A Year at River Mountain (26 page)

Slept late. Breakfast and a slow packing up. At noon, we carried the kayaks from the high-tide line to the water's edge. Paddled north across a choppy strait, surfing a following sea, far apart, yet keeping each other in sight. From inside a trough, I could see nothing but water and sky, the occasional smear of Zhou Yiyuan's red boat. We landed on a wide bay on another island. The white sandy beach was scattered with perfectly round stones. Bear prints led into the forest and Zhou and I left the master to rest and followed the tracks to a sunlit lake. Exquisitely still, as if everything was asleep. Under the surface fallen trees. Weed covered a third of the water.

That evening we paddled to the next island — hours of working against a rising wind — arriving stiff, weary, with barely enough light to haul the boats above the high tide line. Secured them bow-to-bow to a wind-sculpted tree. Made camp and ate in the dark. Built a fire and settled down to drink whisky, exhausted, long into the night.

S
TRENGTHEN THE
I
NTERIOR

“Look, stars,” I said.

“Not stars,” said Zhou, “phosphorescence.”

“Some of it is reflected stars.”

“Ask Frank.”

The light in the water.

“Tell him what we came for,” said Zhou.

“The caves. To offer a bowl of rice.”

By noon we were paddling a minor sea surrounded by islands. Fish-eye lens. We struggled up a tidal river into a lagoon on a large island. Deck-mounted camera. Helicopter shot. Handheld. Portaged to another lagoon: three connected lakes, less and less salty.

On the last lake, we rested our paddles and drifted beneath the overgrown ruins of a temple, gibbons howling from the crumbling walls. We floated on the drowsy lake, almost asleep among chorusing birds and insects and monkeys. Trees festooned with vines and lichen. Hothouse. Steam room. Flies and mosquitoes hovered in the intense heat of the afternoon and dragonflies dipped wings on the mirror surface.

M
IDDLE
C
AVITY

That evening, at the northeast end of the island, Zhou and I looked for the caves, but found only black volcanic rock pools full of anemones and starfish and crabs. And one well-inflated basketball. We bounced it off sheets of rock. Swam in the deepest pool.

We ate around the fire, drinking whisky.

“Your directions were wrong,” Zhou Yiyuan said. “This is the wrong island.”

“No,” said Frank.

“You are blind.”

“A natural deviation.”

“What will happen to a monastery run by a blind monk?”

“New channels are opening,” Frank said. “New paths, new points, new flows.”

“How can new paths show up?” I asked.

“Through meditation,” said Frank. “Through crisis. Ancestral intervention.”

“Do the points ever change?” I said. “Are new points found?”

“No. Perhaps. Not by us.”

The ocean, silent at his back, caught light in its ripples; a distant beacon winked.

Zhou rocked on his heels, staring at the master. “And you don't miss women?”

U
PPER
C
AVITY

I woke before Zhou Yiyuan and Frank and clambered north along the shore; paused in a small bay, amid the jagged igneous rock and tide pools: high in the surrounding cliffs birds were swooping out of three openings.

A tight chimney climb — fissure with toe-holds — to a flat hallway carpeted with wildflowers, crushed and broken shells. Nothing but the bay and the ocean and the wide calm faded eastern horizon. Sun shone into each cave, directly onto sea swallows sitting eggs beneath grotesque figures etched into the stone walls.

When I returned we ate an enormous breakfast and drank the last whisky. Zhou and I played basketball on the hard sand, open ocean rolling in, wind-black. He lobbed a high looping ball at Frank; I intercepted it. Inscribed
NBA,
the ball was marked with the silhouette of a young girl. I didn't tell them about the caves full of sunlight.

Late morning we paddled into the wind toward the research station for supplies, but had to turn back because it was blowing too hard. The sea off the point boiled and tilted.

We tried the wind again in the afternoon. It was a long and open crossing, but with the wind now at our backs we skimmed the waves.

All things happen at once, at the same time. The villagers find a wounded eagle and feed it mice. People change course and an earthquake rewrites the valley. One master follows another. There's raping, killing. Thoughts contain the world. The world contains three men in kayaks. The eagle sits on a pile of sticks in its cage and stares fiercely at whatever approaches. Storm petrels wait. Children come. Demons come. My thoughts react to my gazing at them and open their beaks. The rough sea responds to the increasing wind.

We doubled our strokes when the waves lost order. Red boat to starboard, close to the rocks, the basketball bouncing in a net bag on the deck. The seas rough and disorganised. Wind gusting on our port quarter, then dead astern. The sea churned, confused, white and terrifying, and our small boats rose on tall waves and crashed into valleys, and shuddering towers of spray erupted from surf shattering on the jagged coast.

Concentrate on rudder and wave and paddle stroke, double the strokes.

An arm-length ahead of me, Frank's back was straight, his blind paddle slapping the glassy black roiling surface, almost useless. The eagle in the cage ruffling its feathers. Afraid, yes. Villagers and monks chanting at the dragon festival. A field of dangerous white horses.

A cry, then a shout to starboard. Zhou was trying to turn into the wind, his deck awash, the kayak tipping. Then he fell into the monstrous sea, capsized, clutching the red hull of his boat.

G
REAT
T
OWER
G
ATE

Big seas flipped the red kayak close to the rocks, the basketball was lost and next day, defeated by the storm, we began our drive back to the monastery. I could not speak of what I'd seen. We came upon a car crashed into a ramp railing, police pulling a body from the driver's seat. I'd seen the cave paintings, seen what they were.

Not a bad actor. But I never felt appreciated. You cheered, along with a few others. Actors applauded. Certain directors always called. Not many. Critics remained largely silent. My mother's son, of course. There was that. And not enough fame, recognition, money. There was that. In the end, I couldn't face another audition or screen test: my agent threw up her hands, literally. Her hands in the air, big white flowers. By the time they came down, I had bowed and made my exit, stage left. No. A lengthy period on anti-depressants and a short stint on a psychiatric ward. Bouts of violent behaviour, and the smell of shit, the taste of it, often at night. A sense I'd chosen the wrong role. Not a bad actor, but I gave myself away.

We'd talked and drunk whisky, gone to bed late and slept in. Stepped out of our tent into salt wind. We had paddled our little boats along sea paths, forgetful of everything. How far I'd felt from myself, as if I'd become another kind of being.

T
URTLEDOVE
T
AIL

I was not helpful to Zhou Yiyuan in the water. The guilt of that. A monk, this monk, must assess the context, the season, and the time of day. Accustomed to quick action, Zhou rescued himself. He swam into a tiny inlet behind a few rocky fangs, and crawled ashore and undressed and wrung out his clothes. I was able eventually to manoeuvre our boat alongside his and tow it into a barnacle-filled crevice and pump the water out of the cockpit, sponging up the last drops. Frank lost his paddle. He sat, eyes closed, in the wind.

Two days later, around midnight, we parked on the river road, just as the bell sounded. Frank hobbled ahead, across the bridge, tapping with his stick.

C
ENTRAL
C
OURTYARD

Now back in the valley, back in the lovely valley, I see right away that its magic is all in pieces. I know something.

I was on a train journey zooming east over the roofs of houses, their cluttered yards. Clothesline of billowing plastic bags. Ugly uncut grass. Two children skipping rope. All rolling in black and white. Sky black with wind. White sun on the west horizon. Passengers dozing. Each station brought me closer. Skip. Skip. Skip. Closer.

C
HEST
C
ENTRE

Piles of stones and lumber to finish the new storehouse. Can't recognize the faces of monks I've worked beside for years.
Sotto voce
: Now it would be okay to name everything and everyone. Just playing with the idea. But the next word comes, surprise, struggle, swift pain, gravity and light
ta da,
y
ou're a monk but you vamoose like a psych patient, like, long term, why not the ten thousand names?

Our son skipped downstairs to the hall and opened the door and was in the street. The boy weighing his options. Nothing expected. All responsibility waived. Tall flowering trees on the long block. In Amsterdam it rained for a week in June 1989. Our son walked past the trees. The figure smaller and smaller. Shoulders squared for engagement. That was the day I fell out of love. Hours later, tucked in bed, away from the moment, in the middle of the night, sure that evil had taken over the universe, I heard church bells and started to cry, and couldn't easily stop.

J
ADE
H
ALL

I didn't say anything about the caves, but Frank knew I'd found them. There had been no human forms, only demons: raping, killing, hunting. And now beneath the foundations of the storehouse the workers have found human bones.

P
URPLE
P
ALACE

The things around us matter; I love their shapes, even though nine-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-seven are hollow. I love my brush. My broom. My dreams of women. The logjam in the subsiding river. My time in the storehouse library.

“My legs and shoulders ache,” I said to Frank. “My kidneys hurt. This morning I could hardly get out of bed.”

A snake was sunning itself in the middle of the path, coiled, unaware, and the master stopped in his tracks and turned to me. “I wonder how that is to be written,” he said.

“What?”

“That.” He lowered his head.

I touched the knuckles of his hand resting on his stick. “You can't see it.”

He laughed and stepped over the snake. “Didn't you get out of bed this morning?”

Worry is the opposite of dream. What starts in family, ends in devotion. Instinct rescues itself. Culture looks after the container. If order wrongs chaos, does chaos right order? Where are we? Asylum. Hospital. Sanatorium. Temple. Monastery. Things matter, shape matters. The dying eagle spreads her broken wing. Give the valley a river and a new summer. Give rice a chance to grow. Let the mowed lawn go pointillist with daisies. Let the river shrink to fit its banks. Let humans decrease without suffering. Let fields drain. Let hammers fall. Let the demons through. I didn't lose my son. My wife didn't steal him. Our son grew up.

In the middle of making his latest map, Frank said, in his quiet voice: “It is time to check something.”

M
AGNIFICENT
C
ANOPY

The ones to be feared are not the bone gatherers in their masks, but those armed with machetes who stand shoulder to shoulder hacking down nettles and canary grass and young bamboo as they slowly advance, eventually to an overgrown path through tall bamboo.

At the end of a day's sweat and labour in the wild land, we came to a black shrine leaning against a basalt wall. We heard splashing overhead, from a waterfall. We let down our tools and sat in the brief clearing we'd made, all gasping from the effort of scything. My legs stung from thorns and knife grass. The shrine roof was green moss a foot deep. Birds were almost deafening in the opened forest. From the beams steam rose, ascending the rock face.

The shrine was empty.

When told, Frank got to his feet and went to see for himself.

My purpose seems to matter less and less each day. Yet it has a shape. A boat, yet not a boat. A bird, yet not a bird. A dragon, yet not. A man, yet not a man. A demon, yet not. One morning soon Imogen will be here.

J
ADE
P
IVOT

The bellringer's apprentice invited the bell, ran down to help Frank into the tractor, drove from the construction zone to the start of the reclaimed path.

Frank leaned on my shoulder. “Something fishy going on.”

We followed the new path to the dark shrine and went inside and sat on the worn boards. “Do you know what?” he said.

“What?”

“I have no idea. Something important.”

I did not want to tell him anything yet. “This shrine. Does it have a name?”

He shrugged. “Let's go swimming.”

He got to his feet and clutched my fingers and towed me along the shattered path, and then we dropped down to the slow green river and took off our robes and slipped cautiously into the freezing water. I held his hand and we let the current carry us to the deep place where we rolled onto our backs.

The sky fit around branches teeming with birds. We put our feet down and struggled, hand in hand, against the flow, feet slipping on weedy river stones, until we were back at the bank where we'd left our clothes.

“Were your mother and father good to you?” he asked.

“Not really.”

“Were they certain about the future?”

“Oh yes. My mother once apologised for living long enough to spend all the money, but she told me not to worry.”

“We are like father and son.”

“Yes.”

“I'm sorry for leaving the world the way it is.”

H
EAVENLY
C
HIMNEY

Shape and purpose. Two things that rise simultaneously. Head bowed, in front of the steadily flowing river. The faintest dawn light. Logjam gone. On my way to the temple to see the workmen's progress, stopped by owls calling back and forth among the dark firs — a tall yellow-eyed owl quite close on one branch, another on a higher branch. Two things.