by David Kirk
The sound of it carried Musashi along through the meaningless noise and clamour. Lithe forms of stub-tailed cats ghosted over overhanging roofs, peered down with eyes wide and green and cynical. The arc of a bridge lined with neophyte monks, bell-shaped straw baskets over their heads smothering the mantras they uttered low, bowls held out pleading in bony hands, they living their years of avowed poverty seeking to learn the charity and meanness of the world. The sweet stink of a sake brewery with its broad doors cast wide open and the vats within exposed. Imposing shrieks of the peddlers of goods, tempting potential customers to partake of sweet bean paste, of imported incense, of intricately carved netsuke beads to hang from the belt, inutile shit, inutile shit, inutile shit.
Another shrine for the Regent’s festival was being readied. It was of a brilliant blue lacquer that had been polished to a sheen, and now men were testing the hardness of its yokes upon their shoulders. Forty of them bore it upwards with a great wheeze of effort, and they and the watching crowd cheered as they found the weight bearable. They began to teeter it back and forth between them, the shrine rising and falling like a boat upon rough seas, cymbals and gongs and chimes attached to it rattling in a great cacophony.
Those on the left of the mob went: Hwaja!
Those on the right of the mob went: Hoja!
The left went: Hwaja!
The right went: Hoja!
The chant went on and on, and people in the crowd clapped in time, and apart from this was Musashi, silent and watching. Always apart.
He walked on. Like a bruise to be prodded, a burn to be squeezed, the school of the Yoshioka drew him in. Surpassing all thought of danger, the grim curiosity, the necessity. He told himself that he would look on it for but a moment, and then retreat. Glimpse and see Akiyama’s head, and in its piteous state find the inspiration he needed, or simply convince himself that he had made some progress towards its liberation, or both, or neither.
Something, anything.
As a sealed lagoon amidst a squall, the street before the school was quieted and residual noise from elsewhere washed like spraying spume over the crowd that had gathered. They were giving the gates a wide and fearful berth. Cautioned, Musashi peered covertly out over their heads from the corner of an alley.
Beneath the maw of their compound he saw Denshichiro sitting upon a stool. The leader of the Yoshioka had his tea-coloured sleeves bound back and his thick arms crossed, and at his side eight adepts stood equally dressed. They had evidently been there some time, for they were standing watch over the head of Akiyama.
Still impaled upon the spike, the head had been taken down from the gatehouse and was now set on the street before them all. The sun and the heat had done to it what Ameku had not been able to describe.
The crowd watched the head, and the head watched back.
In those few moments of his botched attempt at a righteous larceny, the Yoshioka must have recognized Musashi. Or perhaps they had simply surmised who it must have been in its aftermath, and then duly extrapolated what it was Musashi had been seeking on top of the gatehouse, and thus they found their lure.
Had they spent each day since then in this manner? The trap was so apparent, and yet Musashi could not walk away. Stood there for far longer than the moment he had promised himself, observing all he needed to.
He was taller than most of those in the crowd and, even in his obscured position and even in his stillness, one of the Yoshioka eventually spotted Musashi. He spoke to his fellows and their heads turned, Denshichiro’s last of all.
The smile that broke across his face, once he had confirmed to himself it was Musashi, was visible at distance.
Denshichiro rose to his feet. Those close to Musashi grew nervous as they realized who it was who had attracted the samurai’s attention. Musashi abandoned any pretence of hiding and stepped out onto the street. The crowd drew back.
Instants unfurled devoid of sound or rhythm as each man watched the other. Denshichiro’s smile faded. He cocked his head and held his hand out in gesture to Akiyama’s head.
Come and claim it, his spread palm said. Charge and give us the excuse and shield of your instigation to wield at the Tokugawa.
Nine men there. Nine men, nine swords, and Musashi’s leg imperfect and his ribs painted purple and yellow and his mind still without any idea on how he might surpass them. Yet he could not force himself to walk away.
Denshichiro turned to his men. He held his hand out. One of them tossed him a bamboo training sword. He caught it and held it up to Musashi.
Musashi saw.
Denshichiro took it by the grip and then turned to Akiyama’s head. He looked to Musashi. He looked to the head. He ran the blunted point through the brittle curls of the dead man’s hair. He looked to Musashi.
Musashi saw this, too.
Denshichiro drew the sword up to rest across his shoulder, and slowly he went to stand behind the head. He stood there with his off-hand on his hip, and still he looked at Musashi.
Musashi’s thumb dug its way between the rope that served as his belt and his waist, clawed itself.
Denshichiro drew his right arm back and swung the sword around one-handed. A gentle parody of a blow, the shaft slapped against Akiyama’s right cheek, rested there.
Musashi saw. Saw nine of them. Nine of them, and he alone.
Denshichiro drew the sword back once more, and this time swung backhanded. Bamboo connected in the same demeaning manner against Akiyama’s left cheek.
Steel swords at Musashi’s waist, and what was it that held them back? The Yoshioka were there and he was here, and, if he had not the method or the logic that would best them, then what of will, or of justice, or of bloody-minded ambition?
Denshichiro swung forehanded again, then backhanded once more, forehanded, backhanded, growing stronger. The head rocked and twisted and flies raged at each impact.
Or if those things would not suffice, what of a complete and utter hatred?
Forehanded, backhanded, forehanded, backhanded, and the outrage spiralled ever outwards. The anger that had carried him this far could take him further surely. The soles of Musashi’s feet parted the dust of the street and a curse parted his teeth as his lips drew back into a snarl, and from his side a girl whispered his name, and there was Denshichiro not fifteen paces away, scion, heir, Lord of all that was wrong, and bamboo broke skin and painted a rotten welt upon a desecrated cheek, and Musashi’s palm was upon the grip of his sword, calluses sliding between the leather cords, and then Yae, with no other choice, stepped into his path.
An hour later in the workroom of the lodgings Musashi and Ameku were at erratic war, he striding back and forth and tearing at his clothes and she stilled and sitting at her loom and not offering him her face.
It was she who had sent Yae to watch over him.
‘What in all the hells were you thinking?’ he shouted at her. ‘What your intent? You think I need guarding?’
‘Yae, she stopped you, no?’
‘She stopped me from recovering Akiyama’s head!’
‘Yae, how many men, Yoshioka men?’
‘A lot,’ said the girl. She was standing by the woman, clutching at her sleeve, afraid of Musashi in his fury.
He waved a scornful hand. ‘They could not have stopped me.’
‘They would kill you,’ said Ameku.
‘I was there to get Akiyama’s head, to set him at peace. I was trying to right that wrong.’
‘They would kill you.’
‘Do you know what it was they were doing? Denshichiro, that arrogant son of a whore?’
‘I do not care about this man.’
‘That you knew you him, you would. Worthy of his head being struck from his shoulders, and his school torn down and—’
‘And then his men kill you.’
‘Was it not you who spoke so candidly about how wrong and terrible and ugly it was, that Akiyama’s head was not laid to rest with his body?’
‘I said . . .’ sh
e said, struggled to keep up with the pace of his words. ‘I said it is bad, but, but, do not die, do not kill . . . Can you not understand this?’
‘Get the head, and all at peace, and them that need laying low laid low,’ he spat.
‘You die.’
‘And so what if I did?’ he cried. ‘What matter that? Better I die killing them than, than . . . I hid for two years from them after Sekigahara, and they intruded upon me, and killed those just like me. Their world, their Way. Two years as nothing I, as black water at night, and still the injustice. Better to kill and to be killed, to, to live in moments where I can say that I was definite, that I was real . . . A separate entity to them, defined by my striking at them and they striking me than to hide and acquiesce to all their ordurous shit and achieve the same end.’
‘Truly, you think this?’ she said. ‘Better to die?’
He faltered for a moment, the fuel of his stubborn arguments sputtering before the wind of logic.
‘Please forgive me, Musashi,’ said Yae in the disjointed lull. ‘I’m sorry that—’
‘You have no cause to apologize,’ he snarled in a manner that made her feel she had to apologize. Wind could extinguish or it could ignite. ‘Neither one of you can tell me that they, those samurai, do not deserve to die. Neither one of you can say that my coming here, of my felling Seijuro, of what I shall do to Denshichiro, none can deny that these are worthy things, things that need to be done. That I will do.’
‘Revenge . . .’ said Ameku. ‘It is this important to you?’
‘This is not revenge,’ said Musashi. ‘What are you talking of?’
‘Yoshioka try to kill you,’ said the woman. ‘So, you come to Kyoto to kill them. And Akiyama dies, and now here you are.’
‘This is not a matter of vengeance! I am no samurai. I overcame that – vengeance is no saintly thing to me. Or, if it is a vengeance, it is no vengeance for myself. This is for Akiyama, and all like him, for Jiro, for all those thousands at Sekigahara, and the centuries before.’
Ameku said nothing. Perhaps she could not think of anything to say, or perhaps she could not think of how to translate what she thought, or perhaps she meant to mock him. The outrage spiralled ever outwards; in this kind of mood all were against him.
‘If you only understood the Way,’ he said. ‘If you understood it, if you felt it . . . Felt it as I did, who was born to it. Do you know what I almost did because of it, where it almost led me on some supposed shining path? What I was made to do, when I was no more than a child? I watched my father pull his own intestines out in agony, and watched other men condemn him for this. Then I was set upon a path of vengeance, and committed myself to die at its end. Do you understand this? I came so close . . . For years I struggled through hardship, all for a single chance – and I succeeded! I got so near to him, I had the dagger all but at that son of a whore Nakata’s throat. Prepared to kill to him, knowing I would be cut down after, or have to kill myself, and all this because dogma demanded it. I was a sliver from death – I, a child, ready to die. To waste all I had. The Way made me want to do so – want to! Have you ever felt such a hold upon you? But no . . . I failed to kill him then, I could not do it, but even so I was not freed. I hated myself for the gall of surviving. Hated myself for living – the Way made me shamed of my own breath! Do you know what it is like to wake in the morning and to loathe yourself entirely, to wish the flesh to be scoured from your hands and the bones beneath unto dust? That, I felt for years, on account of some ancient code. Some scabrous accursed dogma. That is the Way. The dream that I was given. That was forced upon me. Where is the justice that such a thing should reign highest in the world? What sort of man is it that could look out and see statues of his enemy raised to the sky, and not seek the satisfaction of—’
‘And this is not revenge?’ said Ameku.
Musashi stood there with his jaw clenched and his hands as fists, and no words escaped him. Outside still the drums played, growing in scale, growing in urgency – atta-ta-tata, ta-tata, ta-tata atta-ta-ta – and they were there and easy to blame and so he snarled and turned his rage upon them instead.
‘How can anyone abide the city?’ he said, lashed his arms at the unseen players. ‘This accursed noise, these drums. To the myriad hells with it all. I cannot think. I cannot breathe.’
Expended, he went and sat down with his back against the wall, turned his head away and looked at nothing. Yae had tears in her eyes. Ameku sensed or heard this, and moved along the bench. The girl climbed up to sit beside her and leant her head on the woman’s shoulder, and for a time her sniffling was the only sound from those within the room.
Outside the drums played on.
Ameku began to knock a fist into a palm in time. ‘This,’ she said, meaning her pounding, ‘what is the word for this . . . ?’
‘Rhythm,’ said Musashi.
‘Rhythm,’ said Ameku. ‘This is not a bad thing. Do not hate it. All ideas from rhythm. All ideas from music. I told you before, in Ryukyu we have no iron, so no swords. Instead of swords, we have instruments. Men, women, both. Drum, or flute, or voice, or three-string . . .’ She made a motion as though she were strumming a shamisen or a biwa lute. ‘Everyone, an instrument. Everyone, rhythm. Better this way, I feel.’
He looked at her. As always her hair was long and immaculately combed, caught echoes of the light. Her words stayed with him through the haze of his sleep that night the way the melodies of her songs had stayed with him through prior darkness.
The next morning found him on the streets of Kyoto, caught in a somnolent stupor born of a vampiric heat and the toll of restless nights. Crowds passed dreamlike around him, the taste of sweat salt on his lips, sounds passing through his body as ethereal as the sounds of bells beneath water.
On the streets he saw groups of young women forming, learning to dance the dance they would dance for the Regent soon. Standing in ranks, and on their heads were lanterns worn as hats, empty of candles at present, symmetrical fronds shaped from cheap wood to form arcane crowns. They all following the movement of the leader, legs extending, cavorting, the fans held in either hand twirling, rising, falling, spinning. The motion of them all in their tentative unison mesmerizing to the desperately tired eye searching for comforting recognition of pattern.
On the steps sat the old women watching, teeth like lead and fingers like the husks of millet. They, these grandmothers, holding the wrists of the youngest girls that were corralled between their legs, moving their little hands through the motions of the dance, simultaneously teaching and remembering how it had been when they were young, when they had danced as they had been taught in turn by their own grandmothers.
Nudged and bumped, his body in the bustle. Would have driven him to anger usually, or given the sense of entrapment, an enclosing pressure, but now Musashi found ambivalence. His reserves of fury perhaps temporarily spent the day before, his flesh now at the whim of the world as much as his mind, all just equal forces buffeting equally.
The drums, the drums. The skins lashed now, and the great bands forming. The rhythm permeating. Some big double-skinned instruments borne on a yoke between two men facing one another, and as they would each strike a separate side of it they would caper, lifting one another up, flipping and cavorting. A young man on his knees with two small sticks in his hands, beating frantically on a snare no bigger than a bowl, the tone of it high and pitched.
All things from music. All ideas from rhythm. Ameku’s words constant in his mind like the chanting of circumambulating monks.
Musashi stopped and watched a group of ten men with ten drums out before them on stands at waist height, bodies and instruments set out in a perfect line. What they were practising was a dance as well as music, the motions of their arms as they played regimented and flourishing, one arm held high, the other flicking the wrist and the stick in spirals and curls. Or one leg sliding out behind them and dipping into a crouch – just like a sword stance – or interlocking their arms with
their neighbour and playing with one hand on their drum and one hand on the adjacent instrument, striking out two concurrent parts and yet the one, whole true rhythm held flawless.
Now realized properly, their noise was not repulsing or irritating but rather mesmerizing, enthralling, he drawn to watch them closer, drawn to observe rather than see. Natural, the natural state of things to be carried such, the rhythm of the universe that he had felt only fleeting before manifested here. Observing their technique, the muscles moving beneath the skin, the wrists rolling and rolling on and on untempered and yet methodical, free yet precise.
The right hand kept the rhythm, pulsing, pounding deep: bom, a-bom, a-bombombom.
The left hand beat out the counter, the urgency: atta-ta-tata ta-ta-ta ta-tata-atta-ta-tata.
The girls nearby chanted: Sore! Sore! Sore sore sore sore sore!
The entwining, the interplay of the hands of the drummers entrancing, two hands together in unison. Something forming quivering and invisible between the hairs on the back of Musashi’s own hands. His mind deprived of the concept of ego beyond simple endurance, of rationality, now sparked and inspired to blaze off on an abstract angle of pure conjecture.
He saw drums and thought of longswords, and how a longsword worked was this: the right hand held up near the guard pushed and the left hand held near the pommel pulled. It was this controlled motion that gave the ability to cut properly, not some great swipe with the shoulders but rather the sword utilizing the body as no more than a fulcrum, the potential of the steel by and for itself duly realized as it whipped around. Thus, two hands always on the sword.
Musashi, though, saw the duel with Akiyama: his longsword cutting down across the body held only in one hand. He had summoned enough strength with his right wrist alone to achieve the motion of two. Contra. Impossible. But he had done it, and he had kept training the right arm to this day. But always a strange sense of emptiness as he did so, as if he were pushing at something barely realized.
A feeling as empty as his left hand was during the training.