Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [496]
The melon vendor cried out in astonishment, “Kojirō! It’s me. Save me!” Hamada blanched with terror and gasped, “Ko-ji-rō!” Then he wheeled around and tried to flee.
“Where do you think you’re going?” barked Kojirō. The Drying Pole flashed through the sultry stillness, lopping off Hamada’s ear and lodging deep in the flesh under the shoulders. He died on the spot.
Kojirō promptly cut the melon vendor’s bonds. Rearranging himself into a proper sitting posture, the man bowed, and stayed bowed, too embarrassed to show his face.
Kojirō wiped and resheathed his sword. Amusement playing faintly around his lips, he said, “What’s the matter with you, Matahachi? Don’t look so miserable. You’re still alive.”
“Yes, sir.”
“None of this ‘yes, sir’ business. Look at me. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”
“I’m glad you’re well.”
“Why wouldn’t I be? But I must say you’ve taken to an unusual trade.” “Let’s not talk about it.”
“All right. Pick up your melons. Then—I know, why don’t you leave them at the Donjiki?” With a loud shout, he summoned the proprietor, who helped them stack the melons behind the blinds.
Kojirō took out his brush and ink and wrote on one of the shoji: “To whom it may concern: I certify that the person who killed the two men lying on this vacant lot was myself, Sasaki Kojirō, a rōnin residing at Tsukinomisaki.”
To the proprietor, he said, “This should fix it so no one’ll bother you about the killings.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Think nothing of it. If friends or relatives of the dead men should come around, please deliver this message for me. Tell them I won’t run away. If they want to see me, I’m ready to greet them anytime.”
Outside again, he said to Matahachi, “Let’s go.”
Matahachi walked beside him but would not take his eyes off the ground. Not once since coming to Edo had he held a steady job. Whatever his intention—to become a shugyōsha or to go into business—when he found the going rough, he changed jobs. And after Otsū slipped away from him, he felt less and less like working. He’d slept in first one place, then another, sometimes at flophouses populated by hoodlums. The past few weeks, he had been making his living as a common peddler, trudging from one part of the castle wall to another, hawking watermelons.
Kojirō wasn’t particularly interested in what Matahachi had been doing, but he had written the sign at the Donjiki and he might later be questioned about the incident. “Why did those samurai have it in for you?” he asked.
“To tell the truth, it had to do with a woman….”
Kojirō smiled, thinking wherever Matahachi went, there soon arose some difficulty connected with women. Perhaps this was his karma. “Mm,” he IT ambled. “The great lover in action again, eh?” Then, more loudly, “Who is the woman, and what exactly happened?”
It took some prodding, but eventually Matahachi gave in and told his tale, or part of it. Near the moat, there were dozens of tiny tea shops catering to construction workers and passersby. In one of these there had been a waitress who caught everybody’s eyes, enticing men who did not want tea to step in for a cup and men who were not hungry to order bowls of sweet jelly. One regular customer had been Hamada; Matahachi, too, dropped in occasionally.
One day this waitress whispered to him that she needed his help. “That rōnin,” she had said. “I don’t like him, but every night after the shop closes, the master orders me to go home with him. Won’t you let me come and hide in your house? I won’t be a burden. I’ll cook for you, and mend your clothes.”
Since her plea seemed reasonable, Matahachi had agreed. That was all there was to it, he insisted.
Kojirō was unconvinced. “It sounds fishy to me.”
“Why?” Matahachi asked.
Kojirō could not decide whether Matahachi was trying to make himself appear innocent or whether he was bragging