Samurai

Mindscape: at the foot of the green Tara hill, near the high mound where the Irish kings were crowned, a stream flows. Its waters gurgle beneath the whisper of wind through the blades of grass, in a mild spring morning lit by the Sun — a bright eye in a sky crossed only by a few swift, white clouds. By the stream, a broad boulder serves a seat for a man in a traditional samurai attire. He sits crossed-legs, playing a long bamboo transverse flute; a flashy katana hangs at his waist.
In truth, he is not playing: the man produces notes, but they shape no music. In fact, they are not even bound by any harmony; it is harmony itself he is here to find.
A child appears.
“What are you doing?” the child asks the samurai, completely unaware of the man’s customs, of why he is dressed that way, of the danger he might pose. The flute’s sound has drawn him there from afar, and the sight of the long sword has only further piqued his curiosity.
The man stops playing and lays the flute in his lap. He knows there will be no peace until the child’s curiosity is satisfied. And in truth, he had known the child would come, drawn by the sound of the flute, his curiosity piqued by the sight of the sword. The man had been waiting for the child to come.
“I’m seeking harmony”, he replies.
“Nice! Har-mo-ny!” the child spells aloud. “What’s that?”
The samurai smiles, satisfied: this is the child he had hoped to draw in. “It is when all things call to one another”, he answers, “as if everything were at peace with everything else”.
“Oh, I see! Like this stream and the wind running together; and the clouds up there moving with the blades of grass, and your notes in the wind; and the path of the Sun following the round line of Tara’s hill! You came here, to a place of harmony, to find it. Why?” the child asks.
It is true, everything is just as the child described it. He even held back: he could have gone on for hours, pointing out resemblances between the now unreadable remains of the once-honoured and revered stronghold and the boulder where the samurai is sitting, between the wildflowers in the meadow and the tiny vortices in the stream’s flow, between…
“Because I feel I don’t have any inside me and I long to find it”, the samurai replies calmly.
“And when you have found it, then what? That’s a sword, isn’t it?” The questions begin to flow fast. Children at that age can think of many things at once; if they had a hundred mouths, they could ask a hundred different questions all at the same time!
“When I have found it, I will know what I must do next in my life and yes, this is a katana, the weapon of the samurai”, the man answers without flinching.
“And do you have to kill someone, with that sword?” the child goes on.
“Not that I know of. And you? Do you think I have to kill someone?” Finally, the samurai counters.
“I don’t know”, the child replies. “You are the one with the sword. Have you killed many people?”
“A few”, the samurai replies curtly. He has never liked speaking about his missions, least of all with the innocent.
The wind rises, the ripples in the stream grow choppy, a grey cloud passes in front of the sun but, after a moment, the landscape returns to be as calm and idyllic as before.
“Why did you kill them?” the child asks, without a trace of blame or judgment. In his voice there is only genuine curiosity.
“Because that’s what samurai do when their lord commands them”, the man replies.
“And did your lord tell you whether those people were good or bad?” the child presses on.
“No, he didn’t tell me”.
A heavier cloud passes between the sun and the scene; under the tense wind, the once pleasant temperature turns cold. The child goes on: “And you never asked him?”
Reluctantly, the warrior admits: “No, I didn’t ask. Samurai don’t ask questions: they obey their lord’s commands”.
The shadow thickens, the wind grows stronger, the temperature less and less pleasant.
“Then why are you seeking harmony?” the child asks. “You are a samurai, you carry out your duty with care, harmony must be within you!”
“Forgive me, little Master”, the man replies, “but I can assure you I am not in harmony”.
“And yet, harmony is within you”, the child insists, “and in this place. You don’t feel it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there! Please, play your flute!”
The samurai lifts the flute to his lips and begins to blow. Suddenly the clouds part, the gentle sun returns and lights the scene, the wind softens. The long, sweet notes of the flute are carried away by the breeze down the valley at the foot of the hill, along the stream and then far, far away.
From afar, a crane replies to the notes with a hoarse cry, as if answering the call.
“You see?” says the child. “Harmony is within you!”
The samurai cannot believe what he has just experienced, yet the proof is so clear. “Then why can’t I feel it, Master?”
“Unsheath your sword!” the child commands.
The samurai’s hand clasps the hilt, then he pushes the guard slightly upward with his left thumb, just enough to allow for a smooth, single motion draw with his right hand, then the warrior lays the blade flat across his hands and offers it, head bowed, to the child. The wind and clouds return, making the scene once again cold and somber.
“There is no harmony in you now. Why?” the child asks.
“I thought you would be the one to answer that question, Master”, the samurai replies, disappointed; a low thunder rumbles from afar.
“Can you hear it? Do you think it is not in harmony?” A longer rumble draws the man’s attention.
“I wouldn’t have thought so but… yes, it is in harmony, Master. It is in harmony with the cold wind, with the darkness rising from the clouds, with the rain it announces”, he says.
“Then, if thunder can be in harmony, why can’t you be, when you are, every time you play the flute?” the child presses.
“I don’t play the flute, Master. I am a samurai”, the man insists.
“Then you will not find harmony”, the child declares, “not here, nor anywhere else. Why can the thunder be in harmony and you can’t?”
“Because the thunder follows the wind and goes where it must”, the warrior answers, “but I go where I don’t wish to be, and I do things I don’t wish to do”.
The wind stops all at once, the clouds part again, it is warm spring once more.
“Can you believe that I know what you’ve done?” the child asks.
The katana slips from the samurai’s hands and falls the ground with a clang. The man bursts into tears sobbing deeply. “Yes”, he replies. The searing pain for the atrocities committed under the sole excuse of obedience to the samurai code of honour — what honour, truly? — has struck him all at once.
“Well, it was like thunder that heralds the rain, like a storm wind, passing through, bringing turmoil, and then gone. Because that is their nature,” the child explains.
“Good man, you are no samurai. What were you doing when I came here?”
“I was playing the flute”, the man replies.
“And what will you do, when you leave this place? Perhaps you will carve a piece of wood or mend a broken shoe, or will be a father and a teacher, or pass on your flute-playing to someone else. None of these things define who you are, yet you play the flute more than you wield the sword, and will spend far more time raising your child than killing your lord’s enemies! So, who are you, really?”
The man doesn’t know what to say. “I… don’t know!”
“And that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you came all this way seeking something that lies within you. You are not searching for harmony: you are here because you no longer want to perform acts you feel are loathsome just to serve your lord. But this is the thunder’s harmony, that passes with its burden of rain. You may not like it, but it is harmony nonetheless!”
Silence. Slowly, the samurai replies: “It is not a music I wish to play”.
“Then don’t play it!” the child retorts. “Look at those bamboo stalks down there”, as he says so, he points to a green thicket the man hadn’t noticed before. “Can you bend a bamboo cane with your bare hands?”
“If it is not too thick, yes, I can”, the warrior answers.
“And if you bend it very, very tightly, do you think you could break it?” the child presses.
“Yes, Master. If it were thin enough and I bent it far enough, I could break it”, the samurai nods.
“And if you broke it, would that be disharmony?”
The warrior imagines himself with the bamboo cane, sees himself bending it and, after much effort, making the plant’s fibres snap. Another thunder far away echoes his thought.
“No, Master: what happens to the cane is simply the natural consequence of my forcing it. In fact, when it breaks, my arms would move with it, as the cane would no longer resist the tension”, he explains.
“And if the cane slipped from your hands and sprang away, would that be disharmony?” the child continues.
“Not at all! It is more likely that an unskilled hand would fail to control the cane, and it would suddenly break free. And the stronger the pressure I put on it, the stronger its recoil would be. It’s all perfectly harmonious!” the man observes.
“Then you know what to do”, the child says quietly, and sits by the stream in the lotus position, meditating.
“Master”, the man asks. “Why couldn’t I feel it, before? It was as if I had a crust of mud on my face and you words washed it away: now I can see!”
“Because you were afraid. You were afraid of losing something, afraid you could no longer be a samurai. But now you understand that any path remains open to the man who knows what harmony is”.
A gust of wind rolls across the grassy slope of the hill, drawing a wave of green that rushes down its slope.
“You look so young”, the warrior says in admiration.
“Free your spirit of every burden, and you will be as well!” the child replies, then vanishes.
The samurai, now alone, hears from afar the sound of a faltering flute producing tones, but no melody. In truth, not even a harmony. He leaps down from the boulder he was sitting on, a jump that feels higher than expected, and as his feet touch the ground, it seems to him that his legs have suddenly grown shorter. The music calls him, and so he begins to run, run breathless toward those erring sounds, his heart wild with joy as it hadn’t been for years, since he was a child, on the grassy hill of Tara.

---

This tale, also published on Medium, is the translation of its Italian version, published on Bravi Autori