10
The sun had slipped behind the mountain peaks and a blue dusk was descending when they came to a hut at a fork in the path. It was small, its roof thatched; a lean-to along one side sheltered a pile of neatly stacked logs. It had one door, a heavy wooden one, and no screens. They paused to wash their hands and drink from the nearby spring. An animal scampered under the veranda at their approach. Matsuda heaved at the door, slid it open, and peered inside. He chuckled. “It’s withstood winter well. No one’s been here since last summer.”
“No one but rats,” Shigeru said, looking at the droppings on the floor.
Shigeru had placed the bundles on the wooden step-hardly a veranda, though it served the same purpose. Matsuda knelt to untie one and took out a handful of wood shavings. He put the embers from the iron pot in a small brazier, added the shavings and blew gently on them. When they began to smoke, he stood again and took up a broom.
“I’ll do that,” Shigeru said.
“We’ll share these simple chores. You go and find kindling.”
Mosquitoes whined around his head as he searched for dry wood in the gathering darkness. The forest here was beech and oak, with one alder by the pool where the spring overflowed. Here and there were white mountain lilies and arum, and near the stream kingcups gleamed. The first stars were appearing through the heavy foliage above.
He breathed out deeply.
The fallen branches on the ground were still sodden after the rain, but there was enough dead wood on the lower limbs and trunks of the trees to gather an armful of kindling. He could smell the pine shavings from the hut, a friendly human smell in the lonely forest. When he returned, a frog was calling from the pool. Another answered it.
He broke the kindling into small pieces and carried them inside. The floor was clean and Matsuda had lit a small lamp and spread out the thin hemp bedding and quilts in order to air them. The tiny room was filled with smoke.
An iron hook suspended from the ceiling held a small pot, which was starting to steam. With the extra wood, it was soon boiling. Matsuda took dried mushrooms and bean paste from a container in the bamboo basket and added them to the water. After a few minutes he took the pot from the hook and poured the soup into two wooden bowls. He performed all these movements with dexterity and great skill, as though he had done them many times before, and Shigeru guessed the master had been to this hut on many occasions, alone or with other pupils, during the years he had served the Enlightened One at Terayama.
They drank the soup and followed it with the last two rice cakes from the container. Shigeru wondered what they would eat the next day; maybe they were to fast. Matsuda told him to take the pot to the spring, rinse it, and refill it; he would make tea.
It was completely dark by now, the stars visible through the swaying branches, the moon a faint glow in the east behind the peaks. A vixen screamed in the distance, an inhuman sound that made him think of goblins-and suddenly of Takeshi, who had wanted to be taught the art of the sword by the goblins of the mountain, like Matsuda himself. Maybe it had been in this very place; maybe Shigeru would see the same goblins, be taught by them, become the best swordsman in the Three Countries, far better than Iida Sadamu… He resolved not to waste a moment of this time with Matsuda. Whether it involved fasting, fetching wood, sweeping the floor, he would carry out all the tasks of the disciple in order to learn from his master.
BEHIND THE HUT was a small clearing, level and smooth-grassed. Rabbits, hares, deer, and other forest creatures came to graze here before sunrise. It made a perfect natural training ground, and Shigeru was eager to begin. Yet Matsuda seemed in no hurry. He roused Shigeru while it was still dark, the silent darkness that precedes dawn when the sounds of night, even the frogs, are muffled. The moon had already set, and the stars were dimmed by mist rising from the damp earth. The embers of the fire still glowed, a tiny light against the darkness of mountain and forest that lay around them.
After they had relieved themselves, washed their faces and hands in the spring, and drunk from the water, Matsuda said, “We will sit for a while. If you are to learn, it must be with an empty mind. Watch your breath; that is all you need to do.”
The old man sat down, legs crossed on the small wooden step. Shigeru could not see his face, though he was barely a pace away. He also sat, on the ground, legs crossed, hands on his knees, the first finger lightly touching the thumb.
He breathed in and out, feeling the breath as it filled his chest and flowed out through his nostrils. The inbreath was strong, the outbreath weak-the inbreath full of life, the other somehow suggestive of death. Always the strong breath followed it, the body possessed of its own desire to live, but one day that outbreath would be the last. The air would no longer go in and out of him. This body, which was so familiar to him, indeed so loved by him, would decay and rot: eventually even the bones would crumble. But his spirit? What happened to that? Would it be reborn into the endless cycle of life and death? Or into the hell reserved for the wicked, as some sects taught? Or would it reside in some remote shrine like this one, as the country people believed, or at Terayama, where his descendants would revere him and honor him?
His descendants: He would be married; he would have children. He brought his thoughts back from that direction. He would not start dwelling on women. He opened his eyes and glanced guiltily at Matsuda. The old man’s eyes were closed, but he said quietly, “Watch the breath.”
The breath went in and out. Thoughts circled around it like goblins or demons, clamoring for his attention.
As the fletcher whittles arrows, as the horseman tames horses, so you must direct and control your straying thoughts.
But the horses made him think of Kiyoshige and of the black colt he had left behind. He thought he could see through the horse’s eyes, taste the summer grass in the water meadows; he longed to feel the animal beneath him, the springy, controlled tension, the excitement in the curve of neck and back, the pleasure in controlling a creature so much larger and more powerful than himself. And the arrows: He felt his hands change out of their meditative pose into a longing to shape themselves around the bow, the rein, the sword.
He breathed in and out.
If you cannot quieten yourself, what will you ever learn?
The words fell into his hearing. He knew it was Matsuda who had spoken them, yet they seemed to come from some other source, some place of truth within himself. He repeated them under his breath. If you cannot quieten yourself. They became the breath. For a few brief moments his mind emptied. However, almost immediately the clamorous thoughts returned. So that’s what my teacher meant! I did it. Now maybe I can start using the sword.
Impatience set its ant bite on him. As if in response, his body began to complain about its discomfort. His legs were cramped, his belly empty, his throat dry. Yet Matsuda, over three times his age, did not move at all, merely breathed calmly, in and out.
I will be like him, Shigeru thought. I will. He tried to discern the master’s breathing and follow it. He watched himself breathe. In. Out.
Birds were starting to call from the trees. A thrush burst into song. He opened his eyes briefly and realized it was lighter. He could make out the shape of the hut, the trees beyond Matsuda’s figure sitting above him. He could not help thinking of the morning meal: his mouth filled suddenly with water. In Hagi, at this moment, the kitchens would be coming to life, the fires stoked, the soup boiling, the cooks slicing vegetables, the maids preparing tea: the whole army of servants that maintained the life he led would be awake, working deftly, silently. All his life he had been able to command them: even in times of famine, after natural disasters such as typhoons, droughts, or earthquakes when many in the Middle Country had starved, he had not gone hungry. Now he had given all that away: he had become like one of them, dependent entirely on the will of another. He trusted Matsuda: he believed the old man could teach him many things he needed to know. He submitted his reluctant will to the master’s, let the thoughts of food float into his mind and float out again, breathed in, breathed out. His mind stilled, like a green horse that finally accepts that all its bucking and rearing will not unseat the rider. He saw how all desires, all longings, can be either indulged or allowed to dissipate. He grasped what the master meant about choice. In the stillness came a sense of his spirit, a wave on the surface of the ocean; calm flooded over him, together with compassion for all beings, compassion for himself, reverence and love for Matsuda.