Samurai

A downpour that didn't arrive, sporadic drops only. Foreign skies remained difficult to read for a new-comer. The election too surprised in this one-party city-state, the expected new President narrowly victorious. Post Offices and shops were closed. 

A young, contained, neat-as-a-pin doctor named Ing was met at the library cafe. While the library itself was closed, the cafe drew a large crowd. 

Boning up on paediatric specialisation, Ing was busy. During the chat the former tough-boy ex-offender happened along. 

Alone today the man on his usual run that combined confession and raising of funds with key-rings for sale. The slight tremor of the young doctor at his appearance was understandable. (She had chosen paediatrics over geriatrics—against the demographic here as anywhere else in the First World.)

Shortly after the chap was caught again at the corner traffic light. 

Three months he had been on the program. The man immediately understood the unspoken question, the real question behind the one that was voiced. With the rehab likely he had the compulsion to confess his sins at every opportunity. 

Without hesitation he volunteered the eight year term. There had been twenty-four strokes of the cane additionally, administered over two sessions. (The law here stipulated twelve strokes maximum at a time, in the presence of a doctor.) 

Manslaughter it had been in the course of a fight; victim got the knife in the neck. Quickly the whole burden was divulged. 

As he must have done many times previously, the chap re-enacted the event, bringing his grasping right fist down onto craned neck from a height.

Yes, a Geylang lad. A few weeks before he had been sighted flitting under the balconies, with the same rapid movement as in his hawking among the library cafe tables. 

The victim had wielded a samurai sword. (Eight years ago the same as today, it was easy to believe such weapons were brought out in the back blocks of Geylang. There had been two deaths there recently after Saturday night brawling.) 

Lifting the back of his tee as pedestrians circled proved these were no idle tales. On his lower back the long arc of a healed wound showed a descending slash from left to right; a backhanded sweep for a right-hand opponent. 

Late-twenties, unmarried and tattooed like the girl-friend who was on the scene earlier. The cost of living in Singapore made it difficult; there had been no sales that day. Hopefully there had been some good hearings; usually the people at the library cafe tables listened and often reached for their wallets. 

By coincidence a copy of The Unfettered Mind was picked up at Kinokuniya the day prior. Seventeenth century letters from an old Zen master offering tuition on how to inhabit the moment, the untrammeled Zen moment. The ultimate state from which to meet one's opponent, his sword, its swing. Life itself.