by Ronan Frost
*
Yobutomo walked and I followed at his heels. The trail felt like a hidden secret, wide enough only for one man, snaking through the trees. The rain did not relent, and throughout the forest it had washed away any remaining trace of fallen snow, leaving slush and mud. I sensed my pace was much slower than what Yobutomo was accustomed to and he made conscious effort to keep me in tow. He still wore his distinctive single planked goblin-sandals, and far from making progress difficult, they endowed him with agility over the uneven ground, his feet clear of the mud.
“I need to stop,” I dared to say finally, unable to stop myself from scratching at the itching red flesh of my thighs.
Yobutomo paused and grabbed long strips of resilient sasa grass, chopping the stems low with his belt knife and adding the strips to the collection growing in his belt. He was not even breathing heavily.
“We all feel pain,” he said. “It is the suffering that is optional.”
I made a face, and Yobutomo laughed at himself.
“I’m sorry boy. Here, let’s rest a while.”
And so we sat, and while we rested the morning rain eased, leaving the forest gleaming with hanging beads of water. Yobutomo passed me a flask of water, and given the chance I would have stopped right there for the day, but Yobutomo sensed my deepening relaxation and jumped to his feet. With a nod of his head, he set off once again and, groaning, I followed.
He led us along snaking exposed ridge lines and dipping low through forests, the mud on the slopes slippery with ice and, unlike my guide, I had to tread with care, holding the narrow trunks of trees lining the path. As the long hours passed that indirect low light of the winter sun hidden by cloud started to fade, and we finally stopped to make camp. I felt like a marionette that had every string tensed up so tightly I could hardly move; the tendons where my thighs joined my hips at the front tight, the muscles of my calves like rock.
At the base of an evergreen the needles were soft and relatively dry. Yobutomo took up his woodman’s axe and set about gathering standing wood for a campfire in the growing darkness. In my exhaustion I could not move to help, but simply watched. After creating a modest and carefully stacked construction, Yobutomo shrugged free of the slender bag slung over his shoulder and, laying it upon the ground, untied one end. Then, one by one, he removed the things within; a handful of vegetables with earth still clinging to them, a small square of white cloth, some bamboo leaves, a pouch of uncooked rice, and a small lacquer box from which wisps of smoke drifted, billowing out in a little cloud as he slid it open and withdrew a tightly wrapped tinder bundle, placing it low and precisely in the stacked wood, blowing a long measured breath until flame licked at the pine needles. The way he carried out each action seemed a ritual, performed so often it hardly required thought with the reverence of prayer.
Slowly hungry yellow flames grew to create a small fire no bigger than the spread of my hands, and although I sat practically atop of it, it did little to drive the chill dampness from my clothing.
“Can we not make it bigger?” I asked.
It was quick, but saw Yobutomo glancing into the darkness. I was immediately suspicious.
“What is it? Can you hear something?”
He smiled reassuringly. “No. But I think this fire is large enough for our purposes.”
He lay the square of cloth flat upon the earth, brushing it clean before dashing a handful of hard brown grains of rice into the center. He shot me a look from beneath the tangle of his bushy grey brows, as if measuring up my hunger, and without expression cast another handful in. He then tied the ends of the cloth together and, holding it away from himself, doused it liberally with water from his egg-shaped drinking gourd. He replaced the stopper in the gourd, laying it aside, then lifted the soaking pouch of rice towards the fire, the dripping cloth making hissing noises as he placed it deep into the hot ashes to cook.
He slid his wakizashi sword clear of its lacquered sheath. It was a beautiful blade, the metal gleaning the most perfect silver. No doubt the work of a master artisan, the hundreds of folded layers gone into its forging shimmered upon the edge of vision. Yobutomo casually held the hilt up close to the guard and used the edge to slice up the vegetables, dropping them into a wrapping of bamboo leaves at his feet. He held the weapon with his left hand, while his right hand – the one missing all but the stumps of all four fingers – he used to hold the vegetables. The wickedly sharp blade sliced the vegetables without any apparent effort. He looked up, noticing my attention, and smiled.
“It was my grandfather’s,” he said, flipping the blade over his fingers and sliding it back into the sheath.
“He was a samurai?” I asked, for only the ruling class were permitted such a weapon.
“As was my father,” Yobutomo replied simply. His attention seemed focused on wrapping vegetables in bamboo leaves, and moving them close to the base of the fire.
I blinked, intrigued and confused, and in my eyes the mountain monk before me took on another depth. Yobutomo saw my look and his voice softened and he spoke so quietly it was barely above the crackling of the sticks as they burned. “I was not always like this, calm and in control of my emotions. In the prime of my youth, I had a terrible temper. It would sweep over me. I did some things to those I loved the most that I regret most deeply, things that cannot ever be undone.”
He gave a wan smile and looked down at his right hand, flexing what remained of his fingers. “But that is a story for another day.”
He slapped his palms upon his knees, as if to seal away the past. His motions were deliberate and quick as he took two small bowls and two pairs of chopsticks, laying them before him in readiness.
“Is that how you do it?” I asked at last. “Your strength. You have the blood of the samurai?”
Yobutomo laughed; a natural, casual laugh. “Despite all that is told, I believe it is the same blood that flows in all veins; peasants, warriors, and kings.”
“No, there must be truth in it. You don’t even look tired.”
“I’ve had a little more practice than you.” Yobutomo dusted his hands upon the gown at his knee and sat back, satisfied with the progress of the cook. He gathered the handful of the grass stems he had collected during the day and sorted through them, finding the longest. He started to weave them together, his hands seemingly once set on their task working independently of thought. “All of us have the ability for change. You feel it, don’t you?”
“Feel what?”
He smiled as if at a shared secret. “Calmness.”
I dropped my eyes, staring back to into the fire, and took a moment of reflection. I saw in my fatigue there lay a kind of quietude, a silencing of the inner monologue that had always ridden my thoughts.
“I think perhaps I do,” I said.
“Then you are already on the path to enlightenment.”
I made a snort of dismissal that sounded harsher than I had intended.
Yobutomo smiled down at his lap where he worked. “Part of the yamabushi training, and core to our philosophy, is running.”
“That doesn’t sound very spiritual.”
“What could be more spiritual? Exertion of the body beyond limits of exhaustion, opening the mind to the natural order of the world…” He paused in his task and looked directly at me, his eyes gleaming in the firelight. “A moving mediation that puts us in the present, in the now. As you run, you are able to venerate every blade of grass, every stone, in all things see the manifestation of Buddha.”
“I’ve been to the limits of exhaustion, and that brought me no closer to enlightenment. I’m afraid I’m no monk.”
Yobutomo had seemed to finish a part of whatever he was weaving. He placed it at his feet and, reaching out across the small fire, placed his hand companionably upon my shoulder. Despite the lightness to his touch, I flinched at the unfamiliar contact.
“You might surprise yourself one day, my boy, with the things a man can become.”
&nb
sp; I flushed with sudden heat until at last he withdrew his hand from my shoulder.
“So are you a monk, or a warrior?” I asked.
“I am yamabushi, and all yamabushi are both. Not only do we run, but we also train in the martial arts. We align ourselves with those lords whose goals match our own, and at times fight alongside their armies.”
“The yamabushi are an army?”
“No. We have leaders, but no master. The yamabushi are a collection of individuals, each of their own free will, joining together for strength in unity, to fight for and protect those we love.”
“But with no master, how do you survive?”
“Man is a social creature; the hardest battle to find freedom is the inner one, as you yourself know. You have seen that without a master and without duty, there is no belonging. I can see it in your eyes - you now face loneliness, without direction, without purpose.” Yobutomo tilted his head, eyes glinting with a depthless knowledge, black upon black. “In time, you will learn that it is not a hollow that needs to be filled, it is the container than needs to be broken.”
I felt a stirring thread of kindred to this old man, but before I could ask more the aching hollow of my stomach chose that inopportune moment to give a mighty rumble.
Yobutomo shook himself back to the present. Using the end of a thick stick he pushed aside the glowing red ashes, pushing out the sack of rice until it lay upon the edge of the fire, steaming. “But enough of this talk – we’ve been on the trail all day and I’m sure you are starving. Dinner is done; well enough in any case – I don’t think I can hold you back any longer.”
He plucked the knot in the cloth and spread it upon the ground, freeing clumps of steaming rice and serving out a generous portion into my bowl with his chopsticks.
Food had never tasted so good.