Runaway Horses Read Online Free PDF

Honor would do well to mark this lad. The kendo world expects much of him. At nineteen, he has already achieved the third rank.”
    “What’s the boy’s name?”
    “It is Iinuma.”
    The name stirred Honda’s memory. “Iinuma? Is his father a kendoist?”
    “No, he is Shigeyuki Iinuma, the head of a well-known patriotic group in Tokyo. He has always been most devoted to our shrine. But he himself has never engaged in kendo.”
    “Is he here today?”
    “He wanted very much to see his son perform in the tournament, he told me, but unfortunately he has to attend a meeting in Osaka today.”
    It was Iinuma, then, beyond a doubt—the Iinuma that Honda had known. For a long time now, his name had been rather prominent, but Honda had identified him with Kiyoaki’s former tutor only two or three years before. At that time, when the current ideological ferment was becoming a popular topic in the judges’ chambers, Honda had borrowed some journals from a colleague making a study of it. Among the articles he read was one entitled “A Survey of Right-Wing Personalities” which mentioned Iinuma as follows: “An increasingly conspicuous figure is Shigeyuki Iinuma, a living embodiment of the Satsuma spirit. During the time he was a middle school student he was esteemed by his masters as the most promising boy in the entire prefecture. His family was poor, but, being highly recommended, he came to Tokyo to enter the household of Marquis Matsugae and serve as tutor to the Marquis’s young heir. He devoted himself wholeheartedly to the furthering of both his own education and that of the young master. However, he fell passionately in love with one of the maids, a girl named Miné, and he abandoned the Marquis’s service. Today this hot-blooded man has survived a time of hardship to attain eminence as the head of his own academy. He and his wife—Miné, of course—have one son.”
    Thus Honda learned what had become of Iinuma. He had never had much to do with Kiyoaki’s tutor. The only impression of Iinuma that lingered in his mind was that of a stern figure in a somber dark-blue kimono with a pattern of white splashes leading him silently through the long, dark corridors of the Matsugae mansion. To Honda, Iinuma remained an inscrutable figure against a background of darkness.
    The shadow of a horsefly darted over the clean-swept surface of the forecourt. Suddenly the fly buzzed loudly, approaching the long table covered with a white cloth behind which Honda and the others sat. One of the guests opened his fan and brushed it away. His gesture was so elegant that Honda at once remembered seeing from his name card that this man was a kendoist qualified to the seventh rank. The tedious address of the leader of the veterans’ group went on and on.
    From the square before him—but also from the overhanging gable of the shrine, the green of the holy mountain, the radiant sky—came the scorching breath of violence. Stray gusts of wind stirred the dust in the silent kendo square, soon to be filled with the shouts of antagonists and the crack of bamboo staves, as if the unseen breeze were a lithe phantom flexing its limbs to presage a brave combat.
    Honda’s eyes were somehow drawn to the face of Iinuma’s son, who happened to be seated directly opposite him across the courtyard. The Iinuma of twenty years before must have been five years older than Kiyoaki and Honda. Even so, the realization that the earnest young tutor from the provinces had now become the father of a boy so mature forcibly reminded Honda, childless as he was, of the years that had slipped by unnoticed.
    The boy had sat bolt upright throughout the long-winded speeches without making the least movement. Honda could not be sure whether he was really listening. His eyes glittered and he glared straight ahead, an image of steely imperviousness.
    The boy’s eyebrows were prominent. His complexion was dark. The line of his tight-shut lips was as straight as a