#The First Beat by the River
zn01 end-of-issue story · Seriousness ★☆ · pure Scent (fiction). No rules or numbers appear.
My hands trembled. Both hands cradling the biwa.
"Otowa! Where's that kid moping about now!"
Behind the makeshift stage by the river, the voice of old Danjo, the aged impresario, came booming through the gaps in the straw mat. The old man had a head gone completely bald, with only his eyebrows growing wild like a white thicket, and a mouth twice as big as he was tall. A veteran who had dragged a troupe around for forty years, yet he himself couldn't properly pluck a single biwa string.
"Old man, I can't do it."
"What did you say?"
"My hands are shaking. Look." I held out my hands. They really were trembling like leaves. "There are too many people. I never thought this many would come."
Old Danjo lifted the straw mat and took a quick peek out at the riverbank, then came back in and grinned from ear to ear.
"Many? Twenty at most, I'd say."
"...You just counted them yourself a moment ago and said seventy-one."
"That was just to draw a crowd."
I nearly collapsed on the spot.
Otowa. That's my name. A wandering biwa hoshi, an old monk, gave it to me, saying it sounded like a river. Three years of learning the biwa from that old monk's hands — from tuning the strings to a passage of the Heike, I just barely picked it all up — but the old monk passed away last winter, falling asleep on a snowy road. What remained was a single worn biwa and this one noisy old man who had taken me in.
"Otowa, dear." The old man suddenly lowered his voice. His white eyebrows drooped heavily. "Do you know what your master said at the very end?"
I shook my head.
"'That one has good hands. She's only afraid of the stage.' Then he gave a little chuckle. Heh, he hit it right on the mark."
The old man slapped me on the back. Light, yet thunderous.
"Being afraid is only natural. The one who isn't afraid is the one who can't make the strings ring, really. Your hands shaking — that's your body shouting, 'I mean it now.' So put that trembling into the strings. Understand?"
"...I don't, though."
"I don't either. Just go out and pluck a string."
And that's supposed to be encouragement.
The straw mat was lifted away.
The smell of river water, the smell of rice cakes grilling at the stalls, the murmur of the crowd. A spring evening on the Shijo riverbank unfurled before me, whole. There really were so many people. Seventy-one or twenty, to my eyes they were just one pitch-black mass.
My legs wobbled. A small cushion in the middle of the stage. Reaching it felt like a hundred-ri road.
Somewhere up front, old Danjo snapped open his fan and called out. "Now then—! The last pupil of the wandering biwa, the river's daughter, Otowa! She'll give you a passage of the Heike—!"
There wasn't even any applause. Not a single soul expected anything of this little girl. That was a relief, if anything. With no expectations, there's nothing to disappoint.
I sat on the cushion and stood the biwa up on my knees. My hands were still trembling. Just as the old man said — this trembling, into the strings.
I plucked the first string.
Dohn — one low note spread out over the river. Because of my trembling hands the note wavered a little, but that wavering sounded, if anything, like a ripple of water. The murmuring quieted by a span.
I plucked the second string. The third. My fingers found their own way to the very spots the old monk used to press with his eyes closed. My voice came out. At first like the whine of a mosquito, then like a flowing river.
"...The bell of Gion Shoja tolls the impermanence of all things—"
The pitch-black mass began to look like human faces. A child stopped with a rice cake in hand, a porter with his mouth open, an old woman wiping the corners of her eyes. They were watching me. No — they were listening to my biwa.
It wasn't frightening. This was — warm.
When I plucked the last string long and stilled my hand, the riverbank fell quiet for a moment. One beat. Two beats.
And then it burst.
Cheers surged in louder than the river's flow. Someone threw a coin. Clink, clink, the sound of it falling at my feet. "One more! One more!" The child with the rice cake jumped up and down.
Off at the side of the stage, old Danjo was loudly blowing his nose into his fan. Beneath his white eyebrows his eyes were bright red. When his eyes met mine, the old man hastily cleared his throat and moved only his lips.
— See there. You trembled, didn't you.
I burst out laughing. Pressing the first string again with my trembling hand, this time I plucked it without a tremor.
Dohn —.
The river received it.
(End)