Stealth of the Ninja

by Philip Roy

  At seventy-five feet my head was much clearer but I felt terribly sick. I could see Sensei’s face better now without the flashlight. He looked sick, too. He wasn’t swimming anymore. He looked like he wanted to go to sleep too. Breathe! I took the regulator out of my mouth and blew bubbles and gestured to him with my hand. He nodded his head but he was sleepy now. I pushed my hand against his stomach and said, “Breathe!”

  At fifty feet, Sensei wasn’t communicating with me anymore, and I was feeling terribly sick. I was afraid I was going to throw up into the regulator. It was getting harder to breathe. I looked at the gauges. No wonder. There was no air left.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I broke the surface and saw Seaweed squawking on the hatch. He had squeezed past the burlap sack. I could hardly hear him. My head was splitting, and I was sick to my stomach. When I looked for Sensei, I saw him bobbing slowly to the surface, but he wasn’t moving on his own. Only now did I see that he was wearing a strap with metal bottles around his waist. This was helping him float. On his back was strapped the long bamboo sheath that held his sword.

  For a second I feared he was dead but he choked and coughed up seawater. Then I knew that he was alive, although unconscious. I unhooked the scuba tank, slipped out of the gear, and let it fall. I couldn’t help Sensei when I was wrapped up in it, especially with the way I was feeling. I could barely stay afloat myself.

  I took hold of Sensei under his arms and pulled him to the sub. He was thinner than before, and probably hadn’t eaten for eight days. When your body has no fat to burn, it will eat its own muscle.

  We leaned against the railing and rested. A little blood was coming from one of his ears. He had burst his eardrum. I put my fingers to my ears, and one of them was bleeding also. That’s why I couldn’t hear Seaweed. This was the second time in my life I had burst an eardrum. It would take months to heal properly. But we were alive, and Sensei was no longer trapped down in the ship. I couldn’t quite believe it.

  But was he okay? He was breathing but didn’t look good.

  It was hard to get him up the ladder and into the sub. I thought I was going to faint and drop him. He did slip the last few feet inside the portal because it was impossible to hold him and squeeze down the ladder at the same time. He landed on the wooden floor with a bump that seemed to wake him for a second or two. Then he rolled over and went back to sleep. Hollie came over and started licking his face but Sensei didn’t respond. I pulled out my camping mat and pillow, rolled Sensei onto it, then dropped onto my bed with a bucket and threw up.

  The walls were spinning like a merry-go-round, my head was throbbing with pain, and my stomach was the sickest it had ever been. There was nothing I could do to feel better but fall asleep, which took a long time. I just lay in my bed and watched the walls spin and spin, and felt the sickness in my stomach that I kept asking to go away but wouldn’t.

  When I woke, the walls were still spinning, and my headache was severe. I was still stomach sick but not as badly as before. It hurt to raise my head, but I wanted to check on Sensei. He had moved. He was lying next to Hollie beside the observation window with his eyes open but glassy.

  I sat up, dangled my feet over my cot, and waited to feel better before standing up. It never happened, so I got up anyway, made my way to the stove and put on the kettle. I looked at Sensei. He was staring at Hollie, who was staring back at him sympathetically. Hollie was the most sympathetic dog in the world. He knew when you weren’t feeling well, and would do everything he could to make you feel better.

  When the tea was ready, I poured two cups, put powdered milk and sugar in them, and carried them over to the observation window, spilling them because my hands were shaking so badly. Hollie’s tail was wagging. I sat down beside Sensei and offered him a cup. His eyes were droopy. He was feeling horrible, too. He nodded his head a little but didn’t reach for the cup. So I put it down beside him. Hollie stuck his nose in it. “Not for you, Hollie,” I said. My voice sounded far away. I raised my cup and took a sip. The tea was wonderful in my throat. It was a miracle we were alive.

  After a while I began to feel a little better. I made a pot of porridge and ate it with lots of brown sugar. I couldn’t get Sensei to take a bite, and he still hadn’t touched his tea. I bent down next to him and looked into his eyes. “Are you okay?” I asked. I made a thumbs-up sign and questioned him with my eyes. He tossed his head a little, and raised his thumb. At least he could hear me. Then he curled up in a ball and went back to sleep. He didn’t use the mat or pillow. I brought them over but he just shut his eyes. “Okay,” I said. “Sleep. I’ll make you some fresh tea when you wake.”

  We were at least three or four days’ sail from Okinawa, where Ziegfried was probably already waiting, which meant that we were three or four days late. I knew that Ziegfried would wait at least a week, if not more, but he would be worried. I felt badly about that.

  But the feeling was nothing compared to the fact that I had disobeyed him. How was I going to explain that?

  There was no point in worrying about it now. I just had to get us there. So I sealed the hatch, submerged to a hundred feet, where the sea was peaceful, engaged the batteries and pointed us in the direction of Okinawa.

  Sensei’s decompression sickness was worse than mine, not because he was older, I thought, but because he hadn’t breathed enough on the way up. He had burst an eardrum, but his lungs seemed to be okay. There was no blood coming from his mouth, and he wasn’t struggling to breathe. I did finally manage to have him drink a little tea. I carried over a fresh cup when I saw him stirring after another sleep. We had been quietly cutting through the water at sixteen knots for a few hours, but now we had to surface to recharge the batteries.

  Once he finished the tea, I rose to the surface, opened the hatch, and turned on the engine. A light rain fell down through the portal, collected in the trough below the floor, to be removed later by the sump pumps. I watched Sensei stare at the rain as if it were a miracle. In the belly of the ship he must have believed he was going to die.

  As the sub ploughed through choppy waves in darkness and rain, I stood at the stove and cut vegetables for a stew. I fried onions in oil, and sprinkled them with salt, pepper, and spices. Though I could barely hear the onions sizzle, the smell rose out of the pot, and Sensei turned his head towards it. A small smile appeared on his face. He must have been starving.

  Once the stew was ready, I carried him a bowl. But his hand was so shaky he could hardly hold the spoon. The stew kept falling off and Hollie kept licking it up. From a whole bowl of stew he had maybe a third. But he had bread, too, and chewed it very slowly, as if he were falling asleep. He never rose to his feet. I showed him where the bucket was for using the toilet, but he just nodded weakly. He was so sick. So I brought the bucket over and put it down beside him. Then he closed his eyes and slept for another ten hours.

  When he finally woke, he seemed a little better. He wanted to know where we were going. I carried over a map, pointed to where we were, then pointed to where we were headed.

  “Okinawa!” he said. He put his hand on his heart and shut his eyes. When he opened them, they were wet with tears.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The man lying on the floor was not the man I had known on the ship. Seven days without food or light, without good water, and certainly without fresh air, had seemed to shrink him to half the size he had been, which wasn’t very big to start. On top of that he had been injured on the way to the surface. How injured I didn’t know, but he needed medical attention. His breathing seemed shallower all the time, though I couldn’t hear well enough really to tell.

  One unexpected effect of his condition was that he began to talk. He struggled at first, speaking very slowly, stopping often to rest. Yet he seemed driven to do it, as if he felt he had to explain himself—not to me in particular, just to somebody. I was an eager listener. Like everything else about him his thoughts were well organized and came out clearly, as if he had be
en practising them the whole time he had been trapped in the ship.

  “My father was a strict man. I never saw him smile, ever … He was a traditionalist. Everything about old Japan he loved … With me, he was very strict, very hard. He told me what I would do, what I would think, what my life would be like from start to finish … But I rebelled. Like you, I wanted to see the world. I wanted to be free … My father tried to change me. He gave me many beatings before I ran away.”

  Sensei spoke softly. I had to sit right beside him to hear him above the ringing in my head. I didn’t want to miss a word.

  “My father was a very strong man. Me, I was just a skinny boy … Sixteen or seventeen. On my last beating, my father broke my arm … He had been teaching me ninjutsu, and was frustrated with me. I was too slow, too lazy. The next day, I left in the middle of the night … I never saw him again. Many years later I came back to see my mother. My father was dead then … I stood at his grave, and wept.”

  Sensei paused to rest and catch his breath.

  “Were you born in Okinawa?”

  “Yes. But I left to travel the world. I worked on ships. I did everything: cooking, cleaning, loading, unloading … I worked every day. I learned many skills. When I wasn’t working, I would read … I travelled to America, to Europe, to Canada, to Australia. I have been to Montreal many times.” He smiled.

  “I taught myself English by reading English books. Mark Twain. Jack London. Joseph Conrad. Charles Dickens …”

  Sensei winced and held his head with his hand.

  “Are you okay?”

  He looked wearily into my eyes. “I am still alive. That is not so bad. I thought I would die with my ship, but you are very determined … You do not ‘give up’.” He smiled again. “I think you and I are not so different.”

  I shrugged. “You would have done the same for me.”

  “I would.”

  “Where did you get your ship?”

  “My ship.” Sensei dropped his head and swung it side to side. “My ship has been with me for a long time. So many times I thought I was losing her, but she has always stayed with me. Now, finally, she is gone. All things pass away, even us.”

  “I am sorry.”

  He shook his head and took a sip of tea. I was anxious for him to continue.

  “When did you get your ship?”

  “After the war.”

  “The Second World War?”

  “Yes. I returned to Japan and served in the navy. Three times I was wounded from explosions on our ship … Not from the enemy. We carried weapons to the islands. It was very dangerous. So many people died. Young men like you. Then the bombs … and then it was over.” He took another drink of tea.

  “And then?”

  “After the war, ships were very cheap. I had saved all my money. I had American money. Very good in Japan then.”

  “So you bought your own ship?”

  He nodded. “I bought my ship, hired a crew, and began to transport plastic.”

  “Plastic?” I was surprised.

  “For many years I carried plastic goods around the world. Japanese industry grew very quickly after the war. Everywhere was plastic now. Everyone wanted it. Everyone liked it … It was new. It was cheap. What we used to make with ivory, shell, glass, and wood, we now made with plastic. It was easy to pack and transport. It didn’t break. You couldn’t destroy it … I made lots of money. I never thought about the environment. I never thought about the sea … Every day, every week, every month, every year, we filled my ship with all things plastic and carried them around the world. I believed we were doing good service to humanity.”

  Sensei laughed, and then coughed. It didn’t sound good.

  “When did it change for you? When did you start to feel differently?”

  “Not for a very long time. First, I bought a plastics factory.”

  “You owned a plastics factory?” I couldn’t believe it. “Did you stop sailing?”

  “For a while. I got married. I settled down.”

  “Did you have children?”

  “No. My wife could not have children.”

  He paused. He was far away in his memory.

  “She was sick for a long time. It was cancer. When she died, they told me she had been poisoned by my factory. Everyone got sick. Even I was sick too, but not with cancer. We didn’t know then how harmful the chemicals were when the plastic was hot. We didn’t wear masks …”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your wife.”

  “A long time ago. Then, I went back to sea. I became healthy again. I began to practise the ninjutsu my father had forced me to learn when I was young … All of the things he had taught me came back to me. It felt like he was there with me again. I wished I had been a better student. I wished I had been a better son. And then …”

  “And then?”

  “I began to see garbage in the sea. Every day more garbage than the day before. It was as if the land had become full, and it was now spilling over into the sea.”

  “Plastic?”

  “Yes, plastic, and nets, and dead animals. One day I saw a dolphin struggling with a plastic ring around its neck. I tried to save it but I was too late. It strangled itself to death.”

  “I’ve seen things like that, too.”

  “Yes. But this plastic ring had my name on it. It was made in my factory.”

  “Oh.”

  Sensei took a drink of tea and spoke over the cup. I had to lean closer to hear him.

  “It took me forty-five years to learn that everything I was doing was wrong. I was getting rich but I was destroying life. What good is that, to have money, but kill the very life that we love, kill the people we love, kill the sea? This is crazy. We humans are crazy.”

  “I know.”

  “So I closed my factory. I shut it down. I left everything behind and went to sea in my old ship, alone. I began to pick up plastic from the sea. I could never pick up a fraction of what I had manufactured but I could start … A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step … At seventy-five years of age I began to really live for the first time. I came to understand that we humans are just like the dolphins. No more important, no less. Now, I live for life, for the sea, for my garden.”

  “I’m sorry you lost your garden. It was so wonderful.”

  Sensei put his hand to his chest. “My garden is here. I carry it with me always.”

  I nodded.

  “Many times I have sailed my ship full of plastic to recycling plants in Tokyo. They think I am crazy there. I tell them we are all crazy, but it is better to save life than destroy it.”

  “What will you do now?”

  “Now, I will visit my brother in Okinawa. He has children. His children have children. He has always asked me to visit him. Now I think I will.”

  “Is he as old as you?”

  “No. He is younger. He is just a young man, maybe only ninety-two.” Sensei laughed a little, and then was overcome with coughing. A little blood came up when he did.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Two days later, as we approached Okinawa, Sensei’s condition worsened dramatically. He had stopped talking the day before. He seemed to go in and out of sleep, but his sleep was not restful. His breathing was so laboured, I was beginning to believe that his lungs had been damaged after all. With my help, I could get him to drink tea, but no longer to eat. I needed to get him to a hospital as quickly as possible. He was wasting away.

  When I spied the north of the island with the binoculars I felt hopeful, but by then Sensei had slipped into unconsciousness and I was also beginning to feel desperate. It was the middle of the night. I motored up and down the north of the island, looking for a fire on the beach but not finding one. When I was pretty sure I had found the most northerly of the beaches, I dropped anchor, inflated the dinghy, and rowed to the beach.

  It was a starry night and the moon was still out. I could see the silhouettes of logs and rocks on the beach but no tents. Had Ziegfried alread
y come and gone?

  Hollie charged out of the dinghy like a cannonball. Then he began to scour every inch of sand and rock as fast as he could. Nobody ever loved a beach as much as he did, not even Seaweed, who was already here, attacking scurrying crabs in the moonlight.

  I pulled the dinghy above the high tide line and tied it to the heaviest log I could find, though it wasn’t windy. With poor hearing it was harder to gauge the elements.

  I was nervous. How was I going to explain to Ziegfried what had happened? Would he be angry? Would he be disappointed in me? That’s what worried me the most. But I just couldn’t have lived with myself if I had let Sensei die. Would Ziegfried understand that? I was so nervous about it, I was jittery.

  Where was he? I walked up and down the beach looking for a tent, or a car, or a campfire, or extra-large footsteps, or any evidence he had been here, and found nothing. The horizon was blue now. The sun was coming up. Where was Hollie? He was here a few minutes ago. It was confusing when you couldn’t hear properly, and your head was ringing constantly. I was so tired. I just wanted to go to bed and wake up to find everything was better. And then I felt a heavy hand come down on my shoulder. I nearly jumped out of my sneakers. I turned around, and there was Ziegfried, with a confused look on his face.

  He called my name, but the ringing inside my head was so loud now I could barely hear him. He reached over and gave me one of his great bear hugs, which prevented me from breathing until he let go, which took a while. When he did, I almost fell. Ziegfried was speaking quickly, with excited gestures, but I wasn’t following him. He looked confused. What was wrong? He questioned me with his face. I pointed to my ear and shook my head. And then, try as I might, I couldn’t keep my tears from falling.