Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [164]
For two months Matahachi wandered about Osaka, increasingly confident that this was the place for him. Here was where he would catch the straw that would lead to success. For the first time in years he felt as brave and dauntless as when he’d gone off to war. He was healthy and alive again, unperturbed by the gradual depletion of the dead samurai’s money, for he believed luck was finally turning his way. Every day was a joy, a delight. He was sure he was about to stumble over a rock and come up covered with money. Good fortune was on the verge of finding him.
New clothes! That was what he needed. And so he bought himself a complete new outfit, carefully choosing material that would be suitable in the cold of approaching winter. Then, having decided living in an inn was too expensive, he rented a small room belonging to a saddle-maker in the vicinity of the Junkei Moat and began taking his meals out. He went to see what he wanted to see, came home when he felt like it, and stayed out all night from time to time, as the spirit moved him. While basking in this happy-go-lucky existence, he remained on the lookout for a friend, a connection who would lead him to a good paying position in the service of a great daimyō.
It required a certain amount of self-restraint for Matahachi to live within his means, but he felt he was behaving himself better than ever before. He was repeatedly buoyed up by stories of how this or that samurai had not long ago been hauling dirt away from a construction site but was now to be seen riding pompously through town with twenty retainers and a spare horse.
At other times he felt a trace of dejection. “The world’s a stone wall,” he would think. “And they’ve put the rocks so close together there’s not a chink where anybody can get in.” But his frustration always eddied away. “What am I talking about? It just looks that way when you still haven’t seen your chance. It’s always difficult to break in, but once I find an opening …”
When he asked the saddle-maker whether he knew of a position, the latter replied optimistically, “You’re young and strong. If you apply at the castle, they’re sure to find a place for you.”
But finding the right work was not as easy as that. The last month of the year found Matahachi still unemployed, his money diminished by half.
Under the wintry sun of the busiest month of the year, the hordes of people milling about the streets looked surprisingly unrushed. In the center of town there were empty lots, where in early morning the grass was white with frost. As the day progressed, the streets became muddy, and the feeling of winter was driven away by the sound of merchants hawking their goods with clanging gongs and booming drums. Seven or eight stalls, surrounded by shabby straw matting to keep outsiders from looking in, beckoned with paper flags and lances decorated with feathers to advertise shows being presented inside. Barkers competed stridently to lure idle passersby into their flimsy theaters.
The smell of cheap soy sauce permeated the air. In the shops, hairy-legged men, skewers of food stuffed in their mouths, whinnied like horses, and at twilight long-sleeved women with whitened faces simpered like ewes, walking together in flocks and munching on parched-bean tidbits.
One evening a fight broke out among the customers of a man who had set up a sake shop by placing some stools on the side of the street. Before anyone could tell who had won, the combatants turned tail and ran off down the street, leaving a trail of dripping blood behind them.
“Thank you, sir,” said the sake vendor to Matahachi, whose glaring