Part 2 (1/2)

A MEXICAN FELLED.

History (which, like a certain motion-picture director, tells its story in dis- continuous images) now offers us the image of a hazardous bar set in the midst of the all-powerful desert as though in the midst of the sea. The time-one changeable night in the year 1873; the exact place-somewhere on the LlanoEstacado,in New Mexico. The land is almost preternaturally flat, but the sky of banked clouds, with tatters of storm and moon, is cov- ered with dry, cracked watering holes and mountains. On the ground, there are a cow skull, the howls and eyes of a coyote in the darkness, fine horses, and the longshaft of light from the bar. Inside, their elbows on the bar, tired, hard-muscled men drink a belligerent alcohol and flash stacks of sil- ver coins marked with a serpent and an eagle. A drunk sings impa.s.sively.

Some of the men speak a language with manys's -it must be Spanish, since those who speak it are held in contempt by the others. BillHarrigan,the red-haired tenement house rat, is among the drinkers. He has downed a couple of shots and is debating (perhaps because he's flat broke) whether to call for another.

The men of this desert land baffle him. To him they look huge and terrifying, tempestuous, happy, hatefully knowledgeable in their handling of wild cattle and big horses. Suddenly there is absolute silence, ignored only by the tin-eared singing of the drunk. A brawny, powerful-looking giant of a Mexican with the face of an old Indian woman has come into the bar. His enormous sombrero and the two pistols on his belt make him seem even larger than he is. In a harsh English he wishes all the gringo sons of b.i.t.c.hes drinking in the placeabuenas noches.No one takes up the gauntlet. Bill asks who the Mexican is, and someone whispers fearfully that the dago (Diego) is BelisarioVillagran,from Chihuahua. Instantly, a shot rings out. s.h.i.+elded by the ring of tall men around him, Bill has shot the in- truder. The gla.s.s falls from Villagran's hand; then, the entire man follows. There is no need for a second shot. Without another look at the sumptuous dead man, Bill picks up the conversation where he left off.

”Is that so?” he drawled. ”Well, I'm BillHarrigan,from New York.”

The drunk, insignificant, keeps singing.

The sequel is not hard to foresee. Bill shakes hands all around and ac- cepts flattery, cheers, and whisky.

Someone notices that there are no notches on Billy's gun, and offers to cut one to mark the killing ofVillagran.Billy the Kid keeps that someone's knife, but mutters that ”Mexicans ain't worth makin'

notches for.” But perhaps that is not enough. That night Billy lays his blanket out next to the dead man and sleeps-ostentatiously-until morning.

KILLING FOR THE h.e.l.l OF IT.

Out of the happy report of that gunshot (at fourteen years of age) the hero Billy the Kid was born and the s.h.i.+fty BillHarriganburied. The scrawny kid of the sewers and skullcracking had risen to the rank of frontiersman. He became a horseman; he learned to sit a horse straight, the way they did in Texas or Wyoming, not leaning back like they did in Oregon and California. He never fully measured up to the legend of himself, but he came closer and closer as time went on. Something of the New York hoodlum lived on in the cowboy; he bestowed upon the Mexicans the hatred once inspired in himby Negroes, but the last words he spoke (a string of curses) were in Spanish. He learned the vagabond art of cattle driving and the other, more difficult art of driving men; both helped him be a good cattle rustler.

Sometimes, the guitars and brothels of Mexico reached out and pulled him in. With the dreadful lucidity of insomnia, he would organize orgies that went on for four days and four nights. Finally, in revulsion, he would pay the bill in bullets. So long as his trigger finger didn't fail him, he was the most feared (and perhaps most empty and most lonely) man on that fron- tier. Pat Garrett, his friend, the sheriff who finally killed him, once re- marked: ”I've practiced my aim a good deal killing buffalo.” ”I've practiced mine more'n you have, killing men,” Billy softly replied. The details are lost forever, but we know that he was responsible for as many as twenty-one killings-”not counting Mexicans.” For seven daring and dangerous years he indulged himself in that luxury called anger.

On the night of July 25,1880, Billy the Kid came galloping down the main (or only) street of Fort Sumner on his pinto. The heat was oppressive, and the lamps were not yet lighted; Sheriff Garrett, sitting on the porch in a rocking chair, pulled out his gun and shot Billy in the stomach. The horse went on; the rider toppled into the dirt street. Garrett put a second bullet in him. The town (knowing the wounded man was Billy the Kid) closed and locked its windows. Billy's dying was long and blasphemous. When the sun was high, the townspeople began to approach, and someone took his gun; the man was dead.

They noted in him that unimportant sort of look that dead men generally have.

He was shaved, sewn into tailor-made clothes, and exhibited to horror and mockery in the shopwindow of the town's best store.

Men on horses or in gigs came in from miles around. On the third day, they had to put makeup on him.

On the fourth, to great jubilation, he was buried.

The Uncivil Teacher of Court Etiquette KotsukenoSuke

The iniquitous protagonist of this chapter is the uncivil courtier KiraKotsukenoSuke,the fateful personage who brought about the degradation and death of the lord of the castle of Ako yet refused to take his own life, honorably, when fitting vengeance so demanded. He was a man who merits the grat.i.tude of all men, for he awakened priceless loyalties and provided the black yet nec- essary occasion for an immortal undertaking. A hundred or more novels, scholarly articles, doctoral theses, and operas-not to mention effusions in porcelain, veined lapis lazuli, and lacquer-commemorate the deed. Even that most versatile of media, celluloid, has served to preserve the exploit, for ”Chus.h.i.+ngura, or The Doctrinal History of the Forty-seven Loyal Retainers” (such is the t.i.tle of the film) is the most oft-presented inspiration of j.a.panese filmmaking. The minutely detailed glory which those ardent tributes attest is more than justifiable -it is immediately just, in anyone's view.

I follow the story as told byA. B. Mitford,who omits those continual distractions lent by ”local color,”

preferring instead to focus on the move- ment of the glorious episode. That admirable lack of ”Orientalism” allows one to suspect that he has taken his version directly from the j.a.panese.

THE UNTIED RIBBON.

In the now faded spring of 1702,Asano Tak.u.mino Kami, the ill.u.s.trious lord of the castle of Ako, was obliged to receive an envoy from the emperor and offer the hospitality and entertainment of his home to him. Two thou- sand three hundred years of courtesy (some mythological) had brought the rituals of reception to a fine point of anguished complication. The amba.s.sador represented the emperor, but did so by way of allusion, orsymbolically-and this was a nuance which one emphasized too greatly or too little only at one's peril. In order to avoid errors which might all too easily prove fatal, an official of the court at Yedo was sent beforehand to teach the proper ceremonies to be observed. Far from the comforts of the court, and sentenced to this backwoodsvillegiature(which to him must have seemed more like a banishment than a holiday), KiraKotsukenoSukeimparted his instructions most ungraciously.

At times the magisterial tone of his voice bordered on the insolent. His student, the lord of the castle of Ako, affected to ignore these affronts; he could find no suitable reply, and discipline forbade the slightest violence. One morning, however, the ribbon on the courtier's sock came untied, and he requested that the lord of the castle of Ako tie it up for him again. This gentleman did so, humbly yet with inward indignation. The uncivil teacher of court etiquette told him that he was truly incorrigible-only an ill-bred country b.u.mpkin was capable of tying a knot as clumsily as that. At these words, the lord of the castle of Ako drew his sword and slashed at the uncivil courtier, who fled-the graceful flourish of a delicate thread of blood upon his forehead-----A few days later, the military court handed down its sentence against the attacker: the lord of the castle of Ako was to be allowed to commithara kiri.In the cen- tral courtyard of the castle of Ako, a dais was erected and covered in red felt, and to it the condemned man was led; he was given a short knife of gold and gems, he confessed his crime publicly, he allowed his upper garments to slip down to his girdle so that he was naked to the waist, and he cut open his abdomen with the two ritual movements of the dirk. He died like a Samu- rai; the more distant spectators saw no blood, for the felt was red. A white-haired man of great attention to detail-the councillorOis.h.i.+ Kuranosuke,his second-decapitated his lord with a saber.

THE FEIGNER OF INIQUITIES.

Tak.u.mi no Kami's castle was confiscated, his family ruined and eclipsed, his name linked to execration.

His retainers becameRonins.*One rumor has it that the same night the lord committedhara kiri, forty-seven of theseRonins meton the summit of a mountain, where in minute detail they planned the act that took place one year later. But the fact is that the retain- ers acted with well-justified delay, and at least one of their confabulations took place not on the difficult peak of a mountain, but in a chapel in a for- est, an undistinguished pavilion of white-painted wood, unadorned save for the rectangular box that held amirror.

TheRoninshungered for revenge, but revenge must have seemed unat- tainable. KiraKotsukenoSuke,the hated teacher of court etiquette, had fortified his house, and a cloud of archers and swordsmen swarmed about his palanquin. Among his retinue were incorruptible, secret spies upon whom no detail was lost, and no man did they so closely spy upon and fol- low as the councillorKuranosuke,the presumed leader of the avengingRonins. Butby chanceKuranosukediscovered the surveillance, and he based his plan for vengeance upon that knowledge.

He moved to Kioto, a city unparalleled throughout the empire for the color of its autumns. He allowed himself to descend into the depths of brothels, gambling dens, and taverns. In spite of the gray hairs of his head, he consorted with prost.i.tutes and poets, and with persons even worse. Once he was expelled from a tavern and woke up to find himself in the street, his head covered with vomit.

It happened that a Satsuma man saw this, and said, sadly yet with anger, ”Is not thisOis.h.i.+ Kuranosuke,who was a councillor toAsano Tak.u.mino Kami, and who helped him to die yet not having the heart to avenge his lord, gives himself up to women and wine? Faithless beast! Fool and craven!

Unworthy the name of a Samurai!”

And he trod onKuranosuke'sface as he slept, and spat on him. WhenKotsukenoSuke'sspies reported this pa.s.sivity, the courtier felt much relieved.

But things did not stop there. The councillor sent his wife and two younger children away and bought a concubine; this iniquitous act cheered the heart and relaxed the fearful prudence of his enemy, who at last dis- missed half his guards.

On one of the bitter nights of the winter of 1703, the forty-sevenRoninsmet in an unkempt garden on the outskirts of Yedo, near a bridge and the playing card factory. They carried the pennants and banners of their lord. Before they began the a.s.sault, they informed the inhabitants of the city that they were not raiding the town but embarking on a military mission of strict justice.

THE SCAR.

Two groups attacked the palace of KiraKotsukenoSuke.The councillorKuranosukeled the first, which a.s.saulted the main gate; the second was led by the councillor's elder son, who was not yet sixteen years old and who died that night. History records the many moments of that extraordinarilylucidnightmare- the perilous,pendulardescent of the rope ladders, the drum beating the signal of attack, the defenders'

rush to defend, the archers posted on the rooftops, the unswerving path of the arrows toward vital or- gans, the porcelains dishonored by blood, the burning death that turns to ice-all the brazen and disorderly elements of death. Nine of theRoninsdied; the defenders were no less brave, and they would not surrender. Shortly after midnight, all resistance ended.

KiraKotsukenoSuke,the ignominious cause of all that loyalty, was no- where to be found. The attackers sought him through every corner of the emotion-torn palace; they were beginning to despair of finding him, when the councillor noted that his bedclothes were still warm. Again theRoninssearched, and soon they discovered a narrow window, hidden by a bronze mirror. Below, in a gloomy courtyard, a man in white looked up at them; a trembling sword was in his right hand. When they rushed down, the man gave himself up without a fight. His forehead bore a scar-the old rubric left by Tak.u.mi no Kami's blade.

Then the b.l.o.o.d.yRoninswent down on their knees to the detested n.o.ble- man and told him that they were the former retainers of the lord of the cas- tle of Ako, for whose death and perdition he was to blame, and they requested that he commit the suicide that befitted a samurai.

In vain did the retainers propose to the lord's servile spirit that act of self-respect. He was a man impervious to the pleas of honor; at sunrise, the officers had to slit his throat.

THE EVIDENCE.