Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [81]
“I can never go home again!” he thought. “I threw all of it away for … for …” Enraged afresh, he dumped Okō’s clothes out of the clothes chests and ripped them apart, strewing strips and pieces all over the house.
Slowly he became aware of someone calling from the front door.
“Pardon me,” said the voice. “I’m from the Yoshioka School. Are the Young Master and Tōji here?”
“How should I know?” replied Matahachi gruffly.
“They must be here! I know it’s rude to disturb them when they’ve gone off to have some fun, but something terribly important has happened. It involves the good name of the Yoshioka family.”
“Go away! Don’t bother me!”
“Please, can’t you at least give them a message? Tell them that a swordsman named Miyamoto Musashi has appeared at the school, and that, well, none of our people can get the better of him. He’s waiting for the Young Master to return—refuses to budge until he’s had a chance to face him. Please tell them to hurry home!”
“Miyamoto? Miyamoto?”
The Wheel of Fortune
It was a day of unforgettable shame for the Yoshioka School. Never before had this prestigious center of the martial arts suffered such total humiliation.
Ardent disciples sat around in abject despair, long faces and whitened knuckles mirroring their distress and frustration. One large group was in the wood-floored anteroom, smaller groups in the side rooms. It was already twilight, when ordinarily they would have been heading home, or out to drink. No one made a move to leave. The funereal silence was broken only by the occasional clatter of the front gate.
“Is that him?”
“Is the Young Master back?”
“No, not yet.” This from a man who had spent half the afternoon leaning disconsolately against a column at the entranceway.
Each time this happened, the men sank deeper into their morass of gloom. Tongues clicked in dismay and eyes shone with pathetic tears.
The doctor, coming out of a back room, said to the man at the entranceway, “I understand Seijūrō isn’t here. Don’t you know where he is?”
“No. Men are out looking for him. He’ll probably be back soon.” The doctor harrumphed and departed.
In front of the school, the candle on the altar of the Hachiman Shrine was surrounded by a sinister corona.
No one would have denied that the founder and first master, Yoshioka Kemp& was a far greater man than Seijūrō or his younger brother. Kempō had started life as a mere tradesman, a dyer of cloth, but in the course of endlessly repeating the rhythms and movements of paste-resist dyeing, he had conceived of a new way of handling the short sword. After learning the use of the halberd from one of the most skillful of the warrior-priests at Kurama and then studying the Kyō hachi style of swordsmanship, he had then created a style completely his own. His short-sword technique had subsequently been adopted by the Ashikaga shōguns, who summoned him to be an official tutor. Kempō had been a great master, a man whose wisdom was equal to his skill.
Although his sons, Seijūrō and Denshichirō, had received training as rigorous as their father’s, they had fallen heir to his considerable wealth and fame, and that, in the opinion of some, was the cause of their weakness. Seijūrō was customarily addressed as “Young Master,” but he had not really attained the level of skill that would attract a large following. Students came to the school because under Kempō the Yoshioka style of fighting had become so famous that just gaining entrance meant being recognized by society as a skilled warrior.
After the fall of the Ashikaga shogunate three decades earlier, the House of Yoshioka had ceased to receive an official allowance, but during the lifetime of the frugal Kemp& it had gradually accumulated a great deal of wealth. In addition, it had this large establishment on Shijō Avenue, with more students than any other school in Kyoto, which was by far the largest city in the country. But in truth, the school’s position at the top level in the world of swordsmanship was a matter of appearances