Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [86]
Matahachi, facing the moat of the Honnōji, stood silently with his head bowed while the men ran by. As the last one passed, he called out to him. The man stopped. “What do you want?” he asked.
Going toward him, Matahachi asked, “How old was this man called Musashi?”
“How would I know?”
“Would you say he was about my age?”
“I guess that’s about right. Yes.”
“Is he from the village of Miyamoto in Mimasaka Province?”
“Yes.”
“I guess ‘Musashi’ is another way of reading the two characters used to write ‘Takezō,’ isn’t it?”
“Why are you asking all these questions? Is he a friend of yours?” “Oh, no. I was just wondering.”
“Well, in the future, why don’t you just stay away from places where you don’t belong? Otherwise you might find yourself in some real trouble one of these days.” With that warning, the man ran off.
Matahachi started walking slowly beside the dark moat, stopping occasionally to look up at the stars. He didn’t seem to have any particular destination.
“It is him after all!” he decided. “He must have changed his name to Musashi and become a swordsman. I guess he must be pretty different from the way he used to be.” He slid his hands into his obi and began kicking a stone along with the toe of his sandal. Every time he kicked, he seemed to see Takezō’s face before him.
“It’s not the right time,” he mumbled. “I’d be ashamed for him to see me the way I am now. I’ve got enough pride not to want him to look down on me… . If that Yoshioka bunch catches up with him, though, they’re likely to kill him. Wonder where he is. I’d like to at least warn him.”
Encounter and Retreat
Along the stony path leading up to the Kiyomizudera Temple stood a row of shabby houses, their planked roofs lined up like rotten teeth and so old that moss covered their eaves. Under the hot noonday sun, the street reeked of salted fish broiling over charcoal.
A dish flew through the door of one of the ramshackle hovels and broke into smithereens on the street. A man of about fifty, apparently an artisan of sorts, came tumbling out after it. Close on his heels was his barefooted wife, her hair a tangled mess and her tits hanging down like a cow’s.
“What’re you saying, you lout?” she screamed shrilly. “You go off, leave your wife and children to starve, then come crawling back like a worm!”
From inside the house came the sound of children crying and nearby a dog howled. She caught up with the man, seized him by his topknot and began beating him.
“Now where do you think you’re going, you old fool?”
Neighbors rushed up, trying to restore order.
Musashi smiled ironically and turned back toward the ceramics shop. For some time before the domestic battle erupted, he had been standing just outside it, watching the potters with childlike fascination. The two men inside were unaware of his presence. Eyes riveted on their work, they seemed to have entered into the clay, become a part of it. Their concentration was complete.
Musashi would have liked to have a try at working with the clay. Since boyhood he had enjoyed doing things with his hands, and he thought he might at least be able to make a simple tea bowl. Just then, however, one of the potters, an old man of nearly sixty, started fashioning a tea bowl. Musashi, observing how deftly he moved his fingers and handled his spatula, realized he’d overestimated his own abilities. “It takes so much technique just to make a simple piece like that,” he marveled.
These days he often felt deep admiration for other people’s work. He found he respected technique, art, even the ability to do a simple task well, particularly if it was a skill he himself had not mastered.
In one corner of the shop, on a makeshift counter made of an old door panel, stood rows of plates, jars, sake cups, and pitchers. They were sold as souvenirs, for the paltry sum of twenty or thirty pieces of cash, to people on their way to and from the temple. In stark contrast to the earnestness the potters devoted to their work was the humbleness of their boarded shack. Musashi wondered whether