Kaze continued his slow breathing as he listened to Jiro’s receding footsteps. He expected Jiro to make his way to the privy. That would almost always be to the south of a farmhouse. Kaze had noticed a nanten bush growing south of the farmhouse, something usually planted next to a privy as a symbol of ritual purification, so he was sure that’s where the facilities were. But the charcoal seller was walking west, not south. That meant he was walking into the surrounding woods.
Kaze lay still, slowly listening to his breathing, and tried not to be curious about the strange nocturnal journey of the charcoal seller. He counted over a thousand breaths before Jiro painstakingly slid the farmhouse door open again and crept inside. In the dark, Jiro made his way back to his spot on the farmhouse’s platform floor and settled back to sleep, congratulating himself on making his nightly trip without the samurai noticing.
The next morning, Kaze shared a breakfast of hot miso soup and cold porridge from the night before with Jiro without complaint. The breakfast passed without any comment on the charcoal seller’s peculiar behavior. Kaze finished his food, then he put on his tabi socks and started strapping on his hemp sandals.
“Looking around the village again?” Jiro said, frankly curious.
“I’ve seen the village. I’m moving to the next village.”
“You’re leaving?” Jiro said, alarmed.
“Yes. There’s no reason for me to stay.”
“But the Lord hasn’t decided what to do about the murder.” Fear made words tumble from Jiro’s mouth.
“The murder has nothing to do with me.”
“But the Magistrate told you to stay here.”
“Your Magistrate is nothing to me. He’s too stupid to even understand what happened. He will never find the murderer. Domo. Thank you for your hospitality. Good luck.”
“But the Magistrate will be mad if you leave!”
Kaze shrugged.
“You may meet bandits on the road.”
“Then that is my karma. Domo.”
Kaze stuck his sword in his sash and strode out of Jiro’s hut. Jiro rushed to the door, watching the samurai walk down the path that led through the village using the economical gait of a man used to covering long distances. Jiro was fearful of the samurai’s leaving, yet not quite sure what he should do about it.
Once out of the village, Kaze enjoyed the sweet air of the mountains, scented with pine and the memory of summer grass. The sky was sunny, and although he had gained no news of the girl, he was not discouraged. He would not quit. This last village meant one less place to look. If she was alive, sooner or later he would find her.
To demonstrate his powers of concentration, Daruma, the Indian monk who founded Zen Buddhism, sat in a cave and meditated for nine years while staring at a wall. Kaze’s Sensei would often relate that story when Kaze grew too restless with a lesson or exercise, but Kaze could never see the example applying to him. He could be still, but he could not be idle.
He had searched for the girl for two years. During the search he had wandered the cities and back roads of Japan, constantly moving. Inactivity, not a lack of patience, was why the lesson of Daruma was never incorporated into his heart. It was two years since he saw her, and at that age girls grow quickly. He wondered if he would recognize her. Would there be some spark of her parents shining in her face as she matured, or could he walk past her on a village street and not recognize that he had found the object of his search?
Just as swordsmanship was a matter of a hair’s width, luck in life could be a matter of brief seconds. A man could turn and an arrow or musket ball fired at him could miss. If he turned a fraction of a second later, he would be dead. Even if she did look like her parents, perhaps Kaze would be turning a corner just as she was stepping out a door and miss her. Perhaps she would be moved to a village just as Kaze had left it. There were so many possibilities, but Kaze knew he could not just sit idle and wait for luck. He believed in the Japanese proverb that said waiting for luck is like waiting for death.
As he walked along the path, Kaze looked at the splashes of blue sky peeking through the woven branches of the trees. It was a constantly changing mosaic that recalled the intricately painted patterns on the expensive Satsuma porcelains he knew from his youth. His quest weighed on his soul, but he reflected that his life was not without its pleasures, especially as he walked along an empty road, smelling the coming autumn and listening to the sound of his sandals crunching the pine needles that had drifted across the path. He was about to start humming an old folk song when he stopped abruptly and stared into the trees lining the road. Something caught his eye.
CHAPTER 5
A butterfly roosts.
Unexpected elegance
on a bobbing leaf.
It was a subtle thing, but he was a man used to living off subtleties. The trees along this patch of road were thick and overgrown with brush, yet deep in the woods, through the tangle of branches, Kaze had seen a flash of red, then gold. He stared intently, seeing if he could spot the colors again, but saw nothing except the dark tree trunks.
Leaving the road, he started making his way into the trees. Silent as any hunter, he carefully stepped over brush and glided from point to point, penetrating the woods with a maximum of stealth and a minimum of sound.
A short distance from the road, he stopped. There the woods opened up into a large clearing. The grass in the clearing was trampled down, forming a space roughly the size of eight tatami mats. In this space, standing alone, was a Noh dancer.
The dancer wore a rich kimono of red and gold. The crimson silk was embroidered with a pattern of golden maple leaves, tumbling from one shoulder and fluttering their way to the kimono’s hem. Stepping through this dry autumn shower, a brown embroidered doe gently peeked from the back of the kimono to the flank of the dancer, looking about warily with wide eyes. The lushness of the kimono’s color was what Kaze had spotted through the trees.
On the face of the dancer was a ko-omote, the traditional mask of a maiden: oval, serene, painted white with red lips and high, expressive eyebrows. The mask was surmounted by a black wig with long, lustrous human hair pulled back into a bun, adding to the illusion that the Noh dancer, who was a man, was really a woman.
The dancer moved with slow grace, his movements controlled and stylized. Kaze, who had not seen Noh for many years, was entranced. Noh was part dance, part drama, and part music. In the silent performance being pantomimed before him, the music and stylized singing and speech of the Noh ensemble were missing, but the grace of the dancer remained.
He was moving in a precise, measured triangle, and Kaze realized that it was Dojoji, a Noh play about a dedication ceremony for a large bronze bell at Dojoji temple. An enchanting female shirabyoshi dancer climbs the mountain to the temple, only to be revealed as a vengeful spirit who turns herself into a frightening serpent when trapped under the bell by the priests of the temple. It’s a spectacular performance, with a costume change for the principal dancer when hidden in the bell, metamorphosing from the robes and mask of the maiden to the glittering costume and fearsome mask of the serpent.
The dancer walked through the small triangle again and again, varying the walk by small degrees. It was the part of the play where the dancer makes the long climb up the mountain to the temple, a part that extends for many minutes in the actual performance. Here the precision and skill of the dancer was taxed to keep the action interesting to the audience, and Kaze was delighted by the finesse shown as the dancer made small variations in these apparently repetitious movements.