Taiko. Part 2

"Serves you right!"

"I'm sorry!"

After slapping Hiyoshi two or three times, Chikuami hoisted him up at arm's length and hurried back home. Although Chikuami called Hiyoshi "monkey," he did not dislike him. Because he was in a hurry to do away with their poverty, he felt he had to be strict with everyone, and he also wanted to improve Hiyoshi's character-by force if necessary.

"You're already nine years old, you little good-for-nothing," Chikuami scolded.

Once back home, he grabbed the boy by the arm and hit him several times more with his fist. Hiyoshi's mother tried to stop him. "You shouldn't be so easy on him," he barked at her.

When she started to cry, he gave the boy another beating.

"What are you crying about? I'm beating this twisted little monkey because I think it'll do him some good. He's nothing but trouble!"

At first, every time he was beaten, Hiyoshi would bury his head in his hands and beg for forgiveness. Now he just cried and cried-almost in delirium-and used abusive language.

"Why? Tell me why? You appear out of nowhere and pretend to be my father and swagger around. But my...my real father...."

"How can you say such a thing!" His mother turned pale, gasped, and put her hand over her mouth. Chikuami redoubled his rage.

"Smarta.s.s little good-for-nothing!" He threw Hiyoshi into the storage shed and ordered Onaka not to give him any dinner. From then until it got dark, Hiyoshi's shrieking could be heard coming from the shed.

"Let me out! You fool! Stonehead! Is everybody deaf? If you don't let me out, I'll burn the place down!"

He went on crying, sounding like a howling dog, but around midnight he finally cried himself to sleep. Then he heard a voice calling his name from somewhere near his head. "Hiyoshi, Hiyoshi."

He was dreaming of his dead father. Half-awake, he called out, "Father!" Then he realized that the form standing in front of him was that of his mother. She had slipped out of the house and brought him some food.

"Eat this and calm down. Come morning, I'll apologize to your father for you."

He shook his head and clung to his mother's clothes. "It's a lie. He's not my father. Didn't my father die?"

"Now, now, why do you say such things? Why be unreasonable? I'm always telling you to be a good son to your father."

To his mother, it was like being cut by a knife. But Hiyoshi could not understand why she cried until her body shook.

The next day, Chikuami started yelling at Onaka from the time the sun came up. "You went behind my back and gave him food in the middle of the night, didn't you? Because you're so soft, his character will never improve. Otsumi is not to go anywhere the storage shed today either."

The trouble between husband and wife lasted almost half a day, until finally Hiyoshi's mother went off alone, crying again. When the sun was about to set, she returned, accompanied by a priest from the Komyoji Temple. Chikuami did not ask his wife where she'd been. Sitting outside with Otsumi and working on a straw mat, he frowned. "Chikuami," the priest said, "your wife came to the temple to ask us if we'd take your in as an acolyte. Do I have your consent?"

Chikuami looked silently at Onaka, who stood outside the back gate, sobbing.

"Hm, I suppose it might be all right. But doesn't he need a sponsor?"

"Happily, the wife of Kato Danjo, who lives at the foot of Yabuyama Hill, has agreed, and your wife are sisters, I believe."

"Ah, so she went to Kato's?" Chikuami's expression was bitter, although he did not object to Hiyoshi entering the temple. He tacitly agreed to the proposal, answering questions in monosyllables.

Giving an order to Otsumi, Chikuami went to put away his farm equipment, and worked for the rest of the day with a preoccupied air.

After he was let out of the storage shed, Hiyoshi received repeated warnings from his mother. All night long he'd been eaten up by mosquitoes, and his face was swollen. When he was going to serve at a temple, he burst into tears. But he quickly recovered.

"The temple'll be better," he declared.

While it was still light, the priest made the necessary preparations for Hiyoshi, and as the time for departure drew near, even Chikuami seemed a little sad. "Monkey, when you enter the temple, you must have a change of heart and discipline yourself," he told the boy. "Learn to read and write a bit, and let us see you become a full-fledged priest soon."

Hiyoshi mumbled a short word of a.s.sent and bowed. Once on the other side of the fence, he looked back time after time at the figure of his mother, who watched him disappear into the distance.

The small temple was on the top of a rise called Yabuyama, a bit removed from the village. A Buddhist temple of the Nichiren sect, its head priest was of advanced years and bedridden. Two young priests maintained the buildings and grounds. Because of the many years of civil war, the village was impoverished, and the temple had few parishes. Hiyoshi, responding quickly to his new surroundings, worked hard, as if he were a different person. He was quick-witted and energetic, and the priests treated him with affection, avowing that they would train him well. Every night they made him practice calligraphy and gave him elementary schooling, during which he displayed an unusual talent memorization.

One day a priest told him, "I met your mother on the road yesterday. I told her you're doing fine."

Hiyoshi did not understand his mother's sorrow very well, but whatever made her happy made him happy.

But when the autumn of his tenth year came around, he began to find the temple too confining. The two younger priests had gone to neighboring villages to beg for alms. In their absence, Hiyoshi got out a wooden sword he had hidden away, and a handmade staff. Then he stood at the top of the hill, yelling down to his friends, who were getting ready to play war games.

"You enemy troops, you're stupid. Come on, attack me from any direction you like!"

Although it was not at all the usual time, the huge bell suddenly rang out from the bell tower. People at the foot of the hill were taken by surprise and wondered what was going on. A stone went flying down the hill, then a tile, which hit and injured a girl working in a vegetable patch.

"It's that kid up at the temple. He's rounded up the village boys and they're playing al war again."

Three or four people climbed the hill and stood before the main hall of the temple The doors were wide open and the interior was covered with ashes. Both the transept and the sanctum were in a shambles. The incense burner had been broken. It looked as though the banners had been put to some questionable use, the gold brocade curtain had been ripped and tossed aside, and the drumhead was ripped.

"Shobo!" "Yosaku!" called parents looking for the children. Hiyoshi was nowhere to be seen; the other youngsters, too, had suddenly disappeared.

By the time the parents got back to the foot of the hill, there was some sort of tremor in the temple. The thickets rustled, stones flew, and the bell rang again. The sun went down, and the children, bruised and bloodied, limped down the hill.

Every night when the priests came back from begging for alms, the villagers would go to the temple and complain. But when the priests returned that evening, they could only stare at each other in shock. The incense burner in front of the altar had been split per fectly in two. The donor of this precious vessel was a man by the name of Sutejiro, who was a pottery merchant from the village of Shinkawa and one of the temple's few remaining parishioners. At the time he had made the gift to the temple, three or four year; earlier, he had said, "This incense burner was fired by my master, the late Gorodayu. I have cherished it as a keepsake. He decorated it from memory, and he took particular care in applying the blue pigment. In offering it to this temple, I a.s.sume it will be treatec as a treasured article until the end of time."

Ordinarily it was kept in a box, but just a week earlier Sutejiro's wife had visited the temple. The incense burner had been taken out and used, but had not been put away again.

The color drained from the priests' faces. Added to their worries was the possibility that if they reported this to the old head priest, his illness would worsen.

"It was probably Monkey," said one.

"Right," another agreed. "None of those other little devils could do this kind of evil.

"What can we do?"

They dragged Hiyoshi in and thrust the pieces of the broken vessel in his face. Hiyoshi could not remember breaking the incense burner, but said, "I'm sorry."

The apology made the priests even angrier, because the boy spoke calmly and seemed to be without a trace of remorse. "Heathen!" they called him, and tied his hands behind his back and bound him to one of the large pillars of the temple.

"We're going to leave you here for a few days. Maybe you'll get eaten by rats," the priests said.

This sort of thing happened to Hiyoshi all the time. When his friends came the next day, he thought bitterly, he would not be able to play with them. And when they did come, they saw he was being punished and ran off.

"Untie me," he called out after them. "If you don't, I'm going to beat you up."

Elderly pilgrims and the village women who made their way up to the temple made fun of him. "Say, isn't that a monkey?"

At one point he was calm enough to mutter to himself, "I'll show you." His small body, pressed against the great temple pillar, was suddenly filled with a feeling of great power. He kept his lips shut about such things and, well aware of his predicament, put on a defiant face, cursing his fate.

He fell into a deep sleep, only to be awakened by his own drooling. The day was frightfully long. Thoroughly bored, he gazed at the broken incense burner. The potter had written an inscription in small characters on the bottom of the vessel: "Made with good omen, Gorodayu."

The nearby village of Seto and, in fact, the entire province was famous for pottery. This had never interested him before, but looking at the painted landscape on the incense burner, his imagination took off.

Where is that, I wonder?

Mountains and stone bridges, towers and people, clothing and boats, the like of which he had never seen before, were painted in indigo on the white porcelain. It all left him deeply puzzled.

What country is that? he wondered.

He could not guess. He had a young boy's cleverness and thirst for knowledge and, desperate for an answer, he strained his imagination for an answer that would fill this emtiness.

Could there really be such a country?

While he was thinking hard about this, something flashed in his head-something he had been taught or had heard, but had forgotten. He racked his brains.

China! That's it! It's a picture of China!

He was pleased with himself. As he looked at the glazed porcelain, he flew to China in his imagination.

At long last the day came to an end. The priests returned from their begging. Instead of finding Hiyoshi in tears, as they had expected, they saw that he was grinning.

"Even punishment is useless. He's beyond our help. We'd better send him back to his parents."

That evening, one of the priests gave Hiyoshi some supper and took him down the hill to the house of Kato Danjo.

Kato Danjo lay down next to the lamp. He was a samurai, used to being exposed to battle morning and night. On those rare days when he could relax, he found staying at home much too peaceful. Tranquillity and relaxation were things to be feared-he might become used to them.

"Oetsu!"

"Yes?" Her voice came from the direction of the kitchen.

"Somebody's knocking at the gate."

"It's not the squirrels again?"

"No, somebody's out there."

Wiping her hands, she went to the gate and came back right away, saying, "It's a priest from the Komyoji. He's brought Hiyoshi." A look of distress swept over her young face.

"Aha!" Danjo, who had expected this, said, laughing, "It seems that Monkey has gotten a leave of absence." Danjo listened to the priest's recital of recent events. Having sponsored Hiyoshi's entrance into the temple, he now apologized to all concerned and took charge of Hiyoshi.

"If he is unfit to be a priest, there's nothing to be done. We'll send him back home to Nakamura. You should no longer feel under any obligation to keep him. I'm sorry he's been nothing but trouble."

"Please explain the matter to his parents," the priest said, and as he turned to go, his step became lighter, as if a heavy load had been lifted from his shoulders. Hiyoshi cut a lonely figure. He looked around curiously, wondering whose house he had come to. He had not stopped here on his way to the temple, nor had he been told that relatives lived close by.

"Well, little boy, have you had anything to eat?" Danjo asked with a smile. Hiyoshi shook his head.

"Have some cakes, then."

While he was munching on the cakes, Hiyoshi eyed the spear suspended over the door, and the crest on the armor chest, then looked hard at Danjo.

Is there really something wrong with this boy? Danjo asked himself. He had his doubts. He stared back, but Hiyoshi neither turned his eyes away nor looked down. There was no trace of the imbecile in him. He smiled rather charmingly at Danjo.

Danjo laughed as he gave in. "You've gotten quite big, haven't you? Hiyoshi, do you remember me?"

This focused a hazy memory in Hiyoshi's mind of a man who had patted him on the head when he was six.

As was the custom with samurai, Danjo almost always slept at the castle at Kiyosu, or on the battlefield. The days he was able to stay at home with his wife had been few. He had returned unexpectedly the day before, and would go back to Kiyosu the next day. Oetsu wondered how many months would pa.s.s before they spent another day together.

A troublesome child! Oetsu thought. Hiyoshi's arrival was inopportune. She looked up, embarra.s.sed. What would her in-laws think? Could this really be her sister's child?

She could hear Hiyoshi's screechy voice from her husband's sitting room: "It was you with all those samurai on the riverbank that day, riding a horse."

"You remember, do you?"

"Sure." He went on in a familiar tone of voice, "If that's the case, you're a relative of mine. You and my mother's younger sister are engaged."

Oetsu and the maid went to the living room to get out serving trays. Oetsu felt uncomfortably cold, listening to Hiyoshi's language and his loud country boy's voice, Opening the sliding door, she called to her husband.

"Dinner's ready."

She saw that her husband was arm-wrestling with Hiyoshi, whose face was bright red, b.u.t.tocks raised like a hornet's tail. Danjo, too, was acting like a child.

"Dinner?" he said absently.

"The soup is going to get cold."

"Go ahead and eat by yourself. This kid is playing for keeps. We're having a good time. Ha, ha! He's a strange one."

Danjo, totally absorbed, seemed to be taken in completely by Hiyoshi's artlessness. The boy, always quick to make friends, was almost leading his uncle by the nose. From arm-wrestling they went to finger puppets, then mimicry, playing children's games until njo was holding his sides with laughter.

The next day, as he was about to leave, Danjo said to his wife, who seemed depressed, "If his parents allow it, how about keeping him here? I doubt he'd be much use, but I suppose it'd be better than keeping a real monkey."

Oetsu was less than pleased with the idea. Going with her husband as far as the garden1 gate, she said, "No. He would annoy your mother. That would never do."

"Whatever you say."

Oetsu knew that whenever Danjo was away from home, his mind dwelt on his lord and on battles. Would he come back alive? she wondered. Was it such a big thing for a man to make a name for himself? Oetsu watched his retreating figure and thought of the many months of loneliness ahead. Then she finished her housework and set off with Hiyoshi for Nakamura.

"Good morning, madam," said a man coming from the opposite direction. He seemed to be a merchant, probably the master of a large establishment. He wore a resplendent half coat, a short sword, and, on his feet, leather socks with a design of small cherry blossoms. He was about forty and genial-looking.

"Aren't you Master Kato's wife? Where are you off to?"

"To my sister's house in Nakamura, to take this child home." She held Hiyoshi's hand tde tighter.