Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [585]
Osei agreed readily, saying, “It would be the best thing that could possibly happen to him.”
Otsuru got up to go look for Iori, but just then he emerged from behind a tree, where he had overheard the whole conversation.
“Do you object to going with me?” asked Sado.
Bursting with happiness, Iori begged to be taken to Kokura.
While Sado drank his tea, Otsuru got Iori ready for the trip: kimono, hakama, leggings, basket hat—all new. It was the first time he had ever worn a hakama.
That evening, as the Tatsumimaru spread its black wings and sailed forth under clouds turned golden by the setting sun, Iori looked back at a sea of faces—Otsuru’s, her mother’s, Sahei’s, those of a large group of well-wishers, the face of the city of Sakai.
With a broad smile on his face, he took off his basket hat and waved at them.
The Writing Teacher
The sign at the entrance to a narrow alley in the fishmongers’ district of Okazaki read: “Enlightenment for the Young. Lessons in Reading and Writing,” and bore the name Muka, who was from all appearances one of the many impoverished but honest rōnin making a living by sharing his warrior-class education with the children of commoners.
The curiously amateurish calligraphy brought a smile to the lips of passersby, but Muka said he wasn’t ashamed of it. Whenever it was mentioned, he always replied in the same way: “I’m still a child at heart. I’m practicing along with the children.”
The alley ended in a bamboo grove, beyond which was the riding ground of the House of Honda. In fair weather it was always covered by a cloud of dust, since the cavalrymen often practiced from dawn to dusk. The military lineage they were so proud of was that of the famous Mikawa warriors, the tradition that had produced the Tokugawas.
Muka stirred from his midday nap, went to the well and drew water. His solid-gray unlined kimono and gray hood might well have been the dress of a man of forty, but he was in fact not yet thirty. After washing his face, he walked into the grove, where he cut down a thick bamboo with a single sword stroke.
After washing the bamboo at the well, he went back inside. Blinds hanging on one side kept out the dust from the riding ground, but since this was the direction from which light came, the one room seemed smaller and darker than it actually was. A board lay flat in one corner; above it hung an anonymous portrait of a Zen priest. Muka set the piece of bamboo on the board and tossed a bindweed flower into the hollow center.
“Not bad,” he thought, as he backed away to examine his work.
Sitting down in front of his table, he took his brush and began practicing, using as models a manual on squarish, formal characters by Ch’u Sui-liang and a rubbing of the priest Kōbō Daishi’s calligraphy. He had evidently been progressing steadily during the year he had lived there, for the characters he wrote now were far superior to the ones on the sign.
“May I trouble you?” asked the woman from next door, the wife of a man who sold writing brushes.
“Come in, please,” said Muka.
“I only have a minute. I was just wondering…. A few minutes ago I heard a loud noise. It sounded like something breaking. Did you hear it?”
Muka laughed. “That was only me, cutting down a piece of bamboo.”
“Oh. I was worried. I thought something might have happened to you. My husband says the samurai prowling around here are out to kill you.”
“It wouldn’t matter if they did. I’m not worth three coppers anyway.”
“You shouldn’t be so easygoing. Lots of people get killed for things they don’t even remember doing. Think how sad all the girls would be if some harm came to you.”
She went on her way, not asking, as she often did, “Why don’t you take a wife? It isn’t that you don’t like women, is it?” Muka never gave a clear answer, though he’d brought it on himself by carelessly