Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [232]
Akemi was between the dog and the monkey, blocking the dog’s way, so he attacked her. As she rolled to one side, the howl of the dog reached a crescendo.
Akemi was now screaming from pain rather than fright. The dog had set his teeth around her forearm. Kojirō, with an oath, kicked him violently again in the ribs. The dog was already dead from the first kick, but even after the second, his teeth were solidly clamped on Akemi’s arm.
“Let go! Let go!” she screamed, writhing on the floor.
Kojirō knelt beside her and pulled the dog’s jaws open. The sound was like that of pieces of glued wood being wrenched apart. The mouth came open, all right; a little more force on Kojirō’s part, and the dog’s head would have split in two. He threw the corpse out the door and came back to Akemi’s side.
“It’s all right now,” he said soothingly, but Akemi’s forearm said otherwise. The blood flowing over the white skin gave the bite the appearance of a large crimson peony.
Kojirō shivered at the sight. “Isn’t there any sake? I should wash it with sake…. No, I guess there wouldn’t be any in a place like this.” Warm blood flowed down the forearm to the wrist. “I have to do something,” he said, “or poison from the dog’s teeth might cause you to go mad. He has been acting peculiarly these past few days.”
While Kojirō tried to decide what could be done in a hurry, Akemi screwed her eyebrows together, bent her lovely white neck backward and cried, “Mad? Oh, how wonderful! That’s what I want to be—mad! Completely stark, raving mad!”
“Wh-wh-what’s this?” stammered Kojirō. Without further ado, he bent over her forearm and sucked blood from the wound. When his mouth was full, he spat it out, put his mouth back to the white skin, and sucked until his cheeks bulged.
In the evening Tanzaemon returned from his daily round. “I’m back, Akemi,” he announced as he entered the temple. “Were you lonesome while I was gone?”
He deposited her medicine in a corner, along with the food and the jar of oil he had bought, and said, “Wait a moment; I’ll make some light.”
When the candle was lit, he saw that she was not in the room. “Akemi!” he called. “Where could she have gone?”
His one-sided love turned suddenly to anger, which was quickly replaced by loneliness. Tanzaemon was reminded, as he had been before, that he would never be young again—that there was no more honor, no more hope. He thought of his aging body and winced.
“I rescued her and took care of her,” he grumbled, “and now she’s gone off without a word. Is that the way the world is always going to be? Is that the way she is? Or was she still suspicious of my intentions?”
On the bed he discovered a scrap of cloth, apparently torn from the end of her obi. The spot of blood on it rekindled his animal instincts. He kicked the straw matting into the air and threw the medicine out the window.
Hungry, but lacking the will to prepare a meal, he took up his shakuhachi and, with a sigh, went out onto the veranda. For an hour or more, he played without stopping, attempting to expel his desires and delusions. Yet it was evident to him that his passions remained with him and would remain with him until he died. “She’d already been taken by another man,” he mused. “Why did I have to be so moral and upright? There was no need for me to lie there alone, pining all night.”
Half of him regretted not having acted; the other half condemned his lecherous yearning. It was precisely this conflict of emotions, swirling incessantly in his veins, that constituted what the Buddha called delusion. He was trying now to cleanse his impure nature, but the more he strived, the muddier the tone of his shakuhachi became.
The beggar who slept beneath the temple poked his head from under the veranda. “Why are you sitting there playing your recorder?” he asked. “Did something good happen? If you made lots of money and bought some sake, how