In reality, he was looking to create a distraction, an opening where he could close with me and drive me to the floor.
But I ignored his words. Thoughts of any type just slow reaction time and draw events out. I’ve learned that over the years. Better to ride the storm and get it over with quick.
He would want to close the distance between us and get inside the sword’s arc, wrap me up, slam me to the floor, and pound me into submission. He’d batter my weapon away, lunge forward, and grab my legs. He’d launch at me like an ugly, calculating animal.
It was an explosion of feints, blocks, angles worked, and weaknesses exploited. The usual sweaty blur. In the end, I broke his arm, both collarbones, and dumped him on the floor. Then I went back to training.
So you can see why our latest visitor made my stomach clench and my scalp tingle.
I’d seen people like him enter our little world before. He was dressed in the dark blue suit, white shirt, and red tie these people wore like a uniform. The way he moved, the way he looked, made me uneasy. And somewhere deep inside my brain a voice hissed: Be careful, Burke.
It sounded like Yamashita’s voice. I know what you’re thinking: hearing voices? This sort of psychic event had started happening to me a few years ago. At first, I couldn’t be sure what I was experiencing. But with time, the voice in my head grew in strength and authority. Now, whenever it came, it rang with a bell-like quality. And it seemed to me, as Yamashita’s physical powers had waned as he aged, his spiritual force had only gained in strength. I can’t really explain it, but there is a link between the two of us. And in times of confusion or danger, his voice comes to me, unbidden, but welcome nonetheless.
I study something called the Yamashita-ha Itto Ryu. It’s probably not like anything you’ve ever seen. Most people are familiar with modern martial systems like judo or karate. What I do is both more complicated and more elemental than these modern styles. For two decades I’ve worked to master a body of knowledge that has as its end the achievement of a type of aesthetic violence. I can drop someone with a sword or staff. I know joint locks that make your skin feel like it’s been set afire, and nerve strikes that will make the body convulse and the universe shrink down to a bright, white-hot nova of pain. It’s a system of refined force and channeled aggression. At least that’s what Sarah Klein, the woman who left me, thought. But I don’t think she got the entire picture. It’s not simply about danger and violence, but also about the ways in which we acknowledge the chaos in life, deal with it, and come out the other side. So if the tradition has left me with a butcher’s knowledge of human anatomy, it also strives to provide me with a monk’s insight into the frailty and transcendence inherent in human nature.
The dojo I was in that day was simply a large, high-ceilinged room with a polished wooden floor. There were racks for weapons along one wall, and one long scroll of calligraphy near the wooden shrine. It’s an admonition from an old archery sensei that Yamashita liked very much: Be in the dojo wherever you are. Live like a sage or exist like a fool. Not many people could read it, but that wasn’t a problem. Yamashita and I send the same message in every practice session we teach.
We bowed out at the end of class and I turned my attention to the visitor. He came across the dojo’s broad expanse of floor toward me. He moved well: good balance, with the momentum coming from his hips. These kinds of guys are usually pretty well trained in judo or karate: fifth-degree black belt or higher. He wasn’t close enough for me to guess. If his ears were banged up, I’d bet judo. If his hands were banged up, I’d go with karate. Fifteen or twenty years ago I’d have been impressed, but not anymore. Yamashita operates on a whole other level.
The man bowed politely. “Please excuse me, Dr. Burke, for disturbing the end of your lesson.” He held out a business card, a meishi, holding it with two hands, very formal, very polite.
“Choudai-itashimasu, Ito-san,” I began. I’d glossed his name from the kanji on the card. In Japan, business cards like this have one side in Japanese characters and the other in English. Technically, Ito was correct in presenting the Japanese side first, but I couldn’t be sure if he was paying me a compliment by assuming I’d be able to read it or hoping I’d have to turn it over to read the English translation and thereby lose face. This is part of the fun of hanging out with the Japanese. If you get invited to lunch, you can’t be sure whether you’re there to eat or be eaten.
Then the ritual began. I welcomed him to the dojo and apologized that I had not been able to prepare for a visitor. He said the fault was his and he was honored to be welcomed to such a renowned school. I invited him upstairs for tea, suggesting we would be more comfortable. He declined. I insisted. He declined again. I asked him to reconsider, but he demurred. Only then could we get down to business.
The conversation was formal and it proceeded along predictable lines, but my mind was racing during the entire exchange. I had read more than his name on the business card. What I saw there alarmed me. I tried to mask it, even as I searched Ito’s face for some hint of the danger he was bringing into my world.
“We are, of course, honored to have you as a visitor, Ito-san,” I said. “It’s a shame you did not come earlier. Perhaps the training would have interested you.”
Ito smiled tightly at that and his eyes widened in agreement. It was the first glimpse of honest emotion he’d let me see. “I agree. Perhaps you would do me the honor at some other time?”
I bowed slightly. “Of course.” Now that we were close to each other, I could see he had the thick hands of a man who had spent his formative years pounding things. It marks you in all sorts of ways. The prospect of a good fight of any kind probably made his nervous system hum like a shark’s when it senses chum in the water. Was it my imagination, or did Ito’s nostrils flare slightly?
It was a fleeting twitch, however, and he got himself under control quickly. “The dojo’s reputation is impeccable,” he said politely.
“Yamashita Sensei is a true master,” I told him. “It is unfortunate he is away and unable to welcome you in person.” My teacher was spending a few weeks at a small zendo, a monastery in upstate New York. He went there for the solitude and the spiritual discipline—not everything revolves around the sword, Burke—but I also suspected he liked the hot baths as well. It’s something I can sympathize with. I haven’t been at this as long as my teacher, but even so there are days when my joints moan and I yearn for release.
“Yes,” Ito said. “We had been informed Yamashita-san was away.” He gazed around the room at the last of the students, racking weapons and preparing to leave. “A pity. I would have enjoyed seeing him after all I have heard …” Then he focused on me.
I expected some condescension. Some sign that I wasn’t quite living up to the standards set by my absent master. As the years have passed and I have assumed more and more teaching responsibilities in the dojo, it was a common experience for me to be judged a disappointment by others. The old-time Japanese sensei are skeptical that a round-eye can ever even approach a level of serious competence. They’d have preferred it if Yamashita had chosen someone else to be his heir. And even the American students who come our way seem disappointed. You think they’d know better. But deep down they yearn for the inscrutable East. For the magic of the exotic. For Master Yoda.
What they get is me. The thick forearms of a swordsman. A shock of dense, dark hair. Eyes the greyish blue of the shingle by the shore of a cold sea. Dressed up in the dark blue garments worn by warriors from another place and another time.
But there was no disappointment in Ito’s expression. He was carefully studying me, a man sipping at some invisible nectar in the air. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood up and I tingled from
