The customer sank into an armchair. He said, “Gen is interested in the military life. I was telling him all about it.”
In Japanese, the brushstrokes of a single character could define a writer’s class and education. The casually rich room, the few words from the customer, their intonation at once formal and negligent, suggested the royal Peers’ School, university, travel abroad. In an army officer’s case, that would have been Berlin.
“We’re wasting your time,” Harry said and hoped Gen would get to his feet.
“Not a bit. Gen has a great deal of promise.”
“He delivered the print?”
The customer gave thought to his answer. “Yes, he delivered the print, and we fell into conversation. You’re not Japanese at all, are you?”
“No, sir.”
“Ah.” He bestowed a smile on Gen, who lit as if a lamp had been turned his way. The customer stretched out his bare feet and considered Harry. The smell of fresh sweat hung in the air, along with a leathery scent of cigars. In one corner, a dummy in a kendo mask and armor held a wooden stave. Harry noticed murky photographs of equestrian events, an engraved trophy for something, a gilded citation in German and a side table holding a vase with a single white chrysanthemum. The customer seemed to have accomplished a great deal for his young age. There was a restlessness about him that suggested a coil under pressure. What Harry could see of the rest of the apartment was a thoroughly Japanese arrangement of screens and mats, but this European parlor had the personal shadows of a lair. The customer suddenly heaved himself out of his chair and asked Harry, “What do you know about swords?”
“The sword is the soul of the samurai.”
“Quite right. And the samurai is the sword of the emperor. Try this. One hand.” The customer lifted from its mount not a Japanese sword but a Western saber with blood channels and a rounded guard. With only one hand, Harry could barely hold its weight. “Meant for horseback, really. The rider impales a man on foot, and the force of the horse’s charge throws the victim over the rider’s shoulder. Very mechanical. It even feels like a piece of machinery, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” In Harry’s hands, the saber felt like a giant wrench.
“I will give the Germans this. When they fence, they hack at each other until they’re bloody, they don’t back down. The scars are most impressive.”
“But they don’t perform seppuku, do they?” Gen said.
“No, it is strictly Japanese to take one’s life by cutting the stomach open. It’s an honor that has unfortunately become degraded. Today someone barely pricks his stomach before a friend cuts off his head.”
“Have you ever seen it?” Gen asked.
The customer didn’t answer directly. “Even the beheading is sloppy. You have to cut through the neck, not at it. It helps to shout.”
I’ll bet, thought Harry.
“You take kendo at school?” the customer asked.
“Yes,” said Harry.
“Who is the best swordsman?”
“Gen.”
“I’m not surprised. He is a model of youth.”
“Harry is usually a target,” Gen said.
“A target, if he’s brave, can learn more than anyone else,” the customer said. His breath was sweet from cognac. He ran his hand from Harry’s shoulder blades to the base of his spine. “Stronger than you look. Now try this.” He took the saber from Harry and replaced it with a samurai sword. The blade was narrow and tapered, its length marked by a wavy temper line between the steel of the edge and a darker, softer iron core. Although it was longer than the saber, and its grip was stripped to show the maker’s signature stamped into the bare tang, the sword was a two-handed weapon that Harry held comfortably. Even still, it seemed in motion. “A blade of the Bizen school, the edge as sharp as a razor. The first so-called reform of Japan after the West forced its way in was to forbid samurai from carrying their swords. Thousands of swords were melted down to make bookends, souls turned into knickknacks and souvenirs. Hold it lightly, as lightly as you should hold your life.” The customer squared Harry’s shoulders and hips, hands like a sculptor’s molding clay. When Harry twitched the man’s hand off, he took Harry by the head and aimed his attention to the sword. “Do you know how a blade is made so fine and so hard? The metal is beaten and folded and beaten a hundred times, and then a hundred times more, and then another hundred, the same way a man is made into a soldier. That is why a Japanese soldier can march in his sleep, can stand at attention while the ice forms on his face. The sword is worn with its blade up so that the act of drawing becomes the act of attack. The curve of the blade puts the sword as it’s drawn at the most efficient angle to strike an enemy. Every parry carries within it a thrust. That is the Yamato spirit. Hold the sword straight out. You take bayonet, too?”
“We drill at school,” Gen said. “We train on Harry.”
The customer asked Harry, “They train on you, yet you’re still here? You have the quality of durability, if nothing else. Perhaps you have the makings of a soldier after all. But I saw you once in a movie house. You seemed more interested in women.”
“He’s in love with Oharu,” Gen said.
“Is that true?” the customer asked Harry. “Are you in love with a woman?”
Harry felt the color in his cheeks betray him. Held straight out, the sword trembled.
“It’s one thing to have a woman,” the customer said. “It’s another to be in love with a woman. To love a weaker person, what does that do for you? To mix inferior steel in a sword, does that make the sword weaker or stronger? Weaker…or…stronger?” He pulled back his sleeve and placed the inside of his wrist under the sword. Harry tried to hold the sword up, if not still, but his shoulders ached; the blade grew heavier and began to dip. Gen got to his knees to see. The blade’s edge just touched the customer’s skin, and a drop of blood circled his wrist. He didn’t flinch. He said, “True love can only exist between equals.”
As Harry let the blade fall, the customer neatly slipped his hand out of the way, took the sword and stepped back for more room. Sword at the perpendicular, he took a position of balance, knees slightly bent, looking right, left, making a complete turn, the blade slicing down, then on a horizontal arc, his kimono swirling around marble-smooth, muscular legs in the sort of dancelike move Harry had seen on the Kabuki stage and in samurai films, but never before with such a sense of ease and genuine menace, of an animal casually indulging in the briefest display of its claws. Harry knew in that instant the difference between being inside and outside the cage of a bear. The customer finished with a snap of the sword called “the flipping off of blood,” slipped the blade under his arm as if sheathing it and bowed to Harry.
“Excuse me, that was impolite. Worse, it was melodramatic.”
“No, it was wonderful,” Gen said. “It was the real thing.”
“Not yet,” the customer said, “but in time we will see the real thing. It is unavoidable.”
“He’s with the Kwantung army,” Gen told Harry. “That means Manchuria. They’ll see action there.”
“We should be going,” Harry said. “Let’s go, Gen.”
Gen said, “It would be rude to leave.”
The customer replaced the sword on the wall. He drew Gen up by the hand. “No, your friend is right, and there are more important things I’m supposed to be doing than entertaining every urchin who comes off the street.”