Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [371]
The sun seemed all the brighter for the rain the previous afternoon. With Musashi’s words echoing in his head, Matahachi longed to throw up every drop he had drunk. Fortunately, Kojirō was still asleep in another room. Matahachi slipped downstairs, made the women give him his kimono, and set off at a run for Seta.
The muddy red water under the bridge was liberally sprinkled with Ishiyamadera’s fallen cherry blossoms. The storm had broken the wisteria vines and strewn yellow kerria flowers everywhere.
After a lengthy search, Matahachi asked at the tea shop and was told that the man with the cow had waited until the shop closed for the night, then had gone to an inn. He had returned in the morning, but not finding his friend, had left a note tied to a willow branch.
The note, which looked like a large white moth, said, “Sorry I couldn’t wait longer. Catch up with me on the way. I’ll be looking for you.”
Matahachi made good time along the Nakasendō, the highroad leading through Kiso to Edo, but he had still not caught up with Musashi when he reached Kusatsu. After passing through Hikone and Toriimoto, he began to suspect he had missed him on the way, and when he reached Suribachi Pass, he waited half a day, keeping his eyes on the road the whole time.
It wasn’t until he reached the road for Mino that Kojirō’s words came back to him.
“Was I taken in after all?” he asked himself. “Did Musashi really have no intention of going with me?”
After much doubling back and investigation of side roads, he finally caught sight of Musashi just outside the town of Nakatsugawa. At first he was elated, but when he got close enough to see that the person on the cow was Otsū, jealousy took instant and complete control of him.
“What a fool I’ve been,” he growled, “from the day that bastard talked me into going to Sekigahara until this very minute! Well, he can’t walk all over me this way forever. I’ll get even with him somehow—and soon!”
The Male and Female Waterfalls
“Whew, it’s hot!” Jōtarō exclaimed. “I’ve never sweated like this on a mountain road before. Where are we?”
“Near Magome Pass,” said Musashi. “They say it’s the most difficult section of the highroad.”
“Well, I don’t know about that, but I’ve had enough of this. I’ll be glad to get to Edo. Lots of people there—right, Otsū?”
“There are, but I’m in no hurry to get there. I’d rather pass the time traveling on a lonely road like this.”
“That’s because you’re riding. You’d feel different if you were walking. Look! There’s a waterfall over there.”
“Let’s take a rest,” said Musashi.
The three of them made their way along a narrow path. All around, the ground was covered with wild flowers, still damp with morning dew. Coming to a deserted hut on a cliff overlooking the falls, they stopped. Jōtarō helped Otsū off the cow, then tied the animal to a tree.
“Look, Musashi,” said Otsū. She was pointing at a sign that read: “Meoto no Taki.” The reason for the name, “Male and Female Waterfalls,” was easy to understand, for rocks split the falls into two sections, the larger one looking very virile, the other one small and gentle.
The roiling basin and rapids below the falls fired Jōtarō with renewed energy. Half jumping, half dancing down the steep bank, he called up excitedly, “There’re fish down here!”
A few minutes later, he cried, “I can catch them! I threw a rock and one rolled over dead.”
Not long after that, his voice, barely audible above the roar of the falls, echoed back from still another direction.
In the shadow of the little hut, Musashi and Otsū sat among countless tiny rainbows made by the sun shining on the wet grass.
“Where has that boy gone, do you suppose?” she asked, adding, “He’s really impossible to manage.”
“Do you think so? I was worse than that at his age. Matahachi, though, was just the opposite, really very well behaved. I wonder where he is. He worries me far more than Jōtar