Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [225]
Otsū slowed her steps, thinking Musashi might be in the very crowd they were in. Then a chill ran up her spine and she started walking faster. Matahachi’s dreadful mother might also materialize at any moment.
Jōtarō hadn’t a care in the world. The colors and noises of the city, seen and heard after a long absence, exhilarated him no end. “Are we going straight to an inn?” he asked apprehensively.
“No, not yet.”
“Good! It’d be dull being indoors while it’s still light out. Let’s walk around some more. It looks like there’s a market over there.”
“We haven’t time to go to the market. We have important business to take care of.”
“Business? We do?”
“Have you forgotten the box you’re carrying on your back?”
“Oh, that.”
“Yes, that. I won’t be able to relax until we’ve found Lord Karasumaru Mitsuhiro’s mansion and delivered the scrolls to him.”
“Are we going to stay at his house tonight?”
“Of course not.” Otsū laughed, glancing toward the Kamo River. “Do you think a great nobleman like that would let a dirty little boy like you sleep under his roof, lice and all?”
The Butterfly in Winter
Akemi slipped out of the inn at Sumiyoshi without telling anybody. She felt like a bird freed from its cage but was still not sufficiently recovered from her brush with death to fly too high. The scars left by Seijūrō’s violence would not heal quickly; he had shattered her cherished dream of giving herself unblemished to the man she really loved.
On the boat up the Yodo to Kyoto, she felt that all the waters of the river would not equal the tears she wanted to shed. As other boats, loaded with ornaments and supplies for the New Year celebration, rowed busily past, she stared at them and thought: “Now, even if I do find Musashi …” Her troubled eyes filled and overflowed. No one could ever know how eagerly she had anticipated the New Year’s morning when she would find him on the Great Bridge at Gojō Avenue.
Her longing for Musashi had grown deeper and stronger. The thread of love had lengthened, and she had wound it up into a ball inside her breast. Through all the years, she had gone on spinning the thread from distant memories and bits of hearsay and winding it around the ball to make it larger and larger. Until only a few days earlier, she had treasured her girlish sentiments and carried them with her like a fresh wild flower from the slopes of Mount Ibuki; now the blossom inside her was crushed. Though it was unlikely anyone was aware of what had occurred, she imagined everybody was looking at her with knowing eyes.
In Kyoto, in the fading light of evening, Akemi walked among the leafless willows and miniature pagodas in Teramachi, near Gojō Avenue, looking as cold and forlorn as a butterfly in winter.
“Hey, beautiful!” said a man. “Your obi cord is loose. Don’t you want me to tie it for you?” He was thin, shabbily clothed and uncouth of speech, but he wore the two swords of a samurai.
Akemi had never seen him before, but habitués of the drinking places nearby could have told her that his name was Akakabe Yasoma, and that he hung around the back streets on winter nights doing nothing. His worn straw sandals flapped as he ran up behind Akemi and picked up the loose end of obi cord.
“What are you doing all by yourself in this deserted place? I don’t suppose you’re one of those madwomen who appear in the kyōgen plays, are you? You’ve got a pretty face. Why don’t you fix your hair up a little and stroll about like the other girls?” Akemi walked on, pretending to have no ears, but Yasoma mistook this for shyness. “You look like a city girl. What did you do? Run away from home? Or do you have a husband you’re trying to escape from?”
Akemi made no reply.
“You should be careful, a pretty girl like you, wandering around in a daze, looking as though you’re in trouble or something.