Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [605]
Being in total darkness with Otsū’s body slowly began to work on her mind. She had the feeling that the chilly ashen face was staring accusingly at her. At first she reassured herself by saying, “Everything that happens is destined to happen. Take your place in paradise as a newborn Buddha. Don’t hold a grudge against me.” But before long fear and the sense of her awful responsibility prompted her to seek refuge in piety. Closing her eyes, she began to chant a sutra. Several hours passed.
When at last her lips were silent and she opened her eyes, she could hear birds chirping. The air was still; the rain had stopped. Through the mouth of the cave, a golden sun glared at her, shedding fresh white rays on the rough ground inside.
“What’s that, I wonder?” she said aloud as she got to her feet and her eyes fell on an inscription carved by some unknown hand on the wall of the cave.
She stood before it and read: “In the year 1544, I sent my sixteen-year-old son, whose name was Mori Kinsaku, to fight at the battle of Tenjinzan Castle on the side of Lord Uragami. I have never seen him since. Because of my grief, I wander to various places sacred to the Buddha. Now I am placing in this cave an image of the Bodhisattva Kannon. I pray that this, and a mother’s tears, will protect Kinsaku in his future life. If in later times anyone should pass here, I beg that he invoke the name of the Buddha. This is the twenty-first year since Kinsaku’s death. Donor: The Mother of Kinsaku, Aita Village.”
The eroded characters were difficult to read in places. It had been nearly seventy years since the villages nearby—Sanumo, Aita, Katsuta—had been attacked by the Amako family and Lord Uragami had been driven from his castle. One childhood memory that would never be erased from Osugi’s memory was the burning of this fortress. She could still see the black smoke billowing up in the sky, the corpses of men and horses littering the fields and byways for days afterward. The fighting had reached almost to the houses of the farmers.
Thinking of the boy’s mother, of her sorrow, her wanderings, her prayers and offerings, Osugi felt a stab of pain. “It must have been terrible for her,” she said. She knelt and joined her hands together.
“Hail to the Buddha Amida. Hail to the Buddha Amida …”
She was sobbing, and tears fell on her hands, but not until she had cried herself out did her mind again become conscious of Otsū’s face, cold and insensitive to the morning light, by the side of her knee.
“Forgive me, Otsū. It was wicked of me, terrible! Please forgive me, please.” Her face twisted with remorse, she lifted Otsū’s body in a gentle embrace. “Frightening … frightening. Blinded by motherly love. Out of devotion to my own child, I became a devil to another woman’s. You had a mother too. If she had known me, she would have seen me as … as a vile demon…. I was sure I was right, but to others I’m a vicious monster.”
The words seemed to fill the cave and bound back to her own ears. There was no one there, no eyes to watch, no ears to hear. The darkness of night had become the light of the Buddha’s wisdom.
“How good you were, Otsū. To be tormented so many long years by this horrible old fool, yet never returning my hatred. To come in spite of everything to try to save me…. I see it all now. I misunderstood. All the goodness in your heart I saw as evil. Your kindness I rewarded with hatred. My mind was warped, distorted. Oh, forgive me, Otsū.”
She pressed her damp face against Otsū’s. “If only my son were as sweet and good as you…. Open your eyes again, see me begging for forgiveness. Open your mouth, revile me. I deserve it. Otsū … forgive me.”
While she stared at the face and shed bitter tears, there passed before her eyes a vision of herself as she must have appeared in all those ugly past encounters with Otsū. The realization of how thoroughly wicked she had been gripped at her heart. Over and over she murmured, “Forgive me … forgive me.” She even wondered if it wouldn’t be right to sit there until she joined the girl