Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [345]
Though the tale sounded absurd, she told it with deadly seriousness. Matahachi tried to listen politely, but was soon overcome with laughter.
“Ha, ha! You’re making it all up! You probably frightened the ghost. Why, you used to roam the battlefields and didn’t even wait for the dead spirits to leave before you started stripping the corpses.”
“I was only a child then. I didn’t know enough to be afraid.”
“You weren’t all that young…. I gather you’re still pining over Musashi.” “No…. He was my first love, but—”
“Then why go to Ichijōji?”
“I don’t really know myself. I just thought that if I went, I might see him.” “You’re wasting your time,” he said emphatically, then told her Musashi didn’t have a chance in a thousand of coming out of the battle alive.
After what had happened to her at the hands of Seijūrō and Kojirō, thoughts of Musashi could no longer conjure up images of the bliss she had once imagined sharing with him. Having neither died nor found a life that appealed to her, she felt like a soul in limbo—a goose separated from the flock and lost. As he stared at her profile, Matahachi was struck by the similarity between her situation and his. They had both been cut adrift from their moorings. Something in her powdered face suggested that she was looking for a companion.
He put his arm around her, brushed his cheek against hers and whispered, “Akemi, let’s go to Edo.”
“To … to Edo? You must be joking,” she said, but the idea shook her out of her trance.
Tightening his hold on her shoulders, he said, “It doesn’t necessarily have to be Edo, but everybody says it’s the city of the future. Osaka and Kyoto are old now. Maybe that’s why the shōgun’s building a new capital in the east. If we go there now, there should still be lots of good jobs, even for a couple of stray geese like you and me. Come on, Akemi, say you’ll go.” Encouraged by the growing spark of interest in her face, he went on more fervently.
“We could have fun, Akemi. We could do the things we want to do. Why live if you can’t do that? We’re young. We’ve got to learn to be bold and clever. Neither of us will get anywhere acting like weaklings. The more you try to be good and honest and conscientious, the harder fate kicks you in the teeth and laughs at you. You end up crying your heart out, and where does that get you?
“Look, that’s the way it’s always been for you, isn’t it? You’ve done nothing but let yourself be devoured by that mother of yours and some brutal men. From now on, you’ve got to be the one who eats, rather than the one who gets gobbled up.”
She was beginning to be swayed. Her mother’s teahouse had been a cage from which they had both fled. Since then the world had shown her nothing but cruelty. She sensed that Matahachi was stronger and better able to cope with life than she. After all, he was a man.
“Will you go?” he asked.
Even though she knew it was as if the house had burned down and she was trying to rebuild it with the ashes, it took some effort to shake off her fantasy, the rapturous daydream in which Musashi was hers and hers alone. But finally she nodded without speaking.
“Then it’s settled. Let’s go, now!”
“What about your mother?”
“Oh, her?” He sniffed. He glanced up at the cliff. “If she manages to lay hands on something to prove that Musashi’s dead, she’ll go back to the village. No doubt she’ll be mad as a hornet when she finds I’m not around. I can hear her now, telling everybody how I left her on the mountain to die, the way they used to throw away old women in some parts of the country.