I wanted to write about the innocence of a child and his surroundings. Also, I wanted my narrative to be nostalgic creating a sense of it being autobiographical. Thanks for reading.
The Dojo Hunchback
Miyako I.
"You can kill with just your fists and heels," my martial arts instructor said. I had been training karate under Sensei Tanaka since I knew how to walk. He was my uncle. Well-known in our village, he could fell a banana tree with just a slap. He could also tiptoe on a thin earthen jar and not break it. Not only did he teach me how to fight, he also instilled in me how not to die. From him, I learned that death could be negotiated.
"Yes, it's true," my mother said. "Your uncle killed a crocodile with a punch on its head and a kick on it stomach, and he had no scratch or whatsoever." Her eyes opened widely as if her intention was to scare. I believed her. The old folks in our town said the same thing. They always talked about my uncle's exploits over bottles of coconut wine.
My grandmother added, "He even made a gang of four who wielded knives run for their lives." There was pride in her telling. She said it after spitting the juiced areca nut she was chewing. Her voice made the nearly tragic story sound like a joke. She halted not to breathe but to laugh. I knew she was telling the truth. My uncle had scars.
Sensei, single like an hermit almost, lived alone in the adobe house he inherited from my late grandfather. He was the youngest, so he got to own the ancestral home. We did our exercise drills and mock fights in his covered backyard, our dojo. The ground, used to be level and smooth on our backs when we wrestled, was now unevenly crumbly and twiggy. It hurt to walk around barefoot. Once, a sharp woodchip pierced my toe. I nearly died from tetanus infection. Feeling guilty, Sensei closed the dojo.
After closing the dojo, not wanting us kids to call him "sensei" anymore, he preoccupied himself with landscaping his backyard. He dismantled the palm roof and the bamboo walls and planted chili bushes around the tall wooden fence. Painstakingly, using a pick and a bolo, he dug up and cut the live roots that wildly spread and ruined the even surface of the ground. He suspected that they also consumed much of the ground's moist leaving the soil powdery and dry. The source was the century-old banyan tree.
We heard many stories about the strange-looking tree. I grew up avoiding it when we played hide-and-seek. Its twisted trunk looked like a hunchback. Its hollow hole seemed like a face staring at me begging. I usually knocked on a wood when I saw it.
"Manong, we should cut the balete," my uncle suggested to my father. "It would be too late if its roots reach our living rooms." The tree was also not far from our house.
My father, a rabid environmentalist, opposed my uncle's idea. "You should ask a tree expert on what to do with the roots. There should be another way besides felling it."
"I already talked to someone, and he told me to cut them. Look at my hands." My uncle showed his bursting blisters and pinched the ripe, watery ones to drain them.
A quick problem solver, my father broached an option he had seen before among the hill farmers. "Why don't you burn them using kerosene? It's also good for the soil."
From our breezy veranda, I watched and listened. It seemed he was dead set to have the banyan tree chainsawed. My father came home fuming, mad at his brother.
I went to the tree and talked to the begging hunchback. "Impo, if you don't want to die, please move your legs or uncurl your toes." I used a chaste language for respect.
Not long after, the roots growing in my uncle's backyard and in ours suddenly disappeared. The ground looked like what it was before. The dojo reopened. We were back to karate, listening again to my uncle's stories about his youth. I trusted him now more than ever. Sensei was right. Death could be negotiated. I did with the hunchback.
Reply With Quote
