Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [204]
“I’ll take them over to the Arakida house,” Otsū said. When she took the pack and swords down, she nearly dropped them, they were so heavy. Lugging them with both hands, she wondered how men could walk about carrying so much weight.
Otsū and Jōtarō had come here two months earlier, after traveling up and down the Iga, Omi and Mino highroads in search of Musashi. Upon their arrival in Ise, they had decided to settle down for the winter, since it would be difficult to make their way through the mountains in the snow. At first Otsū had given flute lessons in the Toba district, but then she had come to the attention of the head of the Arakida family, who, being the official ritualist, ranked second only to the chief priest.
When Arakida asked Otsū to come to the shrine to teach the maidens, she had consented, not so much out of a desire to teach as out of her interest in learning the ancient, sacred music. Then, too, the peacefulness of the shrine’s forest had appealed to her, as had the idea of living for a while with the shrine maidens, the youngest of whom was thirteen or fourteen, and the oldest around twenty.
Jōtarō had stood in the way of her taking the position, for it was forbidden to have a male, even of his age, living in the same dormitory as the maidens. The arrangement they arrived at was that Jōtarō could sweep the sacred gardens in the daytime and spend his nights in the Arakidas’ woodshed.
As Otsū passed through the shrine gardens, a forbidding unearthly breeze whistled through the leafless trees. One thin column of smoke rose from a distant grove, and Otsū thought of Jōtarō, who was probably there cleaning the grounds with his bamboo broom. She stopped and smiled, pleased that Jōtarō, the incorrigible, was minding very well these days, applying himself dutifully to his chores at just the age when young boys think of nothing but playing and amusing themselves.
The loud cracking noise she heard sounded like a branch breaking off a tree. It came a second time, and clutching her load, she ran down the path through the grove, calling, “Jōtarō! J-ō-ō-t-a-r-ō-ō-ō!”
“Y-e-e-s?” came the lusty reply. In no time she heard his running footsteps. But when he drew up before her, he said merely, “Oh, it’s you.”
“I thought you were supposed to be working,” said Otsū sternly. “What are you doing with that wooden sword? And dressed in your white work clothes too.”
“I was practicing. Practicing on the trees.”
“Nobody objects to your practicing, but not here, Jōtarō. Have you forgotten where you are? This garden symbolizes peace and purity. It’s a holy area, sacred to the goddess who is the ancestress of us all. Look over there. Don’t you see the sign saying it’s forbidden to damage the trees or hurt or kill the animals? It’s a disgrace for a person who works here to be breaking off branches with a wooden sword.”
“Aw, I know all that,” he grumbled, a look of resentment on his face.
“If you know it, why do you do it? If Master Arakida caught you at it, you’d really be in trouble!”
“I don’t see anything wrong with breaking off dead limbs. It’s all right if they’re dead, isn’t it?”
“No, it is not! Not here.”
“That’s how much you know! Just let me ask you a question.”
“What might that be?”
“If this garden is so important, why don’t people take better care of it?” “It’s a shame they don’t. To let it run down this way is like letting weeds grow in one’s soul.”
“It wouldn’t be so bad if it were only weeds, but look at the trees. The ones split by lightning have been allowed to die, and the ones blown over by the typhoons are lying right where they fell. They’re all over the place. And the birds have pecked at the roofs of the buildings until they leak. And nobody ever fixes any of the stone lanterns when they get knocked out of shape.
“How can you think this place is important? Listen, Otsū, isn’t the castle at Osaka white and dazzling when you see it from the ocean at Settsu? Isn’t Tokugawa Ieyasu building more magnificent castles at Fushimi and a dozen other places? Aren’t the