Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [44]
She always carried it next to her body, and Takuan knew how much she treasured the instrument. He had never imagined, however, she would refuse to let him play it.
“I really won’t break it, Otsū. I’ve handled dozens of flutes. Oh, come now, at least let me hold it.”
“No.”
“Whatever happens?”
“Whatever happens.”
“You’re stubborn!”
“Okay, I’m stubborn.”
Takuan gave up. “Well, I’d just as soon listen to you play it. Will you play me just one little piece?”
“I don’t want to do that either.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’d start to cry, and I can’t play the flute when I’m crying.”
“Hmm,” mused Takuan. While he felt pity for this obstinate tenacity, so characteristic of orphans, he was aware of a void deep within their stubborn hearts. They seemed to him doomed to yearn desperately for that which they could not have, for the parental love with which they were never blessed.
Otsū was constantly calling out to the parents she’d never known, and they to her, but she had no firsthand knowledge of parental love. The flute was the only thing her parents had left her, the only image of them she’d ever had. When, barely old enough to see the light of day, she’d been left like an abandoned kitten on the porch of the Shippōji, the flute had been tucked in her tiny obi. It was the one and only link that might in the future enable her to seek out people of her own blood. Not only was it the image, it was the voice of the mother and father she’d never seen.
“So she cries when she plays it!” thought Takuan. “No wonder she’s so reluctant to let anyone handle it, or even to play it herself.” He felt sorry for her.
On this third night, for the first time, a pearly moon shimmered in the sky, now and then dissolving behind misty clouds. The wild geese that always migrate to Japan in fall and go home in spring were apparently on their way back north; occasionally their quacking reached them from among the clouds.
Rousing himself from his reverie, Takuan said, “The fire’s gone down, Otsū. Would you put some more wood on it? … Why, what’s the matter? Is something wrong?”
Otsū didn’t answer.
“Are you crying?”
Still she said nothing.
“I’m sorry I reminded you of the past. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It’s nothing,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have been so stubborn. Please take the flute and play it.” She brought the instrument out from her obi and offered it to him across the fire. It was in a wrapper of old, faded brocade; the cloth was worn, the cords tattered, but there still remained a certain antique elegance.
“May I look at it?” asked Takuan.
“Yes, please do. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“But why don’t you play it instead of me? I think I really would rather listen. I’ll just sit here like this.” He turned sideways and clasped his arms around his knees.
“All right. I’m not very good,” she said modestly, “but I’ll try.”
She knelt in formal fashion on the grass, straightened her kimono collar and bowed to the flute laying before her. Takuan said no more. He seemed no longer to even be there; there was only the great lonely universe enveloped in night. The monk’s shadowy form might well have been a rock that had rolled down from the hillside and settled on the plain.
Otsū, her white face turned slightly to one side, put the cherished heirloom to her lips. As she wetted the mouthpiece and prepared herself inwardly to play, she seemed a different Otsū altogether, an Otsū embodying the strength and dignity of art. Turning to Takuan, she once again, in proper fashion, disavowed any claim to skill. He nodded perfunctorily.
The liquid sound of the flute began. As the girl’s thin fingers moved over the seven holes of the instrument, her knuckles looked like tiny gnomes absorbed in a slow dance. It was a low sound, like the gurgling of a brook. Takuan felt that he himself had turned into flowing water, splashing through a ravine, playing in the shallows. When the high notes sounded, he felt his spirit wafted into the sky to gambol with the clouds. The sound of earth and the reverberations