Edited by Hannah Ryder Proofread by Amanda Lewis
8: A Song for the Peach Tree In My Master’s Garden
Copyright © 2021 Christopher M. Struck
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please write to the publisher. This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by BHC Press Library of Congress Control Number: 2020933920 ISBN: 978-1-64397-123-0 (Hardcover) ISBN: 978-1-64397-124-7 (Softcover) ISBN: 978-1-64397-125-4 (Ebook) For information, write: BHC Press 885 Penniman #5505 Plymouth, MI 48170
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act one
chapter one
the peach tree
A
lone peach tree stands. Along one of the main streaking rivers down the lower face of Aoyama (Blue Mountain), a clump of dark firs hides the Peach Tree from the estate’s direct view. The Peach Tree. The oldest living thing on the Toda estate and hidden in a corner of the master’s large and strictly private garden. The low hills and rice paddies, hidden from its small clearing, descend out from the inner walls to the east. The Blue Mountain rises to icy caps in the north. And the Peach Tree grows in a mystical grotto carved by the tears of Aoyama and sheltered by the taller pines that line the white water of the shallow river. The grotto’s eerie silence, broken only by the wind shifting in the distance. A quiet peaceful setting, hidden from sight. It would be an easy spot to relieve oneself. And as I rush toward the river and long to part my kimono to let the idle stream export my expounding excrement to the far away silent valley, I notice something else. Something that is not supposed to be there. Like I am not supposed to be there. In that quiet space beneath the mountain. My feet planted at the edge of the river and when I turn, I can see her. It is her. The daughter of the master. With me, alone. I recognize her immediately. ~5~
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Umi. Her back is to me wearing an elaborate, light-blue kimono with black-and-purple flowers patterned around her and beneath the wrap. Her hair is long and tied into a stiff black bow. She faces the Peach Tree, kneeling. She cries. Whimpers. Whispering something to the ground as she presses her small, pale fingers into the dirt. Did she bury something there? Leaning forward, she takes up something else. I see only a flash of brief red and my heart jumps. I almost shout. The wind rushes in that far off way. With a sound like a deep exhale. The forest says, shh. The scent of coming rain. And then something else with it. Incense. I notice a dreary bit of smoke lift up over her shoulder. And the red thing becomes at once the shape of a stick as she places it in the small mound of earth. I wonder if I can cover up again and get away. If I might find another place to claim a moment’s respite. But fate has a funny way of making bad things become good things and good things become bad things. In that moment I slip and fall into the river. She helps me out of the shallow stream. The bottom of my kimono is soaking wet. She looks worried. There are too many reasons that she could have to be worried. I should have them too, since being caught in her presence without official invite means instant execution. But there is a moment of all moments to remember and to ponder for the rest of my tale of sorrow and love and above all else life more than death. Though there will be much death. That first moment. When she shuffled over to the river with her hand over her mouth. The kimono a blur of black and blue and purple. When she sees me, and she sees that I am her age and the recognition becomes something like seeing hope in the light of one’s eyes and the full shape of another person. Like a heart finding another heart in a place where you don’t expect to see such kindness. Clean beauty. ~6~
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“Are you fine?” She says this once I am collected beside her beneath the tree. My poor kimono. The drab color of nothing. My only kimono. Still wet, but we did our best to wring it out. Difficult when I still wore the garment. She must see that I am nothing and yet she asks me the question as if I am something. I should, we both should, feel a sense of danger, but I don’t. I don’t think she does either. Not beneath the Peach Tree. “Yes.” “Are you hurt?” “Hurt? No.” “I am Umi.” “I know.” “Your name is?” “Ah, my name?” “Yes.” “Hachi.” “Hachi.” “Yes.” We are both young. Younger than ten. Suddenly, sitting beneath the Peach Tree together. Watching the rivers that look like tears streaming down the mountain in silence. Listening for the whispers of the wind coming from the valley. The Peach Tree always with its ugly branches and its precious fruit. Uncultivated and misshapen. Dropping promise into our hands. Seldom. But seldom is enough for me. And in that particular time. That of late winter. Before the buds on the Cherry trees bloom, the Peach Tree had one, single peach perched on a low branch and she took it and held it in her hand. She turns it over and over gently, leaving no trace that she has touched it at all. “Are you a samurai?” “No.” ~7~
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“Your belt? Isn’t that the belt of a samurai?” I look down and examine the wrap around my drab, damp kimono. The wrap is thick and bold in size, but calm and neutral in color. It tells the men of the estate that death is my second master and my sole purpose in life. Am I a samurai? I can’t remember for just that split second when her eyes lock onto mine. Two forbidden pools of black and brown and curiosity. “I am training.” There will be a time when sitting beneath this Peach Tree together, we will be much older and at least I will not be any wiser. But for now, with the youth in our hearts and our kindred sense of being somewhere, we are not supposed to be, we be. A heightened sense of danger must have made our hearts race, but it didn’t stop us. That and a similar sense of purpose. “Why are you here?” “Why am I here?” “Yes.” “I was looking for somewhere quiet.” “Me too. I understand.” I glance at what she might have buried beneath the Peach Tree. Discretely as to not offend her. I wonder when I turn back toward the river if she has not caught my eye. I turn it around in my head trying to imagine what is her purpose in being here as the light of the day fades into pink streaks of light in one half of the sky. The other half of it darkening slowly with the coming rain. She would not bury a toy, would she? Broken, but loved. Left to become an offering to the spirits of dreams. The mountain, the forest. The stream and the stone. A poetic choice. “Hachi, do you want to be a samurai?” “Yes. I never want to not be a samurai. I want to be the best samurai.”
~8~
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If I had been older. If I had been wiser. I might have seen a bit of her own self-doubt. Her own feelings wrapped in her question, but I answered as samurai do. Quickly. Honestly. Hesitation is death. And death is our master. Not our friend. “How do you know?” I thought for a long time. I enjoyed it. The training. The idea of it. I had always done it. As far as I could remember. Samurai is who I was meant to be. Selected to be. I had no other family. It was my reason for being, for breathing, for life. Without the path of the warrior, my life would be meaningless for the master of the estate, Umi’s father. Even in my youthful hour, I could comprehend that. I could understand it. I could understand it better than I could understand anything else. I was to be a samurai or nothing. I was to kill or die trying. I was to uphold the master’s will. I was to be the master’s will. I am a sword. I am to be, only, a shining piece of silver metal fashioned into cold death. That is my only. Choice has nothing to do with it. Life is a gift the master has given. He has taken me already from death. From hunger. From famine. From disease. From nothing. He has given me purpose where there would only otherwise be nothing. I am, in a way, righteous. I am, in a way, a justiciar. His justice. But there is no place, in the long life of the world, for those who become tools of death. And even in my misguided youth I could see that I would face trials. Though not how many and not what form. If death did not claim me first, a real samurai I would be. But in becoming a real samurai the whole of the world would become my enemy and my purpose resigned to singularity. Leaving the path of the sword would never be an option. If I left the sword behind, my mind would still know the timing and purpose of being as. Samurai. But I did not say those things. And I thought them only briefly. They drift so quickly through my mind in an instant. I stifle further thoughts within beneath the grind of my teeth and let them disappear into not words. It is the only way. ~9~
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I am samurai. “I don’t know.” She held her tongue, and we breathe in only silence. A comfortable, longwinded silence like so many I would come to know in the lonely nights and the days lived in pursuit of a singular dream. I could see her thinking. Her thoughts swim as mine do. There is nothing in the world more heart wrenching than the sight of the woman you have decided to love, thinking. And her thoughts lurk in between us as we hide beneath the Peach Tree together. I long to say more. To talk more. To hear her voice. But then from the villa. From beyond the tall firs, we hear the call go up for her. “Umi!” As clear as the sound of the distant rain that darkens the sky beyond the hidden realm of the Peach Tree, the sound drifts into our sanctum. The words to take her away from me. The words that would take her away from me many times in the coming years. “I will see you again here.” This time she whispers. I smile. I nod. She gives me the peach to hold. When it touches my hands, so do her hands. They are soft. Too soft. Where my hands are broken and breaking. Where blood once streamed, they’ve grown to numb the pain. I look down at the peach. It is bigger than my palm can hold. It is soft and ripe. With just a single touch from my calloused hands, the juice oozes out the side. But she left the soft fruit as she found it. Safe. I destroy it with just one touch and then I realize that this will always be a difference between us. When I look up, she is not there. Not even a trace of her between the trees. Only the soft mound and the no-longer-burning incense and I fight the urge to look into the dirt. Something about it turns my stomach. I look off toward the way she left. The dark, northern path along the stream and then I go the other direction ~ 10 ~
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back to the place where I live. Where I should be. Where I will learn the rest of what it means to be who I will be. Or who I am. Years will pass and we will always meet under the Peach Tree, but the tone and theme of our discussions will change. It will become clear that her interest goes beyond the romantic ideal of the warrior. There becomes a practicality to our discussions. There is a sense that she wants to understand her father’s estate. She wants to understand who the people are. People she has met, but that she views through the veil of stringent social ritual. Rituals that we break in the twilight hour, beneath the Peach Tree, in the master’s garden. Again, and again. Every long night. If we must break a rule in our lives, let it be this rule. Let it be the rule to stay away. Let it be the rule to stay the same. Let it be the rule to only be the one thing we are trained to be. She, the only daughter of a rich and powerful lord with no son. Destined to be the wife of the next lord. And me. A kiss of life’s shadow waiting to deliver its silence on a world that has given me no other choice. This is how I begin. With desire. A desire born in something that goes beyond my comprehension. I know only the path that I can follow, but it becomes for me an answer to something in my heart that Umi opens in that moment beneath the Peach Tree. This is a story of a curse. And of the curse of our choices. Ours and those made for us. Those choices that weave their way through our lives. But what is the curse and what is the choice is never clear until the whole picture is revealed. Some things become blessings and others do not.
~ 11 ~
chapter TWO
SAMURAI I
T
he Peach Tree. It remains on my mind. Stronger than anything. Stronger than the girl that loiters beneath it in some of my dreams. I close my eyes. I see the Peach Tree. I open my eyes. I see the lingering image of the Peach Tree burned into a blurry silhouette blink out of my sight. I long to be there again but going to the Peach Tree is too dangerous. Something has happened, and the risk of being caught remains death. For a time, I keep the kindling desire at bay, but it returns always. That image and the faint scent of incense. How dangerous it was. For now, I feel the tinge of want with each sniff of smoldering hope’s sticks. Every ritual. Every ceremony. Nearly every candle holds in it a piece of the memory. That smell. The smell of that incense that wafted up over her slender shoulder. Inevitably, my thoughts drift away from the serene image of the tree to the woman that knelt in black with purple flowers. Umi. Is she waiting for me? Does she wonder about me as I wonder about her? A memory waiting to burst into flame. Igniting a passion my heart longs to know. To remember. To dream within reality and in her presence. ~ 12 ~
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I have not been back yet, but I dream to be. She told me to come. I want to go back every second, but it is not yet a day later. I don’t remember why or how I found that mystical place. But, the day, the night, the time when I met Umi dominates my entire memory of the tree and its quiet corner of the castle garden. I know I can remember the way back. If I try. If I try to go, I will find it. The getting back is always easier than the going. I imagine, me, arriving and there she is. She is happy to see me. She rushes to greet me with questions about how I am. She rushes to tell me that she worried whether I had been harmed and despite what she hears about the samurai training, she knows deep within her heart that I will achieve my goals. I know this vision is false. I know that she does not wait, and I know deep down that she might not even go to the Peach Tree. I will, and the anticipation burns. Deeper and hotter than the fated meeting could have ever ignited me. The unspoken reasons as to why she had been there in the first place touch my foolish curiosity. But, that private serenity can’t be overlooked. She must go often. Though maybe only as a luxury, so the seclusion and nostalgia don’t lose their appeal. When those thoughts finally fade, I reimagine the same scene where I return, and she waits. She wears something colorful and pristine. She turns to see me come up the bank of the stream. My heart wrenches. Nearly falling out of my chest. Her eyes are filled with tears. Each incarnation of the dream brings a new layer. She tells me all the nightmares that have catacombed through her head. She thinks I could be dead. She thinks I may have abandoned her. She thinks I don’t care. All these things and more that must have made it impossible for me to come. She’s not wrong to think of these things. And especially of the dangers, though how likely is it that the daughter of the magistrate should take an interest in an apprentice samurai like me? We are doomed to die even more gruesomely than almost any other. At ~ 13 ~
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least we’re potentially saved a few years by indentured servitude rather than immediate sacrifice. Death. Immortal life. In the service of our lord. It would be our highest honor. It would be my highest honor. Fantasies remain. They linger ever stronger. I notice that the older “recruits” who have become adepts and tasked with keeping us in line lose interest sometimes. In the afternoon, when one sleeps on watch, I can get away. I notice that the true samurai, those that teach us, expect us to respect the danger. The danger of attempting to leave their school. My mind respects the danger. It respects the danger very much, but the heart that lurks beneath the mind scoffs at the mere mention of being caught. One half of my heart pushes me to race to the little clearing up the hill from our housing units to see Umi now. The other half pushes against the instinct of self-preservation to defy the odds. My full heart longs to find the peaceful setting beneath the Peach Tree again, and ultimately at the core of that feeling exists the need to discover whether Umi does indeed care about a peasant boy, who will either leave the shackles of poverty in glory or death. Perhaps, Umi, like I, returns always to the Peach Tree to summon the fading feeling. She remembers the hope that stings the eyes and fools the heart. The hope that something meaningful exists here, because indeed it does. It does. Whether it exists to blossom or to wither and die. It exists and no amount of hiding from that will drown the feeling away. It only serves to allow the memory to take on new definitions. The grotto itself of the Peach Tree evokes a feeling of peace. And every day while I take my wooden blade and smash against sticks and wood and bone, I wonder, so utterly imprisoned by violence, at how such a complete peace as that can exist in the world. It is these sentiments that drive me to sneak from the compound of the school which lies on the wooded, northern edge of the rice paddies. I risk swift death. ~ 14 ~
8 - A SONG FOR THE PEACH TREE IN MY MASTER’S GARDEN
With planning I escape on my adventure as I did before, near the middle of the day. To leave at night would have been quite an idea. Arguably easier. The only issue with leaving during the night? Umi would not be there. It had to be an afternoon. It had to be hot and bright and lazy. When the opportunity came, I had to seize it. I can’t leave a letter. I can’t write. Not yet at least. We have an hour to ourselves, which some of the adepts use to go into town. Some of the wandering ronin or samurai who teach in competing schools of other magistrates, towns, or masters, post challenges or calls to apprenticeship. While it is not yet in my position to inspect these postings, I know that it could be soon. The future apprentices who go to see the challenges (or duels) may earn a spot amongst the adepts or even as a nubile samurai with just one convincing victory. Many duels are to the death. I have seen them as we all have, but some of the boys always sneak off during this time. It is common. Sneaking off during the allotted hours is not punished with death. But not making it back soon enough is a different punishment. That is how I know of the supreme danger I am in for leaving. As such, this early afternoon as the sun finds its place in the heavens, I follow my heart to take one of the first true risks of many to come in my life. My master does not care whether I live or die; I know that he doesn’t. He is mortal. King of the realm, maintaining a vast estate that stretches as far as the eye can see. I am only his soldier. I am only his tool. Without his purchase of my flesh and soul, I would not live. There is glory available to me, but it is his first. Even if I become a samurai and I earn a position as aide and retainer, I will owe it first to my master. Because of his attention, my life could create a lineage. I could earn a solid income, own land, and command armies. There is certainly always the risk of
~ 15 ~
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death, but after over a year of training as a samurai, I feel that I am making progress. Even if I do survive the training to come, I may not become a samurai. I may leave the school of the Yoshioka clan without attaining the full rank of the samurai. It, too, is a risk I must take for a chance at a better life. At least that potential luxury is available to me. These thoughts of life, love, and death are ever present as I toil in the sun for the prestigious teacher as a samurai in training. After a few moments as the blood pumps into my head, thumping into my ears, they disappear until they return again stronger. Only the sounds of the plants and dirt beneath my feet break the silence of the woods. Occasionally, wind splits the trees and the birds swoop between them. It is clear. I am on my way to the Peach Tree. The first step is always hardest. I am on my way now. There will be no stopping me. I dash through the woods. Up the hill. I can hear the streams. The echoing sounds of the forest pursue me. I feel at home with the soft melody of the water and the trees forming a quiet concert in the wooded hills. I jump from rock to rock as I climb up the mountain toward the castle wall. As I go, I find makeshift footpaths where the shrubs have been beaten and worn away. Some start and end before they’ve really begun, signs of spirits also making their pilgrimage up the mountain. Where the shrubs have been worn away, leaving the dark, damp mud exposed, I smell the hearty stagnant scent of the wet earth mix with the soft passing scent of the cold stream. If the forest indeed has a spirit, I feel like he welcomes me back. For a fleeting second, I know I could live in this shadow realm forever, but as soon as I think this simple thought, I am confronted. The wall. Or at least what is known as the outer wall. Carved out of the earth and then piled high with stone bricks larger than me, the ~ 16 ~
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wall separates the forest from the master’s castle. Only the faintest glimpse of the top of the castle, a six or seven window high monstrosity overlooking the southern valley, can be seen if I position myself at the right place. Along most of the wall, between the last tree and the foot of the stone, there is some space. At least thirty feet of open grass where you can be seen by sentries who regularly patrol the area, but it’s been years since the outer defenses have been properly maintained. Japan is unified now and has been for longer than my life. War has left the rice and hills for good. Korea is the new battleground. I come to a spot of the wall where the woods have reclaimed territory. The wall watches over but has been overgrown with green moss marking it as unkempt but slippery to the touch. If there are ramparts over the back, they are unused. The forest is silent as if it watches me walking along the bottom of the wall making sure, even in my confidence of solitude, to not make a sound. I am looking for a tree that fell along the wall. A tree that I used the first time that I went into the magistrate’s forbidden garden. And now a tree that I plan to use again. As I struggle to find the decaying wood bridge, I think that my time in the forest might be dragging on a little too long. I do not have an infinite supply of time. The sounds of the forest and the thoughts of the Peach Tree have allowed me to forget about the risk that I am inheriting with the undertaking of this quest, but now in the silence beside the wall, the reality of my mischief shows itself plainly. There it is. The fallen tree. A behemoth of the wood as old as time. Struck by lightning or pulled down by furious wind in a storm only months ago. A titan that the magistrate and his men did not dare to disturb in the decades past when the wall went up, as it appeared far enough below and away from the high wall, has now attempted its own attack on the green stones with its dying breath. From a quick glance, the fallen trunk has managed only to wedge itself against the wall, three quarters of the way up. A bro~ 17 ~
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ken bit of its top drags to the forest floor surrounded by shrubbery and sprouting trees that have slowly taken ground in this decade of neglect. For my use, I can climb up near the splintered bottom covered in ants and other creatures of decay and then balance myself easily on the massive circumference before embarking toward the wall. The illusion of safety remains as the surrounding canopy masks the final leg of my ascent. I am on top of the wall. A few steps over the rotting wood of the old ramparts. I drop down off of it and onto a patch of grass below that is up to my knees. I find my way to the stream by memory and the sound. I am almost at the Peach Tree again. There is the copse of firs stretching out from the bank to the low lawn that runs up to the inner walls of the estate. There is the bend in the meander of the stream that hides the Peach Tree from the rest of the world. I am here. Alone in the clearing. I don’t know why I imagined that she actually would be here. She isn’t. It doesn’t appear that anyone has been here. The incense still sticks out of the shoddily packed mud. An early morning rain has sent little rivulets through the soft earth that are now caked and dry and would show the treads of comings and goings. The peach that I had so easily bruised lies decayed and the tree does not bear any fruit. It’s branches sway in the gentlest of winds. The world waits quietly as I sit down beneath the tree that haunts my memories. The mountain and its tears swallow up the view over the stream that now runs quietly in clear peace away from me and down the mountainside from where I came. Something drove me here. Something had made me decide that I needed to see this peaceful grotto. Maybe though that’s all it was. My own desire for serenity or clarity. I wonder why she didn’t retrieve the red incense that sticks out of the barren earth as if marking the dead. It is not like a Japanese ~ 18 ~
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woman to leave anything out for very long regardless of what it is used for. And it’s not simply that thought that perplexes me, but the feeling that I have when I near it. Unlike curiosity. I can’t bear to look at it. It feels almost like hate, but inwardly as if something about that stick reveals something of my truest nature. The day is lost. I pick up the rotting peach and throw it into the river. I don’t even have a letter than I can tuck away beneath the dirt for her to read. If only I could write, I could leave her something to remember me by. I knew she wouldn’t be here, deep down. And now I must be back to the school. Yoshioka School. As an adopted son of the magistrate it would be my sacred honor to take the name of our teacher, Yoshioka, but for now they call me Hachi. If I am to be a samurai, the magistrate will call on me. The easiness of life in this serenity has allowed my thoughts to wander. I’ve drifted away from the task at hand, leaving the estate before the hours run out. I sit there in peace for one more moment. Everything about this place seems somehow at once limitless and constrained. Compared to the teachings of Yoshioka Seijuro, I feel so much more connected to the world and to my dreams. The little clearing with its cavern-like atmosphere almost appears like a perfect circle. I cup my hands and look through them at the world around me as if testing the shape. As soon as I leave the outer wall, the dread of returning to the school hits me. Combined with a sheer tremor that shakes my gut and torso that sears only one image in my mind. My thoughts are poisoned again by the Peach Tree. Worse now than ever. As I run down the mountain, back along the paths that I came. Rocks, trees, shrubs, animals, leaves, the smells again, and wet earth. I think of only one thing. The Peach Tree.
~ 19 ~
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I want again to sit against the trunk as I did. I long to feel the cold water of the white stream against my feet and hands. It is a burden, this knowledge of this place where happiness is possible, if only briefly. And it has ensnared me completely. The absence of its rapture stirs my young mind, but as a child I have none of the words that I can later use to describe this sense of urgency. I react only to the pang of desire and the pain of loss. I think of only two things. Did I spend too much time in that place of solitude or not enough? I don’t care about not leaving a letter. The humidity of the forest mingles with the dry heat of the midday sun as I near the edge of the woods. Did I give Umi enough time to wander through her father’s garden to find me? There is something about the idea of her that has implanted itself within my heart. Nothing truly coherent drifts into my mind. I almost can’t remember her face, but I long to share the world of the samurai with her. All of the danger and honor. If I become samurai, it is possible. I don’t care whether she loves or hates the samurai, but maybe I care what she thinks of me. I get to the school grounds. Cross the yard checking all directions and shuffle between a loose board int the outer wall quickly. I look both ways, slide the door of my building open unceremoniously. Place my shoes expertly along the wall. I am the first one back. I shake my head and lie down and listen as the cicadas buzz about outside. My insecurities about being able to read begin to disappear. There is time to learn. Soon, it begins to drizzle lazily, and in the white noise, I drift to sleep, thinking of the Peach Tree.
There is nothing more terrifying than the weight of responsibility. Men and women run half the world away to escape it, and then
~ 20 ~
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they share stories of how they’ve skirted every opportunity to become constrained, restrained, or committed to something. Being a samurai is accepting responsibility. There are no locks on the doors. There is no one to keep you in the intense training but yourself. There is only the reality of certain, meaningless death outside the paper and wood panels that guard one from thundering rain and hunger. You can run at any time and for what? To find your peachless Peach Tree? The other option is to stay and accept responsibility. It is not a tough decision at a young age. It only appears that way to adults (coddled merchants and lawyers and farmers that work fertile land), because they have obligations and alternatives. For me and for many and for most, it is instantaneous. You either find the sword an ideal or you cast it down. It is only a moment, but it is a moment that decides your fate for the rest of your life. Once you accept that responsibility over the certainty and fear of death, then you have but one goal: to die an honorable death. Death may come to samurai in many forms and at many times, but to die a death in battle means that your life was not wasted. Your life is not a soul or a solitary fraction of time. It is not you in this moment or what you might be. You are a samurai. It is the only thing that you are. It is the only thing that you will be. But it is all the things that you have done to make it to that moment on the battlefield when you are striking weapon against weapon with the intent to kill. A thousand cuts in the wind each day. A thousand steps. A thousand breaths. All serving one purpose. To die that death on that battlefield. Whether anyone sees you or not. You can close your eyes and know that every movement of your dying body has moved toward one goal. It took a long time to know these things. It took a long time to understand responsibility. Reflecting later, beneath my Peach Tree, maybe I could pinpoint a time when I recognized that it was not fear that drove me to become a samurai but acceptance. But it doesn’t ~ 21 ~
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matter, because the beauty of understanding the will to be a samurai came almost immediately in those first few years at the Yoshioka school. In fact, the memory that Master Yoshioka Seijuro (Seijuro-sama) etched into me at an early stage in my studies became a core factor in my philosophy for life. It comes back to the Peach Tree. And this is also the reason why that I went back up to visit it that day. I would write it in a letter for Umi if I could; if she would care to know what happened in the village below her father’s castle. Seijuro-sama had seen someone return from curfew after the designated time. Which was me. I knew it was me, but they didn’t. It had seemed late, although I had snuck in, appearing ahead of other. This was not an easily forgivable offense. If I was to give myself up, then I could have my hands chopped off or be killed instantly. Seijuro orders us into a line. I remember looking up and down the line thinking that there were so many young samurai. How we were all going to become officers or retainers or hired men. It seemed like there were never many samurai about. It felt like there were twenty in the whole of the master’s realm, but there are twenty boys in my age group at least. Probably even more. I look at Seijuro-sama and then to an adept that is walking on the opposite side of the line. There is a quick nod between the two and then with a deftness that forever unto this day defies the laws of time and reality to me, Seijuro-sama and the adept chop off the heads of two boys. Seijuro-sama nods at the line of boys, we are dismissed. There is nothing to say that will provide the reason to the violence perpetrated here at the Yoshioka school, and Seijuro-sama has no need to explain. But my understanding is simple. A transgression against the honor and reputation of the school has been made. The punishment for which has been delivered upon the dead boys. Public or private it ~ 22 ~
8 - A SONG FOR THE PEACH TREE IN MY MASTER’S GARDEN
does not matter. Who did the crime and who aided it does not matter. Honor and the responsibility to uphold it matter only. It’s odd I think as I walk through the wood-paneled halls. It is strange. I did not ever know their names. I barely knew their faces, and now they are dead. There is a lot of death at this time in Japan, and that is not unique to Japan. All the countries in the world are wrapped in this game of responsibility and desire. Uphold or die. I, then, did not know what I think or believe to be the way, but I know with that episode that Seijuro-sama remains dangerous, the Peach Tree remains dangerous, and that war is inevitable. Because people like me want to stop people like them and not the other way around.
Seijuro-sama teaches us. He is the samurai master. Sensei. Day in and day out, I acquaint myself with the stocky veteran of the unification wars. His eyes are dark and void. There is no smile to them and no reason to smile. He peers at you with an effortless malevolence that bridges the gap between hate and indifference. I’ve seen him differently with the adepts that make it through these especially dangerous years as youths in the school when we are unproven burdens on needed resources like rice and salt. But, until then. Until I prove myself, I remain a blade of grass, a flower in the garden, or possibly the bees that come to pollenate those flowers. Maybe Seijuro-sama is wary, and he views us as simultaneously a threat and a blessing to the health of his home. He is stocky. His torso is about as wide as it is tall. His hands are thick, and his fingers look like giant slugs. He likes to tap his cheeks with his hands and mutter to himself something incomprehensible. He presides, continuously over our progress. He teaches us to read. He teaches us to write. He teaches us to eat, sleep, fight, kill, love, walk, watch. The list goes on and the training never ends. ~ 23 ~
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There is no stopping point in the day. There is no set time. There is no clock and there does not need to be. We are samurai, we must live like samurai, and we must act like samurai. We will never be anything other than samurai. I progress at a normal pace in reading and writing, but I can tell that I disappoint Seijuro-sama. What I lack in the art of language, I quickly make up for in other areas that could be viewed as more important to our discipline. Even though I still cannot write a letter, I can handle a sword. I am the best in class by far when we play our sword games. I can see Seijuro-sama’s cheeks shake as if he fights away a smile. His eyes betray nothing. He challenges me with other weapons. Astutely, I pick up basic and then more advanced staff and kusarigama skills, but it is neither of these that entrances me. It is the sword that hangs from Seijuro-sama’s waist. He watches me regularly. He follows me from form to form, and I know why. I tell myself it is because he sees potential. I tell myself it is because he sees a glint in my eyes. I tell myself it is because I have something hidden within that he can sense. I will be the best, I say, each time that he looks my way. It is glorious. The shine of its metal in the sun. I remember it from the day when it whipped through the air and drank a feast of blood. A black, chipped case with gold dragons slipping along the side. Seijuro-sama carries a heavy blade forged from the finest smith in the prefecture at the end of the unification wars. I can see the marks he’s made on the side to sign his name have faded slightly with time. I can see the way Seijuro-sama labors in a half-feigned, laconic manner every time he pulls the sword up from where he’s placed it. A momentary wince. And how it shined. Seijuro-sama’s sword shined with such perilous promise. He held it out to display. His impassive, sunken, dark eyes stealing the light from the air and then the mere shimmer of the split second when it took off the heads of the target. ~ 24 ~
8 - A SONG FOR THE PEACH TREE IN MY MASTER’S GARDEN
A shudder runs through me for I know that the blade could as easily and more deservedly have taken my head instead. I breathe heavily. The sword of a samurai could sever a limb with one direct thrust. It has no equal. Where other weapons are clumsy and unpredictable, the sword is quick, clean, and precise. Every time I swing the wooden stick that we practice with I feel my mouth water and my eyes sting. I feel the heat rise in my hands and spread up my arms to my shoulders until the feeling hardens into resolution. This is desire. I can tell. The only desire that drives the thoughts of the Peach Tree and the garden from my mind. The only thoughts that take me from the suffering of my loneliness. This is the responsibility that I accept. It is then that I remember the Peach Tree. How could I forget it? I feel shame for a brief second, but then I wonder why. And the knowledge of the Tree becomes a burden with such sudden force that I am shook again, because I realize finally that I am caught between two opposing forces. Peace. War. Both are a part of me. Both are a part of everyone. Just as we have a capacity to love, we have a capacity to kill. This is also responsibility. The honor of a samurai hangs always in the balance. Swords will be given to plowshares, and I know that I will kill. I do not have to be told to do so. It is a feeling akin to memory. I know that I will stop at nothing to be the best swordsman that Japan has ever seen. The greatest samurai. And maybe in doing so, I will earn the right to not need a sword to live. The right to walk the world unarmed.
I awake from a dream startled. It seemed so pleasant but morphed into something unrecognizable. Everything had gone well. My dreams and plans for meeting Umi based off a letter that she sent ~ 25 ~
christopher m. struck
me, but then she disappeared from the secret grotto of the Peach Tree as suddenly as if she had burst into flame spontaneously. I look around. There is no letter. There are only my tattered rags, my slim frame, and the huddled bodies of the others who seek to make death their companion for a little while in exchange for rice and salt.
“Hachi! So good to see you! You have not come to the Peach Tree for months. Where have you been?” “I couldn’t come. They found out that I’ve been sneaking away.” “I heard. Something terrible. Something, so, so terrible.” “What did you hear?” “A novice was killed.” “Two novices. Decapitated.” “How? Oh. Are you in danger? You are a novice, right?” “Me in danger? Only if I come here. And you are here.” “Why did you come then? Oh, Hachi, you mustn’t risk your life for me.” “The Peach Tree, it calls to me.” She turns away and looks toward the mountain. “Who killed them?” “Seijuro-sensei.” “Describe him to me.” I do, and she speaks again. “Would you kill him if you had to?” “Would I kill him?” “Yes.” The Peach Tree changed color behind me, and I felt the world shake and give, then slip away.
~ 26 ~
about the author Christopher M. Struck enjoys writing contemporary and historical fiction. His debut novel Kennig & Gold is a 1940s love-at-firstsight iconic American tale inspired by true events. He enjoys traveling, studying foreign languages, and is especially fond of the Japanese culture. He resides in New York City where he writes reviews for Cabaret Scenes Magazine and BroadwayWorld.
