Tengu (9 page)

I didn’t know what was going on with him. But I rarely did. Part of the warrior’s art was to give away as little of yourself as possible to the world. You remained always watchful, guarded. And even after all this time and all that we had been through, in many ways my teacher was still a mystery to me.

I had waited until the last of the students had left the
dojo
and the lights were turned down low in the cavernous training hall. Yamashita drifted up the stairs to the loft area and beckoned for me to follow. I ascended into the soft lighting and simple décor of his living area. It was a familiar view; there were a few easy chairs and lamps. The walls were white and dotted with framed
sumi-e
paintings—the stark and elegant ink drawings of Japan, and resting on a table in pride of place, his swords.

The
daisho
, the two swords of the old samurai, are emblematic in many ways of the art Yamashita follows. They are a melding of esthetics and functionality, highly refined products of master artisans whose ultimate purpose is savage beyond description. I’ve seen their use firsthand, and wondered how such danger can be contained—or justified. Once I had asked my teacher this question. His eyes narrowed and the answer was brief. “Discipline,” Yamashita told me. “And wisdom.”

It’s a hard path to walk.

Sensei
lifted his swords out of their rack and set them down on a table. He brought out a small wooden box, slid back the lid, and removed sheets of fine, soft paper, a small vial of oil, and a stick with a round fabric ball at the end. Yamashita knelt by the table and, bowing to the blades, began to inspect them.

When handling swords, there is an unyielding etiquette. Any time a sword is unsheathed, the potential for danger is released as well. For this reason, Yamashita held the long sword horizontally in front of him and slowly drew the blade from the scabbard with his left hand, pausing after a few inches of steel was revealed and then slowly continuing. The
katana
, the long sword that people typically think of as a “samurai sword,” is usually drawn with the right hand. By using the left, and removing it slowly from the glistening black scabbard, Yamashita was symbolically demonstrating a lack of offensive intent.

Once the sword was fully drawn, he set the sheath down and raised the blade to the vertical. The handle was wrapped in sharkskin and silk cords and the metal fittings were simple and balanced. The blade itself was an arc of deep silver, wrought centuries ago by skilled sword-smiths laboring in an atmosphere made dense by heat and Shinto prayer. A delicate wave of shadow ran in undulating lines along the single, razor-sharp cutting edge. The pattern, known as a
hamon
, was created in the forging process itself. It was a subtle mark of distinction, of personality. For the Japanese, all things have a spiritual essence. And the power and beauty of swords make them a locus of strange energy. Folktales tell of swords that hum to warn their masters of danger, that leap of their own accord to battle. Of swords that can make a warrior great or that can drive the bearer mad.

Yamashita worked quietly, precisely, on his swords. His eyes concentrated as he regarded the blade he held before us. He slowly oiled the surface, wiping the metal gently with soft polishing paper made expressly for the purpose. Then he took up the stick and ball and tapped the fabric end of the implement all along the edge of the sword. It absorbed excess oil that was left from the polishing.

Yamashita stretched the sword between his hands, one hand on the handle, the other cradling the blade in a folded sheet of the paper. A sword should never touch skin except in the instant of attack. He focused on the handle, checking the bamboo pin that held the sword firmly in place within the handle.

“The
mekugi
is sound,” he said quietly to me, referring to the pin. “Even the finest blade depends for its utility on the most simple of things . . . ” It was a commonplace observation, but his tone implied a deeper meaning.

Sensei
slid the sword back in its scabbard with a fluid, gliding, almost magical motion that took my breath away. He did it with the grace of nature. I work every day of my life to try to emulate it.

Yamashita stood and placed the swords back in their rack. “So . . . ” he said, “it appears as if you will be traveling,
neh
?” He wandered into the kitchen and I followed him.

“
Sensei
,” I started, but he waved me to silence.

“Your brother has spoken of this to me, Burke,” Yamashita said. He let out a small, hiss of breath. “Coffee?” he asked.

“If you’re going to have some,” I answered.

He made a small grimace. “Tonight, I think not.” It wasn’t like him: This was the second time he had given up this indulgence. Yamashita has been a coffee connoisseur for as long as I’ve known him. Before I could say anything he switched gears, asking “What of the new students?”

“That’s for you to decide,” I told him. “You’re the
sensei
.”

The lighting in the kitchen was muted, but I thought I detected a twinkle in his eyes. “Ah, but it is you who teach them their lessons, Professor.” There was a playful tone in his voice. He was walking back out to the sitting area as he said that, but I could pick up the nuance anyway.
Sensei
sat down and beckoned me to a seat beside him.

“I’ll only be gone for a week,” I explained. “Ken or one of the other senior people can help you. Then I’ll be back.”

Yamashita smiled tightly, as if he didn’t quite believe me. But he said nothing.

“I need the money,” I added lamely.

His smile grew broader. “There is that need, always,” he commented, shaking his head in resignation. “But for you, there is more to this . . . ”

I started to say something, but he held up a hand. “I know you, Professor. There is within you this need . . . ” he searched for a word, “ . . . to prove yourself somehow. Over and over again.”

I nodded because there was no sense in denying it. I had spent my life pursuing various goals: a doctoral degree in history, black belts in the martial arts. And no matter how much I believed they were real achievements, I had come to realize that much of their value lay in the respect they elicited from others. Yamashita knew this as well. It’s a motivator he had used over the years to drive me along the hard path he laid out for his students. And now I use the same technique when I teach newcomers. It’s a curious blend of raw emotion and subtle psychology, percolating through the chemical surge that hard exercise creates.

“Your father was a soldier,” Yamashita mused. “Your brother and his partner also. These are men you respect. And you wish to have them respect you as well.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” I protested.

My
sensei
waved a hand. “Important things rarely are. This for you is important,
neh
? A chance to assist your countrymen in training. To earn a living, and to prove something about yourself as well as your art.” He sounded so very matter-of-fact, and his acceptance of my decision surprised me. Yamashita sighed and looked at his hands, as if the creases of his palms held the words he wished to speak. “You will do well, I am sure, Professor. You will be missed here, but we will be glad to see you return.” I looked up at that. It wasn’t the kind of thing my teacher said very often.

Yamashita’s head came up, too, and he looked at me with the dark and oddly forceful eyes he has. I used to find the look disconcerting. Now, it was a relief to see something of my teacher’s old ferocity back in evidence. “Two things to remember,” he said.

“What’s that,
Sensei
?”

“These are young men you will be training with. They will be resilient in ways that you are not.” I started to protest and he smiled as he continued. “You will be almost twenty years older than most of them, Professor. You are more skilled, but your muscles are not as young. You will be sweating and straining. Watch against dehydration. I have found it useful to drink a beer in the evening. It helps you retain fluids.”

I smiled at that, even though he was perfectly serious. “I think I can handle that,” I told him. “What else?”

Yamashita grew somber. “Consider the virtue of
isshin
—single-heartedness. Can a person who is in so many places ever be fully present anywhere at all?”

“Yamashita’s right,” Sarah Klein told me. “I think this whole thing is some odd excuse to prove yourself to the men in your life.”

Sarah has a real knack for being blunt, but is also adept at taking much of the sting out of her comments when she wants to. She’s utterly direct, but charming. She’s got a heart-shaped face and very expressive brown eyes that shine with a type of tolerant amusement at most things in life. Tonight her face was stern as she spoke, and the warm wood and subdued lighting of the Japanese restaurant where we were eating created an atmosphere of calm that couldn’t subdue the urgency of her words.

Sarah studies
kyudo
, Japanese archery, and Yamashita has taken her under his wing. He likes her intensity, he confided to me once. My teacher thinks she has the makings of a good warrior. For me, the attraction is at once both more complex and subtle than that.

I tried talking with Micky about it. I’m not terribly articulate about these things. It’s the combined impact of growing up Irish American and then spending my adult years with the Japanese. Many things are intensely felt; few are discussed. I tried any number of analogies when I talked with Micky about Sarah. I tried magnetism. Chemistry. Kismet. Micky heard me out patiently, letting me squirm with what for him was good-natured patience. When I was done, my brother squinted at me and smirked.

“You’re in love, you dope,” my older brother explained.

And maybe I was. I sometimes slip down into the lower level of the Dharma House, the place where the archers train, just to watch Sarah. She’s unaware of my presence most times, and moves through the motions of her art with a focus and grace that make me smile in contentment. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can see her in another place, wet and muddy, eyes wide with the curious mix of fear and determination that I’ve come to think of as bravery, as she fires arrow after arrow into a fight none of us really expected to survive.

I know Sarah remembers that event, too. And while we’re drawn to each other in many ways, her memory of that time also makes her fight the attraction. In battle’s heat, we sometimes learn things about people—ourselves and others—that we would prefer not to think about.

There’s a dark side to what I do. And it worries her. I sensed that tension, even in the calming atmosphere of our favorite restaurant. “Hey,” I said defensively, pushing a crab dumpling known as
shumai
around my plate, “this is a really good opportunity for me to do some consulting work. It’s not like my career is taking off anywhere else . . . ” That, at least, was hard to argue. I’m an academic without a home, an expert on an obscure aspect of Asian history, over-educated and under-employed.

Sarah sipped thoughtfully at her cocktail and squinted at me. “Consulting, huh?”

“Sure,” I responded brightly. “I get to review the training system the Army has set up down in Fort Bragg, watch them work out, make some suggestions.” I shrugged. “It’ll only take a week, and then I’m back, with a nice fat check from Uncle Sam.”

In reality, the check was not really going to be that fat, but the Burke universe is not one awash in money. Everything is relative.

“It’s not the mechanics of it that bother me, Burke,” she told me. In the rare tender moments we’ve had, she whispers my name, Connor, in a way that makes my stomach flip. But mostly, and especially when she’s annoyed, I’m Burke. The waitress brought our entrees and Sarah paused while the plates were set down and arranged. The waitress topped off my glass with more beer. I smiled gratefully. I had the feeling I was going to need it.

“I’m sure that it’s something you
can
do,” Sarah continued. “I just wonder whether it’s something you
should
do.” She looked at me significantly. “For a man who can be so focused, you’re all over the place sometimes.”

We’ve had these sorts of discussions before. Sarah has watched me struggle to find out where I fit in, and she has her own very clear idea about that. But there was more to her uneasiness than that. The martial disciplines are a disconcerting blend of idealism and brutality. When Yamashita wields a sword in the flowing movements of the solo performance called
kata
, it’s a thing of beauty. Each performance ends with a tight swoop of the sword before it’s sheathed. To the uninitiated, it’s a dramatic flourish, an artistic embellishment. In reality, it is something called
chuburi
. The action is designed to shake blood and human tissue off the sword blade. It’s a reminder of what it is to know the way of the sword.

Sarah, on the other hand, is an archer. For students of
kyudo
, the esthetic of action is all-important. They stand at a distance from their targets. It makes it easier to imagine yourself as simply an artist, a performer. In Yamashita’s world and mine, you can feel your opponents’ body heat, smell their breath. It’s harder to maintain the illusion of calm and serenity.

The struggle in the martial arts between beauty and brutality, power and transcendence, is one that bothers Sarah. And she hates it when my actions remind her of it.

I shrugged at her statement. “Seems to me the government needs all the help it can get.” She made a face at that. “You know what I mean . . . ” I protested.

“I’d feel better if I could be sure that was all there was to this, Burke,” she told me. She wasn’t letting go. I sighed inwardly. A nice night out. Some salad with ginger dressing,
shumai
and
yakitori
. Perhaps some warm
sake
. The primitive romantic cunning of the Burke clan linked fine dining with romance. I looked at Sarah Klein with longing. She was pretty and self-assured, her dark hair shining in the subdued lighting of the restaurant. She sat there across from me, supple and sparkly, alive to so much of life—and tonight, totally impervious to my charm.