The Tokaido Road

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  Musui slowed his pace to match hers. Cat closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. She silently chanted a mantra for serenity. At this rate she would never reach KyMto.

  “Is Your Honor going to Ise?” The old woman peered sideways up at Musui.

  “The gods alone can say, auntie. The Path matters. The destination doesn’t.” Musui was off on his favorite subject. “My disciple and I follow the instructions of the Daishi to roam about until exhausted, then drop to the ground, and in this dropping be whole.”

  “I could tell you pudgy city priests a thing or two about dropping from exhaustion.” Now that the shoulder-burden-auntie had recovered from her shock, her basic nature was reasserting itself.

  She swiveled her knobby head to look up at Musui. Her hair was gray and feathery as lint. Below it her skull looked as though thin leather had been sewn tightly over a collection of edged objects.

  “I have advice much more valuable than that.” Her beady eyes glinted with the malice spawned by a lifetime of grievances.

  “Keep your money in your belt. Don’t pull your knife on a drunkard, and don’t show your daughter to a monk.

  “Or in your case, pretty boy ...” She shook her walking stick in Cat’s direction. “Don’t turn your back on one. They’ll hop into your drawers faster than a flea.”

  “I’ll add that wisdom to the Daishi’s rules of the road.” Musui’s equanimity seemed to disappoint her.

  “What are Daishi-sama’s rules, sensei?” Cat asked. Maybe Kobo Daishi had some practical advice for travelers. Cat could use any advice she could get.

  “ ‘Do not wish for riches or acclaim or gratification of the flesh,’ ” Musui said. “ ‘Do not kill, steal, fornicate, drink, or talk idly.’ ”

  “Might as well stay home,” the old woman mumbled at her feet.

  “ ‘If you meet a highwayman, give him everything,’ ” Musui continued. “ ‘Don’t haggle over the cost of an inn or a ferry. Give alms to beggars. Never ride a horse or kago.’ ”

  “Why is that?” Cat immediately discarded most of the advice, keeping only the part about not haggling with ferrymen and innkeepers.

  “One travels the Path humbly, without outside aid. When you feel the desire to break these rules, stop your journey and go home.”

  The woman resumed her load when they reached the edge of Hodogaya. Without saying “Thank you” or looking back, she trudged off and was soon lost to sight down a side street.

  “ Ungrateful,” Cat muttered.

  “He who knows kindness is a true warrior.”

  Cat’s face burned at the gentle reprimand. Oishi had often said the same thing when as a child, Cat had lost her temper with the household servants.

  “Hold out your begging bowl.” Musui drew his own wooden bowl from the front of his robe and extended it. “Homage to the Daishi who impels our earnest pleas,” he chanted to passersby.

  Cat clenched her teeth and did likewise. Of the many virtues her parents had taught her, humility was the most difficult.

  In Hodogaya the begging bowls served two purposes. The waitresses in their thick white face powder and blue aprons dodged around Cat and Musui. They went in search of wealthier travelers to drag back to their inns and tea houses.

  By the time Cat and Musui had passed through the village they had collected forty coppers, a few handfuls of uncooked rice, a dried fish, and an offer of lodging in a hovel that a rat would have avoided. The afternoon was late, and Cat was ready with a refusal, in case Musui were mad enough to accept the offer.

  The hut sat on a barren piece of rocky ground at the edge of the village. It was made of panels of woven bamboo lashed between posts, with cast-off mats thrown over for roofing and held down with rocks. The mat that served as a door was thrown back to reveal the furnishings, a heap of bamboo leaves in a corner.

  With a bundle of brush a gaunt old woman was sweeping the earthen floor at her doorway. She wore a tattered paper robe and a faded rag over her head with the front corners tied at the nape of her neck.

  “Honor our miserable house by staying here, kind pilgrims.” Like the shoulder-burden-auntie, her back was permanently bent, but she bowed lower. “Bring the Daishi’s blessing to us with your presence. I have only gleanings from the millet fields for your supper, but I shall fetch fresh river grass for you to lie on. And I will massage your weary feet.”

  “We must journey farther before stopping for the night,” Musui answered her gently. “Perhaps on our way back we can enjoy your generous offer. In the meantime, please do us the honor of accepting this meager trifle for the Daishi’s sake.” He gave her a small wooden tablet with an invocation and a picture of Kobo Daishi stamped on it. “It comes from Mount Koya. It will protect you and your loved ones.” He added the rice and the fish they had been given and all the coppers.

  Clutching the treasures, the old woman wept and bowed and called her thanks until they rounded a curve in the road. When they were out of sight, Musui sat down abruptly on a rock. His eyes sparkled with tears.

  As Cat stood staring down at him, grief and shame overwhelmed her. She saw the old woman curled in the pile of straw with snow drifting in through the gaps in the roof and walls and covering her frail body. Cat shuddered. She crouched next to Musui, buried her face in her sleeves, and began to cry as though her heart would break.

  “Here now,” a young woman shouted. “Everyone dies in the end. So while we’re in the world let’s be merry.”

  Cat glanced up and saw the group of young women standing in the roadway, but she couldn’t stop crying any more than she could have said why she was doing it. The tears flowed from some dark spring hidden inside her. They stemmed from despair that someone as kind as the old woman should suffer before being released by death and born into a better life. She cried in fear that her own mother would die poor and alone. She wept for her nurse, who no longer had a home or a livelihood worthy of her.

  “There, there, Shinobu.” Musui became concerned. “We must have endurance, Endurance.” He handed Cat a towel to wipe her eyes. “I shall ask the abbot to find a simple job for her and a place to live on the temple grounds. In her next life she will certainly be born higher on the wheel.”

  Musui handed her a paper handkerchief. As she was blowing her nose Cat felt the playful tap of a fan on her head.

  “Such a pretty boy and such a red nose.” The six young women, all dressed in identical pilgrims’ hats and robes, stood in a semicircle around her. Behind them stood a trio of porters, almost invisible under their loads of boxes and bundles.

  “JizM-sama has sent us to cheer you.” The speaker for the group had a round, plain face and a merry smile.

  “Ah, the seven sages have left their meditation in the bamboo grove.” Musui helped Cat up under the weight of the furoshiki.

  The women laughed. Everyone knew the ancient story of the seven Chinese sages who left the frivolity of court life to meditate and drink and compose poetry among the bamboo. The joke was that the ideogram for “seven sages” was pronounced the same as “seven prostitutes.” In spite of their plain white robes, their pilgrims’ bells, and the pious slogans on their wide bamboo hats, Musui had recognized their profession.

  “You flatter us, Your Honor,” said the leader. “We are but simple bathhouse girls, off on a pilgrimage to Ise.”

  “Our holy gift to pilgrims is to make their road seem shorter,” one of them said.

  And they did. The leader thumped time on her hand drum and Cat sang the “Song of the Tailless Ox” and other, more vulgar ditties. For most of the two ri to Totsuka, the seven sages laughed and clapped time and danced.

  CHAPTER 21

  KARMA PILED UP

  A young man sat in an unsavory drinking establishment on the outskirts of Totsuka. He was dressed in a threadbare dark blue hempen laborer’s jacket. His legs were bare. His high, shaved forehead was divided horizontally by a faded blue towel, twisted into a roll and tied in front. Clear, artless eyes shone from u
nder the dangling ends of the knot.

  He watched an old couple shuffle by as the divergent tides of the TMkaidM surged around them. They were dressed as pilgrims, but their unpatched robes were cotton, not paper. The square bamboo pack the husband carried was shiny and new.

  The young man rose to his feet, settled his sash lower on his thin hips, slipped his toes through the thongs of his straw zoris, and sauntered after them.

  His smile was affable and polite. “Grandfather, allow me to carry your pack. It will earn me merit on the Great Wheel.”

  “Thank you, my son. How kind of you. Thank you so very much.” The old man’s exhaustion made him effusive.

  The teakettle and the small pot tied to the pack jangled when he took it off. His wife squatted, panting, in a patch of late-afternoon sun.

  “We’re on our way to Ise to ask Amaterasu-sama, the Sun Goddess, to cure my old woman’s ailment.” The man’s face was as circular as a soup bowl. His features were rounded and flattened, as though weathered by the elements. His sparse eyebrows arched high above slightly bulging eyes, giving him a faded, startled look. His wife resembled him remarkably.

  “The trip is difficult for her,” he said. Actually the couple looked too frail to walk to the public bath, much less make an arduous trek across wild rivers and over mountains.

  “My beloved, devout mother journeyed to Amida’s Land of Pure Light last year.” The young man’s smile shifted to grief. “I have sworn to help any old people I meet. I myself am on my way to Mount Koya to bury her ashes and to pray for the repose of her soul.”

  “Buddha has sent you, and He will bless you.” The old man helped his wife to her feet and put an arm around her waist. She clung to him as she laboriously slid one foot in front of the other. “We were about to seek lodging at an inn,” he said. “It’s getting dark, and my wife cannot travel farther today in any case.”

  “I know a fine inn, grandfather.” The young man was earnest. “It’s run by a pious woman who charges a pittance for pilgrims. But it’s a bit off the trampled road.” He gently herded them onto a narrow path along the dike between the rice paddies.

  The path led into the hills just west of town. The man followed his prey patiently. “Just a little farther,” he called cheerfully. “The inn has a splendid view of the town.”

  To take their minds off the deepening twilight and the extra distance, he described the simple, wholesome meal that awaited them. He praised the hot bath the mistress of the inn would draw for them. He promised to massage their feet himself.

  When the path passed the last farmhouse and entered a towering, whispery grove of bamboo at the base of the hill, he decided they’d gone far enough. He started forward to close the space between them and himself, but although his feet continued to move, his body stayed where it was. He reached back to free the pack straps of whatever was snagging them. He touched warm flesh.

  His yelp startled a flock of crows into the air. He twisted, trying to see what had such a firm grip on the pack and his sash. His companions swiveled, as slowly as two stranded sea turtles, to see what was happening.

  Still holding the thief helpless, Hanshiro put his mouth close to his ear and spoke in a low voice. “Do not reach into your coat. Remove the pack. Take off your coat. Then lie on your stomach and do not move.”

  “Here then! What are you doing?” The old man brandished his staff. “Cullion! Bandit!”

  When he saw the two swords in Hanshiro’s belt, he folded stiffly to the ground, pulling his wife with him. “Spare the lad, honorable sir,” he cried. “Kill us. We’re old. But the boy was only trying to help.”

  “Take everything.” Wearing only his loincloth, the thief lay sprawled facedown in the loam of the grove. “I’ll show you where you can hide their bodies. I’ll work for you.”

  Hanshiro pulled a straw cord from his sleeve.

  “Come here, grandfather.” He quickly tied the thief’s wrists.

  He looked up to see that the old man was still prostrate on his knees, his body and arms flung forward. He trembled so hard that he rustled the dry bamboo leaves. His wife was chanting the Mantra of Light to dispel evil karma.

  The thief recited a garbled lament that included his widowed mother and six starving siblings, ailing grandparents, a deserted sister and her brood, a typhoon, a fire, a plague, the malice of neighbors, and an ancient curse. When that failed to get him any pity he offered Hanshiro the sexual favors of his widowed mother, his sister, all of his younger siblings, nieces, nephews, and himself.

  “Come here, grandfather.” Hanshiro’s impatience didn’t sound in his voice. He had paid a boy to watch the road for him, but he knew that while he tarried, his quarry might be passing through Totsuka. “I won’t hurt you.”

  The old man struggled to his feet and crept toward him, as though Hanshiro were a poisonous snake. Hanshiro held the man’s bound hands up for inspection. “Do you see calluses?”

  “No.” The old man peered at the soft palms and long nails.

  “Yet he wears the clothes of a laborer.” Hanshiro rolled him over. The knife was stuck into the back of the waistband of his loincloth. “He planned to kill you with that, uncle.”

  “But all we have are a few coins, the stamps and amulets from the temples we’ve visited, and the spare clothes in the pack.” The old man was bewildered.

  “It’s easier for a hawk to attack a morsel of mouse than a meal of wild boar.” Hanshiro gestured toward the village of Totsuka. “Take his coat and sash. You can sell them and get something for the trouble he has caused you. Go back to the main road. When you pass the stables and the tatami maker’s shop, ask for the Bamboo Inn. It’s on the street of the medicine-box makers. Tell the mistress that the rMnin from Tosa sent you. She’s honest.”

  Hanshiro didn’t bother lecturing them to be less trusting. Dishonesty wore so many masks on the TMkaidM, he could never list them all. As the old man led his wife away she was still chanting the mantra. Hanshiro’s rescue had only convinced her further of its efficacy.

  Resting his weight on his heels and his elbows on his thighs, Hanshiro crouched near the thief’s head. The man’s topknot had come loose, and his stiff, oiled hair fanned outward. He had drawn his knees up to his chest and his chin down to meet them. He was weeping and pleading incoherently now. His tears mixed with the black soil and muddied his face.

  “I am Emma, lord of Hell,” Hanshiro said quietly. His victim drew into a tighter coil and sobbed and babbled louder.

  “Listen to me.” Hanshiro poked him with the cold iron ribs of his fan. “I stand at the gateway of Hell, and I am in a hurry. Tell me where the bodies are, and I may turn you away from my kingdom this time.”

  The thief made a prodigious effort to control himself. He had already soiled himself. Three long shudders rolled through him before he could speak. “In a small cave. In the side of the mountain at the edge of the grove. By the big pine.”

  Hanshiro hauled him to his feet and shoved him forward. The thief led him to the cave’s small opening, hidden at the base of the slope by rank growths of wild azalea and rhododendron. It was covered by a wall of stones that looked like a rock slide. With a second cord he tethered the man’s feet so he could walk with tiny steps but couldn’t run. Then he untied his hands.

  “Pull away the stones,” Hanshiro said. “And remember that Emma, the king of Hell, has more important business to attend to. If you delay him, you irritate him.”

  When the thief pulled down the first few stones the stench expanded outward from the opening as though it were inflating like the bloated corpses inside. Hanshiro almost gagged.

  “Faster.” Hanshiro tied his towel across his nose and mouth. He could see that this was not a cave, but a small cavity in the face of the hill. The faded light of sunset illuminated patches of the tangle of rotting limbs and bare bones jammed inside. The ominous, relentless buzz of flies seemed to be the chanting of sutras for the abandoned spirits of these dead.

  Hanshir
o thought of the poem written eight hundred years earlier.

  Karma piled up from long ages past

  keeps us coming and going in these bitter lives.

  When the man had pulled away most of the rocks, Hanshiro retied his wrists. He pulled the thief’s towel off his head. He unknotted it, tore off a strip, and stuffed the rest into his mouth. He used the strip to tie the wadded cloth tightly in place.

  He picked him up and stuffed him into the opening, on top of the charnel pile. The softened flesh gave way easily under him. Hanshiro wedged him in so he couldn’t work his feet loose and kick away the stones. The flies and ants that swarmed over the heap began climbing over him.

  The gag muted his screams, but Hanshiro could hear them as he methodically piled the stones up again, walling the thief inside with his victims. He left one rock ajar so he could breathe.

  Without looking back he reentered the cool, green-and-silver-and-russet twilight of the bamboo grove. The bamboos’ sleek grace and the creak and rustle of their culms and leaves calmed him. As he walked among the shiny stalks, Hanshiro agreed with the Chinese poets who said a bamboo grove was the best of all places to get drunk. He decided that getting drunk was a good idea.

  When he caught up with the old couple on the thread of a path dividing the rice fields, they slid down the side of the dike. They clasped their hands and bowed, their foreheads resting on the edge of the path.

  Without a glance, Hanshiro stalked by them with his splayfooted gait. He was annoyed with them even though he understood why they made these pilgrimages to the great shrine of the Sun Goddess at Ise.

  They had years of blessings to give thanks for and paltry sins to atone. Now that the current lifetime was drawing toward the end, they thought more about how they would spend the next one.