Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [145]
“No need to rush,” he said to himself, conscious now of his exhaustion. He had to pull himself together before presenting himself to the master inside.
“Sooner or later,” he thought, “someone’s bound to come to the gate. That’ll be time enough. If he still refuses to see me as a wandering student, then I’ll use a different approach.” He sat down under the eaves of the gate, leaned his back against the post and dropped off to sleep.
The stars were fading and white daisies swaying in the breeze when a large drop of dew fell coldly on his neck and woke him up. Daylight had come, and as he stirred from his nap, his head was cleansed by the morning breeze and the singing of the nightingales. No vestige of weariness remained: he felt reborn.
Rubbing his eyes and looking up, he saw the bright red sun climbing over the mountains. He jumped up. The sun’s heat had already rekindled his ardor, and the strength stored up in his limbs demanded action. Stretching, he said softly, “Today’s the day.”
He was hungry, and for some reason this made him think about Jōtarō. Perhaps he had treated the boy too roughly the night before, but it had been a calculated move, a part of the lad’s training. Musashi again assured himself that Jōtarō, wherever he was, wasn’t in any real danger.
He listened to the sound of the brook, which ran down the mountainside, detoured inside the fence, circled the bamboo grove and then emerged from under the fence on its journey toward the lower castle grounds. Musashi washed his face and drank his fill, in lieu of breakfast. The water was good, so good that Musashi imagined it might well be the main reason Sekishūsai had chosen this location for his retirement from the world. Still, knowing nothing of the art of the tea ceremony, he had no inkling that water of such purity was in fact the answer to a tea master’s prayer.
He rinsed his hand towel in the stream, and having wiped the back of his neck thoroughly, cleaned the grime from his nails. He then tidied his hair with the stiletto attached to his sword. Since Sekishūsai was not only the master of the Yagyū Style but one of the greatest men in the land, Musashi intended to look his best; he himself was nothing but a nameless warrior, as different from Sekishūsai as the tiniest star is from the moon.
Patting his hair and straightening his collar, he felt inwardly composed. His mind was clear; he was resolved to knock at the gate like any legitimate caller.
The house was quite a way up the hill, and it wasn’t likely an ordinary knock would be heard. Looking around for a clapper of some kind, he saw a pair of plaques, one on either side of the gate. They were beautifully inscribed, and the carved writing had been filled in with a bluish clay which gave off a bronze-like patina. On the right were the words:
Be not suspicious, ye scribes,
Of one who likes his castle closed.
And on the left:
No swordsman will you find here,
Only the young nightingales in the fields.
The poem was addressed to the “scribes,” referring to the officials of the castle, but its meaning was deeper. The old man had not shut his gate merely to wandering students but to all the affairs of this world, to its honors as well as its tribulations. He had put behind him worldly desire, both his own and that of others.
“I’m still young,” thought Musashi. “Too young! This man is completely beyond my reach.”
The desire to knock on the gate evaporated. Indeed, the idea of barging in on the ancient recluse now seemed barbarian, and he felt totally ashamed of himself.
Only flowers and birds, the wind and the moon, should enter this gate. Sekishūsai was no longer the greatest swordsman in the land, no longer the lord of a fief, but a man who had returned to nature, renouncing the vanity of human life. To upset his household would be a sacrilege. And what honor, what distinction, could possibly be derived from defeating