Heart of a Samurai

by Margi Preus

  A farm was procured; a fine house built, with many rooms, glass windows, and carpets made out of the wool of sheep. Manjiro had a room to himself, with land to roam and farm animals to tend, a stream to fish, and—just like a real samurai—a horse to ride, a pleasure he never would have been allowed in Japan. Like a character in a fairy tale, Manjiro found himself transformed from a poor fisherman into a prince …

  … the kind of prince who had chores. He weeded the garden, fed chickens, gathered eggs, milked the cow, and tended to many other tasks that filled up his summer days. When his chores were done, he rode his horse, Plum Duff, around the farm, along the lane, across fallow fields, into the oak woods, or down to the stream to fish.

  He fell off in all those places, too. If Plum Duff changed gaits, Manjiro would jounce off her back. If she came to a stop too fast, he’d slide up and over her head. At a trot, he’d bounce so much that eventually he’d bounce right off. He landed on country roads, plunked down into meadows, crashed into fields, plopped into streams, and splatted into mud puddles.

  Falling off Plum Duff was how Manjiro met Terry. Once, when he had done a somersault over her head and landed on his back in a field of alfalfa, he looked up to see a face peering down at him—a face wearing an almost comical look of surprise. The boy the face belonged to carried a fishing pole over one shoulder and a small wicker basket over the other.

  “Havin’ a nap?” the boy, Terry, said.

  “I fell off my horse,” Manjiro said.

  “What horse?” Terry said.

  Manjiro sat up. Plum Duff was nowhere to be seen. Manjiro stood, wobbling a little. He must have been knocked out cold for her to get so far away that he couldn’t see her anymore.

  “Plum Duff!” he hollered. “Plum Duff!”

  “What kind of name is that for a horse?” Terry asked.

  “Plum Duff—it is best food on whale ship,” Manjiro said.

  “Oh, you mean plum duff.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, you said ‘prumuduffu.’”

  The floor plan of Captain Whitfield’s house drawn by John Mung

  “Whatever you want to call the horse, I don’t mind, but will you help me find her?”

  “Sure, I’ll help, but I’m telling you, there’s got to be an easier name for your horse.”

  Terry pointed out a silvery path, about as wide as a pony, that wove through the alfalfa, and the two boys struck off after the horse. By the end of the afternoon, Manjiro knew that Terry lived in town, collected stray animals, and had three small trout inside that wicker basket. Terry knew that Manjiro was trying to learn to read and write English, lived with the Whitfields, and had a chicken that laid blue eggs. And by the time they found Plum Duff casually ripping up clumps of tall, wide-bladed grass near the edge of the woods, they had agreed to shorten the name to Duffy.

  In the summer days that followed, Terry tried and failed to teach Manjiro how to stay on Duffy. And Manjiro taught Terry how to build cages for crickets, how to play a game called Go, and how to filet a fish.

  “How did you learn to do that?” Terry asked after Manjiro had cleaned, gutted, and filleted their morning catch.

  “Don’t you know how to filet fish?”

  “Not like that—so clean and fast.”

  “The key is to have a sharp knife,” Manjiro said, “as sharp as a samurai’s sword.”

  “A sama-what?”

  Manjiro explained as best he could that, in his country, people were born into their rank, and that “Samurai are very high-status people who are trained in all manner of fighting, including swords-ship.”

  “Swordsmanship?” Terry corrected.

  “But my country hasn’t had battles in more than two hundred years, so samurai now don’t have much to do. But samurai of long ago times, they make legends of themselves.”

  On their way home from the fishing hole, the boys walked through a meadow, swatting at the tall grass with sticks while grasshoppers flung themselves out of their way.

  “A samurai’s sword should be sharp enough to slice through a floating water lily, but strong enough to cut through seven corpses,” Manjiro said matter-of-factly.

  “Ka-zing!” Terry cried, taking a swipe at a pesky fly.

  “No, not like that,” Manjiro said. “Like this.” He showed Terry some sword-fighting moves like the “zigzag,” “reverse dragonfly,” “waterwheel,” and “eight-sides-at-once.” These were real names for styles of swordplay, but he and his friends back home didn’t really know what they meant; they just made up their own moves. Then Manjiro told Terry about the different kinds of swords and knives, including the katana, the nodachi, the tanto, and the naginata. He didn’t tell Terry that he never would have been allowed to actually carry a sword.

  “If you went back to Japan would you be a samurai?” Terry said.

  Manjiro hesitated before answering. He could explain that there was no possible way he could ever be a samurai, that if he went back to Japan he would be a simple fisherman again. That he really didn’t know anything about swords or about swordplay—it was all made up by boys in his village so remote from actual samurai that they could get away with such foolishness. But he didn’t. Instead, he said, “Yes. That’s what I would be.”

  “Ooh,” Terry said. “That would be something.”

  “It would,” Manjiro said. “It really would be something.”

  17

  FITTING IN

  or a while the differences between life in America and life in Japan were always on Manjiro’s mind. If only he could write! He would record the strange and wonderful things he observed in America. He would write it all in a letter to his mother, tuck it into an envelope, and stash it in the little box where he kept small treasures—the dozens of shells he had collected from all the places he’d been. Until then, he tucked his letters away in his memory.

  Time is different here. There is no such thing as a tiger year, rat year, dragon year, and so on. There are twenty-four hours in a day and a year is divided into twelve months.

  People greet each other by extending their right hands.

  They like to sing and often do this when walking down roads.

  A kind of sweet juice runs from the trees. It is so sweet, sugar is made from it.

  The fronts of shops are made of glass, so a person passing by can look in and see all the splendid things.

  Ordinary men carry timepieces called “watches.” When walking they carry canes, inside of which swords are often hidden.

  They make a wonderful food out of flour and salt and eggs and water. It is called “bread.”

  The fields are so large, the farmers have to use horses to sow the wheat.

  Ordinary people can become as wealthy as emperors. They live in houses as large and richly decorated as palaces.

  In this land, everyone has two names, instead of just one like common people do at home.

  In the United States they call a temple a “church.” The priest has a wife and children and they all eat meat. Churches are large and often have a clock on the tower. Many people gather with their books and the priest stands on a high platform and tells the people to open their books to certain pages. The priest reads from these pages and then explains the meaning.

  At church on Sunday morning, Manjiro tried to concentrate on the minister and what he was saying from his high pulpit, but the stifled coughs and frowning faces of the church elders distracted him. They didn’t approve of him. What was wrong? he wondered.

  He touched his hair—clean and soft. He brushed at his jacket and ran a finger under his tight, starched collar; it was clean and stiff. He’d gotten used to bathing only occasionally, as the Westerners did, and he was as clean as anybody else in this church. He sniffed at the sleeves of his jacket. He couldn’t possibly smell any worse than old Mr. Wasser, two pews up, who reeked of tobacco and sauerkraut.

  The next week the Whitfields went to a different church. But it was the same thing there. Peo
ple who were polite to him on the street pouted when they saw him at church. The elders frowned and the ladies pursed their lips and adjusted their bonnets.

  Manjiro kept his head bowed most of the time, just like he had in Japan. There he did it because he was a poor fisherman. Practically anybody’s status was higher than his. But here, he was the son of a well-to-do whaling captain. That should have put him in a higher status, almost the highest. So he was puzzled that the men scowled and the ladies sniffed.

  As he pondered this, the little girl in the pew ahead of him turned to look at him. She stared—as children did everywhere—with simple curiosity. Ah! Manjiro realized. It was just the way he looked. He’d forgotten he looked funny to people. If people met him on the street, he was a delightful novelty. They fussed over him as if he were a monkey one of the whalers had brought from some tropical place. Sometimes he wondered if they expected him to do a backflip, then hold out a tin cup. In a church, however, apparently the way he looked was an offense.

  After the service, Manjiro stood with Mrs. Whitfield as she chatted with friends, but his eye was on the captain and two of the church deacons, who stood apart from them. From where he stood, Manjiro had a good view of the captain’s face, and he could read it the way he’d learned to read the ocean and its weather—its dark clouds, fair breezes, raging storms. At first the captain’s face showed open friendliness, but when one of the other men glanced toward Manjiro, the captain’s countenance turned dark and steely. The look he gave the deacons—a slight tightening of the jaw, the eyebrow raised over his one open eye, slightly pursed lips—was one he might wear if the crew were slow to bring the ship about or let the sails luff or lie back. When Manjiro saw a vein pulsing in his neck, he knew something was really raising the captain’s ire. Although Manjiro had heard him give sharp orders, he had never heard him raise his voice in anger, and he didn’t do it now, either. The deacons, seemingly unaware of how angry Captain Whitfield was, touched their fingers to the brims of their hats and retreated into the church.

  After the two men had gone, Captain Whitfield strode over to Mrs. Whitfield and Manjiro and swept them both away.

  “What happened with those church elders?” Manjiro asked.

  “Those ‘elders’ think you ‘would be more comfortable in the seats reserved for negroes,’” Captain Whitfield said.

  “More comfortable?” Manjiro said.

  “It’s ridiculous!” the captain said firmly. He clamped his jaw tight, and Manjiro knew the conversation was over.

  The next Sunday, when Mrs. Whitfield came to his room to wake him for church, Manjiro pulled the covers up to his nose and coughed.

  “I think I’m a little sick,” he said.

  “Too sick to go to church?” Mrs. Whitfield said.

  Manjiro nodded.

  She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead and looked at his eyes. “No fever.” She sat down on a chair across from his bed. “Perhaps you just don’t want to go to church?”

  Manjiro didn’t answer.

  Mrs. Whitfield raised an eyebrow.

  “I don’t mind church!” Manjiro blurted out. “But I bring unhappiness to people there. I cause them to be …,” Manjiro didn’t know any other word to describe it. “Unhappy.”

  “You do no such thing!” said Mrs. Whitfield. “They cause their own unhappiness.”

  “But it’s me they don’t like. They don’t want me there.”

  “Oh, they don’t mind you being there,” Mrs. Whitfield said. “It’s just that they want you to sit in the pew for colored people.”

  “I don’t mind sitting there, you know. Especially if it will make people happier,” Manjiro said. “I will do that.”

  “It won’t make anybody happier, and you will do no such thing,” said Mrs. Whitfield. “The very idea! Why there should be such a thing as a separate pew for colored people—honestly! And in a place of worship that claims to believe in equality for all. I hope we live to see the day when such notions are abolished—along with our country’s deplorable institution of slavery. There’s a movement, you know, gaining momentum. Now, get up, John, we’re not going to that church anymore. William has found a different church where they believe as we do that all men—all men—are created equal.”

  “And women?” Manjiro asked.

  “Ah, yes,” said Mrs. Whitfield. “That is yet another question to be addressed, isn’t it? There’s a movement for more rights for women, too. So much happening these days. The country is suffering growing pains, just like some boys around here. Now, are you going to lie abed on such a morning as this? Or are you going to get up and help the world change—starting with our religious institutions?”

  At church, Manjiro tried to concentrate on the preacher’s sermon and the words of the hymns, but Mrs. Whitfield’s words had stuck in his head. Are you going to get up and help the world change?

  It was not something he’d ever thought was possible before. Or at least, he had not thought that he would ever be able to bring change to the world.

  In Japan, nothing ever seemed to change. Life went on in the same way it had for hundreds of years. But here, things were changing constantly—people buzzed with talk of a way to send messages clear across the country in a few moments; of iron boxes that ran on tracks and moved so fast that people said time itself would be obliterated. Someone had to be making all these things happen. Someone had to be changing the world. What if he could be one of those people?

  18

  SCHOOL

  chool was where it would all begin. Manjiro had never been to school. He didn’t know how to read and write even his own language. Now he was going to learn to read and write in English, and to do that, he would have to attend class with the little children. Sixteen-year-old boys like him went to different schools. If they were smart enough, they could go to the Bartlett School of Navigation. That place was for students who excelled in school, who were likely to go on to be whaling captains, ship owners, important people. At Bartlett they could learn mathematics, surveying, and, most important, all the secrets of navigation. That was the school Manjiro longed to attend.

  But he began his education at the Stone House School, where he studied arithmetic, learned the alphabet, worked at reading and writing English, and practiced a thing called penmanship.

  When he wasn’t in school, he helped Captain Whitfield with the chores. They cut and baled hay together, harvested vegetables, milked the cows, and put up fencing.

  It was sometimes comical to see the mighty Captain Whitfield with a pitchfork in his hand, mucking out the cow’s stall or turning dirt over with a spade. But the captain seemed to enjoy farming almost as much as sailing. Almost.

  In the evening, Manjiro and Captain Whitfield sat on the porch and discussed the events of the day. It was, Manjiro thought, a lot like the way they had stood together at the bulwark of the John Howland, talking into the night, their words given to the darkness for safekeeping.

  One evening, the captain cleared his throat and said, “Miss Allen tells me you can’t go to her school anymore.”

  “I can’t?” Manjiro said. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No,” Captain Whitfield chuckled, “nothing wrong—you’ve just learned everything there is to learn at that school. You need to go to a different one.”

  Now Manjiro’s heart pounded in his chest. “What school?” he asked.

  “Well … I spoke to Mr. Bartlett about his academy….”

  Manjiro could hardly hear for the roar in his ears.

  “He wasn’t sure you were the right material for that school.”

  Manjiro’s stomach clenched.

  “But …,” the captain went on, “I told him how well you’d done at Miss Allen’s school—they say you ‘fairly soak up learning’—and what a bright, motivated student you are, and he agreed to give you a try.”

  Manjiro leaped up, shook the captain’s hand, and ran inside and hugged Mrs. Whitfield.

  “Now, sit down,
John,” Captain Whitfield said when the boy returned. “I’m not finished.”

  Manjiro sat down—on the edge of his chair.

  “Mr. Bartlett has agreed to give you a try with some conditions. You have to be able to keep up with the other students; your English must be up to his standards—reading, writing, and speaking—and you can’t get into any mischief.”

  “Mischief?”

  “Trouble. He doesn’t want any trouble on your account.”

  “Aye, aye, sir!” Manjiro said. “No trouble!”

  19

  VICTORY WITHOUT FIGHTING

  current had drawn him toward this moment—a current as strong as Kuroshio had pulled him to Captain Whitfield and to America and now to the Bartlett School. Nothing was going to stop him from learning everything he could, especially about how to navigate the world’s oceans. He was going to study hard. He was going to use good English and correct grammar and work hard on his spelling. He was going to pay attention to the teacher, not ask too many questions, and above all, he was not going to get into trouble.

  He arrived early his first day. As he stood waiting for the school to open, he noticed a shiny coin on the ground in front of him. What, he wondered, was the right thing to do? Surely he couldn’t just pick it up and keep it for himself? Or could he? Someone had lost this coin. He looked all around, but there was no one nearby. Perhaps whoever had lost it would come back and look for it. He should probably leave it.

  Half dime drawn by John Mung

  But what if someone came along and took it? Wouldn’t it be better if he tried to find the owner? Manjiro decided this would be the right course of action, and he bent to pick it up. But just as his fingers were about to close around it, the coin skittered out of his reach!