Haiku

by Andrew Vachss

  When Chica finished, she approached where I was sitting. She bowed deeply before she said, “May I ask a question, master?”

  I returned her bow, then spread my hands to indicate permission. “Yes, my daughter,” I intoned.

  “Am I ready?” is all she asked.

  Did I ask, Ready for what? Did I even consider the possible ramifications of her question? Did I give such a dedicated and devoted student the simple respect of inquiry?

  No.

  Instead, I sonorously proclaimed, “The truth is inside you, child. Allow it to guide you. Follow its path.”

  Chica bowed, nodding as if I had just answered her Life Question.

  As truth revealed, I had pronounced her death sentence.

  26

  Days later, one of my most trusted students saw Chica’s photograph in the newspaper and took it upon himself to bring it to my attention, placing it upon my desk without comment.

  The photograph accompanied an account of Chica’s death. She was described as twenty-three years of age, pursuing a graduate degree while residing in housing provided by the university. The night after we spoke, a violent confrontation had taken place between her and a man whose name I did not recognize.

  The man was identified as Chica’s stepfather. He told the police that Tracey—the name underneath her photograph—had surprised him with a midnight visit. However, he had instructed the doorman to allow her admittance, assuming she was going to ask him for financial assistance, as she had done many times before.

  But once inside, his stepdaughter had “gone berserk” and suddenly attacked him without provocation. He suffered broken ribs, a spiral fracture of his left arm, and impact injuries to his face.

  “I think she must have been high on something,” he was quoted as saying. “It was like she was a different girl.”

  Yes, I remember thinking to myself. Not Tracey. Chica.

  By the grace of fortune, the stepfather had been just about to put the licensed pistol he carried for self-protection away for the night. He had a special safe for just that purpose, but upon being notified Tracey was already on her way up, he had hurriedly slipped the pistol into the pocket of his robe. Under the force of such a relentless attack, he had no choice. …

  By the time the police arrived, Chica was dead. A gunshot wound to the chest, at close range.

  27

  My gift allowed me to watch as the events played on the screen of my mind, as if on an endless loop. I saw Chica’s stepfather push a button on his desk, and speak to what I realized must be the sentry at the entrance to his building. I saw him remove a pistol from his desk and slide it into the left side pocket of his lounging robe. I saw him place a bottle of wine and two glasses on a side table. I watched as he opened the door.

  Chica entered the apartment, and the man closed the door behind her. She was balanced, aware.

  The man seated himself and spoke to Chica. As she answered, he poured two glasses of wine.

  Chica approached the large, upholstered chair in which the man half-reclined. She spoke. What had been a knowing smile slid from his face, as if a mask was dropping.

  Chica lashed him with her words. His complexion changed. Anger began to take possession, replacing the confident self-control draining from his spirit.

  Chica bent at the knees, so slightly that only a trained practitioner would notice. Venom spewed from her mouth.

  Inducing the attack.

  When it came, Chica stepped back as if shocked, allowing her stepfather to gain his feet and draw back his hand to slap her face in a gesture so callously confident that it was clearly habituated.

  Chica slid behind his outstretched arm, and snapped it with a single, perfectly executed upward thrust. As the man instinctively grasped his right arm with his left, Chica’s sidekick connected to his exposed ribs.

  The man fell to the carpeted floor, cringing in fear, his throat fully exposed.

  But then Chica’s training deserted her. Instead of driving her heel into her opponent’s larynx, she dropped to one knee and backhanded his face, screaming soundlessly.

  Chica was so out of her own control that she never saw the pistol emerge from the man’s robe. I prayed that she was already dead as she slumped to the floor, that she never heard whatever words her enemy spat over her before he stumbled to the telephone.

  28

  Some weeks later, Chica’s mother, a Mrs. Lorraine Winters, “spoke out”—the term the media applied to her statements. Again, my student brought the televised appearance to me, this time on his portable computer.

  Mrs. Winters told a television reporter that Tracey’s biological father was her first husband, a “hardworking man” who had perished after falling off a scaffold on a construction site. The mother had remarried when Tracey was still an infant. “I wanted the best for her,” she said. “And I believed Myron could give her all that.”

  But the mother’s judgment had been flawed. When she learned that her new husband had been repeatedly sexually abusing her daughter, she had immediately sued for divorce.

  “I made a mistake when I married him,” she said dramatically. “I thought it was the price I had to pay to protect my child. But I never dreamed Tracey would have to pay, too.”

  At that point, she broke into such sobbing that the interview could not continue.

  29

  A tacit understanding having been reached, my student continued to supply me with whatever information surfaced about Chica.

  One reporter was not satisfied with the mother’s facile account. A print journalist who still followed the old ways of his craft, he pursued the truth independently.

  That reporter’s follow-up story revealed that the mother had not sought a divorce until Chica was fifteen. The original divorce complaint had charged her husband with adultery. The adultery had been his “affair” with the child. That case had been “settled out of court.” I needed no legal expertise to follow the beam of the reporter’s flashlight.

  Chica’s mother had never sought criminal prosecution of the man who had abused her daughter. There was some sort of “Family Court” proceeding, the records of which are not available to the public. However, the reporter unearthed Chica’s application to attend college, made at age sixteen. That application showed an address different from that of her mother’s. Further investigation showed that Chica had been “placed” in foster care.

  The reporter also discovered that Chica’s mother was still receiving payments from a “structured settlement” she had won in a lawsuit against the company that had employed her first husband. No photo of this man was shown, but his name indicated he was of Hispanic origin.

  The divorce settlement with her second husband, the stepfather, entitled her to several thousand dollars per month in “alimony and maintenance.” She had also received full possession of a jointly owned apartment.

  The stepfather told the reporter that Chica’s mother was a notorious fabricator, motivated solely by money. He said he had never known about the structured settlement, and had been told the woman had “family money.” This he offered as proof of her duplicity.

  The mother declined the reporter’s request for an interview.

  The divorce documents—which apparently were considered a public record—made no mention of custody of the child.

  30

  Chica’s stepfather lived in a luxurious high-rise in one of the city’s most exclusive areas. Perhaps this had been a factor in his obtaining a legal permit for the pistol he had used to kill her.

  The District Attorney announced that the stepfather’s severe injuries, combined with the fact that the attack took place in his own home, made out such a classic case of self-defense that no charges would be filed.

  Chica’s mother immediately began appearing on more television shows. She said she was writing a book about her experiences, in the hopes that others would learn from the tragedy. A movie was anticipated. She said some of the proceeds would be used to start a f
oundation dedicated to protecting children.

  My student assured me that only a very few would ever read a newspaper investigation, but many, many millions would view a movie. And I had already learned that, in American culture, the movie would become the reality.

  31

  When I finally accepted the truth of what I had done, I shuttered the dojo, draping only a single black silk ribbon over the door.

  My students had expected this. Nor were they surprised at the period of mourning which followed.

  My days were filled with self-questioning. My nights were haunted by the answers.

  Had Chica truly been the “daughter” I had so facilely called her, she would have come to me for safety and protection, not for meaningless “wisdom.”

  Had I listened, truly listened … I would have answered her question with honesty. Had I known the adversary she intended to face, had I known the battlefield she had chosen, I would have told Chica that she was not ready.

  Given time, I could have made her ready. That time had not been stolen from me—I had tossed it aside, much as I had cast away my mother’s legacy.

  Only Chica’s spirit was prepared. She had become a true warrior, one who fears nothing but dishonor.

  That was the warrior I had taught her to be. The warrior I once was.

  Warrior? mockingly echoed within my heart. I was no longer worthy of such a title. I was less than nothing—a sinner who had allowed another to pay for his own sins. I had joined Chica’s mother, both of us whores, only for different currencies.

  My fatuous, self-absorbed arrogance cost Chica her life.

  Worse, it cost her the death of her enemy.

  I had robbed the child I called “daughter,” just as her mother had. Chica’s soul knows my betrayal.

  32

  For months, sadness suffused me. I remained paralyzed until the moment when I accepted the most bitter truth of all: I was not suffering from grief; I was wallowing in self-pity.

  That same night, I walked away. From the dojo, from my living quarters above it, from my life. I did not write a suicide note, because it was not my intent to die. I had not earned such a privilege.

  I rejected the code of the warrior as I had that of the priests. A true priest, like a true warrior, fears nothing but dishonor. I feared nothing on this earth, and I was already dishonored. There was no name I knew for a man who has learned to serve something far greater than his meaningless self. But it was that man I swore to become.

  33

  The priests had taught us that each man has a personal haiku, a haiku that must emerge from within. A master of haiku might be commissioned to produce thousands in his lifetime. But only one could truly express his own spirit.

  The priest who told me this later showed me his own haiku. When I attempted to show my respect for his achievement, he gently explained that the haiku was not finished. He would continue to refine it, forever seeking perfection.

  “When will it be finished, master?” I asked.

  “Perfection cannot be achieved by men,” he told me. “Our highest calling is the pursuit of perfection. My haiku will be finished when I die, but never will it be perfect.”

  When Chica died—no, when my departure from the Way forfeited her life—I shredded the haiku I had been composing for dozens of years.

  Now I have begun another. One of truth. I have rewritten it endlessly since.

  It is inadequate. I continue to struggle. Perhaps I will never be able to express what is in me. I cannot know how much time is left for me to do this. I know only that I must atone before I leave, or I shall enter the other plane carrying the haiku of a man without honor.

  I understand that renunciation of worldly goods is not true atonement. Many do this, each for his own reasons. Mine is that I must return to the man I was, and so I must focus all my being on that task alone.

  I have started my walk. May it become the walk of the warrior I had once imagined myself to be.

  I must walk until my haiku reflects the spirit of a man who honors his mother’s love, for only then may I call Chica “daughter” when I see her again.

  34

  I entered my new life with the simple act of sleeping on a park bench. I had been cautioned against this by a group of men huddled around a fire blazing palely in a cut-down oil drum. They had shared this warmth with me in the manner of herd animals, instinctively understanding that only their numbers provide a margin of protection from predators.

  As a newcomer, I found my role instantly transformed from all-knowing “master” to the most ignorant of students. And, as always, there is never a shortage of willing guides.

  For most students, a guide is chosen based on the credential of experience. In the world I had abandoned, my students were taught to define this correctly: fifty years of mediocrity is of less value than five of success.

  I would use American boxing to illustrate this concept, showing my students that a man may have been a professional fighter for many years, yet not an especially skilled one. He would be called a “journeyman” or a “veteran,” but never a “champion.”

  Thus, there is no correlation between time spent performing the same act and skill in doing so.

  “So,” I would ask them, “when one seeks a guide, what qualities should one seek?”

  “One must look beyond the years,” a student might say.

  “Look to what, then?”

  “To success, master.”

  “So, then, a champion boxer would be a better teacher of boxers than one with many fights who had never become a champion?”

  “Yes, master!”

  “How does that follow?” I would ask. “Why should it be that a fighter whose physical limitations prevented his success could not later teach others what he had learned but could never himself execute?”

  My students would bow their heads. But I never allowed myself to be satisfied with what I knew to be reflexive submission rather than any indication of acquired knowledge.

  “There are those who overcome a lack of fighting skills due to sheer strength or speed. Such a fighter may often defeat a more highly skilled opponent. But only the defeated opponent possesses skills which can be taught to others.

  “Do you understand? It was only those skills which allowed the defeated fighter to survive against those who were more naturally gifted. One does not teach physical strength; one teaches how to most skillfully apply whatever physical strength the student already possesses.”

  As my students raised their eyes to mine, I would give them a simple illustration.

  “Imagine a boxer who had no punching power,” I would tell them. “He can land his blows easily—swiftly, and with precision—but they have no real effect on his opponent. Imagine another, with very limited skills. He rarely succeeds in landing a blow, but, when he does, it is instantly effective. Which would you choose as your teacher?”

  Then I would see the truth reflected in the eyes of my students. And the subtle difference in how they bowed their heads in response to what they had just been taught.

  My sin had been arrogance, not hypocrisy. So I welcomed the opportunity to become a student of those who had been judged failures, mindful that they lived in a world in which those who judged them would not survive a single night.

  I listened as I taught my students to listen—humbly, but with discernment. I measured any offered knowledge not by how long the guide had managed to survive, but by how he had done so. I decided I would heed only the words of those who had lost all, yet still retained themselves.

  35

  “Don’t ever go in those shelters,” I had been warned, that first night by the fire. “An old man like you, they’d eat you alive.”

  “And don’t go near the park at night, neither,” another said. “Those benches look good—keep you off the ground and all—but that’s where the kids go to hunt.”

  “Hunt?” I asked.

  “This here’s what you call a bonfire,” the first one tol
d me, pointing at the oil drum. I could see by his manner and bearing that he was accustomed to being the spokesman for his group. “What those evil fucking kids do is what they call making a bumfire. And that’s us—bums.

  “All they need is to catch one of us sleeping. They got these plastic squeeze bottles full of gasoline. Spray you all over, strike a match, and whoosh!” he said, pointedly looking down at the blazing fire.

  “Could you not protect one another?” I asked. Mine was not a challenging query, it was the speech of a humble man in search of knowledge. “Perhaps by taking turns sleeping, so some could always keep watch?”

  “Even if we could do that—and who’s going to trust their life to one of us staying awake?—it wouldn’t do no good,” the leader told me. “Those kids, they don’t just carry spray bottles. They got baseball bats, lead pipes, all kinds of stuff to break bones with. And they like doing it, fucking us up for kicks.”

  I knew he spoke the truth. I had first encountered such men when I had been a soldier. They came in many uniforms.

  36

  Later that same night, I wrapped myself in a piece of discarded carpet I had found in an alley, lay down on a park bench, and closed my eyes.

  They were not long in coming. Even had I actually been asleep, I would have sensed their presence—their collective spirit emitted a thick, putrid odor, like raw sewage.

  Through slitted eyes, I saw three young men in identical black outfits, their faces covered with ski masks. Only the red laces on their heavy boots disturbed the total blackness of their images.

  As they began their preparations, I slipped out of the carpet into the darkness. Two of them began spraying the thick, empty bundle on the bench, never noticing that their comrade behind them was already immobilized.