Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [593]
Gudō turned and called Matahachi.
“Coming,” said Matahachi. “Do what I told you,” he advised Musashi as he rushed off to catch up with the priest.
Thinking that letting Gudō out of his sight again would be fatal, Musashi decided to follow Matahachi’s advice. In the flow of universal time, a man’s life of sixty or seventy years was only a lightning flash. If in that brief span he was privileged to meet a man like Gudō, it would be foolish to let the chance slip by.
“It’s a sacred opportunity,” he thought. Warm tears gathered at the corners of his eyes. He had to follow Gudō, to the end of the earth if need be, pursue him until he heard the word he longed for.
Gudō walked away from Hachijō Hill, apparently no longer interested in the temple there. His heart had already begun to flow with the water and the clouds. When he reached the Tōkaidō, he turned west, toward Kyoto.
The Circle
The Zen master’s approach to travel was whimsically eccentric. One day when it rained he stayed inside the inn all day and had Matahachi give him a moxa treatment. In Mino Province, he stopped over at the Daisenji for seven days and then spent a few days at a Zen temple in Hikone, so it was only gradually that they approached Kyoto.
Musashi slept wherever he could find a place. When Gudō stayed at an inn he spent the night either outdoors or at another inn. If the priest and Matahachi were stopping at a temple, Musashi took shelter under the gate. Privations were as nothing compared to his need for a word from Gudō.
One night outside a temple by Lake Biwa, suddenly aware of the coming of autumn, he took a look at himself and saw that he resembled nothing so much as a beggar. His hair, of course, was a rat’s nest, since he’d resolved not to comb it until the priest relented. It was weeks since he’d had a bath and a shave. His clothes were quickly being reduced to tatters; they felt like pine bark rubbing against his skin.
The stars seemed ready to fall from the sky. He looked at his reed mat and thought: “What a fool I am!” All at once, his attitude appeared insane. He laughed bitterly. He’d stuck to his goal doggedly, silently, but what was it he was seeking from the Zen master? Was it impossible to go through life without torturing himself so? He even began to feel sorry for the lice inhabiting his body.
Gudō had stated unequivocally that he had “not one thing” to offer. It was unreasonable to press him for something he did not possess, wrong to resent him, even though he showed less consideration than he might have for a stray dog along the wayside.
Musashi gazed upward through the hair hanging over his eyes. No doubt about it—it was an autumn moon. But the mosquitoes. His skin, already peppered with red welts, was no longer sensitive to their bites.
He was quite prepared to admit to himself that there was something he did not understand, but he thought of it as being one thing. If only he could figure out what it was, his sword would be released from its bonds. Everything else would be solved in an instant. Then just as he felt on the verge of grasping it, it always eluded him.
If his pursuit of the Way was to end here, he would prefer to die, for he saw nothing else to live for. He stretched out under the roof of the gate. When sleep would not come, he asked what it could be. A sword technique? No; not only that. A secret for getting on in the world? No; more than that. A solution to the problem of Otsū? No; no man could be this miserable over the love of a woman. It had to be one all-encompassing answer, yet for all its magnitude, it could, at the same time, be no larger than a poppy seed.
Wrapped in his matting, he looked like a caterpillar. He wondered if Matahachi was sleeping well. Comparing himself with his friend, he felt envious. Matahachi’s problems