It was only when the Nationalist movement rose up at their university that Oshima began to shine. This shy boy whom the masters used to pick on became the leader in all that, the leader of the group who sought to raise Japan to become the star of the entire East. It turned out that although he was weak in his body, he was strong in his words. He had the power to impress the politicians and the power too to move large groups of people with his oratory. Ikkanshi had stood by and listened to him, feeling concerned that his lot was making progress with their leaders.
Ikkanshi wondered what it was like for Oshima in Berlin. What would he be doing? Making himself known to the Nazis and sending letters back to High Command in Tokyo, he supposed. Probably not attending the opera. He thought of his own time in London, longingly, as he had often done. He had had no military duties. He had been a mere translator. He had had time to meet beautiful ladies in tea shops and go to Covent Garden.
There was a spot in the Royal Opera House where he loved to stand. It was on the staircase, halfway to the mezzanine. He could see over the heads of all the people milling in the foyer. He felt invulnerable there, and inspired. When he would go into the theatre and hear the music and watch the dancers he would be seized with a melancholic joy. All this they were supposed to reject as British, and white, and not Japanese. But he adored it. When he left, he had to remind himself: life is not ballet. These beauties of gesture and sound were dreams.
Everything spoke of summer’s coming end. The wind raised its voice; the waves came closer to the shore, harassing, hurrying the
ama
back to land with the day’s catch. The sky was changing; the clouds came charging in from the east, as if on a track, like overloaded boxcars, their bottom edges flat and their tops bulging. The light was newly penetrating, coming from another angle across the sea. The water was so clear now that Vera could see through it down ten feet or even twenty, on calm bright days. The bottom of the sea jumped up so it seemed that if you put your hand in the water you could touch the rocks and the grasses. But they were thirty feet, forty feet down.
And then, suddenly, the summer that had been a seamless ribbon of transparent days broke up. It dissipated into wisps and ragtag ends. And in the confusion of rain gusts, erratic winds, a false return to perfection and then a plunge in temperature, another pageant began to play.
There were no more games on the beach in the late afternoon. After the day’s fishing, the men carried larger stones for the roofs of the huts, and pulled up the docks onto the shore where the giant winter waves would not carry them away. The old women dried and mended and folded away the nets. Others dug up the potatoes from their little gardens. The
ama
tied their baskets together into the back corners of their houses, up high and out of reach of the mice. They piled the dried squid in baskets specially made for them. The boys carried all the bundles down to the shore. Even the island began to change, retreating into itself. The grass that had grown so tall it made a fine, green forest went brown and lay down. On the shortened evenings, the grey wooden houses under their weight of stones merged into the twilight.
Vera went to say goodbye to the sword polisher.
He sat in his black
gi
and
hakama
on the wooden stool that stood only eight inches above the floor. In front of him were his stone block, and the big wooden bucket of water, with the metal bands around it holding the staves in place. His polishing stones were to one side, stones of different shades, brown, and light
grey and a dark bluish grey. He started with the most coarse, the
iyoto
stone. This day, on this blade, he had done the rough work and moved on to a finer stone. Vera could see that he was working with the
nagurado
stone, removing the marks left by the
iyoto.
The process would go on for seven or eight stages, with seven or eight different stones; he had told her that.
He did not look up, but she knew he saw her. His eyes remained fixed on the sword.
‘What sword is that?’
He did not answer.
He put his right hand in the water and then ran it along the length of the blade, making it wet. With one hand near the tip and the other hand near the blunt end he began to rub the blade rhythmically against the stone, rocking it a little. It made a soft noise: k-cha, k-cha, k-cha. He moved the blade up and down the stone, and the soft noise became a little higher, then a little lower, as if the metal were the string of a musical instrument. And his stone was a strange bow.
As she watched, a fine grey paste began to develop on the metal. An equally fine sweat formed on his smooth upper lip.
Vera fell mesmerised by his concentration, and did not speak.
He lifted the blade, ran his fingers along it, and wiped it with a cloth. Then he held it to the light, the clear white sea light that came in through the open door, and looked along the length of it. He plucked the edge with his thumb.
‘Do you see?’ he said, ‘the
hamon.’
A wavy line was in the metal, like the grain in a piece of wood. Like a line of blue hills over water. She had not known that metal had these graces, like a living thing.
‘I do,’ said Vera.
‘And the shadow above it? We call that
utsuri.
That is the sign of a good, old blade.’
He spoke with his head on the side. His wire-frame glasses reflected a white light that disguised his eyes. His black hair with its white stripe was slicked back today, while it most often stood up loosely. He had dressed up formally to sit before the blade.
He changed his position on the stool so that now one knee was up and to the side, the other tucked under him. He took a fine, soft brush and cleared the paste from the blade. Then he began to rub again, the blade against the stone. K-cha, k-cha, k-cha. This went on for a long time. At one point Ikkanshi-san pointed to a small pillow that sat at the side of the room and she brought it. He stopped his rubbing and put it on his wooden bench, then sat back on it.
Ah, he was human.
She watched as he leaned forward, using his body weight to bring pressure. He rocked the blade on the stone, and the grey paste built up. He was holding the blade in two fists. His fingers were clenched as he rubbed and the sweat gathered on his brow. He stopped, and put his hands in the water.
‘Will you talk to me?’ Vera asked.
He continued with his work. He did not say yes and he did not say no. She saw the small pile of boards he had saved. And the nails he made himself from any little bits of scrap he had.
‘What are you doing? Are you becoming a carpenter?’ she asked.
‘As a matter of fact I am.’
‘What for?’ she said. ‘What will you make?’
‘Another room for my house,’ he said.
‘You don’t need another room! What are you going to do? Have parties?’ she teased.
She often mocked his sombreness. He laughed to humour her.
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘The new room will be beautiful and peaceful. Its purpose will reveal itself by and by.’
‘They say you will stay here all winter.’
He did not deny it and so she knew that it was true.
‘Is that the purpose of your new room? Will it be someplace for you to stay when it is cold? Nobody lives here all winter,’ she said. ‘This is the summer island. It always has been. You told me so yourself.’
She thought she saw his head incline toward the radio in the
corner, half sunk in the darkness. She seemed to hear, although it was not turned on, the shrill hectoring voices, the roaring of crowds.
‘And your radio will be company?’ she insisted. She laughed, a slightly mocking laugh. She was mocking herself and not him, for caring, for presuming that she could look after him.
He wet the blade again. He rubbed its sharp edge with his thumb, turning the blade, squinting along the edge of it. Now the waves of deepening blue flashed. She saw his perfect, short cut fingernails.
‘If no one has stayed here over the winter before, I wonder why a person chooses to do it now,’ she said, rhetorically. It was a way of talking to him because he did not respond, talking to herself about him as if he were someone else and that someone else were not there.
She was not certain that he heard. He held the blade straight out from his right eye and looked long and slowly along it, as if he were looking into the sights of a rifle. There were several nicks in the metal. With his thumbnail he scraped off a chip of the pale stone and, breaking it between his thumb and forefinger, made it into small, thin pieces, like soap flakes. Then he dabbed these on the marks on the blade, and rubbed.
‘The blade has seen battles,’ he said, finally.
‘Someone has sent it to you?’ she asked. ‘That someone wants you to make it like new?’
‘It is a
meito,’
he said. ‘Remember the word I told you? A sword of some importance. One with a name.’
‘What is the name?’ Vera asked.
‘Sometimes we find a
Kamakura,
or a
Bizen.
There is also a fine blade called
Sagami.
This may be one. I do not know, yet. I have seen very few of them. There are not so many good old swords. So many were destroyed.’
‘Who destroyed them?’
‘Soldiers. In Meiji,’ he said, ‘some years after the Americans broke our isolation it was in March of your year 1876. There was a battle. The samurai fought as they had fought for centuries,
with
katana
and
naginata.
They were laden with heavy armour and weapons. Can you imagine, on the battlefield, each samurai had servants running after him to carry his baggage?’
He gave a little snort. ‘They thought they could not lose. They fought against army that had been raised by conscription from the population of farmers who knew nothing of
bushido.
But they did not need to. Something which the samurai were too blind to see had replaced their swords. You can imagine what. The gun, of course. These peasants were armed with rifles from the outside, from America, and France, and Britain. They simply raised the rifles, and aimed, and the samurai fell. The days of fighting face to face, one against one, were over. You see, while Japan had been closed to the outside world, the samurai had become outdated. And more than that. From arrogance, from corruption, the rulers had lost their soul. There is a saying we learned in school. “A military man without poetry is a savage, not a samurai.”’
‘You have poetry,’ Vera said. ‘You have Shakespeare.’
He inclined his head. He had no quotation this time.
‘So the great samurai and his sword with its
kami
was humiliated. Then Japan herself was humiliated by the likes of your kind.’ He smiled. ‘It was forbidden to wear a sword. By an edict from the Emperor. Hiro-rei. The soldiers of the Emperor went around the countryside finding and seizing all the old swords. They made huge fires and melted them back into iron. But this one –’ he lifted it again and took another sighting along its edge ‘– this one was hidden in the ground.’
‘Where?’ Vera asked.
‘You ask a question about what is unimportant,’ he said. ‘It does not matter where it was hidden. Only that it was hidden. And that it has come to light again. The spirit does not truly die. It is part of a cycle: death and rebirth.’
‘It is not coming back to life by itself,’ insisted Vera. ‘You are bringing it back.’ He put his hand in the water and began to rinse off the paste. She watched the gleam on the blade grow stronger.
‘An old sword is good because it is both hard and soft. I
told you this: remember it. Hard so as to cut well, and soft so as not to break. A sword made today is not good.
Gendaito.
Modern. They are too hard. They have no ability to bend, no softness. They are not quenched in water, but in sand. Do you know what it is to quench?’
He knew more English than she did.
‘It means to put out the flame. They are made for a bad purpose, without understanding, in a fever to make a war.’
He spoke with great intensity while looking at the blade in his hand. He had not seemed to be addressing Vera, and she listened without really understanding, to the ferocity in his voice as he continued. She was caught by surprise when he included her again.
‘And Japan is once again descended to
kuro taniwa.
Do you know what that is? I believe you would call it military fascism. And I forbid you to say those words I have said to you.’
It made no sense to Vera. ‘All right,’ she said.
‘Do you understand? I forbid you.’
‘Yes.’ There was a silence. She thought he was angry at her. ‘Where did the sword come from?’ she asked again, to break the quiet. If it was so unimportant perhaps he would say.
‘It was buried in the back yard of a house in Kumamoto.’
‘And why has it come out now? Who has sent it to you?’
He did not answer.
‘I saw the basket maker come,’ she said.
Not a muscle of Ikkanshi-san’s face moved, but she knew she had guessed right.
He squatted barefoot over the stones. His feet were white and waxy. His hands too, were hard and smooth and hairless, like the hands of a marble statue. They kept about their business of the fine work as if no thought were needed to guide them. But he had said, ‘your kind’. Why was he making them on opposite sides? She tried to imagine the smooth-faced Japanese man in a western suit attending the theatre in Covent Garden. The operas he had loved, that he still remembered, and sometimes still heard on his radio.
‘Why do you have to do everything so many times over?’ she asked. ‘It must be very boring.’
At last he stopped the rocking.
‘There it is, proof of how little you understand,’ he said, smiling. ‘Or perhaps you only want my attention.’
The light was still coming in through the doorway but it was at such an angle it was not useful to him. He got up to start his generator. He reached to pull the cord.
‘Can I do it?’
He handed Vera the little handle at the end of the cord. She pulled hard. The starter did not catch. She pulled again. The handle came part way back and then slipped out of her hand, clattering back against the generator. Her arm felt as if it would come out of her shoulder socket. Ikkanshi-san laughed. She frowned, drawing her eyebrows together in an imitation of his. She concentrated all her efforts, and took a deep breath, grasped the handle more firmly and the third time the motor roared and shook. Then it settled into a rhythmic throb. Ikkanshi had a small electric light; slowly it began to glow, brighter and brighter. He trained the beam on his work. He put his face right up to the blade and peered along the length. The light came on it and it glowed like a sullen fire. He raised his face to hers, and bowed. Now his voice was different.