Original picture by Artem Podrez
“Ichi.” The quick slide of feet, the rough snap of the gis against themselves. “Ni.”
Slide, snap. And the thick smell of sweat, virility, and cleaning product. The studio’s windows were kept closed, even in summer, to keep the smoke of the food stalls from Praça Quinze outside.
“San!” The eleven men punched the air almost in unison (almost) and shouted. The kiai of the two brown belts up front came from the diaphragm, guttural and powerful. The others varied in different orders of incompetence, until the one from the only white belt: his shout was the disheartened moan of an old motorcycle refusing to start.
No kiai, including the ones from the brown belts, resembled a real war cry. The old man knew it.
“Yame” said Arashiro, crossing his arms in front of the body. The students got out of formation and did what gym students do: drank water, stretched, practiced strikes against invisible enemies; sometimes an unproductive combination of the above.
Arashiro put his foot on the bench and went back to a half-smoked cigarette. He looked at his students: an always present but never constant mass that in two years got tired, or gave up, or found more important things in life and stopped training. The ones who stayed were more exception than rule.
“Sensei” said one of the brown belts, nodding his head. Arashiro turned. The boy at the door could not be older than twenty. He wore pants and a button-up shirt, though the clothes bale over his shoulder gave away that he was a new student.
And there was the fact, so obvious and indelible that needed not be said: the boy was also Japanese.
“What’s your name?” asked Arashiro.
“On the birth certificate says Pedro. My mother calls me Hiroshi. Like my father.”
Arashiro put the cigarette on the heavy iron ashtray on the window sill.
“I would like to train with you” said Pedro-Hiroshi.
“I’m here all week, but classes are every other day. It’s about…”
“With all due respect, sensei. I already know the details. I talked to the landlady downstairs (gossiping old woman, thought Arashiro).” He took a wad of old bills from his pocket. “I can start right now.”
Pedro had no talent, but made up for it with effort. In many days Arashiro would come to the studio and the boy was already there, warming up before the locked door. He made all the mistakes Arashiro had ever seen, and some he had never even imagined. The master, however, corrected severely, and, by the next class, Pedro had fixed the issue. He failed, but differently.
One day Arashiro found him living in the building. Soon Pedro was showing up for training every day. One Saturday, before going out to drink, Arashiro left the studio’s keys with him. He came back three hours later, and Pedro was still in there. The feet slid, the gi snaped, the kiai came from the diaphragm. Almost good. Almost.
It was on an August 15th that Pedro appeared at the bar. Like every August 15th, Arashiro drank at the last stool, alone amidst the crowd. Pedro sat next to him.
“Paula told you where I was?”
“She did.”
“Gossiping old woman.”
“She is. A cup of sake, please” the last part was addressed to the barman, who rolled his sleeves up the fat triceps and poured a shot from the black bottle to Pedro. He also filled up Arashiro’s cup, following a silent but obvious request.
The old man drank and looked at Pedro.
“I know you want to be alone today” said Pedro, and nothing else. The boy did not understand, but he wanted to. He was too Japanese to ask the question, but Brazilian enough that it was obvious he wanted to ask it.
But no, Arashiro thought, he did not understand. Not his fault: the kid was the son of immigrants, he had been born one generation later. And one generation was enough to forget what had been the Empire.
And Arashiro told him. Maybe it was the sake, maybe it was the date, maybe it was the fact that Pedro-Hiroshi reminded him of Seiichi, who had died from typhoid fever in the ship’s hold, two days before they anchored in Rio. But Arashiro told him.
He told of the outskirts of Naha, of the summer rains, of the dark-green hills in which he glided in his childhood. He remembered when the first telegraphs came, sprinkling the horizon. In his youth he went to the capital to become a doctor, and came back karateka. He trained with Nakayama and Funakoshi and many others, fists that hit harder and minds that saw farther than his own.
Then came the war. He enlisted at the university, and went through training not far from there. He was sent across the sea, to kill for the Empire and die for it. To die, that was the final purpose: to die protecting his country and his Emperor. That was the greatest mission, and Arashiro had failed it. He had been captured by the Americans, and it was a pale sergeant from Oregon who told him the war was over. When Arashiro came back home, there was still an Emperor, but no Empire. He had lost his country, his honor, his Seiichi, who had died from typhoid fever in the ship’s hold (two days before they anchored in Rio, two days before there were doctors and medicines, only two days). Karate was all he had left. While he had a breath on his body and a square foot around him, he could train. That they could not take away from him.
Arashiro did not remember getting home that night.
The following months, Pedro-Hiroshi progressed faster than his peers. Tradition and hierarchy forced him to get in formation at the last row, alongside the other white belt, though it was clear Pedro had surpassed him in both ability and effort. Before the year was over, Arashiro promoted the boy to yellow belt.
The next day was a Saturday, when the first real summer rain fell. There was no class that day, but Arashiro went to the studio to pay the landlady.
“The kid is upstairs” said she, counting the wrinkled bills. “He said he had forgotten something there yesterday.”
Arashiro went upstairs. He stopped in the middle of the steps, something bothering him. He realized it was the silence. When Pedro-Hiroshi trained alone, there was always the sound of the punching bag, of the snap of the gi, of the many gasps and interjections a man made when he was not trying to hide his tiredness from others. Now, there was nothing.
He went inside the studio and found the boy waiting, sited over his knees. The only movement in his body was a slow and deliberate breathing, but when he saw Arashiro, his lips frowned. Too Brazilian.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Asked the sensei.
“Now I did” he faced Arashiro. “Coward.”
Arashiro walked towards the window and opened it. Outside the rain was a grey curtain, tapping out of tune over the food stalls. Behind, Arashiro heard the door lock clicking. Pedro-Hiroshi threw the key under the door.
Arashiro lit up a cigarette, took a drag, and rested it over the metal ashtray. He turned around.
“Hiroshi. Takeshi Hiroshi” said the old man. “He was your father, wasn’t he?”
Pedro nodded.
“And you killed him” said he. “You were not captured, were you? You deserted.”
He spat on the floor. The motion seemed rehearsed, as if the boy were mimicking what a furious man should do.
“You deserted. And sold to the enemy where your troop was. And they killed my father.”
Arashiro imagined the boy growing up alone, heir to a world that no longer existed, stuck in a limbo between his family and the strange land that was his home. And all of this personified in the imaginary figure of a father he never met. Did Hiroshi know his father was a man? No, probably not. In his mind he had turned into a hero, a god, something so big Hiroshi could only live in him or in the void left by him. Arashiro felt sorry for the boy.
“Now” said Pedro-Hiroshi “I kill you.”
Arashiro took the cigarette from the ashtray, but did not raise it to his mouth.
“Do you have a gun?” He asked.
The boy shook his head.
“No. I’m going to defeat you in your own art.”
The boy raised his fists and spread his legs. It was a good stance: stable and at the same time flexible. He had learned well.
Hiroshi sprung forward and shouted, the shout of a demon, the shout of a prisoner finally released, a shout built over an entire life of fear and suffering, suffering that was real even when it was imaginary.
Arashiro grabbed the ashtray and spun, hitting Hiroshi on the temple. The boy staggered, stunned, and the old man swept him by the back of the heel. Hiroshi fell out the open window, falling down on the food stalls, which crumbled under his weight.
There was a bloodstain on the ashtray. Arashiro cleaned it up on the shirt hem and stooped over the window. He waited to see if the boy would move among the wreckage. Nothing. What a shame.
That was the best kiai he had ever heard.