Stealth of the Ninja

by Philip Roy

  We moved the sub on a dark rainy night. We left the rented car at a fishing wharf on the south side of the island, just an hour’s drive from Naha, and then spent the better part of the day motoring north in the fishing boat that Ziegfried described as “a washing machine in a bucket.” The rain started in the afternoon. The boat coughed, shook, wheezed, and gasped for air until it reached six knots, its top speed. It was a long, slow trip, but Hollie and Seaweed seemed to enjoy it. And we did get a good look at the east coast of the island, even in the rain.

  When we reached the north of the island and discovered the sub where we had left her, I was so relieved. I just wanted to crawl into my bed and have a good sleep. But Ziegfried said we had better continue around the point and down the west side of the island while it was still dark. The less attention we drew to ourselves the better. So I made a pot of tea and Ziegfried made a pot of coffee. He ploughed through the waves for the rest of the night in the boat, and I followed underneath in the sub. Hollie and Seaweed chose to stay on the boat, where they knew they’d be spoiled with food and attention. My only consolation was a large bag of candy I had bought in Naha, which didn’t have any iron or B12 in it but sure kept my spirits up throughout the long night.

  It took a lot of skill to stay right underneath the boat. It helped that her engine was so rough, because I couldn’t hear it well enough to tell when she was pulling ahead, or dropping behind, or veering to port or starboard, but I could feel the absence of her vibrations above my head. Whenever I grew sleepy and didn’t notice, I’d have to raise the periscope and find her again. Once the sun was up, however, and we sailed into the area north of Naha, where the American military base was, I had to stay alert. Not only was it necessary to appear as one vessel on sonar and radar, the sub had to be directly beneath the boat so that it would be invisible from the air.

  In truth, we weren’t as afraid of being caught by the American navy as we were by the Japanese coast guard. My experience with the Americans had always been positive; they did not consider me an outlaw. They might demand that I sail on the surface within the three-mile zone, as required by international law, but they surely wouldn’t see me as a criminal in the way that Japanese authorities would.

  We needn’t have worried. From the water, the American base appeared just as quiet as everywhere else on Okinawa except Naha. By mid-morning we were sitting in front of the boathouse. I was absolutely exhausted. The last two hundred feet had been too shallow for the sub to stay beneath the fishing boat, so I had to drop behind, raise the periscope, and follow Ziegfried in, with the nose of the sub touching the stern of the boat. Once at the boathouse, Ziegfried jumped out, swung open the boathouse doors, and I glided the sub inside. We sealed the boathouse, and I went straight to bed. Ziegfried made another pot of coffee and motored the fishing boat all the way back to its cove, where he picked up the rental car, and drove back. I was dead to the world even before he left the boathouse.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  After a good long sleep I began my job as Ziegfried’s lackey, which, truth be told, wasn’t the most rewarding experience in the world. Ziegfried was one of the nicest people you could ever meet, that is, once you got to know him, but you wouldn’t know it when he was working.

  His mind was so focused on the task at hand that he would forget things like saying please and thank you when he asked me to pass him a tool, or fetch something. And if he looked at work I had done, such as filing clean a valve opening, or scraping off old paint, and it wasn’t quite up to his standards, he’d tell me to do it over again in a cold, logical, scientific tone. If you were looking for encouragement, or a pat on the back, you wouldn’t find it here, not now. This was a time for work.

  After a whole morning of being ordered around like a slave, I was glad to lose myself for the rest of the day in the lonely scraping and sanding of the hull.

  It was slow, tedious, muscle-aching work, but I kept telling myself how nice it would be to have the sub slicing through the water a few knots faster with a new coat of paint, or, well, five coats of paint. I remembered the barnacle skirt of Sensei’s ship, how sluggish it was under sail, and that inspired me to stay at it.

  Even though I couldn’t hear terribly well, I had to wear earphones to block the screeching of the electric sander, because the vibrations would damage my ears. I also had to wear eye goggles and a face mask with special filters to protect my lungs from the toxic dust of the paint. Wrapped up in these protective masks, and wearing heavy cotton overalls and gloves, I sweated constantly. I had to stop every now and then to guzzle a bottle of water, and kept a bag of candy on the go to keep up my energy.

  After five days without a break, except taking Hollie for walks, we received an invitation to Sensei’s brother’s house. We were invited for dinner. Thank Heavens! Not only was I relieved to get away from the boathouse for an evening, I was looking forward to seeing Sensei again.

  The only problem was that we didn’t have any clean clothes. Neither did we have a shower or bathtub to wash up in. We were living in the boathouse day and night, cleaning ourselves in a bucket of fresh water, and shaking our clothes out in the wind. We simply couldn’t afford the time to go to a laundromat, or wash our clothes by hand. We didn’t realize how bad we actually stank until we stepped outside in the sunshine and examined each other.

  I thought we were maybe passable, but Ziegfried said I had spent too much time at sea with a dog and a seagull, and could no longer tell the difference between dirty and clean. We couldn’t visit Sensei’s brother’s home looking and smelling like two hoboes, he said. So we scrubbed extra hard with soap to get the dirt and grime off, spot-cleaned our clothes, and shook them out to dry. Then we inspected each other again.

  “I hope I’m cleaner than you,” Ziegfried said seriously.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  So we stopped at a department store on the way, bought two inexpensive pairs of pants, two pairs of socks, and two flowery shirts. Ziegfried said we’d be leaving our shoes outside anyway so we didn’t have to buy new ones. For Ziegfried, we bought the largest pants and shirt they had, but the pants still only came halfway up his legs. He covered the rest of his hairy legs with long black socks that were meant for playing soccer. The only shirt that fit him was a stretchy one that pulled uncomfortably tight, and looked ready to burst. Ziegfried also bought a small bottle of cologne, which I thought was a terrible idea. He splashed the whole thing on both of us until we smelled like a flower shop. Although it was way too strong for my nose, Ziegfried said it was better than smelling like old stinky paint cans. I wasn’t so sure.

  Sensei’s brother lived in a tidy wooden house that was rather plain but had a beautiful garden outside and a view of the sea. Sensei met us at the door and we exchanged bows and warm handshakes. I was so happy to see him. He looked much better. He introduced us to his family once again, and we met his great-grandnieces and nephews, including Himari, the girl who had frowned at me in the hospital.

  I couldn’t believe it was the same girl. She had long black hair, chestnut eyes, creamy skin, red lips, and long curled eyelashes. She wore a traditional Japanese dress over her lean curvy body. Standing in slippers, she was the same height as me. She was, to be honest, the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. As I reached out to take her hand, she said to me, “You saved my great-granduncle’s life.” And she bowed low.

  It was the first time I understood the expression: “to have someone take your breath away.” She did that to me.

  Himari was very confident, if a little bossy. She seemed mature for her age, but was not much older than me. When she took a close look at us, I think she wanted to laugh. How I wished we had rented a hotel room to take a bath. At the very least I wished we hadn’t bought the cheapest clothes in the store. There was nothing we could do about it now. Everyone looked at Ziegfried’s socks and pants, and I was impressed that they never laughed.

  For dinner we had sushi and rice with all sorts of fish a
nd vegetables in small dishes. Everything was tasty. I expected to see jellyfish, but there weren’t any.

  At first, the conversation was quiet, polite, and serious. Everyone spoke about the tsunami, the nuclear meltdown, and the terrible loss of life. But after a while the conversation grew animated, especially after Ziegfried, Sensei, and his brother drank sake, a drink with alcohol, which Ziegfried really liked, but I couldn’t stomach. Himari sipped it slowly, which made me want to like it, but I just couldn’t swallow it. I still couldn’t understand why people liked alcohol. As far as my taste buds were concerned, it was just another fuel. You could light it with a match, and you could burn it in an engine.

  I didn’t want to be rude and stare at Himari, but she kept staring at me the whole time.

  For dessert we had all sorts of extremely sweet rice cakes and cookies. I ate so many that I grew sleepy. I knew it wasn’t polite to over-eat when you were invited for dinner, but Himari kept pushing the plates of cookies in front of me, and since I couldn’t hear well enough to know what was making everyone else laugh so hard, I had nothing to do but eat. Ziegfried was sitting next to Sensei, and they were talking a lot, but I couldn’t hear them.

  After a while, Himari went to Sensei’s seat to ask him something. She spoke into his good ear, and he nodded his head and smiled at me. Then she excused herself from the table, and gestured very politely for me to follow her, which I did. She led me to a martial arts studio in the back of the house and asked me to wait there for a moment. I stood in the middle of the room, looking at the shiny steel swords on the wall. I saw dozens of wooden sticks in a large bucket and wire mesh masks hanging from hooks. This was a serious training studio. Himari returned wearing a white suit and black belt. She was talking excitedly now, though I couldn’t hear every word. She pulled down two masks, handed one to me, and pulled out two wooden swords from the bucket. She tossed one towards me exactly the way Sensei would have. Unlike on the ship, I caught it. But did she intend to fight me? She pulled on her mask, so I did the same.

  I didn’t know what Sensei had told her about me, or why she would think I could fight, but she took an attack position and raised her wooden sword. The food in my stomach made loud gurgling noises. Oh boy.

  I had never fought with a girl before and had been raised that you didn’t hit girls, even if they hit you. I was taught that a man who struck a girl was a coward and a bully. This made a fight with Himari, even a wooden sword fight, tricky for me.

  It wasn’t tricky for her. She was obviously very used to fighting with boys, and she came at me as a warrior in full attack mode.

  I was surprised to discover that just two weeks of intensive training with Sensei on the ship, during which I suffered more cuts, bruises, and sheer pain than at any other time in my life, had greatly sharpened my reflexes and ability to defend myself. So when Himari’s stick swung through the air lightly and quickly, I met it with mine just in time to prevent it from hitting me. Clack! went the sticks. Gurgle, gurgle, went my belly.

  I couldn’t see her face through the mask, but I thought I heard her laugh. I wasn’t sure. She swung again, and I blocked it. She twirled her whole body around in a movement I never saw Sensei make, and when her stick cut through the air it didn’t come straight, it curved at the last second and struck me on the leg. It hurt, but I didn’t show it. Now I had another dilemma: I didn’t want her to think that I couldn’t fight. She wouldn’t respect me if she could beat the pants off me, and I did want her to respect me.

  And so, I buckled down and focused very hard to defend myself. Himari came at me more and more aggressively without ever striking me a second time. I swung to defend myself, without ever intending to strike her. But I did.

  She had backed me into a corner. She must have known I was purposefully trying not to hit her, and yet she kept attacking and attacking. One time when I swung back very hard to block her swing, my stick missed her stick and struck her on the side of her mask with a loud whack!

  She stepped back. It must have hurt, and I wondered if it made her angry. She swung around in a circle twice, very quickly, like before. She was just a blur. When she came out of the spin, her stick was close to the ground. I jumped and it missed me. I was now in a perfect position to strike her on the mask again, and she knew it. But I didn’t do it. I bent my knees instead and waited for her next strike. But it never came. She pulled off her mask. “Pretty good,” she said. “Let’s try something else.”

  We put the sticks and masks away. She stood in front of me and told me to grasp her arm firmly. So I did. She tugged at me, and I tugged back. Then she made a quick movement towards me, and the next thing I knew I was flying over her back and landing on the floor behind her. The gas in my belly came up my throat and out my mouth in one loud fast burp. It sounded exactly like a large pig.

  “Excuse me,” I said. I jumped to my feet. She was smiling and sweating, and looked very pleased. She was so beautiful. “I could teach you judo,” she said.

  “I think I’d like that.”

  She could have taught me how to clean out a sewer, and I would have liked it.

  After a few more flips, and a kind of back and forth wrestling, which made me giddy, Himari wanted to show me her room, and another skill she was expert at—painting. She had an easel in front of the window, and the walls were covered with very skillful paintings of trees and birds and nature scenes. I was impressed. She kept talking, even though I couldn’t hear every word. I just loved the sound of her voice. How nice it would be to learn Japanese, too. I was just beginning to wonder if Ziegfried was right about moving to Okinawa when he appeared at the door.

  “Time to go, Buddy.”

  “Really?” It felt like we had just got here.

  “I think you’ll have to drive, Al. I’ve had too much sake.”

  “Okay.”

  Sensei’s brother appeared at the door and insisted we stay over. That sounded pretty good to me but Ziegfried politely refused. We thanked our guests over and over, promising we would visit again as we climbed into the little car. Himari stood at the door with her elders and frowned. She didn’t want me to go, and I didn’t want to leave. I could still smell the sweet mix of her sweat and perfume, which was a world away from the cheap cologne we were wearing.

  It was a sign of Ziegfried’s confidence in me that he would ask me to drive the car back when I didn’t have a license and had never driven on the left side of the road, as they do in Japan. But as it was a small city and late, there were almost no cars on the road. It didn’t take me long to get the hang of it.

  Ziegfried’s fatigue had finally caught up with him. He fell asleep after only ten minutes in the car. I had a hard time waking him when we got back. He staggered into the boathouse, flopped down on his sleeping mat, and went to sleep for twelve hours. I climbed into the sub with Hollie, fed him, tried to wash off the cologne, brushed my teeth, and dropped onto my cot with a smile. I couldn’t stop thinking of Himari.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  For the next two weeks we worked hard refitting the sub, and didn’t often leave the boathouse. I spent so much time wrapped up in goggles and masks that I felt like a spaceman. Fortunately there was always a good breeze, and we left the windows open for fresh air, although we had to hang makeshift curtains so that people couldn’t see inside. Although few people ever came close enough, we were extra careful. All it would take would be one person to see the sub, recognize Hollie and me from news footage a few months earlier, and call the police. However unlikely that might be, we just couldn’t take the risk.

  If we needed something, Ziegfried usually went into town alone and I stayed in the boathouse. But sometimes we did go together so I could help search for hoses, valves, pipes, nuts and bolts, or whatever was needed. While we could have bought those things new, they cost next to nothing at the junkyard; it only made sense to save as much money as possible, especially when the paint was expensive. Ziegfried had found a supplier for the paint in Naha, and had
cut a deal for it, something he was expert at doing.

  The few times we did go into the city together we picked up food items to restock the sub for the trip across the Pacific. I was planning to stop in Saipan, where I had been before and knew people. I could refuel there and restock with fresh fruit and vegetables. Still, as Saipan was fifteen hundred miles away, Ziegfried insisted we restock as much of the dried and canned food as possible. You never know when you might have to leave in a hurry, he said.

  Once I had finished scraping, belt-sanding, and preparing the outside hull for painting, and once we had applied the primer, there was nothing more for me to do until it dried, which would take two days before we could begin repainting. For the first few hours we couldn’t even stay in the boathouse; it was too toxic. So we lay down on the grass outside, stared up at the clouds and rested. I took the chance to suggest that maybe we could visit Sensei again, as Himari had offered to teach me judo, which I thought would be an important skill to learn.

  Staring up at the clouds and chewing on a piece of dry grass, Ziegfried said, “Judo?”

  “Yes. It’s excellent self-defence. It could come in really handy, you know, if I were ever attacked again. I’ve been attacked before, you know?”

  “By who? Himari?”

  “No. I was attacked by a pirate in South Africa.”

  “That’s terrible, Al. And you feel that if you knew judo you could have better defended yourself?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Well, that’s something to think about. Maybe when you get back to Newfoundland we can find you a teacher of judo.”