The Child and the Samurai

Context: This piece was inspired by this excerpt from the Bible. Although I am not religious, it is a wonderful piece of writing.

The Child and the Samurai

Let me tell you a story from my childhood. A story of someone who was a dear friend of mine. Of a friendship that shaped me like I was wet clay, and now that I have hardened into the man I am, I often wonder who I would be if I had never met a samurai.

It was the spring of the year 1955 in Vietnam. I must've been ten or eleven at most. It was a year before I was due to start school, so with busy parents and all the time in the world, I kept myself good company. I played in the rice fields that my father tended, running through the long grass and wading through the waterlogged soil. Sometimes I would venture out beyond the fields and into the forest to explore, though my father would always chastise me for doing so. It was under the canopy of thick, tall trees that I first met the Samurai. He was a haggard man, thin to the bone with eyes that retreated into their sockets. He was crouched over a small fire, eating a meager meal. The crackle of the wood as it burned sounded just the same as the snap of twigs under my feet as I wandered closer to him, but the man still turned his head to look at me, no look of surprise on his face. 

Had I stumbled across this strange, peculiar man a year later, I would have never approached. The cruelty of the world and the danger of strangers would've been drilled into my head at school. But in that now, I was very much intrigued. I wondered who this person was, and how he had come to the state that he was in. I had no desire to help him, only the selfish fascinations of a young boy. So I sat down next to him, and he offered me his food. He tore the bread he was eating in half, and he gave me a piece. He poured me some soup from a flask, and gave me the cup. I asked him why he would do this when he clearly needed the food more than me, and that I had plenty in a warm home not far from here. He told me the trail back to the village was long and I must've walked a long way to get here and so I must've been hungry too. He told me there would always be a way for him to find food, whether it be foraging in the forests, hunting wild animals or stealing from the markets. I was just a young boy and I did not know how to do those things yet, so in his eyes we were equals. I accepted the food and ate it fervently. He was right, I was hungry. I did not realise it then but the stranger had shown great humility, and it was the first lesson of many I would be taught by him.

As the days passed I would on occasion make the journey through the forest and find his small little camp. Even if he was not there, I would sit down on a log and occupy myself with a book. Sometimes I would try and start the fire, but I never could. Soon, the man would return, taking a seat beside me. I always jumped in surprise - I never heard his footsteps. We would talk until the sun began to set, then I would return home. I learnt many things about him. He was a samurai, but he had been exiled for refusing to go to war with a rival clan. When I asked him why, he said it was because there was a woman he loved in the other clan. When I asked why he did not join the other clan, he said it was because he loved his clan, and would not want to fight them either. I asked him whether he believed this woman to be the love of his life, and he said perhaps. So I asked why he did not pursue her with more vigor. He said that he still had faith in the world, and that if it was meant to be, once the war was over, she would still be alive. And if she was not, it would be tragic but it would not be irrecoverable. The most important thing was that he did not partake in the bloodshed of the ones he loved. And so, the samurai showed me what integrity is.

The samurai taught me how to hunt. First with a knife, chasing wild rabbits. I learnt that quickly. The eager, brutish energy of an eleven year old meant I easily caught up to the scampering rabbits with their small legs. The plunging of the knife though, through the neck of the small creature, was not something I quickly got used to. It is one of the cruel realities of life, the samurai told me. If I let the rabbit live today, tomorrow it would be eaten by a fox. Soon we moved onto bigger game, and I was taught how to use a bow. The bow was an elegant instrument, but in my hands it felt clumsy. My shoulders ached as I pulled back the string, and I could not stop the bow from shaking under my strain. It meant I was terribly inaccurate. I could not hit a standing bottle yet alone a deer from a hundred feet. One day, after hours of practice, I threw the bow down in anger and stomped off deeper into the woods. "I can live off rabbits!" I shouted. When I returned, the fire was burning strongly and the aroma of cooked deer filled the air. The samurai looked at me, amused. "You can live off rabbits. But you will always be drawn to the taste of your unknown potential." And so I trained with the bow until it felt light in my hands and my accuracy was pinpoint. So the Samurai had taught me how to persevere.

Once I was confident enough with the bow, we set off for my first big game. It was summer and in the woods it was mating season for the deer. It was good for us. The scent of males and females would distract the deer, and the shot would be easier. After an hour of tracking footsteps, something I had still yet to learn, we reached an opening. The Samurai and I huddled behind a bush and peered out into the green. The ground was uneven but we could see a deer sitting on the grass. I looked at the Samurai, to ask if it was a good idea to go for this shot, and he nodded. And so I drew my bow, aiming at the heart, and released the string. The arrow flew through the air and landed exactly where I had aimed. The wounded deer, in its surprise, leapt up and ran away but with a punctured heart it was not long before it collapsed onto the ground. I sprang forward and ended its life quickly with a knife across the neck. It was a perfect kill I thought, and I turned proudly towards the Samurai but his eyes were fixed on another small creature laying where the deer had rested. It was a fawn, not older than a few days, and it looked up defenselessly at the Samurai. I knew the life cycle of a deer was cyclic, and like us, they spent the first portion of their lives utterly helpless. They depended entirely upon their mothers for food and warmth, and it was through their mothers that they learnt to navigate the woods and identify other creatures as dangers. I looked at the Samurai and asked if we should kill it too and he shook his head. It would be wrong and wasteful to end a life so young, he said. He said we would raise it together, until it could stand steadily on its own four feet and knew the scent of its hunters. We wrapped the fawn in cloth and carried it back to our camp. I learnt two lessons that day. First, that even the Samurai could make mistakes. And second, a lesson in taking responsibility. 

That evening the Samurai taught me how to skin a deer. First, you start around the bend of each leg. Your knife must be sharp, and you move it slowly, with precision. Your cuts must be gentle. You do not pull on the knife, but let it fall through. In my eagerness to skin the animal, to taste the succulent meat and quench the hunger in my stomach, I did none of those things. I worked hastily, moving the knife brutishly like I was cutting bread. The Samurai stopped me again and again, warning me that I was ruining the hide but I did not care. I wanted the meat, not the hide. I finished skinning the animal in half the time it was supposed to take. I cut the meat, now free from its skin, into pieces and placed them onto the fire. We were eating before the sun had even set. An hour later, under a moonlit sky, I sat and watched with a full stomach. The deerskin laid on the ground, ragged and disregarded. I felt I had done a terrible thing. As my stomach began to lurch, the Samurai spoke. The meat will only sate you for a moment, he said. Your desire for the meat is fuelled by carnal instincts, savage and brutish thoughts from your belly and not your mind. The meat will fill you up, but soon you will feel empty. However, the skin will protect you for a lifetime. It will protect you from the cold and the ground. You do not desire the skin like you desire the meat, but you need it just as much. So treat it with respect, give it the time it deserves. This was how the Samurai taught me patience.

It was not until six or seven years later, when the paths of our lives had diverged long ago, that I realised the final lesson the Samurai taught me. He did not teach me through words or even actions, but through his self. The way he would move, the way he would speak. Softly, without disturbance. I had believed that the Samurai had been trained to step lightly. I never heard his footsteps. Now I know that it was not his training but his temperament that made his steps featherweight. The way he would talk to others, the way he would look at them. Always thinking, reading emotions and movements of the body. As I neared the end of my school years the world grew harsher. Boys became men, and men were cruel. Girls became women, and women were compelling. I found that adults were selfish, fascinated by selfish thoughts. People who did good could be bad, and those who were bad could be kind. By all rights the Samurai was not a good person. He was an exile. He stole from markets, he lived off the land and he contributed nothing to society. And so I learnt of the ethereal nature of kindness. It was a kind of magic that swished and swirled around the world and wrapped itself around certain people. It did not distinguish between good and bad, it chose its hosts through a different, unfathomable method.

On the first of November that year, the Vietnam war broke out. Hundreds of men from the village went to join the Viet Cong to help liberate us against the Americans, and a foul silence hung throughout the air. Some of the older schoolchildren even went, and our school felt emptier. The Samurai told me one day that he was going to join the fight and that he would not be coming back. I asked him why, it was not his war to fight - he was Japanese. He told me that the land on which he lived was Vietnamese, and so he must show his gratitude. It was his responsibility, he said, and instantly I knew he would not be convinced otherwise. As I watched from my home in the village as the horses cantered through carrying Viet Cong soldiers, the Samurai among them, I was saddened. I knew I would miss him, and I wondered if he would remember me. I wondered if I had made any impact on his life, when he had bulldozed through mine. But through the sadness I had a realisation. All those lessons the Samurai had taught me were pillars that held up a larger one. It was a lesson on how to love. And in the now empty classrooms, the empty village and empty forests, it broke my heart that the best teacher of love was loneliness.