You saw these photos all over Arkansas, though usually a dead deer or a baseball bat or a football was part of it, instead of a kendo shinai; it was the same, the father passing on what he knew, the boy, though distant, hungry for it.
“Swagger! Sword, now. Now!”
Doshu is a drill sergeant. He’s a yeller, a pressure cooker, a demander. But it’s so hard because it’s not progressive in a western sense; there’s no feeling of going from here to there. The edges of things are blended. Somewhere-the start is indistinct-he’d moved into kata, which was a series of moves with the sword, a kind of offensive syncopation so that the blade came out, flowed around the shoulders to a certain perfect position, then was cut with, the cut riding a rhythm, never just a brute expression of force. It seemed to have something to do with wave dynamics, a sense of harnessing a blast of energy that would rise from one hip, course through the body to the opposite shoulder, flow downward into the fists, which would then surge in opposing directions, bringing the blade through with an amazement of unwilled speed and force, all without trying. Doshu would swing lazily at him with his bokken and Bob would block it, feel it sliding off his own wooden blade, and see how to ride it down and open up a way to the man’s innards, then turn back and slip into another kata.
“Attack and abide in one,” Doshu said, “migi yokogiri,” and Bob delivered his side cut.
“By the false, the true is obtained,” he also said, “hidari kesagiri,” so that Bob tried to obtain the truth through a left-to-right diagonal.
He clarified by adding, “Beat the grass and scare up the snake, tsuki,” and Bob thrust, trying to scare up snakes.
Then to make it absolutely clear: “Use thought to approach no-thought; use attachment to be unattached.”
He then tried speed. A Swagger gift: fast, good hands.
He brought maximum speed to a horizontal stroke from the draw-nutisuke-and you’d have thought he’d blown his nose on a flag or something.
“No! No! Speed wrong. Speed bad. Speed sick, Swagger. No speed. No speed!”
It was not the only time the obscure little man seemed really agitated, but something about speed annoyed him deeply.
“Speed sick. Speed bad.”
He said it over and over.
Don’t think of speed, Bob cautioned himself. If you connect with speed, it’s all wrong. No, no, no. Slow, sure, smooth. Smooth is fast. Fast is not fast. Fast is slow. Smooth is fast. Be smooth.
“Moon in the cold stream like a mirror.” That was the strangest, yet it was what Doshu would always come back to. Opaque, cute even, some Asian cornball thing from an old TV show or other. It felt too self-consciously “mystic.”
He remembered Yoda from some Star Wars thing: “There is no try. Only do.” Something like that. Maybe he was some aged fool of a Luke Skywalker on a strange planet far from home, trying to master a little wizard’s poetry, which would only work if you believed it, yet he could not believe it at his heart, because he was a U.S. Marine and what he believed in was obedience to orders, obedience to traditions, never surrendering, and breaking the weapon down to clean it.
Yet he saw that was itself a form of Zen or bushido or whatever this little guy was selling. It wasn’t action, it was belief. You had to give yourself to it and trust it. You had to give up on the you part of you, because the more of you there was, the less belief there was and the more vulnerable you were.
Day and night flowed together. Bob never saw the sun, not after the first morning’s work outdoors. He slept in snatches, was pulled from unconsciousness, dragged to the dojo floor, and put through paces. Some children watched and laughed. They thought he was really supremely funny, big, tall, clumsy, gangly. Sometimes even Doshu smiled.
But it did seem a rhythm arrived somehow, sometime. The moves began to feel all right to him, possibly even good. The less he tried, the better he did. Maybe it was that he was so exhausted he didn’t care anymore. But he was learning smoothness.
Doshu stood across from him; the bokken flashed toward his face, and Bob was fast enough to parry and ride the sword down. He saw three next steps: he could rise off the pinned sword and go for a horizontal cut-migi yokogiri-that would take Doshu across the chest; he could pivot inward, getting so close to Doshu that Doshu was helpless, and drive backward for a penetrating strike to the chest, tsuki; or he could float backward, find a new stance, and look for another, larger opening.
While he was thinking, Doshu was cutting. Doshu had reversed, come out of the pressure of the upper blade, and stepping away, clipped him with two inches in the larynx. If the swords had been steel instead of wood, he’d be on the floor trying to hold the last of his seven pints of blood in his body, but he wouldn’t be fast enough.
This went on; the combative katas increased, and Bob got them, he saw them, he understood the principle, saw the opening, but he just never quite got there in time.
“Fuck!” he said.
“Moon in the cold stream like a mirror,” the man said.
Bob tried to crank up the concentration, but that didn’t work. He was being beaten severely at every exchange, and the blows of the wooden sword were raising knots on his bones and joints. His sweat poured off him. His fingers felt numb. How much longer would this go on?
And suddenly it stopped.
Doshu drew back from him and looked at him. Then he delivered a verdict.
“First day, eight cuts. Not bad. Second day, cutting tameshigiri, not bad. Yesterday, fighting, good. Today, fighting, not so good. Nothing.”
“I don’t have it today,” said Bob.
“Is no ‘Don’t have today.’ No yakuza say, ‘You got today? Okay, now we fight.’ Is only now.”
“I’m trying,” Bob heard himself say, and waited for Yoda to answer, “Is no try. Is only do.”
But it was Doshu who answered: “You not know enough. Anyone beat you.”
Bob wanted to say, But you said speed is sick. Wanting to win is sick. Then he stopped. Why fight him? he thought. He knows this shit, I don’t. It’s not up to me to point out his contradictions. Just go with it.
He bowed, showing humility to his tormentor, and saw immediately that this pleased the man. Bob composed his face into an expression of nothingness. Is nothing. Nothing is. Only void. Enter void. Do not exist. Use thought to approach no-thought.
“You sleep now.”
“No, I’m fine. I can go on.”
“No, sleep. Tired, sore, disappointed, confused. Not concentration. You sleep now. You come when you wake. But then, you fight.”
“Fight?”
“Sure. A match. But you must win.”
“I will win.”
“You must win. No win, I kick you out. I cannot help you nothing. You go away. Swagger die soon anyway, no worth helping.”
“I will win,” pledged Bob, believing he would. He liked this little development; it was a return to cause-effect. It was an ending, a climax. He would fight, he would win, he would go on. The finality was pleasing.
Doshu bowed; Bob returned the bow and went off. He went to the kitchen, where a surprisingly nourishing meal had been prepared; he ate it hungrily. Then the old lady-Doshu’s mother, his maid, his sister, no introductions had been made-took him to a room where he discovered a modern shower. She left, he stripped, and luxuriated in the warmth of the stinging water, feeling it soothe his bruised muscles and achy, swollen joints. Then, wrapping himself in a towel, he found his pallet behind the kitchen. Someone had covered it with a futon and a clean linen sheet and he settled into surprising comfort.
He woke sensing light.
I am ready, he thought. I will win.
He found a fresh jockstrap, pulled on gi trousers, covered them with hakama trousers, which he now knew how
