Enzan: The Far Mountain (8 page)

“Perhaps some reading will assist you in your reflections,” he said.

“I thought you promised to deliver this to Yamashita Sensei.”

He stood up a little straighter. “So I did. In three days. But I did not say what I would do with it before that time.” He turned and started down the hushed corridor. His sandals whispered against the floor. His voice was ghost soft. “Goodnight, Connor.”

And there in a monk’s chamber, I opened the package and began reading.

Chapter 8

The book Goro had delivered to the roshi was a small one, one filled with neat, precise characters. It was a journal of sorts, a diary. And a last testament. The final page bore the seal and signature of the author, and a chill staggered up along my shoulders and neck when I saw the name: Mori.

He was a figure from Yamashita’s past. They had trained together and served the Kunaicho years ago. My master had turned away from those memories with an iron resolution, and this part of his life was never spoken of. I can’t know for sure, but I suspect he had traveled all the way to America to put that time behind him. Mori had never left the service of the Imperial House, and the intrigue that swirled around him eventually snared us in its grasp. I had seen Mori breathe his last as an operation he was running in the Philippines went spinning out of control. It had almost killed me and it left Yamashita in the diminished condition he struggled with today. I touched the book gingerly. I felt that even Mori’s words could be toxic. I feared whatever impulse animated the text in my hands.

A small sheet of paper was inserted into the front of the book. A chill went through me as I felt the strength of Mori’s connection to
Yamashita.
This psychic thing could really be a nuisance
.

But I read it
.

It pleases me to have finished the tale, to see the characters lining these pages like leaves carpeting the forest as winter comes on. And if you are reading it, Rinsuke, I am gone. That pleases me too, for then I am beyond worry and free of the tangle of cares that filled my life. Understand: I have no regrets. Just relief. I have returned to the Void, a drop mingling in the immensity of the sea.

But one last story, a final spark before I am extinguished and night swallows me. I have lived too long with secrets and have seen too many of them taken to the grave. You already know part of this tale; the remainder is something I should have shared with you long ago.

Forgive me.

Or not. For by the time you read this I am beyond either scorn or approval. I have lived a life weighed down by duty, but am now as light as a feather.

—Mori

Mori’s Journal

You came north, a promising student with the right connections. But I think the dojo was not what you expected. The winter is long in Hokkaido—the weather bites and the heavens have no mercy. I suspect that is why the old man chose to live there. He was as cold and hard as the land itself.

Takano Sho was the best swordsman of his time, a compact man with a square head and a wide, tight mouth. It was perfect for expressing displeasure. His hands were hard and his blunt fingers could grind down and find a nerve point in a way that stopped your breath. Training with him was a type of fearful revelation. In my first few years there, he stalked me even in my dreams. But he knew things, that one. And if you could stand him, if you could endure the casual brutality and endless barbs of criticism, he could polish you into something special. We all knew that. It was why we were there.

You arrived that day in 1960, eighteen years old and already marked as one with great potential. But so were we all. Nobody crossed the threshold of the dojo without this pedigree. I stood with the other students and watched you in silence. We saw the rolled-up judogi, tattered and supple from countless matches. Saw the yudansha’s black belt that was wrapped around the bundle. Noted as well your thick neck and the arms strung with muscles like heavy cables. You knelt before Takano and proffered your letters of introduction. He glanced at them briefly, then tossed them to one side with contempt. The master glared at you. Then he reached out and snared one of your hands, turning it over and examining the calluses. He followed the old ways, and read hands in the same way he read faces. It was an old skill, one among many he pursued. Takano pored over the ancient scrolls, questing after arts lost centuries ago. He was forever hungry for this kind of mysterious knowledge, never satisfied. He sought more skill. More power. I think sometimes he used us like you would use monkeys in a laboratory: he tested theories on our flesh. And he was peering into the folds and creases of your hand that day, convinced he had the power to see into your soul.

Did you shiver at the experience? In my first year there, Takano terrified me in ways I had never experienced before. It wasn’t simply his skill or his power, although they were overwhelming enough. When exposed to the full energy of his focus, I felt a cold, furious probing of my very essence. It was as if he were going to try to reach down and draw the life out of me.

Did you feel it that first day? The sheer, primal power of the man? If so, you gave no sign. You sat like a rock, silent under his gaze. His eyes narrowed and then his wide mouth opened slightly in a cruel grin. He had small uneven teeth, and the smile made him look even more fearsome, like some unpredictable, hungry animal.

Takano rose to his feet and gestured you up. No sooner had you stood, then he swept you off your feet and down to the floor. When the old man threw you, he never held back. Each time, he executed a flawless technique that was beautiful to watch. Until, of course, the victim crashed down. Takano was never satisfied with the mere act of throwing; for him, the very floor was a weapon. He used it as a striking surface to pound his victims with.

You crashed to the floor and the room shook with the force of the impact. You rolled to your feet and faced him again.

He attacked once more. I saw the momentary pause in the action as you resisted and began a counter, but he flowed around your attack and drove you down. All the students watched. Our faces were rigid, but we all winced inside as we each remembered our own welcome to the dojo.

The third attack. There was a moment there when I thought you actually had Takano beaten. I saw a doubt flash across his face, but then his mouth tightened in a cruel line and he rocketed you down for a final time.

He turned his back on you as you stood up. Then he wheeled around and sat once more.

“At least,” he grated, “you can fall down.” He scanned the line of silently watching students. “Mori,” he called, and I scampered to the front of the dojo, bowing.

“Mori,” Takano said. “This is Yamashita Rinsuke. He may have some promise. You will be his sempai.”

And that was how we met, with the old man making me your sempai, your senior, your special training partner. Such a long time ago, Rinsuke. We bowed to each other, our hair still black and our eyes not as guarded as they would later become. Did you wonder what you were in for at that moment? A hint was not long in coming.

“Mori,” Takano said, his voice harsh like a hawser grating on a rock, “see if you can break him.”

What do you recall of those first months? When I think back, there is the memory of sweat, the unyielding surface of the dojo floor. Or the sensations of cold and wet, the smell of damp earth and pine. A place of extremes, Rinsuke. Comfort snatched in brief, furtive moments. But mostly, there is the memory of that old man, the bark of his commands and the fierce eyes that missed nothing. It was a hard place, designed to break the weak. Even those of us who endured were never the same.

We had all been tested before, of course; otherwise, we never would have been accepted as uchi deshi, live-in students. To be accepted as such by the old demon was an honor in itself. It was said in his youth he had bested all comers. He was a peerless fighter. Sword, staff, spear—it was all one to him. Take away his weapons and his broad, thick hands reached for you like claws. It was a peculiar genius, as if he were born with the memory of the old ways roaring in his blood. And we came in the hope that he would share some of this with us.

Thirty years before you or I laid eyes on him, he had been a restless youth. He loved the rough and tumble of the dojo, but yearned to make his mark upon the world. He had a good head for numbers and tried clerking. But he chafed at being tied to a desk. He taught for a time in a temple school, but he lacked the patience. Finally, he enlisted in the army and was sent to Manchuria. It was known as Manchukuo then, part of the expanding colonies of the emperor. This was before the dreams of empire began to unravel, shriveled to ash in carpet bombing, or bled white on distant Pacific atolls. This was a heady time, when our country was filled with a sense of new power and limitless ambition. In time, we learned otherwise. It was a brutal reckoning.

The old man took to military life and marched across the vastness of Manchukuo, one soldier among many in puttees and dusty tunics. Even then, he had been a noted fighter, and eventually became a sergeant. But one day, an event changed him. He was never the same. Some said it unhinged him, others that it opened a new plane of perception. I wager that both views were right.

He was at the head of a patrol, winding down a narrow canyon. The bandits, ranged out along both sides of the ravine’s walls, sprung the trap. The crossfire was withering. Soldiers scurried behind what cover they could find while the bullets cracked through the air and snapped at the rocks, seeming to come from every direction. Sounds bounced back and forth in the canyon. The bandits stayed well hidden. A man would seek cover, peering out from behind a rock, only to be taken by rifle fire from another direction. The old man knew to remain in that place was not an option; the only route to safety was the offensive. He called to his men, trying to rally them. Yet they hunkered down, terrified of the crossfire. The old man stood, enraged, firing at the unseen enemy, cursing his own men.

And then, as later he explained, it was as if time slowed down. The whine of ricochets and the screams of soldiers seemed to fade into an all-pervading hum. And as he cast about, he began to see the air shimmer with the pulsing arc of bullets. He could see the rifle fire, he claimed. Knew where it was coming from and where it was going. He stood, silent and amazed in the blazing sun. He saw the flowering of a muzzle blast and a bullet ooze across space toward him. Like a man in a dream, he watched the projectile come toward him, growing larger until the blurred ocean of noise around him grew sharp and immediate again. He ducked and the bullet whined away.

His men watched him twist and whirl across the field. He grunted and foamed at the mouth like a man in the grips of madness, but he aimed and fired, reloaded and fired again. He made his way gradually up the canyon wall and, one by one, his soldiers followed in his path. He crested the slope ahead of them and was lost from sight. Then the screaming began.

In the end, they lost half of the patrol, most of them cut down on the canyon floor. But on that one side of the ravine’s top, not one of the bandits survived. Some tried to surrender; the wounded dragged themselves away in the desperate hope of escape. All were dispatched, however. It was the price of failure. It was how it was done in those days. The old man wandered the field, putting them down. When his pistol was empty, he used the bayonet. When the task was complete, he sat, blood-soaked and staring into the distance.

The survivors brought him back. The officers wanted him decorated for valor. The regimental surgeon eventually recommended a discharge. The old man came home to a hero’s welcome and sought the solace of the family farm. He resumed training in the village dojo that his wealthy father supported. Most of the time he was as fierce as ever. But he heard things no one else did and would unexpectedly stop what he was doing and stare off into the distance. At night he would wander the fields, returning at dawn, soaked and dirty, to collapse into sleep.

His family sent him to Hokkaido. Did they hope the wild north would somehow tame him? Or were they simply searching for a refuge where he could hide away? In the end, they got both wishes.

One day, the old man met his match. He was riding a train and was jostled by a diminutive, craggy-faced man in threadbare clothes. Words ensued and the old man reached out to teach the stranger a lesson. Amazingly, he found himself pinned to the floor, stunned and helpless. He struggled, but the stranger’s grip was unbreakable. One last attempt and the shabby stranger rammed an iron-hard fist into a nerve cluster. The old man convulsed.

“Enough?” the stranger hissed. The old man tried one last time to break the hold. Again, the jolt of pain as a fist ground into him. “Enough?”

As Takano related it later, the pain of the nerve attack almost paled in comparison to the humiliation he felt. But he gave in. “Maitta,” he said. I’m beaten.

The stranger stood up and stepped over him with the same casual distaste you would show avoiding manure in a barnyard.

The man in the shabby traveling kimono was a true master. He had killed men with his sword in duels, maimed students in his dojo, a man of impeccable skill and violent temperament—haughty, mercurial. In time he accepted Takano as his student. The old man drank up the lessons and merged them with his own already remarkable skill. In the heat of that cauldron, he came to an enhanced understanding of who he was and what his role in life was.

You put it best after your first year with us, Rinsuke. The dojo is supposedly a place where both skill and insight are fostered. The reality is often less than this, and more often the product is warped by the flaws lurking in both teachers and their students. Such was the case with Takano, a peerless fighter and a flawed human being. For the weaker spirits in that hell dojo, Takano’s savagery was not only accepted, it was understood as an expression of his greatness and as something to emulate.

You would have none of it, though. You withstood every attack he made on you, body and spirit. You learned, but never bent completely to his will. You acknowledged his skill as a technician but never excused his failings as a man. You were his student, but never his slave. He hated you for it, but was fascinated as well. Each day the old man’s eyes clicked across the dojo, searching for weakness in us all. But he watched you with a particular malevolence.

One night, secluded, the old man’s students discussed their teacher’s nature: was he a god or was he a devil? “Neither,” you replied. “He is a genius of a type, the most gifted fighter any of us have seen. But it is a fearsome burden to bear. He is great.” Then you smiled grimly. “He is also a complete sociopath.”