Stephen Hunter - The 47th samurai

The question wasn’t even sane enough for an answer. She just looked at him. He took the small, flat brown bottle out of the paper bag, cranked off the cap, smiled, toasted her, and said, “Cheers.”

Then he poured some of it into his hair, and ruffled his hair with his other hand.

He splashed some on his neck.

He handed her the bottle.

He pulled down his tie and unbuttoned four buttons on his shirt and tugged his shirt up on the left side.

“‘The foundation of the Way is always deception.’ Yagyu, sixteen thirty-five,” he said.

“All right, Swagger. I give up. Go to your little war.”

“See ya,” he said, stepping out.

“I’ll be waiting for you to come out, that is, if you come out.”

Nii was amazed. The old man, barefoot and in black like some kind of hipster, with glasses so big they blew his eyes up like a bug’s, sat on a low stool on a platform. He looked like some kind of musical performer. He was bent over the long curve of steel, his eyes fiercely concentrating, his left hand securing the blade against a block of wood, his right gripping a piece of flat stone. A water bucket sat at his right foot.

He was in the part of the process called finishing. It had been a long, slow war, starting with foundation stones and the full power of his imagination and his stamina and his know-how, all applied against the blade in an act that was part love and part hate and all art. The blade, for its part, fought him stubbornly. Its scars were proudly earned in forgotten battles, its surface was stained by the blood of many, some justly taken, some not so justly taken. It did not want to return to the ceremonial pristine.

In the war, the old man’s weapons were stones. There were dozens of them, each with a specific name, a specific grain, a specific face, to be used in one place, in one direction-arato, kongoto, binsui, kasisei, chunagura, koma-nagura, uchigumori hato, uchigumori-to-and the art of the campaign was in knowing the place for each in the time-consuming ritual. The old man’s face was as wrinkled as a prune’s, but his hair was long and fluffy. He looked more like a saxophonist than a warrior, but a warrior he was, and the glitter of a million particles of ground steel were the evidence of his attack, even if, every hour, he vacuumed them up, for an unvanquished particle could slide between stone and blade and cause havoc.

Nii watched as something beautiful emerged with slow precision out of something mundane. What had seemed to be a common chunk of old steel, smeared, spotted with rust, nicked, and hazed, was now an elegant sweep of colors and textures. It didn’t shine, not really; it glowed, as if lit from within. Somehow as the old metal was removed, the blade regained its life and power. It was alive now. The smeary, milky line (or smudge, really) of the hamon ran along the whole edge. The tip, kissaki, was cruel and perfect, a couple of inches of eloquent steel that would penetrate anything. The thicker metal of the mune had a golden quality, substantial and embracing, solid yet giving rather than crudely strong and brittle. And the two grooves (bo-hi, they were called) gave the blade an aerodynamic purity and would make it sing as it cleaved the air. It looked hungry for blood. It was one of those objects that was sacred and profane at once. It wanted but one thing, to drink more blood, and yet it was also an expression of the distilled genius of the people of the little island who had created and spread its soul and spirit across half the known world. Nii knew none of this. He could express nothing of it. He felt all of it. It had gotten his mind, for once, off little girls.

The old man worked steadily, without seeing anything but the sword, six inches from his face. He was, in his way, too cool to see the gaudy, fashion-obsessed yaks of the world. He communicated to them that, though loud and forceful, they were trivial, meaningless. He lived to work. He accepted that day some weeks ago when they had simply shown up with guns and a large pile of money.

“You will do this work. This work and no other. You will keep it secret from everybody. You will be watched. You must finish by the first week in December.”

“It cannot be done in that time.”

“Yes, it can,” Kondo had said to him. “You must know who I am, and what I am capable of. I would hate to spill your blood-”

“Life, death, it’s the same.”

“To you, in your eighties, but perhaps not to children, grandchildren, wife, friends, and so forth. We will leave a big hole in this small town.”

Glumly, the old man accepted the new now. He gave himself up to the blade. What choice did he have, really?

And now he was done. A final burnishing, an inspection, the full power of-

“Nii!” someone called.

Nii looked up. He saw that the old man had stopped polishing, something he’d never done before. That disturbed Nii.

Then Nii heard it: someone was banging on the door.

“Who is that fool?” he demanded.

“It’s a gaijin. It’s some stupid-looking gaijin.”

“Fuck. Well, I’ll get rid of him,” Nii said. “You, back to work.”

But for some reason the old man would not work. He stared at Nii with great intensity, as if seeing him for the first time or as if he knew something. Then he smiled.

He spoke for the first time in months.

“This is going to be good,” he said.

Bob knocked hard on the door. He heard stirring inside. He tried the lock, felt it rock in the jamb but not give much at all. He knocked again, harder.

“Hey!” he said. “Hey, goddammit, open up. I got a sword needs polishing!”

Something stirred inside, and through a small crack in the curtain behind the glass, he sensed a flash of movement. What he could see was otherwise unimpressive: shelves and on the shelves what looked to be shoeboxes, and in the shoeboxes what looked to be stones, some flat, some jagged, all different in shape, texture, and color.

“Hey,” he shouted again, “goddammit, I have a sword! You want some money? I have money for you. Don’t you want to work? Come on, goddammit, open the hell up.”

He did this for about three minutes, loudly, a drunken gaijin who would not go away, not soon, not ever.

“I hear you! Goddammit, I hear you in there, open up, goddammit!”

Then he saw movement in the dark, which soon resolved itself into two husky young men in suits. They had impassive faces and one wore sunglasses. They were about 240 each and lacked necks. They had short arms that hung at a slight bend because the muscle was so overdeveloped it kept the arms from straightening.

They came to the door, and Bob heard clacking as the lock was released. The door slid open an inch but no farther and both young men crushed against the opening with their full linebackers’ weight and strength, giving no quarter.

“Hey, I-”

“You go away. Shop closed. No one here. He gone. Go away now, please.”

“Come on, fellas,” he said with a drunk’s belligerent stupidity. “I bought this thing for a thousand bucks. It needs a shine. This is the place, ain’t it? Guy told me this place really shines ’em up good. Come on, lemme in, lemme talk to the fella.” He held up the white-sheathed, white-gripped wakizashi.

“Go away now, please. No one here. Polisher gone. Go elsewhere. Not your business here.”

“Guys, I just want-”

“No business for you here.”

The door rocked shut and Bob heard it click.

The two men edged back, then disappeared into a rear room.

He stood there a second, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a metal pick. The clickings of the door had informed him that it was a standard throw-bolt, a universal fixture, easily overcome. He slid the pick in the keyhole, felt the delicate mesh of tumblers and levers, wiggled this way and that, and felt each tumbler eventually give up its position. He put the pick away, took out a plastic credit card, drew that up the door slot to the bolt, and began a steady upward tapping, gentle and persistent, urging the bolt off the spring-driven lever that secured it. In two seconds, with a snap, it yielded to these probings and popped open.