Ransom
Authors: Jay McInerney
15
North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan, March 1975
23
North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan, March 1975
30
North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan, March 1975
Kyoto, April 1977
When Christopher Ransom opened his eyes he was on his back, looking up into a huddle of Japanese faces shimmering in a pool of artificial light. Who were these people? Then he placed them. These were his fellow karate-ka, members of his dojo. And there stood the sensei, broad nose skewed to the left side of his face, broken in the finals of the Junior All-Japan Karate Tournament fifteen years ago. Ransom was pleased that he could recall this detail. Collect enough of the details and the larger picture might take care of itself.
The sensei asked if he was okay. Ransom lifted his head. Turquoise and magenta disks played at the edge of his vision. He was hoisted to his feet; suddenly the landscape looked as if it was flipped on its side, the surface of the parking lot standing vertical like a wall and the façade of the gym lying flat where the ground should be. Then the scene righted itself, as if on hinges.
The sensei asked him what day it was. The surrounding darkness indicated night, but which night? Ransom thought it was Friday, and said so. The narrowness of the sensei's eyes and mouth Ransom took to signal annoyance, although it was hard to tell. He had less range of
expression than the average household pet. Ransom looked away. Obviously he had fucked up. He had been knocked down, and one did not get knocked down except through an abdication of vigilance. It was axiomatic that you got what you deserved. Ransom tried to remember how he'd gotten his. His left temple throbbed painfully. He recalled that he had been sparring with Ito. Despite the ache in his temple, he experienced a warm sense of relief that the match was over and the results no worse than this. The pain was fading and he was relatively intact.
“Mawashi geri,” the sensei said, specifying the gambit to which Ransom had proved susceptibleâa reverse roundhouse kick. The sensei mimed Ransom's last moments of consciousness, dangling his arms beside his hips and rolling his head idiotwise. He told Ransom his guard was low and that Ito had faked with a left. Ransom nodded. Divided between chagrin and relief, he hoped only the chagrin was showing. The last time he sparred with Ito he'd been kicked in the balls and was sick for three days.
The others stood around him, absorbing the lesson of his failure. Ito stood with his hands folded across his crotch, distant and innocent. Ransom wanted to remove his front teeth with extreme prejudice. At the same time he felt humble, contrite. He wanted to be as good as Ito. Going up against him was a way of learning quickly. Ransom reminded himself that there was nothing personal in Ito's violence. He was a pure instrument of the discipline, a regular martial arts batting machine.
The arrival of Yamada was a merciful diversion. Yamada's Nissan 240Z squealed around the corner and
stopped sharply just short of Ransom's motorcycle. Yamada jumped out and stripped off his shirt, bowing repeatedly and begging the sensei's pardon as he approached the group. He quickly donned his gi, then dropped to his knees on the asphalt in preparatory meditation. The sensei narrowed his eyes still further. A general restlessness spread while everyone watched Yamada and waited for the sensei's next command. Ransom tried to regain bearing and dignity with a few high kicks. The others stretched and shadow-boxed. The spotlights from the gym cast their elongated forms against the wall of the adjoining building. Ito alone stood perfectly still, his eyes barely open.
The sensei would sometimes pause like this for minutes. At first Ransom suspected absentmindedness, but by now he realized that the sensei was managing the tension and energy of his students. The present caesura seemed directed toward Yamada, whose nearly consistent tardiness, Ransom thought, was beginning to erode the sensei's patience.
When Yamada finished stretching, the sensei called his name and Ito's. Two points, no restrictionsâno restrictions meaning that the head as well as the body was a target, although you were supposed to pull your hits short of the face. The others formed a circle some ten feet in diameter around them, and the younger boys were visibly excited by the prospect. For his part, Ransom was glad to see Ito fight somebody besides himself.
They faced off. Ito crouched low in a cat-leg stance, his weight all back on the right leg, the left leg cocked in front of him, toes pointed for the kick. There seemed to be no
straight lines or acute angles in his posture, his limbs tracing a series of S-curves. Almost six feet, and thin, he had the build of a basketball player and the flexibility of a gymnast. In his current posture he looked weightless, as if the breeze might waft him away at any moment. Yamada, on the other hand, had the aspect of a Patton tank. He held his arms nearly straight out from the turret of his massive shoulders. He looked martial, whereas Ito appeared serene, almost sleepy. Both held the same rank, but they appeared to be practicing distinct, incompatible disciplines.
Yamada had done most of his training at another dojo, a Shotokan school, and had joined here only two years ago, shortly before Ransom did. Shotokan was a hard school, and Yamada's karate was based on straight thrusts and relentless attack. By comparison Ito's karate, the sensei's karate, was circular and fluid. The school was Goju: hard-soft, based on a notion of alternating tension and relaxation, systole and diastole. The style combined hard Okinawan techniques and the more flexible Chinese kempo. At least so Ransom, with his imperfect Japanese, had gathered. Whatever it was, Ito had it down, with an emphasis on the soft techniques. He turned his opponents back on themselves. It was always hard to remember how he had gotten you. The last thing you remembered was thinking you had him.
The difference was also a matter of temperaments. Yamada was rough and garrulous; Ito had the demeanor of a monk on Quaaludes. Ransom thought of him as the Monk.
When he had begun, trying to learn the basics while
keeping his face intact, Ransom used what he hadâhis relative size and strength. In this he was like Yamada, who was built like a weightlifter. The sensei was always shouting at both of them to stop
boxing
. Ransom found Yamada and his karate to be congenial, more accessible; but Ito, in his foreignness, came to be his model. The Monk embodied something Ransom did not understand: a larger set of possibilities than the pursuit of, say, football or golf. Ransom knew that eventually, with practice, he could do what Yamada did, which was a sophisticated form of kick-boxing. But he aspired to that which he did not know he could do. He didn't just want to be good. He wanted to be transformed.
This ambition did not necessarily make facing the Monk in combat any easier.
Yamada feinted with a jab to the face. Testing the waters. The Monk didn't move. Yamada launched a barrage of front kicks, the Monk retreating and sweeping the kicks away with rhythmic forearm strokes. The kicks had enough force to break an arm, but Ito finessed the contact, making it sound like distant clapping. Yamada followed with a combination of front jabs. The canvas sleeves of his gi snapped crisply on the rebound. Then they were both still, holding their original stances, the distance between them just longer than a kick. Yamada attacked again. Ransom didn't see the opening until the Monk had already filled it. When Yamada reached on a jab, bending forward from the waist, Ito snapped a kick into his gut.
The sensei called the point. They faced off again. Yamada noisily drew breath, and then, grunting, expelled it. For some minutes they stood perfectly still, watching
each other's eyes. Yamada was going to try to wait Ito out. The Monk made waiting seem like the smart strategy. He seldom initiated attack. Now, though, he threw a kick. Yamada smashed it down and followed with two front kicks and a roundhouse, all of which the Monk slipped away from. Yamada's was basically a machine-gun strategy: spray the target area. The Monk was a marksman who fired few rounds.
Yamada's arms had dropped during his barrage. The Monk aimed a front jab at Yamada's face, but was knocked backwards by a kick to the chest before he could deliver it. Propelled back into the spectators, the Monk quickly resumed his fighting stance.
The winning point was so quick Ransom wasn't sure he had seen it. He heard the snap of the Monk's sleeve, saw Yamada's head jerk back. They exchanged bows.
Ransom was anticipating final calisthenics and a shower when the sensei called his name. He felt a sudden terrible plummet of spirit, an ominous premonition of vacancy in the bowels.
Sparring, one point
, the sensei said.
Ito and Ransom
.
Ransom smiled inquisitively as if he had not comprehended the announcement or else expected revision. He then bowed to the sensei and took his place opposite Ito in the circle. He bowed to his opponent, keeping his eyes fixed on Ito's, because you should never drop your guard, and because the fight was often determined, before the blows were struck, by the eyes; then slowly lowered himself into a ready stance, wishing to prolong the process indefinitely with meticulous adjustments of posture, weight, balance, stance; noting the smell of pork and
garlic from the noodle shop across the street and hearing the metronomic progress of a Ping-Pong game from a room within the gym. The same breeze that chilled the sweat inside Ransom's gi lifted Ito's cowlick aloft. Ransom inhaled deeply and expelled the air in forced bursts from his diaphragm. He inhaled again and told himself that his fear was right there, balled in his lungs. He blew it out with the bad air. Then it was time to fight.
Ransom bent down in order to get his head under the jet of the shower. The cold water focused the ache in his forehead and numbed his scalp. Someone banged on the wooden door of the stall for him to hurry up.
He was changing into his street clothes when the Monk approached and asked if he was all right. During practice any gesture of concern would have been irrelevant and insulting, but now it was okay. Ransom assured the Monk that he was fine and that it was his own fault anyway.
You're improving
, Ito said.
The second bout you almost scored with that mawashi geri. Soon you'll be defeating me
.
Ransom protested that he was a rank beginner, although he was in fact rather proud of his second bout. What he told Ito, however, was something to the effect that he was no good and never would be. The Monk disagreed. He was already good enough for a kuro obi, the black belt.
Oh, no, not at all
, Ransom protested.
This was all terribly Japanese.
The Monk bowed and said goodbye. Yamada was towelling off beside the door of the gym, telling the high
school boys about a cabaret he had been to the night before. The sensei approached from behind, smoking a cigarette. With his free hand he grabbed one of Yamada's arms and twisted it until he went down, his cheek almost flush against the asphalt.
He let go and said,
Don't leave your back exposed like that
. He asked Yamada why he was late for practice and Yamada muttered something about his job.
The sensei turned to Ransom.
You wanted to talk?
Beg your pardon?