rockets so many years ago. He could explain the rockets; what he saw today, he could not.
Shen Lang Rui and Le had been meeting under the trees all week. This afternoon, it appeared that the master, in accented Vietnamese, was pushing Le to move faster and faster. To Old Gravedigger Quang, Le was moving extraordinarily fast already. His quick hands would snap out and back like the crack of a whip; still the old master looked dissatisfied.
From fifteen meters away, the gravedigger could only hear bits and pieces of their conversation, words like, “too slow,” “engage your thoughts,” and something about “the fourth level,” whatever that meant.
Then Shen Lang Rui walked over to an old urn, a black and crudely ornate piece of no religious significance that sat beside what was left of a broken down cinderblock wall that used to border this part of the graveyard. A communist rocket destroyed a big section of it early in the war and, because the adjacent property had been purchased to accommodate the growing number of war dead, it was left to crumble into the ground with the passing years. About a year ago, Old Gravedigger Quang and two other much larger men chipped the decaying mortar away from under the urn’s base and nearly broke their backs lowering the thing to the ground.
Weathered and coated with three decades of grime, the urn stood about one-meter high, the bowl about a meter across and deep enough to hold ten liters of rainwater, or so. It was full today because it had rained for the last several nights.
Shen Lang Rui positioned himself slightly behind the urn, close enough to touch the water. At first, Old Gravedigger Quang thought the master was going to plunge his fist into it, an exercise he himself had done as a boy during his Vovinam lessons. He and the other students would punch to the bottom of a barrel and then retract their fist as fast as they could. The smaller the splatter, the better the technique. Given what he had seen of the Chinese master’s great speed and purity of movement, the gravedigger guessed that the water disturbance would be minimal.
Shen Lang Rui stood motionless over the urn, his palms pressed together under his chin as if in prayer to the Buddha. There was something odd about how he stood so very still. It was as if the old man were a photograph. Yes, that was it: as if the master and everything in his immediate aura were a photograph.
Le stood two strides off to the side, his hands clasped in front of him, his expression one of deep respect for his teacher. The way he stood motionless was not the same as Shen Lang Rui. Le’s hair moved in the afternoon breeze, as did his loose, white shirt, the tree leaves above him, and the long weeds at his feet.
Just as the gravedigger was thinking that all of this was more than strange, just as he was wondering how the master would thrust his fists into the bowl given his odd position, the water exploded upward out of the urn like a geyser. His first startled thought was that someone had thrown something into it, such as one of the many broken bricks that lay scattered about. No, he had been watching; there was no brick.
The splash shot up nearly as high as the master’s face, not once, but twice. The second time it erupted, which followed the first in about the time it would take to blink three times, the heavy urn cracked loud enough that Old Gravedigger Quang heard it from way over where he had just dropped his shovel. Then it shattered, all of it, spraying pieces of pottery and rainwater over the ground.
Old Gravedigger Quang’s heart nearly stopped right then. From where he had watched, it looked as if, and this is hard to fathom, that the force that broke the urn came from… inside of it. How could this be? But, as frightening and confusing as that was to ponder, there was something even more startling. What nearly stopped his heart was not what he saw the master do, but rather what the master did not do.
As God is his witness and as Buddha surely saw with his holy eyes, and what is driving the gravedigger to drink earlier than usual, is this: When that rainwater exploded upward out of the urn, not once, but twice, and the vessel shattered into pieces, Master Shen Lang Rui remained as still as a photograph, his palms ever pressed together.
I lunge diagonally away from Alan’s roundhouse kick and manage to shield my upper body with both forearms a hair of a second before his padded shin slams into them hard enough to jar loose my bone marrow. Before he can retract, I give him some low pain with a snap kick to the shin of his support leg and then split his attention with a brain-jarring palm against his forehead. I drive his head back and down until he plops onto his back. He jerks away from my attempted elbow lock, rolls up onto his knees, and launches a barrage of punches at my legs, two of which land hard enough to send biting shock waves into my thigh muscles.
I teach my students that training in the martial arts is a metaphor for life, with ups and downs, wins and losses, and pain and pleasure. Alan’s T-shirt reads: “Get knocked down ten times, get up eleven.” That’s a good one, too. Actually, sparring with one of my most skilled and inventive advanced students is a metaphor for the way my life has been going for the past few weeks. Just when I think I know what’s coming next, he throws something unexpected that jars my brain and forces me to regroup.
About a week ago, I was watching a reporter on the news interview a woman about to turn one hundred and seven years old. When the old gal was asked what it was like to have another birthday, she said, “Life is a gift. Everyday is an opportunity.” That was almost an epiphany to me. It’s definitely more positive than “life sucks,” which is where my head has been for the last sixty days and nights.
I step back to lure Alan into thinking that it’s safe to get up. My quickly formed strategy is to let him plant his weight on one leg, and then seize the opportunity to lunge in and unleash a category five all over his unbalanced body. Okay, there’s the foot plant and—
He springs off his foot, tucking his head into a fast somersault that for an instant I think is going to bowl right through my slow-to-react body. At the last instant, his legs shoot out from the ball and scissor one of mine. So much for that opportunity metaphor. I wonder if that old woman ever sparred a third-degree black belt. He traps my ankle with one foot and hooks behind my knee with his other, sending me to the mat face-first. I slap out, roll up on my side, and shield my chest against another hard roundhouse kick. Those are getting old, fast.
His shin stays on target a hair of a second longer than it should—a gift, perhaps—allowing me to trap his ankle with my hands and snake my leg over his knee. He tries to sit up to punch, but he’s a tad tardy because I’ve already seized the opportunity to put a crank on his ankle and a hyperextension on his knee. He winces and taps out.
How about that? Maybe the old woman’s metaphor is just fine after all.
I’m up first and help Alan to his feet. I lightly punch his shoulder. “You got one nasty roundhouse. Where’d you come up with that somersault? You Tube?”
He places his weight carefully on his foot. “Thanks,” he chuckles. “And double thanks for not breaking my ankle and knee.” He studies me for a moment. “When was the last time we sparred? Five weeks ago?”
I nod, knowing what he’s thinking. Five weeks ago, when apathy ruled my days, only his respect for me as his teacher kept him from handing my butt to me in a basket. Thankfully, the indifference has been dissolving progressively as my old, charming self reemerges. I’m not all the way there yet, but I will be. “About that. Thanks to you and the others, I’m getting better.”
He nods with a faint smile. “Good,” he says, testing his weight on the ankle. “I think.”
“Is it okay?” I ask with concern. Hitting each other hard is one thing but you have
