Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [266]
When the monk reached the fallen weapon, he seized it, and taking careful aim, threw it again, but again Matahachi ducked.
Running at full speed for more than a mile, Matahachi passed Rokujō Avenue and approached Gojō, finally decided he’d lost his pursuer and stopped. Rapping his chest, he panted, “That staff—terrible weapon! A man has to be careful these days.”
Cold sober and burning with thirst, he began searching for a well. He found one at the far end of a narrow alley. He pulled up the bucket and guzzled his fill, then put the bucket on the ground and splashed water on his sweaty face.
“Who can that have been?” he wondered. “And what did he want?” But as soon as he began to feel normal again, dejection set in. Before his eyes he saw the agonized chinless face of the corpse at Fushimi.
That he had used up the dead man’s money hurt his conscience, and not for the first time he thought about atoning for his misdeeds. “When I have money,” he vowed, “the first thing I’m going to do is pay back what I borrowed. Maybe after I’m successful, I’ll put up a memorial stone to him.
“The certificate is all that’s left. Maybe I should get rid of it. If the wrong person found out I have it, it might lead to complications.” He reached inside his kimono and touched the scroll, which he always kept tucked in the stomach wrapper under his obi, though this was rather uncomfortable.
Even if he couldn’t convert it into a vast amount of money, it might lead to some opening, to that magic first rung on the ladder of success. The unfortunate experience with Akakabe Yasoma hadn’t cured him of dreaming.
The certificate had already come in handy, for he had found that by showing it at small, nameless dōjōs or to innocent townspeople with an urge to learn swordsmanship, he could not only command their respect but receive a free meal and a place to sleep, without so much as asking. This was the way he had survived during the past six months.
“No reason to throw it away. What’s wrong with me? I seem to be getting more and more timid. Maybe that’s what keeps me from getting ahead in the world. From now on, I’m not going to be like that! I’ll be big and bold, like Musashi. I’ll show them!”
He looked around at the shanties surrounding the well. The people living here struck him as enviable. Their houses sagged under the weight of the mud and weeds on their roofs, but at least they had shelter. Somewhat abjectly, he peeped in on some of the families. In one dwelling, he saw a husband and wife facing each other over the single pot that held their meager dinner. Near them were a son and daughter, together with their grandmother, doing some piecework.
Despite the paucity of worldly goods, there existed a spirit of family unity, a treasure that even great men like Hideyoshi and Ieyasu lacked. Matahachi reflected that the more poverty-stricken people were, the stronger their mutual affection grew. Even the poor could know the joy of being human.
With a tinge of shame, he recalled the clash of wills that had led him to stalk angrily away from his own mother at Sumiyoshi. “I shouldn’t have done that to her,” he thought. “Whatever her faults, there’ll never be anyone else who loves me the way she does.”
During the week they had been together, going, to his great annoyance, from shrine to temple and temple to shrine, Osugi had told him time and time again about the miraculous powers of the Kannon at Kiyomizudera. “No bodhisattva in the world works greater wonders,” she had assured him. “Less than three weeks after I went there to pray, Kannon led Takezō to me—brought him right to the temple. I know you don’t care much for religion, but you’d better have faith in that Kannon.”
Now that he thought of it, she had mentioned that after the beginning of the new year, she planned to go to Kiyomizu and ask Kannon’s protection for the Hon’iden family. There’s where he should go! He had no place to sleep tonight; he could spend the night on the porch, and