The 47th samurai

It wasn’t until “proof through the night that our flag was still there” that Swagger realized he was the source of the music; it was the ringing of the forgotten cellular phone that Kondo had given him to manage his transit to the point of exchange.

He flicked it open.

“It’s five thirty a.m. As I said I would, I call you. We have some business,” said Kondo Isami.

“We do,” said Bob. “Time and place, please.”

“It’s not so far, gaijin. It’s next door, over the wall, quite a lovely place. Kiyosumi Gardens. Turn left at the pond. Look to the left. I await you on an island. I’ll be easy to find. I’m the one with the sword.”

45

Swagger turned and strode out the gate, the Muramasa blade over his shoulder, the folds of his hakama jacket tied back by a figure eight of rope around his shoulder, his obi tight, his creases still sharp. He turned right on the little street, walked fifty yards, then diverted to the left through the open gate of Kiyosumi Gardens in the somber rise of light.

He entered a kind of wonderland. Light snow lay upon everything, as did the utter tranquillity of dawn. Before him he saw the pond, a flat sheet of reflection, its surface broken now and then by the ripple of one of the ceremonial carp the size of trout breaking the surface in a flash of golden torso. In one corner, reeds, still green because their verticality gave snow no purchase, waved ever gently, more on their own internal vibration than by any force of atmosphere. Across the way, a pavilion, ivory with a sequence of tile roofs and the elfin upturn of Asian style over stout mahogany pillars and a sea of paned, opaque windows, supported its own mantle of snow. The trees were variously dressed in white as well, the pines supporting it, the willows less cooperative and, like the reeds, still mostly green. Ducks cruised, the big fish fed, the snow lay crisp as sugar, everything was etched to a woodcut genius’s perfection. No modern buildings could be seen. It was a haiku called “Garden, 5:32 a.m., Break of Dawn.” He might have added, “ 1702.”

He saw the man standing on an island to the left, still a hundred quiet yards away. Swagger followed the path, skipping over rocks where they transected a cove for a shortcut, ducked under willows, turned again to find a wooden bridge, and crossed to the island.

The circle of earth lay possibly thirty feet across, with a shore of rocks artfully arranged, some glazed white in snow. Its trees were willows, bent with their own load of snow, the white on the green, the whole painted magenta by ribbons of sunlight broken through and captured on the surface of the low, dense clouds. Now and then a bubble popped, as a fat carp came up in search of food or merely to belch.

Kondo stood, one hip cocked, with a warrior’s utter narcissism. Like Swagger, he held the saya over a shoulder, almost like a rifle. A smirk marked the handsome face on the square, symmetrical head. He looked like a jazz musician ready for a riff or a ballplayer in the on-deck circle, his muscularity held taut under a black, formal kimono, his radiant vitality almost a heat vapor off his posture.

“So,” he said as Swagger approached, “did Miwa die well?”

“Not particularly,” said Swagger. “He gave some bullshit speech.”

“Alas, I heard it many times. You, Swagger-san, I know you will die well.”

“I doubt it,” said Swagger. “I plan on screaming like a baby. But since it ain’t happening for thirty more years, it ain’t worth worrying about now.”

The jibe brought a sharper smile to Kondo’s confident face. Then he noticed something.

“Oh, I see my father gave you Muramasa’s blade. He actually still believes in all that crap. It’ll be a pleasure to give it back to him without comment this afternoon. He’ll know what it means. That will be my revenge on him. Oh, what a warm family moment.”

“What he’ll get is a bag with your head in it.”

“If Dad’s been helping, that means he sent you to Doshu. I studied with Doshu too. It’s too bad, you know; you can only get so far with Doshu. You’re limited by Doshu’s imagination. You better have more than eight cuts if you’re going to last a minute against me. And when I take your head, Doshu will hear too. I wish I could see that.”

“You must be nervous. You talk too much. I come to fight, not talk.”

“No, I am not nervous, I am eager. This is a red-letter day for me. I didn’t help Miwa win his dirty movie election, but so what? As I say, he was only a pornographer. But I am about to fight and defeat a really great samurai, as I have dreamed of for years. Then I will have defeated in proxy my father, and as he is the living memory of samurai in Japan, I will have entered legend.”

“You’re talking so much you must think you have all the time in the world.”

“I do. And let me tell you why. I have genius, and genius always triumphs. It’s the law of genetics. I have a thousand years of swordsmen’s blood in my veins. Then I have experience. I’ve fought man on man to the death thirty-two times and won all. I know what happens in a duel. I have strength and stamina. I have foreknowledge: I know Doshu’s style and the eight cuts he taught you, and I can easily counter every one with either hand. I also know your particular style: the cuts are shaky, except for your best, migi kiriage, and your footwork is always suspect,” said Kondo.

Swagger said, “You forgot one thing: I cheat.”

The swords came out fast, like the flickering of a snake’s searching tongue, with doubled rasps of polished steel against wood loud against the silence of the dawn. Kondo was much faster. He was so swift in the unleashing, Swagger knew he’d been smart to keep his distance, so that he couldn’t be chopped down in nukitsuke, the draw, and fall ruptured before the fight had even begun.

The island afforded little enough room: Swagger thought that was to his advantage, because the less he ran, the more strength he’d have. The closer he got, the better chance he’d have. If it became a ru

Trusting aggression, his old friend, he moved in, quickly cutting the island in half, bringing his blade on high right to an enemy that awaited on the balls of his feet, bent utterly in concentration, his blade thrust before him.

Bob closed, forgetting the swordsman’s shuffle over the bare wood of a dojo. This was in the real world, over clumps of grass, drifts of feathery snow, the odd stone. He launched forward-“Ai!”-with his right-handed kesagiri, but the mercury-slippery Kondo rotated out of sword’s fall, repaying with a fast sideways cut, very strong, classic yokogiri, but Swagger with a speed he never guessed he had (but knew he wouldn’t have for long) got his blade up in time to turn it away, as the steel on steel hit an almost musical tone. Swagger felt the muscle and precision in the blow, even as he turned it and got himself out of range for a second.

“Yes, that’s good, close in, finish it fast. We both know you can’t stay with me. Each second is a point for me. I don’t need to cut you down quickly to win, merely to last until your arms fade,” the yakuza said, that fucking smirk still on his face.

In that second he made as if to relax and exactly as Bob’s subconscious read the relaxation in his body, he knew it to be a fake, and in the next moment, from the pose of muscular softness, Kondo exploded. His move had no coefficient in nature, it was beyond metaphor. What Swagger was doing still alive after that, he never knew, because something cat-fast in himself took over, as his blade didn’t fight Kondo’s for the space, but vacated pronto, turning with a way-less-than-good cut, which Kondo easily thwarted. But Kondo didn’t press the advantage, instead eased backward.