The Tokaido Road

  She turned away the bamboo pipe that splashed water into the basin. When the surface became still she used it as a mirror.

  She untied her disheveled hair and bent over, throwing it forward and combing it with her fingers. She wrapped the same dirty cord several times around the base of the bundle of hair. She grabbed it above the cord and used her shears to cut it off above her hand. When she let go, it bushed out in a tuft, a boy’s jaunty tea whisk style.

  She trimmed the hair around her face into bangs and long sidelocks. When she inspected herself in the water, she was surprised by the handsome urchin who looked back at her. Then she noticed the splatter of blood across the front of her black coat.

  She pulled her arms out of the sleeves, leaving the coat belted at her slender waist. Her upper body was bare, except for the hammaki that was still tightly wrapped around her abdomen and chest. She held the coat under the water gushing from the pipe and rubbed the stain, rinsing out the worst of it.

  “Washing one’s clothes without undressing. It must save a lot of time. I should have thought of it.”

  The quiet voice startled Cat so badly, she almost screamed. She plunged her hands into the sleeves and pulled up the wet coat, adjusting the front opening. She whirled to face the speaker.

  Like most Buddhist lay monks, this one had shaved his head entirely, although his hair had grown out into a shadowy fuzz. He carried a staff, and he was dressed for traveling, but he was walking backward. He squinted nearsightedly at her from over his shoulder as he approached her.

  The rear tail of his old black robe was tucked up into his sash, exposing bowed calves clad in brown leggings. A bronze pilgrim’s bell and a rosary of heavy black beads and fat red tassels hung around his wrist. His conical sedge hat rode on his back, over a closed paper parasol, a rolled mat, and one cylindrical brocade case for his bamboo flute and another for his pilgrim’s scroll. He wore a small white towel draped on his head, a white prayer stole on his left shoulder, straw sandals, and a smile.

  He passed Cat and walked, still backward, up the uneven stone steps of the chapel. He turned, bowed, and muttered a short prayer.

  “One hundred,” he said then. He threw a twisted straw into the box on a stand by the window through which JizM-sama peered out benignly.

  He picked up the box and walked down the steps, frontward this time. He nodded at Cat, who bowed deeply.

  “These days I call myself Musui, Dream Besotted. I’m visiting old friends and older temples and seeing the historic sites.”

  Cat almost blurted out her recognition of him. Of course she had heard of Musui and his poetry, but she remembered, just in time, that she was about to pretend to be ignorant of both.

  Musui took a fistful of straws from the box and handed them to her. “You’re so good at saving time, what with washing your clothes while you’re wearing them,” he said amiably. “You can save me time by helping me count these.” He sat on the bottom step, rested the staff across his knees, and began tallying the rest. “Hi, fit, mi, yo . . . One, two, three, four ...”

  Famous or not, Cat was infuriated by his complacency. She was about to be beheaded and her corpse gibbeted, hung out like laundry, and he acted as though nothing were out of the ordinary.

  “Please.” He waved the back of his hand at her, encouraging her to start.

  She squatted beside the neatly raked path. Now that she was dressed as a boy, behaving like one came easily to her. She rather enjoyed being feckless and common. She would have enjoyed it more under better circumstances.

  “Hi, fu, mi, yo.” She laid each straw on the ground between her feet as she counted it. The act was curiously calming.

  “Forty-six,” she said finally.

  “Fifty-three.” Musui sighed. “Fifty-three and forty-six is ninety-nine. How is that possible? I counted the straws out beforehand. We shall just have to do the Hundred-Times-Worship again.”

  “I must be leaving, Your Honor.” Cat bowed and backed away.

  But Musui held out his hand, fingers down, and opened and closed them rapidly, the signal for Cat to come with him. “If you’re going to be my page, you’ll need better clothes.” He started down the path as though the matter were settled. “My companion became ill and returned to Edo two days ago,” he called back to her. “Now the Beloved Amida has sent me another.”

  Cat started to say that she couldn’t make his journey with him, then stopped. The two stared at each other a moment, shrouded and dwarfed there in the deep shade of the majestic cedars.

  Musui had a gentle look, but Cat had the feeling that tatamae, what she showed others, didn’t fool him. He was a man capable of seeing the essence.

  His skin was the color of tarnished bronze. One corner of his wide, thin-lipped mouth curled up, the other down. His mouth, jowls, and jaw canted forward from a flat nose and flared nostrils. They gave him a look of simian impishness. In spite of his nearsighted squint he had an air of intelligence and nobility as well as humor. He had wrinkles above and below his large, bright eyes. He had elephant eyes.

  Cat knew that people with elephant eyes were popular. They were kind and creative. A person with elephant eyes could be trusted.

  Musui could get into trouble for helping her, of course, but he was of noble birth. And famous besides. If he were caught, his punishment would be far lighter than that meted out to a commoner like Viper. Cat had been taught to be protective of subordinates, but superiors didn’t need her protection.

  If there is a god who forsakes, she thought, there is another god who helps.

  “Forgive my rudeness, Your Honor, but I have no money for clothes worthy of such an exalted position.” Cat gave Musui a chance to extricate himself from the trouble he had blundered into. In spite of Musui’s fame he didn’t look as though he had funds to outfit a servant.

  “When one has friends one doesn’t need money. His Reverence the abbot is an old friend of mine.” As he walked, Musui waved in the general direction of the long, low building that housed the monks. “I have trouble making out temple inscriptions and road signs along the way,” he said. “Can you read?”

  “I’m the ignorant offspring of a poor widow, Your Honor. I go in search of a teacher.”

  “You search for a teacher. A teacher finds you.”

  As they left the grove of trees Musui nodded toward the five men gathered at the door of the abbot’s quarters. “And I wonder for whom they search.”

  Cat almost shrank back at the sight of them. In their sashes they wore their badges of office, the long forked steel rods that if skillfully used could snap a transgressor’s sword in two.

  “Police?” she asked.

  “They have the appearance of police.”

  Musui gave a shallow nod. The men bowed low and backed down the steps while Musui called on Amida Buddha to bless them.

  The abbot stood in the doorway and watched them until they were out of sight among the trees. Then he bowed to his old friend Musui and nodded to his old friend’s new apprentice.

  “They’re looking for a brigand who wounded three samurai and an artist at the ferry this afternoon,” the abbot said. “They say he was dressed as a komuso. I don’t wonder one of them is behaving like a mad dog, attacking civilized folk.” The abbot disapproved of the sect’s methods. A komuso had passed through recently selling amulet bags that he said had been made from Kobo Daishi’s robes.

  “I told the police to search the grounds. We harbor no miscreants here.” The abbot glanced at Cat. “I see that your companion has rejoined you, Musui-sensei. Are you feeling better, lad?”

  Cat looked quickly over at Musui, who continued to smile as though he hadn’t heard the question. “I am feeling well, Your Reverence,” Cat said.

  “ ‘In travel, a companion. In life, sympathy.’ “ The abbot intoned the old proverb as though he had just invented it.

  He said everything as if it were valuable information his listeners should note and remember. He was big enough to be one of the f
ierce warrior-priests who had defended the huge temple complex on Mount Hiei in the old days. But muscle had given way to fat.

  He waited while they sat on the raised floor of the reception area and removed their footwear. Then he led them through cool cherry wood corridors to his inner room and to the tea and smoking accessories laid out on the tatami. The door to the inner courtyard was open, and a tiny waterfall splashed in the garden there. Three fat ducks snoozed at the edge of the carp pond. The sound of distant chanting of the Lotus sutra soothed Cat. She felt as though she were being ushered into Paradise.

  CHAPTER 18

  MAKE EMPTINESS YOUR PATH

  “Musui, my old and tender friend, you said your companion had become ill, but you didn’t tell us he was so handsome.” For all his pompousness, the abbot was a bluff, good-natured fellow. He appraised Cat by the soft light of the floor lanterns. “Paint black eyebrows on him and blacken his teeth and he could be Lord Yoshitsune’s lover Shizuka in her disguise as a pageboy.”

  Ready to refill and relight her new master’s tiny pipe every few puffs, Cat was kneeling on the tatami behind him. She bowed low, acknowledging her unworthiness of the abbot’s compliment. She was also trying to hide the fact that she could be a woman in disguise more easily than the abbot imagined.

  At least she felt scrubbed and fed and civilized for the first time in days. The clothes she wore had been handed down through generations of boys serving at the temple. The cotton cloth was softened by long wear, the collar of the loose coat frayed. But the clothes were clean, and they harbored no fleas or lice.

  Over her loincloth Cat wore full gray breeches tied and bloused at her knees. Over that she had put on the quilted, black-and-yellow-striped cotton robe. She had pulled the wide black hakama over both and tied it low on her hips. The breeches and the robe showed through the long slits down the hakama’s sides. Its stiffened rear panel stood up jauntily against the small of her back. She wore white tabi. Her hair was dressed in the tea whisk style but tied now with a scarlet paper cord.

  “He’s handsome enough to be a gohodoshi, a messenger of the gods and retriever of lost souls.” The man who spoke had large overlapping front teeth that looked like the yellowed ivory vanes of a fan. He was one of five monks of higher rank who had come to spend an evening with the famous poet. The sullen acolyte attending him glared at Cat. He didn’t like the presence of a good-looking rival in the abbey.

  “If I were to stray into the spirit world,” the monk leaned over and whispered at Cat, “I would want you to escort me home, Gohodoshi-san.”

  Cat ignored him and the acolyte’s jealous glower and the abbot’s look of disapproval. She stared instead at the bit of paper glued by a spot of blood to the back of Musui’s pale, smooth skull. Cat had been charged with shaving her master’s head. She’d never shaved a head before or anything else, for that matter, and her hand had slipped. Now she was afraid that someone would notice the bloody scrap and embarrass Musui, but she dared not call attention to it by picking it off.

  A wrestler named Arashi, Mountain Wind, filled one corner of the twenty-four-tatami-mat room. The broad shaven strip from his forehead to his crown bulged between the oiled banks of his hair. His clubbed topknot rested on his bare pate like a lizard sunning. He wore a quilted cotton robe big enough to cover a double mattress. He sat cross-legged with his feet tucked under his massive, lumpy thighs like small, well-fed creatures sheltering there. He leaned on an ironwood elbow stand that creaked under the pressure.

  He was still fuming about his dousing in the river that afternoon when the larcenous river porters had tried to extort more money from him. And he was irritated that the poet was sitting in the place of honor and receiving all the attention. The poet wasn’t going to wrestle the local strongmen in a charity performance for the temple the next day. Mountain Wind was.

  One of the monks had just asked Musui why haiku poems were composed of seventeen syllables when the door slid open and an initiate spoke from a kneeling position on the corridor floor.

  “Your Reverence, a gentleman wishes an audience with you.” The youth moved out of the way.

  Hanshiro knelt in the doorway and bowed. He entered without rising, gliding along by putting his left foot out, drawing himself forward on it, lowering that knee to the floor, extending the right foot, and repeating the process. When he reached the humblest location in the room, nearest the door, he slapped his hakama hems out of the way, knelt again, knees slightly apart, hands on his thighs, and settled back on his heels.

  “Tosa no Hanshiro.” He bowed as he introduced himself. “ Your Reverence, forgive the discourteous intrusion while you ‘re entertaining such an honored guest.”

  Hanshiro absentmindedly reached inside the neck of his ancient jacket to scratch a moxa scar on his shoulder. Those sitting nearest him assumed he had fleas and edged away. He had bathed in the river and had relied his topknot, but he still seemed a scruffy thistle among the pruned and cultivated monks, all of whom came from noble families.

  Cat stiffened. She might not know the price of a rice cake or a ferry ride, but she recognized danger, even if it had left its long-sword politely at the door.

  “You’re quite welcome here,” the abbot said. “We amateurs were only chatting about poetry. But we are indeed honored to have among us Musui-sensei, a disciple of the master, Basho himself.”

  “Maybe you can answer our question.” Musui smiled innocently at Hanshiro. “Why does a haiku poem usually consist of seventeen syllables?”

  It was a test, of course, but Musui had no intention of embarrassing Hanshiro. He was sure the newcomer knew the answer. He was arranging for Hanshiro to earn a respected place in the gathering, although he also was sure Hanshiro of Tosa didn’t care if he were respected or not.

  “My knowledge of the arts is trifling.” Hanshiro looked at Musui, but he surveyed the room from the corners of his eyes.

  Cat felt the cold, hard edge of his gaze brush her. She shivered inside her big jacket and hakama. That the clothes were borrowed must be obvious. Cat could almost hear them crying out, “Imposter!”

  “I would say that Basho-sensei composed poems of seventeen syllables because they can be read in one breath.” Hanshiro bowed gravely in thanks when an acolyte set down a tray of smoking utensils. “The poet’s thought can be grasped in an instant. The expression of his enlightenment approaches the point of no-time. Of no-mind. Of no-being.”

  Musui beamed. He had been right about the unkempt stranger.

  “What of poets like Ihara, who create dozens of poems a day?” The monk who spoke was sitting next to the wrestler.

  His voice startled Mountain Wind, who had settled his chins onto the overstuffed cushion of his chest for a snooze. Mountain Wind dutifully sat up straighter, ready to regale them all with a listing of the forty-eight falls. When he realized they were still discussing poetry, he went back to sleep.

  “Sensei said that he who creates five haiku during a lifetime is a poet,” Musui said. “He who completes ten is a master.”

  “And which of the master’s poems is your favorite, Hanshiro?” the abbot asked.

  Hanshiro cleared his throat and stared straight ahead. He looked beyond the gathered monks and beyond the abbey walls to Tosa, the wild, remote land of his birth. He stood at the end of the world, on the high black promontory of Cape Muroto. He heard the roar of the surf, felt the cold salt wind on his face.

  A winter moon’s light

  Silver-crested waves rising

  To knock at my gate

  His reciting voice was deep and resonant and sent a chill through Cat. Everyone sat silent, appreciating Basho’s genius. The waterfall in the garden seemed loud in the stillness of the room.

  The poem was well chosen. It was in keeping with the coming of cold weather and expressive of longings for a distant homeland. Cat was grudgingly impressed.

  “And what brings you so far from the coast, where waves knock at your gate?” The abbot had finally go
tten to the business of Hanshiro’s visit.

  “I’m looking for a fugitive who wounded four men,” Hanshiro said. “That one may be dressed as a wandering priest. That one was seen headed this way.” The language’s pronouns didn’t distinguish male from female, so Hanshiro didn’t have to reveal that the fugitive was a woman.

  Cat feared she would faint. All that stood between her and destruction at the hands of this coarse ruffian was the affable shield of her master’s smile.

  “A-so. The unfortunate affair at the ferry.” The abbot already had dispatched underlings to find out as much as possible about the fight, just as Hanshiro knew he would.

  Hanshiro also knew the abbot was appointed by the emperor, one of the few official functions left to him. He had little loyalty and less love for the shMgun’s upstart government in Edo. Locally the abbot had power and information, without the legal obligation to ask Hanshiro the kinds of questions the authorities would have asked. That was why Hanshiro had come here.

  “We have not seen him. Have any of his opponents died?” The abbot’s question wasn’t an idle one.

  To save themselves the bother of dealing with nosy officials, the local folk were in the habit of depositing the corpses of unidentified travelers on the temple steps. Since the unauthorized burial of persons who had died under unusual circumstances was a punishable offense, the abbot was stuck with each decaying body until the matter could be straightened out. A proportion of the sake donated to the temple by wealthy patrons went toward preserving the malodorous evidence in such cases.

  “No, they didn’t die.” Although they probably wish they had died, Hanshiro thought.

  At least the shame of being beaten by one small woman would keep Kira’s men from making much of a fuss about it. They were like men who stepped in dog dung in the dark. They would be quiet about the entire affair.