoy ourselves and stop bothering her? Kōetsu must be all by himself. One of you girls go and invite him to come here."

Shōyū waved his hand. "No reason to fetch him. I'll just go back to my room with Yoshino."

"You will not," said Mitsuhiro, hugging her tighter.

"The insolence of the aristocracy!" exclaimed Shōyū. Eyes sparkling, he offered Mitsuhiro a cup, saying, "Let's decide who gets her by holding a drinking contest—right before her eyes."

"Why, of course; that sounds like good fun." Mitsuhiro took a large cup and placed it on a small table between them. "Are you sure you're young enough to stand it?" he asked playfully.

"Don't have to be young to compete with a skinny nobleman!"

"How are we going to decide whose turn it is? It's no fun just swilling. We should play a game. Whoever loses has to drink a cupful. What game shall we play?"

"We could try staring each other down."

"That would involve looking at your ugly merchant's face. That's not play; it's torture."

"Don't be insulting! Um, how about the stone-scissors-paper game?" "Fine!"

"Takuan, you be referee."

"Anything to oblige."

With earnest faces, they began. After each round, the loser complained with appropriate bitterness and everyone laughed.

Yoshino Dayū slipped quietly out of the room, gracefully trailing the bottom of her long kimono behind her, and walked at a stately pace down the hallway. Not long after she left, Konoe Nobutada said, "I must go too," and took his leave unnoticed.

Yawning shamelessly, Takuan lay down and without so much as a by-your-leave, rested his head on Sumigiku's knee. Though it felt good to doze here, he also felt a pang of guilt. "I should go home," he thought. "They're probably lonely without me." He was thinking of Jōtarō and Otsū, who were together again at Lord Karasumaru's house. Takuan had taken Otsū there after her ordeal at Kiyomizudera.

Takuan and Lord Karasumaru were old friends with many interests in common—poetry, Zen, drinking, even politics. Toward the end of the previous year, Takuan had received a letter inviting him to spend the New Year's holidays in Kyoto. "You seem to be cooped up in a little temple in the country," Mitsuhiro wrote. "Don't you long for the capital, for some good Nada sake, for the company of beautiful women, for the sight of the little plovers by the Kamo River? If you like to sleep, I suppose it's all right to practice your Zen in the country, but if you want something more lively, then come here and be among people. Should you feel any nostalgia for the capital, by all means pay us a visit."

Shortly after his arrival, early in the new year, Takuan was quite surprised to see Jōtarō playing in the courtyard. He learned in detail from Mitsuhiro what the boy was doing there and then heard from Jōtarō that there had been no news of Otsū since Osugi got her clutches into the girl on New Year's Day.

The morning after her return, Otsū had come down with a fever, and she was still in bed, with Jōtarō nursing her, sitting by her pillow all day, cooling her forehead with wet towels and measuring out her medicine at the proper times of the day.

As much as Takuan wanted to leave, he could hardly do so before his host did, and Mitsuhiro seemed to be more and more absorbed in the drinking contest.

Both combatants being veterans, the contest seemed destined to end in a draw, which it did. They went on drinking anyway, facing each other knee to knee and chatting animatedly. Takuan could not tell whether the subject was government by the military class, the inherent worth of the nobility, or the role of merchants in the development of foreign trade, but evidently it was something very serious. He lifted his head from Sumigiku's knee and, eyes still closed, leaned against a post of the alcove, every once in a while grinning at a snatch of conversation.