Cherry Blossoms

Cherry Blossoms

In the words of the ancients, one should make his decisions within the space of seven breaths …. A warrior is a person who does things quickly.

(Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai)

A girl I haven’t seen before stands at the end of the empty corridor, her head to one side. Sunlight streams through the door to shimmer in the dusty hall behind her. The girl’s mouth is promising pink, her hair a lengthy silk scarf of the blackest pitch. Thick, white socks pile up around her calves. A white collar arcs around a neck unused to lips and tongues and teeth and hands. I go straight for the corner.

A hand, out of nowhere, holds me in my place. Twisting round, I see the Deputy there, apparently out of breath. He releases me, inclines his head politely, and offers me a long white envelope. One fluid motion. But his eyes flicker past me, focus on the figure at the end of the corridor, come back apprehensive.

“The principal asked me to see that you received this,” he mutters, and I take the envelope from him: probably another memo about photocopying.

“Thank you,” I say as he walks away, his shoes clipping the floor like a woman’s heels.

When I look back, the girl is no longer there.

*   *   *

On my seventh birthday, my father gave me a book: The Way of the Samurai. Over the years I lost things, disposed of things, gave things away, but this book stayed with me. It offered a guide to living, and communicated its wisdom in the form of ambiguous anecdotes and metaphorical aphorisms. It demanded contemplation. To my father’s mind, The Way of the Samurai promised discipline. “The end is important in all things,” he quoted at me from the doorway of my room as I sat reluctant in front of exam revision. And when I was getting the highest grades in my class, and thought I’d earned the right to a day off, he replaced my bowl of miso soup with the book at the breakfast table, drawing a finger along the line as he read it aloud: “Continue to spur a running horse.” As the years wore on, he came back to this book: often in reference, always in earnest. And I followed. It provided structure; better still, validation. And the older I grew, the more sense it made. A warrior is rarely born thus.

*   *   *

Through windows strung out like lanterns at regular intervals along the corridor, I see students sitting in groups, under trees whose dark, twisted branches will be hidden behind thick flowers any day now.

We wait for it every year: we watch the television forecast, check the newspaper reports to see whether the wave of flowering has reached the Kanto plain. When it comes, we make arrangements at work: who will buy the sake, who will pick up food, who will bring tarpaulin, and who will go to the park early to reserve a desirable spot under the trees. After work, we rush to the parks and drink and laugh, and leave late, knowing we’ll suffer the next morning. And this has never stopped us. We soak it up, loving it all the more because we know it won’t stay long. The samurai spirit urges me to stay in the moment, to cherish the blossom. And the yen opens out. At its core it is hot pink. The slightest touch. It’s what the yen pulls towards.

And in the moment there is: her pouting lips, full and felt, stirring the ache of hunger in the stomach; the point of her chin, like the reflection of Fuji-san in a springtime lake; the narrow neck, dipping slightly at the centre like the cleft further down her spine; the sting of her breasts, like nothing else in the world. And the smooth nose with its tiny nostrils that can flare out unexpectedly, like petals tickled by a balmy breeze.

*   *   *

It was shortly after I met Momo that I noticed the orange, blue and violet dashes in the air. The dragonflies swept through the city, hovering above the heads of stampeding salary men in their suits, as though they didn’t know their place was in the countryside. We used to sit in Yoyogi park and count them. Some called it love. Not me. My longest relationship to date: swept along, but not away. And time proved me right: only one year later, and Momo no longer matters. When confronted with her these days, I’m surprised, then resentful. With Hazuki I’m Hikoboshi. This is how I imagine us: mythical lovers. Brought together in yearning. Separated by the Milky Way.

*   *   *

In the staff room, Shibuya-san watches me pack my bag. I can imagine what he’s thinking, what he’ll be saying later to the principal. He’s too old now to teach, so he sits around, commenting on the role of the teacher and what it’s become. It’s impossible for us to take him seriously and still return to the classroom so shamed. So we bow out our niceties and pretend not to see his frowning. There’s nothing to be done about the age in which we live except to live it, and this is something the old man may never understand, or even care to consider. I look to the students and see them utterly unaffected by the black gaze he casts over them. This is how I understand their world is unburdened in a way that mine isn’t. I envy them their flippancy: this is true. I envy them their determination to remain children. They are laughing and jostling each other all around me as I walk through the playground.

Brightly coloured o-hanami decorations hang from the tops of lampposts and shop signs all the way to the station. A black cat crosses my path and I can’t remember whether or not this is lucky. Because it’s quiet, I find a seat easily enough, in the sunlight. I catch a glimpse of myself reflected in the window as we pass a building cast in shadow and then it’s gone as quickly as it came, and the four-beat bar takes over. A headline in the newspaper of the old man sitting opposite tells me that mobile phones are killing all our ghosts. I start to drift away.

*   *   *

Lying in bed last week, straining towards sleep, Momo asked me to tell her a secret. A cold fear laid its hands on me: did she know, or was this just another of her perverse questions? Could I ever tell her? A part of me longs to, to bridge the gap. A small part: too small. Wrap your intentions of needles of pine. It was the day after I’d found the Heaven’s Passport.

I first saw Hazuki’s Heaven’s Passport in an English class. It took on all kinds of strange identities in my mind, so when I was finally able to look at it more closely, the truth seemed a thousand times more perverse than the steamy admissions of lust that had raged in my imagination.

It happened after school one day. Everyone had gone home and the lights had been turned off for the night. And as I passed the lower girls’ lockers, I saw that hers was ajar. In the space of seven breaths. I nudged the door with my finger, and it swung open. Inside, the guarded notebook: a simple catalogue of good deeds, in a haphazard, adolescent hand, punctuated by shiny, gaudy stickers. I turned it over. It didn’t make sense. I read a few of her entries: they were sweet, sometimes amusing. And then I found the motivation.

On the very first page was her wish, which would  come true once she’d performed one hundred good deeds. This was all promised in fine, golden print. What she’d written took me straight home to the three bottles of vintage red wine I’d been saving for a special occasion. How to explain to Momo why the wine has suddenly vanished, when she’s begged me to open a bottle so often? I dread the moment she notices they’re gone. I dread the moment it becomes apparent that I’m not prepared to tell her the truth, and that I don’t have the energy anymore to make it up.

If I cradle The Way of the Samurai loosely in my hands, there are certain points where the pages part of their own accord. One of these contains a passage underlined in red pen: If by setting one’s heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way. His whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling. Hidden in the leaves lay the promise of my salvation; hidden in the leaves the chance of a blameless path. Of the last sentence, of course, it was always the first clause which interested me. There never was a calling. Teaching used to be, or so I gather from what I’ve heard, but not now. Not for a long time. I’ve searched my colleagues for signs and it’s a strong conviction of mine that we are, all of us, lacking. So it wasn’t the promise of promotion of work that drew me in, but the prospect of a life free from blame. And it was this that brought me back, repeatedly, to the conditional. What did it mean to set one’s heart right? To live as though you were already dead? Years of thought brought me to a clutch of meagre speculations and one, clear conclusion: fear was out of the question. You are samurai: you’re dead before you reach the corner.

*   *   *

On the way to the convenience store, I pass my local launderette and see a plague of cockroaches trapped inside the window. Their large black shells glimmer in the dying light and I stop to count them as they wheel in their frenzy at the glass: twenty four. Making a mental note to buy a roach bomb in the morning, I move on, glancing back a few times to check the vision is real. The image will probably work its way into my sleep and there will be nobody to wake me when it does. Unless Momo is there. In spite of the roach dreams that might ride the tides of sleep tonight, I’m offering prayers to the few gods I now of that she is not. Not tonight. Please.

*   *   *

I look at Momo these days, and I can’t understand why she’s there. It’s a strange thing to be with a person you have no more left to say to. I’d prefer her not to come. I’d prefer to be left alone with my yen. Most disconcerting is the way she moves around so comfortably, the way she sits cross-legged on the floor in front of the screen, a bowl of steaming rice on her lap, or stands at the sink, elbow-deep in soap suds. She looks at home; my apartment has embraced her in a way it never did me, and she’s free to come and go as she pleases. I’m in no position to ask her not to.

Thirty-nine years, and still in no position! Dead before I reach the corner, and by my own hand.

Hazuki lingered after class. I waited for her to leave, my head down, scribbling on the register. She hovered about her desk, her skirt moving on the periphery of my vision. I drew breath, raised my head, to see her staring at me, a thumb baiting the corner of her mouth. Collecting herself, she straightened and bowed slightly.

“Sensei,” she said, politely, “There’s a lot I didn’t understand.” The almond-shaped space between her thighs, down to her knees. The same as her eyes. “Sensei?”

“If you tell me which parts you didn’t understand, I’ll explain again.”

She moved across to me. Her glassy hair broke open into a fat crescent of white light as her face lowered to the floorboards. In seconds, two white knees, impossibly chiselled, only inches away. My hands clasped and clenched on the desk. I thought I knew what her skin would taste like. The urge to put it to the test was almost unbearable. She put her notebook on my desk and I caught a hint of sweat mixed with jasmine. The blood in my temples pulsed. Yes, there are moments when self-control is out of the question. Even for a sensei. A glimmer in her eye. A throbbing in me for the pink confetti raining from the trees.

“So, the future perfect,” I began.

*   *   *

At the 7-11, the queue sits fat around the outer aisle like a blockage in a pipe. I almost leave, but my fridge is empty, so I grab a basket. Minutes later, in the queue the basket cuts off the circulation of blood in my arm, and I put it on the floor, pushing it forward with a foot inch by miserable inch. One lives in the world and reacts to things around him. The question is where one places his feet. I look down.

I’m staring inanely at the contents of my basket, wondering what it says about me, when my fingers find the memo in my pocket. We need to have some sort of meeting, I think to myself: I have plenty to say about the restrictions on photocopies. The queue shifts forward and I put the basket on the counter, busy myself with the memo in my hand while the kid packs my shopping. My eyes start to speed read. Stop. Go back. I have that feeling again, like I’m falling and it’s taking me years to hit the ground. It’s not a memo.

*   *   *

My heart was already busy with its swelling by the time autumn descended red, gold and yellow upon the city. I fell over the wooden desks, all pointed my way in the closed-off classroom. A long descent. A girl thirteen years old.

Is it true that people grow older at a faster rate these days? Certainly I feel now as I expected to feel in my seventies. So if I’m older in feeling than in years, couldn’t a case be made for her?

And maybe this is something like the secret Momo suspected I’d have. But then probably nothing so vulgar, or so recent, entered her imagination. And now there’s the delicate matter of the letter to hide from her, detailing the complaints lodged against me, and the inquiry that will follow.

*   *   *

Home, I slip my key into the lock and hold still, listening. Trying to sense whether Momo’s on the other side of the door. Click, push, silence. No television. No lights. I dump my shoes and coat at the entrance, my briefcase on the kitchen floor. Put my shopping into the fridge, which hums its approval. Spaghetti Bolognese goes into the microwave. High. Sixty seconds. I’m cast back, suddenly, to a spring afternoon thirty years old. My father towers above me. One of his fingers is raised, and I hear the samurai code on his lips: “There is something to be learned from a rainstorm, Yuudai-chan: you must be resolved to get wet from the start!”

Twiddling disposable chopsticks, I move into the main living area, where the futon is taking up most of the floor space, the duvet humped in segments across it like a huge, cotton maggot. I draw back the curtain and go out onto the balcony, where the moon is slung low, hammocked between the Soseki Tower and the Katanga Building. In a murky blue. No stars. Pylons pull thick, black cables taut across my view, dividing the city into three unequal parts. I take the letter out to read it again. I will not be expected at the school tomorrow. They’ll contact me in a few days. The more I stare at the words, the less sense they make and in a matter of seconds they’ve become hieroglyphs. Ping. Inside, I place the letter carefully at the back of a drawer, build up sandbags of socks towards the front, and push it closed quietly. I ought to shred it. Momo hasn’t yet wormed her way into all of my drawers, but I’m always on the alert. How to ask her to leave without risking a scene? How to take it all back quietly?

*   *   *

I worried for Hazuki’s education. I watched that she ate well in the cafeteria, that she was happy, that none of her classmates were nasty to her. After, when she bled, I wiped her myself.

*   *   *

I remember the sword shop my father took me to once, when I was young; the samurai sword with the silhouette of mountains and blossom scored along its edge, where the steel had been folded. The owner leant down to me and said: “To see if a thing is Japanese, boy, look for the careful arc, the controlled flourish.” I call back the sword itself, in its simple glass case. You should never breathe upon, or even speak close to a samurai sword: the blade is so sensitive, it can rust. I knew this at the age of seven. You should never hold a cherry blossom in a wet hand, or with too tight a grip. And this I knew instinctively. I close my eyes and find the girl. She glows soft and pure under hard white light, ready to open. A samurai sword: worth more when they’ve not killed. But the shedding of blood is something else: a part of the process. Part of the cycle.

And how to explain all this to a man who has pictures of dead Emperors on his desk, in place of his wife and children?

© Lenya Samanis

[Heavily doctored chapter from a novel: shortlisted for the New Writing Ventures Award for Fiction, September 2006.]