Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [285]
“I can see your point. No matter how faithless she’s been, she was your fiancée. All right; if you don’t want me to watch, go by yourself. I’ll stay here.”
He went, silently.
Otsū had first thought of running away, but if she did, all the patience she had exercised in the previous twenty days would come to naught. She decided to bear it a little longer. To pass the time, she thought of Musashi, then Jōtarō. Her love for Musashi set millions of bright stars shining in her heart. As if in a dream, she counted the many hopes she had for the future and recalled the vows he had made to her—at the pass at Nakayama, on Hanada Bridge. Though many years might pass, she believed with all her heart that in the end he would not forsake her.
Then the image of Akemi came to haunt her, darkening her hopes and making her uneasy. But only for a moment. Her fears about Akemi were insignificant in comparison with her unbounded confidence in Musashi. She recalled, too, Takuan’s saying that she was to be pitied, but that made no sense. How could he regard her self-perpetuating joy in that light?
Even now, waiting in this dark, lonely spot for a person she did not want to see, her rapturous dream of the future made any amount of suffering bearable. “Otsū!”
“Who … is it?” she called back.
“Hon’iden Matahachi.”
“Matahachi?” she gasped.
“Have you forgotten my voice?”
“No, I recognize it now. Did you see your mother?”
“Yes, she’s waiting for me. You haven’t changed, have you? You look just the way you did back in Mimasaka.”
“Where are you? It’s so dark I can’t see.”
“May I come closer? I’ve been standing here. I’m so ashamed to face you. What were you thinking about?”
“Oh, nothing; nothing in particular.”
“Were you thinking of me? Not a day has gone by I didn’t think of you.” As he slowly approached her, Otsū felt a little apprehensive. “Matahachi, did your mother explain everything to you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Since you’ve heard everything,” she said, immensely relieved, “you understand my sentiments, but I’d like to ask you myself to see things from my viewpoint. Let’s forget the past. It was never intended to be.”
“Now, Otsū, don’t be like that.” He shook his head. Though he had no idea what his mother had told Otsū, he was fairly certain it had been intended to deceive her. “It hurts me to have the past mentioned. It’s difficult for me to hold my head up in front of you. If it were possible to forget, heaven knows I’d be glad to. But for some reason, I can’t bear the thought of giving you up.”
“Matahachi, be sensible. There is nothing between your heart and mine. We’re separated by a great valley.”
“That’s true. And more than five years have flowed through that valley.” “Exactly. Those years will never come back. There’s no way to recapture the feelings we once had.”
“Oh, no! We can recapture them! We can!”
“No, they’re gone forever.”
He stared at her, stunned by the coolness in her face and the finality of her tone, asking himself if this was the girl who, when she allowed herself to reveal her passions, was like spring sunlight? He had the feeling he was rubbing a piece of snowy white alabaster. Where had this severity been hidden in the past?
He recalled the porch of the Shippōji and how she had sat there with limpid, dreamy eyes, often for half a day or more, silently looking off into space, as though she saw in the clouds mother and father, brothers and sisters.
He drew closer, and as timidly as he might have reached among thorns for a white rosebud, whispered, “Let’s try again, Otsū. There’s no way to bring back five years, but let’s begin again, now, just the two of us.”
“Matahachi,” she said dispassionately, “are you imagining things? I wasn’t talking about the length of time; I was talking about the abyss that separates our hearts, our lives.”
“I know that. What I mean is that beginning right now I’ll win your love back. Maybe I shouldn’t say it, but isn’t the mistake I made one almost any young man might be guilty of?”
“Talk if you like, but I’ll never again be able to take your word seriously.