Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [148]
Otsū and Jōtarō ran as far as their legs would carry them, shouting themselves hoarse. Their screams echoed through the fields. At the edge of the valley they lost sight of Musashi, who ran straight into the heavily wooded foothills.
They stopped and stood there, forlorn as deserted children. White clouds stretched out emptily above them, while the murmuring of a stream accented their loneliness.
“He’s crazy! He’s out of his mind! How could he leave me like this?” Jōtarō cried, stamping the ground.
Otsū leaned against a large chestnut tree and let the tears gush forth. Even her great love for Musashi—a love for which she would have sacrificed anything—was incapable of holding him. She was puzzled, bereft and angry. She knew what his purpose in life was, and why he was avoiding her. She had known since that day at Hanada Bridge. Still, she could not comprehend why he considered her a barrier between him and his goal. Why should his determination be weakened by her presence?
Or was that just an excuse? Was the real reason that he didn’t like her enough? It would make more sense perhaps. And yet … and yet … Otsū had come to understand Musashi when she had seen him tied up in the tree at the Shippōji. She could not believe him to be the sort who would lie to a woman. If he didn’t care about her, he would say so, but in fact he had told her at Hanada Bridge that he did like her very much. She recalled his words with sadness.
Being an orphan, she was prevented by a certain coldness from trusting many people, but once she trusted someone, she trusted him completely. At this moment, she felt there was no one but Musashi worth living for or relying on. Matahachi’s betrayal had taught her, the hard way, how careful a girl must be in judging men. But Musashi was not Matahachi. She had not only decided that she would live for him, whatever happened, but had already made up her mind never to regret doing so.
But why couldn’t he have said just one word? It was more than she could bear. The leaves of the chestnut tree were shaking, as though the tree itself understood and sympathized.
The angrier she became, the more she was possessed by her love for him. Whether it was fate or not, she couldn’t say, but her grief-torn spirit told her there was no real life for her apart from Musashi.
Jōtarō glanced down the road and muttered, “Here comes a priest.” Otsū paid no attention to him.
With the approach of noon, the sky above had turned a deep, transparent blue. The monk descending the slope in the distance had the look of having stepped down from the clouds, of having no connection whatever with this earth. As he neared the chestnut tree, he looked toward it and saw Otsū.
“What’s all this?” he exclaimed, and at the sound of his voice, Otsū looked up.
Her swollen eyes wide with astonishment, she cried, “Takuan!” In her present condition, she saw Takuan Sōhō as a savior. She wondered if she was dreaming.
Although the sight of Takuan was a shock to Otsū, the discovery of Otsū was for Takuan no more than confirmation of something he had suspected. As it happened, his arrival was neither accident nor miracle.
Takuan had been on friendly terms with the Yagyū family for a long time, his acquaintance with them going back to the days when, as a young monk at the Sangen’in in the Daitokuji, his duties had included cleaning the kitchen and making bean paste.
In those days, the Sangen’in, then known as the “North Sector” of the Daitokuji, had been famous as a gathering place for “unusual” samurai, which is to say, samurai who were given to thinking philosophically about the meaning of life and death; men who felt the need to study affairs of the spirit, as well as the technical skills of the martial arts. Samurai flocked’ there in greater numbers than did Zen monks, and one result of this was that the temple became known as a breeding ground for revolt.
Among the samurai who came frequently were