Then he seemed to make a decision. He took the book and looked at the author’s blurb on the back. Then he handed it to me. “Perhaps another teacher’s voice, neh?” He turned then to the practice floor and I followed.
So I sat at lunch the next day reading the book called Warrior Ways to Power: Entering the Mystic City. The thoughts of a Tibetan lama thrust on me by a Japanese martial arts sensei.
The weather had slipped back into the clammy grayness of a Long Island spring. The temperature had dropped since that day in Edward Sakura’s backyard. And the sun seemed too weak to burn through the constant cloud cover. The cafeteria at Dorian University was steamy and thin rivulets of rain ran down the plate glass windows that opened onto the quadrangle. I sat alone at lunch, hunkered down in the gloom.
Any university is an odd place. Dorian University was a bit odder than most. Inside the buildings, overeducated professors with wet, shifty eyes and little or no coping skills skitter down the halls. They labor with inept delivery and dated scholarship, sure that their personal magnetism alone keeps Western Civilization afloat. The students sit in the classrooms and eye their teachers with bovine tolerance and dream of the weekend. Each party to the ordeal tolerates the other, secure in the knowledge that classes run for only fifty minutes and the semesters are only fifteen weeks long. It’s the Classics Illustrated version of higher education.
A few years ago, I had hoped to get a teaching job here. They could have used me. Dorian’s faculty have all the depth of a silted-up drainage ditch, particularly in Asian Studies. There’s a noodley philosophy professor who spent some time in Thailand, chanting in temples but secretly dreaming of the red light districts. An overweight woman sociologist concerned with gender issues is still trying to get a manuscript called “Coming of Age in Singapore” published, and a hypertensive historian who wants to be the Stephen Ambrose of the Korean War shows The Bridges of Toko-Ri a lot. But that’s it.
I worked as a lowly administrator, since the faculty felt I was unworthy to be involved in anything remotely academic. They meant it to be insulting, but by now the sentiment was only faintly unpleasant, like the memory of an old toothache.
Tucked away in upscale suburban Long Island, from the outside Dorian looks like a real school. Its buildings are ivy covered and the brick blushes in the morning sun on clear days. The playing fields stretch away into the distance, and the bustle of fall and spring made it look like a place where something of significance occurs. I’m no longer really sure. Maybe it was Yamashita’s ramped up training demands. Maybe it was the Sakura murder, but I found myself more and more frequently thinking about things other than the university. Increasingly, I just do my job and at the end of the day leave for the dojo, where more important things happen.
I found Tibetan Buddhism interesting. It’s colorful and elaborate. There are all those stories of levitation and mystical powers. The Third Eye. Clairvoyance. But, mostly, the teachers were strict and their followers did what they were told. It was an experience I could relate to. The book wasn’t bad, actually. The mystic city angle has been pretty well used since St. Augustine, but I was interested in the warrior aspect of things. The Tibetans aren’t all sitting around in the lotus position. Life is pretty tough there on the Roof of the World, and they had a warrior heritage of their own. In the old days, they were pretty good archers.
The cadence of the lama’s written words was soothing in a way that I hadn’t expected. The prose was clear. I wondered what he was like in person. The picture on the book jacket didn’t tell you much: a bespectacled man past middle age in the robes of a monk. I wondered how he had met Yamashita.
I tried to focus once more on reading the book my teacher had given me. But my attention wandered from mystic cities to the cryptic clue left by a murdered calligrapher. To the possibility of a type of experience that was unseen and yet nonetheless real. And to the increasingly conflicting demands of the different worlds I seemed to inhabit. It was like a low, distracting murmur. A rumble that, while still faint, would eventually grow in significance. I struggled hard against the idea that I would someday have to make a choice, and made another attempt to concentrate on the here and now. Develop some sensitivity. But the location wasn’t much help. Just within the range of my peripheral vision, a young coed sitting at a nearby table was getting up and wiggling away. Her slim middle was exposed by a short shirt and her navel was pierced. I forced myself not to watch.
Training, as my sensei says, is never ending.
The birds complained during the lulls. Off in the distance the trees were hazy with green buds. The weather had cleared and it was spring again. But the targets came at you fast, and there wasn’t much time to stop and appreciate the weather.
My brother Micky set himself with arms outstretched. The pistol shots snapped out with a quick, machine-like pace. Micky’s eyes were wide and focused on the human silhouette that raced toward him along the cable. The slide on the Glock rammed back and stayed open. The target was shredded in two spots. Micky stepped back away from the firing line and grinned.
“It’s like everything else, buddy boy,” he said to me. “You work the heart and the head.” I nodded in appreciation.
Micky’s shooting stance was all intensity. It wasn’t that he was stiff. It was a quality that gave you a sense, for the brief moment between the thought and the pull on the trigger, that all of Micky’s energy was focused on that one thing. I believe, if he could, that my brother would race along with the bullets he shot so he could pound them into the target by hand.
His partner Art stepped up to the line. The interesting thing about watching different people do any sort of similar physical activity is the degree to which their idiosyncrasies are revealed in the act. I see it all the time in the dojo. The same technique is rendered unique in different people by the ball of quirks that make up our personalities.
Art’s a lefty, so there’s a certain awkward appearance to his shooting. It’s an illusion caused by the dominance of the right-handed perspective. He took his time placing his shots. His pistol let off a slow series of cracks, and Art’s mouth tightened occasionally as he monitored his performance. It took a while. The Glock Seventeen is aptly named: the clip holds seventeen 9 mm bullets. And one in the chamber.
But I wasn’t thinking about the technical details of the firearm. The most deadly thing about a pistol is the person who holds it. I was watching Art struggle with his marksmanship.
Cops qualify a few times a year with their pistols. Art’s microsurgery had repaired his right hand, but I knew he was still going to therapy to regain a full range of use. In the two-handed shooter’s stance, one hand grips the butt of the pistol; the other is cupped underneath to steady the aim. The lingering awkwardness of the right hand was bothering Art. You could tell.
There’s a focus and a connection between all the parts of the body when you’re doing something right. The head gives you away. If you’re too overly conscious of what you’re doing, if you’re nervous or scattered, the head looks like it’s rising up and losing connection with the rest of you. In training we say that you “float.” People who float are easily identified in the dojo. They’re usually the people getting knocked down.
I saw the telltale signs of floating in Art’s posture. It wasn’t just the grimace on his face or the obvious hesitation in his right hand as it scrabbled for a grip at the base of the pistol. He was thinking about it too much. Worrying. It created a break in his stance and his coordination. And when the target reached him, the shots were mostly scattered outside the primary target zones.
Art grimaced as he took off his ear protectors. “Shit.”
