Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [399]
No longer able to maintain the fiction that the money didn’t exist, Musashi tucked the pouch into his stomach wrapper for safekeeping.
Then, despite urgings to linger awhile, he shouldered his pack and went out into the night. Having eaten and restored his strength, he calculated that he could make it to Daimon Pass by sunrise. By day, he would have seen around him an abundance of highland flowers—rhododendrons, gentians, wild chrysanthemums—but at night there in the immense sea of darkness he could see only a cottonlike mist clinging to the earth.
He was about two miles from the teahouse when one of the men he’d seen there hailed him, saying, “Wait! You forgot something.” Catching up with Musashi, the man puffed, “My, you walk fast! After you left, I found this money, so I brought it to you. It must be yours.”
He held out a piece of silver, which Musashi refused, saying it certainly wasn’t his. The man insisted that it was. “It must have rolled into the corner when you dropped your money pouch.”
Not having counted the money, Musashi was in no position to prove the man wrong. With a word of thanks, he took the silver and put it in his kimono sleeve. Yet for some reason he found himself unmoved by this display of honesty.
Though the man’s errand had been completed, he fell in alongside Musashi and began making small talk.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t ask, but are you studying swordsmanship under a well-known teacher?”
“No. I use my own style.”
The perfunctory answer failed to discourage the man, who declared that he had been a samurai himself, adding, “But for the time being I’m reduced to living here in the mountains.”
“Is that so?”
“Um. Those two back there too. We were all samurai. Now we make our living cutting trees and gathering herbs. We’re like the proverbial dragon biding its time in a pond. I can’t pretend to be Sano Genzaemon, but when the time comes, I’ll grab my old sword and put on my threadbare armor and go fight for some famous daimyō. I’m just waiting for that day to come!”
“Are you for Osaka or Edo?”
“Doesn’t matter. The main thing is to be on somebody’s side, or else I’ll waste my life hanging around here.”
Musashi laughed politely. “Thanks for bringing the money.”
Then, in an effort to lose the man, he started taking long, rapid strides. The man stayed right beside him, step for step. He also kept pressing in on Musashi’s left side, an encroachment that any experienced swordsman would regard as suspicious. Rather than reveal his wariness, however, Musashi did nothing to protect his left side, leaving it wide open.
The man became increasingly friendly. “May I make a suggestion? If you’d like, why don’t you come spend the night at our place? After Wada Pass, you’ve still got Daimon ahead of you. You might make it by morning, but it’s very steep—a difficult road for a man not familiar with these parts.”
“Thanks. I think I’ll take you up on that.”
“You should, you should. Only thing is, we don’t have anything to offer in the way of food or entertainment.”
“I’d be happy to have a place to lie down. Where is your house?” “About a half mile off to the left and a little higher up.”
“You really are deep in the mountains, aren’t you?”
“As I said, until the proper time comes, we’re lying low, gathering herbs, hunting, doing things like that. I share a house with the other two men.” “Now that you mention it, what became of them?”
“They’re probably still drinking. Every time we go there, they get drunk, and I wind up lugging them home. Tonight I decided to just leave them… . Watch out! There’s a sharp drop there—stream down below. It’s dangerous.”
“Do we cross the stream?”
“Yes. It’s narrow here, and there’s a log across it just below us. After we cross, we turn right and climb up along the riverbank.”
Musashi sensed that the man had stopped walking, but he did not look back. He found the log and started across. A moment later, the man leaped forward and lifted the end of the log in