With a polite farewell, he took his leave. Holding on to Oetsu's sleeve, Hiyoshi looked back at him several times.

"Tell me, Auntie, who was that man?"

"His name is Sutejiro. He's a wholesaler who handles pottery from many countries."

Hiyoshi was silent for a while as they trudged along.

"The country of the Ming, where is that?" he asked suddenly, thinking of what he had just heard.

"That means China."

"Where is it? How big is it? Are there castles and samurai and battles there, too?"

"Don't be such a nuisance. Be quiet, won't you?" Oetsu shook her sleeve irritably, but a scolding by his aunt had no more effect on Hiyoshi than a gentle breeze. He craned his neck upward and gazed fixedly at the blue sky. It was so wondrous he could hardly stand it. Why was it so incredibly blue? Why were human beings earthbound? If people were able to fly like birds, he himself could probably travel to the country of the Ming. Indeed, the birds depicted on the incense burner were the same as those in Owari. The people's clothes were different, he remembered, as were the shapes of the ships, but the birds were the same. It must be that birds had no countries; heaven and earth were all one country to them.

I'd like to visit different countries, he mused.

Hiyoshi had never noticed how small and poor a house he was returning to. But when he and Oetsu peered inside, he realized for the first time that even at midday it was as dark as a cellar. Chikuami was nowhere to be seen; maybe he was out attending to some business.

"Nothing but trouble," Onaka said, after hearing of Hiyoshi's latest escapades. She let out a deep sigh. His expression was nonchalant. As she looked at him, there was no blame in her eyes. Rather, she was impressed by how much he had grown in two years, Suspiciously, Hiyoshi eyed the infant sucking at his mother's breast. At some point his family had increased by one member. Without warning, he took the child's head, wresting rom the nipple, and peered at it.

"When was this baby born?" he asked.

Instead of answering, his mother said, "You've become a big brother. You'll have to behave."

"What's his name?"

"Kochiku."

"That's a strange name," he said excitedly, at the same time experiencing a feeling of power over the small child: the will of an older brother could be imposed on a younger brother.

"Starting tomorrow, I'll carry you on my back, Kochiku," he promised. But he was hadling the baby clumsily, and Kochiku began to cry.

His stepfather appeared just as Oetsu was leaving. Onaka had told her sister that Chikuami had grown tired of trying to wipe out their poverty. He sat around drinking sake, and his face was flushed now as he entered the house. Spying Hiyoshi, he let out a yel1.

"You scoundrel! You were expelled from the temple and you come back here?"

Tenzo the Bandit

Hiyoshi had been back home for more than a year. He was eleven. Whenever Chikuami lost sight of him, even for a moment, he'd charge around looking for him and roar at the top of his voice, "Monkey? Have you chopped the firewood yet? Why not? Why did you leave the pail in the field?" If Hiyoshi so much as started to talk back, the rough, hard hol­low of his stepfather's hand would quickly ring against the side of the boy's head. At such times his mother, the baby strapped to her back while she trod barley or cooked, would force herself to look away and remain silent. Still, her face looked pained, as if she herself had been slapped.

"It's natural for any eleven-year-old brat to help with the work. If you think you can slip away and play all the time, I'll break your ass!"

The foulmouthed Chikuami drove Hiyoshi hard. But after being sent home from the temple, he worked hard, as if he had come back a different person. On those occasions when his mother unwisely tried to shield him, Chikuami's rough hands and voice lashed out with severity. It was better, she decided, to pretend to ignore her son. Now Chikuami rarely went into the fields, but he was often away from the house. He would go into town, return drunk, and yell at his wife and children.

"No matter how much I work, the poverty of this house won't ever be eased," he complained. "There are too many parasites, and the land tax keeps going up. If it weren't for these kids, I'd become a masterless samurai—a ronin! And I'd drink delicious sake. Ah, these chains on my hands and feet!"

After one of these fits of abusiveness, he would make his wife count out what little money they had, then send Otsumi or Hiyoshi out to buy sake, even in the middle of the night.

If his stepfather wasn't around, Hiyoshi would sometimes give vent to his feelings.

Onaka hugged him close and comforted him.

"Mother, I want to go out and work again," he said one day.

"Please stay here. If it weren't for your being around…" The rest of what she said was unintelligible through her tears. As each tear appeared, she turned her head to the side and wiped her eyes. Seeing his mother's tears, Hiyoshi couldn't say anything. He wanted o run away, but he knew he would have to stay where he was and bear the unhappiness and bitterness. When he felt sorry for his mother, the natural desires of youth—to play, to eat, to learn, to run away—would grow within him like so many weeds. All these were fitted against the angry words Chikuami hurled at his mother and the fists that rained iown on his own head.

"Eat shit!" he muttered, his defiant soul a flame within his small body. Finally he pushed himself to the point of confronting his fearsome stepfather.

"Send me out to work again," he said. "I'd rather be in service than stay in this house."

Chikuami didn't argue. "Fine," he said. "Go wherever you like, and eat someone else's rice. But the next time you get driven away, don't come back to this house." He meant what he said, and although he realized Hiyoshi was only an eleven-year-old boy, he found limself arguing with him as an equal, which made him even madder.

Hiyoshi's next job was at the village dyer's shop.

"He's all mouth, and sassy to boot. Just looking for a sunny place to pick the dirt from his navel," said one of the workmen operating the dye press.

Soon after that, word came from the go-between: "I'm afraid he's of no use." And back home he went.

Chikuami glared at him. "Well, how about it, Monkey? Is society going to feed an idler like you? Don't you yet understand the value of parents?"

He wanted to say, I'm not bad! but instead he said, "You're the one who no longer farms, and it'd be better if you didn't just gamble and drink at the horse market. Everybody's sorry for my mother."

"How dare you talk that way to your father!" Chikuami's thundering roar shut the boy up, but now he was beginning to see Hiyoshi in a different light. He thought, Bit by bit, he's growing up. Each time Hiyoshi went out into the world and came back again, he was noticeably bigger. The eyes that judged his parents and his home were maturing quickly. And the fact that Hiyoshi was looking at him with the eyes of an adult deeply an­noyed, frightened, and displeased the errant stepfather.

"Go on, hurry and find work," he ordered.

The following day, Hiyoshi went to his next employer, the village cooper. He was back home within a month, the mistress of the shop having complained, "I can't have a dis­turbing child like this in my house."

Hiyoshi's mother could not understand what she meant by "disturbing." Other places where Hiyoshi began apprenticeships were the plasterer's shop, the lunch counter at the horse market, and the blacksmith's. Each time he stayed no longer than three to six months. His comings and goings gradually became known, and his reputation got so bad that no one would act as his go-between.