think of him going right back out into the night. Her eyes opened wide. 'Where are you going?' she asked.
'I don't know, but this time I'll serve a samurai. Then I'll be able to set both of your minds at rest.'
'Serve a samurai?' Onaka whispered.
'You said you didn't want me to become a samurai, but that's what I really want to do. My uncle at Yabuyama said the same thing. He said now's the time.'
'Well, you should talk this over with your stepfather too.'
'I don't want to see him,' Hiyoshi said, shaking his head. 'You should forget about me for the next ten years. Sis, it's no good for you not to get married. But be patient, all right? When I become a great man, I'll clothe our mother in silk, and buy you a sash of patterned satin for your wedding.'
Both women were weeping because Hiyoshi had grown up enough to say such things. Their hearts were like lakes of tears in which their bodies would drown.
'Mother, here are the two measures of salt the pottery shop paid me. I earned it working for two years. Sis, put it in the kitchen.' Hiyoshi put down the bag of salt.
'Thank you,' said his mother, bowing to the bag. 'This is salt you've earned by going out into the world for the first time.'
Hiyoshi was satisfied. Looking at the happy face of his mother, he was so happy himself that he felt as if he were floating. He swore he would make her even happier in the future. So that's it! This is my family's salt, Hiyoshi thought. No, not just my family's, but the village's. No, better yet, it's the salt of the realm.
'I guess it'll be quite a while before I'm back,' Hiyoshi said, backing toward the outer door, but his eyes did not move from Onaka and Otsumi. He already had one foot out the door when Otsumi suddenly leaned forward and said, 'Wait, Hiyoshi! Wait.' She then turned to her mother. 'The string of money you just told me about. I don't need it. I don't want to get married, so please give it to Hiyoshi.'
Stifling a sob in her sleeve, Onaka fetched the string of coins and handed them to Hiyoshi, who looked at them and said, 'No, I don't need them.' He held the coins out to his mother.
Otsumi, speaking with the compassion of an older sister, asked, 'What are you going to do out in the world without money?'
'Mother, rather than this, won't you give me the sword Father carried, the one grandfather had made?'
His mother reacted as though she had been struck in the chest. She said, 'Money will keep you alive. Please don't ask for that sword.'
'Don't you have it anymore?' Hiyoshi asked.
'Ah… no.' His mother admitted bitterly that it had long since been sold to pay for Chikuami's
'Well… if you want that one.'
'It's all right if I take it?' Though he cared about his mother's feelings, Hiyoshi persisted. He remembered how badly he had wanted the shabby old sword at the age of six, and how he had made his mother cry. Now she was resigned to the idea of his growing up into what she had prayed he would never become—a samurai.
'Oh, well, take it. But Hiyoshi, never face another man and draw it from its scabbard. Otsumi, please go get it.'
'That's all right. I'll go.'
Hiyoshi ran into the storage shed. He took down the sword from the beam where it hung. As he tied it to his side, he remembered that six-year-old boy in tears, long years past. In that instant, he felt that he had grown up. 'Hiyoshi, Mother wants you,' said Otsumi, looking into the shed. Onaka had set a candle in the small shrine on the shelf. In a small wooden dish she had put a few grains of millet and a small pile of the salt Hiyoshi had brought. She joined her hands in prayer. Hiyoshi came in, and she told him to sit down. She took down a razor from the shrine. Hiyoshi's eyes opened wide. 'What are you going to do?' he asked.
“I'm giving you your coming-of-age ceremony. Though we can't do it formally, we'll celebrate your departure into the world.' She shaved the front of Hiyoshi's head. She then soaked some new straw in water and tied his hair back with it. Hiyoshi was never to forget this experience. And while the roughness of his mother's hands as they brushed his cheeks and ears saddened him, he was conscious of another feeling. Now I'm like everybody else, he thought. An adult.
He could hear a stray dog barking. In the darkness of a country at war with itself, it seemed that the only thing that grew greater was the barking of dogs. Hiyoshi went outside.
'Well, I'm off.' He could say nothing else, not even 'take care of yourselves'—it stuck in his throat.
His mother bowed low in front of the shrine. Otsumi, holding the crying Kochiku came running out after him.
'Good-bye,' Hiyoshi said. He did not look back. His figure got smaller and smaller until it disappeared from sight. Perhaps because of the frost, the night was very bright.
Koroku's Gun
A few miles from Kiyosu, less than ten miles west of Nagoya, was the village of Hachisuka. Upon entering the village, a hat-shaped hill was visible from almost any direction. In the thick summer groves at noon, only the song of the cicadas could be heard; at night the silhouettes of large bats on the wing swept across the face of the moon.
'Yo!'
'Yo!' came the reply, like an echo, from within the grove.
The moat that took its waters from the Kanie River passed around the cliffs and large trees on the hill. If you didn't look closely, you probably wouldn't notice that the water was full of the dark blue-green algae found in old natural ponds. The algae clung to the weathered stone ramparts and earthen walls that had protected the land for a hundred years, and, along with it, the descendants of the lords of the area, and their power and livelihood.
From the outside, it was almost impossible to guess how many thousands or even tens of thousands of acres of residential land were on the hill. The mansion belonged to a powerful provincial clan of the village of Hachisuka, and its lords had gone under the childhood name of Koroku for many generations. The incumbent lord was called Hachisuka Koroku.
'Yooo! Open the gate!' The voices of four or five men came from beyond the moat. One of them was Koroku.
If the truth were known, neither Koroku nor his forebears possessed the pedigree they boasted of, nor had they held rights to the land and its administration. They were a powerful provincial clan, but nothing more. Though Koroku was known as a lord, and these men as his retainers, there was, in fact, something rough and ready about this household. A certain intimacy was natural between the head of a household and his
retainers, but Koroku's relationship with his men was more like that which existed between a gang boss and his henchmen.
'What's he doing?' Koroku muttered.
'Gatekeeper, what's keeping you?' yelled a retainer, not for the first time.
'Yooo!'
This time, they heard the gatekeeper's response, and the wooden gate opened with a thud.
'Who is it?' They were challenged from the left and right by men carrying metal lamps shaped like bells on stalks, which could be carried on the battlefield or in the rain.
'It's Koroku,' he answered, bathed in the lamplight.
'Welcome home.'
The men identified themselves as they passed through the gate.
'Inada Oinosuke.'
'Aoyama Shinshichi.'
'Nagai Hannojo.'
