The Golden Naginata (50 page)

When the gate opened, the nun saw before her the woman who had been attacked by three men the night before. She looked about nervously, then grabbed the big boy's fat arm and pulled him into the enclosed garden, indicating to the bikuni that she should enter as well.

They went into the house by way of the kitchen door, as though they were servants. The bikuni was used to back entries, as mendicants commonly came by kitchen doors; but the young woman and the retarded boy were of samurai caste. This was their house. The bikuni wondered if their furtiveness in their own house was due to the likelihood that the young woman belonged in the castle serving Lord Sato's daughter, but was a runaway, having returned without permission to her parents' home.

“Tah-neh!” the huge boy exclaimed. The young woman shushed him sternly and made him sit down in the kitchen. She bowed in an embarrassed manner to the nun, then gave the big boy some rice balls and told him to stay in the kitchen to eat them.

The bikuni had left her sandals by the door. She had removed her hat and carried it under her right arm; in the right hand she carried her sheathed longsword, for it was rude to wear any but the short one inside a house. The young woman failed to indicate a place to leave hat and sword. In fact, she had not as yet made any kind of formal greeting or introduction. Rather, once the slow-witted youth was settled down, the young woman indicated by posture that the bikuni should follow her toward another room. The bikuni did so, taking hat and sword along.

Only their toe-socks were between soles of the feet and the cold, hardwood hallway. The two women passed several doors. Then the younger knelt before a certain door and asked permission to enter. No one answered, but she slid the door open, then bowed to one side of it, allowing the bikuni to enter first, stepping foot on the soft tatami matting of the room.

Inside, an old man lay on his deathbed, a thin futon mattress beneath him, another on top of him. To one side of the bed there were three family members with mournful expressions. Nearest the head of the dying man's bed was a man perhaps twenty years younger, but still elderly. Beside him, there was a woman as ancient-looking as the man who was dying, undoubtedly the reposing man's wife. Near the foot of the bed was a young man wearing a peasant's field jacket, and this was most unexpected, except that the bikuni recalled that the young woman had been attacked by samurai who had learned of her involvement with a peasant youth. His mere presence in the samurai house was a punishable crime. Yet it appeared as though the family accepted him, however fugitively, as their son, inviting him even to the deathbed of the family patriarch.

It was clear, too, that it was a small family on the verge of extinction. There were no young sons present. If the foolish fellow in the kitchen was the family heir, then essentially there was no family heir. The aging father appeared to be a widower, for he had no wife nearby. The entire clan might well be embodied by two grandparents (one of them dying), a father, a slow-witted son, a daughter, and an unofficial son-in-law whose blood would not allow the family name to be carried on. No peasant could be adopted into samurai lineage except by the most unusual of circumstances. The family had a cowed look because of all this, as though only recently aware of the extent of personal, and clan, mortality.

The bikuni had an uneasy feeling, for she began to suspect why they had brought her here in quiet. When the grandmother, father, and peasant youth saw the bikuni enter, they bowed with faces to the floor, although they did not owe a bikuni such obeisance. When the old, old woman's face looked up at last, her eyes were wet and shiny, and her creased expression was one of gratitude, but the bikuni had done nothing to merit such a look.

The man at the head of the patriarch's deathbed, soon to be the family's patriarch himself, was immeasurably sad as well. He looked as though the weight of the world were upon his shoulders. He said to the bikuni,

“I am Kahei Todawa, a low-ranking samurai in the service of Lord Ikida Sato, presently under house arrest for misspeaking myself as regards the Lotus Sutra. It is the measure of Lord Sato's goodness that I was not executed. Please forgive the shyness of our invitation. It is not really that we are ashamed to invite you here. We had very little time to prepare, having only seen you pass the other way a short time ago, and realizing you would be turned away and would pass our house on your return.”

“Please don't feel embarrassed for my sake,” said the bikuni, settling on her knees near the foot of the deathbed, setting her sword and bamboo hat at her side. “I am aware that Lord Sato has decreed only the holy men and women of the Lotus sect may be invited into any house.”

“I am chagrined to go against my Lord's wishes,” said Kahei Todawa. “But it is an odd thing that Lotus mendicants have not heard of Lord Sato's favor. They have not rushed to this fief at all. Only a priest named Kuro the Darkness represents that order, so that my Lord's decree means, in essence, that there are no priests to whom anyone might turn legally, save Kuro alone. Due to my comments regarding this very observation, Lord Sato placed me under house arrest, although at least I can still wander to the edge of my small estate, and my doors have not been barred with bamboo crosses. Again I ask you to see in this the goodness of my Lord's true heart. All the same, I find it difficult to be entirely obedient in this particular instance, when my father is dying and in need of a small service.

“My daughter, Otane, informed me previously of your effort in her behalf, only last night. It was my decision, on seeing you pass my estate while I was pruning trees, to quietly invite you here. A brave and martial nun might not fear Kuro the Darkness, and would be willing to recite the sutras of Amida Buddha before my father breathes his last.”

The dying old man's eyes opened for the first time since the bikuni entered the room. He turned his head weakly, looking straight at the nun. She could not look away. A withered, spidery hand slipped out from under the quilt, clinging to a Buddhist rosary, shaking with palsy.

The bikuni was extraordinarily ill at ease. She scooted away from the foot of the dying man's bed, bowed with forehead to floor, and whispered, “Forgive me, but I have never learned Buddhist sutras of any sort. I am a Shintoist at heart.” When she raised her head from the floor, the old, old woman was looking at the straw matting at her own knees, her face blandly unreadable, devoid of its former and premature gratitude. Otane, who was sitting on her knees just inside the door as though she were still only a servant in the castle, finally spoke.

“Surely you know a few! How can you walk about the country as a nun and never learn the sutras?”

The bikuni's eyes were again caught by those of the dying old man. It was impossible to turn her face away from his. Still, she was able to answer Otane's harsh query.

“Buddhist doctrine is as the leaves of a tree, but Shinto is the tree itself.” Her voice was small when she added, “Think of me as a poor, dry autumn leaf.”

Otane was indignant and angry, perhaps embarrassed as well, if she had been the one to suggest to her father that the martial nun be brought in the first place. “A bikuni can't think like that!” she exclaimed.

“It is the essence of esotericism,” said the bikuni, “that we think as we please.”

“It's too much!” scolded Otane, but Kahei Todawa shushed his daughter, and the room became deathly still. Deathly. After a long, cold, lonely silence, the dry lips of the dying man began a pitiful recital in his own behalf: “
Namu Amida Butsu … Namu Amida … Butsu … Namu
…”

The nun could not remain composed in the face of this wretched encounter. She bowed again, this time to the dying man in particular. Though it was unlike her, she made an excuse for herself: “It has been my way to play my shakuhachi for the sick at heart or the dying. This has been my excuse for never learning the sutras. But my shakuhachi has been damaged and waits this very moment to be repaired in the village. Please live two or three more days and I will come back to do my best for you!”

With so much pain in her gut she felt as though she had committed seppuku, the bikuni grabbed hat and sword and hurried out of the room. Otane bowed to her grandmother, father, and dying grandfather, and she left as well. The unobtrusive peasant youth followed after Otane.

For the majority of her life, the bikuni had been a samurai. Among samurai it was generally felt that there was nothing so terrible as retirement from worldly life. Honorable, valorous death was vastly preferred to lost privilege, glory, and class standing. Yet the bikuni had taken the tonsure voluntarily. She had not regretted it until this day. Only now did it seem she had given up less of the world than previously believed. She had lost status while retaining responsibility; given up glory though deeds were still required. It had always been easy for her to face her own death as a samurai. But it was terrifying to be asked, as Buddha's woman, to ease another's dying.

She went as far as the kitchen, trying to erase from her mind the image of the dying man and his watchful mourners. In the kitchen, she saw the huge boy with bits of sticky rice all around his mouth. A grin widened in his pudgy face. The bikuni stood over him, looking at him strangely. Otane came up behind her, the handsome farmboy in tow. Otane said softly,

“Let me feed you before you go.”

The nun sat by the firepit and held her hands above the coals, trying to look at none but the foolish boy, whose innocent spirit was a healing thing, untouched as he was by remorse or sorrow. This boy and the priest called Paddy-Bird were the only two individuals she had seen in the whole mountainous fief, aside from small children, capable of smiling.

“Tah-neh!” the huge fellow exclaimed, seeing she was after food again. Otane shushed him with a not-too-harsh look, and for a moment he didn't smile.

The farmboy sat down near the nun, warming himself by the kitchen firepit as well. The nun didn't look at him, but noted his appearance from the corner of her eye. There was no denying his beauty. His lips were full and small, his chin round, his eyebrows long and thin. It was a wonder no one in the castle had noticed him among the fields, and made him a minor page at least, for he was prettier than those pampered youths. Yet there was something disrespectful in the manner of his expression, something perhaps not attractive to many, suggesting as it did a dislike for authority.

“Iyo there is Otane's brother,” said the farmboy. “He has a lot of trouble understanding things and being understood, though he's good for a few sorts of errands and chores. He doesn't know his grandfather is dying, though it's been explained to him once or twice. You're a stupid fellow, isn't it so, Iyo?”

Iyo realized this last was addressed to him, but didn't know that he had been disparaged. He grinned hugely as always, and exclaimed, “Shin Ji! Tah-neh's Shin Ji!”

The farmboy laughed, yet there was a joyless edge to it. “That's right, Iyo,” he said. “I'm Otane's Shinji, not Shinji's Shinji.”

The nun had been near the verge of disliking the youth, if for no other reason than his easy mistreatment of Iyo. But she quickly detected Shinji's self-deprecation. She realized he did not hold himself in as much esteem as he would like to project. For all his physical beauty, Shinji yet seemed to think of Iyo as a kind of mirror. When he teased Iyo about things, it reflected on himself. Certainly Iyo absorbed none of it and felt no injury.

Otane was hurt by it, though. She cringed at Shinji's last remark, but hid her mortification as she went silently about her task of preparing fresh rice balls for the nun. Shinji continued talking boldly to the bikuni.

“Though Iyo isn't very smart, he is nonetheless of the buké class. Even a fellow like him is more important than a farmer's son. Otane's parents condescend to treat me like a son at times, and I remind myself to be humble and appreciative. But they are lost in their sadness and have forgotten that I am here. They never think I might have feelings as real as their own, that I might share their sorrow, or comfort them, given half a chance. Samurai are good at not noticing peasants, don't you think? Just like crickets on a path. Who sees if one is underfoot?”

Otane moved about the kitchen in speechless trepidation. Was Shinji so blind? Didn't he see that she was affected by his tongue? Such a good-looking fellow should learn to notice the feelings of others, or his beauty didn't mean a thing. That's what the nun was thinking. But she didn't say a thing.

“Even if you keep a cricket in a little cage,” he said, “and feed it and write a poem about how nice the cricket is … if it gets loose, or if it dies, pretty easy to replace it with another one. Hard to tell the difference.”

Otane dropped the rice spatula. Surely Shinji noticed, but hardly skipped a beat in the rhythm of his lecture.

“Despite this, Otane and I have decided we will live together someplace. Isn't it funny? A samurai and a cricket. Maybe just a worm! Feel free to laugh at us.” Shinji's eyes glinted as though to convey the jesting nature of his words, yet the words were far too harsh to be accepted as humor. Otane was visibly shaken, but had no doubt heard it all before, and offered no criticism of anything her illicit lover said.

The bikuni turned her face from Iyo's to the farmboy's and looked at him without the least emotion. Her thoughts were many, but she would not let him know her feelings about his callousness and insecurity. He'd been respectfully silent at the deathbed of the patriarch, and was doubtless grateful that they had not shut him out altogether. Yet he was simultaneously bitter about many things. He had not been raised like a samurai and could not hold back his feelings for long periods of time. As he was more comfortable in the kitchen, as opposed to the private rooms of samurai, Shinji felt at ease to speak his mind, especially as he was only talking to a mendicant.