Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show (22 page)

To her profound relief he was there again immediately and she fell against him, even as her husband took her elbow, gently pulling her off the floor.

26
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I Guess There's Hooligans Every Damned Where

THEY ENTERED ODAWARA
to a change in the weather. A cold April wind came off the Pacific, with cargo ships from Edo banking and hovering in the lee of the promontory.

At the town's edge Manjiro, still optimistic, still bolstered by his renewed spirits, took the Americans in one direction while Kyuzo went another. His job was as it had been in the villages along the way—to discover what he could of Ueno and the soldiers who chased them, to hear what news he could about what went on in Edo. He was to meet them later in a field by the castle, before Manjiro went in to show his face to his father and brother.

In earlier centuries the castle's walls were all that kept its occupants protected from marauders, but those walls had succumbed to fire during the rule of Manjiro's great-grandfather and now the castle simply sat there, approachable from a dozen directions, though there were only two official roads. Manjiro decided they would cut through the thickest part of the forest, coming past Masako's marsh, to a clearing where he and Einosuke had often played as boys. There were tall grass and fresh water in that clearing, and he could watch the castle through the foliage, think about how to make his approach while they waited for Kyuzo.

When they stepped out onto a street of low brothels and drinking houses, most of which were closed until summer, the Americans were walking, as per Manjiro's instructions, in a single line some twenty feet behind him and twenty feet apart, as well. But because he'd been thinking about how he should greet his father, and about whether it would be his father or Einosuke who was angrier at him, Manjiro hadn't been paying attention, and before he could come back to himself someone spoke.

“Are you following me monk, or are you only looking to fill your saké bottle in the cheapest part of town?”

It was, of course, the young samurai who had questioned him on the road that morning. Manjiro turned to see that only one of the Americans was visible, had thus far come into this street behind him. He spoke loudly, so the second one might know not to show himself. “Alas, as you know I no longer have my bottle,” he said. “All I am doing is passing by.”

The samurai—Manjiro remembered that Ichiro was his name—sat atop a closed water barrel outside a ramshackle bar, the only one on the street that was open. Beside him was another barrel with its cover off. The clouds had parted and the moon was reflected in the surface of this second barrel's water. When the samurai noticed that there were two monks now, he called the second one forward, waving at him with an empty flagon.

“Do either of you know the old song about the monk and his mate?” he asked.

The American, whichever he was, had seen that the safest thing to do was to stand next to Manjiro with his hat still on and his head down. When the samurai touched the surface of the water in the barrel beside him, the image of the moon shook and he began to sing his song.

“I learned that song as a boy but I don't like it much anymore,” he said. “Though I still think the second monk's answer is splendid, all the first monk does is ask the same question again,
‘Oh where are we walking in the mountain so late?
' If were the second monk I'd have said, ‘Get away from me fool! From now on I'm walking alone.'”

He laughed and got down from his barrel, then sighed and got back on it again, deflated. “Ah, what's the use of talking to you?” he said. “When I get older I may choose a religious path myself, but I won't lose my spirit like you two obviously have. And that, Mr. Drink-weak monk, is a promise.”

Manjiro bowed, hoping they might continue on their way, but as he touched the sleeve of the man beside him, a shout came from inside the bar and two more samurai staggered out. “Here you are!” one of them yelled. “Sitting like a dummy outside.” When he saw the two monks standing there he covered his mouth.

Manjiro noticed that the third man, the one who had not yet spoken, was older than the other two, and he hoped he might issue an order for them to act properly, to go about their business and leave the monks alone. The older man, however, only pushed Ichiro off his perch and sat there himself, tipping sideways into the center of that adjacent barrel, soaking his arm and shoulder. His companion laughed again and the reflection of the moon disappeared from the surface of the water.

“Go on, laugh!” the older man roared, righting himself and standing again and stumbling back against the nearest wall of the bar. Manjiro thought he saw a chance to get away amid the confusion, and he nudged the American. But then he made another inexplicable error, larger, even, than letting the samurai see them there in the first place.

“Just walk slowly,” he whispered in English, at the precise instant that all three samurai grew silent.

“Whoa!” said the loud one. “Were those words you said just now, or were you only farting?”

Manjiro took his hat off. “I told him not to hurry,” he said.

The older samurai stood away from the wall he'd crashed into and the loud one pulled out his long sword and flicked the second monk's hat off. Ned Clark's hair fell across his forehead, framing startled blue eyes and a decidedly foreign face.

“Well I'll be picked and damned!” the older man said.

Behind him, to the left of the bar, a path lined with bamboo poles led to an outhouse. Balanced on top of the nearest pole was a small clay teacup.

“He looks like the devil himself,” said the younger one. “And he stinks worse than that rotten outhouse back there.”

“Who are you, then?” Ichiro asked Manjiro. “A monk who speaks English or the people's new hero, the latter-day Kambei of those posters we keep finding everywhere?”

He spoke politely, but the older man said he wanted to go find Ueno and report. Let him know who they had captured.

“Hold on a second, Grandpa, let's think this through first,” said the younger man. He put his long sword away but pulled out his short one. “Is this not an enemy we've caught here? Is he not the first actual enemy any of us have ever seen in our decrepit and pitiful lives? Before we call Ueno I think we should exercise our right as captors. Let's mark him like they used to in the real Kambei's days. Let's cut off his nose.”

Indeed, there were many famous stories concerning nose-cutting, about how, for example, Hoshimaru snuck into the camp of the great general Norishige and took his nose while he slept. Such stories were at least as old as those which heralded Kambei, but they had to do with good swordsmanship and deserved humiliation, not with the low level of bullying this man was talking about.

“Cutting his nose would be easy,” said the older man. “Look at the size of the target.”

Ned's body had started to shake and his knees were about to buckle, so Manjiro put a hand on his shoulder to calm him and spoke directly to Ichiro. “It's unbecoming of you to play on this man's fear,” he said, “and pointless, too, because he doesn't understand the language.”

The other young samurai chose that moment, however, to touch Ned's nose with the flat of his blade. It was cold, and so close to his right eye that Ned leapt up. “Lord almighty,” he said, coming down so hard that the teacup tumbled off the top of that nearby bamboo pole.

“Sha-sha-sha
,” said the older samurai, dancing in a little circle.
“Bosa, bosa, baka waka.”

Manjiro understood that Ichiro was embarrassed by this display, and was about to ask him to intercede, when the loud young samurai told the older one to go back into the bar for some soy sauce and mustard.

“I want to paint the target so I get only his nose,” he said. “If he keeps an unmutilated face, we will have acted like the samurai of old.”

“You haven't the vaguest notion of the samurai of old,” Manjiro said. “How about handing me a sword, see how you fare against a worthy opponent?”

Ichiro nodded. “That's sounds like Kambei all right,” he said, but the older man had found the soy sauce and mustard by simply reaching into the bar and taking them off the nearest table. He mixed them together then turned Ned in the waning moonlight.

“Well fine then,” said Ned, “there's hooligans every damned where, I guess. If you wanta be stupid your whole lives long, it's no sweat off my backside. You don't know \'bout me, but I can eat a dozen peppers in a heat wave without it even waterin' my eyes. So go ahead and do your damnedest with that concoction you dunderheaded rascals. See if I care.

He then actually opened his mouth, ready to prove what he'd claimed.

The older man put the soy sauce dish on the top of the pole from which the teacup had recently fallen. “Now don't move,” he said, “I'm going to start at the tip and work my way back.” He painted quickly, with the thumb and index finger of his right hand, and when he finished Ned's nose looked as black as it did in his minstrel makeup.

“Good job,” said the younger man, but Ned, finally understanding that something meaner was afoot than just pouring hot sauce down his throat, jumped away as he spoke, darted past the distressed Ichiro, and back up the road the way they'd come. He was so fast that they'd never have caught him, but just before he disappeared around the corner another samurai stepped out and stopped him, catching him by his robes.

“Gentlemen, please,” said Kyuzo, “take your pleasure a bit more quietly. And find a worthier target than this poor fellow.”

“Who's that?” asked the older samurai.

“It's only me,” said Kyuzo, “invigorated by the evening air.”

He had Ace with him and brought both Americans back to stand next to Manjiro. “My name is Kyuzo, until recently in service to Lord Tokugawa of Mito,” he said. “Can we not settle this amicably and then retire? It's late and I, at least, cannot put up with insufficient sleep nearly so well as you younger men seem able to anymore.”

The younger man's short sword still gleamed in the air, but there was something different in his manner now, and Manjiro saw that Ichiro, too, had stood back in order to allow room for his sword to clear his belt. Only the older man remained nervous. He rocked on the balls of his feet and licked his fingers and smoothed back his hair.

Such behavior in a man his age disgusted Kyuzo and he touched his sword, a tactical error. All three men scowled at him and the older one said, “You've got one and we've got the other. That's one prize each, so why don't you be on your way. We'll settle the issue of this one ourselves.”

“Very well,” said Kyuzo, “but whatever happens you mustn't pretend. Now that you have painted it you must really cut his nose off, for only that will show a man like Ueno that you have discharged your duties seriously. If you bring him a man with a painted nose that still sits on his face he will know that you are frivolous men.”

It was a bold thing to say but it came from an accurate observation and the younger drunk flinched. “Oh come on!” he said. “In these difficult days what samurai doesn't have the right to engage in a little fun?”

“In that case simply go back inside this bar and engage in your fun alone,” said Kyuzo. “And no one will even know that we met like this tonight.”

He tried to maintain a level voice, with no opinion in it. He believed the older samurai would do as he suggested, and even the young leader seemed undecided, but there was too much shame in it for Ichiro.

“No, sir,” he said.

Kyuzo nodded again, and looked at Manjiro. To find a man of honor in an otherwise dishonorable band made things vastly more complicated, for it embarrassed the other young samurai so much that he made a noise in his throat, called up a ball of phlegm, and spit it between Kyuzo's legs. The phlegm, round and greenish-yellow, was the most impressive thing about the man thus far.

Kyuzo nodded again, sighed a little bit, and knelt down to examine the phlegm. He threw enough dirt on it to cover its color, slipped his short sword beneath it, and stood back up. He pushed it out toward the offending man. It shone there like a delicacy on a shiny narrow plate. “Put this back,” he said.

The younger man's eyes moved from the phlegm to the faces of the two Americans. Put it back? Surely he wasn't suggesting what he thought he was. “We have laws,” he said.

As he spoke, however, the older man's mouth fell open, as if understanding for the first time just how far they had fallen. “You mustn't take such ridicule,” he told his younger colleague.

“Ah,” said Kyuzo, “you're in luck, a volunteer.”

He turned and flipped his sword toward the older man, rotating its blade and stopping abruptly, an inch in front of his face. The man's eyes bulged out and his mouth opened even further and the phlegm flew directly inside. “Ahg, arr,” he said, as it lodged itself halfway down his throat.

There was a second of frozen astonishment and Kyuzo used it well. He turned his short sword back on the younger man, tucked it under his chin and danced him high up onto his toes. Ichiro charged him, but too quickly, and Kyuzo pulled the dancing man between them so that Ichiro's sword went into his thigh. The older man was clutching his throat and thrashing around, searching for something to drink, so Manjiro got that bowl of soy sauce and mustard from on top of the pole.

“Here,” he said, “this might help.”

Kyuzo released the wounded man, and when he fell, Ichiro, lest he cut him more deeply, had to drop his sword.

“Let's stop now,” Kyuzo said. “And reconsider everything from the beginning.” He was speaking only to Ichiro and he used the highest forms of speech. He had seen good swordsmanship in Ichiro's thrust, hands that were as quick as his own used to be, and a steadiness that could not be taught. He smiled at Ichiro, but the older man flung the soy sauce away and wrenched open the door of the bar, in search of water. When he was gone the wounded one hissed, “Why are you waiting? This old man has no skill!” His own sword was stuck beneath him, making it useless unless he stood up.