Not a man among them realized that they owed their very lives to Konnai, who merely sat with a half-smile on his face even as the ship at last came swaying gently into harbor and the passengers scrambled ashore, congratulating one another and celebrating with simple-minded whoops and cries.
It was not long after this incident that Chudo Konnai arrived back at Matsumae Castle. Once he’d given a full report on his coastal inspection tour to his superior, Noda Musashi, and the conversation had turned to matters of a more casual and private nature, Konnai offhandedly related, without embellishing the story in the least, all that had transpired in the seas off Sakegawa. Musashi, having long admired Konnai’s honesty of character, did not doubt for a moment that he had in fact encountered such a wondrous creature. “A rare occurrence, indeed, in this day and age!” he exclaimed, slapping his knee. “Let us lose no time in reporting this affair to His Lordship!” Konnai blushed and protested that it was hardly a matter of such importance, but Musashi interrupted him, saying: “Nonsense! It’s an extraordinary feat, the like of which has never been equaled in history. It is a tale that will serve as a great inspiration to the young men of our clan, and spur them on to greater efforts.” He spoke emphatically, leaving no room for argument, and, urging the embarrassed Konnai to hurry, ushered him into the daimyo’s presence.
It so happened that the other ranking retainers were also in attendance at the main hall that day, and when Noda Musashi, still in a state of considerable excitement, asked for their attention and began to recount in full detail the strange adventure that had befallen Konnai during his trip, prefacing his remarks by saying that he was about to describe a feat of unprecedented skill and courage, all present, including the daimyo himself, edged closer and hung on his every word. All, that is, but one—a man by the name of Aosaki Hyakuemon.
This Hyakuemon was the son of one Hyakunojo, who had devoted many years of loyal service to the daimyo as a chief retainer of the Matsumae clan. Upon his father’s death Hyakuemon had inherited the same rank and stipend, in spite of the fact that he had done—and continued to do—nothing whatsoever to earn them, but rather lived a life of idleness and debauchery. So puffed up with pride in his lineage was he, that he held his fellow retainers in contempt and had always refused to marry, declaring whenever the subject arose that he could scarcely permit the daughter of some parvenu to assume the Aosaki name. He was now forty-one, however, and not a samurai in the land would have relinquished his daughter to such a man, though he were to beg on bended knee. Disgruntled by this state of affairs, for which he alone was to blame, Hyakuemon never lost an opportunity to seek retaliation by heaping derision upon other members of the clan. He was universally disliked, not only for his unsavory character but for his physical appearance, which was the very image of a pale blue demon from hell. He stood nearly six feet tall and was extraordinarily thin and bony, with fingers as long and slender as writing-brushes, small and deep-set eyes that flickered with a perverse greenish glow, a great hooked nose, hollow, sunken cheeks, and a perpetual frown of distaste.
Before Musashi had got more than midway through the tale of Konnai’s adventure, this Hyakuemon laughed through his beaklike nose and turned to a young tea-server who sat hunched over timidly in the rear of the hall. ‘Well, Gensai,” he said, “what do you make of this? Is it not rather questionable conduct to impose such a preposterous tale upon His Lordship? There are no monsters in this world, no unexplainable mysteries; the monkey’s face is red, the dog has four feet: so it always has been and so it always will be. A mermaid, no less! Are we here to listen to fairy tales? A grown man, a man of supposed distinction, speaking of sea monsters with red coxcombs—well, I ask you!”
Hyakuemon’s voice grew ever louder and harsher.
“What say you, Gensai? Even supposing these freakish lady-fish, these so-called mermaids, did inhabit the northern seas, to shoot such a creature with a bow and arrow one would need virtually supernatural powers. Your average, mediocre archer would not stand a chance! Birds have wings; fish have fins. To bring down a small bird in flight, or shoot a goldfish as it swims, is not easily done; but to fell a monster with a—what was it, a crystal body?—why, one would need the skill of Raiko, Tsuna, Hachiro, Tawara Toda, and the God of Arms all rolled into one. I speak from experience. The goldfish in my fountain at home—you yourself have seen them, have you not? As you know, they enjoy but a shallow pool in which to flit about, and yet, just the other day, to while away the time, I unleashed some two hundred arrows at them with a child’s bow—two hundred arrows—and failed to score a single hit. Let us hope that our Konnai here, finding himself caught in a storm at sea, was not simply so frightened that he let fly his arrow at an old rotting log adrift on the waves!”
Thus Hyakuemon ranted on, ostensibly addressing the mortified young tea-server, who cringed and fidgeted as the man clutched at his sleeve, but speaking loudly enough to make certain the daimyo could hear his snide and calumnious remarks. Finally Noda Musashi, who had long harbored enmity toward Hyakuemon for his arrogant and brazen manner and could now no longer contain his wrath, spun about to face him.
“That is merely your lack of education speaking,” he growled through clenched teeth. “Only someone who possesses nothing but the most superficial knowledge would categorically state that there are no mysteries, no monsters in this world. Japan is a sacred land, the land of the gods; wonders which defy the limits of human understanding are everyday occurrences here. The occasional appearance of marvelous and fantastic beings is only to be expected in a land with more than a thousand leagues of mountains and seashores and three thousand years of history, a land which, I need scarcely add, is by no means to be compared with the piddling fountain in your garden. In ancient times, during the reign of Emperor Nintoku, there lived in Hida a man with two faces, one on either side of his head; during Emperor Temmu’s reign, a bull with twelve horns was raised at a mountain cottage in Tamba; and on the fifteenth day of the sixth month of the fourth year of Keiun, during the reign of Emperor Mommu, a demon with three heads who measured twenty-six feet in height and five feet across arrived on these shores from a foreign land. With precedents such as these, you have no cause to doubt the existence of this mermaid.”
As Musashi reeled off this rebuttal in the torrential, eloquent flow of words for which he was renowned, Hyakuemon’s pale face went even paler, and finally, with a scornful sneer, he replied: “Superficial knowledge? If anyone is guilty of that, it is you, sir. But I am not fond of debate. Debates are for ignoble souls such as yourself who are anxious to achieve distinction. We are not children; we might exchange empty theories until we’re out of breath and merely end up adhering all the more stubbornly to our respective views. Arguing is a foolish waste of time. I’m not saying that there cannot possibly be such things as mermaids in this world; I’m merely saying that I’ve never seen one, and that it’s a pity that, in addition to his amusing tale, Konnai didn’t bring this marvel along with him to present before His Lordship.”
Musashi, enraged no less by the loathsome and provoking disdain with which Hyakuemon spoke than by the words themselves, edged closer to him and said: “To a true samurai, trust is everything. He who will not believe without seeing is a pitiful excuse for a man. Without trust, how can one know what is real and what is not? Indeed, one may see and yet not believe—is this not the same as never seeing? Is not everything, then, no more than an immaterial dream? The recognition of any reality begins with trust. And the source of all trust is love for one’s fellow man. But you—you have not a speck of love in your miserable heart, nor of faith. Behold how honest Konnai, the blameless target of your venomous tongue, trembles with rage, wringing bitter tears from the depths of his faithful soul. Konnai is not, like yourself, sir, a man to whom it would ever occur to resort to prevarication. Surely not even you can claim to be unaware of his unwavering fidelity over the years.”
Thus Musashi pressed his case, but Hyakuemon merely ignored him and poin
ted toward the front of the hall. “Look there!” he barked. “His Lordship is taking his leave. He does not appear to be amused.” Hyakuemon prostrated himself before the daimyo as the latter retired to his inner chambers, but he could not resist having the final word. “Insufferable fools,” he muttered as he rose to his feet once the daimyo had gone. “You may wish to give the name ‘honesty’ to what others would call dimwittedness, but leave it to such ‘honest men’ as yourselves to deceive the world with your fabulous dreams and superstitions.” And with that, he left the hall, creeping off as silently as a cat.
As for the other retainers present, some despised Hyakuemon for his mean-spirited pettiness, while others considered Musashi’s eloquence sheer affectation and felt that neither was worth siding with, and still others, who’d been dozing throughout, merely climbed woozily to their feet, oblivious to all that had transpired. By ones and twos they left the hall until none but Musashi and Konnai remained. Musashi gnashed his teeth in vexation.
“How the wretch prattles on!” he growled. “Konnai, I can guess what is in your heart. As the true samurai that you are, you realize there is but one course of action; but know that whatever comes of this, I, Musashi, will take your side. In any case, such insolence must not go unpunished.”
These words of encouragement, stouthearted though they were, only left Konnai feeling all the more keenly the hopelessness of his situation, and for some moments, wracked with mournful sobs, he could make no reply at all. Such it is for those in the grips of misfortune: declarations of support and sympathy, rather than providing comfort, may serve only to increase the victim’s pain. Overwhelmed with despair, Konnai bowed his head and wept, even as he resigned himself to the fact that his life was all but over. At length, wiping the tears away with both fists, he looked up and spoke in a voice still punctuated with sobs:
“Thank you. The abuse which Hyakuemon has heaped upon me today is scarcely such as I can find it in me to ignore. I assure you that, though I may be his inferior in terms of rank, my only thought was: Knave! I shall slice you in two! Being in the presence of His Lordship, however, I had no choice but to endure the unendurable and choke back these tears of rage. But make no mistake—I am resolved to do what must be done. To chase the bastard Hyakuemon down at this very moment and dispense of his life with one stroke of my sword would be easy enough; but then the world would believe I’d shed his blood out of anger that he’d exposed my lie. My account of the mermaid would come to be regarded with even greater suspicion, which could not but reflect unfavorably upon yourself as well. Since, in any case, this life of mine is lost, I shall delay the end only long enough to return to the inlet at Sakegawa, where, if the God of Arms has not forsaken me, I will recover the carcass of that mermaid, bring it back to the castle for all to see, rebuke Hyakuemon with an easy mind, cut him down, and then gladly commit seppuku.”
Such was the pathos of this speech that Musashi too began to weep. “Would I had never meddled in your affairs!” he said. “Announcing your heroic feat before His Lordship was a grave error. To think that all for some meaningless debate over mermaids, a worthy man must die! Forgive me, Konnai. May you not be born a samurai in the next life!” Turning his tear-stained face away, Musashi rose to his feet. “I shall look after your household in your absence,” he said gruffly, and strode out of the hall.
Konnai’s wife had died of an illness some six years before, and he now shared his house with his only daughter and a maidservant. The daughter, Yaé, was a tall and sturdy girl of sixteen with fair skin and lovely features; the maidservant, whose name was Mari, was a petite and clever young woman some twenty-one years of age. Konnai returned home that day making every effort to appear carefree and cheerful. “I must leave immediately on another trip,” he said, “and I may be gone quite a while this time. Watch out for each other.” And without another word, he surreptitiously gathered up most of his savings, stuffed the money into his clothes, and dashed out of the house.
“Father’s acting awfully strange,” Yaé said, after seeing him off.
“Yes, he is,” Mari calmly agreed. Konnai was inept when it came to deceiving people, and his smiling, lighthearted pose had been of no avail; both his sixteen-year-old daughter and the maidservant had seen right through it.
“And why would he take all that gold?” wondered Yaé. They’d even seen him snatch up his savings.
Mari nodded pensively and muttered: “It must be something rather serious.”
“I’m frightened.” Yaé placed her hands over her breast. “My heart is pounding.”
“There’s no telling what might happen,” Mari said. “We must prepare the house for any eventuality.”
They were rolling up their sleeves to begin cleaning the house when Noda Musashi slipped in through the back door, unaccompanied and dressed in a plain kimono.
“Has your father left already?” he whispered to Yaé.
“Yes. And he took all his gold and silver with him.”
Musashi forced a grim smile. “It may be a rather long trip. If you should need anything at all while he’s gone, you mustn’t hesitate to come to me.” He pressed a large sum of money into her hands. “This should hold you for the time being.”
Certain now that her father was in some sort of trouble, Yaé, samurai child that she was, slept that night in her kimono, with the sash firmly tied, hugging a dagger to her breast.
Konnai reached Sakegawa the following morning. His first order of business was to assemble all the fishermen in the village and distribute among them every last piece of the silver and gold he’d brought.
“I speak to you not in my official capacity, but as an individual in a difficult predicament,” he began, dutifully making that important distinction. “It is in regard to a personal and confidential matter,” he continued, then faltered and blushed. With a rueful smile, prefacing his remarks with a defensive “You may not believe what I’m about to tell you,” and shouting to be heard over the howling wind that pelted the seashore with snow, he proceeded to recount the entire affair of the mermaid, ending with a desperate plea: “This is the request of a lifetime. I beseech you to recover that mermaid’s carcass for me. If I do not present it to a certain man, I, Konnai, will lose face as a samurai, and my honor will be blighted forever. It’s cold weather for such work, I know, but I beg you to spare no efforts until we’ve retrieved that monster’s body.”
The elderly fishermen sympathized, believing Konnai’s story without question, and while it must be admitted that the younger men had their doubts about mermaids and such, they too were at least curious enough to join in casting the great nets and dragging the bottom of the inlet. Unfortunately, all they managed to snag that day were common herring, cod, crabs, sardines, and flatfish—nothing the least bit out of the ordinary—and the same was true the following day and the day after that. Though every man in the village participated, enduring all manner of hardship, bobbing about in their boats, battered by wind and waves, casting their nets, and diving into the icy waters, it was all in vain, and finally, toward the end of the third day, the younger men began to complain as they stood around the fires on the beach, making loud, vulgar jokes—“Just look at that samurai’s eyes, he ain’t normal I tell you, he’s loony is what he is, and we’re crazy for takin’ a lunatic at his word and divin’ into that freezin’ water. Me, I’ve had enough, I quit. Why should I be out here lookin’ for some sea mermaid we’ll never find when I could be gettin’ warm in the arms of my land mermaid back in the village?”
As the young men roared with laughter, Konnai sat a short distance away, alone in his torment, pretending not to hear and concentrating his entire being on the fervent prayers he offered up to the deities of the sea. “Let me retrieve but a single golden scale or a single strand of hair from that monster,” he prayed, “so that I may preserve my honor, and that of Musashi as well, and together we can reproach Hyakuemon to our heart’s content, after which I shall give him a taste of the blade of truth, del
iver him his just punishment, and dispel from my heart these bitter clouds of rancor.”
Moved by the pathetic sight of Konnai forlornly stretching his neck to peer from one end of the inlet to the other, an elderly fisherman approached with tears of pity welling up in his eyes. “Now, now,” he said. “Everything’ll work out just fine, don’t you worry, mister samurai, sir. Those youngsters don’t know what they’re talkin’ about, but we older fellows, we figure there’s sure enough a mermaid down there with the good samurai’s arrow stickin’ out of her, because, see, the seas around here, hell, they’ve always been full of the strangest fish, ever since way back when. Why, when we were boys, listen, right here off this shore, we sometimes used to see this giant old fish that people called the okina, and, oh my, what a commotion there used to be over that! I’m not lyin’ when I tell you the damn thing was five, six miles long, maybe longer—nobody knows for sure how big it was ’cause nobody ever saw it all in one piece—but when that monster come around, why, the sea would start a-rumblin’ like a thunderstorm and the waves would swell up like mountains, even if there weren’t no wind, and all the whales, why, they’d scatter in every direction, fleein’ for their lives, and the fishermen would start screamin’ ‘Okina! Yah! It’s the okina!’ and row toward shore as fast as they could, and then finally that fish would rise to the surface, and I’m tellin’ you it looked like a whole string of islands had suddenly popped out of the sea. Yes, sir, there’s some frightenin’ strange fish and monsters out in these waters, always has been, just ask anybody who’s lived around here long enough, which is why there’s no doubt in our minds that you saw what you say you saw, and I’ll tell you one thing for sure: We’re goin’ to find that mermaid’s body for you. You won’t have to lose your face or nothin’ like that.”