Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [70]
“Take you with me? Take you where?” he demanded bluntly.
“Wherever you go.”
“I’m setting out on a long, hard journey, not a sightseeing trip!”
“I won’t get in your way. And I’m prepared to endure some hardships.” “Some? Only some?”
“As many as I have to.”
“That’s not the point. Otsū, how can a man master the Way of the Samurai with a woman tagging along? Wouldn’t that be funny. People’d say, ‘Look at Musashi, he needs a wet nurse to take care of him.”’ She pulled harder at his kimono, clinging like a child. “Let go of my sleeve,” he ordered.
“No, I won’t! You lied to me, didn’t you?”
“When did I lie to you?”
“At the pass. You promised to take me with you.”
“That was ages ago. I wasn’t really thinking then either, and I didn’t have time to explain. What’s more, it wasn’t my idea, it was yours. I was in a hurry to get moving, and you wouldn’t let me go until I promised. I went along with what you said because I had no choice.”
“No, no, no! You can’t mean what you’re saying, you can’t,” she cried, pinning him against the bridge railing.
“Let go of me! People are watching.”
“Let them! When you were tied up in the tree, I asked you if you wanted my help. You were so happy you told me twice to cut the rope. You don’t deny that, do you?”
She was trying to be logical in her argument, but her tears betrayed her. First abandoned as an infant, then jilted by her betrothed and now this. Musashi, knowing how alone she was in the world and caring for her deeply, was tongue-tied, though outwardly more composed.
“Let go!” he said with finality. “It’s broad daylight and people are staring at us. Do you want us to be a sideshow for these busybodies?”
She released his sleeve and fell sobbing against the railing, her shiny hair falling over her face.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I shouldn’t have said all that. Please forget it. You don’t owe me anything.”
Leaning over and pushing her hair from her face with both hands, he looked into her eyes. “Otsū,” he said tenderly. “During all that time you were waiting, until this very day, I’ve been shut up in the castle donjon. For three years I haven’t even seen the sun.”
“Yes, I heard.”
“You knew?”
“Takuan told me.”
“Takuan? He told you everything?”
“I guess so. I fainted at the bottom of a ravine near the Mikazuki Teahouse. I was running away from Osugi and Uncle Gon. Takuan rescued me. He also helped me make arrangements to work here, at the souvenir shop. That was three years ago. And he’s stopped in several times. Only yesterday, he came and had some tea. I wasn’t sure what he meant, but he said, ‘It’s got to do with a man and a woman, so who can say how it’ll turn out?”
Musashi dropped his hands and looked down the road leading west. He wondered if he’d ever again meet the man who’d saved his life. And again he was struck by Takuan’s concern for his fellow man, which seemed all-encompassing and completely devoid of selfishness. Musashi realized how narrow-minded he himself had been, how petty, to suppose that the monk felt a special compassion for him alone; his generosity encompassed Ogin, Otsū, anyone in need whom he thought he could help.
“It has to do with a man and a woman… .” Takuan’s words to Otsū sat heavily on Musashi’s mind. It was a burden for which he was ill prepared, since in all the mountains of books he’d pored over those three years, there wasn’t one word about the situation he was in now. Even Takuan had shrunk from becoming involved in this matter between him and Otsū. Had Takuan meant that relationships between men and women had to be worked out alone by the people involved? Did he mean that no rules applied, as they did in the Art of War? That there was no foolproof strategy, no way to win? Or was this meant as a test for Musashi, a problem only Musashi would be able to solve for himself?
Lost in thought, he stared down at the water flowing under the bridge.
Otsū gazed up into his face, now distant and calm. “I can come, can’t I?” she pleaded. “The shopkeeper’s promised