Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [153]
On the night of his departure, he had discovered that the Miyamoto Musashi who was acquiring a reputation as a swordsman in the capital was his old friend Takezō. This severe shock was followed almost immediately by strong waves of jealousy.
With Otsū in mind, he had stopped drinking and attempted to slough off his laziness and his bad habits. But at first he was unable to find any suitable work. He cursed himself for having been out of the swim of things for five years, while an older woman supported him. For a time it appeared as though it was too late to change.
“Not too late,” he’d assured himself. “I’m only twenty-two. I can do whatever I want, if I try!” While anyone might experience this sentiment, in Matahachi’s case it meant shutting his eyes, leaping over an abyss of five years, and hiring himself out as a day laborer at Fushimi.
Here he had worked hard, slaving steadily day after day while the sun beat down on him from summer into fall. He was rather proud of himself for sticking to it.
“I’ll show them all!” he was thinking now, despite his queasiness. “No reason I can’t make a name for myself. I can do anything Takezō can do! I can do even more, and I will. Then I’ll have my revenge, despite Okō. Ten years is all I need.”
Ten years? He stopped to calculate how old Otsū would be by then. Thirty-one! Would she stay single, wait for him all that time? Not likely. Matahachi had no inkling of recent developments in Mimasaka, no way of knowing that his was but a pipe dream, but ten years—never! It would have to be no more than five or six. Within that time he would have to make a success of himself; that was all there was to it. Then he could go back to the village, apologize to Otsū and persuade her to marry him. “That’s the only way!” he exclaimed. “Five years, six at most.” He stared at the watermelon and a glimmer of light returned to his eyes.
Just then one of his fellow workers rose up beyond the rock in front of him, and resting his elbows on the boulder’s broad top, called, “Hey, Matahachi. What’re you mumbling to yourself about? Say, your face is green. Watermelon rotten?”
Matahachi, though he forced a wan smile, was seized by another wave of dizziness. Saliva streamed from his mouth as he shook his head. “It’s nothing, nothing at all,” he managed to gasp. “Guess I got a little too much sun. Let me take it easy here for an hour or so.”
The burly stone haulers gibed at his lack of strength, albeit good-naturedly. One of them asked, “Why’d you buy a watermelon when you can’t eat it?”
“I bought it for you fellows,” answered Matahachi. “I thought it’d make up for not being able to do my share of the work.”
“Now, that was smart. Hey, men! Watermelon! Have some, on Matahachi.”
Splitting the melon on the corner of a rock, they fell to it like ants, snatching greedily at the sweet, dripping hunks of red pulp. It was all gone when moments later a man jumped up on a rock and yelled, “Back to work, all of you!”
The samurai in charge emerged from a hut, whip in hand, and the stench of sweat spread over the earth. Presently the melody of a rock haulers’ chantey rose from the site, as a gigantic boulder was shifted with large levers onto rollers and dragged along with ropes as thick as a man’s arm. It advanced ponderously, like a moving mountain.
With the boom in castle construction, these rhythmical songs proliferated. Though the words were rarely written down, no less a personage than Lord Hachisuka of Awa, who was in charge of building Nagoya Castle, quoted several verses in a letter. His lordship, who would hardly have had occasion to so much as touch construction materials, had apparently learned them at a party. Simple compositions, like the following, they’d become something of a fad in society as well as among work crews.
From Awataguchi we’ve pulled them—
Dragged rock after rock after rock.
For our noble Lord Tōgorō.
Ei, sa, ei, sa …
Pull—ho! Drag