Shogun - Clavell James - Страница 188

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"Please excuse my stupidity."

Omi rode off. They watched him briefly, then spread themselves out in a circle around the stones, and began to dig.

Mura dropped his voice. "Uo, you'll go with the baggage train."

"Yes, Mura-san. But how?"

"I'll offer you to the Anjin-san. He won't know any different."

"But his consort, oh ko, she will," Uo whispered back.

"She's not going with him. I hear her burns are bad. She's to go by ship to Yedo later. You know what to do?"

"Seek out the Holy Father privately, answer any questions."

"Yes." Mura relaxed and began to talk normally. "You can go with the Anjin-san, Uo, he'll pay well. Make yourself useful, but not too useful or he'll take you all the way to Yedo."

Uo laughed. "Hey, I hear Yedo's so rich everyone pisses into silver pots - even eta. And the women have skins like sea foam with no pubics at all."

"Is that true, Mura-san?" another villager asked. "They've no short hair?"

"Yedo was just a stinking little fishing village, nothing as good as Anjiro, when I was there the first time," Mura told them, without stopping digging. "That was with Toranaga-sama when we were all hunting down the Beppu. We took more than three thousand heads between us. As to pubics, all the girls I've known had them, except one from Korea, but she said she'd had them plucked, one by one."

"What some women will do to attract us, heh?" someone said.

"Yes. But I'd like to see that," Ninjin said toothlessly. "Yes, I'd like to see a Jade Gate without a bush."

"I'd gamble a boatload of fish against a bucket of shit that it hurt to pull out those hairs." Uo whistled.

"When I'm a kami I'm going to inhabit Kiku-san's Heavenly Pavilion! They say she was born perfumed and hairless!"

Amid laughter, Uo asked, "Did it make any difference, Mura-san, to attack the Jade Gate without the bush?"

"It was the nearest I ever got. Eeeeh! I got closer and deeper than ever before and that's important, neh? So I know it's always better for the girl to take off the bush though some are superstitious about it and some complain of the itch. It's still closer for you and so closer for her - and getting close makes all the difference, neh?" They laughed and put their backs into the digging. The pit grew under the rain.

"I'll wager the Anjin-san got plenty close last night for her to stand at the gateway like that! Eeee, what wouldn't I give to have been him." Uo wiped the sweat off his brow. Like all of them he wore only a loincloth and a bamboo; conical hat, and was barefoot.

"Eeee! I was there, Uo, in the square, and I saw it all. I saw her smile and I felt it down through my Fruit and into my toes."

"Yes," another said. "I have to admit just her smile made me stiff as an oar."

"But not as big as the Anjin-san, eh, Mura-san?" Uo chuckled. "Go on, please tell us the story again."

Happily Mura obliged and told about the first night and the bath house. His story had improved in the many tellings, but none of them minded.

"Oh, to be so vast!" Uo mimed carrying a giant erection before him, and laughed so much he slipped in the mud.

"Who'd have thought the barbarian stranger'd ever get from the pit to paradise?" Mura leaned on his shovel a moment, collecting his breath. "I'd never have believed it - like an ancient legend. Karma, neh?"

"Perhaps he was one of us - in a previous life - and he's come back with the same mind but a different skin. " Ninjin nodded. "That's possible. Must be - because from what the Holy Father said I thought he'd be burning in the Devil's Hell Furnace long since. Didn't the Father say he'd put a special curse on him? I heard him bring down the vengeance of the great Jesus kami himself on the Anjin-san and, oh ko, even I was very frightened." He crossed himself and the others hardly noticed. "But the Jesus Christ Madonna God punishes His enemies very strangely if you ask me."

Uo said, "Well, I'm not a Christian, as well you know, but, so sorry, it seems to me the Anjin-san's a good man, please excuse me, and better than the Christian Father who stank and cursed and frightened everyone. And he's been good to us, neh? He treats his people well - some say he's Lord Toranaga's friend, must be with all his honors, neh? And don't forget Kiku-san honored him with her Golden Gully. "

"It's golden all right. I heard the night cost him five koban!"

"Fifteen koku for one night?" Ninjin spluttered. "Eeeeeee, how lucky the Anjin-san is! His karma's vast for an enemy of God the Father, Son, and Madonna."

Mura said, "He paid one koban - three koku. But if you think that's a lot..." He stopped and looked around conspiratorially to make sure there were no eavesdroppers, though of course in this rain he knew there would be none - and even if there were, what did that matter?

They all stopped and moved closer. "Yes, Mura-san?"

"I just had it whispered to me she's going to be Lord Toranaga's consort. He bought her contract this morning. Three thousand koku."

It was a mind-boggling figure, more than their whole village earned in fish and rice in twenty years. Their respect for her increased, if that were possible. And for the Anjin-san, who was therefore the last man on earth to enjoy her as a courtesan of the First Rank.

"Eeee!" Uo mumbled, hard put to talk. "So much money - I don't know whether I want to vomit or piss or fart."

"Do none," said Mura laconically. "Dig. Let's find the swords."

They obeyed, each lost in his own thoughts. Inexorably, the pit was deepening.

Soon Ninjin, whipped by worry, could contain himself no longer, and he stopped digging. "Mura-san, please excuse me, but what have you decided about the new taxes?" he asked. The others stopped.

Mura kept on digging at his methodical, grinding pace. "What's there to decide? Yabu-sama says pay, so we pay, neh?"

"But Toranaga-sama cut our taxes to four parts out of ten and he's our liege Lord now."

"True. But Lord Yabu was given back Izu - and Suruga and Totomi as well - and made overlord again, so who is our liege Lord?"

"Toranaga-sama. Surely, Mura-san, Tora-"

"Are you going to complain to him, Ninjin? Eh? Wake up, Yabu-sama's overlord as he always was. Nothing's changed. And if he puts up taxes we pay more taxes. Finish!"

"But that'll take all our winter stocks. All of them." Ninjin's voice was an infuriating whine but all knew the truth of what he said. "Even with the rice we stole-"

"The rice we've saved," Uo hissed at him, correcting him.

"Even with that, there won't be enough to last through winter. We'll have to sell a boat or two-"

"We sell no boats," Mura said. He jabbed his shovel into the mud and wiped the sweat out of his eyes, retied the string of his hat more firmly. Then he began to dig again. "Work, Ninjin. That will take your mind off tomorrow."

"How do we last the winter, Mura-san?"

"We still have to get through the summer."

"Yes," Ninjin agreed bitterly. "We've paid more than two years' taxes in advance, and still it's not enough."

"Karma, Ninjin," Uo said.

"War's coming. Perhaps we'll get a new lord who'll be fairer, neh?" another said.

"He can't be worse - no one can be worse."

"Don't wager on that," Mura told them all. "You're alive - you can be very dead very quickly and then no more Golden Gullies, with or without the forest." His shovel hit a rock and he stopped. "Give me a hand, Uo, old friend."

Together they fought the rock out of the mud. Uo whispered anxiously, "Mura-san, what if the Holy Father asks about the weapons?"

"Tell him. And tell him we're ready - that Anjiro's ready."

They came to Yokose by noon. Buntaro had already intercepted Zataki the previous evening and, as Toranaga had ordered, had welcomed him with great formality. "I asked him to camp outside the village, to the north, Sire, until the meeting place could be prepared," Buntaro said. "The formal meeting's to take place here this afternoon, if it pleases you." He added humorlessly, "I thought the Hour of the Goat would be auspicious."

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