Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [239]
At the edge of the icy river, he untied his obi and removed his kimono and underwear; then he plunged in and, splashing about like a water bird, washed himself thoroughly.
He was standing on the bank wiping his skin vigorously when the first rays of dawn broke through a cloud and fell warmly on his back. He looked toward the fire and saw someone standing on the dike above it, another traveler, different in age and appearance, brought here by fate. Osugi.
The old woman had seen him, too, and cried out in her heart, “He’s here! The troublemaker is here!” Overcome by joy and fear, she nearly fell down in a swoon. She wanted to call to him, but her voice choked; her trembling body would not do as it was told. Abruptly, she sat down in the shadow of a small pine.
“At last!” she rejoiced. “I’ve finally found him! Uncle Gon’s spirit has led me to him.” In the bag hanging from her waist she was carrying a fragment of Uncle Gon’s bones and a lock of his hair.
Each day since his death she’d talked to the dead man. “Uncle Gon,” she’d say, “even though you’re gone, I don’t feel alone. You stayed with me when I vowed not to go back to the village without punishing Musashi and Otsū. You’re with me still. You may be dead, but your spirit is always beside me. We’re together forever. Look up through the grass at me and watch! I’ll never let Musashi go unpunished!”
To be sure, Uncle Gon had been dead only a week, but Osugi was resolved to keep faith with him until she, too, was reduced to ashes. In the past few days, she had pressed her search with the furor of the terrible Kishimojin, who, before her conversion by the Buddha, had killed other children to feed to her own—said to have numbered five hundred, or one thousand, or ten thousand.
Osugi’s first real clue had been a rumor she’d heard in the street that there was soon to be a bout between Musashi and Yoshioka Seijūrō. Then early the previous evening, she had been among the onlookers who watched the sign being posted on the Great Bridge at Gojō Avenue. How that had excited her! She had read it through time and time again, thinking: “So Musashi’s ambition has finally got the better of him! They’ll make a clown of him. Yoshioka will kill him. Oh! If that happens, how will I be able to face the people at home? I swore I myself would kill him. I must get to him before Yoshioka does. And take that sniveling face back and hold it up by the hair for the villagers to see!” Then she had prayed to the gods, to the bodhisattvas and to her ancestors for help.
For all her fury and all her venom, she had come away from the Matsuo house disappointed. Returning along the Kamo River, she had first taken the firelight to be a beggar’s bonfire. For no particular reason, she had stopped on the dike and waited. When she caught sight of the muscular naked man emerging from the river, oblivious of the cold, she knew it was Musashi.
Since he had no clothes on, it would be a perfect time to catch him by surprise and cut him down, but even her old dried-up heart would not let her do that.
She put her palms together and offered a prayer of thanks, just as she would if she had already taken Musashi’s head. “How happy I am! Thanks to the favor of the gods and bodhisattvas, I have Musashi before my eyes. It couldn’t be mere chance! My constant faith has been rewarded; my enemy has been delivered into my hands!” She bowed before heaven, firm in her belief that she now had all the time in the world to complete her mission.
The rocks along the water’s edge seemed to float above the ground one by one as the light struck them. Musashi put on his kimono, tied his obi tightly