Manga #1 (History)

It is the time of the Samurai, and our castle on the green mountain is besieged. The gatehouses are burning, and in unbroken lines enemy soldiers stream up the hill towards us.

Our archers shoot arrows from the battlements as rapidly as they can.

 We have some men with guns, waiting behind bundles of straw.

But the invading soldiers, kicking up dust, in conical hats and with strong square shields, move fast in strict formation towards the rectangular shape of light which is the central gate.  The gate is open.  I don't know why.

They break ranks, beneath their vertical white flags, and the three I can see most clearly are monstrous. One has an eye patch and a white bandanna, its loose ends flailing out behind his head in the greed of his approach.  Next to him, in steel armour and helmet, a soldier with his two-handed sword already on the backhand slash. The third has a hook nose and a staring eye, and is leading the invaders' chant in words like blood. Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.  'Kill them all!!'

Somewhere inside the castle, in a room with a wooden wall, I am waiting. I am very hot, sweat running through my war bandanna, down the side of my nose, my neck.  I am very young, with long black hair which flops over my face in fetching spikes and strands.  My scabbard I clutch diagonally across my chest, and the handle of my sword is up beside my ear. My teeth are clenched and my eyebrows are angled down into the top of my nose, eyes decided.  I'm dressed for war, with leather pads on my shoulders and the backs of my hands. Remember me like this.

And then I jump up, and the room I'm in is all golden wood.  I have a breast-plate and leather protective skirts, bamboo shin-pads, blue-steel protectors on my arms etched with flower patterns, and billowing blue pants to the knee. My sword is in my hands, at hip level, and I'm screaming out loud, my hair ruffled, the embodiment of fierce defiance while about me other men without particular colour are running.  'Get out!!  While you still can!!'  In the background, Kill them, Kill them, Kill them all.

Everything returns to black and white, as the older warriors always said it would, and I hardly know whether I'm living this or just looking at it.   In the guardhouse above the gate people are screaming: 'They're here, they're coming, they're inside.'

They are, I see them flooding in.  'It's too late! We're doomed!!'

Arrows arrive in a hail, thudding into the wooden floor-boards of the guardhouse, and through one guard's chest-plate. Also his knee.

Back inside, somewhere close, at the end of the big wooden room. A wounded soldier is arching on his back.  To three other soldiers standing above him, he's saying: Kill me, Kill me now.

My eyebrows jump.  'What the ..!!'

One of the standing soldiers, our men, smashes the injured man's head to bits, with rapid and repeated strokes so that blood explodes across the floor.  !!  My back is turned to it and my teeth are clenched but I can still see it. War is odd like that.

Infuriated, I turn and ready my sword, the blade upright like a sight between my eyes. Which is when a voice comes from behind me, from a small person leaping in the air and calling out to me.

He is a little old man sitting on his haunches.  He is bald and has a strip of cloth tied in the middle of his forehead with a bow. He hasn't shaved.  'Stop!!  Think before you act.'

'Be careful what you say, old man.'  I reach out my hand and pull him to his feet. He bows as he stands up; he is really very small. 'I'm honoured that you should listen to me,' he says.

He looks wise, or like a picture of wisdom, and raises his finger as he speaks.  'Don't be hasty!! There is a time and a place for violence.'

I punch him in the face. He flies backwards, sideways, head snapped back. 'What do I want to hear that for!!' (And in the background, Kill them.)

I turn, sweating but picturesque, mouth open as I gasp for breath, alert, listening. 'I have to do something!!'

I rush up some stairs, my speed in absolute evidence.  Behind me, the wise old man feebly raises his arm. 'Stop! Come back'. He is surrounded by the defeated and the dead, limp and slumped against walls.

Keep on, keep on up the stairs (Kill them, Kill them).

'Leave me alone! I'll do what I want!'  I shout.  I sweat.

At the top of the stairs is a long, empty corridor.  I stop, not knowing where to go next.

And then I see a door and slide it open with a bang. What the . . . !!

There is a naked woman, mouth open, sweat or sperm in slick globules over her breasts, face, dribbling from the side of her open mouth. I don't know if she's in pleasure or in pain, but there's something solid and slabby beside her head.

It is the naked and hairy thigh of a large, muscular man.  I am all eyes, only eyes. Two huge men with bald heads and sharp black beards, on their knees, without trousers, at each end of the woman. One is lifting the woman's head up so that the other can see it, and the other one is propping himself up on his muscular arms as he fucks the woman, whose large breasts are slanting sideways.  This man is staring at me, and within the stretch of his grimace he has two front teeth missing. He says: 'So what!?'

I reel back in the doorway, 'What's going on?!'

And a memory comes back to me, reappears, a vision: hot soup steaming in a clay pot on the window-sill on a sunny day.

The white is showing above my pupils, and my eyebrows are fixed in that downward line to the top of my nose.  Kill them.  It's hot, so hot. I'm sweating, always sweating. 'What are you doing!?  How about defending the castle!!' 'You defend the castle.  We're taking the women before they do!!'

'The women!' I run out of the room; I have somewhere very important to go, without delay.  'Maiko!!'

Already, just like that, I'm there.  I slide open the painted doors to her large tatami room, and there's a woman's head.  On the floor.

I cover my mouth with my hand, clamp shut my eyes. 'No!'

The head is connected to a woman's body in a flower-patterned kimono, but the mouth in the face is open and blood is running out like a river-delta over the ancient weave of tatami mats. She has a long-handled knife plugged deep in her throat.

I look up to my left along the corridor, a kind of enclosed terrace .  !!  There's another woman in a kimono.  She has her back to me because she's peering round the far corner, spear at the ready.

She hears me and swivels round, spear out. It is a long pole with an arrow head stuck in the end. She is pretty, in an abundant kimono printed with three different types of flower, the material venting slightly between her slender legs. She has huge round eyes and a tiny nose.   A tiny nose.

She, too, is feeling the heat. Her cheeks are flushed and droplets of sweat gather on her forehead, cheeks, neck.  'You idiot,' she says.  'I might have hurt you.'

'Oh Maiko!!' I laugh out loud, my sword back in my belt and my hands down by my sides.  'Hurt me! That's a good one.'

She flips the spear round and whacks me in the forehead with the blunt end.  Aiiee.  She's angry: steam is puffing from her ears.  'Hurt you!!,' she shouts. 'And I still might do it!!'

I hod my hand up to my head. 'Ow. That hurt.'

She is immediately repentant.  'I'm sorry .' she says, 'I'm a bit jumpy.'  She looks very pretty just now, a little frown above her huge eyes, her straight black hair hanging to her shoulders, her white teeth between her thin lips, a flush on her skin between the upper folds of the flowered kimono.

I am suddenly enraged, my moods apparently out of control. I'm flashing eyes and puckered brow and mouth wide open to shout:  'Women?!  You know nothing!!  I came up here to save you!!'

'To save you.' I rush at her with my hands like claws, and she's being sarcastic, her hand to her ear. ''To do what?' she says. 'I can't quite hear you.'

'Aaghhh.'  Another vision: she's teasing me when we were children, before even my first bandanna.  Now I loom over her in my leather breast-plate.  'You never change,' I say.  'You're the same little brat you always were.' Unfortunately, I spit a little as I say this.  Luckily, so does she: 'And you think you're so grown up!!'

She rests the base of the spear on the ground, closes her eyes and becomes serene. 'Typical boy,' she says.  'You'll probably never grow up, ever.'

This infuriates me even more, and I start shouting again.  I think it's probably more of the same. She doesn't know what she's talking about, she's a girl, I'm a boy, and I'm going to be a great great warrior, starting now.

She shouts back, and my oh my she's pretty when she's angry. 'Fantasy!!  Wake up to the real world!!'

'I am in the real world,' I say, but then suddenly three people appear from around the corner. 'What are you two doing there!!'

They're women, older women, and not so pretty with their bandannas tied at the front in bows.  They, too, are finding it hot. It must be the humidity. 'Don't just stand there!!  They're inside the main keep!!'

I find this funny. 'Exactly what I was trying to tell the young lady.'

She's never looked prettier, glancing up through her long eyelashes from her wide soulful eyes.  She knows what she does to me, how much she needs me.  'I . . . it was just that .'

The women summon an image of invaders in steel helmets and armoured face-masks, with no human traits except the gritting of teeth. 'They're coming. They'll take us women. Is that what you want?'

Maiko gazes at me, my decision, my mouth closed, the sweat still running.  The women's voices drone on:  'They'll rape us all! You two need to escape!!'

I hold out both hands to Maiko.  'Come with me.' But she breaks away, holding her spear horizontal between clenched fists, a fighting stance. 'I can look after myself!!'

She knows her own mind.  'You're a man too, like the rest of them.'

I hold out a hand for peace, palm showing, fingers upward. 'Don't be stupid.  We've known each other since we were children.  I'm not like other men.'

She turns away, sulking head lowered but glancing up from beneath  her lashes. 'That's exactly what all the other men say.  I'm leaving now.'

She is at the end of the corridor and already two or three steps down the staircase. I can only see her from the buttocks upwards, the intricate bow in the small-backed kimono, the spear tip above her shoulder.

It takes a moment for this to sink in. I stare at nothing, somewhere beyond the floor.

I fall to my knees, my upper body sobbing forward and my scabbard like a tail sticking up from my belt.  What have I done??  What will become of us!?

The small old man is back in the corridor, his two little hands clasped behind his back. 'Don't say I didn't tell you so.'

He's standing above me, his finger in its appeal to wisdom raised in the air once again. 'First lesson.'

I look up at him, full of sorrow.  'I only wanted to save her.'

From the same kneeling position, I repeat myself: 'I only wanted to save her from dishonour. Now I'm dishonoured myself, if she won't let me protect her.'  God, it's hot.

When I'm on my knees like this, the little old man is only half a head taller than me. That's small.  He says: 'There's only one course of action open to you.'  'I knew you were going to say that.'

The small old man concentrates my entire being on the dagger he inches from its scabbard, revealing the start of its blade. 

I remember my father's sword, sharp and gleaming with a light of its own.

The little man is neither happy nor sad. As well as the stubble on his chin, I notice a mole to the left of his nose.  His teeth are terrible, rounded and gappy, but he Knows the truth.  If we had a fresh regiment of archers on the ramparts, we still wouldn't win.  'They're coming.  We can't stop them.  They're here.'

I narrow my eyes, and sweat.   'There's nothing we can do, no matter how brave you are.  This is the end.'

He steadies himself several paces away, legs apart, hands behind his back. I face him on my knees.  'There is only one course of action open to us,' he says.  'We must kill ourselves.'

My eyes bounce open. 'Don't say it!'

'It is the only way,' the old man says, turning to look out of the screen window beside him.

He turns back and his face is angry, ugly with those gappy rounded teeth and stubbly chin and the light from the window behind his head. 'Let's do it now.  It's the only way.'

He whips the dagger fully out of the scabbard. 'I've got the weapon, everything we need .'  I can only gape as my jaw drops. He is looking for somewhere to stick me.

At which point an arrow flies through the window and thuds into the side of his head.  It is such a solid contact that the point is entirely buried inside his skull.  Blood sprays out. 'Unnngh' he says, his eyes widely vacant and staring.  As he starts to keel sideways, an ancient instinct overcomes him and he plunges the dagger deep inside his belly.

And then he crashes over, blood pounding from the arrow embedded in his temple.  I push myself backward, away from the dying man and the window.

My wide astonished eyes, the white visible above the pupil.

I jump up. 'He's dead. He's dead.'

I wrench my head back and forth, straining against the muscles in my neck.

But he is dead.  His cheek crushed against the exposed floorboards, his eyes wide and staring, but blind to his own blood spreading and staining the cedar-wood.

'What should I feel!!' I'm at a loss. I express all I know, of love, of grief, of strong emotion, by clenching my teeth, my eyebrows shooting down into the top of my nose. I am sweating, always sweating, but I feel very strongly there ought to be some other possible response.

I kneel over the small, inert body, the shaft of the arrow pointing directly up at the ceiling.  I look in the same direction, my neck arched back, screaming at the gods.  'Why is this happening to me!!  Leave me alone!! All I want is peace!!'

I topple over onto my back, arms up above my head, legs splayed.

But the ceiling, which is in carved wooden sections, gives back no answer, no guidance.

I stare up at it, all energy gone, willing something divine up there, no higher than the ceiling, to bring me an answer.

I shout out, eyes clamped shut, the cry rallying right from the back of my throat. 'Tell me what this is for!!'

Something bangs onto my forehead.  Against my bandanna.

I open an eye.

It is Maiko, smiling and lifting up the end of her spear like a fishing rod. She has just poked me in the head with the blunt wooden end.  I sit up, stare ahead, partly out of embarrassment.

Maiko giggles, most winningly, into her hand.  Her spear is now at ease against her shoulder.  'Never seen anyone talking to a ceiling before.'

I spring to my feet, and it seems I'm often shouting, and when I am, I can't help the spittle which flies out between my teeth.  'I was not talking to the ceiling!!'

She grabs my sleeve. She touches me, a grab of my warrior-cloth between her delicate fingers. 'Come on .' she says.

'There, there,' and she pulls me to her and rests her head against my chest. I hadn't realised how small and delicate she is. Her hair at the level of my breast-bone, I can easily see the floor beyond her head and I stare at it dumb-founded.

I close my eyes, my mouth unusually relaxed. My face is calm. I like this, and like to guess Maiko with her eyes also closed, and a small smile of utter contentment. 'I've wanted to do this ever since we were kids.'

Her eyes are full of tears.  'Hush,' she says, grabbing harder at the cloth of my sleeve,  'everything is different now.

I have never felt, nor looked, more noble. This is my favourite self-portrait.  Although I'm looking into a middle distance, not the first time, it's as if a great truth has suddenly revealed itself. Individual strands of my long, fine hair arrange themselves tactfully across my face.  My skin is shining, wonderful, and in this idea I have of myself there is no armour.  Although beautiful, and resolved, I am not necessarily a fighting man.

Kill kill kill.  My mouth turns down at the edges.

They're in the corridor behind us, two of them, slobbering and running pell-mell this way. 'Kill the little chickens!!'

I see them over my shoulder, lines of determination creasing above my nose.

I turn, and with rigid arms out in front, I stop them both in their tracks.  Their legs leap up and out in front of them

And then they drop hard and lifeless.  Have I cracked their windpipes? I don't know.  There must have been some luck involved, to kill two grown men so easily.

I turn to Maiko. Kill kill. 'This is your fault. You must have led them here.' Kill kill.

Her eyes widen, and her lips part slightly.  Kill kill kill. 'I'm sorry, I didn't .'

I snatch the spear from her hands. 'Give me that!!' 'But I need it!?'

I hold up my index finger to keep her quiet. 'Don't you say another word!!  Ever!!'

She looks shocked, though also vulnerable, half turning away with her fists clenched.  I'm frightening her. 'Stop shouting at me!!'

But shouting is what I do. My eyes crunched up, my mouth as open as it goes, a full set of teeth showing and sweat running down my cheeks.  'I am not shouting!!'

Maiko is very sad. Her eyebrows go up at the middle, as does her mouth at either end. Her nostrils are flared, and she's looking at me with pity, because on and on I shout.  'You know nothing!! You just keep getting us into trouble!!'

And then it boils up and over. I straighten my arms with the spear clasped in front of me like a rail over a long drop.  I close my eyes and scream as loudly as I can, investing in this scream my whole body.  'I HATE YOU!! ... I ALWAYS HAVE!!'

'Unnhh.' With a sharp intake of breath she covers her mouth with her fist.  A tear runs down her cheek. 'I don't believe you . . .   You're not yourself . . .'

'I am myself!! And I mean every word!!' But maybe this isn't true. My expression doesn't change, eyebrows on the angle, nostrils flared, mouth wide open. Does any emotion mean more to me than another? I don't know.

Action is the answer.  I whack the spear down on both sides of Maiko in a rapid sequence of movements. And all the time I'm talking, although it's rare for me to talk so much. 'I hate you more than the soil hates the plant!! and the plant the rain!! and the rain the sun!! and the sun the movements of all the planets.'

I shoulder arms with the spear, but remain knees bent, at the ready. 'They're so subservient!!' I snort. And Maiko says, standing meekly before me. 'You're not making sense.  Perhaps you want to say . . .'

It's her meekness which does it. Her little nose and her open bud of a mouth, the V of the shifting kimono on the pale shim of her throat. She says: 'You love me.'

My head whips round and I'm the same shouty, angry young man, though even in my never-ending rage I know that this expression is no longer appropriate. It can't be. 'No . I . don't.'

She makes it worse.  She smiles and brings her little hands up beneath her chin in a kind of prayer. She looks demurely off to one side, and her eyes narrow almost imperceptibly, but enough to back up the smile, and leave that sly-eyed and smiling image of her branded on my mind for ever.

I stare, I take my time. It's hot.  So hot. For the first time, through calculating eyes, I really see her.

And then I explode.  'AAAAGGHHH!!' I thrust my arms out to either side of me and plant my legs wide and shout as loudly as I possibly can, so that the whole cosmos breaks into fire and flame around me.

'Right, that's the last straw,' Maiko says.  She's back at the stairs and disappearing again.  'This time I've really had enough.'

'And good riddance,' I shout after her, my hand cupped to my mouth.  'I'm going to save you and everybody else in this castle whether you like it or not!!'

I check out the window.  I see a distant harbour, and all the boats along the shore are burning, sea-level lanterns with a dark mountain glowering behind.

How this happened I don't know, but I'm now in a stables and using the spear blunt end downwards, to vault onto a saddled war-horse. It is grey, which usually means it's white.

The clouds and the heavens line up behind me.  I am astride my charger.  I have my spear.  Here I come.

I'm outside the castle, on a path beside some woods, hurtling along with the spear high above my head like a last hand-hold I'm clutching to save my life. A column of the enemy with their white vertical standards are up ahead, and I'm galloping at careening speed straight at them.

They see me. There is a break in the ranks as they raise the alarm, staggering at the sight of my approach.  'A horseman!! He's coming straight for us!!'

The archers are prepared.  One, two, three, four, five of them with arrows already set and bow-strings tight, sighting down the shafts, thumbs out to the side.

I see them and my eyes widen.  'Hell!!'

I see, despite my speed, just the one single glinting arrow-head, the straining bamboo of the bow, a straight inflexible arm and the unflinching eyes of the archer.  Now would be a good time to stop and think.

I remember the arrow thudding into the skull of the little old man, the blood booming out to the side. My lips curl back, my nose flattens.

I ride on, through a storm of arrows, for death and glory with my terrified high-pitched horse.

Chunk!!  An arrow whacks into the back of my shoulder, right in the joint with the arm.  A haze of blood follows in my slipstream, but it must mean I'm past them.  I have no clear plan, no strategy.  Maybe I'm trying to get myself killed. That would make sense.

An arrow in the shoulder hurts, and the haze of blood is spreading.  I start shouting again, always shouting, my head thrown back as arrows continue to fall, galloping in some direction I don't understand, rein-less, my spear in both hands across my chest.   'I have no idea what I'm doing, or what my existence is for.'

Not good enough. If you look closely (look closely), my eyes are shut and I'm straining through gritted teeth to achieve, to do, to move, to find some other and better way of expressing myself.

But I can only shout, my mouth so wide you can see my flattened tongue between the crescent of lower teeth. 'I cannot change what I am!!'

Only this I know.  I steer the horse in circles with my knees, waving the spear in swooshing circles round my head. I shout: 'Kill kill kill kill kill kill.'  The uniformed enemy troops from behind some rocks say: 'The boy's gone mad. Let's put him out of his misery!!'

Three archers lift their bows, draw back their arrows, but an officer holds out his hand, fingers splayed, and stops them. 'Don't shoot!! Let's take him alive, and find out who he is.'

The soldiers start throwing rocks. 'This is undignified,' they say. 'Let's  try and kill him with the rocks, for his own sake.'

They get me hard in the head, the chest, knocking me off the horse.

I fall, though still gripping Maiko's spear.

The horse doesn't know what to do. It stares at me like a dumb animal.

I stare back,  'Run for cover!!  Give me a target!!'

The enemy soldiers are closing in, coming down a path from both sides. Just when they think they have me, I shout to the horse: 'Now!!' I vault up on the spear, following my horse as he jumps off the edge of the path.  The arrow is sticking out from my shoulder, but just now I can't be bothered with that.

Coming down from my vault, beyond the road, I see that on the other side it's a sheer cliff-face, and a long way down.

But the horse is down there, and I keep falling.

And despite the distance, I land right on the horse's back.  'We did it,' I say, 'we did it,' and I hug the animal's broad and muscular neck.

I'm ready again. Off we go, me and my horse and my spear, and my arrow out the back of my shoulder.

I find myself on a small ridge above another column of marching enemy infantry.  It's just me, one man against so many. The faces I can see are scarred and beaten.  What on earth to do!?

The only thing I know. I put my energy into my face.  My eyebrows angle into the top of my nose, and my nostrils flare. The whites of my eyes show above the pupil.  My mouth opens as wide as it goes.  I shout out loud.

Lawson's Convenience Store, Shinagawa 1 Chome, Tokyo. May 2004.