Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [343]
Musashi chose this moment to leave. Without a word, he simply withdrew from her side and walked away, toward his appointment with death.
Otsū, with a stifled cry, ran a few steps after him.
Musashi ran farther ahead, then turned back and said, “I understand your feelings, Otsū, but please don’t die a cowardly death. Don’t, because of your sorrow, allow yourself to sink into the valley of death and succumb like a weakling. Get well first, then think about it. I’m not throwing my life away for a useless cause. I’ve chosen to do what I’m doing because by dying I can achieve eternal life. Depend on one thing: my body may turn to dust, but I’ll still be alive.”
Catching his breath, he added a warning. “Are you listening? By attempting to follow me in death, you may find that you’re dying alone. You may look for me in the world beyond only to find I’m not there. I intend to live on for a hundred or a thousand years—in the hearts of my countrymen, in the spirit of Japanese swordsmanship.”
He was out of hearing before she could speak again. She felt her very soul had left her, but she did not think of this as a parting. It was more as though the two of them were being engulfed in a great wave of life and death.
A cascade of dirt and pebbles came to rest at the foot of the cliff, followed closely by Jōtarō, wearing the grotesque mask he had received from the widow in Nara.
Throwing his hands up, he said, “I’ve never been so surprised in my life!” “What happened?” whispered Otsū, not quite recovered from the shock of seeing the mask.
“Didn’t you hear it? I don’t know why, but all of a sudden there was this horrible scream.”
“Where were you? Were you wearing that mask?”
“I was above the cliff. There’s a path up there about as wide as this one. After I climbed up a little way, I found a nice big rock, so I was just sitting there looking at the moon.”
“The mask—did you have it on?”
“Yes. I could hear foxes howling, and maybe badgers or something rustling around near me. I thought the mask would scare them away. Then I heard this shriek, bloodcurdling, like it was coming from a ghost in hell!”
Stray Geese
“Wait for me, Matahachi. Why do you have to walk so fast?” Osugi, far behind and completely winded, had forfeited both patience and pride.
Matahachi, in a voice calculated to be heard, grumbled, “She was in such a hurry when we left the inn, but listen to her now. She talks better than she walks.”
As far as the foot of Mount Daimonji, they had been on the road to Ichijōji, but now, deep in the mountains, they were lost.
Osugi would not give up. “The way you keep picking on me,” she rasped, “anybody would think you had a terrible grudge against your own mother.” By the time she had wiped the sweat from her wrinkled face, Matahachi was off again.
“Won’t you slow down?” she cried. “Let’s sit here for a while.”
“If you keep stopping every ten feet to rest, we won’t be there before sunrise.”
“The sun won’t be up for a long time yet. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have any trouble on a mountain road like this, but I’m coming down with a cold.”
“You’ll never admit you’re wrong, will you? Back there, when I woke up the innkeeper so you could rest, you couldn’t sit still for a minute. You didn’t want anything to drink, so you started carrying on about how we’d be late. I hadn’t had two sips before you dragged me out of the place. I know you’re my mother, but you’re a hard woman to get along with.”
“Ha! Still peeved because I wouldn’t let you drink yourself silly. Is that it? Why can’t you exercise a little restraint? We have important things to do today.”
“It’s not as if we’re going to whip out our swords and do the job ourselves. All we have to do is get a lock of Musashi’s hair or something off the body. There’s nothing so hard about that.”
“Have it your way! No use fighting with each other like this. Let’s go.”
As they started walking again, Matahachi resumed his disgruntled soliloquy. “The whole thing’s stupid. We take a lock of hair back to the village and offer it as proof that our great mission in life had