The Biwa Priest

The road to Itanaba is a busy one leading up to the days of its famed Thunder Drums festival. Roadside tea shops overflow with travelers filled with anticipation, the air ignited with energy and a general feeling of camaraderie. Among these pilgrims was a nameless biwa priest, who took his food off by himself into the woods, as if he were in solitary pain. Then he played himself a song in stringed sympathy, the trees and insects his audience. By the time he returned to the tea shop, there was a commotion.

Kurobe, the ronin samurai who had terrorized the Itanaba village since he arrived three years ago, was demanding tribute from the tea shop owner, an elderly woman who had no choice but to comply. The priest made his way through the onlookers to stand front and center so that he could eye Kurobe up close. Kurobe was stung by the priestly stare.

"What do you look at, priest? Robes or no robes, I will strike you down!"

The shop woman returned from the back, sobbing, handing over what meager coins she had. Her deference was abject and complete as the priest stood witnessing before the heavens above. Kurobe was infuriated.

"I thought I told you to be gone!" he railed as he pocketed the money uneasily, as if he were standing on coals. No one ever stood up to Kurobe, who could not be defeated with a sword. But the priest had no sword. "Now avert your eyes or you will never see out them again!" A raging, trembling hand grabbed his sword handle, ready to draw and slice.

"I do not wish to kill," replied the priest in all sincerity, teetering on the edge of despair at the prospect of having to do so.

"Kill? Kill who? You have no sword or weapon. Is your biwa so lethal?" A bemused Kurobe walked around the priest in studied observance. "No, you have nothing. Do you have any last words, priest? Been a long time since I had such an enjoyable kill."

"What's enjoyable about killing yourself? Do you not see the sun above which records every deed? Will you strike it down too?"

Kurobe sensed a strength in the man, a soul who walked his own path. Each man is alone in the world, answering to no one at the end of the day. Like every terrorist, Kurobe's campaign was a cry for unanswered love. With the priest he felt a connection, of someone who could give him the understanding he craved. But the reason the terrorist was driven to instill fear was to express the very fear he felt victimized by. The priest knew this.

Kurobe changed his stance, unable to sever the connection he needed. "Very well, priest. The next cloudy day you will die." Kurobe turned his back rather pleased with his pithy response.

"Wait!" demanded the priest. "What is it you fear in the sun?"

A furious Kurobe spun around. "I fear nothing!"

"Do you not fear to give a sobbing old woman her money back? Are you so weak?"

"I take what is mine! Why should I care about her? Who cares about my heart in the still of the night? It's every person for himself in this life."

"I am sorry for your loneliness. Its wounds I too suffer in daily torment. I play my biwa in healing ritual. Shall I play for you?"

"I have no need!" waved off Kurobe who stormed back to the village suddenly embarrassed.

The witnessing crowd gasped at the priest, assuring him he was lucky to be alive.

"Who said I'm alive?" he rebuked. "Listen not to my priestly musings."

***

A nameless wanderer of the land, the priest took pleasure in the simple things of life: a good meal, the smells of early Spring, listening to the rain while visiting a temple. These were his final refuge in a destroyed life. A former high-ranking samurai, he betrayed his liege-lord in a fit of jealousy over his lord's wife. His desires exposed to the clan, he was given the choice of an honorable death or a dishonorable priesthood. His cage of guilt crushed him with every dawn; a man proven untrustworthy. Fools who approach the priest as a godly man were sorely mistaken, he wryly observed.

"Everything is the opposite of what it seems." Only a loser needs be called a winner.

He was a poor biwa player but dedicated. "If only I had the talent..." Then maybe he'd be safe from his unmet needs, his instrument friend enough. But then again, he'd been forced to realize: he who lives by the biwa dies by the biwa - just as Kurobe lived by his sword. Though not knowing what shape or form, he knew another encounter was imminent, as if the script had already been written. No doubt Kurobe was a in a bar somewhere downing sake fast as he could, licking his wounds trying to clear his head of the demon's pitchforks of inadequacy the priest had unleashed. Otsuna's face, however, was a problem he could never solve with sake or sword. Kurobe's one ambition in life was to reduce every situation to one he could resolve with a blade.

"That stupid priest. There's something wrong about him."

The idea his life - and every life - was nothing more than a struggle for love and that no other endeavor has meaning or purpose was the idea he most wanted to slay. The fact the priest had taken up that point of view bothered him greatly. Yet even Kurobe knew killing the priest would not save him from his torment. No, he must prove his sordid soul too could have love and with that eliminate the priest's pestilence. Tonight would be the night he'd have Otsuna's love - even if he had to take it. A fool no more he'd be - he just needed more sake first.

The priest knew he'd set off a chain reaction. He figured by that evening the time bomb that was Kurobe would tragically explode. That's when the priest knew he'd have to pay for his sins [deliberately ambiguous].

***

The Itabana village at night during festival time is a magical place. With the influx of outsiders the villagers were able to shrug off the ever-looming threat of Kurobe and his band of thugs and connect to the ancient traditions that had passed down for centuries through civil war and famine, an historic string binding them and bringing them together. There was no escaping the sounds of the thunder drums, a beating heart for miles around. Their soundtrack provided a communal backdrop for the activities lighted by the excited glow of lanterns lining the edges of eaves as only happens during the festival. It was impossible not to feel special.

A few revelers begged the priest to join in with his biwa but he was on a mission. He knew Kurobe's pain and humiliation firsthand. And though loathe to be connected to Kurobe, the universe had made its decision. Out of sync with the surrounding activities, he stepped slowly and deliberately, keeping an eye out for a doubtless angry beast on the prowl. The priest would be the last person the beast wanted to see - it wanted no witnesses to its seething crime. The priest knew he must be like water to match the level of the beast's focus.

Having found the bar where Kurobe had been drinking, the priest asked of the madman's whereabouts. The owner said he did not know ("I'm just glad he's gone.") but had heard Otsuna's name mumbled on the way out. She lived south of the village. To the surprise of everyone, Kurobe had actually been careful to court her in a legitimate way, as if her stamp of approval would legitimize his life. Yet the priest found the beast exactly as was feared.

Kurobe's eyes were of another world, possessed by a demonic will. "She refused me! She refused me again!" he explained to the approaching priest. "No more! Tonight's she's mine." Otsuna's limp body was in the grasp of his right arm, clinging to his body.

"Kurobe!" barked the priest. "Did you kill her!"

"Not yet. But she's mine tonight!" His voice spoke to the priest but his eyes were still not present, trapped in an inner nightmare. The priest knew he must act quickly.

"Kurobe! If you must kill someone, kill me!" The eyes did not hear him. "Listen! You cannot kill her. It's me you should kill."

The eyes half-heard, their voice that of a curious parent to a child. "Kill you? Why kill you."

"For you to face yourself! I said I did not want to have to kill you but you've left me no choice."

"No." Kurobe's eyes were gaining consciousness. "You can't kill me."

"You don't need to understand it for it to happen. Leave, Kurobe, before it's too late!"

The priest had gained the eyes' full attention. They dropped Otsuna, stalking their way towards the holy man, sword in hand. With a single stroke, the priest's biwa was sliced in two. "Now I kill you," the beast vowed with eyes looking from its forehead.

"Is that what you want? To expose yourself like that? Then we'll know who it is you think you are - but are not!"

Kurobe hesitated.

***

CODA: No one is certain of the outcome of Kurobe and the priest, as neither they nor Otsuna were ever seen again in the village. One rumor had that a silent killer of priests roamed the countryside in a ceaseless quest for vengeance. Another had it the priest saved Kurobe's soul that night ("I am the devil!" "We are angels!"), marrying the couple in a runaway ceremony. The rest were somewhere between homicide and suicide. In Itanaba, it was only after Kurobe had left that they sensed his previous loneliness.