Sensei (18 page)

"We will need to work on rhythms, Burke, You will need to be here all through the training." It was a statement, not a question. The link between sensei and student was too strong for doubt. In some ways, it was a return to the balance of our former relationship. Yamashita sat comfortably, a dark blue training uniform stretched over his thick torso, squinting out into the garden as he spoke.

I moved gingerly, and he looked at me. His eyes were flat. "Are you tired? You will be more so. We will work more on your meditation. It will help with the fatigue."

Yamashita had a hard time getting out of the role of instructor. Even though this training was really for him, he insisted on talking like it was something he was doing for me. I had ceased to notice it and just nodded wearily in resignation.

"Physically, there is little room for improvement. But your skills ..." he paused as if internally rating the catalogue of my ability. He smiled tightly, as if to himself. Small sparrows sputtered in the waterfall's pond, scattering droplets in a fine spray. "You are a good student, Professor. Among my best. At each step, you have struggled, but you persevere. I like that."

I wasn't sure what he liked more about me: the fact that I had to struggle or the fact that I eventually learned much of what he taught me. It was typical of him.

With Yamashita, grading, like everything else, is a bit different from that of other arts. Martial artists talk about rank and belts and promotion. Yamashita Sensei uses a far older system. We don't wear colored belts. Some of the newer students come with their black belts wrapped around them under the ha kama like a security blanket. Eventually, we all stop wearing them. It is not just that the belts don't make you feel secure in his dojo. It's that they are revealed as totally irrelevant.

In Yamashita's dojo there are seven different stages, ranging from kirigami, or initiate, to the level where the student has mastered the complete syllabus of the art, known as menkyo kaiden. Each level is not really a promotion, however. It's just an acknowledgment that you can do some things and are ready to try some more. It doesn't signal an end to training; there is no such thing. Only the invitation to learn more.

So when Yamashita paused and smiled, I was sure he was mentally listing my faults and reliving my past struggles, all as a preparation for judging whether I could follow him further.

"This, I think, will be hard for you." He emerged from his interior reflection and focused on me. The sounds of the world outside were muted and far away. As he spoke, they faded further, or his words swelled despite their quiet tone, so that all I could focus on was his teaching.

"It requires a total focus on the struggle. An absence of compassion. I have watched you for years. You are a good man. This type of concentration and ruthlessness are hard for you. But it would be hard for any of us. And yet, very necessary.

"The evil to be faced ..." He inhaled suddenly as if being confronted with it directly for the first time "... is powerful."

As he talked, he joined his hands and whispered a word. I saw the fingers knit. "Rin," he intoned.

I sat up a bit straighter.

"It will be as relentless as fire, Burke."

Again the pause and a new configuration of the hands. The mantra was barely audible: "Pyo."

His breath was cadenced. His body grew still, dense with presence, like a rock in his garden.

A new movement and the hissed word: "Toh."

"All techniques are needed to defeat this demon. All that the body can bear." The chant and the hand gestures continued.

Sho.

"But there is more to learn."

Kai.

"The spirit must be focused."

Jin.

"There cannot be the least gap in concentration."

Retsu.

"The luxury of mercy does not exist."

Zai.

"Or fear."

Zen.

"Or doubt."

I had seen this before. The hypnotic chant and the fluid knotting of the fingers. The breath control. Kuji~no~in is an ancient summoning of power. The mudra hand gestures spring from Tantric Buddhism, a ritual in which the "seals" of the gestures have been repeated over centuries to forge a link between body and spirit. The chanted mantra have echoed along dark corridors of the warrior past. They are still used in some schools of the old style as a meditation device. But with Yamashita it was something more.

He quietly began again, and I felt my fingers begin the flow in imitation of my master. This time, it was the full ritual. For each mudra, the chanted word is exhaled for eighty-one breaths. Each mantra has a name: the Single Point, the Inner Binding, the Wisdom Fist. Each is linked to a lesson: the channeling of ki, control, concentration.

The mind's rhythm rises and falls with the breath. The hands weave their spell. The words are murmured in the still air, small sounds that fill the space around you.

With the ritual of the ninth gesture, known as join, completed, Yamashita lit a candle and drew paper and brush to his side. He beckoned me to approach him.

His voice seemed to come from deep inside him, from a place impossibly remote.

"Thus we intone the kuji-in. For strength. Compassion. Courage. This you have been taught."

I bowed formally to him. My muscles protested, but it was a curious, muffled sensation, more like a faint message from another place.

"There is yet the ju-in, a tenth seal, Burke. Not many know of it. Not many have the need. I will show you the character."

He brushed the dark, balanced strokes of an accomplished calligrapher on the small piece of paper. "Look at it," he ordered me, pointing at what he had written. "Do you recognize it?"

"Yes, Sensei," I whispered. He raised a hand.

"Do not say it." Then he reached out for my hand. "Trace its lines. Learn it."

I did as I was bid, tracing the lines. Yamashita ensured that my finger moved in the correct directions in the correct sequence. Our hands moved together, over and over again until I was sure.

"Now," he said, "the kuji kiri!" The cutting with kuji. He raised his hands and, for each of the nine gestures, made a slash in the air in front of him, as if cutting up space. "Four vertical lines," he instructed. "Five horizontal. In the center, to-in"

He showed me how to make the hand shape of the tenth seal and, with my hands in that configuration, how to cut at the air, tracing the character in the center of the lines that, invisible, quivered with power and reality nonetheless.

It was the warrior's grid. A power symbol. And in the middle, ju-in, the tenth seal, called to~in. The Sword Seal.

Only then did Yamashita utter the mantra that accompanied it. He voiced it forcefully, as if pushing against the fabric of the atmosphere. I heard it and repeated.

It was an ancient word, a complex word, jumbled in the passage from Sanskrit to Chinese to Japanese, but whose meaning was clear and sharp: the destruction of evil.

"How's Art?" I asked Micky wearily. I could hear the surge of my blood in the phone receiver.

"The same," he said. "Hanging on."

"That's something, at least." I got a grunt. "Any new leads?" It wasn't a particularly animated conversation.

"We're workin' on it. I shook your pal Bobby Kay's tree a bit."

"Anything there?"

I could see the shrus, even over the phone line. "Something or o stinks there, but I don't have anything solid." Then he switched gears. "What are you up to? I've been trying to reach you."

"I know," I apologized. "Sorry. I got involved with something with Yamashita Sensei." I tried to sound sincere, but it was an effort holding a conversation. Yamashita had worked me ruthlessly for the rest of the day. I was sitting in one of the chairs in his living room upstairs. It was a comfortable seat. And it was good to talk. But some of the small muscles in my left hand were spasming. You could see them jump in the lamplight. My brain felt pulled in two directions.

I hadn't really told Micky about my scheme yet. I wanted to ease him into it. So I let him know that Yamashita wanted me to do some special intensive training with him. But that was all.

"It'll be a few days," I said evasively.

"Sometimes, Connor, I don't get you at all," he grumped. "OK," he sighed, "I may need to reach you there. Give me the number."

The muscles down in my right calf near the Achilles tendon were starting to tighten up. I felt like I had tightly strung cables in my legs and was trying to ignore it and listen hard to the inflections in his voice. He knew something was up.

I gave him the number, said good-bye, and sat there with my eyes closed. Idiot, I thought. You should have told him. He's had enough of people holding out on him.

Your conversation was upsetting." My eyes snapped open. YamasKita had slipped into the room and sat across from me. His face was impassive, but his eyes were alive.

I exhaled slowly and nodded. Your brother does not understand what is going on?"

"No." I shook my head guiltily, reliving the phone call.

' Burke," he said, sitting forward, "listen to me. You are wise not to involve him. A ring of danger surrounds us here. When you bring people close to you, they will be imperiled."

Not many people use the word imperiled any more. When Yamasjhita said it, it didn't sound quaint.

You Americans," he continued with that tight smile of his. "You want all things that are good to also be easy.

Now I will tell you something, Professor. It is obvious you care for your brother. And you are wise not to inform him of your jplans. If you can shield him, you must do so. Even if it means that he will be upset."

"I laiow, Sensei, but..."

He-held up a hand, palm out. It was a small hand, but the palm Was broad and the fingers were thick. Yamashita's hands looked, in fact, much like the rest of him: they were hard and capable parts of a fierce, focused human being. Even his words of comfcort had a brutal tinge to them. "But nothing, Burke," he said. "Which is better, that your brother feel hurt for a time because he does not fully understand your motives, or that you gush out your secrets and he runs to your side, with all the danger it could bring? He has already suffered enough."

I nodded as he scolded me.

"If you pull him close at this moment, you will place him within the dark circle. He is, I am sure, a good policeman. But he has no place here."

Yamashita looked up and gazed out the window. Lights fought the darkness, cutting at it, beating it back in spots, but ultimately, on the edges of light, the brightness bled away, surrendering to the infinite strength of night. Yamashita's eyes were unfocused, as if he were intent on something beyond mere sight. For a moment, in the lamplight, I could see the toll of years on him. Maybe, in his own way, he was trying to explain why he had kept things from me for so long.

"Make no mistake, Burke," the old man said. "Tomita is coming. I can feel it."

In the night, I slept fitfully. Outside Yamashita's dojo, cars rumbled by, radios pounding. Distant horns sounded. Sirens shrieked and died away. I drifted into a drowsy half-sleep. My body jerked involuntarily as muscle tension began to dissipate. I didn't think I slept, but the sensei startled me when he woke me.

"Get up, Burke. It is two-thirty." I stood and focused on his stolid silhouette beside me in the dark.

"Time to train," my teacher said.

The heavy fire door boomed open, echoing in the empty dojo. Yamashita and I had rested at dawn, and Mori and his hired help had arrived shortly afterward. The two senior men conferred quietly, while the thug waited in the shadows for something to happen. The first floor practice room was empty of students, but Mori's watchdog scanned the empty air with an idiot vigilance.

Mori had a flat, reserved face that gave you the illusion of total control. But he was not as cool as he pretended to be: he looked up sharply at the sound when the door banged.

I went to see who it was. It was one of those automatic things you do for your sensei. Before I could even get to the foot of the stairs, however, the thug had jumped in front of me. His pistol appeared in one fluid motion, almost like that of a magician pulling a bouquet out of the air with a simple flourish.

He glided across the floor ahead of me, the gun's muzzle a black snout cutting through the space. Yamashita followed me down but said nothing, watching the action with professional dispassion.

The intruder stood with hands on his hips and regarded the watchdog. He looked at me, then back at the man with the gun, and clearly felt the need to defuse the situation.

"Take it easy, you dick wad he said. "I'm a cop, remember?" My brother had come visiting.

Looking at him, you could almost forget he was a policeman. Off duty, he looked like any other tired guy in rumpled clothing. He had the cop eyes, of course, but from a distance he looked just like the person I had grown up with. He had been through a hard few days, though, and as I got closer it showed in his face. But I was glad he had come. When Micky pushed open that dojo door, he let in street sounds, heat, and the almost palpable tug of memory. All the drills and lectures and mantra had begun to make me feel like a man in suspended animation. We may have been setting a trap, but I was the one who felt imprisoned, set off from the real world. Micky restored my sense of connection. I could guess that Yamashita thought my brother's presence was bad for the training he was trying to accomplish. I, however, grinned like an idiot.

My brother stood there dressed in sneakers patched with duct tape, a pair of old khaki pants, and a dark blue NYPD T-shirt with a little yellow badge on the breast. He looked at Mori's hired gun with that placid expression he used to calm dangerous people. Or lull the unwary. He gingerly held his empty hands out at his sides to show he had no weapon.

"Hey, c'mon," I said. "We've been through this before." Eventually, the thug relaxed, although he looked annoyed that he hadn't been able to shoot anyone. Micky glared at him silently, came upstairs, and said hello to Yamashita. It wasn't a warm greeting. I held my breath. My brother had a long memory and a short temper. From his perspective, Yamashita was partly to blame for this mess. And Micky felt there were still things he wasn't being told. He was right, of course, but now I was the one holding out on him.

Mori didn't say much when Micky showed up. The two men eyed each other warily, but Micky didn't even acknowledge him. Instead, he looked at Yamashita and said, "I came to take him off your hands for a while, Yamashita."

Yamashita looked at me like he was judging a prospective meal. He turned to my brother and nodded. "He has been behaving. Enjoy the afternoon." My teacher gestured toward the street like he was inviting us to explore Xanadu.

What we got to see instead was the brick and blacktop of Brooklyn baking in the sharp summer glare. We drove up to Fifth Avenue and headed through Sunset Park. Both sets of grandparents had lived around here, and we had spent an awful lot of childhood Sundays visiting the area, watching relatives decay and the neighborhoods change. Fifth Avenue was different now from the street of our childhood, but it certainly was lively.

People were wandering in and out of local bode gas Racks of summer dresses and T-shirts were on display on the sidewalks. Even though we had the car windows closed and the AC on, I could hear the Latin music that the merchants piped out onto the street.

"How you doing, Mick?" I asked. His face had that tired, drawn look crash survivors have. But his eyes were clear.

He nodded. "I'm OK. You, on the other hand, look like hell."

I hadn't paid attention to a mirror in a while, but I imagined that all the training with Yamashita showed. I said nothing and let him drive. There was a point to the visit, and Micky would get to it when he was ready.

"Hey, look," Micky said. "OLPH."

The parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Help was marked by a large church complex looming over one whole block. Down Fifty-ninth Street, the school building was tucked away in the back. Micky parked in the driveway entrance to the school parking lot.

Perverse creatures, schools hibernate in the summer. The entrance gate to the lot was chained shut Property of the Diocese of Brooklyn, Violators Will Be Towed and the building was dark and silent. Micky tossed his NYPD card on the dashboard and walked away without a second thought. It was one of the great things about being a cop: ordinary parking rules did not apply. Then again, my brother was in a line of work where Kevlar vests were considered appropriate Christmas gifts from your loved ones, so the trade-off was probably even.

The church itself was a huge, sandstone-colored building with a red tile roof. Its large arched entrance doors faced the avenue, an imposing multi story presence built of stone and old wood and leaded stained-glass windows of deep-sea blue and red as rich as blood. The old locals called it "the Basilica." The cavernous hall of the main church, up one flight of stone steps from the street, was dark and locked, but the smaller lower-level church was open. My family had baptized, married, and buried three generations in this church, and it was familiar ground for both of us. As kids, we had spent what felt like an eternity at a host of rituals there. They didn't do much for our piety, but they did create our immense capacity for tolerating boredom. We also developed the ability to sit very quietly for long periods of time. They also taught us endurance.

Micky went in, and I followed. Working with Yamashita had put me in a heightened state of suspicion and sensitivity. I didn't think it was likely Tomita would be anywhere near at this time of day, and he certainly wouldn't be interested in me. But, as my sen-sei kept drilling into my head, awareness was the key to survival. I took a hard look around.

The ceiling in the lower church was not very high, nothing like the soaring vaults one story up, and the view of the altar was blocked by the pillars that supported the floor of the church above. It broke up your line of sight, and the feeling was that almost anyone could be lurking there. Maybe even God. I scanned the room. An old man was slowly shuffling down the center aisle toward the doors. To our right, a woman knelt, obscured in a kerchief and dark blue raincoat. Her eyes were red-rimmed and moist. Her lips were dry and worked in a constant, mumbled litany. Beads made faint clicking noises. It was the sad cast of characters you find in any church in the daytime.

The room smelled of wax and the memory of incense. The pews were old and dark, polished by the friction caused by generations of human emotion and ritual choreography. Gaudy statues of saints lined the walls, and banks of candles flickered in front of them like whispered entreaties.

My brother walked slowly into the church, like someone just awakened who was trying to remember the details of a particularly vivid dream. I followed him to one of the side altars where a statue, dark with age, was located.

Most of the statues in the church were the smooth, pious, type. Bland, sightless eyes were set in creamy complexions, and tidy robes with flowing lines helped obscure the awareness that any of these figures had been corporeal at one time. They were neat but not particularly powerful figures.

Micky made his way to a dark corner where a different type of statue stood, obscured in shadow. It was unpainted, a monochrome presence that glowered there, all angles and force. Someone knew what he was doing when he made it. Most of the statues in that room looked faintly ridiculous and anemic, like porcelain tar ted up to distract you from their lifeless essence. But the form Micky stood before was fierce.

It was a dark cast-copper figure. The dull luster made you want to reach out and feel the hard surface. One booted foot, closest to the rank of candles, had been rubbed shiny by decades of supplicants unable to resist the impulse. The winged form was armed with a sword and a lance. The shaft pierced a writhing form, half snake, half dragon, while the stern face of the saint gazed upon the world as if trying to judge whether it was worth all this effort. He was supposed to be a holy man, but he looked more like a warrior.

Michael. The Archangel. God's champion.

My brother's namesake.

Micky stood staring at the form for a while. Then he turned and went outside without saying a word. I touched Michael's foot before I followed. The weepy lady in the back looked right through us.

We walked slowly around the perimeter of the church. The sidewalk was wide, and there were young trees planted in large squares of earth at regular intervals. They didn't do much to cut the sun's glare. Small, bronze plaques were set into the pavement near the trees. The metal was a dark blue-green with age.

As we walked, my brother looked down at the plaques.

"Yju remember Dad telling us about these trees?" he asked. "Well, not these trees, exactly. These are replacements. But the originals?"

"No. Not really," I said.

He went right on, the older brother determined to pass me this piece of family lore. We walked down the long block toward Sixth Avenue, past the rectory entrance as he spoke, still with that far-away look in his eyes. "There was some retired army guy who started a marching band in the parish. I forget his name. A big deal for the neighborhood. A working-class boy makes good. Becomes an officer.

"Well, he retires and comes back to the parish. Gets this marching band going. Uniforms and music, fifty, maybe a hundred boys. The pride of the parish. Then the First World War breaks out. The guy pulls some strings, gets back on active duty, and organizes a volunteer brigade. All those boys who grew up marching to his orders and trusting him..."

It was hot and the light color of the sidewalk threw up glare. It was hard to see Mickys expression very well. His voice was flat.

"So off they go to the Big War. They get a huge send-off here. Flowers and speeches. The pride of the area, all those kids, all dressed up and eager to go ..."

We rounded Sixth Avenue at the rear of the complex. Micky had been looking at each plaque as we passed. Now he looked up and stared into the distance, down the long avenue that led south to the sea.

"Most never came back, Connor. They were used to marching band stuff: moving in step, colorful uniforms, patriotic speeches. They got over there and what they got was interlocking fields of