Addendum: Samurai Sorrow

Nobu stood perplexed at the precipice of life in the early morning fog. Which road leads to life and which to death? He'd found heaven under the sun - but was the sun his to claim?

*****

At long last Nobu had freedom from the suffocating samurai structure which had imprisoned him since birth. His creative impulses, his vision, his ever active imagination acted as tormenting demons in his daily life, struggling against a corrupt authoritarian regime he couldn't help but taunt as he himself felt. It was a case of damned if he did and damned if he didn't.

"Why me?" Nobu wondered in the middle of night. What annoyed him most - when he let go in his most private moments - was the irrepressible feeling of optimism that would bubble up. An exciting truth lingered just below the surface, that if it ever got free would change the world. I am instrument of Destiny!

"Baka!" he'd reprimand his dreaming soul in self-mutilation. Samurai were servants, their fate determined at birth to be no less or more than objects in a feudal society. Anything outside of that had no place in their strict code of conduct. The simple wallowed in this like muddy pigs, thugs relished it in bullying delight, and those of rare intelligence either became ambitious or torn apart like Nobu. Now, he lived on the other side of that fence - the price to live on the run.

Life on the run after his famously - and infamously - done gesture of rebuke of the samurai way breathed even more life into his impossibly secret dream. More excited than ever, it waited for the inevitable moments when his guard dropped, Nobu losing his human will. But this ambiguous nebulous cloud of hope never quite came into focus. Stop getting so excited for no damn reason! It was like grasping to touch a rainbow.

Emiko changed all that.

It wasn't until he met her did Nobu realize he'd been praying to meet her his entire life. Like finding a long lost childhood friend he knew her life story the minute he saw her smile and explored her deep, gathering eyes. They were two of a kind walking upright in a world that crawled on all fours. Or, at least, with her Nobu walked upright.

It's true the specter of doom dogged his every step but his world reversed with her, as the dream seemed more true than an illusion of hunted reality. This is something real. I feel I've given birth to a flower of light at last! Never before faced with this sort of spotlight of self-illumination, the samurai who'd been forced to live his life in his head shivered with a fear no mere sword could ever arouse. Yet there was no denying he craved this with a lifelong thirst.

Emiko had also found her missing piece. She fancied poetry and the arts like a Heian princess of the ancient court which prized wit and culture above all, contributing to a poetry chain as important as military prowess. Her husband had recently died of sudden disease and she walked in the dark shadows of grief seeing neither the moon nor stars nor sun. As so often happens in times of crisis, the swell of emotion overflowed into art. Her haiku were so painful she could not bear to read them afterwards.

Had he stayed in his samurai rut Nobu would never have met a soul like Emiko. In the never ceasing questioning of himself if he made the right decision to go on the run, surely this was irrefutable evidence of vindication! Side by side they made love with calligraphy, feeling a deeper intimacy than either had known before. This unspoken jubilation struck each soul as having proven their previous paths in life had not been what they'd pretended to be.

Most touching of all for Nobu was for his Thoughts He Could Not Defend. The role of science was squelched in Japan in the 18th century (which made for a volcanic scientific blossoming when the samurai era ended) but Nobu was gifted with the imagination of an inventor, foreseeing a world of splendor. His crucifixion to the Japanese gulag of misplaced vanity of a perfectly ordered society buried him under a mountain of frustration. He was bitter not only for himself but also for his beloved Japans cheating herself with this willful ignorance. "It's not just me who pays!" he cried to the wilderness of the deaf.

Emiko, however, had ears. She was a life-saving oasis in a desert of monotonous weeds. She could understand his visions which cannot be explained. In this, a thousand poking demons died in the night replaced by a chorus of angels. Maybe the Maker of all was not such a cruel beast. Nobu had never experienced such a feeling - never suspecting it was even possible! This starburst of joy humbled him and confounded him. Like Moses before the burning bush he knelt in awe of this gift that surely only the most pure deserve.

Her latest poem shattered him further:

"The falling leaf
does not hate
the wind."

He nearly cried at the sentiment, she expressing no self-pity at the sudden taking of her beloved husband. Her calligraphic style was clean and exquisite, for how one wrote was as important as what one wrote. Nobu realized what a selfish and self-centered existence he'd led - even if the insulated world of the samurai encouraged that. Emiko showed that was no excuse not to rise above. Her beautiful surrendering to Nature made him feel as lacking as a child in an adult's world.

What the self-doubting Nobu failed to face was that his presence to her was as much a part of her realizing that sentiment as any efforts of her own.

Nobu still had one demon to overcome, his strongest and most feared: the Guilt Monster. For every ounce of joy he received with Emiko an equal amount of brutalization was wrought by the monster. He'd yet to tell her of his checkered past. He'd yet to tell her he was on the run, a notorious fugitive of the Shogunate. He'd yet to tell her that her life was in danger if she were deemed by authorities to have helped him. How can you do this, you sorry dog! She gives you life and you repay her like this? If she saw the real you she'd disown you!

Tears streamed down his face in the hot, sticky air of the dusty hut. This Sorrow For The Ages was the final betrayal by the universe. Helpless to be with her as he was to take his next breath his only choice was to drive her away. He pretended scorn of her writing, crushing her to the core as his previously doubtless belief in her had rekindled her waning creative spirit she was finally beginning to fully nurture. Too painful to go on, not believing her horrified eyes, giving him chance after chance, she left never to return. She wrote no more.

The Guilt Monster congratulated Nobu on his suicidal sacrifice, for having crawled back into his samurai saga of pity's martyrdom. Did you think someone as wonderful as she deserves to die because of you? She's better off now!

"I know. I know. But I shouldn't have lied to her. I'm blind! I'm blind! I can't see what to do!"

You were deceiving her all along. It was never real.

"I'm going to die without her, this I know."

See? That proves your love! You gave your life for her!

"But I can't help to believe I should have come clean no matter what. If I did the right thing why am I in this living hell?"

What were you going to do? Ask her to die for you? What an asshole, you selfish prick! She has a right to a happy life.

"But our love is dead. The flower of light taken away. The darkness is twice as black as before."

Stop kidding yourself, she can get that from anyone. What did you ever have to offer? You must hold onto your integrity and answer yourself this question: What would she have answered if you'd asked her to give her life to stay in your company? Who are you anyway? Do you even dare to know? Tell me what her answer would have been!

*****

Nobu's life on the run went into permanent decline. The ice melting under his feet, his betrayal of love hounded him night and day as he was seized by savage sweat-inducing nightmares of his life falling into the cold hands of revenging samurai; a life rent by the thorns of the world with his having forsaken heaven in the clouds. Later, in the afterlife, he finally posed the question to Emiko if she would have given her life to be with him.

"There was no life without you. Separation was the real danger."

It was true there was no way out once he went on the run but Nobu could have died with love instead of without. For all eternity, he howled in pain at what he'd lost.