Musashi: Bushido Code (80 page)

"Don't be a fool, Otsū!" he suddenly blurted. "There's no reason why you should die." The strength of his own voice and the depth of his feeling surprised even him. "It's one thing for me to die fighting against the Yoshiokas. Not only is it right for a man who lives by the sword to die by the sword; I have a duty to remind those cowards of the Way of the Samurai. Your willingness to follow me in death is deeply touching, but what good would it do? No more than the pitiful death of an insect."

Seeing her burst into tears again, he regretted the brutality of his words.

"Now I understand how over the years I've lied to you, and I've lied to myself. I didn't intend to deceive you when we ran away from the village or when I saw you at Hanada Bridge, but I did—by pretending to be cold and indifferent. That wasn't the way I really felt.

"In a little while, I'll be dead. What I'm about to say is the truth. I love you, Otsū. I'd throw everything to the four winds and live out my life with you, if only ..."

After a moment's pause, he continued in a more forceful vein. "You must believe every word I say, because I'll never have another chance to tell you this. I speak with neither pride nor pretense. There have been days when I couldn't concentrate for thinking about you, nights I couldn't sleep for dreaming of you. Hot, passionate dreams, Otsū, dreams that nearly drove me mad. Often I've hugged my pallet, pretending it was you.

"But even when I felt like that, if I took out my sword and looked at it, the madness evaporated and my blood cooled."

Her face turned toward him, tearful but as radiant as a morning glory, she started to speak. Seeing the fervor in his eyes, her words caught in her throat and she looked at the ground again.

"The sword is my refuge. Any time my passion threatens to overcome me, I force myself back into the world of swordsmanship. This is my fate, Otsū. I'm torn between love and self-discipline. I seem to be traveling on two paths at once. Yet when the paths diverge, I invariably manage to keep myself on the right one.

"I know myself better than anyone else does. I'm neither a genius nor a great man."

He became silent again. Despite his desire to express his feelings honestly, his words seemed to him to be concealing the truth. His heart told him to be even more candid.

"That's the kind of man I am. What else can I say? I think of my sword, and you disappear into some dark corner of my mind—no, disappear altogether, leaving no trace. At times like that I'm happiest and most satisfied with my life. Do you understand? All this time you've suffered, you've risked body and soul on a man who loves his sword more than he loves you. I'll die to vindicate my sword, but I wouldn't die for the love of a woman. Not even you. As much as I'd like to fall on my knees and beg your forgiveness, I can't."

He felt her sensitive fingers tighten on his wrist. She was no longer crying. "I know all that," she said emphatically. "If I didn't know it, I wouldn't love you as I do."

"But can't you see the foolishness of dying on my account? For this one moment, I'm yours, body and soul. But once I've left you ... You mustn't die for the love of a man like me. There's a good way, a proper way, for a woman to live, Otsū. You must search for it, make a happy life for yourself. These must be my parting words. It's time for me to go."

Gently he removed her hand from his wrist and stood up. She caught his sleeve and cried, "Musashi, just one minute more!"

There were so many things she wanted to tell him: she did not care if he forgot her when he was not with her, she did not mind being called insignificant, she'd had no delusions about his character when she fell in love with him. She caught his sleeve again, her eyes searching his, trying to prolong this last moment, to keep it from ever ending.

Her silent appeal nearly undid him. There was beauty even in the weakness that prevented her from speaking. Overcome by his own weakness and fear, he felt himself to be a tree with brittle roots, menaced by a raging wind. He wondered if his chaste devotion to the Way of the Sword would crumble, like a landslide, under the weight of her tears.

To break the silence, he asked, "Do you understand?"

"Yes," she said weakly. "I understand perfectly, but if you die, I'll die too. My dying will have a meaning to me, just as yours has to you. If you can face the end calmly, so can I. I won't be trampled down like an insect, or drown in a moment of grief. I have to decide for myself. Nobody else can do it for me, not even you."

With great strength and perfect calm, she went on. "If in your heart you'll consider me to be your bride, that's enough, a joy and a blessing that only I, of all the women in the world, possess. You said you didn't want to make me unhappy. I can assure you I won't die because of unhappiness. There are people who seem to consider me unfortunate, yet I don't feel that way in the least. I look forward with pleasure to the day when I die. It will be like a glorious morning when the birds are singing. I'll go as happily as I would to my wedding."

Nearly out of breath, she folded her arms over her breast and gazed up contentedly, as though captivated by a delightful dream.

The moon seemed to be sinking rapidly. Though it was still not daybreak, mist had begun to rise through the trees.

The silence was shattered by a horrifying scream that rent the air like the screech of a mythical bird. It came from the cliff Jōtarō had climbed earlier. Startled out of her dreams, Otsū directed her eyes to the top of the cliff.

Musashi chose this moment to leave. Without a word, he simply withdrew from her side and walked away, toward his appointment with death.

Otsū, with a stifled cry, ran a few steps after him.

Musashi ran farther ahead, then turned back and said, "I understand your feelings, Otsū, but please don't die a cowardly death. Don't, because of your sorrow, allow yourself to sink into the valley of death and succumb like a weakling. Get well first, then think about it. I'm not throwing my life away for a useless cause. I've chosen to do what I'm doing because by dying I can achieve eternal life. Depend on one thing: my body may turn to dust, but I'll still be alive."

Catching his breath, he added a warning. "Are you listening? By attempting to follow me in death, you may find that you're dying alone. You may look for me in the world beyond only to find I'm not there. I intend to live on for a hundred or a thousand years—in the hearts of my countrymen, in the spirit of Japanese swordsmanship."

He was out of hearing before she could speak again. She felt her very soul had left her, but she did not think of this as a parting. It was more as though the two of them were being engulfed in a great wave of life and death.

A cascade of dirt and pebbles came to rest at the foot of the cliff, followed closely by Jōtarō, wearing the grotesque mask he had received from the widow in Nara.

Throwing his hands up, he said, "I've never been so surprised in my life!" "What happened?" whispered Otsū, not quite recovered from the shock of seeing the mask.

"Didn't you hear it? I don't know why, but all of a sudden there was this horrible scream."

"Where were you? Were you wearing that mask?"

"I was above the cliff. There's a path up there about as wide as this one. After I climbed up a little way, I found a nice big rock, so I was just sitting there looking at the moon."

"The mask—did you have it on?"

"Yes. I could hear foxes howling, and maybe badgers or something rustling around near me. I thought the mask would scare them away. Then I heard this shriek, bloodcurdling, like it was coming from a ghost in hell!"

Stray Geese

"Wait for me, Matahachi. Why do you have to walk so fast?" Osugi, far behind and completely winded, had forfeited both patience and pride.

Matahachi, in a voice calculated to be heard, grumbled, "She was in such a hurry when we left the inn, but listen to her now. She talks better than she walks."

As far as the foot of Mount Daimonji, they had been on the road to Ichijōji, but now, deep in the mountains, they were lost.

Osugi would not give up. "The way you keep picking on me," she rasped, "anybody would think you had a terrible grudge against your own mother." By the time she had wiped the sweat from her wrinkled face, Matahachi was off again.

"Won't you slow down?" she cried. "Let's sit here for a while."

"If you keep stopping every ten feet to rest, we won't be there before sunrise."

"The sun won't be up for a long time yet. Ordinarily I wouldn't have any trouble on a mountain road like this, but I'm coming down with a cold."

"You'll never admit you're wrong, will you? Back there, when I woke up the innkeeper so you could rest, you couldn't sit still for a minute. You didn't want anything to drink, so you started carrying on about how we'd be late. I hadn't had two sips before you dragged me out of the place. I know you're my mother, but you're a hard woman to get along with."

"Ha! Still peeved because I wouldn't let you drink yourself silly. Is that it? Why can't you exercise a little restraint? We have important things to do today."

"It's not as if we're going to whip out our swords and do the job ourselves. All we have to do is get a lock of Musashi's hair or something off the body. There's nothing so hard about that."

"Have it your way! No use fighting with each other like this. Let's go."

As they started walking again, Matahachi resumed his disgruntled soliloquy. "The whole thing's stupid. We take a lock of hair back to the village and offer it as proof that our great mission in life had been accomplished. Those bumpkins have never been out of the mountains, so they'll be impressed. Oh, how I hate that village!"

Not only had he not lost his fondness for the good sake of Nada, the pretty girls of Kyoto and a number of other things, he still believed the city was where he would get his lucky break. Who could deny that one morning he mightn't wake up with everything he'd ever wanted? "I'll never go back to that piddling village," he vowed silently.

Osugi, again lagging a good distance behind, cast dignity to the winds. "Matahachi," she wheedled, "carry me on your back, won't you? Please. Just for a short while?"

He frowned, said nothing, but stopped to let her catch up. Just as she reached him, their ears were assaulted by the shriek of terror that had jolted Otsū and Jōtarō. Faces blankly curious, they stood still, listening keenly. A moment later, Osugi uttered a cry of dismay, as Matahachi ran abruptly to the edge of the cliff.

"Wh-where are you going?"

"It must be down there!" he said, and disappeared over the edge of the cliff. "Stay there. I'll see who it is."

Osugi recovered in no time. "Fool!" she shouted. "Where are you going?" "You deaf? Didn't you hear that scream?"

"What's that got to do with you? Come back! Come back here!"

Ignoring her, he rapidly made his way from tree root to tree root to the bottom of the little ravine.

"Fool! Numskull!" she cried. She might as well have been barking at the moon.

Matahachi again shouted to her to stay where she was, but he was so far down that Osugi barely heard him. "Now what?" he thought, beginning to regret his impulsiveness. If he was wrong about where the cry had come from, he was wasting time and energy.

Though no moonlight penetrated the foliage, his eyes gradually became accustomed to the dark. He came upon one of the many shortcuts crisscrossing the mountains east of Kyoto and leading to Sakamoto and Ōtsu. Walking alongside a brook with tiny waterfalls and rapids, he found a hut, probably a shelter for men who came to spear mountain trout. It was too small to hold more than one person, and obviously empty, but behind it he spotted a crouching figure, face and hands starkly white.

"It's a woman," he thought with satisfaction, and concealed himself behind a large rock.

After a couple of minutes, the woman crept from behind the hut, went to the edge of the stream and scooped up some water to drink. He took a step forward. As though warned by animal instinct, the girl looked around furtively and started to flee.

"Akemi!"

"Oh, you frightened me!" But there was relief in her voice. She swallowed the water that had caught in her throat and heaved a deep sigh.

After eyeing her up and down, Matahachi asked, "What happened? What are you doing here at this hour of the night dressed in traveling clothes?" "Where's your mother?"

"She's up there." He waved his arm.

"I bet she's furious."

"About the money?"

"Yes. I'm really sorry, Matahachi. I had to leave in a hurry, and I didn't have enough to pay my bill, and nothing to travel on. I know it was wrong, but I panicked. Please forgive me! Don't make me go back! I promise I'll return the money someday." She melted into tears.

"Why all the apologies? Oh, I see. You think we came up here to catch you!"

"Oh, I don't blame you. Even if it was just a wild impulse, I did run away with the money. If I'm caught and treated like a thief, I guess I can't really complain."

"That's the way Mother would look at it, but I'm not like that. Anyway, it wasn't very much. If you really needed it, I'd have been glad to give it to you. I'm not angry. I'm much more interested in why you left so suddenly and what you're doing up here."

"I overheard you and your mother talking tonight."

"Oh? About Musashi?"

"Uh, yes."

"And you decided all of a sudden to go to Ichijōji?"

She didn't answer.

"Oh, I forgot!" he exclaimed, recalling his purpose in coming down into the ravine. "Were you the one who screamed a few minutes ago?"

She nodded, then quickly stole a frightened glance at the slope above them. Satisfied that nothing was there, she told him how she had crossed the stream and was climbing a steep crag when she looked up and saw an incredibly evil-looking ghost sitting on a high rock, staring at the moon. It had the body of a midget, but the face, that of a woman, was an eerie color, whiter than white, with a mouth that slashed up on one side to the ear. It seemed to be laughing grotesquely at her and had frightened her out of her wits. Before she came to her senses, she had already slid back down into the ravine.

Though the tale sounded absurd, she told it with deadly seriousness. Matahachi tried to listen politely, but was soon overcome with laughter.

"Ha, ha! You're making it all up! You probably frightened the ghost. Why, you used to roam the battlefields and didn't even wait for the dead spirits to leave before you started stripping the corpses."

"I was only a child then. I didn't know enough to be afraid."

"You weren't all that young.... I gather you're still pining over Musashi." "No.... He was my first love, but—"

"Then why go to Ichijōji?"

"I don't really know myself. I just thought that if I went, I might see him." "You're wasting your time," he said emphatically, then told her Musashi didn't have a chance in a thousand of coming out of the battle alive.

After what had happened to her at the hands of Seijūrō and Kojirō, thoughts of Musashi could no longer conjure up images of the bliss she had once imagined sharing with him. Having neither died nor found a life that appealed to her, she felt like a soul in limbo—a goose separated from the flock and lost. As he stared at her profile, Matahachi was struck by the similarity between her situation and his. They had both been cut adrift from their moorings. Something in her powdered face suggested that she was looking for a companion.

He put his arm around her, brushed his cheek against hers and whispered, "Akemi, let's go to Edo."

"To ... to Edo? You must be joking," she said, but the idea shook her out of her trance.

Tightening his hold on her shoulders, he said, "It doesn't necessarily have to be Edo, but everybody says it's the city of the future. Osaka and Kyoto are old now. Maybe that's why the shōgun's building a new capital in the east. If we go there now, there should still be lots of good jobs, even for a couple of stray geese like you and me. Come on, Akemi, say you'll go." Encouraged by the growing spark of interest in her face, he went on more fervently.

"We could have fun, Akemi. We could do the things we want to do. Why live if you can't do that? We're young. We've got to learn to be bold and clever. Neither of us will get anywhere acting like weaklings. The more you try to be good and honest and conscientious, the harder fate kicks you in the teeth and laughs at you. You end up crying your heart out, and where does that get you?

"Look, that's the way it's always been for you, isn't it? You've done nothing but let yourself be devoured by that mother of yours and some brutal men. From now on, you've got to be the one who eats, rather than the one who gets gobbled up."

She was beginning to be swayed. Her mother's teahouse had been a cage from which they had both fled. Since then the world had shown her nothing but cruelty. She sensed that Matahachi was stronger and better able to cope with life than she. After all, he was a man.

"Will you go?" he asked.

Even though she knew it was as if the house had burned down and she was trying to rebuild it with the ashes, it took some effort to shake off her fantasy, the rapturous daydream in which Musashi was hers and hers alone. But finally she nodded without speaking.

"Then it's settled. Let's go, now!"

"What about your mother?"

"Oh, her?" He sniffed. He glanced up at the cliff. "If she manages to lay hands on something to prove that Musashi's dead, she'll go back to the village. No doubt she'll be mad as a hornet when she finds I'm not around. I can hear her now, telling everybody how I left her on the mountain to die, the way they used to throw away old women in some parts of the country. But if I make a success of myself, that'll make up for everything. Anyway, we've made up our minds. Let's go!"

He strode off ahead, but she hung back.

"Matahachi, not that way!"

"Why?"

Y•

"We'll have to pass that rock again."

"Ha, ha! And see the midget with a woman's face? Forget it! I'm with you now. Oh, listen—isn't that my mother calling? Hurry up, before she comes looking for me. She's a lot worse than a small ghost with a scary face."