That's pretty bad Noh, Hiyoshi thought, as he lay stretched out on the straw he had spread on the floor of the empty stall. He liked music. Not that he understood it, but he liked the cheery world of dreams it created. It allowed him to forget everything. But he was distracted by his empty stomach. Oh, if I could only borrow a pot and a fire, he groaned inwardly.
Taking his dirty straw bundle with him, he stuck his head through the door of the kitchen. "Excuse me, but I wonder if you couldn't lend me a pot and a small cooking stove. I was thinking of eating my meal."
The kitchen helpers stared blankly back at him. "Where in the world did you come from?"
"His lordship brought me back with him today. I'd like to boil the pond snails I picked from the rice paddies."
"Pond snails, eh?"
"I've been told they're good for the stomach, so I eat some every day. That's because I get stomach upset easily."
"You eat them with bean paste. Do you have any?"
"Yes."
"Rice?"
"I have rice, thank you."
"Well, there's a pot and a fire in the stove in the servants' quarters. Do it over there."
Just as he did every night in cheap lodging houses, Hiyoshi cooked up a small portion of rice, boiled his pond snails, and ate his evening meal. Then he went to sleep. The servants' quarters being an improvement over the stable, he stayed there until midnight, when the servants finished their chores and came back.
"You swine! Who told you you could sleep here?"
They kicked him, picked him up, and threw him out. He went back to the stable, only to find the messenger's horse fast asleep and seeming to say, "You don't belong here, either."
The hand drum had fallen silent, and the pale moon was waning. Hiyoshi, no longer sleepy, could not stand being idle. Work or fun, it didn't matter much to him, but if he wasn't involved in one or the other, he very quickly became bored.
Maybe the sun will come while I'm sweeping up, he thought as he started to sweep the stable, collecting the horse manure, fallen leaves, and straw into a pile, out of the master's sight.
"Who's out there?" Resting his broom, Hiyoshi looked around. "Ah, it's the needle seller."
Hiyoshi finally saw that the voice was coming from the lavatory at the corner of the main house's veranda. He could make out Kahei's face inside. "Oh, it's you, my lord."
Drinking sake with the messenger, who was a strong drinker, Kahei had drunk too much. Now, almost sober again, he asked in a tired voice, "Is it close to dawn?" He disappeared from the window, opened the rain shutters of the veranda, and looked up at the waning moon.
"The cock hasn't crowed yet, so it'll be a little while until dawn."
"Needle seller—no, we'll call you Monkey—why are you sweeping the garden in the middle of the night?"
"I had nothing to do."
"It would probably be a good idea to get some sleep."
"I already slept. When I've slept for a certain amount of time, for some reason I can’t lie still anymore."
"Are there any sandals?"
Hiyoshi quickly found a pair of new straw sandals and arranged them so that Kahei could step into them easily.
"Here you are, my lord."
"You just got here today, and you say you've already slept enough. How is it you know the lay of the land already?"
"Please excuse me, my lord."
"What for?"
"I'm not a suspicious person at all. But in this kind of mansion, even when I’m asleep, by hearing various sounds, I can guess where things are located, the size of the grounds, the drainage system, and where the fires are."
"Hm. I see."
"I noticed where the straw sandals were earlier. It occurred to me that someone might come out and ask for sandals."
"I'm sorry. I forgot all about you."
Hiyoshi laughed but made no reply. Although he was no more than a boy, he did not seem to respect Kahei very much. Kahei then asked him about his background and whether he had hopes of serving someone. Hiyoshi assured him that he had. He had high hopes for the future and had been walking throughout the provinces from the time was fifteen.
"You walked around the provinces for two years, wanting to serve a samurai?"
"Yes."
"Why, then, are you still a needle seller?" Kahei asked pointedly. "Looking for two years without finding a master—I wonder if there isn't something wrong with you?"
"I have good and bad points, just like any other man. At first I thought any master or any samurai household would do, but once I went out into the world, I started to feel differently."
"Differently? How?"
"Walking around and looking at the warrior class as a whole—the good generals, the bad generals, the lords of large and small provinces—led me to think that there is nothing so important as choosing a master. Therefore, I decided to go on with my needle selling and before I knew it, two years had gone by."
Kahei thought he was clever, but there was also something of the fool about him. And though there was some truth in what he said, he sounded very pretentious and a little hard to believe. There was one thing that was beyond doubt, though: here was no ordinary young man. He decided on the spot to employ Hiyoshi as a servant.
"Will you serve me?"
"Thank you, my lord. I'll try," Hiyoshi answered with little enthusiasm in his voice.
Kahei was dissatisfied with Hiyoshi's joyless reply, but it did not occur to him, as the new master of this wandering youth clothed in nothing more than a thin cotton coat, that he himself might be deficient in some respect.
Like the samurai of the other clans, the Matsushita samurai received intensive training in the horsemanship needed for battle. At daybreak they left their dormitories with practice spears and swords, and went to the broad field in front of the rice storehouse.
"Hiyaaa!" Spear clashed against spear, sword against sword. In the morning, everyone, down to the lower-ranking samurai in the kitchen and the men who pulled guard duty, gave their all and came away from the field with faces bright red from exertion. That Hiyoshi had been taken on as a servant was soon common knowledge throughout the mansion. The stable attendants treated him as a rank beginner and ordered him about.
"Hey, Monkey! Every morning from now on, after we take the horses out to graze, clean out the stables. Bury the horse manure in that bamboo thicket." After he had finished cleaning up the horse manure, one of the older samurai told him, "Fill the big water jars." And so it went on: "Split the firewood." While he was splitting the firewood, he'd be told to do something else. In short, he was the servants' servant.
He was popular at first. People said, "Nothing makes him mad, does it? His good point is that no matter what you tell him to do, he doesn't get angry." The young samurai liked him, but in the way that children like a new toy, and sometimes they gave him presents. But it was not long before people started to complain about him.
"He's always arguing."
"He flatters the master."
"He takes people for fools."
Since the younger samurai made a lot of noise over small faults, there were times when the complaints about Hiyoshi reached Kahei's ears.
"Let's see how it goes," he told his retainers, and let the matter drop.
That Kahei's wife and children always asked for Monkey made the other young men of the household even angrier. Puzzled, Hiyoshi decided that it was difficult to live among people who did not want to devote themselves to work, as he himself preferred to do.