Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [9]
“You’re crazy!” Takezō would reply in exasperation. “You’re going to get us killed, or at least picked up. We lost, we’re stragglers—can’t you get that through your head? We have to be careful and lie low until things cool down.”
He soon grew tired of trying to reason with his pleasure-loving friend, however, and started instead to cut him short with curt replies:
“I don’t like sake,” or sometimes: “I like it out here. It’s cozy.”
But Takezō was going stir-crazy too. He was bored beyond endurance, and eventually showed signs of weakening. “Is it really safe?” he’d ask. “This neighborhood, I mean? No sign of patrols? You’re sure?”
After being entombed for twenty days in the woodshed, he finally emerged like a half-starved prisoner of war. His skin had the translucent, waxen look of death, all the more apparent as he stood beside his sun-and-sake-reddened friend. He squinted up at the clear blue sky, and stretching his arms broadly, yawned extravagantly. When his cavernous mouth finally came closed, one noticed that his brows had been knit all the while. His face wore a troubled air.
“Matahachi,” he said seriously, “we’re imposing on these people. They’re taking a big risk having us around. I think we should start for home.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Matahachi. “But they’re not letting anyone through the barriers unchecked. The roads to Ise and Kyoto are both impossible, according to the widow. She says we should stay put until the snow comes. The girl says so too. She’s convinced we should stay hidden, and you know she’s out and about every day.”
“You call sitting by the fire drinking being hidden?”
“Sure. You know what I did? The other day some of Tokugawa’s men—they’re still looking for General Ukita—came snooping around. I got rid of the bastards just by going out and greeting them.” At this point, as Takezō’s eyes widened in disbelief, Matahachi let out a rolling belly laugh. When it subsided, he went on. “You’re safer out in the open than you are crouching in the woodshed listening for footsteps and going crazy. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” Matahachi doubled up with laughter again, and Takezō shrugged.
“Maybe you’re right. That could be the best way to handle things.”
He still had his reservations, but after this conversation he moved into the house. Okō, who obviously liked having people, more specifically men, around, made them feel completely at home. Occasionally, however, she gave them a jolt by suggesting that one of them marry Akemi. This seemed to fluster Matahachi more than Takezō, who simply ignored the suggestion or countered it with a humorous remark.
It was the season for the succulent, fragrant matsutake, which grows at the bases of pine trees, and Takezō relaxed enough to go hunting the large mushrooms on the wooded mountain just behind the house. Akemi, basket in hand, would search from tree to tree. Each time she picked up their scent, her innocent voice reverberated through the woods.
“Takezō, over here! Lots of them!”
Hunting around nearby, he invariably replied, “There are plenty over here too.”
Through the pine branches, the autumn sun filtered down on them in thin, slanting shafts. The carpet of pine needles in the cool shelter of the trees was a soft dusty rose. When they tired, Akemi would challenge him, giggling. “Let’s see who has the most!”
“I do,” he’d always reply smugly, at which point she’d begin inspecting his basket.
This day was no different from the others. “Ha, ha! I knew it!” she cried. Gleefully triumphant, the way only girls that young can be, with no hint of self-consciousness or affected modesty, she bent over his basket. “You’ve got a bunch of toadstools in your batch!” Then she discarded the poisonous fungi one by one, not actually counting out loud, but with movements so slow and deliberate Takezō could hardly ignore them, even with his eyes closed. She flung each one as far as she could. Her task completed, she looked up, her young face