by Trent Dalton
Yukio would sit for hours behind the workshop counter on an upturned wooden wash bucket, polishing and sharpening filleting blades as he watched his father dazzle fishermen with increasingly elaborate tales of each sold knife’s mythic creation. Fishermen from the Black Sea and from the Mediterranean and the Pacific and the Atlantic, and from seas as high and cold as the world went, and as wide and warm. They would come to Sakai port to hear Oshiro Miki tell his knife-maker tales. And, every single week, young Yukio was surprised to find that his father had miraculously acquired a new sacred and old blade that he had promised never to part with but might consider selling to one lucky foreign fisherman if he deemed him worthy of the knife’s ownership.
‘You carry yourself with honour,’ Oshiro would say to that week’s particularly fortunate customer. ‘You have treated my family and me with respect, and for this kindness I will repay you by showing you a most uncommon blade. I will now tell you the story of this blade, but you must never repeat it and you must never speak of where you found this blade.’
What followed was usually a tale of adventure, courage, sacrifice, tragedy and, always, true love. The blade Yukio’s father held in his hands was invariably the sacred object with which the tragic hero of each story managed to overcome a malevolent force – deceitful loved one, old wizard, seductive witch, many-limbed sea monster – standing in the way of true love’s triumph. Oshiro would complete these lucrative counter transactions and then turn to his son and whisper about the wonders and importance of story. ‘The finest blades are forged not with steel, son,’ he would say. ‘But with story.’ Oshiro Miki knew full well that his customers would speak freely of where they found their precious new blades. He knew his strict requests to keep his hallowed workshop and its treasured stories secret was the very reason Miki family blades were spoken about over tuna nets and chopping boards across the globe.
As Yukio grew into his teens behind the workshop counter, his father taught him how to tell these knife stories to foreign travellers in broken English and broken French and broken Spanish. The stories, he said, could sound even more mystical and significant when told in a few carefully selected English words.
‘Love!’ Oshiro hollered in perfect English to a wealthy American couple sailing the seven seas, oil money spilling from their pockets. He waved his hands excitedly at the long-married husband and wife. ‘I see … love!’ he declared. And then he explained in broken English that the word ‘love’ was his favourite word in the entire English language because it was the first word of English he ever learned. How perfect, Oshiro recognised, and how fortunate was he that the first word of English he ever learned was also the language’s most profound and sacred and joyous. ‘True … love,’ he said with a smile.
And Yukio watched as the Americans smiled with the newfound knowledge that their shared love, despite whatever feelings they may have harboured to the contrary, was clear and strong enough to cross even the divides of sea and language. Then Yukio’s father spoke of how that couple’s true love reminded him of a true-love story behind a sacred and expensive wakizashi that he just knew would make the perfect souvenir to show their many friends back home in Pennsylvania.
‘Was “love” the first word of English my father learned?’ Yukio asked his grandfather Saburo Miki, who was an old and quiet and thoughtful man, as they washed dishes that night.
‘Ha!’ Saburo laughed. ‘The first word of English your father learned was “dog”. The second word he learned was “fish”.’
‘Then my father is a liar,’ Yukio said.
‘Your father is a storyteller,’ Saburo said, washing thick brown fish sauce off a dinner plate. ‘He tells those stories to fill this plate for you each night. There is a difference between liars and storytellers, Yukio.’ The grandfather passed the clean dinner plate to his grandson. ‘Some storytellers still make it to heaven.’
*
‘Just one more story,’ Oshiro Miki said, holding the wakizashi in two hands before his son. He prefaced this story as he’d done every other time he told it, by acknowledging its more questionable narrative turns. ‘For this story to reach your heart, son, you may need to swallow it down with a sprinkling of salt from the shores of the inland sea,’ Oshiro said. ‘You should write the facts of this story only on tissue paper. But you should carve its meaning in stone.’
Yukio patiently and respectfully listened, again, as his father spoke of how the shortsword was made in the 1700s by a quietly spoken and diligent knife-maker named Asato Miki, who had discovered that the love of his life, Rina, had left Sakai in the arms of his younger brother, Uno. All but swallowed up by the dark shadow of grief and betrayal, Asato Miki willed himself to forge the perfect wakizashi blade, with which he was determined to cut out his own beating heart and toss it into the furnace that had forged his own murder weapon. For such an impossible act, Asato reasoned, he would need to forge an impossible blade and, in a single, dizzying twenty-four-hour haze of fevered and hate-filled industry, Asato hammered two types of metal together – soft and workable jigane iron and hard and deadly tamahagane steel – in a furnace so hot he could only work in thirty-minute blasts of furious activity between guzzles of fresh water fetched by his apprentice, which would also serve to cool and harden the blade. Asato felt so strong that day that he came to believe the very breath of Futsunushi – god of swords – had filled his workshop and a dragon’s fire had filled his blood. Asato forged the two metals into a single blade so sharp it cut the four legs off the bed he had shared for three years with Rina in four swift strokes.
The tortured ironworker was stunned by a newfound artistry born of pain. He was more stunned, still, to discover that the joy of his newfound gifts had swallowed up the sorrow that had driven him to make the sword in the first place. Asato began demonstrating and advertising his miraculous ironwork skills in sake houses across Sakai by having loose-pocketed drinkers throw objects – apples, oranges, carrots, potatoes, unlucky alehouse kitchen rats – at him, each of which he would slice into two perfect halves with a single swipe of a short but swift sword as thin as a Yamato River ghost.
One day a legendary vagabond assassin known as the ‘White Tiger’ sailed into the Sakai port, his thick mane of pure white hair braided and hanging almost to his calves. He began asking questions about an impossible blade forged by love and betrayal and loss and hate.
‘That sword is not for sale,’ Asato told the stranger in his workshop.
‘What if I told you the first person I will kill with this blade will be your betrayer, Rina?’ the White Tiger asked. ‘And what if I told you the second person I will kill with this blade will be your younger brother, Uno?’
Asato was silent for a moment. ‘The sword is not for sale,’ he said.
The White Tiger reached into a leather pouch slung to a belt around his waist. He raised a closed fist then opened it to reveal a pure white butterfly, which launched into flight from the assassin’s soft, open palm.
‘Have you heard the story of the gravedigger and the butterfly?’ the assassin asked.
‘I have not,’ said Asato.
*
And so now Oshiro Miki told his story of how the White Tiger told his story of Takahama, who was born into wealth and was highly educated but, despite his good fortune, chose, in the prime of his life, to spend the rest of his days alone, digging graves and tending the headstones of the dead, as caretaker for what was believed to be the most haunted cemetery in all of old Japan. So humble was the caretaker’s hut connected to the cemetery grounds that Takahama’s wealthy and influential family refused to visit for fear of embarrassment. Years later, when two neighbouring villagers stumbled upon an aged Takahama slowly dying alone on his bed, they called for the cemetery keeper’s remaining relatives to visit him at once.
Takahama’s long-lost nephew, Hansuke, made it to the old man’s bed just in time to witness his final hours of life. As Takahama drew his last laboured breaths, a pure white butterfly flew in thro
ugh his window and perched itself peacefully on the tip of his nose. The butterfly flapped its wings once, twice, three times. Hansuke shooed the butterfly away, and it flew off and returned and flew off and returned to the tip of the old man’s nose. Then Takahama’s eyes closed forever and the white butterfly seemed to know this and flew back out the window. Instinctively, Hansuke followed it deep into the haunted cemetery. He ran through grey and black gravestones covered in weed and moss, aisle upon aisle of the never-visited dead. The white butterfly flew left and flew right and then deep into a tunnel of elm trees that ended at a single tomb, where the butterfly rested itself on the only grave in the cemetery without a trace of moss or dirt upon it. Indeed, the grave was as pristine as if the headstone and tomb had been placed that very day. There was a name on the headstone: ‘Akiko’.
Studying the gravestone epitaph, Hansuke began to piece together the story behind his late uncle’s decisions. Akiko and Takahama had been betrothed, but Akiko had died the day before their wedding. Since Takahama had already promised to look after his beloved Akiko, every hour of every day, he swore he would continue to do that, even if it meant caring only for her grave.
As he stood pondering this, Hansuke noticed another small white butterfly emerge from the dense forest surrounding the cemetery and flutter towards the one he had followed to the grave, which was still hovering above the headstone. The two white butterflies circled each other for a long moment and then Hansuke edged closer to them, but his movement caused the butterflies to fly away from the headstone and they fluttered up into the sky and never came back down again. The nephew stared at that blue sky above, not with a sense of grief or confusion, but only wonder.
Asato Miki stroked his chin inside his knife-making workshop, absorbing the assassin’s tale.
‘Well?’ the assassin asked.
‘Well what?’ Asato replied.
‘What did you learn from the story?’ the assassin asked.
Asato stroked his chin some more, then gave his answer. ‘It is a simple tale you tell and there is only one lesson to be learned from it,’ he said. ‘Transformation. Sometimes they stay with us. And sometimes they wait for us. The lost are not lost. We can change into things. We can transform ourselves. Sometimes for the better …’
‘Sometimes for the worse,’ said the assassin, his eyes turning to the pure white butterfly that was now flapping above his right shoulder. He turned back to Asato. ‘I must take your life now,’ he said.
‘Why?’ Asato asked.
‘Because you will not share your artistry with me.’
‘You haven’t given me a chance,’ Asato said.
The assassin paused. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Show me the full extent of your artistry.’
‘How would I do that?’ Asato replied.
The assassin turned his eyes to the butterfly. ‘Take your sword and slice a wing off this flying white butterfly.’
‘That’s impossible,’ Asato said.
‘So is your blade,’ the assassin said.
Asato took a deep breath then exhaled slowly. He retrieved his impossible sword from a small locked room off the workshop’s furnace area and returned to stand before the butterfly and the assassin. He gripped the sword’s handle tight and raised the perfect blade high as the butterfly hovered, as if by will, as if by command, before his eyes. The betrayed sword-maker drew a short breath, tensed his shoulders, fixed his feet to the floor and began to swing his blade – but he immediately pulled out of the swing, and presented the sword to the assassin, handle end first. ‘I can’t,’ he said, shaking his head.
The assassin raised his eyebrows.
‘The butterfly’s life is already too short,’ Asato said.
The assassin lifted the sword to his eyes, laid his forefinger gently on the blade. He turned to face Asato and swung the blade three times. The sound of steel slicing through air was the only evidence of his actions, the blade moving too fast to be visible. Asato heaved a long sigh of relief on realising that he was still breathing.
The White Tiger rested the sword in his open palms then handed it back to its creator. ‘You are right, knife-maker,’ he said, before turning and exiting the workshop through its rusty-hinged wooden front door.
Asato stood in silence, then rushed to the door, just in time to see the assassin disappearing into the bustling port-village crowd, the pure white butterfly hovering peacefully above his right shoulder.
*
‘Well?’ Yukio asked.
‘Well what?’ Oshiro replied.
‘What are you trying to tell me, father?’ Yukio asked.
‘The lost are not lost,’ Oshiro Miki said in the silence of the Sakai workshop.
Yukio nodded his head in understanding. ‘There is something I must tell you about sad love stories, father,’ he said. ‘They are not as enjoyable when they are true.’
Oshiro was silent. Then he nodded sincerely and said, ‘The lost are not lost. Sometimes they transform. Sometimes they stay with us.’
And it was with two open palms that Oshiro Miki handed the old fire-forged shortsword to his first-born son, Yukio, before he set off to war.
Yukio received the sword in silence. He walked to the front door of the workshop, then turned to speak to the father he loved.
‘And sometimes they wait for us,’ he said. Yukio left his father in the workshop and walked out the door in the direction of war.
*
Nara smiling at him now in a winged weapon. Now the deephell machinery sound of Yukio and his airborne brothers, who do and do not fear their death, spread across an attack wave of 183 battle planes in arrow formations: 89 Nakajima B5N bombers carrying 800-kilogram torpedoes and 250-kilogram bombs; 51 Aichi D3A dive bombers, each with a 250-kilogram bomb slung under its fuselage and two 30-kilogram bombs nestled on racks under its wings; and 43 agile Zero fighters flying above it all, closer to the blue sky ceiling, closer to heaven. The vicious snarl of that sound, the growl of it. The wasp of it. The tiger of it. A violent symphony of three-blade propellers slicing air and overworked engines spitting smoke. Red spots on battle wings. All those red rising suns in a morning sky formation.
Yukio’s cockpit canopy has a 360-degree view of sky, water and land. A high green mountain range on Yukio’s right side, cloud on his left. It’s 7.48 a.m. and he’s been flying for one hour and forty minutes. The air fleet banks west and along a turquoise coastline and Yukio reaches quickly for his binoculars. Two glass lenses magnifying the beauty and terror of eight majestic battleships lining the port of Pearl Harbor, on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. There are smaller grey warships anchored around them like mice sleeping beside greyhounds.
Yukio drops his binoculars and his naked eyes find the ‘black dragon’, an electrifying dark blue flare that’s now rising into the light blue sky. They don’t know we’re coming, Yukio tells himself. The fleet’s leader, Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, is speaking loudly and clearly to Yukio and his brothers with that dark blue flare. Speaking without speaking. He’s saying only one word. Screaming it through a burning and soaring dragonflare streak. Demanding it. Just one word. Attack.
Yukio’s left hand reaches for the gunsight fixed between his two 7.7-millimetre machine guns. His right hand reaches for the photograph fixed above his fuel gauge. He folds the top half of the photograph down over the bottom half. He doesn’t want her to see this. ‘I’m coming, Nara,’ he whispers, as his fighter swoops down towards a horizon lit by fire.
Here lies Lisbeth Fleming. Dead at seventy-three, influenza. Buried 1884. Here stands Molly Hook, aged twelve years and nine months, four feet deep in Lisbeth’s grave, Bert’s blade biting through old dirt that’s meeting the sun for the first time in fifty-seven years.
‘Water?’ Molly asks.
‘Break at five feet,’ says her father, Horace. ‘These old gravediggers always took shortcuts. They usually called it quits at five and a half.’
A gravestone. A hole in the ground. The girl in the hole, and he
r father and her uncle, Aubrey, leaning on their shovels above ground, each taking a side of the grave. Around the grave are mountains of dirt and a single pile of rocks beside the rusting mattock that was used to dig them all up.
Molly digs. Molly digs. Molly digs. She wears old brown leather boots, her dig boots, and a pair of brown pants made for boys that Horace found in a Tennant Creek thrift store.
Molly digs, her thin arms, only bone and muscle, filling a wooden bucket with grave dirt that her father and uncle pull to the surface after every eight shovel loads.
‘Dad.’
Horace takes a long drag on his smoke. Exhales.
‘Mmmm,’ he offers Molly. This is her permission to speak.
Molly digs hard as she talks, heartened by her father’s permission to do so. ‘I was just thinkin’ about how I’ve dug up six already this week and this will be my seventh and I’ve been working real hard with the customers as well and I was wondering if you would let me go to the Star with Sam on Saturday night?’
‘I can’t afford for you to go to no picture theatre, Molly,’ Horace says.
‘No, no, Sam said he’s gonna pay for me,’ Molly says.
‘Who’s Sam?’
‘Sam Greenway.’
‘The coon boy?’
Just Sam and nothing else, Molly thinks. Her best friend who’s not a shovel or a sky.
‘Sam’s good stock, Dad. He works hard and he’s real smart and he’s been telling me all there is to know about what it’s like growing up out there in the bush, in the real deep country past the Clyde River.’
