Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [433]
In deference to the dead man’s wishes, Musashi kept his money and instead offered to contribute the strength needed to transport the body in one piece. The boy agreed, and together they loaded the corpse on the horse. When the road got steep, they took it off the horse, and Musashi carried it on his back. The graveyard turned out to be a small clearing under a chestnut tree, where a solitary round stone served as a marker.
After the burial, the boy placed some flowers on the grave and said, “My grandfather, grandmother and mother are buried here too.” He folded his hands in prayer. Musashi joined him in silent supplication for the family’s repose.
“The gravestone doesn’t seem to be very old,” he remarked. “When did your family settle here?”
“During my grandfather’s time.”
“Where were they before that?”
“My grandfather was a samurai in the Mogami clan, but after his lord’s defeat, he burned our genealogy and everything else. There was nothing left.”
“I don’t see his name carved on the stone. There’s not even a family crest or a date.”
“When he died, he ordered that nothing appear on the stone. He was very strict. One time some men came from the Gamō fief, another time from the Date fief, and offered him a position, but he refused. He said a samurai shouldn’t serve more than one master. That was the way he was about the stone too. Since he’d become a farmer, he said putting his name on it would reflect shame on his dead lord.”
“Do you know your grandfather’s name?”
“Yes. It was Misawa Iori. My father, since he was only a farmer, dropped the surname and just called himself San’emon.”
“And your name?”
“Sannosuke.”
“Do you have any relatives?”
“An older sister, but she went away a long time ago. I don’t know where she is.”
“No one else?”
“No.”
“How do you plan to make your living now?”
“Same as before, I guess.” But then he added hurriedly, “Look, you’re a shugyōsha, aren’t you? You must travel around just about everywhere. Take me with you. You can ride my horse and I’ll be your groom.”
As Musashi turned the boy’s request over in his mind, he gazed out upon the land below them. Since it was fertile enough to support a plethora of weeds, he could not understand why it was not cultivated. It was certainly not because the people hereabouts were well off; he had seen evidence of poverty everywhere.
Civilization, Musashi was thinking, does not flourish until men have learned to exercise control over the forces of nature. He wondered why the people here in the center of the Kanto Plain were so powerless, why they allowed themselves to be oppressed by nature. As the sun rose, Musashi caught glimpses of small animals and birds reveling in the riches that man had not yet learned to harvest. Or so it seemed.
He was soon reminded that Sannosuke, despite his courage and independence, was still a child. By the time the sunlight made the dewy foliage glisten and they were ready to start back, the boy was no longer sad, seemed in fact to have put all thoughts of his father completely out of mind.
Halfway down the hill, he began badgering Musashi for an answer to his proposal. “I’m ready to start today,” he declared. “Just think, anywhere you go, you’ll be able to ride the horse, and I’ll be there to wait on you.”
This elicited a noncommittal grunt. While Sannosuke had much to recommend him, Musashi questioned whether he should again put himself in the position of being responsible for a boy’s future. Jōtarō—he had natural ability, but how had he benefited by attaching himself to Musashi? And now that he had disappeared to heaven knew where, Musashi felt his responsibility even more keenly. Still, Musashi thought, if a man dwells only on the dangers ahead, he cannot advance a single step, let alone make his way through life successfully. Furthermore, in the case of a child, no one, not even his parents, can actually guarantee his future. “Is it really possible to decide