Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [196]
To his way of thinking, he had had a battle with a nail, and the nail had won. As a student of the martial arts, he was humiliated at having let himself be taken unawares. “Is there no way to resist an enemy of this sort?” he asked himself several times. “The nail was pointed upward and plainly visible. I stepped on it because I was half asleep—no, blind, because my spirit is not yet active throughout my whole body. What’s more, I let the nail penetrate deep, proof my reflexes are slow. If I’d been in perfect control, I would have noticed the nail as soon as the bottom of my sandal touched it.”
His trouble, he concluded, was immaturity. His body and his sword were still not one; though his arms grew stronger every day, his spirit and the rest of his body were not in tune. It felt to him, in his self-critical frame of mind, like a crippling deformity.
Still, he did not feel he’d entirely wasted the past six months. After fleeing from Yagyū, he had gone first to Iga, then up the Omi highroad, then through the provinces of Mino and Owari. At every town, in every mountain ravine, he had sought to master the true Way of the Sword. At times he felt he had brushed up against it, but its secret remained elusive, something not to be found lurking in either town or ravine.
He couldn’t remember how many warriors he had clashed with; there had been dozens of them, all well-trained, superior swordsmen. It was not hard to find able swordsmen. What was hard to find was a real man. While the world was full of people, all too full, finding a genuine human being was not easy. In his travels, Musashi had come to believe this very deeply, to the point of pain, and it discouraged him. But then his mind always turned to Takuan, for there, without doubt, was an authentic, unique individual.
“I guess I’m lucky,” thought Musashi. “At least I’ve had the good fortune to know one genuine man. I must make sure the experience of having known him bears fruit.”
Whenever Musashi thought of Takuan, a certain physical pain spread from his wrists throughout his body. It was a strange feeling, a physiological memory of the time when he had been bound fast to the cryptomeria branch. “Just wait!” vowed Musashi. “One of these days, I’ll tie Takuan up in that tree, and I’ll sit on the ground and preach the true way of life to him!” It was not that he resented Takuan or had any desire for revenge. He simply wanted to show that the state of being one could attain through the Way of the Sword was higher than anyone could reach by practicing Zen. It made Musashi smile to think he might someday turn the tables on the eccentric monk.
It could happen, of course, that things would not go exactly as planned, but supposing he did make great progress, and supposing he was eventually in a position to tie Takuan up in the tree and lecture him; what would Takuan be able to say then? Surely he would cry out for joy and proclaim, “It’s magnificent! I’m happy now.”
But no, Takuan would never be that direct. Being Takuan, he would laugh and say, “Stupid! You’re improving, but you’re still stupid!”
The actual words wouldn’t really matter. The point was that Musashi felt, in a curious way, that hitting Takuan over the head with his personal superiority was something he owed to the monk, a kind of debt. The fantasy was innocent enough; Musashi had set out upon a Way of his own and was discovering day by day how infinitely long and difficult the path to true humanity is. When the practical side of his nature reminded him of how much farther along that path Takuan was than he, the fantasy vanished.
It unsettled him even more to consider how immature and inept he was compared to Sekishūsai. Thinking of the old Yagyū master both maddened and