Kage (18 page)

the pages back into the package and yet simultaneously trying

to see whether anyone was taking an undue interest.

It wasn’t until I was almost out the door that I caught a

glimpse of Xochi watching me with a still, shocking intensity.

I clambered into the limo that was taking me to the airport.

If I had been driving, I would have hit the gas so hard that

the wheels would have been smoking. As it was, the chauffeur

moved us smoothly and sedately away from the hotel. I half

expected Xochi to throw himself across the hood of the car. But

he stayed in the shadows and the limo headed, unmolested, out

into the hard light of the highway.

Home, James.

111

9

Kime

I tried not to think too much about the Westmanns for a

while. And, truth be told, it wasn’t difficult. I had spent a great

deal of my early life thinking too much and I was making up

for lost time.

CRACK!
I parried Yamashita’s cut at my wrist with my

own wooden sword. The
bokken
is dense, white oak, and the

vibration of the blow hummed deep in the bones of my arm.

I could feel the sweat seeping out on my forehead. I moved

warily to one side, watching my teacher. My partner. My oppo-

nent. Yamashita flowed over the surface of the wooden floor,

his face a flat mask and his eyes dark and narrowed with merci-

less concentration. When I first began studying with him, the

sheer psychic force of his presence when we crossed swords was

enough to take my breath away. But I had learned to control

my breath. It was just as well. Today, I was going to need it.

We were engaged in a demonstration
kata
for the students

who sat, mute on the floor around us. Some would be entranced

by the flow of action. The really good students would acknowl-

edge the contained ferocity. Each knew the implications of

the scripted moves and the toll they could take on the trainee.

Symbols and rituals and hints of an exotic culture surround the

traditional Japanese martial arts. It’s easy not to see them for

what they really are. Despite the skill and grace, the elegance

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Kage

of the techniques and philosophies associated with them, these

are systems that take as their subject the destruction of other

human beings. Unlike more modern martial arts forms, these

are not sports. They’re physical and sometimes beautiful, but

never nice.

My countering thrust was as hard and focused as I could

make it. The point of my sword was driven by explosive move-

ment generated from the hips. It was a technique of full com-

mitment; its goal was to have the opponent choking on a blade

that skewered the neck. The thrust known as
tsuki
has been

known to make the strongest swordsman flinch. I gave it every-

thing I had.

In the final instant before my sword tip could make contact,

Yamashita’s body shot to one side as if it were being yanked

along a wire. My momentum carried me forward and he pre-

pared for the final, killing blow.

I spun around to face him, dropping to one knee. My sword

was held horizontally out above my head, my left hand sup-

porting the blade in anticipation of the final blow that would

end the
kata
.

CRACK!
It came, as focused and powerful as I expected.

I steeled myself into immobility as was required. Some peo-

ple think that martial artists only study movement. They are

wrong. We study control, and it takes a variety of forms.

The two of us remained frozen for an instant, our eyes

locked. Finally, my teacher relented. His blade came away and

he stepped back.

“So…” he said in the musing, sibilant way the Japanese

have. Then he bowed and I bowed back. I noticed that his

shaven head was dappled with oily perspiration.

We had reversed roles for the demonstration, a slight and

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John Donohue

imperceptible concession to our changing condition. Age and

wounds pulled at my teacher, and sometimes when the
dojo

was empty but for the two of us, you could see him struggle

against the bonds that time had wrapped around him. But in a

demonstration like this, he could, for a time, summon the old

fire, and he moved with all the crisp force of a blade singing

through the air.

I gave a command, and the circle of students kneeling in a

watchful circle paired off to emulate the form we had just dem-

onstrated. Then we walked the room’s perimeter, my teacher

and I, watching a new generation struggle along the path

toward mastery that we had pointed out for them.

Yamashita’s voice was low, a murmur as we made our rounds

and the walls rang out with the clack and stamp of the
kata
.

“It is good that you are back, Professor,” he told me.

“Nice to be missed,” I said. We glided along the hardwood

floor, our eyes baleful, alert. I saw Sarah working hard with

another woman to get the timing of the attack just right.

Yamashita saw the direction of my gaze. “Some, I think,

missed you more than others,” he said with a faint smile. Then

his face grew stern. “The consulting work you are doing… it is

a distraction.”

“It is a minor thing…”

But he waved me to silence with a chop of his hand. “The

dojo
needs you, Burke. All this other activity…” Yamashita

was silent for moment, and I could tell that it was not merely

annoyance that was giving him pause. His next words were

slow and halting, as if they were difficult to say. “I can still work

with them, Burke, but you supply…” He paused once more to

find the right word.

I knew then what he was getting at. And how hard it was to

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Kage

admit, even to me, that the years and damage were slowly drag-

ging him down. I swallowed and made my voice light. “What?

A little dash?” I suggested teasingly. “A hint of roguish danger?”

Yamashita has gotten use to my sarcasm over the years, as

I have come to finally note and appreciate his own odd, dry

humor. But we both knew what I was doing now. He looked at

me and shook his head. He opened his mouth to say something

else, but his eyes suddenly narrowed, and all that came from

him was a soft hiss.

“I see it,” I told him, and headed over to correct a student’s

technique. Each person in the room except for Yamashita

dropped to one knee as I explained what needed to be changed.

When I was done, the students bowed and sprang back up for

more training. It’s part of the old style of etiquette. Like most

things in the martial arts, it’s got more than one purpose. It

reinforces good manners and lets the entire group see what’s

going on, of course. But all that bobbing up and down also

builds strong leg muscles. The old masters were nothing if not

wily.Yamashita and I resumed our walk, our heads swivel-

ing watchfully while we spoke without looking at each other,

relieved that the pull of the moment had distracted us from

more troubling things.

“Do you know when I first sensed that you would make

a good pupil, Burke?” he asked me. I shook my head and my

sensei
continued. “It was during the first months of training.

You were working with Komura-san.”

Komura. He was a fairly high-level executive with Sumi-

tomo, a thick, stolid swordsman who spent his days at the office

repressing rage and the evenings venting it in
dojo
al across Man-

hattan. He was notorious among the junior students: a guy who

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John Donohue

never said much, careful y folded his pin stripe suits in the dress-

ing room, and emerged onto the training floor with a curt bow

and a murderous gleam in his eye. Some of us thought he was

a psychopath. For his part, Yamashita seemed to enjoy having

Komura around and used him to test the mettle of students.

Yamashita described for me the match he had observed

so many years ago. I had a vague recollection of sparring any

number of times with Komura, but who cherishes unpleasant

memories?

“You had been here long enough to know what you did not

know,” Yamashita reminded me with an approving tone. I could

remember those days: the sense of something akin to despair

when, after almost a decade of training in judo and karate, I

had entered the blast furnace of training in Yamashita’s
dojo
.

The black belts I had achieved were revealed as virtually useless:

they merely served to get me in the door of his school. Where I

was left completely unprepared and virtually defenseless.

I nodded slowly as I thought back. “I remember one time

when Komura hammered me pretty good,” I said.

“Indeed. I told him to,” my teacher said with satisfaction.

“You had been working diligently to master the basic forms,

but there is nothing like working with an opponent.”

“The guy was a lunatic,” I reminded Yamashita.

He pursed his lips as if suppressing a smile. “Komura’s faults

were also his strengths,” Yamashita mused. “His technique was

good, very good… and more to my purpose on that night, it

was not tempered with mercy.”

It was coming back to me. Yamashita had paired me with

Komura, and we went through a seemingly endless series of

parrying drills designed to teach me proper blocking and the

consequences of improper technique. I squinted into the past

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Kage

and remembered the sweat and frustration as, seriously over-

matched, I furiously attempted to avoid the slashing blows of

Komura’s wooden sword. He came at me like a machine, flat

eyed and pitiless. By the end of the session, I had welts all over

my forearms and sides.

I sensed Yamashita looking at me. “You remember now, I

think,” he commented.

“Oh yeah,” I acknowledged.

“And do you know why that event made an impression on

me, Professor?”

“Because I would take a beating and still come back for

more?” I asked.

Yamashita cocked his head. “Endurance is a good thing for

a warrior to have, certainly. But no. At one point, just at the

end of the night, Komura had pushed you to your limit. And

I saw you set yourself and try, one last time. In fact, you went

on the offensive.”

“I was pretty steamed,” I told him.

“Indeed. You were supposed to be ‘steamed’ as you put it.

But when you attacked, it was not a wild thing. It was very

contained. Focused. There was something… dangerous in it.”

“I did
tsuki
,” I remembered. The thrust to the throat we had

just performed in the
kata
tonight.

“Just so. And it was a good, even a very good
tsuki
. A killing

technique.”

“I seem to remember that he dumped me on the floor.”

Yamashita waved it away. “Burke. Of course. He was your

senior and much more experienced. But Komura later confided

in me that, for a brief moment, his spirit quailed under the

force of your
kime,
your focus. And that is when I knew that

you would be a good student.”

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John Donohue

“Because I got angry and attacked him?”

“No. Because you grew angry but contained the energy and

channeled it. It wasn’t your endurance or even your aggression

that impressed me. It was the brief glimpse of
kime.
”

Yamashita moved his head slightly to indicate the students

we were watching now. “It is what they strive to learn. Your

Sarah Klein, for instance. She has the potential to use the sword

well. There is an elegance there.” It was true. I felt that way

whenever I caught a glimpse of her. Something of that quality

carried over into her work in the
dojo
.

“I sense a ‘but’ coming,” I prompted him.

He nodded, his eyes down on the floor, watching the slow

process of his own feet as they slid across the hard, polished

wood. “She lacks as yet the focus needed for a killing blow.”

“It will come in time,” I said.

“Perhaps,” Yamashita mused. “Perhaps it is not something

that she truly wishes to acquire.” Then he looked up from the

floor and changed gears. “We will see. But I am glad that you

are back, Burke. You will finish this study for the woman in

Arizona soon?” I nodded in assent. “Good. Then your focus

can return fully here. Now go and tell that young man to hold

the sword properly or I will demonstrate how to take it away.”

That would be bad. As I said, sometimes he can still stoke

up the old fires.

Eliot Westmann’s literary agent was a man named Jonathan

Roberts. He had a head of snow-white hair pulled back into a

tight ponytail. His face was pink, glowing with good grooming

and incipient hypertension probably brought on by too many

business lunches. He greeted me with the false enthusiasm of a

truly professional schmoozer.