CHAPTER 19

微睡み Madoromi

Takumi’s Dream

The luminous hands of Takumi’s watch stood out in the dark. Ten minutes to five. He was trained to be fully alert on four hours of sleep. The most he usually napped was five minutes, so a one-hour catnap was enough to take him into the evening, or even well into the next day. But since he’d met Jet, his sleep had been restless and filled with dreams. Rather than get up, he tried to remember the one he’d just had.

In it, he was a child, and he’d gone into the jungle at night, not for his usual training with his father, but to catch a bird with golden wings that he’d seen in a marsh. During the dry season, when the moon was full, the birds came to drink, and children tried to catch them. An old white man came from the city to buy the birds. He smelled of tobacco and sweat, but Takumi liked him because he didn’t discriminate between the kids. He bought the best birds, and he paid white kids and Indio kids the same prices.

The birds were as small as a child’s palm and had brilliant feathers, and they sang beautifully. When they drank, they moved quickly and furtively, so that they could barely be seen, and they were not easy to catch. The children tied small limes to the ends of bamboo rods and swung them toward the birds at the exact instant they stopped to drink. They knocked the limes into the birds, throwing them off balance so they could catch them.

Takumi went deep into the jungle, walking toward a marsh he had discovered. Even in the dry season, the air smelled of dead, damp leaves. He parted the bushes, and the blue of the water appeared. He crouched. He could wait for hours. He loved the silence of the jungle. His father had taught him how to conceal himself and subdue his breath, and he dropped instantly into that state of being and non-being. There was no sign of the golden bird, but the moon would be full tonight, and he knew the bird would come.

The sun went down in the west, and moonlight from the east illuminated the marsh. He waited, motionless, and suddenly, a soft tone echoed in the jungle. The white bird with golden wings appeared. It was the most beautiful bird he had ever seen. Each plume was a clear golden color, and its beak and legs were the same bright hue.

I can sell this bird for more money than I ever dreamed, he thought. And then I can be free of this place.

But the longer he watched the bird, the more its beauty entranced him. It circled for a long time until finally it began to descend toward the water.

He gripped his bamboo pole, and just as the bird dipped its beak into the water, he swung. The lime hit it, and the bird lost its balance. With panic in its big brown eyes, it seemed to understand its fate and began to flap its wings. He caught it in the string and pulled it back to him, but as he reached to untie it, the bird cried out.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he told it, trying to unwind the tangled string, but the bird flapped its wings more desperately, becoming entangled.

“Be still! Be quiet!” he said, almost crying himself. So many golden feathers came off in his hands that the bird’s pale skin was visible. And the song, which had been soft and ethereal like a flute, was now a grating, high-pitched squawk. The bird soon lost all of its golden feathers and, exhausted from the effort of fighting, stopped moving.

He held it in his palm and stroked its small body as tears ran down his cheeks.

What have I done? he woke up asking, but there were no golden birds in the jungle near that poor village. It was odd to dream of it like this when almost every night of his childhood, after he’d finished school and his father had left the coffee fields, they’d gone into its secrecy to train. The jungle had always represented poverty and fighting.

He lay in the dark, thinking about how he’d come to this point.

“Ninjutsu,” his father had told him, “are only skills to trick people and steal their secrets. I’m just teaching you how to survive on your own.”

Life was hard, his father insisted. The proof was everywhere, and he wanted options for his son. Though the training was demanding, Takumi knew it was his only hope of a better life. He mastered one technique after another while his father constantly reminded him never to show off. He thought his father had been afraid that the secret fighting techniques would be revealed to the villagers. But now he understood that his father had wanted to show him by example that even if he became a master, there was no way for a ninja to live except as a tool for others. Still, he’d devoted himself to ninjutsu, imagining his return to Japan where he would prove his mastery and gain his freedom.

Until now, Takumi had been pleased with his success. He had money, ate in five-star restaurants, traveled the world, slept in the best hotels. Yet, meeting Jet had uncovered a lingering disastisfaction with it all. He felt like a dragonfly skimming the surface of the world. Everything seemed fleeting and shallow.

What am I trying to attain? I was poor all my life, lived on beans and potatoes. My Indio mother couldn’t read or write, my father survived by clinging to the pride of his ancient tribe. That’s how I managed to find the strength to leave. I made my way in the world only to find a life as a modern-day slave with a knife and a gun.

What was it about Jet that rattled him so? Yes, she was beautiful, her glowing skin, dark hair, and piercing eyes. Two worlds—the East and the West—shone from her expressions: openness and discipline, the desire to reveal who she was and the mask behind which she hid. He sensed her contradictions in the way she spoke and hesitated, in the way she studied him cautiously.

She’d appeared so authentic, so hungry for connection. She’d touched something in him, something buried: all that he hid in his own solitude. She, too, had been cast off, living outside, on the margins. He hadn’t intended to get along with her, let alone find it impossible to shake her from his thoughts.

He frowned, wondering if she had orchestrated their meeting as much as he had. She was certainly capable of that—and more. And had she sensed his ninja energy at the ramen shop, even though he’d done everything possible to mute it? He was shaking. He took a deep breath. She made him weak. He couldn’t afford to be weak. He had to get the job done.

He closed his eyes with resolve. He didn’t believe in victory anymore. Only survival.

Weak meant only one thing: dead.