The Far Shore

by Paul T. Scheuring

I asked, “What about the American?”

  “Which one?” Morio in turn asked, then smiled. “There are a lot of them.”

  “The prisoner Allen.”

  “What about him?”

  “I thought he was going to kill you.”

  “That’s not the kind of hate that’s in him.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “Very little. He asked me a question.”

  “What did he ask you?”

  “The name of the town where the Buddha was enlightened.”

  Morio went to bed after that, and we spoke no more. In fact, I never spoke to Morio again. Morio was taken to the American hospital the next day and didn’t come back. A few days later, I learned that Morio had died.

  Within a week, Japan had formally surrendered, and within another month, I, along with most of the three-and-a-half million enlisted soldiers still on the islands had been demobilized. The Americans went about diligently finding out who would be subject to war crime prosecution while either dismissing or repurposing the rest of the troops. In my case, I was tasked to a disposal unit, whose responsibility was the destruction of the Imperial Army’s weapons and materiel. It was remarkable how much remained. For an island nation bombed to its knees, and nearly to oblivion, it had continued to churn out the things of war, in incredible numbers, all the way up until the end. So I toiled with my fellow soldiers, taking apart the very things that had represented duty, mission, and meaning just a few weeks earlier. We cut rifles with acetylene torches, burnt tanks with thermite grenades, re-smelted the leftover steel in blast furnaces, which was in turn turned over to the Japanese Home Ministry. It turned out that the JHM, in accordance with the American occupiers’ orders, was repurposing that steel for peacetime purposes—bridges, girders, street poles, and such. And who ran the factories with those blast furnaces, with the smelting facilities to create all those new girders? The Mistui Corporation. War or peace, they would make their money. The executives that I encountered in the plant seemed to take the loss of the war—so humiliating to so many of the soldiers around me—in stride. Perhaps they always had the same agenda, before, during, and after the war. Make money on things other men pulled out of the ground. It was just a matter of whom they sold it to, for what reason. In some ways, maybe they were the victors, because they had survived, their agenda intact, their worldview unscathed. It was the fools—the soldiers like myself, sweating before those infernal blast furnaces—that had taken the bait, that had embraced the wayward impermanence of ideology, and for that we were suffering that cataclysmic, cloven reality. How could it be that the sublime beauty of a katana blade—the physical embodiment of the Bushidō code—could be turned into something so mundane and ignoble as a sewer pipe hidden forever beneath the streets?

  But that is the problem, isn’t it? The executive sees either one as a piece of steel; the soldier assigns it an arbitrary significance. I must say, as strange as it sounds, from the perspective of a monk, the executive is closer to the reality of things. Steel is steel. There is no reason in it, no deliverance, no answer. But an eighteen-year-old doesn’t see this.

  And this also, incidentally, is the perspective I now have on the matter. I did not view it with such detachment at the time. For as an eighteen-year-old, I was still subject to the intense sway of emotions. Yes, perhaps I had become disenchanted with the lies of war, but while I had come to the realization that the Americans were not necessarily subhumans, but rather people on the other side of an ideological disagreement, I could not think with such nuance about the corporatists. The Mitsuis! Getting away scot-free while the tribunals prosecuted officers and soldiers for war crimes. Hadn’t the Mitsuis—and all the corporatists—gotten rich peddling steel, the very same bloodstained steel that was now being re-smelted, the blood of the real dupes—the enlisted Americans and Japanese—being purified away in the blast furnaces, so that they could once again resell it?

  They were the enemy now in my mind. For there always has to be an enemy, doesn’t there? You’d think a young man wouldn’t know what to do if there wasn’t some bad guy out there somewhere! I guess we need it to dimensionalize ourselves—give shapes to our identities by rejecting someone or something. At least that was the case for me. I would define myself in negative. I would be all they were not.

  So, in a fit of pique, once I was relieved of disposal work in November of that year, I became a monk! Some young men, consumed by passion, run off and join the circus, or elope, but I ordained and took the robe! Such are the vicissitudes of a young man’s heart. I really had no interest in Buddhism, and certainly not monastic life, but it was a statement—it was all that the corporatists were not. It’s likely that I first got the notion from Morio, when he had talked about the fact that monks never touched money. That’s all I wanted—never to touch money again. And maybe at the beginning, it was more about the statement then the practicalities themselves. But I dove into it with the ardor that I had originally put into being an Imperial soldier. Where before I’d given my all to the military drills, now I did so with concentration practice.

  Anyhow, my path from novitiate to now is probably of little interest to you. I only bring this up because I feel those two men—Gray and Morio—my encounter with them put in motion a certain karmic momentum that led me to be a monk. In some ways, they were two sides of the same coin. Morio was the intellectualization of the process—he had a feverish need for liberation, which he tried to arrive at through intense logic and mentation (two methods that don’t get you there, by the way)—while Gray seemed to have a calm endurance and prepossession, an ability to inhabit the places of pain in which the seeds of liberation reside, and at the same time had little to no interest in the intellectualization of the process. He was, though he didn’t know it—and I think Morio rightly identified this about him—blessed with that supreme forbearance in the face of suffering that is a hallmark of all Arakans.

  LILY: Arakans?

  KESUKE (via interpreter): A perfected person. One who has attained enlightenment.

  LILY: You think he attained enlightenment?

  KESUKE (via interpreter): Oh, no. I don’t think so. Enlightenment is quite a bit more work than that! No, it’s just that, how should I put this? Some people are further along the path than others. Some are born with innate ability to see the truth, to abide in the face of suffering, and see the face of liberation through it. More theistic schools of Buddhism will suggest that this is because the person has led a series of karmically positive lives beforehand. But I am not a reincarnationist. Zen doesn’t trouble itself with those kinds of questions.

  LILY: What do you think happened to Gray?

  KESUKE (via interpreter): It’s hard. The past invariably gets romanticized. But I do think Gray fundamentally was a seeker. The questions that he asked. His attunement to the spiritual struggle. And again, that ingrained forbearance. The fact that he chose not to go with his fellow soldiers—it’s in some ways a young man’s knee-jerk reaction, isn’t it? Just as mine was. A rejection. A statement. And I’m to understand that he never returned to America…

  LILY: That’s right.

  KESUKE (via interpreter): Well, if you ask me, as an old monk, with nostalgia in my eye, I say he went to Bodh Gaya. I don’t know this, but I guess I hope this, because being a monk, giving over fifty years of my life to meditation, I have come a very long way, but I am still horribly short of being an Arakan. That man, he seemed to have a higher foundation than the rest of us at that time. So, I suppose I think, what would those same fifty years of meditation do to a man who was so much further along than I was when I started? Maybe he would be an Arakan. But again, I don’t know.

  XIX

  She is later in her hotel room.

  The space Japanese, minimal.

  A place for thoughts.

  And she is, of course, thinking.

  Weighing all of this.

  Weighing how Gray survived the War.

  A man not Killed in A
ction.

  Merely disappeared, of his own accord, for reasons that were his own, from the War and from the world.

  What were you thinking in those final moments, Gray?

  When you turned your back on freedom and your own countrymen?

  You were made of hate, by your own admission.

  It was your foundation, your Cross.

  (Though you would probably turn that hate on me for bringing a religious notion like that to things, because it seems you rejected religion just as much as you did nationalism.

  You didn’t want anyone telling you what was what, did you?)

  Now the bigger question is how long you survived.

  To where did you walk?

  How many steps did you take ’til life intervened irrevocably?

  Where did you die?

  Or is it that my inkling is right, that you are still alive, that you’re somewhere, still breathing, the great mysterious truth at the end of this story?

  She in some ways hopes he is dead.

  So that she does not have to confront a man with that much trauma in him.

  A man so driven by demons.

  Better to be among the good-natured, the shallow.

  Like Bradley, Bruce.

  Because then she doesn’t have to think.

  Doesn’t have to ask questions.

  Or look squarely at things.

  She didn’t know sake could be served chilled.

  She didn’t know much about sake at all, only being exposed to it a few times on doomed dates, which always seemed to take place at sushi restaurants.

  Maybe they took her to sushi restaurants because the booze flowed freely there.

  It was not wine by the glass or even wine by the bottle, measured attempts to look sophisticated on the way to getting drunk, and perhaps later into bed.

  No, in those sushi restaurants it was Kampai! and beers flowing and sake shots, the chefs drinking right alongside you.

  Her date could still seem sophisticated, because a sushi restaurant proves he’s something more than a burger-boy construction worker, though that’s what she invariably sat across from, what she attracted.

  It wasn’t ever really about the sushi, was it?

  It was about the booze and the speed it got into your date’s veins.

  A drunk date, after all, is the best date.

  Or so that seemed to be the case with her.

  They wanted her drunk.

  To loosen her up, maybe.

  This over-thinker, this doubter of men and in many ways life.

  Or maybe because of her girth, it was their own accelerated inebriation they sought!

  “To hell with getting her drunk to get her into bed!

  I need to be drunk!”

  Oh, to be fat and not give a shit.

  To know men, the easy ones, she would take that.

  Anything besides depth, complexity.

  Because, as far as she saw, in the depths of people, things did not get easier, lighter.

  Case in point: Gray.

  People did not hold at their core some sunny paradise.

  Some Corona commercial with hammocks and white sand beaches.

  No, people went to white sand beaches to get away from their cores.

  People were shallow because shallow serves.

  We invented distraction for a reason.

  Perfected it for thousands of years for a reason.

  A checked-out brain is an untroubled brain.

  And she is well on her way to being checked-out.

  No warmed-up cheap sake here.

  It’s chilled, elegant.

  Arriving at the table courtesy of Bradley and Bruce like a bottle of wine.

  But a bottle of wine to be slammed.

  Because these two like to drink.

  There’s no affect here, no first-date attempts to appear measured.

  Whoom, the glasses get knocked back.

  This stuff is supposed to be the expensive stuff.

  But Bradley and Bruce are drinking it like swill.

  And she is right there with them.

  O the feathers in her brain.

  The full-body massage the booze gives her.

  Nothing better.

  Nothing better than this, right now, this moment.

  Bradley’s drunk, his gin blossoms in full bloom.

  You think there’s any merit to this business, he’s saying.

  This bad-guy-uh business.

  Which, of course, makes Bruce hoot.

  Bad-guy-uh, I love it!

  Bradley looks at him blankly.

  It’s bod-guy-uh!

  Suddenly you’re the expert?

  No, I was just listening to the old guy, that’s all!

  So was I, but you try listening with a pair of ninety-one-year-old ears.

  Just you wait, sonny.

  Just you wait ’til the wheels start coming off.

  Then you’ll be hearing bad-guy-uh everywhere.

  Cheers to that, Bruce says, and everyone clinks glasses.

  Whoom, more feathers.

  They walk back toward the hotel from the restaurant.

  If Japan is quiet during the day, the nights are a void.

  At least in this town.

  Here, even the insects are polite.

  No crickets, cicadas, nothing.

  Just that silence.

  That silence made for thinking.

  Which she, Bruce, and Bradley fill with words.

  It’s not a lead, it’s not, says Bruce.

  They’re again talking about Bodh Gaya.

  Well, it’s something, she says.

  Yeah, and sometimes something’s nothing, you know what I mean?

  This comes from Bruce again.

  He’s made of smiles in the moonlight, not a care in the world.

  Well, I’m going, she says impetuously.

  She’s made out of smiles too.

  It’s a slide show, this night.

  That at any rate is how she will remember it.

  The booze has chopped it into a sequence of still images, narrowly related.

  They are eating ice cream at a 7-11.

  (They have 7-11s in Japan?)

  The air-conditioning inside is a hammer, even at midnight.

  Japan doesn’t wear summer well in a lot of spots.

  Outside is relentless humidity.

  In here, though, it is ice.

  They’re moving through the tiny store, its tiny aisles.

  Eating the ice cream bars—not Klondike, but some Japanese version of the same—as they pay the clerk.

  Somewhere in here hands touch.

  Hers and Bruce’s.

  An accident.

  Going for wallets or some such thing.

  But he holds on, ever so briefly, two fingers warm around her pinky.

  Meaning in that.

  Meaning in his eyes when they meet gazes, share bullshit smiles.

  Both of them: beyond romance.

  Aware of the silliness and obviousness and hopelessness of men and women and the things they hope to get out of each other.

  Then they’re back in the street, splashing out into the humidity from the arctic interior of the convenience store.

  Then another image, the door of Bradley’s hotel room, closest to the elevator.

  A Good Night being shared.

  Bradley is going to sleep.

  The door is closed and Bruce and Lily are left together in the hall, chaperone-less.

  She knows exactly what is going to happen.

  Both she and Bruce talk a big game.

  About how they are islands, indifferent.

  But they are also travelers, on the far side of the world, the mores of back home not relevant here.

  They are a man and a woman, drunk, with a certain rapport, with only the loneliness of their respective empty hotel rooms waiting for each of them.

  Hell, this thing’s going to happen, isn’t it, she thinks.

 
Fate seems to have so decreed.

  He ain’t a looker, he ain’t a keeper.

  But he’s fun.

  And they’re not living in a reality anyhow, not on this side of the world.

  So they end up in Lily’s room, if only because it is the shortest walk from Bradley’s.

  It’s all laughter and clothes flying and sake-breathed kisses.

  Minds oblivious to all else, attuned only to the body.

  Distraction was invented for a reason.

  Right when it gets to the point of no return—when he’s about to close the deal—

  —no, when she’s about to close the deal!—

  —she nevertheless says something that brings it all to a screeching halt.

  Not on purpose.

  It just comes out, as he’s hovering there, ready to descend.

  It’s meant to encourage him, reassure him:

  I can’t get pregnant.

  To which he briefly stops…

  It’s been cut out of me, she says.

  Her whole soul immediately cringes as soon as she says this—

  (Word choice, Lil!

  It’s been cut out of me?!)

  She knows she’s driven a dagger through the whole thing, even before he disengages from her, sits up, processing.

  But she has over time learned not to belabor things, to over-explain things.

  That’s been her motto with this whole thing.

  Because the more you talk about something, the more uncomfortable it gets.

  Just state the facts, the simplest essence of things.

  People will either understand or they won’t.

  But you will not help things by apologizing or rationalizing.

  It is what it is.

  (Though, no doubt about it, you’re a goddamn Viking tonight, Lil!

  It’s been cut out of me?!

  Nothing like visions of medieval surgery to prime the passion pump!)

  Bruce eyes her, uncomfortable.

  That something you want to talk about?

  He says this dutifully, as if it is his obligation to ask, though he would rather not.

  She gets the sense he is already trying to figure out how to extricate himself from the situation.

  No no no, says Lily, dismissive.

  Trying to gain control of the ship again.

  Trying to keep the baggage in the hold.