Thousand Shrine Warrior (7 page)

“I didn't ask her!” the blackmailed artisan said testily. “She asked about Lord Sato's castle. Probably she went up there, but nobody will let a vagrant like her inside unless she is a Lotus mendicant. She looked like an esoteric nun to me. Some hair showed under her hat. She doesn't shave her head.”

Bundori looked upset. “She shouldn't have gone there. Well, maybe they'll treat her like they do me. Send her away without letting her talk to anyone! I hope she doesn't tell them what she did.”

“What did she do?” asked the artisan.

“Nothing.”

“You said she did something! If I'm giving you a hundred zeni, I should get something for it! Tell me something else about her! It's interesting!”

“Nothing to tell. She's not even who I said she was, so don't tell anyone about it. Anyway, it's only two zeni, you said so, not worth even as much attention as I've given you already.”

“Three zeni!”

“I'll write it in my ledger.”

“No need to do that.”

“All right, I won't.” He jumped off the raised wooden floor into his sandals sitting on the packed ground, and was out the door before the argument could be continued. He scurried up the street again. He did not go so far as the bridge, for the two samurai guards would never let him cross. He stood outside a small saké den in view of the bridge, rocking on his heels, looking agitated. Suddenly he spun about and slapped a hand on the door of the saké den, shouting rudely, “I'm coming in for something to drink!”

The maid who unlocked the door was pretty. She looked around to see if the samurai with the corpses was gone and, seeing the way clear, left the door open and invited Bundori inside. There were a couple of customers within, sitting at rustic tables and benches on a dirt floor. Not a comfortable place at all. The owner had been a friend of Bundori's until Kuro the Darkness started influencing Lord Sato's decrees. The maid was the daughter of Bundori's friend, and she was aware of her father's obedience to the awful decree against donations to temples and shrines. She could see how skinny the priest had gotten since the last time she saw him. Her eyes were sad because of this.

“Old priests shouldn't drink,” she said, and smiled at the funny fellow. He brought good feelings with him, even into such a poor little den. “Sit in a nice place and I will make you something good to eat.”

“That's all right with me, but bring saké too. The best you have! Not that it will be very good. I'm not paying for anything, mind you. Erase your sin!”

The maid laughed at that, and the sadness vanished from her eyes. She went into a back room to get the priest some noodles. Bundori sat on a splintery bench and the humor that usually marked his face was weakened. He craned his neck so that he could see out the den's entryway, wishing the wandering nun would appear at any minute.

The nun, in charcoal and cream, moved like a specter midst the shadows of the evergreen-shaded lane. When she came around one of the many turns along the way, there stood the overgrown boy she had seen before. He was directly in her path. At close quarters, he was even larger than she had supposed. He held his gardener's shears at his side, but there was nothing threatening about him. The nun bowed respectfully. Quite likely, no one had ever bowed to the big fellow before, and he was inordinately pleased to be treated with courtesy. His grin could not have gotten any larger without touching his ears.

“Are you the gardener's son?” she asked, watching him through the loosely woven window-section of her bamboo hat. “Or are you the son of some low-ranking samurai?” The boy's eyes gleamed, but he did not reply. There was a family crest on his kimono, by which the bikuni deduced his
buké
or warrior-class lineage. He opened his mouth as if to try to say something, but his mouth was full of saliva. He had to wipe his mouth on his sleeve, looking somewhat embarrassed. The bikuni asked, “Can't you speak?”

“Muh. Muh.”

The fellow had some deformity of the palate. He was clearly a child in mind, though physically he outmatched most men.

“Whu-
rhens!
” he exclaimed loudly. He used his gardener shears to point down a narrow, little-used path. He said again, practically shouting, “Hur-RENDS!”

“Friends,” the bikuni said softly. “Friends of mine?” The fellow became excited because she had understood him. He pointed more exaggeratedly. The bikuni nodded curtly and started to walk the direction indicated by the big, stupid fellow. He ran to get in front of her on the weedy path, leading the way.

They went by a back path to the smallest of samurai estates, the very one she had earlier passed in front of and had thought was better cared for than the rest. The rear gate was locked from within, so the big fellow shouted, “Tah-neh!” and a moment later, “Tah-neh!” in his deep, awkward voice. Already there was someone rushing to unlock the gate.

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.