He waved a skeletal hand before Matsuo's eyes as he passed. White-haired, reed-thin in his tattered, stained work kimono, Izumi the greengrocer hustled back and forth through his shop, his wooden Beta clacking on the floor as he greeted customers, helped them make their selections, checked the bins and dumps to see that they remained filled to overflowing with their proper fruits and vegetables, with the best on top—always the best on top.
Despite Nagata's concerted effort to instill a contempt for all members of the merchant class—who, according to tradition, were one step above the outcasts and untouchables—Matsuo felt a genuine affection for old Izumi-san. He was as generous as he was gruff, a hard taskmaster who worked harder than any of his employees. And every year, on the fifth day of the fifth month, Boy's Day, he hoisted a stout bamboo pole before his shop and flew koinobori, brightly colored carp-shaped streamers, one for every boy who worked for him. But though Nagata despised merchants, he made Matsuo come to Japantown to work here regularly, for it was in accordance with Father's wishes that he be exposed to as many issei as possible while he lived here.
Let him come to know America like an American, but keep him Japanese.
Nagata had repeated the baron's words to him times beyond number. And so Matsuo worked in Izumi's yao-ya.
"Matsuo!"
He looked up and saw Sachi urgently motioning him toward the front of the store. Sachi was Izumi's grandson, a year younger than Matsuo and more than a bit on the chunky side. He was standing next to an impatient-looking middle-aged woman.
"See if you can figure out what she wants," he said as Matsuo came up. "I can't."
"Sure, boss."
Matsuo listened to the woman. Her Japanese accent was unfamiliar to him, but still it was clear that all she wanted was some wasabi root. He found some for her and she thanked him profusely.
"She's in America now," Sachi said when the woman had gone. "She should learn English."
"Maybe you should learn some Japanese, boss," Matsuo said with a wink.
Sachi understood a smattering, but could speak barely a word. He and Sachi had been having this conversation for years. Each knew the other's responses by heart, but that didn't stop them from replaying it time and again.
"No thanks."
"It's your heritage. You shouldn't forsake it."
"Why not? I'm an American. You won't catch me pining away for Japan. I was born here and I'm staying. Learning Japanese is nothing but a big waste of time."
"Anything you say, boss."
Matsuo went back to sweeping while Sachi returned to the front counter. He called Sachi boss because he was the legal owner of Izumi's store. Matsuo also used the term as a barb against the anti-Japanese laws of Sachi's beloved America. The 1920 Alien Land Law forbade any alien from owning land. Two years later, the Supreme Court supported a decision that declared all Japanese aliens "ineligible for naturalization," thereby permanently excluding them from citizenship. As a result, no issei—those born in Japan like Nagata and Matsuo and Izumi—could own a home or a farm or a store. But an American-born nisei like Sachi was automatically a citizen. So some years ago the store had been put in his name.
The unfairness of it all made Matsuo grind his teeth every time he thought about it, but Sachi took it all in stride. He turned a deaf ear to Matsuo's railings against the United States and powerful California Jap-haters like William Randolph Hearst and his San Francisco Examiner. The bigotry that made Matsuo long to return to Japan seemed only to harden Sachi's resolve to carve out a place for himself in a land that hated him.
Frankie helped him stack the new shipment of oranges in the front trays under the sidewalk awning. Matsuo wished all Americans were like Frankie. Maybe then he could walk the streets without feeling the weight of all those stares, all those eyes watching him with suspicion, waiting for him to make a wrong move, ready to pounce on him. Maybe then he could buy a piece of candy at the newsstand without being elbowed aside by the white customers and ignored by the proprietor until he was the only one left.
Yet even without the thousand daily slights of life as a gaijin in America, he would still long for Japan.
As he and Frankie carried the empty crates toward the back, an all-too-familiar voice called out behind them.
"Hey, Chinky-boy!"
Mick and his gang. The five of them were standing at the front of the store, each with an orange in his hand. As Matsuo watched, Mick tore open his orange and took a big, sloppy bite out of the middle. His chums followed suit.
"Real good, Chinky-boy," he said with the juice dripping down his chin. "Good fruit. American fruit. You ain't good enough to sell this. You should be selling little shriveled up Chink apples."
Izumi suddenly appeared from the back, brandishing a broom handle.
"You boy pay for orange now!"
Mick laughed. "Not from your store, yellowface!"
He threw the orange at the old man.
As usual, the gang followed Mick's lead and began pelting Izumi with their fruit. But they slowed the old shopkeeper's charge only momentarily. As he neared them, wielding his broom handle like a bo, they turned and ran off, jeering.
On his way down the sidewalk, Mick kicked a corner support out from under one of the standing fruit trays. It collapsed, sending cantaloupes and oranges rolling in all directions along the sidewalk. Izumi began chasing the fruit instead of the boys.
Matsuo and Sachi helped; so did Frankie, although Matsuo noted that his friend waited until Mick was well gone. Poor Frankie. His terror of Mick was a palpable thing. He wished he could relieve his one white friend of his paralyzing fear.
"You should call the police." Sachi said, visibly angry.
"Shikatoganai," Izumi said, as he always did when harassed. "Shikatoganai."
But it could be helped, Matsuo thought as he righted the tray and reset the support. He could help. But he was not allowed to.
For the thousandth time he wished he was free to give Mick what he deserved. This afternoon when Mick took Frankie in that stranglehold, Matsuo had almost lost control. One swift jab to the left or right of the bully's spine, where Nagata said the kidneys lived, would have ended the scene in an instant. But Matsuo yearned for a slower reckoning. He wished to reduce the bigger boy to blubbering tears, pleas for mercy, to a lump of battered flesh, to humiliate him in front of his friends the way he humiliated Frankie, the way he tried to humiliate Matsuo. But that was a dream. One he would never see.
Nagata forbade it.
He taught Matsuo the arts of combat on the strict condition that he never use them in America. Matsuo's expertise at jujutsu and his growing proficiency with the sword, the staff, and the bow and arrow were skills that he had sworn to keep hidden in this land. Nagata never seemed concerned with Matsuo's tales of the batterings and indignities he suffered at the hands of Mick and his gang. He simply kept repeating his warning never to draw attention to himself. Never.
And so Matsuo played the coward. His shi-no-on—his obligation to his teacher, Nagata—restrained him from breaking every bone in Mick McGarrigle's body. But today he had almost lost control, just as he had lost it in the boys' room last winter. The look in Mick's eyes as he had lain gasping on the tile floor was that of someone who thought he had picked up a harmless garter snake only to find that he held a poisonous pit viper.
But for all the satisfaction of that moment, Matsuo knew now that he had made a mistake. He had allowed Mick to see his inner face. He had shown him the fire within and now Mick wanted to extinguish it. Mick had doubled and redoubled his insults and petty attacks, but had never again confronted Matsuo alone. Mick's bully sense had grasped that Matsuo would not fight back in public and Mick took full advantage of that.
A war . . . one in which Matsuo was not allowed to fight. There seemed no way out—
—except to return to Japan.
Nagata had promised him that he would return to meet his father and brother before he began college. Two more years to go. Two m
ore years of war.
He sighed and began restacking the cantaloupes.
* * *
That night, I had to bounce three pebbles off Matsuo’s bedroom window before he finally heard one. I waved my free hand in wide arcs, hoping he would spot me in the fog.
"Come on down," I whispered as he lifted the sash. "And bring the Luckies."
He came out a few minutes later, barefoot and wearing a light kimono.
"What is it?"
I held up the quart jar I had spirited out of my folks' kitchen.
"Here. Have a taste."
He took it, unscrewed the top, and sniffed. "Orange juice . . . and something else."
"The 'something else' is vodka."
"Vodka? Isn't that a liquor?"
"Yeah. Like gin, only not as smelly. Put vodka in orange juice and it's called a screwdriver."
At least that was what they were calling the mix at my folks' dinner party.
Matsuo made a face. "They named a drink after a tool?"
"Just take a swig, will you? It's good."
"It's safe?"
"Of course. You know my father only buys the best bootleg. Imported only. No basement stuff."
Matsuo took a drink, and nodded appreciatively. "It's good." He drank again. "It's very good."
* * *
Matsuo spoke slowly and carefully, but still could not overcome the slur in his voice.
"We must find a way to bring Mick to justice."
We sat in the bushes between the Japanese garden and the patio and watched the party through the arched windows of my white stucco-walled Spanish-style house. Dad had had everybody out to see his Zen garden before dinner, and now they were all in the living room. Dinner was over. At first the Navy men had stayed in a group with my father, drinking and talking at one end of the room while the women put on the record player and danced the Charleston at the other. But now they all were gathered around the piano singing "I Found A Million Dollar Baby in the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store" and "Bye, Bye, Blackbird." All seemed to be feeling pretty good.
Matsuo and I weren't feeling too bad ourselves. We had finished off the screwdrivers and were sharing a Lucky Strike. Matsuo had had less than I but seemed to be feeling it more. Even in the faint light from the house I could see that his face was flushed a deep red. Suddenly, he had started talking about Mick.
"Who will bell the cat?" I said.
Matsuo didn't seem to hear me. He seemed to be in his own world.
"We must bide our time like the Forty-seven Ronin, and wait until the moment is right. And then, when Mick least expects it, we must strike."
I knew that story by heart. Nagata had told it to us many times. But I didn’t see how my favorite Japanese epic applied here. I reviewed it in my mind:
In 1703 Lord Kira deceived Lord Asano into violating his chu, his duty to the shogunate; Lord Asano committed seppuku to right the wrong. His fief was confiscated, leaving his samurai retainers masterless, and thereafter called ronin. Forty-seven of these ronin entered into a blood pact to avenge their lord. But to throw the powerful Lord Kira off guard, they played the part of wastrels and drunkards; they became despised by all because they neither committed seppuku like their lord, nor did they strike against the man who had engineered their master's death. But when the time was right, when Lord Kira and his retainers were lulled into a false sense of security, they rose up as one and avenged their fallen master by taking Lord Kira's head.
"The lesson," Nagata would always say, "lies not in the bloodshed and deceit; it lies in giri—the obligation, the debt—to one's master. The forty-seven put giri to their master above all. Consequently, they violated chu—the unrepayable debt to the Emperor, the law of Japan—by slaying a lord without the Shogun's permission. Lord Kira's death satisfied their giri to their master; only their own deaths would satisfy chu. So all forty-seven committed seppuku in the Sengaku-ji temple."
The story’s melodrama fascinated me, but I also saw it as a primer for the twists and turns of the Japanese concept of on—one's accumulation of debts and obligations. Matsuo had been exposed to the patterns of on since birth, and even he wasn't completely clear on them. I was a Johnny-come-lately and felt I had almost no chance of grasping the full meaning.
But I understood some of the levels of on. The highest were chu—to the Emperor—and oya—to one's parents—neither of which could ever be fully repaid. Others were various forms of incurred debt—giri—which had to be repaid tit for tat, such as giri to one's name and one's master and one's teacher and so on.
"I don't get the connection," I said.
"We must satisfy the giri to our names."
"How?"
Instead of answering me, he said, "I have to go now." His voice sounded strained.
"Why?"
"Because I am going to be sick."
He got up and staggered off toward the garage. As I watched him go, I mulled what he had said about the Forty-seven Ronin. Did he mean we should pretend to be cowardly wastrels afraid to fight back? I didn't have to do any pretending for that.
Or had he been talking about himself? Was Matsuo some sort of secret samurai, waiting to satisfy our giri? What an exciting thought.
It kept me awake most of the night.
* * *
Matsuo knelt before Nagata's daisho and made an offering of his breakfast fish and rice at the shrine. He could not bring himself to eat this morning. He could not remember ever feeling this sick in his entire life. His stomach quivered and his head throbbed as if the giant bell in Grace Cathedral were clanging inside it. He swore never again to touch another screwdriver, or any other form of Western liquor. Only sake or plum wine for him from now on, and even those in small amounts.
Matsuo reached up and lifted Nagata's katana from its resting place. He pulled the scabbard halfway back and studied the strange, mottled finish on the blade. Nagata said it was a Masamune blade, though it was inscribed with the ideogram for gaijin—stranger. The only blades that could hold a candle to Masamune's were those made by a rival swordsmith, Murasama. It was said that when a Murasama blade was plunged into a running stream, the floating leaves and twigs that brushed against its edge were cut in two; but it was said that when the same was done with a Masamune blade, its edge was so keen that floating leaves and twigs avoided it and passed on either side. This blade held a power that went beyond sharpness, strength, and flexibility. Matsuo swore to save all his money and buy one like it for himself when he returned to Japan.
But he knew there was no other in the world like this one. According to Nagata, Masamune had fashioned this particular blade from another sword given him centuries ago by a wandering gaijin. The original had been made of a very special metal from a stone that had fallen from the sky, and Masamune had hammered and folded and reshaped it into its present form.
It must have been a magic sword, Matsuo thought, for he sensed a hidden power in Nagata's daisho. He could feel it shimmer through his nerve endings when he held the blade.
"Dreaming of beheading your enemies?" said a voice behind him.
Matsuo quickly thrust the blade back to rest within its scabbard and replaced it on the katana-kake, then turned to face Nagata, fresh from his morning bath.
"No, sensei. I would need only my hands to defeat my enemy. But I cannot use them." He gave Nagata a sidelong look. "Although giri to my name might demand that I use my hands just once."
"Giri demands no such thing. Oya and shi-no-on—your duties to your father and your teacher—demand that you play the part of an ordinary poor issei boy and draw no attention to yourself. You stand out enough merely by being Japanese. If you use the jujutsu and bujutsu I have taught you, you will injure an American, perhaps severely. You might then become a focus for the hatred of Orientals in this city. What if someone like Hearst-san decided to attack you in the Examiner? What if this brought to light the identity of your father? Such an incident could cause the baron great embarrassment. And I would be disgraced because
I am responsible for you. I would have no recourse but to bring you home to our land and commit seppuku."
Matsuo felt as if he had been doused with ice water. To be the cause of Nagata's death—the thought left him speechless.
"Besides," Nagata continued, "there are ways other than brute force to satisfy giri. You would do well to follow the wisdom I learned when I studied at the Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu as a boy. I learned bujutsu—all the martial arts—just as you are learning. These arts are designed for one purpose: to kill. But to rely on brute force alone is the way of animals. We learn to kill, yes, but we must also learn that it is not necessary to reveal our strength. We must reach for and grasp a higher form of wisdom and keep our brute power hidden. So said Choisai Sensei, founder of Katori Shinto Ryu. They are words we must both live by.
"So look upon your trials here as tests of your shuyo," Nagata said, thumping his ample belly. "But enough of this. It is time to work in the garden."
He turned and strode toward the door.
Shuyo . . . self-discipline . . . Matsuo wished he had more. Everyone knew that shuyo built up the belly, the seat of control. Matsuo rubbed a hand over his flat abdomen, then followed Nagata out to the garden.
"Your rake is asleep," Nagata said. "Wake it up."
The morning air did nothing to improve the way Matsuo felt. The light of the rising sun was a knife blade through his eyes and into his brain. The soft, steady strokes of Nagata's rake through the fine stones were a thunderous rumble in his head.
Matsuo forced himself to follow his sensei's lead, dragging his wide-toothed rake to form parallel lines in the small stones: arrow straight in the open spaces, but gently curving around the bases of the lava stones and twisted trees.
When the raking was done, Nagata squatted and slowly made his way around the perimeter of the garden, walking like a crab. When he completed the circuit, he stood with hands on hips and smiled.
"It is done. It is good."
Matsuo had watched him spend weeks arranging the varied lava rocks, moving this one three inches to the left, that one an inch to the right. What was so special about the placement of the rocks that Nagata had to spend a whole month at it?