The Shadow and the Star (19 page)

Dojun taught him how to use his hands, delicately, shaping the splayed curve of a table's legs in the same way Samuel was learning
shuji
, to draw the bewildering system of Japanese and Chinese characters, using his spirit and his body—making a simple, beautiful line that fit together into a koa-wood stand that looked to Samuel like calligraphy itself. Dojun snorted and said that with writing, Samuel had no art—that was
shodo
, a mastery far beyond Samuel's clumsy efforts, something that a man might devote his whole life to. But when Dojun looked at the woodwork, he criticized and made curt suggestions for improvement, so Samuel thought he was doing very well, and loved the smell of sawed wood and oiled metal.

Samuel made his wood scraps into blocks, carving them into fanciful shapes of birds and flowers, and took them home for Kai. At five—almost six, as she insisted—she found them moderately amusing for a quarter hour, and then wanted him to ride her on her pony and watch her dive in the fish pond.

When he finished the koa stand, he wrapped it carefully in burlap, carried it down the mountain, and gave it to Lady Tess. She put it in her bedroom, right beside her bed, with the rock on it he'd brought from Diamond Head, which looked very silly and homely to him now that he was older.

At school, he was on the blue team. Both the teams wanted him, because he was one of the bigger boys in his class, stronger and more nimble than most, and had more wind than any of them. In one skirmish a boy from blue tripped and fell across Samuel's legs. He sent himself into an easy roll and came up in a crowd of reds, who fell onto him from all sides. He lay face-down at the bottom of the pile, catching his breath as they got off of him one by one.

The bell rang, and everyone ran except the last boy, who didn't get up off Samuel's back, but lay there heavily, breathing in his ear.

Samuel froze.

He felt for a moment as if the real world had vanished; it all went to black; all he heard was an awful sound and then he was sitting on his knees in the long grass, shaking, staring at the other boy and panting viciously.

"Damn—what's the matter with you?" the red boy yelled, picking himself up clumsily. "You knocked me galley-west, you loonie! I oughta make you eat spit."

Samuel just stared at him. He was afraid he was going to be sick, so he only swallowed and didn't say anything.

"Apologize!" the other boy demanded, standing over him.

Samuel's hand trembled beneath him as he shoved himself to his feet. He was taller than the red boy, heavier, but there was something close to a sob stuck in the back of his throat. "I'm sorry," he mumbled.

"What?" The boy stood with his hands on his hips.

"
I'm sorry
!" Samuel shouted.

The boy grinned. "All right." He reached out to shake hands. Samuel didn't move, and the boy took him around the shoulders, heading toward the school building. Samuel endured the sweaty embrace for half a step, and then pushed him away, sitting down and putting his face in his crossed arms.

One of the teachers was shouting at them. Samuel heard the other boy hesitate, and then run toward the building.

When he came back, the teacher came too, and asked if Samuel was feeling well.

He took a deep breath, stood up, and said, "Yes, sir."

The teacher put his hand on Samuel's forehead. "You're a little clammy. Sit outside in the shade for a few minutes—Wilson, go bring us a dipper of water."

Samuel moved back, not wanting to be touched. "I'm all right," he said. "I want to go in." He forgot to say "sir." He walked past them both and inside the building, sitting down at his desk. Everyone was looking at him curiously, all their white shirts like pale moths in the dark fern-forest shadiness of the classroom.

When he went up Tantalus that afternoon, he was still shaking. He couldn't hold his hands steady with the wood.

"Sick, you?" Dojun demanded in pidgin.

Samuel retrieved the
nomi
chisel that he'd dropped. He wanted to tell Dojun, but he was so ashamed. He never wanted Dojun to know what his old life had been, and there were no words to explain what had happened to him on the school field.

"No, Dojun-san," he said. "I feel fine."

Dojun took the
nomi
from his hand. "You lie me, Samua-chan," he said. "All sick not body."

The way he said it; the word he used with Samuel's name—it was like so many Japanese words, a thousand meanings in one sound—I love you; I'm stronger, wiser, older; I'll take care of you, Samua-chan.

"I'm afraid," Samuel said, staring down at the workbench. "I don't want to go back to school."

Dojun turned the
nomi
and sat down, starting to work on the joining of a chair leg. "For why 'fraid?"

Samuel clenched his empty hands and took a deep breath. "I don't like the other boys," he said, more strongly.

"Fight you?"

He wished they had fought him. He'd like to kill them all, especially the red boy who'd lain on top of him and didn't get up, blowing hot breath against his ear. He thought, for the first time in a long, long time, of the shark and the song, of dark water full of blood. Dojun had never mentioned the songs again, and Samuel had given up waiting to hear, and then forgotten them, but now when he thought of it he knew that Dojun had been teaching him anyway, showing him how to sing songs without words; with his body and his hands and his head.

"No, Dojun-san," he muttered. "I didn't fight."

"Come here."

Samuel lifted his head and went to stand by the stool where Dojun worked. Dojun laid the
nomi
aside, carefully swept some tiny curls of wood into the shavings box. He stood up—and smashed his open palm across Samuel's face.

Samuel reeled back under the force of it. He hit the workbench, grabbed it with his hands and then twisted away as Dojun moved again. Samuel shied behind the bench, staring at Dojun, his body pushing back against the corner between a half-finished
tansu
chest and the wall.

Through the blaze of tears he couldn't even see Dojun as more than a glimmering shadow among shadows. His face stung. It didn't hurt so badly; there were a hundred of Dojun's exercises that had hurt more, but still his body trembled and he flinched uncontrollably when the smeared shape in his vision moved.

Dojun. Dojun had hit him. The betrayal of it seemed so huge that Samuel couldn't think; could only hold himself up against the wall like a fractured doll, clinging to a wooden prop.

Dojun took a step toward him, and Samuel winced again. It felt as if something crucial had collapsed inside him, crumpled in on itself and liquefied and went sliding away, taking what he had of himself with it, leaving a hollow shell that stood there backed in a corner, trembling.

He saw it all as if he were standing outside, looking in, watching it happen. He saw the tears begin to slide down his own face, splash down from his chin to his shirt and make dark spots of moisture.

Dojun stood still. He didn't come any closer. The Samuel who watched had a feeling that Dojun was surprised, though nothing on his face showed it. The empty shell Samuel just stood there, weeping.

"Samua-san," Dojun said, and Samuel flinched.

Dojun watched him another moment, then went back and sat down on his stool. He adjusted a board in the vise, picked up the
azebiki-noko
, and began to saw a crosscut.

"I'll tell you a story," he said in Japanese. "This is a story all Japanese boys know, but maybe foreign boys don't know it. You should hear it now. It's about the pupil who wants to learn to fight with the sword, so he goes looking for the greatest master who is alive. He follows rumors, and travels into the wild mountains, until he finds a shrine, and beyond that, the hut of a ramshackle hermit. This hermit is the master, a fighter of unequaled skill."

Dojun finished the cut and took the board from the vise, laying it out and measuring it. His hand moved up and down the wood once, caressing it, as a man would touch the neck of a favorite horse.

He spoke again. " 'I'm here to study the sword!' " He imitated the grand way the pupil announced his plans to the hermit with a sweep of his arms. " 'How long will it take me to master it?' The hermit went on with sweeping the floor of his hut. 'Ten years,' the hermit said. The pupil was dismayed. "But what if I study hard and work twice as much?' "Twenty years,' the master said."

Dojun spread a cloth across his lap. With the
nomi
, he began working to shape another chair joint. He didn't look up from his hands as he spoke.

"The pupil decided not to argue, but asked to be taken on as a student. When the master put his new pupil to work, it was only to chop wood and clean and cook, so many chores that lasted all day and half the night. There was no time for any training with the sword. The pupil never touched a sword, and after a year he grew impatient. 'Master,' he demanded, 'when do we start training? Am I nothing but a slave for you?"

"But the master just ignored him, and the pupil went on with his chores, though he grew more frustrated every day. He was washing clothes one afternoon, thinking about leaving this crazy old man, when a blow from a huge stick sent him staggering. He lay on the ground in a daze, looking up at the master above him. 'Sir,' he cried. 'I was only washing your clothes! I do a good job. Why'd you hit me?' But the master only walked away. The pupil couldn't figure out what he'd done wrong, but he determined to do better.

"The next day he was chopping wood diligently, when the master struck again, sending him flat on the ground with the blow. 'What's wrong?' the student yelled. 'Why are you punishing me?' The master only looked at him in silence, with no sign of anger. The student thought again about leaving. This old man was nuts. The student began to watch out for him, and the next time, when the blow came, the student managed to scramble out of the way. He fell down into a ravine doing it, but he managed to escape.

"After that the attacks began to be more frequent, and the student got better at avoiding them, and finally he began to understand what was going on. But it didn't get any easier. The better the pupil got at avoiding his master's
bokken
, the more often and unexpectedly the master attacked. He came after the student when he was sleeping, and when he was bathing, and when he used the toilet. The pupil thought he would go mad, but slowly his senses grew so sharp that it was almost impossible for the master to catch him. Still the blows came, ten thousand blows, from any place, at any time. Until one day, after the pupil had been at the hut for four years, he was crouched over the fire, preparing vegetables to put into the cooking pot, when the master attacked him from behind. The pupil merely seized a pot lid, warded off the blow, and went back to peeling vegetables without even moving from his position."

The little curls of hard koa fell from Dojun's tool onto the white cloth across his legs. The familiar sound of the
nomi
chiseling into wood made a small, rhythmic scrape in the room.

"From that time," Dojun said, "the pupil became a master, without ever having touched a sword."

Samuel understood what Dojun was telling him. He wanted to be that tenacious, dedicated, humble student who became a master without ever touching a sword; he wanted it like breathing, like his heart beating, like life. And he huddled there in the corner, knowing that if Dojun hit him again he would not learn to dodge, but would have to go and take up the sharp blade of the Japanese saw and kill himself.

Dojun looked up from the chair leg and into Samuel's eyes. Samuel felt his face go beyond his control. The tears kept squeezing out, as if the liquid despair inside him wouldn't stay trapped, but just leaked and slid out of cracks.

"Please." The word barely came out a whisper. "Dojun-san…"

Dojun would send him away. Dojun's training was inflexible, that Samuel knew; nothing given away for a special weakness, a personal limitation, a particular fear of any part of the routine. Dojun offered what he taught as it was; take it or leave it.

Dojun was watching him, his hands motionless in his lap, his eyes intent and unreadable.

He broke the silence abruptly. "I make promise you," he said. "Never hit. Maybe other fella make hit. Me, never."

For a moment Samuel wasn't certain that he understood. He swallowed at the thickness in his throat. "What?" he said hoarsely.

Dojun flicked his hand from his chest toward Samuel. "Me. You. No hit. No time never. Promise. Savvy, yeah?" He never smiled, never took his eyes off Samuel. "You make body believe Dojun, yeah? Head believe. Arm believe. Toe believe."

Samuel only stared at Dojun warily. He knew it when he heard something that was too good to be true.

The Japanese man got up and walked to Samuel, stood in front of him with his legs spread in the
shizen no kamae
, the relaxed stance of readiness that would allow him to move easily in any direction. When he suddenly lifted his hand, Samuel flinched.

Dojun stopped the move with his hand at the level of
Samuel's shoulder, a foot away. "No buy it, eh?" He smiled dryly. "OK. Me you, no buy already either. No stupid, eh?"

He started to turn away. Samuel caught a small movement in the corner of his eye. Before he could recoil, Dojun's hand swung with a lethal flash of white. Samuel stood braced against the wall, his soul dissolving, his eyes wrenched shut to take the blow.

It never came. He felt something like wind on his cheek, and when he managed finally to blink open his watering eyes, Dojun's hand was still there, palm open and frozen in suspension, a bare breath from Samuel's face.

Dojun's fingers came against his skin, feather-soft. "Samua-chan. You believe Dojun. I promise. I no lie. No hit never."

Samuel bit his lower lip, the only way he could keep it from trembling like a baby's. He set his mouth hard against the weakness. "Tell me the word for 'promise,' " he said hoarsely.

"Chikai."

"Promise me in Japanese," Samuel said.

Dojun stepped back, pressed his hands together and made a formal bow. "I pledge to you, Samua-san," he said in his own language, "I will never strike you by intent for any reason."