The 47th Samurai

26

“I am not going to strike a child,” Bob said.

“Probably true. But she strike you, often,” said Doshu. He spoke quickly to the girl, who began to carefully assemble her kendo armor.

“This interesting,” Doshu said. “My pupil Sueko. She will be safe from your blow and armed with a bokken. As she short, bokken long. When she strikes, much pain. You wear no armor. On the other hand, with a shinai, even your strongest blows will not affect her, that is, if you are even able to strike her. Also, as you long, shinai short. Yet you must defeat her.”

“Sir, you don’t understand. I cannot strike a child.”

“Do not look and see form. Look at what is close as if distant and distant as if close.”

Bob dropped the shinai on the floor.

“No, sir. I come from a father whose father beat him terribly when he was a child. He never struck me and he made me understand, one does not strike a child.”

“Then you must go.” Doshu pointed to the door. “You do not know enough yet. Your mind is soft. You will die quickly if you stay. Go back to America, drink and eat and forget. You are not swordsman. You will never be swordsman.”

Bob saw how cleverly Doshu had penetrated him. The man had put him in a situation where his strength and speed were meaningless; he could not use them against a child, even if he had wanted to. Something deep in his fiber would prevent him. On the other hand, he had to win. If he didn’t win, he’d failed. He would not be a swordsman.

So how could he win? He had to find some way to fight soft. He had to anticipate, move, parry at a level higher than he’d ever been, much higher, and when he saw his opening, he’d have to take it but willfully disconnect from those things that made him a man-his strength, his speed. He had to take command of his subconscious and will it to govern him to a smoothness he didn’t have, a quickness no one had. He was trapped.

“I will fight,” he said. “But if I hurt her, I will hurt you. Those are the stakes here, sir. You understand that. You can’t put her in jeopardy without risking your own ass. And don’t think you can go aikido on me. I know that stuff too. I’ve been in a few dustups. Here, look, goddammit.”

Bob yanked down the corner of his little stupid jacket and showed the old man a few places where hot metal had tried to interrupt his life span. They were puckers, frozen stars of raised flesh, long gashes, healed but never quite vanished, relics of a forgotten war.

“I have seen much blood, my own and others’. I can fight, don’t you forget it.”

Doshu was not impressed.

“Maybe then you be good against little girl. But I think she whip ass.”

Bob faced the child. She looked like some tiny druid priestess. Her bokken, stout white oak, looked like Excalibur or Beheader of Kira and when she drove it into him, it would bruise to the bone. Her head was encased in a padded helmet, her face covered by a steel cage; the helmet wore two thick pads that flared laterally to cover her neck and shoulders. Her torso was encased in padding, and both arms and wrists as well; she wore heavy gloves; she looked part goaltender, part catcher, part linebacker, and 100 percent pure samurai.

They moved to the center of the dojo floor, bare feet on bare wood, under the wooden struts that sustained the place, which felt more like temple than gym. Swords hung on the wall, ghosts flitted in the distance.

She bowed.

He bowed.

“Five strikes wins. Also, kendo much head. I have asked Sueko not to hit head unless necessary. Also, war, not kendo. So any killing strike wins, not only kendo targets. Understood?”

He waited a second, permitting no questions, and then said, “Guard position.”

Bob stepped back, to segan-kamae, the standard high guard, his sword before him at 45 degrees, both elbows held but not locked, the tip pointing to her eyes. It was a solid defensive position, but you couldn’t do much with it. She, meanwhile, fell to gendan-kame, with her sword held low, pointed down and to the left. It was an offensive position, quick to lead to stunning blows, less efficient for blocking.

Bob tried to find the rhythm that had sometimes been there for him and sometimes not. He tried not to see “her,” that is, the child; instead he tried to see her bokken, for it was his real enemy.

Doshu stood between them, raised a hand, and then his hand fell.

He stepped in fluidly, she countered a little to the left, and suddenly, like quicksilver, she went low to high-“dragon from water”-and he could not get his shinai into a block fast enough by a hair, and she slipped her blade under his guard, screamed “Hai!” with amazing force, and he felt the bitter bite of the white oak edge, classic yokogiri, against his ribs. God, it hurt.

He realized, I have just been killed by a child. With live blades, she would have cut his guts out.

“One for Sueko. Swagger nothing.”

Rage went through him, red and seething. He had an impulse to revert to bully’s strength, flare and howl and race at her, using his bulk to intimidate, but he knew he wasn’t fast enough or smooth enough and that no answers lay in the land of anger. She would coolly destroy him.

She attacked, he gave ground and parried two of her blows; then, being limber and flexible, she split almost to ground level and swept at his ankles, but somehow the solution came exactly with the attack itself, and he found himself airborne-he knew that leaving the ground was a big mistake, one of the “three aversions,” to be avoided at all times, but in this case unavoidable-to miss the horizontal cut and, as he came down, he tapped her on the thick pad of the shoulder, near the neck, a somewhat uninspired kesagiri.

“Bad cut, Swagger. But still, you get point. One to one.”

The next two flurries were in hyperspeed. He could not stay with her for more than three strikes and she seemed to gain speed as he lost it, and each time, “Hai!” the bokken struck him hard, once across the wrist, making him drop the shinai, once on his good hip, a phenomenon known in football as a stinger. Oh, hoochie mama, that one hurt like hell.

Sweat flooded his eyes and he blinked them free, but they filled with water and the keenness of his vision went.

He felt fear.

He had to laugh. I’ve been shot at ten thousand times and hurt bad six times and I am scared of a little girl.

Was it the fear or the laughter or both? Somehow something began to come through him. Maybe it was his blurred vision, maybe that thing in sports called “second wind,” maybe a final acceptance of the idea that what came before meant nothing, there was only now, and her next kata seemed to announce itself, he took it on the lower third of the blade, ran her sword to ground, recovered a hair faster, and slashed the shinai across her center chest, kesagiri. She didn’t feel it, given the heavy padding, but Doshu’s educated eyes were quick to make note.

“Hai!” Bob proclaimed.

“Too late. Must deliver blow and shout in one timing. No point.”

Bad call. That was kendo; this was war. But you forget bad calls, as every athlete knows, and when she came, he knew it would be from the left, as all her previous attacks had been right to left; in the split second she drew back to strike, he himself unleashed a cut that seemed to come from nowhere, as he had not willed it or planned it; it was his fastest, best cut of the afternoon, maybe even the whole week, and he got his “Hai” out exactly as he brought the shinai tip as smooth and soft as possible across the left side of her head, and felt the bop as it hit her helmet.

“Kill, Swagger.”

He dropped back, going again to segan-kamae. He saw what she had that he didn’t. It wasn’t that she was stronger or faster. It was that she got to her maximum concentration so much quicker than he did, and her blows came so fast from the ready position; he could stop the first, the second, maybe the third, but by the fourth, he was behind the curve and he missed it.

Yet the answer wasn’t in speed.

Not if you “tried” speed, in the Ooof!-I-must-do-it! way. You could never order yourself to that level of performance.

What was the answer?

The little monster, however, had altered her stance. She slid into kami-hasso, issuing from above, the bokken cocked like a bat in a batter’s stance, spiraling in her grip as she would not hold it still because stillness was death.

She stalked him, sliding toward him, and now that he was tired, he knew that he’d lost much speed and if he struck first, he’d be slow and she’d nail him for the fourth point, then finish him in seconds and it would be over.

What is the answer? he thought, backpedaling, going through his small bag of tricks, and coming up dry.

Oh, shit.

What was-

He tried to read the eyes, could not see them in the darkness of the helmet; he tried to read her sword, it was a blur; he tried to read her body, it was a mystery. She was just it: death, the enemy, all who’d sought to vanquish him and failed, coming in this time on a surge of adrenaline and serious attitude, sublimely confident, aware that he could do nothing but-

“The moon in the cold stream like a mirror.”

Musashi said it four hundred years ago, why did it suddenly appear in his mind?

Suddenly he knew the answer.

What is the difference between the moon in the sky and the moon in the water?

There is no difference.

They have become one.

You must become one with your enemy.

You must not hate him, for in anger is sloppiness. You must become him. And when you are him, you can control him.

Bob slid into kami-hasso and felt his body begin to mimic hers, to trace and somehow absorb her movement until he felt her and in some strange way knew her. He knew when she would strike for he could feel the same wave building in himself, and, without willing it, struck first with his shorter sword and would have sliced both hands off had there been an edge to his weapon. The sword had done it. The sword saw the opening; the sword struck, all in microtime.

“Strike, Swagger. Three-three.”

It was like he’d found a magic portal to her brain; the next strike went quicker still, a tap through her defenses to her solar plexus, so soft he couldn’t exactly recall delivering it but just felt the shiver as the split bamboo splines of the shinai bulged to absorb the impact.

“Hit, Swagger, four-three.”

She suddenly knew rage. Champions are not supposed to fall behind. He had broken her; she lashed out, issuing from above, yet as fast as she was, he felt tranquillity as the blade dived toward him in perfect shinchokugiri. He turned, again without force, and caught her under the chin, a blow that in a fight would have decapitated her.

“Match!” yelled Doshu.

He withdrew, assumed a formal position, and bowed deeply. Becoming her, he now loved her. Becoming her, he felt her pain at defeat. He felt no pride. It wasn’t Miller Time. He felt honored to have fought one so valiant.

She took off her helmet and reverted to child: the face unlined, unformed, though dappled with adult sweat, the skin smooth, the eyes dark and piercing. She returned the bow.

She spoke.

“She say, ‘Gaijin fight well. I feel him learning. I feel his strength and honor. He an honorable opponent.’”

“Tell her please that I am humbled by her generosity and she has a great talent. It was a privilege to learn from her.”

They bowed again, then she turned and left and at a certain point skipped, as if she’d been let out of school early.

“Okay, it worked. I learned something. The moon thing. I got it, finally.”

“Tomorrow I will speak certain truths to you. I must speak Japanese. No English. You know fluent Japanese speaker?”

“Yes.”

“You call. I tell this person some truths, he tell you.”

“Yes.”

“I give you truth. Are you strong for truth?”

“Always.”

“I hope. Now wash floor of dojo. Scrub, water hot. Wash down all surfaces. Go to kitchen, assist my mother. Then cut wood.”

Okada was surprisingly agreeable. She left Tokyo early the next morning and rammed her RX-8 into Kyoto in about five hours, arriving at noon. She parked out front, and Bob, who’d been washing dishes under Doshu’s mother’s stern eye, saw her arrive, in her neat suit, her beautiful legs taut, her eyes wise and calm behind her glasses, her hair drawn up into a smooth complexity of pins and stays, tight like everything about her.

She came in, having replaced her heels with slippers, and was greeted by a child, then led into the dojo. She didn’t even look at Swagger; instead, she bowed to the approaching Doshu.

“Hi,” Bob said, “thanks for coming.”

She turned. “Oh, this ought to be really good.”

Then she turned back to Doshu and they talked briskly. She asked questions, he answered. She asked more questions. They laughed. They talked gravely. He made policy statements, she gently disagreed, and he defended his position. Swagger could hear the rhythm of discussion, the rise of agreement, the fall of disagreement, the evenness of consensus.

Finally, she turned to Bob.

“You got it all?” he asked. “He says I’m a moron and I ought to be kicked out. I thought I did pretty well yesterday. I beat a ten-year-old girl.”

“That ten-year-old girl is Sueko Mori, the prodigy. She’s famous. She won the All Japan Kendo Association for twenty-one-unders a week ago. She’s a star. If you beat her, you did okay.”

“That little kid?”

“That little kid could beat most men in this country. Are you ready?”

His annoyance tamed by this information, Bob nodded.

“Doshu says you learn fast. You are athletic. You are strong, with quite a bit of stamina. Your left side is stronger than your right side, and your rising diagonal is stronger than your falling diagonal. He does not know the explanation.”

“Tell him I spent a summer swinging a scythe, low to high, left to right. Those muscles are stretched and overly developed.”

“Well, he really doesn’t care. Next, he says you have good character and work habits. He worked you like a dog. If you had a weak character or bad work habits you would not have stood for the grueling ordeal and the humiliation. He was very impressed with that aspect of your behavior. He thought, after the first day, you might make a swordsman. Your mind was right. Untrained but right.”

“Well, thank him.”

“He doesn’t require thanks. He’s not congratulating you, he’s telling you what is.”

“Sure.”

“But, he says, it is possible to be too athletic, too strong, too hardworking. The hard worker tends to oversegment, the athlete to trust reflex and muscle. So, though you picked up the moves very quickly, you had trouble integrating.”

“He said ‘integrating’?”

“He said ‘becoming one timing.’ I said integrating.”

“Okay.”

“He says that yesterday, finally, under pressure of the match with Sueko Mori, you integrated. Your learning curve in that match was extraordinary. You went in a nobody, you came out a swordsman. You must learn to develop that feeling, that sensibility; it is your only hope.”

“So he thinks I’m okay?”

“Well, that’s where he goes a little opaque on me. He stops well short of declaring you the next Musashi. He says you still have problems. But he says you have advantages too. Thus he has an idea of what you can or can’t do, and how you must operate.”

“Please, go ahead.”

“He says you are not Tom Cruise. There is no Tom Cruise. No one can learn the sword in days or weeks, except in movies. He hated that movie, by the way. However, you have done a great deal more than most.”

“Okay.”

“You must know your weaknesses and strengths and maneuver accordingly. That is strategy. You have not become a great swordsman. You have become an almost proficient swordsman. You will lose to any proficient yakuza swordsman. You will only win under one circumstance: against someone younger, who hasn’t been in a fight and will panic at the sight of his own blood. You’re a warrior, you’ve seen blood, others’ and your own. Blood doesn’t scare you, turn you to jelly. Thus, you know that in a fight you will be cut, you will bleed. Your opponent may not. He will see blood, his own or even yours, and he will tighten, lose his rhythm, his concentration. He will die; you will survive.

“Other than that, stay away. If you fight others, you will die. You are not strong enough to cover all the sectors of defense. The longer you go, the slower you will get. A good swordsman will play you out, waiting for your sword to still or drop, for your concentration to falter, and then he will kill you. In fights, you must win quickly, one, two blows, or you will die. The longer you fight, the larger the chance that you will die. You survive not merely on your sword, but on your guile in fighting only those you can beat and never those you cannot beat. A great swordsman will kill you in a split second.”

“He knows,” Bob said. “He sees where this is going. He’s telling me I cannot fight Kondo.”

Doshu heard the name and turned to Bob.

“Swagger-san,” he said, with something almost but not quite like affection. “Kondo: death.”

They roared through the Japanese night in her Mazda, the rush of the wind so intense it precluded conversation. Maybe there wasn’t much to say, anyway. Kyoto was a blur of light behind them, Tokyo not yet a blur of light ahead of them. She kept the red sportster up well over eighty miles an hour, driving with calm deliberation, all intensity and concentration.

But after a couple of hours, it began to rain. She pulled over to the shoulder. A car, too close behind, screeched and honked.

“What’s his problem?” Bob said.

“He was too close. I should have signaled. Can you latch the top?”

“Sure.”

She pressed a button and the rubberized roof came out of its compartment, unfolding on an ingenious structure until it covered the cockpit. He got it latched without trouble, though the mechanism, clever and Japanese, was new to him.

“Do you want me to drive? You must be exhausted. Now it’s raining.”

“I’m fine. I’m a big girl. Anyway, you’re just as tired as I am.”

“No, I didn’t get much sleep there, that’s for sure. That old guy worked me to the bone. ‘Eight cuts! Eight cuts!’ I haven’t worked that hard in years.”

“You are a hardworking guy,” she said. “Believe me, I know plenty who aren’t. My supervisor likes to cultivate ‘the big picture,’ which means I do the work and he’s out on the links chatting up businessmen. But I guess it’s okay that he’s lazy, because he’s so stupid if he worked hard he could really screw up.”

“Amazing how full the world is of assholes,” he said. “Anyway, have you heard from Nick yet?”

“No, nothing. I checked my phone and e-mail before we left. I’ll check again.”

She flipped open the little jointed piece of plastic, worked it over, its bright glow illuminating her grave face, and then announced, “No, nothing yet.”

“Okay.”

“What are your plans? You have to tell me, Swagger. I’m so afraid, now that you think you’re Yojimbo, you’ll go out on your own.”

“No, I told you I’d clear everything through you and I will. I’d hoped to hear from Nick, that’s all.”

“Suppose you don’t.”

“Then I’ll try and find a private investigator, a guy with yakuza connections, maybe an ex-cop, and we’ll turn him loose on the case. Maybe I should have done that already. I didn’t think of it. I was just thinking of how to keep that old man from whacking me black and blue.”

“A private eye won’t work. If Kondo doesn’t want to be found, the PI will know it and he will just take your money and conveniently come up with nothing. Nick’s got the guts to ask around; I doubt anybody else does.”

“Then I’ll go to Kabukicho and start kicking in doors on yakuza joints and asking loud, impolite questions about Kondo. That should get me noticed.”

“That should get your head delivered to the embassy by Black Cat Courier by Monday.”

“Then I don’t know. Maybe I am overmatched on this one.”

“On the other hand, you’ve learned stuff-”

Her cell phone rang. She checked the number ID and said, “It’s Nick.”

She hit talk.

“Hello, Nick, what is-”

But then she was quiet.

“Oh, hell,” she said.

“What?”

“It was Nick. But he said ‘Susan, I fed the dragon.’”

“‘Fed the dragon’? What the hell could that mean?”

“I don’t know. But it was also his voice. It was full of fear. Real, ugly fear.”

“Oh, Christ,” Bob said.

She dialed Nick’s number. There was no answer.