Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [263]
Presently, the servant returned with more wild greens, and Myōshū prepared the gruel. As she took it up on small plates, which also appeared to have been made by Kōetsu, a jar of fragrant sake was heated, and the picnic feast began.
The tea ceremony food was too light and delicate for Musashi’s taste. His constitution craved more body and stronger flavor. Yet he made a dutiful attempt to savor the thin aroma of the leafy mixture, for he acknowledged that there was much he could learn from Kōetsu and his charming mother.
As the time passed, he began to look nervously about the field. Eventually, he turned to his host and said, “It’s been very pleasant, but I should go now. I’d like to stay, but I’m afraid my opponent’s men might come and cause trouble. I don’t want to involve you in anything like that. I hope I’ll have the opportunity to see you again.”
Myōshū, rising to see him off, said, “If you’re ever in the vicinity of Hon’ami Lane, don’t fail to stop in to see us.”
“Yes, please come and visit us. We can have a nice long talk,” Kōetsu added.
Despite Musashi’s fears, there was no sign of the Yoshioka students. Having taken his leave, he paused to look back at his two new friends on their rug. Yes, theirs was a world apart from his. His own long, narrow road would never lead him to Kōetsu’s sphere of peaceful pleasures. He walked silently toward the edge of the field, his head bowed in thought.
Too Many Kojirōs
In the little drinking shop on the city’s outskirts, the smell of burning wood and boiling food filled the air. It was only a shack—floorless, with a plank for a table and a few stools scattered about. Outside, the last glow of sunset made it seem that some distant building was on fire, and crows circling the Tōji pagoda looked like black ashes rising from the flames.
Three or four shopkeepers and an itinerant monk sat at the makeshift table, while in a corner several workmen gambled for drinks. The top they spun was a copper coin with a stick stuck through the hole in the middle.
“Yoshioka Seijūrō’s really got himself in a mess this time!” said one of the shopkeepers. “And I, for one, couldn’t be happier! A toast!”
“I’ll drink to that,” said another man.
“More sake!” another called to the proprietor.
The shopkeepers drank at a steady, fast pace. Gradually, only a faint light outlined the shop’s curtain, and one of them bellowed, “I can’t see whether I’m raising my cup to my nose or my mouth, it’s so dark in here. How about some light!”
“Hold on a minute. I’m taking care of it,” the proprietor said wearily. Flames were soon shooting from the open earthenware oven. The darker it grew outside, the redder were the rays from the fire.
“I get mad every time I think of it,” said the first man. “The money those people owed me for fish and charcoal! It came to quite a bit, I can tell you. Just look at the size of the school! I swore I’d get it at year end, so what happened when I got down there? Those Yoshioka bullies were blocking the entrance, blustering and threatening everybody. The nerve, throwing every bill collector out, honest shopkeepers who’d been giving them credit for years!”
“No use crying about it now. What’s done is done. Besides, after that fight at the Rendaiji, they’re the ones with reason to cry, not us.”
“Oh, I’m not mad anymore. They got what was coming to them.” “Imagine, Seijūrō going down with hardly a fight!”
“Did you see it?”
“No, but I heard about it from someone who did. Musashi knocked him down with a single blow. And with a wooden sword, too. Crippled for life, he is.
“What’ll become of the school?”
“It doesn’t look good. The students are out for Musashi’s blood. If they don’t kill him, they