Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [410]
“What happened?”
While the word “rape” was on the tip of everyone’s tongue, no one said it. Nor did it even cross their minds to chase the villain. Whatever had happened to Akemi, they felt, she had brought on herself.
“Come on, let’s go back,” said one of the men, taking her hand.
Akemi pulled away quickly. Resting her face forlornly against the wall, she broke down in bitter tears.
“Seems to be drunk.”
“How’d she get that way?”
Jōtarō had been watching the scene from a distance. What had befallen Akemi was not clear to him in detail, but somehow he was reminded of an experience that had nothing to do with her. The titillation of lying in the fodder shed in Koyagyū with Kocha came back to him, along with the strangely exciting fear of approaching footsteps. But his pleasure quickly evaporated. “I better get back,” he said decisively.
As his pace quickened, his spirit, back from its trip to the unknown, moved him to break into song.
Old metal Buddha, standing in the field,
Have you seen a girl of sixteen?
Don’t you know a girl who’s strayed?
When asked, you say “Clang.”
When struck, you say “Bong.”
A Cricket in the Grass
Jōtarō jogged along at a good pace, paying little attention to the road. Suddenly he halted and looked around, wondering if he’d lost his way. “I don’t remember passing here before,” he thought nervously.
Samurai houses fringed the remains of an old fortress. One section of the compound had been rebuilt to serve as the official residence of the recently appointed Ōkubo Nagayasu, but the rest of the area, rising like a natural mound, was covered with weeds and trees. The stone ramparts were crumbling, having been ravaged many years earlier by an invading army. The fortification looked primitive compared to the castle complexes of the last forty to fifty years. There was no moat, no bridge, nothing that could properly be described as a castle wall. It had probably belonged to one of the local gentry in the days before the great civil war daimyō incorporated their rural domains into larger feudal principalities.
On one side of the road were paddies and marshland; on the other, walls; and beyond, a cliff, atop which the fortress must once have stood.
As he tried to get his bearings, Jōtarō’s eyes traveled along the cliff. Then he saw something move, stop, and move again. At first it looked like an animal, but soon the stealthily moving silhouette became the outline of a man. Jōtarō shivered but stood riveted to the spot.
The man lowered a rope with a hook attached to the top. After he had slid down the full length of the rope and found a foothold, he shook the hook loose and repeated the process. When he reached the bottom, he disappeared into a copse.
Jōtarō’s curiosity was thoroughly aroused.
A few minutes later, he saw the man walking along the low rises separating the paddies and apparently heading straight for him. He nearly panicked, but relaxed when he could make out the bundle on the man’s back. “What a waste of time! Nothing but a farmer stealing kindling.” He thought the man must have been crazy to risk scaling the cliff for nothing more than some firewood. He was disappointed too; his mystery had become unbearably humdrum. But then came his second shock. As the man strolled up the road past the tree Jōtarō was hiding behind, the boy had to stifle a gasp. He was sure the dark figure was Daizō.
“It couldn’t be,” he told himself.
The man had a black cloth around his face and wore peasant’s knickers, leggings and light straw sandals.
The mysterious figure turned off onto a path skirting a hill. No one with such sturdy shoulders and buoyant stride could be in his fifties, as Daizō was. Having convinced himself that he was mistaken, Jōtarō followed. He had to get