Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [318]
The first person he saw was a woman. Head covered by a veil, she appeared to be an ordinary housewife. Jōtarō ran up to her and asked, “How do you get to Yanagimachi?”
“That’s the licensed quarter, isn’t it?”
“What’s a licensed quarter?”
“Goodness!”
“Well, tell me, what do they do there?”
“Why, you—!” She glared at him indignantly for a moment before hastening on.
Undaunted, Jōtarō went steadfastly on his way, asking one person after another where the Ōgiya was.
The Scent of Aloeswood
The lights in the windows of the houses of pleasure burned brightly, but it was still too early for many customers to be prowling the three main alleys of the district.
At the Ōgiya, one of the younger servants happened to glance toward the entrance. There was something strange about the eyes peeping through a slit in the curtain, below which a pair of feet in dirty straw sandals and the tip of a wooden sword were visible. The young man gave a little jump of surprise, but before he could open his mouth, Jōtarō had entered and stated his business.
“Miyamoto Musashi is in this house, isn’t he? He’s my teacher. Will you please tell him Jōtarō is here. You might ask him to come out.”
The servant’s look of surprise was replaced by a stern frown. “Who are you, you little beggar?” he growled. “There’s nobody here by that name. What do you mean, sticking your dirty face in here just as business is about to begin? Out!” Clutching Jōtarō’s collar, he gave him a hard shove.
Angry as a puffed-up blowfish, Jōtarō screamed, “Stop it! I came here to see my teacher.”
“I don’t care why you’re here, you little pack rat. This Musashi’s already caused a lot of trouble. He’s not here.”
“If he’s not here, why can’t you just say so? Take your hands off me!”
“You look sneaky. How do I know you’re not a spy from the Yoshioka School?”
“That’s got nothing to do with me. When did Musashi leave? Where did he go?”
“First you order me around; now you ask for information. You should learn to keep a civil tongue in your head. How should I know where he is?” “If you don’t know, all right, but let go of my collar!”
“I’ll let go, all right—like this!” He pinched Jōtarō’s ear hard, swung him around and pitched him toward the gateway.
“Ouch!” screamed Jōtarō. Crouching, he drew his wooden sword and struck the servant in the mouth, breaking his front teeth.
“O-w-w!” The young man put one hand to his bloody mouth, and with the other, he knocked Jōtarō down.
“Help! Murder!” yelled Jōtarō.
He mustered his strength, as he had when he killed the dog at Koyagyū, and brought his sword down on the servant’s skull. Blood spurted from the young man’s nose, and with a sound no louder than an earthworm’s sigh, he collapsed under a willow tree.
A prostitute on display behind a grille window on the opposite side of the street raised her head and shouted to the next window over: “Look! Can you see! That boy with the wooden sword just killed a man from the Ōgiya! He’s getting away!”
In no time the street was filled with people running hither and thither, and the air echoed with bloodthirsty shouts.
“Which way did he go?”
“What did he look like?”
As suddenly as it had started, the hubbub died down, and by the time merrymakers began arriving, the incident had ceased to be a topic of conversation. Fights were common occurrences, and the denizens of the quarter settled or covered up the bloodier ones in short order, so as to avoid investigations by the police.
While the main alleys were lit up like daylight, there were byways and vacant lots where all was completely dark. Jōtarō found a hiding place, then changed it for another. Innocently enough, he thought he’d be able to get away, but in fact the whole quarter was surrounded by a ten-foot wall, made of charred logs