Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [25]
Bring judgment to bear on those
Insects that devour the crops.
From time immemorial it had been thought in these parts that hanging this practical-minded poem on the wall could protect one from not only bugs, but disease and ill fortune as well. Otsū wrote the same verse scores of times—so often, in fact, that her wrist started to throb and her calligraphy began to reflect her fatigue.
Stopping to rest for a moment, she called out to Takuan: “Stop trying to rob these people. You’re taking too much.”
“I’m talking to those who already have too much. It’s become a burden. It’s the essence of charity to relieve them of it,” he replied.
“By that reasoning, common burglars are all holy men.”
Takuan was too busy collecting offerings to reply. “Here, here,” he said to the jostling crowd. “Don’t push, take your time, just get in line. You’ll have your chance to lighten your purses soon enough.”
“Hey, priest!” said a young man who’d been admonished for elbowing in. “You mean me?” Takuan said, pointing to his nose.
“Yeah. You keep telling us to wait our turn, but then you serve the women first.”
“I like women as much as the next man.”
“You must be one of those lecherous monks we’re always hearing stories about.”
“That’s enough, you tadpole! Do you think I don’t know why you’re here! You didn’t come to honor the Buddha, or to take home a charm. You came to get a good look at Otsū! Come on now, own up—isn’t that so? You won’t get anywhere with women, you know, if you act like a miser.”
Otsū’s face turned scarlet. “Takuan, stop it! Stop right now, or I’m really going to get mad!”
To rest her eyes, Otsū again looked up from her work and out over the crowd. Suddenly she caught a glimpse of a face and dropped her brush with a clatter. She jumped to her feet, almost toppling the table, but the face had already vanished, like a fish disappearing in the sea. Oblivious of all around her, she dashed to the temple porch, shouting, “Takezō! Takezō!”
The Dowager’s Wrath
Matahachi’s family, the Hon’iden, were the proud members of a group of rural gentry who belonged to the samurai class but who also worked the land. The real head of the family was his mother, an incorrigibly stubborn woman named Osugi. Though nearly sixty, she led her family and tenants out to the fields daily and worked as hard as any of them. At planting time she hoed the fields and after the harvest threshed the barley by trampling it. When dusk forced her to stop working, she always found something to sling on her bent back and haul back to the house. Often it was a load of mulberry leaves so big that her body, almost doubled over, was barely visible beneath it. In the evening, she could usually be found tending her silkworms.
On the afternoon of the flower festival, Osugi looked up from her work in the mulberry patch to see her runny-nosed grandson racing barefoot across the field.
“Where’ve you been, Heita?” she asked sharply. “At the temple?” “Uh-huh.”
“Was Otsū there?”
“Yes,” he answered excitedly, still out of breath. “And she had on a very pretty obi. She was helping with the festival.”
“Did you bring back some sweet tea and a spell to keep the bugs away?” “Unh-unh.”
The old woman’s eyes, usually hidden amid folds and wrinkles, opened wide in irritation. “And why not?”
“Otsū told me not to worry about them. She said I should run right home and tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“Takezō, from across the river. She said she saw him. At the festival.” Osugi’s voice dropped an octave. “Really? Did she really say that, Heita?” “Yes, Granny.”
Her strong body seemed to go limp all at once, and her eyes blurred with tears. Slowly she turned, as though expecting to see her son standing behind her.
Seeing no one, she spun back around. “Heita,” she said abruptly, “you take over and pick these mulberry leaves.”
“Where’re you going?”
“Home. If Takezō’s back, Matahachi must be too.”
“I’ll come too.”
“No you won’t. Don’t be a nuisance, Heita.”
The old woman stalked off, leaving the little boy as