“Hakamadare.”
“Yes, that was him. A nasty fellow, so I heard.”
“A bloodthirsty demon.”
“Half the domains on Kyushu feared him. And Lord Otomo maintains a strong peace in these parts. Stringing a few bandits up by the neck discourages successors.”
“You say that as if Lord Otomo is doing the wrong thing.”
“I think every man should be able to carve out a place for himself. The world is full of people who aren’t smart enough or strong enough to take care of themselves. Why shouldn’t what the weak have be taken by the strong? The strong and the clever are more deserving. For example, that potter has a taste for the lotus. I didn’t give him that taste, but I’ll certainly profit from his weakness and stupidity. And why shouldn’t I?”
“He looked … strange. Half-mad with want for it.”
“That’s what happens when you use too much of the stuff.” Shirohige shrugged. “The sensations are the closest thing to nirvana in this life, but the effects don’t last. Some people are so hungry for a taste of heaven that they keep reaching for it, unable to see the illusion.”
“Life is suffering, so the Buddhists say.”
“I can vouch for that. So I find my pleasure wherever I can.”
“Where do you get it, this lotus?”
“It comes from China. I know some people in Hakata.”
“Have you ever tried it?”
“Of course. Many times when I was younger.”
“But you stopped. You didn’t have the same want as the potter?”
“I had one very bad night. I was in Kumamoto and had a little too much in a lotus den. Ran afoul of some trouble, evil whores and their muscle who stole all my money and left me beaten in an alley. I can’t afford to muddle my brain like that anymore.” He gave Ken’ishi a smile, missing a couple of teeth. “Would you like to try some? I’ll give you a taste. You don’t even have to pay me. It’s already been a profitable day.”
Ken’ishi thought about this. He had indulged in too much saké before, and while it made him more talkative and boisterous, he hated the next day’s fuzzy mind and aching head. A taste of heaven on earth? He had never heard of such a thing before.
Shirohige said, “Lotus has a powerful effect, powerful. Like nothing you’ve ever experienced. That kind of power can put hooks into the weak minded. If you’re a strong man, you needn’t worry about ending up like that potter. Besides, you have me to watch out for you.” Shirohige looked askance at Ken’ishi, calculations flickering behind his eyes, thoughts Ken’ishi did not like. “In any case, we’ll camp soon before the mosquitoes devour us to the bone.” He slapped his neck. “I like you, samurai. You’re a simple soul. A strong one. Together we could make a lot of money.”
“By taking from people. Isn’t it the place of the strong to protect the weak? The purpose of the warrior is to serve.”
“Samurai must serve a master, yes, but one doesn’t see many samurai working for peasants nowadays, does one? Lords are strong men, they must be. If they’re not strong, they don’t remain lords for very long. There’s much to be admired in thinking about the betterment of others. But as I said, you’re a strong man. I’ll wager if there’s something you want, very little will stand in your way. Even an angry peasant boy.”
Ken’ishi scratched his head and could not find an answer.
Whether by the strike of the enemy or your own thrust, whether by the man who strikes or the sword that strikes, whether by position or rhythm, if your mind is diverted in any way, your actions will falter, and this can mean that you will be cut down.
—Takuan Soho, “The Mysterious Record of Immovable Wisdom”
Ken’ishi draped a blanket over a rope tied above his sleeping pallet to keep out the evening mosquitoes, but the summer air under the blanket was stifling. He wished wholeheartedly for a mosquito net. He got up and threw wet leaves on the fire, hoping the smoke would drive away the incessant buzzing clouds. He paced, slapping at his face and arms and legs, his frustration growing with every tiny prick.
Shirohige lay in the back of the wagon with a small net propped over him, snoring.
As Ken’ishi paced and fumed, memories flooded out of black depths. Kazuko’s exquisite face, soulful eyes glimmering with love and desire, the sound of her little gasps of pleasure as they coupled, the explosion of heat as her body spasmed and clutched him, the shape of her young breasts and the feel of her skin, the taste of her mouth, of her throat.
None of which he would ever see or hear or taste or smell or feel again.
All of those memories flowed like dyes of mixed colors into similar memories with Kiosé. Both sets of memories so sweet and hot and beautiful, but both steeped with longing for what had been lost. Kiosé’s eyes looking at him with indifference and confusion, unremembering their many nights together. Little Frog playing alone, indifferent to his presence. Ken’ishi’s feet turning away toward the horizon, chasing an ancient piece of cold, heartless steel.
He would never see Silver Crane again. He would never know the truth of his father’s death. He would never be a true samurai. He would never see Kiosé again, or Little Frog, or Kazuko. Or Akao, a friend more faithful than any human. He was a man without a home, wandering a bleak, empty road, pretending to play samurai with a stick. Blackness descended over his thoughts like a midnight ice storm.
“Shirohige.”
“Mmf …”
“Shirohige. Wake up.”
“I’m trying to sleep.” Shirohige rolled his back toward Ken’ishi.
“I want to try your lotus.”
Shirohige’s breathing froze. He sat up and rubbed awareness into his face. “Are you sure?”
“I have need of a bit of heaven tonight.”
Shirohige gave him a long, searching look, then shrugged and started rummaging through his wares. “Here.” He took out a small block of dark brown substance, then pulled out a dagger and shaved a piece from the block. He held the tiny shaving in his palm and offered it to Ken’ishi. “Eat this. Or swallow it. Tastes like hell. Wash it down with some water. It won’t take long.”
Ken’ishi took the shaving skeptically. So much power in such a little piece of what looked like resin? He thought about the want he had seen on the potter’s face, the wasted, empty desperation hollowing out the potter’s eyes.
Shirohige said, “Go on. It won’t hurt you. If you’re thinking about Saburo, you needn’t worry. He’s been a lotus eater for years. You’re too strong to become like him.”
Ken’ishi sat near the fire, even though the night was warm and humid, hoping that the smoke would keep the mosquitoes at bay.
He looked at the substance again and lifted it to his mouth. The harsh bitterness almost made him retch, the resin sticking to his tongue, but he swallowed it, making a disgusted noise, and washed it down with long drinks of water. His mouth and tongue grew numb. A peculiar warmth grew in his belly. He sat on the ground, leaning back against a wagon wheel.
Tethered to a nearby tree, Pon-Pon placidly chewed his cud and watched Ken’ishi, ears and tail flicking at mosquitoes.
For a long time, he lay against the wheel, waiting for heaven to come to him. After a while, the night seemed to encroach upon the circle of trees at the fringe of the firelight. He did not feel the prick of mosquitoes now.
He caught himself rubbing his arms at a strange, tingling sensation. The firelight blurred, and sweet warmth suffused him like the moments when he released his seed, only longer, less convulsive. He slid to his side with a deep, contented sigh, his heart slowing to a deep, sonorous rhythm, his every movement as languid as oil.
Thoughts of loss and pain and longing, gone, as if they had never been. Heaven indeed.
The bamboo and pine forest hedging the campsite slid into blackness. His mind fell away, and he found himself effortlessly in the Void. There was no past, no future, only the now moment, and a pinpoint of his awareness in the vast blackness of the universe. He swam through
the Void like a sea creature from the darkest depths.
From the blackness emerged a low rumble, like a growl, but deeper than any growl he had ever heard, so deep he felt it in his joints, as if it emanated from the earth itself.
Two yellow eyes, simmering with voracious cunning, emerged from the blackness between the bamboo trunks. Great fangs the size of his finger, slavering jaws. The massive shape slunk from the blackness on striped paws the size of his face, long, striped tail writhing like a snake, the massive muscles of its shoulders and low-slung body sliding and bunching under orange and black stripes.
He looked at the tiger with a sense of bemused wonder. He wondered what that might be like, to be eaten. He picked up a handful of dirt and flung it toward the tiger. The dirt pattered, and the tiger crept forward. Its hot breath swirled through the smoke of the fire, sending embers into gentle spirals. He could smell the blood on its breath. He wondered vaguely if Shirohige would be concerned about a tiger in camp, but Shirohige’s snores had vanished into the nothingness.
The flutter of wings dragged his attention to the opposite side of the fire. Stately white wings gleamed like mother-of-pearl in the firelight, a span as wide as Ken’ishi’s outstretched arms, a long graceful neck, bright eyes sparkling with wisdom, its long spindly legs gangly and unsupportive. The crane danced and hopped from one leg to the other, eyeing Ken’ishi, as if performing for him. The crane steadied itself with its outspread wings as it danced.
The tiger swiped a massive paw at the crane, but the crane leaped back with a single wing flap, one leg bent. The tiger snarled and swiped at the crane again, and again the crane danced back. The crane’s grace and wisdom permeated every movement. The tiger’s cunning and ferocity seethed beneath every hair—and its determination.
Ken’ishi was but an afterthought, a morsel. The tiger wanted the crane for its meal.
The tiger’s leap scattered coals and embers, startling Ken’ishi from his stupor. A flash of orange and black fur, a flurry of feathers, a snarl and a squawk, and the crane was in the tiger’s mouth. The tiger shook its head as the crane stabbed at the tiger’s eyes with its beak. The tiger disappeared into the blackness between the bamboo trunks with the crane in its jaws.
Ken’ishi stood, and the world rippled strangely around him. On unsteady legs he wandered after the tiger. “Wait,” he called. The tiger’s movements, the flapping of the crane’s wings, disappeared into the abyss of night. He followed.
He emerged atop a mountain, at sunrise, or sunset, overlooking a great sacred river as it flowed through emerald hills toward a distant silvery sea. The scent of incense drifted up through the forest from the towers and temples along the river. Great caverns yawned on the faces of the hills, filled with torchlight and music, and at the height of the farthest hill lay a massive golden dome gleaming like the sun fallen to earth.
A raft of reed bundles awaited him beside the river, and he climbed upon it. The river took the raft in the breast of its current and swept downstream.
On either side, new sights shattered previous imagination, feasts and horrors and delights and terrors, and many things he would never see again.
A naked maiden with skin the color of black tea and a foam of long, ebony hair, strumming beatifically on a stringed instrument shaped like a cloven teardrop, raising a melody so sweet that he nearly wept.
On the other side of the river, a woman wailed for her demon lover who lay beheaded at her side. Her long, black claws raked bloody furrows in her face, her blood mixing with the streams of black tears, like the streaks on the face of Taro, the constable’s deputy, who had become a demon in his lust for vengeance, who had slain Akao on the night Little Frog was born, and who had finally fallen to Silver Crane’s razor edge. Three stubby horns emerged from the woman’s forehead. He knew this woman, and she knew him. Hatsumi, Kazuko’s old handmaid, leveled a gnarled claw at him, black eyes burning with hatred. “Beware, beware!”
Toward the great golden dome the river swept his fragile craft. Shadows rose from the foundations of the emerald hills, from the forests, from the bed of the sacred river.
“War,” the shadows said. The word fell over him like a chill rhythm. “War. War. WAR.” The shadows flitted and chanted, a great chorus of discordant whispers and trembling, until the river rose to a tumult and swept the raft deep into the heart of the great dome.
Within the edifice, the sky was golden, and the air smelled of incense and the musky perfume of arousal. The banks of the river were crammed on both sides with grim-faced warriors on horseback, warriors made of horn and steel and leather, spired helmets, knots of taut muscle bristling with bows and arrows and malice.
Thousands of dark eyes watched him pass, sizing him up and finding him unworthy.
The hordes of horsemen parted, and there on a massive golden throne sat a man, knee deep in dozens—hundreds—of naked, nubile concubines, all fawning over him, pleasuring themselves and each other, hundreds of them spilling away in a moaning, writhing swell.
The man’s armor gleamed golden in the sun, and his face was round and blunt, his eyes as sharp as steel arrow points, with long pointed mustaches dangling past the spear of beard on his chin. His hand rested on the upright pommel of a short, curved, broad-bladed sword, sticking point-down into a mound of human skulls. A conqueror beyond the ken of history.
Ken’ishi and the conqueror locked gazes as the river pushed the raft onward, and then out of the dome, past the last foam-flecked boulders of shoreline and out to sea.
He could not paddle, and there was no oar, but the current dragged the raft out into the vastness of the ocean, until the sky grew black, and the wind drove the waves to higher and higher peaks, cold brine sprayed his face, and he dropped to his knees to clutch the raft tight as the waves tossed it higher and higher. A terrible wind blasted over him, and then a rain, and suddenly he was surrounded by an ocean of death, untold thousands of bloated corpses flopping in the tumult like rotting, fish-eaten dolls. Splinters of shattered ships swirled through the foaming waters, and the wind howled like a lost child, and the rain fell in sheets of solid water.
A voice tore with rage and despair into his awareness. “You bastard!”
Ken’ishi shook his head. The roar of typhoon and sea receded.
“Get off there, you vile little bastard!”
Fishing weights held Ken’ishi’s eyes closed, but he brushed them aside, struggling onto his elbows.
In the light of the scattered coals, Ken’ishi opened his eyes to see Shirohige swinging the bokken at something in the back of the wagon. The dark, furry shape dodged back, its eyes wearing what looked like a black mask. The sound of trickling water on paper. The creature squatted atop one of Shirohige’s earthen jars.
Ken’ishi tried to shake the blurriness from his vision.
Shirohige roared and swung the wooden sword again.
The creature leaped adroitly from atop the jar and across to the other side of the wagon, its weight tumbling small pottery pieces together, shattering them, scattering everything in all directions.
The tanuki’s eyes sparkled with mischief, and it bared its teeth as if in a taunting grin. The bokken swished, and the tanuki danced aside. More crockery crashed.
Shirohige snapped at Ken’ishi, “Get up, you lazy oaf! This filthy beast just pissed all over my lotus supply!”
Ken’ishi struggled to his feet, wobbling, trying to blink the fuzziness out of his eyes, his mind.
The tanuki leaped, and Shirohige swung. The leap was poorly timed. The bokken struck the tanuki’s side—
And then it wasn’t a bokken anymore. Handfuls of cherry blossoms exploded through the air, whiffing over the tanuki’s back and dispersing through Shirohige’s fingers.
The tanuki chittered, almost like a laugh, and disappeared into the night.
“Unclean beast!” Shirohige raged after it. “Ride an oni to hell!” Then he turned to Ken’ishi, scowling. “And a fat lot of help you were!” He went to the si
de of the wagon and surveyed the damage. “So many pieces broken! Now they’re so much garbage.” He sniffed the large jar where he had kept his supply of lotus, wrinkling his nose at the stench. “Ruined! All of it! Foul creature!” He shook his fist at the night, then leaned against the side of the wagon and sighed. “The entire world is against me. Even the animals.” He scratched his head. “Perhaps a lotus-eater as far gone as Saburo won’t notice the stench or the taste …”
All Ken’ishi could do was sit back down and watch the coals die.
Without looking at right and wrong, he is able to see right and wrong; without attempting to discriminate, he is able to discriminate well. This means that concerning his martial art, he does not look at it to say “correct” or “incorrect,” but he is able to see which it is. He does not attempt to judge matters but is able to do so well.
—Takuan Soho, “The Clear Sound of Jewels”
The next morning lay swathed in a foggy haze. Ken’ishi became aware of the world again as the pressure of life impinged upon his muddled senses. The morning lay dewy cool amid the rustling of bamboo leaves and the now-incomprehensible call of birds. The scattered coals of the fire had burned to ash. In the blurry haze of his vision, the entire world was ash. Shirohige lay again in the back of the wagon, snoring with a sound like a tree being felled.
Ken’ishi remembered little after the tanuki disappeared, but as he stood up, he spotted his bokken lying near the wagon. He picked it up and examined it. It was scarred by use, but whole. He scratched his head and rubbed his face.
So many images last night burned into his memory. Unlike so many other dreams that faded mere heartbeats after waking up, last night’s grew sharper as the fog of sleep lifted.
He had seen his sword turn into cherry blossoms. He had seen a tiger and a crane locked in combat. He had seen hordes of barbarian warriors, the river, the great golden dome, the typhoon. All of it more vivid, like painted images on the walls of his mind, than much of what he had done yesterday or the day before in the everyday world. There were no tigers in Japan, except perhaps in a court noble’s menagerie. Tigers were a creature of fables and far-off lands. The campfire had been scattered, to be sure, but he could have done that himself in his stupor. Nevertheless, he circled the camp looking for tracks. The only tracks besides his and Shirohige’s were the dog-like, four-toed, clawed tracks of a tanuki.
Sword of the Ronin (The Ronin Trilogy) Page 15
