23.
Hired for a Bad Cause

THEY WEREN’T REALLY very far from Odawara—they had to pass it by to get to Shimoda—so on their fifth morning out of Edo, when Manjiro saw a stranger on horseback on the road in front of them, he told the Americans to hide in the nearby trees, lest it be one of his father’s soldiers. Kyuzo wasn’t with them, because he had gone into the nearest village for information and supplies.

When the Americans were gone he rubbed his shaved pate—his hair, topknot and all, had been left on the floor of the Pavilion of Timelessness, snipped from his head by Tsune so he could pass as a monk—and took a drink from a ceramic saké bottle that they had filled with water before breaking camp that morning. By the time he put the bottle back down the rider had closed the distance between them and was waving his arms, to tell him to stay where he was. The rider was a samurai, but not one of his father’s soldiers. His horse was old and unimpressive but the man himself was young. He seemed to want to make the horse prance, to cover the distance between them with a certain bearing, and when the horse wouldn’t do it he put on a frustrated smile. “A man’s beast should not also be his burden,” he said as he dismounted. He looked at the monk before him carefully, not to determine whether or not he was one of the escaped foreigners, but to see if he appreciated the cleverness of his comment.

“Good morning,” Manjiro said.

“Is it?” asked the samurai. “Tell me, monk, what’s good about this morning in particular, as opposed to, say, yesterday’s morning or tomorrow’s?”

“There is only a little breeze,” Manjiro answered, “and it’s getting warm.”

“I like it when it’s hot and I like it when it’s cold but I don’t appreciate these in-between days,” said the samurai. “They seem indecisive, and remind me that there’s too much indecisiveness in men as well.”

He laughed, but stopped when Manjiro didn’t join him. He knew he was taking advantage, but riding along alone these last few days had made him anxious for camaraderie.

“Don’t monks like anything?” he asked, his bombast suddenly gone. “I know you don’t like women or drink, but aren’t you even fond of playful language, a repartee, a friendly exchange on the road?” He saw the saké bottle and said, “Wait a second, perhaps I spoke too fast.”

“It’s only water,” Manjiro told him, “I get thirsty during the day.”

The samurai took the bottle, uncorked it, put it to his lips and tipped it back and drank. When he returned it to Manjiro he said, “It’s almost empty. Why is that, so early in the day?”

Manjiro could see that this young man had eyes that didn’t carry the weight of too much disappointment. He could also plainly see that he rarely talked with so much authority. “I filled it only partly,” he answered. “So it would be easier to carry.”

“But if it’s that kind of ease you want, why not carry water in your belly,” asked the samurai, “and refill it when you come to a stream?”

Manjiro turned the bottle in his hands, wondering what was keeping Kyuzo in that village. He was learning nothing from this exchange, yet one wrong word might give him away.

“Some men like saké,” he admitted. “Never mind their vows.”

“Ah ha,” said the samurai. “I thought that might be the case.”

He was pleased with Manjiro’s confession. He’d seen something odd in Manjiro, perceived some secret, and was glad to discover it was an ordinary human weakness, like dependence on drink. He turned to bring his horse around, ready to remount, when something else occurred to him.

“Where do you get the money for saké?” he asked. “And in such an expensive bottle? When a man begs for food he can expect that if he fails at one house he’ll succeed at another, but do people have sympathy for a monk with a vice?”

Manjiro glanced at the bottle’s bottom, as if looking for the answer, and said, “In some there is a readiness to see a man fall.”

“What is your name?” the samurai asked. “When you knock on people’s doors, who do you say is calling?”

“I am only a wayward monk,” said Manjiro. “I never say my name out loud.”

“Well my name is Ichiro,” said the samurai, “and you cannot deceive me. I can see that you are a man of rare intelligence. I can also see that you are still young, not much older than me in fact, and I’ll tell you something I believe. Japan will change greatly in our lifetimes. There are good chances coming, and not just for aristocrats and samurai, but for peasants and merchants and even for monks like yourself. My advice to you is to seize this chance when it comes, be ready for it, my fine fellow. You are smart enough and young enough to lead a better life than you have led thus far.”

He paused and added ruefully, “And so, of course, am I.”

Manjiro stared at the ground, both in order to make the samurai think he was ashamed and to defeat the urge he had to glance toward the trees where the Americans were hiding. And that made the samurai not only take pity on him, but also take his bottle. “As a first step toward strength I’ll leave you empty-handed,” he said. Then he swung onto his horse again and galloped up the road.

Manjiro stayed where he was until he could no longer hear the sounds of Ichiro’s departure. He had been impressed with the young man, had liked him despite the fact that he was no doubt working for Ueno, whom Kyuzo had discovered the night before, was after them. Of course he knew that samurai were like other men and thus visited by numerous imperfections, but meeting the young man had shown him something he had never before thought of: that in these days when a man could wander for years with no lord to whom he might attach his loyalty, and with so little money that he might as well be a monk as a warrior, he could just as easily be hired for a bad cause as a good one. It was the second insight he had had in two days, however disconnected it was from what he’d learned from Ace Bledsoe and Ned Clark.

He lifted his eyes and looked back down the road the samurai had just come up, and there was Kyuzo, too late for anything, limping along.