Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [595]
“Matahachi, a stick!”
Musashi shut his eyes, steeling himself for the blow, but instead of striking, Gudō drew a circle around him. Without another word, he threw the stick away and said, “Let’s go, Matahachi y’ They walked away quickly.
Musashi was incensed. After the weeks of cruel mortification he’d undergone in a sincere effort to receive a teaching, Gudō’s refusal was far more than a lack of compassion. It was heartless, brutal. He was toying with a man’s life. “Swine of a priest!”
Musashi glared viciously at the departing pair, his lips set tightly in an angry scowl.
“Not one thing.” Reflecting on Gudō’s words, he decided they were deceitful, suggesting the man had something to offer when in fact there was “not one thing” in his foolish head.
“Wait and see,” thought Musashi. “I don’t need you!” He would rely on no one. In the final analysis, there was no one to rely on but himself. He was a man, just as Gudō was a man and all the earlier masters had been men.
He stood up, half lifted by his own rage. For several minutes, he stared at the moon, but as his anger cooled, his eyes fell to the circle. Still inside it, he turned all the way around. As he did so, he remembered the stick that had not struck him.
“A circle? What could it mean?” He let his thoughts flow.
A perfectly round line, no beginning, no end, no deviation. If expanded infinitely, it would become the universe. If contracted, it would become coequal with the infinitesimal dot in which his soul resided. His soul was round. The universe was round. Not two. One. One entity—himself and the universe.
With a click, he drew his sword and held it out diagonally. His shadow resembled the symbol for “o” [オ]. The universal circle remained the same. By the same token, he himself was unchanged. Only the shadow had changed.
“Only a shadow,” he thought. “The shadow is not my real self.” The wall against which he had been beating his head was a mere shadow, the shadow of his confused mind.
He raised his head and a fierce shout broke from his lips.
With his left hand, he held out his short sword. The shadow changed again, but the image of the universe—not by one whit. The two swords were but one. And they were part of the circle.
He sighed deeply; his eyes had been opened. Looking up at the moon again, he saw that its great circle could be regarded as identical with the sword or with the soul of one who treads the earth.
“Sensei!” he cried, bounding off after Gudō. He sought nothing more from the priest, but he owed him an apology for having hated him with such vehemence.
After a dozen steps, he halted. “It’s only leaves and branches,” he thought.
Shikama Blue
“Is Otsū here?”
“Yes, here I am.”
A face appeared above the top of the hedge.
“You’re the hemp dealer Mambei, aren’t you?” said Otsū.
“That’s right. Sorry to bother you when you’re busy, but I heard some news that might interest you.”
“Come in.” She gestured toward the wooden door in the fence.
As was evident from the cloth hanging from branches and poles, the house belonged to one of the dyers who made the sturdy fabric known throughout the country as “Shikama Blue.” This involved immersing the cloth in indigo dye several times and pounding it in a large mortar after each immersion. The thread became so saturated with dye that it wore out long before it faded.
Otsū was not yet used to handling the mallet, but she worked hard and her fingers were stained blue. In Edo, after learning Musashi was gone, she had called at the Hōjō and Yagyū residences, then immediately set out on her search again. In Sakai the previous summer, she boarded one of Kobayashi Tarōzaemon’s ships and came to Shikama, a fishing village situated on the triangular estuary where the Shikama River flows into the Inland Sea.
Remembering that her wet nurse was married to a dyer from Shikama, Otsū had looked her up and was living with her. Since the family was poor, Otsū felt obliged to help with the dyeing, which was