A Year at River Mountain (6 page)

I think I understand Zhou Yiyuan. Certainly, I look forward to our next meeting. Meanwhile I keep my fingernails clean and bend over bodies to jar loose matter no heavier than the sum of my intangible parts.

Last night I was woken by the voice laughing then howling and yipping like a dog. It pulled me from sleep and I stepped outside. All dark, the soil wet, the trees dripping, though not from rain, from heavy dew. The other huts silent. The bathhouse steaming. Afraid, I could imagine the monks as orderlies and nurses. The master was a special doctor. The villagers were visiting their sick relatives. Who beside me was ill? Why was I so wide-awake? For the remainder of the night I stood listening to drops of dew falling from leaves onto the roof.

Season fire is over and season earth carries us toward metal. We will cut and carry wood for winter and the cooking fires. Listen. The yellow grass is hissing. I am dirt before the axe descends. Soon I will be water.

B
EAM
G
ATE

The morning bell in the day's third hour is a ceiling to sleep. A calling in of the living. The deer look up, their triangle faces all knowledge and care and strategy.

In my salad days, when the alarm woke me for theatre school it called me into loneliness. Folks under the pink sky at the bus stop were accidents. We paused in unison to light our cigarettes and nod good morning. Only accidents. I'd lose myself in roles, notes, affairs, then return home on the tube to further accidents and greater loneliness, a troubled sleep and fresh alarm. The electronic trill had to do with community, but also with authority. The pair that have confused and terrified me since the first day of kindergarten are now embodied in Zhou Yiyuan and Song Wei.

The blind bellringer, one of the oldest monks, lives in solitude near the spring above Mountain Temple. His bell hangs on a massive frame under a tile roof on an elevated piece of ground; it and North Shrine are the last edifices of our monastery complex before North Gate and the steps up the mountain. A short zigzag path leads from the bell mound down to the spring, then up to the gate. The blind monk teaches others how to use the bulldozer and the dump truck. He is good at small engine repairs and speaks rusty English since he lived several years in Evanston, Illinois, where he worked as a mechanic and met Thomas Cleary. He rings the morning bell when metal yin is fullest.

Today I was up and running to his hut before I was properly awake.

“I've fallen in love with one of the travellers!”

“Have you?”

“Yes.”

“Does the master know?”

“The master has told me to follow her brother.”

“Follow how?”

“Zhou Yiyuan is my new master.”

The bellringer's shape moved back from his doorway. He sat on the floor. “I have never heard of this. Bring me some water.”

I filled a cup from the barrel by the door and gave it to him.

“You may come in and sit with me, but I can't help you.”

This valley, the monks, the temple and shrines, the bamboo forest, the paths. Close my eyes and I'm living close to where I was born, on the banks of the Ribble in rural Lancashire, in a secluded asylum for people who can no longer cope with the discrepancy between their inner lives and the highly textured boxes into which the world has been sorted. As the doctors cross their lawn, we retreat into backwaters while our bodies run amok, amok, and have to be restrained with drugs and jackets, then pacified with elaborate illusions: now we are actors in a play; now we are monks studying the ancient eternal classics, each day woken by a bell rung by an old blind man who once spoke with Thomas Cleary, who says that he has in him a book of his own, who says he can't help me.

There is perfection in the idea of this being a dream, but when the old monk speaks to me in his rough American English of the birds in the valley, those that live by the river or on the mountainside or in the bamboo forest, how some he knew when he was a boy have disappeared, then I see that perfection does not have enough room. Perfection is not big enough. In the storehouse a room is always kept empty; it has dark corners and a trapdoor to the cellar and a sealed door to the granary.

My father and mother were born in Preston near the Ribble. My father lived in my grandfather's attic with my great grandfather's chest of tools. My dad was a diluted cabinetmaker with many physical skills and a talent for silence and absence. I'm a talking version of him. The old tools he left me I lost or sold.

P
ASS
G
ATE

Everyone slept on his feet on the night journey to the sea. The start of fall, named for the squirrel, involves the expression of human sorrow for all life between sky and earth and a long walk to get news from the hermit monk.

“Wasps have invaded two shrine festivals and a temple ceremony,” he told us. “Something is happening. Late Heaven is being rearranged. Wasps in great abundance.”

And it was true. Even in lantern light wasps caught in our sleeves and danced drunk in our faces. Everyone was stung.

On the island we ran
Wei mo
, the Great Regulator.

(What is lost is lost in the great death or in one of the many minor deaths. My heart grieves for you. My heart grieves for all who have made way for me. My heart grieves for the mother of the drowned son. The laugh I hear from the river in the dead of night is a premonition of the arrival of the unknown. My heart grieves for the birds the old monk remembers from sixty years ago. Something
has
happened. A final curtain. A wrap. A book put down, finished with. A moment of hesitation and doubt.)

I lit lanterns on the posts around the island shrine to illuminate the four paths. Then I carried three lanterns to the three points of the island; at each location I had to wait until the place had forgotten me. Then I gathered the others and led them to the shrine.

Later, alone on the shore, sand squirming beneath my toes, the black-silver current twirling watery acres of twilight, I dug my fingers into the rich soil of the river plain; I thought I might bring something home to the temple, something precious from the time before our valley was inhabited. And hunched there, I saw our valley filled with rubble and fallen shrines and myself trying to climb through the detritus without sending the whole patchwork crashing in on itself. What d'you think? Is Song Wei the new Imogen? Is she the embodiment of all I have made way for?

S
UPREME
U
NITY

When the alembics are unpacked from their cases and arranged for use and the hermit is consulted and the straw dogs burned and the blind bellringer's bobcat has smoothed the land behind West Shrine after burying the drainrock so the shrine won't flood this winter and the leaves have been swept away and we have gathered to hear the birds at sunset, last sun red and hot on our shoulders, our breaths held in unison, the actors take their places and the slow autumn dance begins. The monks and the villagers, complete, no one missing. The master and two priests are all that's needed to bridge heaven and earth; their movements and chants fill not only the vessels, but each fissure in the valley's mantle and every political hiatus in history with water as innocent of life as the first rain. We washed sea-salt from our feet. We salved our wasp stings. We prayed until we were all asleep.

S
LIPPERY
F
LESH
G
ATE

Once through the great outer gate, a curved path runs north past the warrior tree, under the small gate, and then along a wooden walkway through the courtyard. Bow to the wishing tree and the well. This morning, walking to the storehouse, I came upon Zhou Yiyuan practising on the walkway. As he crouched, waves of heat rippled out from his belly and blew me back a step. Mountain Temple seemed to float in the air on the left shoulder of the storehouse. The mountain reared above the temple, its face brilliant in the sun. Zhou held his
qi
and I passed him quickly, shuddering, and forgot to bow to the wishing tree. Rain was falling into the well, not real rain, but a kind of focused downpour of tiny red blossoms.

The storehouse is vast. Built of massive fireproof timbers five hundred years ago, it is the oldest building in the region and attracts more visitors than the temple, which is only two-hundred-and-sixty years old. When I entered the south door, the west side of the building was lost in shadows, and the tall windows high on the east wall were like the night buildings of a distant city.

The great practice hall doubles as a drying room in winter. Time moves slowly here. The ceiling arches high overhead. The stairs, of black wood, lead to a railed walkway, to rooms and chambers where the belongings of the community are stored. In the lower northwest corner is the library. In the northeast corner of the groundfloor is the empty room.

After an hour of darkness and silence there, I blinked and returned; the red petal rain filled the doorway; it only faded when I walked through it and was outside again — the dwarf nowhere to be seen.

Calmer, I bowed to the mountain. Two late swallows were dipping and swooping above the temple's layered roofs. A building said to break the hearts of those who see it by moonlight covered in snow.

H
EAVEN'S
P
IVOT

A slow passage into tidal disturbance is how I remember the end of life in Canada, physical energy rousing me only a few moments each day for the small film parts and theatre festival appearances that had all but vanished. A gradual turn northward out of Active Pass, final sun flashing on the water, seals rising from green depths, their silver-grey bodies streaming bubbles.
Who is passing above? What motors are stirring our world?

I was on a ferry from Vancouver Island, having abandoned a short run in a small production (local troup, local playwright), glancing up from my computer screen. It was midwinter, my hand was bandaged, and I'd just received news of my ex-wife's death, and was absently clicking through a website dedicated to Asian village shrines.

Now I breathe and chant with other monks, and plunge once a season, oftener in summer, into the river below the mountain.

The sun burns hot. The day hangs fire. My heart rises at the scent of oil on my fingers, on the wooden shrine figures. All morning I stood or knelt beside bodies and felt the channels light up. As usual, hooded witnesses mildly curious about this work waited by my side, crosslegged watchers observing human-flavoured energy cycle and flare. Were you among them? I think you were.

A year ago I sat in the branches of the warrior tree and watched Imogen swaying from her hut with her luggage. Two monks accompanied her downhill to the river and over the bridge. I lost sight of her in the trees on the other side, but waited for the return of the monks. They came walking briskly — the morning was cool and mist lay on the water and on the banks — and were laughing together.

Next morning I lay sick on my mat and listened to the rain. I heard each drop hit the roof, roll down the tiles, fall through the air and hit the ground.

Zhou Yiyuan stood in the forest to one side of the path as I swept. Morning light streamed through the dying leaves of the plum trees. He skipped left and right on the balls of his feet and a shaft of sun lit his dark face. His eyes, when he looked up at me, sparkled. They were very black.

“You have not named a place. We have missed a festival. Meet my sister tonight on the bridge after the bell is struck, after the bus passes.”

He was quiet a long time. A breeze moved here and there in the grasses and in the high branches above our heads.

“This is the moment,” he said. “Otherwise conflict.”

O
UTER
M
OUND

This meeting fills me with excitement and dread. I count steps everywhere, breaths, leaves, geese, half up the mountain and back, then all the way to the river. I count monks, villagers, days, productions, appearances, lovers, cities, but no number will provide me with a clue to what will happen next.

She was waiting on the bridge already, the bus behind her, its windows shining through the trees, the engine loud until, with a huge wink, it shrieked into the night. Silence. A single frog croaking. A million crickets.

Song Wei held an electric lantern and was dressed in a tight-fitting silver shirt and silver trousers. Her dusky skin looked black in contrast to the shimmering bands of fabric. She turned and hurried across the bridge toward the road. Her light went out and she was cutting upriver along the south-bank trail before I gathered my wits and followed. She was a white blur, easy to make out under the thick river trees, her black hair swinging across her silver back, a supple crease. Her bare feet slapped the dry path.

Only after hearing car doors slamming did I register the sound of a motor being shut off on the road above. Footsteps and loose male laughter. A geometric tangle of light beams descending.

The gang swept through drifts of leaves to arrive on the trail ahead of me and flowed like a wave toward the woman, who dropped her lantern, raised a hand. Flashlights converged on her and the moment was as fluid as mercury.

Wind in high branches and the low gurgle of the river.

They surged along the path. Some I knew from the settlement; others were strangers. I recognised Zhou's squat form. Song Wei gave a sharp cry and was caught by the first to reach her, a boy and two men, who dragged her to a fallen tree.

It was an old scene, an often-repeated set of actions, an eternal secret vile code that I possessed the capacity for witnessing, though this was not the night-scene of a black-and-white film. Now I charge myself with what I saw, but at the time I did nothing except pay attention.

“Here is the extinction of luck,” her brother told me early this morning when we were shivering on the beach, the fire between us dead.

“What does that mean?” I said.

“An ancient remedy,” he said. “A boundary skirmish.”

“I don't understand,” I said.