Heart of a Samurai

by Margi Preus

  The harpoon was thrown; the line hissed as it played out. There was a moment when Manjiro wished he could reach out and pluck it back. The whale was magnificent, too. A beautiful, glistening creature! Such a big amount of life to take!

  Manjiro turned back to his oar. He heard the sound of the harpoon plunging into the whale’s flesh. Then a second one.

  “Stern all!” the captain cried and all hands heaved at the oars, rowing in reverse as hard as they could.

  The whale lashed out in pain, its tail striking the sea with a sound like thunder. One blow would reduce their boat to splinters and send them all to the bottom of the sea. Manjiro hoped they could row far, far away from the whale. But the harpoon embedded in its back was attached to a line that was attached to the boat.

  Suddenly, the little boat lurched forward. The whale plunged ahead and then struck off swimming, towing them behind so fast it felt as if a gale were blowing.

  “Nantucket sleigh ride!” one of the mates hollered. The boat flew along the surface, leaping from crest to crest of the waves with a bang! bang! bang! The mates whooped or prayed or clung to the boat with all their might.

  Manjiro had not imagined that he could ever experience anything faster or more frightening than when their fishing boat had skimmed down the sides of the giant waves in the storm. But now he knew he had never flown so fast as in this small boat being towed by this enormous beast. Surely, he thought, they would travel from one end of the ocean to the other.

  The spray flying over the side thoroughly drenched them and made it impossible to see—or even breathe. Manjiro realized he had not taken a breath for what seemed like long minutes. He glanced at Edward, who was hunched over and shaking, his knuckles white as they gripped the gunnels of the boat. Manjiro reached out to touch him, then noticed the water sloshing on the bottom of the boat, covering his boots.

  A bucket floated in the briny water and he snagged it and started bailing.

  “There’s me brave lad,” the captain cried. “That’s thinking!”

  Manjiro hadn’t been thinking at all. During the big storm, he had spent long days scooping the water out of their little fishing boat. It had become instinctive.

  The line attached to the harpoon whistled out of the tubs.

  The other end of the line, which had been wrapped around a post in the stern, was smoking from the friction.

  “Water on the loggerhead!” the captain yelled.

  Manjiro tossed the water from the bucket onto the smoking line.

  “Lad,” the captain said, “you were born for this work!”

  Suddenly the whale burst out of the water in an explosion of foam. It thrashed with its great tail, coming near to knocking the boat over two or three times. Then it swam around and around in smaller and smaller circles, beat the water with its tail, gave a tremendous shudder, and rolled on its side. At that moment, Jolly plunged a long iron lance into its lungs; the whale’s spray gushed red, and it lay still at last.

  In the deep quiet that followed, Manjiro realized he was shaking. His teeth clattered together. He was wet, cold, and perhaps more afraid than he’d ever been. He felt exhilarated, disgusted, thrilled, giddy with excitement, repulsed, and deeply sad. All these feelings washed over him in nauseating waves.

  As a Buddhist, Manjiro had learned that it was wrong to kill—not just people, but living creatures. Of course, Manjiro had killed plenty of fish. In a country like his, surrounded by water and filled with people who needed to eat, it was natural to eat fish. In some villages, whales were sometimes caught. But even a small fish deserved a prayer of gratitude. The fishermen he knew never took fish without remembering to leave grateful offerings at shrines for such purposes.

  And this—this was such an enormous being—much more than a big fish. Something with a large spirit! He felt they should say a prayer asking forgiveness for what they had done and express gratitude to the whale for the gift of its life.

  Instead, one of his boat mates leaped out and stood on the creature’s back. Then, without ceremony, he cut a hole in the whale’s head and pulled a rope through it.

  • • •

  For hours they rowed, towing the heavy corpse back to the ship. As the sun set and darkness descended, Manjiro began to gnaw on a problem: What were they planning to do with this whale? Were they going to cook up all the whale meat in those big ovens on the deck? There was no way the few men on board could eat so much meat or transport it any distance before it would spoil.

  While Manjiro puzzled over this, Jolly mumbled under his breath, “… little heathen … wretched pagan … dirty, spying Chinaman …” over and over, with the rhythm of the oars.

  Manjiro, exhausted from the day’s events, tried to concentrate on the oars’ words: splash … whoosh … splash … click … splash …

  As the wind died, the others began to sort Jolly’s voice from the creaking, clicking, and splashing.

  “Jolly,” said one of the mates, “we’ve tired of your name-calling—and for what? He’s just a boy. He’s not done anything wrong.”

  “Can’t you at least call him by his name? He has a name, hasn’t he?”

  “Boy, what’s your name? Name?”

  “Name,” Manjiro repeated wearily. He could no longer concentrate to speak the strange language.

  “He’s simple-minded.”

  “Even if he is, doesn’t mean he can’t have a name.”

  “He has a name,” Edward said. “It’s Mung something, I think.”

  “Mung? What kind of name is that? He should have a proper name, like John.”

  “That’s enough from all of ye,” the captain interrupted. “Henceforth, I expect this boy to be treated with respect. He has proved himself today as steady and quick-thinking as any of ye, if not more so. Jolly, I don’t want to ever hear such foul talk from you again.”

  Manjiro realized the captain was scolding Jolly. Although he was relieved the name-calling was over for the time being, he knew that now Jolly would hate him more than ever. Manjiro shivered with the memory of being dangled over the side of the boat. He hoped he never ran into Jolly alone on deck in the dark night. He knew he was still skinny enough that he could be slipped into the water with hardly a splash.

  “Henceforth,” the captain said, “I want ye to call this boy by his new whaling name: John Mung.”

  “Hear, hear!” the men cheered. All except Jolly, whom Manjiro could feel scowling behind him.

  And so, as the moon rose, laying a pale ribbon of light across the whale’s back, Manjiro became John Mung, whale hunter.

  5

  OIL

  fter all the whaleboats returned to the ship, lamps were lit and the work of butchering began.

  Manjiro leaned over the bulwark to watch three men who stood on a platform suspended above the water. Beneath them, sharks tore great chunks of flesh from the whale. The men on the cutting platform jabbed at them occasionally with their spades while they worked at stripping from the whale the thick layer of outer fat called blubber. The huge slabs of thick blubber were winched onto the deck and lowered into the hold.

  Drawing by John Mung of a whale to be butchered

  “Five and forty more!” came the call from the hands on deck.

  “Five and forty more!” The cry was returned from the mates in the hold.

  “Five and forty more … what?” Manjiro wondered aloud.

  “Barrels, John Mung!” Edward said, struggling by with a basket filled with chunks of blubber.

  John Mung! So they would really call him that? Now he had not just one, but two new names—two names like a samurai would have. But barbarian names. Manjiro shuddered a little.

  “See these, John Mung?” Edward held up a chunk of blubber that had been cut so that its slices fanned out like the pages of a book. “Bible leaves. Into the tryworks they go!” he said, tossing the chunk into one of the giant pots on the deck—the ones Goemon had said were to cook Japanese boys.

  Manjiro tried to repe
at “bible leaves.” More impossible English words.

  “See that?” Edward pointed into the bubbling pot. “Oil, Mung.” Then he called out, “Oil!”

  And the crew sang, “Five and forty more!”

  Manjiro puzzled over this as he stood in the swirl of men and the clouds of stinking black smoke.

  Another basket of whale chunks was carried past, and Manjiro slid out of the way. Already the deck was slick with blood and greasy soot. Soon he, too, was covered with soot, oil, and blood, and was so tired he had to lean against a mast to stay standing. And yet he couldn’t imagine sleeping. There was so much to see and think about. His head spun with questions.

  “Go to bed, Mung,” said Mr. Aken, the man everyone called Itch. “Look at you—you’d fall down if the mainmast wasn’t proppin’ you up.”

  “I learn!” Manjiro said.

  “You can’t learn it all at once,” Itch said.

  Manjiro pointed to his head. “Many pockets!” he said. Soon, when he was home in Japan, he would go to these “pockets” and pull out this new knowledge he had stored away.

  Itch laughed and shook his head. “There’ll be more of the same tomorrow,” he said, returning to his tasks.

  Manjiro saw Denzo and watched him as if from across an ocean of time. Was it only this morning that he had last spoken with him? It seemed like days or weeks had passed. He crossed the deck to speak to him.

  “What happened to you?” Denzo said. “Goemon said he saw you rowing one of the boats.”

  “Yes,” Manjiro said. “I was.”

  “You were part of this … this …,” Denzo turned to gesture to the scene and stopped talking to watch as a bizarre occurence unfolded before them.

  The whale’s gigantic head was swinging above the deck, having been hoisted out of the water on thick ropes. As soon as it was lowered to the deck, several mates worked to slice open its forehead. Denzo and Manjiro gasped as two men stepped right inside it, and exclaimed as they began scooping out a yellowish goo, which hardened to a pearly white wax while Denzo and Manjiro watched. This waxy substance went into a special cask and was carried belowdecks.

  “What do you suppose they do with all this oil and … whatever that stuff is?” Manjiro asked Denzo.

  Denzo shook his head. “If you doubted they were barbarians, this”—he gestured to the roiling black smoke, the blood and grease on the deck, the sharks seething in the water around the ship—“this should convince you.”

  “Our countrymen kill whales, too,” Manjiro said.

  “Yes,” Denzo said. “But not like this. You know how they do it—at home, whole villages work together to capture a whale in a net to drown it. Then they tow the creature to shore, butcher it, and distribute the meat to many people. They use all the parts—all the meat, all the bones, everything. But this—this is barbaric. Look at this waste!” Denzo nodded toward the men who shoved the carcass away from the ship, with most of the meat still intact. The sharks attacked it with such frenzy that the water seemed to boil around it.

  “All that meat! Gone to waste!” Denzo said and shuddered. “They must be very stupid to throw away the best part. Stupid and cruel. Perhaps if they run out of food, they will do that to us!”

  Manjiro’s stomach clenched. Was that true? After today, anything seemed possible. He had participated in their barbaric ritual. They had given him a name like theirs. Did that make him a barbarian, too?

  For days, the work went on. After the blubber had been boiled into oil, the oil packed into barrels, and the barrels stored belowdecks, and when the stinking black smoke had ceased rising into the air—even after all that, the work was still not done.

  For then the scrubbing began. The soot, oil, and blood had to be scrubbed out of the wooden decking. By this time, Manjiro was tired of watching. He wanted to do something, and he thought he was not so stupid that he couldn’t scrub a deck. He was just about to offer to help, when a voice spoke to him in Japanese.

  He turned to see Denzo and Goemon staring at him.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Denzo said.

  “Denzo-san!” Manjiro said. “I … I thought I would help.”

  “No. That would not be appropriate.” Denzo motioned to Manjiro to walk with them along the deck, out of the way. “Manjiro-chan,” he said softly, “I feel it is important for me, as the leader of our group, to watch out for you. Now, listen to me. It is better for you to stay away, so that you don’t become tainted by their ways. They are corrupting you. Already you walk with their swagger. You are forgetting your manners and addressing all of us as your equals. You neglect to bow. Just now—you did not acknowledge me. You don’t even bow to the captain of this ship!”

  “He asked me not to.”

  “You see!” Goemon said. “He is trying to corrupt you. He is making you turn away from all that is right and good. You are being poisoned, Manjiro-chan, just as I warned.”

  Manjiro thought, If I’m eating poison, I might as well lick the plate, but he didn’t say it. There was no reason to be rude. Instead, he bowed to Denzo and said, “Thank you for reminding me of things I should not forget.”

  Was he being corrupted without realizing it? Manjiro wondered later, sitting on his bunk in the forecastle. He jammed his hands in his trouser pockets and felt the hardtack he had tucked away there this morning. It had been forgotten in the excitement.

  He reached under the bunk for the box where he kept such bits of food. When he pulled it out, the lid flapped open—the box was empty!

  6

  DISAPPOINTMENT

  deep belch issued forth from the gloom, and Manjiro squinted at the shadows. There was Jolly, picking his teeth with a small sliver of baleen.

  “You!” Manjiro said, forgetting his fear of the burly man. “I save that food for my family.”

  “There’s no point to that,” Jolly snarled, the toothpick still clenched between his teeth. “Ye’ll be whistling up a wind if ye think ye’ll ever see yer family again.”

  Manjiro held Jolly’s gaze. Was he lying? Or did he know something Manjiro didn’t?

  Jolly sneered. “Cap’n won’t take you back to yer godforsaken country. Savages and beasts that they are, they’d boil us in big pots and skin us, too. They’d do the same to you. That’s how you can tell they’re no better than animals.” Jolly shoved his face up close to Manjiro. “Ye won’t be going home again,” he said. Tiny crumbs of hardtack trembled in his mustache.

  Manjiro felt like the empty box, swept clean of every crumb. It wasn’t his stomach that was empty, though; it was his heart. These people were not his friends. They were not his people. Denzo was right. He should avoid them and their cruel ways.

  He set the box under his bed and went above decks to stand at the bulwark. He strained his eyes, hoping to make out something like the shape of his homeland. But the sea was large, bigger than he’d ever imagined. And now he realized that the sparkling path of light that often glittered on the water, and which he had always imagined was leading them toward home, was actually leading them away.

  “Boy!”

  Manjiro turned to see the captain squinting down at him.

  “I am told you are learning English quickly. Is that true?”

  Manjiro bowed.

  “Does that mean yes? All this blasted bowing! Stand up and say ‘aye’ if that’s what you mean.”

  Manjiro stood up and said, “Aye.”

  “And look me in the eye when you say that.”

  Manjiro forced himself to look—quickly—into the captain’s eyes.

  The captain had a habit of squeezing one of his eyes shut and regarding a person with the other one. He could, Manjiro thought, communicate more with that one eye than most people would be able to with three. It took only one dark, piercing eye to convey his many moods—as many moods as the sea. This time, though, Manjiro didn’t know what to make of his gaze, and he didn’t want to know, either.

  “Good,” the captain said. “I want to explain
something to you, so you can explain to your friends.”

  Manjiro crammed his hands in his pockets and fidgeted. Denzo was the leader of their group, and he should be the one who spoke to the captain. But Denzo, like the others, didn’t want anything to do with the barbarians, including learning their language, so it had fallen to Manjiro to interpret what the others said.

  “Come and have a cup of tea in my quarters,” the captain said.

  Manjiro did not see that he had any choice, and he followed, his brow tight with anger. He tried to let go of it. A samurai should not feel anger toward his enemy, he remembered his father telling him. A courteous samurai, his father said, would wash his hair before battle so if his head was taken it would smell sweet for his enemy.

  Manjiro snorted to think of it. These barbarians and their ship stunk so badly, he doubted that a head of washed hair could be appreciated through the stench.

  “Pardon?” the captain said, reacting to Manjiro’s snort.

  Manjiro ducked his head and said nothing.

  They arrived at the captain’s quarters, by far the most elegant on the ship. The captain gestured to a chair, and Manjiro sat down. He would never get used to sitting this way, he thought, and why should he? Only an ignorant foreigner would sit like this. He should show them the correct way to sit—back on your heels, or cross-legged on the floor. But perhaps these strangers were incapable of sitting that way. They weren’t as supple or as graceful as Manjiro’s countrymen.

  A teapot rattling on a tray announced the cook’s entrance. Captain Whitfield poured the strong, black tea into two cups. In another cup there were some sweet grains like sand, called “sugar.” Manjiro wondered how he might save some of these grains for his little sisters. But then he remembered he was not going home, and the sweet tea turned bitter in his mouth.

  “You have learned English quickly,” the captain said. “I want to explain something to you and I want you to tell this to Denzo and the others.”