Chapter Eighteen
There is a polite knock at the door and I look up as a steaming bowl of soup is placed near the foot of my bed. My stomach revolts at the overpowering smells. For now, I will stay with water. I take another sip. It dissolves in my mouth with a thousand quick needles, my body expanding like a dried sponge. The water has been taken from a sacred spring, and is all I can stomach for now.
I have not slept more than a handful of minutes, the night passing in a strange stop-start motion. Standing there only in my fundoshi loincloth in the pre-dawn light I feel the skin stretch like a drum over the stacked rows of my ribs. I run a hand over my face, feeling the stubble on my chin and upper lip. I will need to go to the temple baths to shave, and I wonder what the others will think when they see my emaciated body.
My white robes lie flat and exhausted near the door. I have two more years of the running trials ahead of me: my sixth year, my course of thirty-six miles must take me along the steep ridge of the Kirara slope overlooking Kyoto. The seventh included eighteen miles around Mount Hiei, six miles of the Kirara slope, and an extended twenty-seven miles around the flat lands of Kyoto city. Not only is the circuit vast, but it includes obligatory stops at two hundred and sixty stations of worship. This I would have to carry out every single day for one hundred days, reversing the course on alternating days.
I brush my hand over the once fine cloth, now torn in countless small places, stained and threadbare. The trappings I carried those five years lay in a neat pile atop the white robes: the book of mantras, candles, a knife, and the sleek length of rope. Oddly, I begin to anticipate with some relish the daily task of running through the forest again.
Over the next few days I rest and slowly feed my body. Everything seems stilled as I feel myself coming back to the world, my body gaining strength with every mouthful of food. Sleep is difficult to find, and the nights are long as I lay in my bed, my mind skipping far afield.
One morning I leave my room to find Yobutomo waiting. We do not need to speak to one another and with a grin we set out together, striking for the forest path.
I can’t help myself. It feels so good to be back on the trails again. There is not a more glorious time of the year, early summer just as the sun is rising. The air teems with life, of sound and of smell. Every twisted branch holds infinite complexity that, if I am not careful, captures my mind and draws me in deeper and deeper. Chest expanding, head level, feet light beneath me, it feels as if I am getting a small measure of my proper form back. I find that I have raised my pace from a brisk walk, approaching that steady, distance-devouring lope of the mountain-monk. Behind me, Yobutomo has matched his stride to mine.
I hear him give a cautioning reprimand, the first words he has spoken to me this morning.
“Do not push yourself.”
It makes me aware my breath is becoming labored and I recall the teaching; first control the breathing, and then control the mind. I force myself to slow, accepting that my body is not yet ready to move as it once did. As I slow I feel my mind calm. I let my thoughts drift as we run. I feel the atrophied muscles in my legs regaining a little of their strength as I move through the trail I know so very intimately, brushing past leaves and over roots. For so long I ran alone for vast stretches of endless days upon days with my own thoughts. It feels odd to be with another.
Suddenly, it is hard to keep my focus. Things blur, then go black, and I hear Yobutomo calling from far away. My hand is against a tree, the world is spinning, and it is hard to find balance.
“Take a moment to get your breath.”
I find that I have stopped near a half-hidden shrine by the trailside, set within a profusion of hollyhocks. The small stone statues are overgrown by green moss, their red bibs faded, yet they seem animated into life by the star-shaped leaves of the hollyhocks shooting spires of white flowers as tall as man into the air. Beside the shrine is small marker where once, years ago, a nameless monk died while undergoing the kaihogyo.
It strikes me hard. I blink as the memories come flooding back.
“I was prepared to do it,” I say in a voice so low that Yobutomo cannot hear it above the rushing of the wind in the trees overhead. I glance away from the shrine, and find him looking at me, concern creasing his brow.
“I used to wonder how it could be possible,” I say, in a voice louder this time. “To have the determination to die rather than fail.”
I find I am sitting upon a gnarled root, my legs have weakened beneath me. Yobutomo sits beside me and stare forward at the forest together.
“In the third year I became ill, a fever so bad it wracked the very breath from my lungs. Every bone and muscle and sinew ached, and I could not even look at food without my stomach coiling into a knot, and it seemed everything crawled with foul humors. I still remember that desperate feeling, that if only I could somehow disconnect my mind from my body, yet I could feel every stone underfoot and the prick of the air in my chest.”
I pause and draw breath. I find that unconsciously I have taken the knife from my belt and examine it. Somehow, repeated cycles of heat and dry have subtly molded the shape of the handle to the contour of my hip. I glance up at Yobutomo and see he listens intently, but then I drop my gaze. It is easier to talk if I simply look at the ground.
“I could go no further, and stopped on the trail. It was dark, and I was shin deep in snow. Cramps came from deep within my stomach and I simply could not move for the pain, so I drew the knife from my belt and positioned it against my chest so that if I fell, it would strike through my heart.
“I must have wavered there for a time, and I did indeed fall, but my ineptitude saved my life, for the knife struck at an angle and skidded away. When I woke, my cramps were better and I got to my feet, and managed to complete the day’s distance with less than an hour to spare. I did not sleep at all that night, and had to leave to run again after only a short break, but I was over the worst of it.”
I turn the knife over in my hands, reflecting upon its character. It is a quiet thing, unassuming, yet perfect in its simplicity and function. Yobutomo gives a sigh, and when he speaks it is with obvious reluctance.
“Kan’emon has requested I speak to you.”
Instantly I sense something odd in his tone.
“What about?”
“Your debt.”
“What debt?”
Yobutomo purses his lips and his bushy eyebrows furrow. He speaks slowly.
“The war comes to us at last.”
“War?”
“Much has happened during your fast. Nobunaga and his army are sweeping the country, luring out clans on the basis of peace treaties and massacring them, or if they are wise to his tactics, other schemes to outmaneuver and outflank his opponent. It will not be long before he installs Yoshiaka as the new Shogun, puppet to his will.”
“Of course, as a monk of Enryaku-ji, I will take up arms alongside my brothers.”
“No. It is not that. You cannot forget your special value.”
“My value?”
Yobutomo pauses.
“The secrets inside your head.”
Connections form in my mind like beading trickles of water in the dust.
“My secrets…?”
“Five years ago, I made a promise. I told Kan’emon you were fleeing Lord Date Masamune. I told him you knew the secrets of his castle. Knowledge that we can use to attack.”
“I don’t understand. You gave me a chance to have a new life. I entered these trials to find freedom.”
“True freedom is an illusion. Nothing can live in isolation.”
“So I have simply replaced one structure of coercion with another! All this time I was cultivated as a tool…”
Yobutomo shakes his head.
“Date has given his full support to Nobunaga, and for such services he will no doubt be awarded lordship of the entire Sendai domain. It will make him one of the most powerful warlords in the country. Nobunaga has sworn
to drive Buddhism from this country, extending protection to the new religion, the Christians. With your knowledge of the secrets ways and the weaknesses of Miyamori Castle, a handful of men can strike north. A select group of only the best will accompany you, I will be among them. We can bring down Miyamori Castle from the inside. Nobunaga’s flank will be weakened, his forces splintered. You can swing the battle in our favor.”
I shake my head. “All this time, I was part of your scheme, to win my trust?” I cannot hide the disappointment in my voice. “You gave me hope, that I could free myself of duty.”
“You are stronger than that! Don’t be so precious with your newfound enlightenment, it is not so easily fractured. We all have debts we must repay: it is not duty, it is responsibility!”
“You don’t understand! I am willing to fight, but I cannot do what you ask. I cannot be an assassin.”
“You do not owe your old master anything!”
I feel oddly disjointed from reality, and it seems that Yobutomo, whom I thought I knew so well, now looks at me as if from the far bank of a swiftly flowing river. I do not understand: this was the man who instructed me to break free of my past, to become a new man. How can he implore me to go back? I have taken control of my emotions now, and I feel a calmness washing over my body, the frustration and impotent anger has fled. My mind does not race through avenues of thought as it once did; rather it is a wide expanse, like a pond, upon which ripples travel and interact. Everything in the world is in balance, nothing can exist pure and in and of itself; even what I had mistaken as entirely good intentions in the old monk had a true, more sinister, motive. Every man, I realize, manipulates ends to his own liking.
“I am no longer that person. That is my past. If I had known you schemed this, I would never have followed you.”
“We need what is in your head.”
“Deception goes against the essence of Buddhism.”
“And what is that?”
“Not to commit evil, to perform only good, and to purify the mind.”
“Is not what I ask a deed of good? For hundreds of years, we of the Buddhist faith have taken up arms, and our belief has given us the strength to conquer emperors and samurai. Divine signs from the heavens have aided our fight against tyranny. If we do not act, Nobunaga will conquer the entire land by force of arms, slaughtering men, women and children alike. He has taken to using a new seal, characters that read Tenka Fubu. One realm under one sword.”
“I have spent a long time thinking about action and consequence. Everything fans outwards from every action like toppling game pieces. No. I have caused enough deaths through my foolishness as a child.”
Yobutomo’s lips are a hard line. “Did you not consider that inaction may have as significant impact as a misjudged action?”
“An action cannot be undone, a death cannot be taken back. You of all people should know that.”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth I know they are wrong. The condemnation sits in the air between us, twisted and wrong. I know I have overstepped myself, and we have betrayed one another.
Yobutomo does not flinch, and his gaze locks to mine, a kindled fire behind his eyes. It is as if I have broken reality into two. I work my mouth, trying to speak, but Yobutomo cuts me off.
“It is foolish to argue. You are right, you did not agree to the bargain. I leave you to complete the trials. Find your place in solitude - but like it or not, the war will find you.”