8: A Song for the Peach Tree in My Master's Garden by Christopher M. Struck

Chapter 1: 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.

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.

“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.”

“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.”

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.

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 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.