A Year at River Mountain (24 page)

S
USPENDED
B
ELL

Night rehearsal of the absence of children.

H
ILL
R
UINS

Sudden and brief torrents of rain. Ribbons of sun last thing before night. I tried to remember being a boy, a son. What did I do with my father? Cricket? Football? There: a rectangle of field beside the school; there: my dad's voice, “Not like that. Not like that.”

F
OOT
O
VERLOOKING
T
EARS

The past has receded leaving only worm casts, broken branches, debris, seed husks. Enough to build a life, perhaps. No matter. Life included joy. Now its erotic promise is enshrined in Imogen's pending visit; one more season to see through, then summer and her arrival.

E
ARTH
F
IVE
M
EETINGS

“I dreamed I flew home,” I said, “and home looked exactly like this — same birds, trees, clouds, same people.”

Frank chuckled. “Was I there?”

“I don't think so.”

“Good.”

In the paddies the grains were plump. I held his hand as we circled the garden wall, ears pricked for any sound; then I left him on the bench by the door and descended alone by a remote path to the bridge then uphill to the temple.

I will find Zhou Yiyuan, get the key and take Imogen into the garden this summer, no matter what it takes — what a child I am! — and we will stage a wedding scene; but which scene, what play?

P
INCHE
D R
AVINE

Days have a shape. This day began slowly and was supposed to go
slow, quick, slow/quick, slow
, these time signatures pencilled across an indeterminate number of dimensions. Then, as morning got underway the first
slow
got quick too fast and the first
quick
vanished, then the second
quick
seemed endless cacophony, and then it collided with the last
slow
. Afternoon was a long unexpected dwindling and now, under the influence of a brief and gorgeous sunset, signalled by bird flight and the memory of Active Pass and snow on a girl's shoulders, I anticipate the briefest
quick
and a slow evening.

Y
IN
P
ORTALS OF THE
F
OOT

The first roses were open in the hedgerow along the road. The bridge to my young great grandparents in England, surely. Tapping sounds from the walled garden. The path to the river was loud: a monk with a chainsaw was bucking up a tree felled by the earthquake, sawdust streaming in early morning light. The scent of sap mixed with the memory of roses. Smell of roses.

Yin Wood

Large Hill

“I don't know about living in a monastery,” I said.

Frank's face looked soft, his lips curving. We were about to descend from the garden door to the river.

“None of this is mine, none of it.”

The familiar smile creased his face. “Am I here?”

“Yes, Frank, you are still here.”

Voices below caught his attention. “What is that?”

“There are people on the bridge,” I said.

He turned his head as if looking down to the river. “Are they leaving or arriving?”

“I don't know.”

“What would you guess?”

“It looks like a meeting.”

“I wouldn't be surprised. Is Zhou Yiyuan among them?”

I stared at the tiny figures on the bridge. “I can't tell. I don't think so.”

He held up his hand and there was dirt on his wrist, his fingers. “It's not your business anymore, but I'm expecting him.”

“What have you heard?”

“I have heard that your master—” He paused. “It's always like this in spring,” he said. “The river brown and full of debris, people coming and going, monks asking idiotic questions.”

M
OVING
B
ETWEEN

“I'm tired of my own voice,” I said.

“Stop speaking,” Frank said.

He stood at my side in silence. The bell sounded and a fish rose from the deep shadow beneath the bridge, the carp's sleek body working the current. High above the snowline three birds turned lazy arcs. Nothing today was rushed.

G
REAT
R
USHING

“How is your apprentice doing?”

“Late, early, muffled.”

“You should fire him.”

“Perhaps I will.”

“Every second person's stumbling along with a crutch, arm in a sling, there are suits everywhere, and have you heard the howls at night?”

“We have had an earthquake. I thought you were tired of speaking.”

“I am.”

We sat in the warm shrine.

“I'm writing with a pencil.”

“Where's your pen?” he asked.

“Lost.”

“Brush?”

“Lost.”

“Mine too.”

M
IDDLE
S
EAL

Sun on black bamboo. The sky silver inside, outside brass. I kneeled on the bank to wash a grazed knuckle and the river carried away my blood.

The willows leaned over the water, tendrils in relief against an inverted silver plate. Gulls dipping wings.

W
OODWORM
D
ITCH

“I'm tired of my words.”

“Stop writing,” he said.

“All words. All signs.”

“Where are they directing you?”

We were in our shrine and a storm was approaching, trees hissing again at the edge of the forest. He washed his hands and dried them carefully before taking up a small bag. He produced two brushes and gave me one.

“I have decided to map the old grounds while the memory of its shape is fresh.”

“It hasn't changed much,” I said.

“You are blind.”

The wind gathered force and shook the trees. He hunkered down to draw the mountain and river, using a grey wash for terraces and forests and stands of bamboo, an inkier wash for the village. Slow work for him, the temple, storehouse, shrines, huts, bathhouse, trees, paths, wind buffeting his bent back. After an hour he lifted his head and smiled. “Why did we not make maps before?”

And I remembered it was Ophelia's father, yes, Claudius' advisor, yes. But it wasn't wisdom that Polonius found in Hamlet's madness, it was method. Ah, yes. Method. Plan.

Frank set aside the large paper to dry, and I helped him anchor it to the boards with four stones. He stood and stretched and fumbled for his stick.

I'm slow to make English words with a brush, but the labour gives me great pleasure. Who would follow a blind man's map? Frank is the master I have been waiting for. Sun glints on the crude map he has made and it seems the work of a clumsy child. When I think this something squirms inside my belly. When I'm done, I stretch my hands high in the air.

C
ENTRAL
C
APITAL

At dawn the monastery grounds lay in a slight mist, green and gentle, beautifully tranquil. Frank led a party of us through the bamboo forest, following the zigzag path to the edge of the wild land.

Later, I found a letter addressed to the old master and postmarked Los Angeles in the company trailer near the bridge. I carried it through the courtyard, past the storehouse construction zone, up to Frank's hut.

We sat on the bench beside the window and he opened the envelope and felt the texture of the paper. As he stroked the words with a finger the bell sounded and he paused while the deep peals blew round us.

“I did not fire him,” he said.

“No.”

“I hope this boy will learn to invite the bell. He is very bad.” He replaced the paper in the envelope. “Tell me what you expect.”

“Nothing.”

He held the letter in the air. “Read it to me.”

K
NEE
J
OINT

I'm not afraid of losing track since I lost track long ago, left matters behind, all but this body and mental bits caught in transit, which I keep in a small valise in a corner of my hippocampus: the shopping lists and scout records and posters and programs and licences and passports. Undeniably mine, just less significant than the Italian hilltop church whose steps I once climbed. They come from my sixty-eight years. Broke another tooth last week. The letter from Imogen was imprecise as to her plans. I keep checking the bridge, afraid I might miss her arrival.

This morning the deck was silver in the low east light and there were footsteps in the dew, two sets, one leading south, the other north. Someone had left and returned or someone had come and gone away again. Other possibilities existed but they were meaningless.

Every day we work together, Frank on his maps, I on these words. Can't help ourselves. We walk side by side in silence around the garden wall. We meditate. We listen critically to the apprentice ringing the bell.

“He is getting worse, not better,” he murmurs.

“Have you seen Zhou Yiyuan?”

“He is alive.”

“Are you leaving?”

“Are you?”

“Not before she comes.”

“And then?”

“Not only am I afraid of going away, I'm afraid of anything new.”

“How are you at bell ringing?”

“No sense of rhythm.”

“Gardening?”

“Did you get the key?”

“I told the television people not to film inside the grounds.”

Thirty-two deaths have transformed this place. Overseers and government agents and ministers are a weekly occurrence. Battle fronts have been reconfigured and nights are quiet. This afternoon the TV crew built a track along the south bank of the river and ran their camera back and forth, its long lens like a machine gun, while men and women with phones stumbled up and down our paths, all vanishing into the forest at the director's command.

S
PRING AT THE
C
ROOK

The crew have retreated for now, but the grasses by the river have been trampled flat. I'm looking for that word again, the word to describe the kind of writing that concerns a journey divided into episodes, increasingly outrageous, the rhythm creating a mounting intensity. I catch it then it's gone. A Japanese word?
Haibun?
No. Spanish, of Moorish derivation, the journey through a desert, Spanish or North African. A dusty lane through flat brown country, days of boredom between vivid encounters. Closer. Don Quixote riding the latest model through ranks of giant metal windmills shrieking and whirling under the stark sun. All the locals thin and savage. Give it up. No, what is it? Serial going, with flair . . . Before we spread east and west, didn't we surge north, a small band of us, from Africa, and what did we call that? The word, should I remember it, would tie
where we came from
to
why we are here.
Would listing our sympoms jog memory? Buying and selling, keeping accounts, pulling up stakes. Sleep, work, eat, spend, migrate. I can't remember cash in the pocket and haven't received payment for services, haven't paid a single bill, and haven't bought anything, not even a book, for a long time. All gone, the things acquired sold, the money given away, the last spent on travel. Acquisition is the perfect betrayal of childhood. Acquisition of money, the adult symptom, distinguishes adult from child, separates the trader from the hunter.

The cure is a deep settling.

Do the garden walls contain Africa? A swatch of Europe, tribal wars and Ethnic conflagration? Atlantic? Pacific?

Relax. Easy
. I think it begins with
p
.

Frank lets out a long sigh and lifts his head from his latest map as if searching the sky. It's almost evening and darkness, texture ahead of the thing itself, has slipped in from the east. He bends to add a quick line between his thumb and forefinger planted on the paper.

J
UNE

Y
IN
E
NVELOPE

A
CROSS THE LAWN THEY COME, THE DOCTORS
, in a small group, laughing and talking together and, amazing thing, the central figure, a tall man in a white shirt with an open collar, stops, and a tear rolls down his left cheek, then a second. He holds up his hands to mask his face. There is a word to describe this kind of waiting, but I can't remember it, only the shape, like the double curve a child draws to suggest a bird in flight. The other word, the writing-journey word, is more alive, closer but still elusive. The doctor's hands meet in prayer, in front of his throat.

Our son walked past the flowering trees in Amsterdam, his shoulders squared in the steady rain, his figure getting smaller and smaller, the street impressionist greys and greens and pinks.

L
EG
F
IVE
M
ILES

I remember going to the store to buy milk early in the morning, crows calling across the alley, spring sun after a long winter, my bike gliding around potholes, cat on a sunny fence. That word, that word. It is French or Spanish. The journey broken up, the hero a fool with barely enough wit to be a rogue.