Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [359]
“Let’s stop for a while,” he said. “You’ll feel better if you get off and lie down for a few minutes.” Tying the animal to a tree, he put his arms around her and lifted her down.
Face down on the ground, Osugi pushed his hands away and let out a groan. Her face was feverishly hot and her hair was a mess.
“Don’t you want some water?” Musashi asked, not for the first time, rubbing her on the back. “You should eat something too.” She shook her head stubbornly. “You haven’t drunk a drop of water since last night,” he said pleadingly. “If you keep this up, you’ll just make yourself worse. I’d like to get some medicine for you, but there aren’t any houses around here. Look, why don’t you eat half of my lunch?”
“How disgusting!”
“Huh?”
“I’d rather die in some field and get eaten by the birds. I’d never sink so low as to accept food from an enemy!” She shook his hand off her back and clutched at the grass.
Wondering if she would ever get over her basic misunderstanding, he treated her as tenderly as he would his own mother, patiently trying to soothe her each time she lashed out at him.
“Now, Granny, you know you don’t want to die. You’ve got to live. Don’t you want to see Matahachi make something of himself?”
She bared her teeth and snarled, “What’s that got to do with you? Matahachi’ll get ahead one of these days without your help, thank you.”
“I’m sure he will. But you must get well so that you yourself can encourage him.
“You hypocrite!” the old woman screamed. “You’re wasting your time if you think you can flatter me into forgetting how much I hate you.”
Realizing that anything he said would be taken the wrong way, Musashi stood up and walked away. He chose a spot behind a rock and began eating his lunch of rice balls stuffed with a dark, sweetish bean paste and individually wrapped in oak leaves. Half of them he left uneaten.
Hearing voices, he looked around the rock and saw a country woman talking with Osugi. She was dressed in the hakama worn by the women of Ohara, and her hair hung down around her shoulders. In stentorian tones, she was saying, “I’ve got this sick person at my place. She’s better now, but she’d recover even quicker if I could give her some milk. May I milk the cow?”
Osugi lifted her face and looked at the woman inquiringly. “We don’t have many cows where I come from. Can you actually get milk from her?”
The two exchanged a few more words as the woman squatted down and began squirting milk into a sake jar. When it was full, she stood up, clutching it tightly in her arms, and said, “Thanks. I’ll be going now.”
“Wait!” cried Osugi in a raspy voice. She stretched out her arms and glanced around to make sure Musashi was not watching. “Give me some milk first. Just a sip or two will be enough.”
The woman watched, astonished, as Osugi put the jar to her lips, closed her eyes and gulped greedily, dribbling milk down her chin.
When she was through, Osugi shuddered, then grimaced as though she might vomit. “What a nasty taste!” she whined. “But maybe it’ll make me better. It’s awful, though; viler than medicine.”
“Is something the matter? Are you sick?”
“Nothing serious. Cold and a little fever.” She stood up briskly, as though all her ailments had dropped away, and after again reassuring herself that Musashi wasn’t looking, drew closer to the woman and asked in a low voice, “If I go straight down this road, where will it take me?”
“Just above the Miidera.”
“That’s in Ōtsu, isn’t it? Is there a back way I could take?”
“Well, yes, but where do you want to go?”
“I don’t care. I just want to get away from that villain!”
“About eight or nine hundred yards down this road, there’s a path going off to the north. If you keep on that, you’ll end up between Sakamoto and Ōtsu.”
“If you meet a man looking for me,” Osugi said furtively, “don’t tell him you saw me.” She bumbled off, like a