What was-
He tried to read the eyes, could not see them in the darkness of the helmet; he tried to read her sword, it was a blur; he tried to read her body, it was a mystery. She was just it: death, the enemy, all who’d sought to vanquish him and failed, coming in this time on a surge of adrenaline and serious attitude, sublimely confident, aware that he could do nothing but-
“The moon in the cold stream like a mirror.”
Musashi said it four hundred years ago, why did it suddenly appear in his mind?
Suddenly he knew the answer.
What is the difference between the moon in the sky and the moon in the water?
There is no difference.
They have become one.
You must become one with your enemy.
You must not hate him, for in anger is sloppiness. You must become him. And when you are him, you can control him.
Bob slid into kami-hasso and felt his body begin to mimic hers, to trace and somehow absorb her movement until he felt her and in some strange way knew her. He knew when she would strike for he could feel the same wave building in himself, and, without willing it, struck first with his shorter sword and would have sliced both hands off had there been an edge to his weapon. The sword had done it. The sword saw the opening; the sword struck, all in microtime.
“Strike, Swagger. Three-three.”
It was like he’d found a magic portal to her brain; the next strike went quicker still, a tap through her defenses to her solar plexus, so soft he couldn’t exactly recall delivering it but just felt the shiver as the split bamboo splines of the shinai bulged to absorb the impact.
“Hit, Swagger, four-three.”
She suddenly knew rage. Champions are not supposed to fall behind. He had broken her; she lashed out, issuing from above, yet as fast as she was, he felt tranquillity as the blade dived toward him in perfect shinchokugiri. He turned, again without force, and caught her under the chin, a blow that in a fight would have decapitated her.
“Match!” yelled Doshu.
He withdrew, assumed a formal position, and bowed deeply. Becoming her, he now loved her. Becoming her, he felt her pain at defeat. He felt no pride. It wasn’t Miller Time. He felt honored to have fought one so valiant.
She took off her helmet and reverted to child: the face unlined, unformed, though dappled with adult sweat, the skin smooth, the eyes dark and piercing. She returned the bow.
She spoke.
“She say, ‘Gaijin fight well. I feel him learning. I feel his strength and honor. He an honorable opponent.’”
“Tell her please that I am humbled by her generosity and she has a great talent. It was a privilege to learn from her.”
They bowed again, then she turned and left and at a certain point skipped, as if she’d been let out of school early.
“Okay, it worked. I learned something. The moon thing. I got it, finally.”
“Tomorrow I will speak certain truths to you. I must speak Japanese. No English. You know fluent Japanese speaker?”
“Yes.”
“You call. I tell this person some truths, he tell you.”
“Yes.”
“I give you truth. Are you strong for truth?”
“Always.”
“I hope. Now wash floor of dojo. Scrub, water hot. Wash down all surfaces. Go to kitchen, assist my mother. Then cut wood.”
Okada was surprisingly agreeable. She left Tokyo early the next morning and rammed her RX-8 into Kyoto in about five hours, arriving at noon. She parked out front, and Bob, who’d been washing dishes under Doshu’s mother’s stern eye, saw her arrive, in her neat suit, her beautiful legs taut, her eyes wise and calm behind her glasses, her hair drawn up into a smooth complexity of pins and stays, tight like everything about her.
She came in, having replaced her heels with slippers, and was greeted by a child, then led into the dojo. She didn’t even look at Swagger; instead, she bowed to the approaching Doshu.
“Hi,” Bob said, “thanks for coming.”
She turned. “Oh, this ought to be really good.”
Then she turned back to Doshu and they talked briskly. She asked questions, he answered. She asked more questions. They laughed. They talked gravely. He made policy statements, she gently disagreed, and he defended his position. Swagger could hear the rhythm of discussion, the rise of agreement, the fall of disagreement, the evenness of consensus.
Finally, she turned to Bob.
“You got it all?” he asked. “He says I’m a moron and I ought to be kicked out. I thought I did pretty well yesterday. I beat a ten-year-old girl.”
“That ten-year-old girl is Sueko Mori, the prodigy. She’s famous. She won the All Japan Kendo Association for twenty-one-unders a week ago. She’s a star. If you beat her, you did okay.”
“That little kid?”
“That little kid could beat most men in this country. Are you ready?”
His annoyance tamed by this information, Bob nodded.
“Doshu says you learn fast. You are athletic. You are strong, with quite a bit of stamina. Your left side is stronger than your right side, and your rising diagonal is stronger than your falling diagonal. He does not know the explanation.”
“Tell him I spent a summer swinging a scythe, low to high, left to right. Those muscles are stretched and overly developed.”
“Well, he really doesn’t care. Next, he says you have good character and work habits. He worked you like a dog. If you had a weak character or bad work habits you would not have stood for the grueling ordeal and the humiliation. He was very impressed with that aspect of your behavior. He thought, after the first day, you might make a swordsman. Your mind was right. Untrained but right.”
“Well, thank him.”
“He doesn’t require thanks. He’s not congratulating you, he’s telling you what is.”
“Sure.”
“But, he says, it is possible to be too athletic, too strong, too hardworking. The hard worker tends to oversegment, the athlete to trust reflex and muscle. So, though you picked up the moves very quickly, you had trouble integrating.”
“He said ‘integrating’?”
“He said ‘becoming one timing.’ I said integrating.”
“Okay.”
“He says that yesterday, finally, under pressure of the match with Sueko Mori, you integrated. Your learning curve in that match was extraordinary. You went in a nobody, you came out a swordsman. You must learn to develop that feeling, that sensibility; it is your only hope.”
“So he thinks I’m okay?”
“Well, that’s where he goes a little opaque on me. He stops well short of declaring you the next Musashi. He says you still have problems. But he says you have advantages too. Thus he has an idea of what you can or can’t do, and how you must operate.”
“Please, go ahead.”
“He says you are not Tom Cruise. There is no Tom Cruise. No one can learn the sword in days or weeks, except in movies. He hated that movie, by the way. However, you have done a great deal more than most.”
“Okay.”
