The Plum Rains and Other Stories

by Givens John

  The rogue samurai lay back to settle the pounding in his head. Sometimes when harassed or anticipating harassment, he would string what money he possessed onto a spare sandal cord and bind it to his ankle. He hadn’t done anything preparatory, apparently, although tied around one wrist was a twisted braid of grey horsehair that he picked apart and discarded.

  The wine last night had seemed cloudy and unclean. He recalled agreeing with Viper Koda, an older Dewa samurai who’d befriended him, that prudence would be required but then forgetting this sensible evaluation as the evening progressed, the day’s exhaustion receded, and the good-fellowship shared among road walkers at a waystation inn led them from one excess to the next.

  Hasegawa sat up, bracing himself against the serpents-nest of nausea that rose uncoiling within him. He didn’t see his clothing or travel gear anywhere. His main sword was leaning against the wall near the door, a place where any entryway-snatcher could have grabbed it.

  Before he lost his position with the northern daimyo Lord Dewa, Hasegawa had practised mountain-monk austerities in order to perfect his understanding of the arts of mayhem. He could sit before a blank wall all day without moving then charge into a squad of opponents and scatter them like pond frogs. He could meditate under an icy waterfall in the dead of winter but still pull a bow and release its arrow with sufficient accuracy to pierce a target no bigger than a man’s eye socket. But when the shogunate decided to curtail private armies, Lord Dewa had yielded to peacetime requirements. Samurai unwilling to become bureaucrats or teachers or poets were set adrift like river foam with only their blades to sustain them, and Hasegawa’s swords were a money-fighter’s choice: black lacquer scabbards with black sash cords, black sharkskin on the grips, black iron fist guards without ornamentation.

  Hasegawa crawled to the entryway. Long strips of blue cotton cloth hung from an elevated bamboo framework next door and rippled in the soft summer breeze. Before him lay a dirt garden dominated by an immense camphor tree, the mass of it richly green against the pale sky. Near the tree stood a privy, and the rogue samurai staggered across to it with his male parts clutched in one hand and his small sword in the other, unable to think of anything better to do with it.

  He slapped open the sliding door and began vomiting in waves of pain that burned up the length of him. Maggots wriggled in the foulness below like bits of chewed noodle come back to life, and Hasegawa retched again and again until he was producing little more than dry spittle. He straightened up too abruptly, lurched to the side, overcorrected, and crashed backwards through the privy door, knocking it off its runners as he emerged, tacking to the left then the right before fetching up finally at the trunk of the camphor tree where he clung like a baby ape clutching its mother.

  A young maid was watching him. She fled back into the indigo dyer’s yard when he spotted her.

  Hasegawa’s robe had been strung along a bamboo laundry-drying pole suspended under the eaves of the building where he’d spent the night, and his other possessions were in a neat pile beneath it. He retrieved his clothing and sorted through his travel satchel. Only a few copper coins remained at the end of what should have been a nearly full string; yet his writing kit was still there, as was a little camphor-wood Jizō-bosatsu in a damascene reliquary.

  The dyer’s maid reappeared with a pot of tea and a cup and an earthenware jar of water cold from the well. Also on her tray was a covered bowl with two rice cakes wrapped in laver. The maid bowed timidly and deposited her tray on the veranda corridor with an awkward clatter.

  Where’s Old Koda? Hasegawa demanded, and the young woman lowered her eyes modestly. Who is he? asked the maid. Your honour’s drinking companion?

  More than that, said Hasegawa. A Dewa warrior of cunning and integrity, and a man who will never be moved.

  Perhaps he’s still in the wineshop then?

  Do people sleep there?

  You mean at the wineshop?

  Where else would I mean? Hasegawa poured out his tea himself. Did we meet last night?

  She glanced at him shyly. Meet?

  Do you not understand the language I speak?

  Do you not remember last night?

  Hasegawa looked at her. Some parts of it better than others, he admitted.

  The maid lowered her eyes, abashed at her own boldness; and Hasegawa turned his attention to the light-shot camphor tree, the bright shining masses of yellow-green leaves glowing in the fullness of summer. Yesterday we walked without stopping all the way from the seventeenth station. A distance that usually requires two full days.

  The maid bowed to acknowledge the wondrous nature of this achievement. You must have important affairs awaiting you.

  I meant only to express the source of my confusion. We arrived well after dusk, and thoroughly exhausted.

  Yes, of course, the young maid agreed. Yet you seemed very lively last night.

  Giddiness caused by excessive exhaustion.

  The maid smiled. Clearly that must be the fact of it. But do you not remember singing the libretto of the Noh play? About the old woman damned to suffer as a wandering ghost because she had been unfeeling when young and beautiful?

  Of course I remember that, Hasegawa said. A scattering of sparrows had begun dropping down into the dirt garden in twos and threes. Now that you mention it.

  All in the wineshop were favourably impressed.

  Hasegawa said nothing.

  And do you not remember buying the carcass of the dead cart horse? And paying for its funeral? You said it would thereby find release from being reborn into this world of suffering and delusion.

  I don’t remember that…

  You said fifty repetitions of the Lotus Sutra would be required. You said the chanting must be done with a firm but musical intonation.

  I said that?

  Firm but musical.

  A grey horse … wasn’t it?

  And that it would thus reach the Western Paradise, the maid said, her eyes twinkling with amusement. And share a golden lotus throne with the Amida Buddha.

  Hasegawa studied the camphor tree against the soft morning haze of the summer sky. A few sparrows moved among the exposed roots searching for insects while others settled into patches of loose dirt and began taking dust baths, their wing-flurries creating furious little beige clouds.

  All in the wineshop praised your sense of pity.

  So I paid for it, did I?

  The young woman smiled. Very generously.

  Whenever the rogue samurai Hasegawa Torakage found himself among the hacked ruins of enemies, he seldom felt remorse for what had happened. If they were thirsty, he gave them water. If their agony was unbearable, he ended it for them. The rogue samurai would watch the blood-flow of defeated men draining away into summer grasses or pooling on the frozen earth of a winter’s night, the dead and dying often like him, men whose companionship he might otherwise have shared, and he did not try to follow back along the chain of irrevocable consequences and determine the one true source of their undoing. Hasegawa accepted the inevitability of convergence. Their deaths had wanted them as would one day his want him. For that reason, he sat calmly where he was and sipped his tea, and the young maid bowed then departed, leaving him to his ruminations.

  KODA THE VIPER SQUATTED IN THE gate-shadows of a roadside shrine. He had a sword that was twice as long as was customary, and he held it upright between his knees, the oversized blade in its bright scarlet scabbard rising above his head like a finial of defiance although his blood-shot eyes, stained robe, unshaven forehead and off-centre topknot lessened the effect of ferocity. Koda was a small man, the scion of an ancient samurai lineage and so permitted to wear his father’s two swords although poverty had resulted in him selling the blades to connoisseurs and affixing the hilts to the empty scabbards with bamboo wedges.

  Hasegawa halted in front of his companion. You look worse than I feel, he said. Although probably I don’t have to say it.

  You can say whatever you want. I don
’t believe it would improve me.

  Viper Koda’s too-long sword carved great sibilant arcs out of the air, its passage like sheet lightning noticed an instant too late. But for all his pleasure in wielding it, Koda was also willing to fight with a wooden cudgel if he had nothing better available, or with an iron bar or sharpened bamboo pole or pointed cedar stake; he would batter with rocks if that was all he had, or cut with shards of clam shell or bits of chipped flint; he would kick and punch with the feet and the fists, strike with elbows and knees, and butt with his head; he would bite and gouge, strangle and smother, drown enemies in cisterns, lakes, streams, ponds and canals, hang them from ropes, fling them off cliffs, or bundle them onto fires.

  You never think you might want to try making friends with people? Hasegawa had asked him once; but the older samurai had assumed he meant as a tactical manoeuvre, and said that thinking that way would put you at a disadvantage.

  They found the drayman lounging in front of the waystation corral. He had lived all his life among horses, and over the years grown to resemble them, his face elongated, his gaze wary. No woman would share his habits so the drayman had never married. Whores demanded double-fees because of the pungency of his musk, and wineshops discouraged his patronage for the same reason. The drayman had spotted the two rogue samurai approaching, and he elected to display voluntarily the coins clutched in his fist rather than risk being made to do so.

  This seems to be the full amount, Hasegawa said. Minus two coppers.

  Koda speculated that that must be the real price for the funeral rites for a horse at this waystation.

  I guess so.

  Hasegawa pulled off one copper and handed it back to the drayman. On account of how you took care of my money for me last night. The fee for that.

  The drayman wasn’t sure if he should accept it.

  And also because we’re looking for a situation that might require our talents, Hasegawa said. Maybe you can help us.

  What kind of situation you looking for?

  Hasegawa smiled at the drayman. Why don’t you make us a suggestion? You can keep that copper. No matter what.

  The drayman eyed Viper Koda uncertainly. That the case with him too?

  Hasegawa laughed. I guess you could try asking him.

  THEY CAUGHT UP WITH THE MERCHANT’S caravan at around the hour of the ram. The pack horses were grazing in a lush meadow, and the merchants and guards were sprawled in the shade of a mulberry grove.

  Hasegawa went over to talk with the man in charge.

  We heard you might need help.

  I already have help, said the merchant.

  We heard you might need more.

  Where’d you get all this about my needs?

  The drayman back there at the indigo dyer’s village.

  I don’t know him, the merchant said. Hasegawa just stood there so he added, What kind of work do you do?

  Blade work.

  The merchant looked down the road in the direction they were heading as if to suggest that better options might be available up ahead. I thought it’d be something like that, he said.

  We only charge for what’s unavoidable. And you only pay what it’s worth to you.

  So you’re not assassins?

  I wouldn’t use that word.

  That’s reassuring. The merchant still wouldn’t look at him. But like I said, I have what I need.

  Hasegawa saw Viper Koda watching him, his too-long sword carried over one shoulder much the way a peasant might tote a mattock. You let us know if you change your mind, Hasegawa said.

  By the hour of the monkey, Hasegawa and Koda had reached the outskirts of White Rock Village. A boy had been left there tethered to a roadside pine. He was a stunted little shirker dressed in a grimy short-robe held closed by a leather cord instead of a proper sash. His hair wasn’t trimmed; he stank of urine and chewed off his fingernails like a creature gone feral; and fuzz darkened his upper lip and chin. The boy had the comfort of the tree’s shade and a half-filled water gourd. Piles of stool littered the ground behind the tree in an arc, the radius of which was the length of the hemp rope that restrained him.

  Hasegawa asked the feral boy why he was being punished, and he said because he stole food.

  Why did he do that?

  When his father was absent, his stepmother denied him his share. And even when his father was home, she gave his stepsister the best bits while he got only the worst.

  Where was his father?

  The boy didn’t know.

  Why didn’t his father defend him?

  The boy didn’t know that either.

  Hasegawa handed him a rice ball and the feral boy bit into it. You want me to cut you out of your rope?

  The boy said he didn’t want that.

  Because it would anger your stepmother? Hasegawa squatted down beside him. At least you’ve got tree shade. And water.

  You’re samurai.

  That’s right.

  You know about things.

  Some things.

  The feral boy swallowed then said he’d been told that a stabbing tool could be fashioned out of a sharpened length of green bamboo. He said it was his understanding that anyone could do it. You just had to get the angle of the bevel right. He said there was said to be a place in a sleeping woman’s neck where her death was easily reached.

  Hasegawa glanced up at Old Koda the Viper then turned his attention to the meadow grass heating in the sunlight, with swallows darting above it taking insects, and scarlet clumps of spider lilies growing near a rill. And you want to know where it is?

  He bit into the rice ball again. They said you just slide it in.

  Who says that?

  I forget his name.

  And you think you could kill a person?

  The boy chewed with his mouth half-open, flecks of rice on his lips, his gaze unwavering. I guess that’s what we’re talking about.

  How old are you?

  Old enough.

  You think so.

  The boy pointed at his own neck. Just show me where it is.

  Hasegawa rose to his feet. He looked down at the feral boy gnawing on the rice ball in his grubby fist. Did he have any other siblings?

  Just the one. The stepmother’s own daughter.

  And you want to hurt her too?

  Hurt them both. But start with the stepmother. Just slide it in.

  You don’t need to know about things like that.

  You mean you won’t say. The feral boy grinned up at the two men. You’re some poor kind of samurai, aren’t you. I guess you just chop cabbages with those blades.

  Cut him loose, Koda said.

  He said he didn’t want that.

  I heard what he said. Viper Koda was straddling the boy with a slash knife in his fist, and the hemp rope came open, the severed ends lying on each side of him. You want to be tied up, you do it your own self, he said.

  The two samurai continued on into White Rock Village, accompanied by the endless cacophony of cicadas shrieking their summer urges. Horses fitted with pack frames were crowded in a corral, all their heads facing the same direction. Hasegawa stopped to scratch one on the nose. Koda stood watching him do it.

  I guess probably you don’t even think that a horse has a Buddha-nature, Hasegawa said.

  I don’t remember expressing an opinion about it, said Koda.

  I was just thinking about last night.

  Probably you’d be better off thinking about something else.

  Probably you’re right.

  They set out walking again.

  But, still, I guess you could look at the matter two ways, Hasegawa said. One way, that everything has the Buddha-nature. A horse, a dog, a man. Everything. And the other way, that only a man can have a Buddha-nature and everything else has something different. Of course, whichever way you choose, you’d still have the question of how you would know. But then I guess you’d always have that question anyway. How you’d know, I mean.

  This som
e kind of new concern for you? said Viper Koda.

  I guess you have to start somewhere, said Hasegawa. But I’m willing to listen to your opinion.

  I don’t have one, Koda said.

  I regret that.

  Koda said nothing.

  Because if you did, then we could debate it. I could for example assert that a horse does have the Buddha-nature, and you could take the opposing view. So then I would state the reasons why I held my belief, and you would question them and perhaps point out aspects of the situation which I hadn’t considered. So your suggestions would then require me to rethink my original position and perhaps adjust some portion of it. Which I would do. Then you would perhaps state your beliefs, and I would then bring out new arguments in response. And then you could reply as you saw fit. And so in this manner, we could spend the day in pleasant conversation.

  You seem like you have it all worked out already, said Koda. No reason for me to get involved.

  You don’t see the pleasure in speculating on the nature of things?

  I guess not, Koda said.

  THE INN AT WHITE ROCK DIDN’T accept masterless samurai. The innkeeper said he wouldn’t make exceptions. He said that in his experience, they couldn’t be trusted. Scabbard-brushers ready to brawl over nothing. He said they could eat and drink on the veranda, but not even double cash would get them a room inside.

  They established a bivouac just outside the village near a roadside shrine. You never know what might come past, said Hasegawa. They were still there the following morning when the feral boy found them. He had armed himself with a fish-gutter’s knife that he carried in a scabbard of his own devising, a crudely-wrought snarl of hemp cords wound around a couple of cask slats.

  I guess you didn’t expect to see me again so soon.

  The two samurai said nothing.

  I guess you must be wondering if I did it already, said the boy, letting his hand rest suggestively on the hilt of his fish knife. But I guess I’m not prepared to discuss the matter.

  Which means you didn’t do anything, said Viper Koda.

  The boy dropped into a squat in the middle of the road. You know I’m just like you, he said.