Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [158]
“That was a close call,” he thought. “Of course, I didn’t really steal anything. I just took it in custody. I had to. He begged me to.”
To his way of thinking, as long as he admitted that the articles were not his, he had committed no crime. At the same time, he realized he could never again show his face at the construction site.
The miscanthus came up to his shoulders, and a veil of evening mist floated above it. No one could see him from a distance; it would be easy to get away. But which way to go was a difficult choice, all the more so since he strongly felt that good luck lay in one direction and bad luck in another.
Osaka? Kyoto? Nagoya? Edo? He had no friends in any of those places; he might as well roll dice to decide where to go. With dice, as with Matahachi, all was chance. When the wind blew, it would waft him along with it.
It seemed to him that the farther he walked, the deeper he went into the miscanthus. Insects buzzed about him, and the descending mist dampened his clothes. The soaked hems curled around his legs. Seeds caught at his sleeves. His shins itched. The memory of his noonday nausea was gone now and he was painfully hungry. Once he felt himself out of the reach of his pursuers, it became agony to walk.
An overwhelming urge to find a place to lie down and rest carried him the length of the field, beyond which he spotted the roof of a house. Drawing nearer, he saw that the fence and gate were both askew, apparently damaged by a recent storm. The roof needed fixing too. Yet at one time the house must have belonged to a wealthy family, for there was a certain faded elegance about it. He imagined a beautiful court lady seated in a richly curtained carriage approaching the house at a stately pace.
Going through the forlorn-looking gate, he found that both the main house and a smaller detached house were nearly buried in weeds. The scene reminded him of a passage by the poet Saigyō that he had been made to learn as a child:
I heard that a person I knew lived in Fushimi and went to pay him a call, but the garden was so overgrown! I couldn’t even see the path. As the insects sang, I composed this poem:
Pressing through the weeds,
I hide my tearful feelings
In the folds of my sleeve.
In the dew-laden garden
Even lowly insects weep.
Matahachi’s heart was chilled as he crouched near the house, whispering the words so long forgotten.
Just as he was about to conclude the house was empty, a red light appeared from deep inside. Presently he heard the pining strains of a shakuhachi, the bamboo flute mendicant priests played when begging on the streets. Looking inside, he discovered the player was indeed a member of that class. He was seated beside the hearth. The fire he had just lit grew brighter, and his shadow loomed larger on the wall. He was playing a mournful tune, a solitary lament on the loneliness and melancholy of autumn, intended for no ears but his own. The man played simply, without flourish, giving Matahachi the impression he took little pride in his playing.
When the melody came to an end, the priest sighed deeply and launched into a lament.
“They say when a man is forty, he is free from delusion. But look at me! Forty-seven when I destroyed my family’s good name. Forty-seven! And still I was deluded; contrived to lose everything—income, position, reputation. Not only that; I left my only son to fend for himself in this wretched world… . For what? An infatuation?
“It’s mortifying—never again could I face my dead wife, nor the boy, wherever he is. Ha! When they say you’re wise after forty, they must be talking about great men, not dolts like me. Instead of thinking myself wise because of my years, I should have been more careful than ever. It’s madness not to, where women are concerned.”
Standing his shakuhachi on end in front of him and propping both hands on the mouthpiece, he went on. “When that business with Otsū came up, nobody would forgive me any