by David Kirk
Earth my father walked, he said within, Earth my grandfather walked. Do you contain some remnant echo of their spirits?
Daubed in dust, he knelt now before the shrine upon the wall, before the portraits of those two men, as well as his great uncle Naomoto. There Seijuro stayed for a long time.
Though he remembered little of his great-uncle he knew that this was the man who had raised the Yoshioka to their pinnacle, who had won the admiration and the patronage of the Ashikaga Shogunate, and this he revered.
His grandfather he tangibly recalled, he the man who had first let Seijuro hold the longsword, the old man wrapping his hands around his own still infant soft, showing him the method of grip with the little finger, the ring finger, the squeeze of Grandfather’s hands strong then but in the memory now an infallible strength, an eternal strength.
And his father, he whom Seijuro had followed more than any other man, literally followed with every muscle of the body as he memorized taught technique, methods of the blade, no kindness given, none asked, only knowledge, raw knowledge with which Seijuro had adorned himself, let form around him as surely as the flesh atop his bones.
I need not your strength this day, he said to the three of them, I wish only for your acknowledgement.
To his sword, then, which lay stripped and naked by a large vat of water. He set his whetstone into the liquid, then let it rest upon a thin plank dripping down, circles forming on the surface, receding, vanishing. The blade he wrapped in tough cloth and then took in both hands, and so Seijuro set about sharpening the steel upon the stone, using short little buff-strokes that gradually became long and slow, long and slow from base to glistening wet point, the sound like the seething of the sea.
The sea, he thought, Miyamoto is tall and he has reach. Picture him as the rock, the cliff unmoving, and I the sea. Surging closer, breaching, dashing myself against him, unstoppable, unrelenting force. The sea shall consume all eventually. The sea is indefatigable.
The steel dried now, powdered, oiled, the blade set back with grip and guard and scabbarded. Time for himself. He washed his body, washed his hair, combed it out meticulously, then shaved his scalp. The tresses oiled, drawn up into the topknot. He looked in the copper mirror and decided to shave his beard, too, so that he would look entirely unmarred. Fresh. The opposite of what a vagrant would be.
Drawing the blade across his flesh suddenly he felt a thrill twisting through him, a base rush of blood, the shimmering warmth of which was indescribably wonderful. He saw it flare in his own reflected eyes, his jaw tight as though it were biting, and why not bite? Today he could kill, today he was permitted to kill, today a day in which he was allowed to fulfil what he was honed to be, to avenge himself against those who doubted and scorned, unleash every slight he bore within him garnered over the vast span since the last such permitted moment, a day to show himself as he was, truly was, in the tearing of the head from the neck and in the feeling of the edge of steel biting through flesh and the dull clip of it parting bone and . . .
Joy. Rage. Whatever he felt, whatever composite of the two, these were undignified things. There had to be propriety, as Tadanari had taught him, and he thought of the methods the master had shown him to level his spirit, to become serene, of meditation and the search for nothingness, of mantras deigned to him since the age of fifteen, and slowly the grip on his razor lessened and he could continue once more.
Fingers; important. Nails clipped and filed, dirt scraped out from under them.
Now armour, the only concession to armour he would make: a belt of a thousand stitches tied around his stomach. His mother had begged by the gates of the Gion temple for passing pilgrims to add to the band of white silk, row after row of little red x’s threaded slowly, she not drinking, not eating, not sleeping until the thousandth stitch was achieved. He wore it now both to honour her and because it was lined with eight gold ryo coins, ovoid, finger-length, thick and warding, protecting his stomach, which he knew to be the centre of his essence; men argued for the head or the heart, but all pleasurable feelings he found emanated from there, of good food, of sex, of victory.
Lastly, the jacket. The symbol. The hem of it hanging to midthigh, the sleeves wide and billowing, lapels bound loose at the sternum with a single elaborate knot, the braided cord tasselled at its ends. This as every other jacket the school wore, and of course, as every other, the silk of it the colour of tea. But here that colour only the field onto which a pattern of gold had been woven, wreathes of leaves encircling blooming whorls of flowers. He remembered seeing his father in it, his grandfather. Only twice before had Seijuro worn this jacket, but today permitted. So light he could barely feel it on his shoulders. Smelt old; a good smell, like faith.
In his mind Miyamoto had the face of a tengu demon and he lunged, overstepped. Seijuro slid around him, brought his longsword down through the shoulder, brought Miyamoto to his knees, felt the tremors of the dog’s heart thrum along the length of his blade, felt them sweet as the beating of his own heart, felt them slow, stop . . .
The acolytes awaited him, a score of the boys lined up in ranks. Matashichiro was not amongst them: why waste a shining memory on someone whose loyalty was already assured? To one of the boys he awarded the stool upon which he would sit prior to the duel. To another he awarded a platter on which a blackened iron spike had been set, this for Miyamoto’s head after. Lastly, to the one he had ensured beforehand was most worthy, he awarded the standard of the school.
This was twice the height of a man, a frame of wood lacquered black forming a right-angle, vertical five times that of the horizontal. Affixed to the peak a banner head in the form of the flower of the konnyaku, long petals parting vulval from which the phallic stigma jutted upwards, a humble plant of meagre sustenance to remind the school of its origins. In nature it was a deep red, tongue red, but here a shining aureate. The banner it sat atop, pinned to the frame with metal rings, read simply:
School of Yoshioka, Head Adept Seijuro Yoshioka.
The boy clutched it reverently in his hands and they followed the standard as they set out onto the street. Seijuro, his two pages, a dozen men. The dead eyes of the Foreigner watched them go. Each pace measured, every gaze upon the horizon. The men not identical, but to those who beheld them no detail of individual face could be recalled, no deviation in height or weight, just them, there as a whole, unified in step and soul and colour, except for Seijuro, marked as he was, anointed.
Around them the city seemed to bend itself, the people aware of their coming without the apparent need of sight. Warping away in Seijuro’s eyes like the images within a broad copper bowl, pulling to the sides, forced there, belonging there, and yet their colours warm and magnificent. Silence enveloped the streets like an aura around the samurai, embracing, then releasing, no words to sully, and, though he did not look at the faces around him, eyes only ahead as was proper, as was manly, behind the gold coins of his thousand-stitch belt, Seijuro felt a stirring.
This only the prelude, he thought. When the sun has set, when the head is affixed, the return – that the glory yet to be.
They made their slow way north to the moor of the Rendai temple, gathering people behind as the fisherman’s net gathers weight, the sun heavy, sinking, quivering behind the haze of its heat, the red eye of heaven descending as though eager to bear witness also. More men of the school awaited them there, having left earlier, and they had erected a palisade of tea-coloured silk. The boy with the stool ran ahead, set it down and awaited on his knees. Seijuro took the longsword from his belt and surrendered it to the page’s waiting hands before he sat down, assumed the militant-regal pose of legs spread wide, left palm broad upon left thigh, point of his right elbow upon the other thigh and this fist balled to cradle his chin with his knuckles.
Silently his men arrayed themselves around him. The standard was set into its waiting stand, hung above them still, no breeze to move it. Distant, the crowd gathered, and Seijuro welcomed them. They ought to see. They ought to unders
tand. Simple theatre with a simple moral.
The Rendai temple humble, unassuming, silent. The torii gate of its entrance monolithic, two upright pillars, two curved beams at the top, shadow cast so long it was like that of a man’s almost, slender legs leading to the mass of shoulders. In the trees about the temple were scores of birds and Seijuro looked at them, looked at the entire span of what lay before him and thought how wonderful it was to be alive, to be born exactly him and no other.
The hour of the rooster was imminent.
*
Imminent, then gone. Miyamoto did not appear. The edges of the coins in his belt began to dig into the flesh of his stomach. Seijuro sat back, unfolded a paper fan upon which the cityscape of Kyoto was drawn in ink, began to fan himself. In the grass, on the trunks of the trees, the cicadas howled.
*
The sun vanished but the heat did not relent. Sweat collected in the hairs of his eyebrows, accumulating slowly, a trembling bead threatening to burst, grew and grew until it did so, splattered salty upon the waxed surface of his fan; Kyoto blighted by sudden flood. His belt, his kimono drenched, the creep inexorable. No choice but to remove his fine jacket for fear of sullying it. Rendered plain, Seijuro resumed his seat whilst his men lit braziers and lanterns all around.
*
The darkness behind him gradually became total; the only thing beyond the moor the city wall, the moat, and the mountains. With the creep of time what Seijuro became unavoidably aware of was that against this vast expanse he and his palisade and his standard were lit up, and to the crowd, they clustered at the edge of the city’s light facing the void, were surely dwarfed by the blackness, marked as feeble, small.
*
Sullied, sullied, silk and moments and potential, and the birds were no longer in the trees, or not visible to Seijuro, and he had long since abandoned sitting, stood now. His mother’s belt sodden around his waist like a tepid noose edged with metal. His sword still held upright in the hands of his page, and the boy would not meet Seijuro’s eyes, kept his own downcast. The shrieking of the cicadas piercing him, they bawling at the rising summer moon. Blaring, shrill, to him entirely discordant.
*
‘Master Yoshioka,’ one of the samurai dared to say eventually, ‘it is clear Miyamoto is not coming. He has fled.’
Seijuro did not answer. He was counting faces, calculating witnesses. It was a fine thing for his palms that he had filed his nails earlier.
‘I took Miyamoto’s response from the board myself,’ said another. ‘I saw it. All saw it.’
That, the manacle; abandon the field and be thought of as an equal coward. The proper length of time nebulous, but, if it was endurable, unequivocally to be endured.
The crowd had grown. Men and women, rich and poor, artisans and merchants and samurai from other schools. Some wanting to see simple carnage, some wanting to see rival methods of the sword, some wanting to see a humbling. None of these thoughts or urges voiced, however. Just watching. A hundred conclusions being drawn. Seijuro pinned before them, certain he was being pierced.
From behind them a crier came, clacking two blocks of wood together, their tone musical.
‘Hour of the dog!’ was his call, and then he shrank at the sudden attention he garnered, he being used to being treated almost as furniture. ‘Hour of the dog . . .’
Lanterns flickered. Seijuro was not alone in his sweating. People shifted weight from foot to foot, legs growing tired of standing. A young boy dozed draped across his father’s shoulders. One of the Yoshioka cracked the knuckles of his hand. An old man hawked and spat. Distant, the low bells of temples could be heard tolling a confirmation of the crier’s claims.
And then he came.
Oh, he was different, not the samurai the mass were expecting. An outsider, certainly, not of Kyoto. The tallest man that most of them had ever seen, young, though, face mottled more with pox-born scars than with beard. His hair, pulled back into a wild tail that hung down to his shoulders, jutted out behind his skull a palm’s breadth where it was bound in the coils of a leather cord, an obnoxious and deliberate opposite to the dignified topknot. Dressed like a destitute with no apparent sense of shame at it, the sleeves of his clothing cut entirely away, recently and clumsily it seemed, coarse torn threads hanging down his bared arms over muscles lean and tight.
And yet they parted for him as they would have done the Yoshioka, followed after him without thinking as he headed towards Seijuro, he swaggering at his own pace, they wanting to hear now his explanation as much as see. Seijuro could wait no longer, snatched his sword from his page and strode out to meet him.
‘Musashi Miyamoto!’ he snarled, fifteen paces away.
‘Seijuro Yoshioka.’
They stopped no more than a sword’s length away from each other. Neither of them bowed. Seijuro saw how young the man was, younger even than Denshichiro, it seemed, and this fresh ignominy all but caused his shoulders to quiver.
‘The duel was set for the hour of the rooster,’ he said.
‘Loud voices,’ said Miyamoto. ‘Long necks. You chose the hour that suits you best. But this? This is my time.’
The arrogance of it; the gathered Yoshioka samurai snarled, even the young pages, moved as if to surround him. Seijuro waved them back. ‘This is the moment of your death,’ he said to Miyamoto. ‘I’ll not visit the same insult of tarrying upon you as you have me. Prepare.’
‘Why is it you sent a man to kill me in your stead?’
‘Because you need to be fought.’
‘You could hate me so for such a reason?’
‘I could hate a man like you for much less of one. Prepare!’
A single hiss of a mocking laugh: ‘I need no preparation.’
‘I am the fourth head of the Yoshioka dynasty! You have no conception of the skill I wield.’
‘The skill of the men of yours I already killed did not impress me greatly.’
Silence then, deepening. Seijuro took a cord and began to bind his sleeves up, held it in his mouth, teeth clenched savage on the braids. The moment drew out into a long appraisal between the two.
‘Akiyama,’ said Miyamoto, ‘was it you who took his head?’
‘My brother had that honour.’
‘Proxies. All proxies with you. Be felled on their account, then; let us call it justice. For him. For all the other thralls.’
‘Your head will rot alongside the Foreigner’s tonight, cur.’
‘I do not think so,’ said Miyamoto, and he laughed, let open disgust write itself across his features. ‘There is no challenge here. I need no more than a single strike to best you.’
‘What?’ said Seijuro.
‘One strike,’ said Miyamoto. The sheer gall of him was staggering, him in his rags and his gaunt pox-twisted face.
‘I’ll cleave your head from your shoulders in one strike!’ said Seijuro.
‘Let’s make these the rules, then,’ said Miyamoto. ‘One strike each. Do you agree, or would you rather have one of your men here bleed for you?’
‘I agree! Prepare to die!’
‘Do you all hear that?’ said Miyamoto to the other Yoshioka samurai. ‘Do you abide by this agreement between myself and your master?’ They snarled their assent. ‘Good. Come, then, and I shall teach you.’
‘Shut your mouth and let’s end this.’
The anger in the Lord-King Yoshioka’s eyes was perfect right then. Musashi beheld it and felt a gardener’s pride, that of having carefully nourished something that was sprouting into a full and vivid bloom.
The samurai of the Yoshioka stepped back and the crowd stepped forward eagerly. Neither Musashi nor Seijuro moved. So very close, lethally close. Seijuro spread his legs and sank into the fighting stance. Musashi remained as he was, obnoxiously neutral.
To describe these kinds of instants was something Musashi could never do, these times that were potentially the summation of his life. The focus came, the deep focus he longed for, and with it left feeli
ng, and all there was was himself and Seijuro in the long and empty universe. He looked at his opponent, saw the tenseness in him, saw the blotch of a birthmark just below his ear, saw his eyes that were yearning, yearning, yearning, and right then he knew for certain that
he
does
not
know
it
as
you
do
and Seijuro was inhumanly angry, anger entirely, and so as the Yoshioka man went for his sword, he turned his shoulders to put strength into the blow where none was needed, sucked in a fierce hiss of breath, and with these signals it was so easy for Musashi to read. Seijuro aimed for the throat with a wild slash, trying to lop off of his head as he said he would, and though he was fast Musashi simply stepped backwards and let the blow come to nought.
Seijuro overswung in his rage, anticipating resistance of flesh and bone, and he staggered almost entirely around. Over his shoulder he looked at Musashi, who had not moved for his sword the slightest, arms at his side still. Instantly, Seijuro’s sword was around and up into a guard, but there was nothing for him to ward: Musashi did no more than watch him levelly. Seijuro had given his word, and both men knew it. Indecision in Seijuro’s eyes, the urge to fight on, but conflicted, receding, quelled.
He lowered his sword and spread his arms wide.
Musashi stepped back into the range of his sword. Seijuro did no more than grit his teeth and lift his chin to bare his throat. His men behind him aghast yet bound by dogma, spectators only to the magnificent futility, and in the crowd a father whispered to the son upon his shoulders, ‘That is being samurai.’
How Musashi would have agreed. He did not prolong it, lashed his sword from the scabbard and struck Seijuro across the chest from pit to pit. But no killing blow this, his strength tempered, seeking not to cleave but to rake the blade across the flesh, splitting muscle but sparing the vital innards.
Seijuro, expecting death, reacted to the pain with surprise more than anything. He grunted somewhere between a whimper and a further snarl of anger, and fell to his hands and knees. There he remained. The cord he had bound his sleeves up with had been split, slid off his back like a serpent, hiss and all.