by John Donohue
This is not something mere mortals look forward to at the university. President Peter Domanova was an old-style autocrat. He was notorious for firing people on the spot, for denying tenure recommendations, and generally outraging the rank and file. He did have a few good points: sometimes he fired people who deserved it and, most important for the university, he was a relentless shmoozer who had managed to raise quite a few dollars for the institution.
Occasionally you caught glimpses of him churning across campus with any number of flunkies in his wake, but most contact with the troops took the form of various combative memos that ended up in everyone’s mailboxes. The president thought of himself as something of an intellectual. He had graduated from Oxford, so maybe at one time this delusion actually held some water. He was on the far side of sixty now, however, and although he could be eloquent and charming, mostly Domanova came across as a cranky snob.
Ceppaglia had told me to “dress nice” for the meeting, which meant that I had to wear the one good blue suit I owned. The men in my family call them “wedding and funeral rigs.” The dean had been a font of gratuitous advice about what to wear and what to say. But, true survivor that he was, Ceppaglia escorted me to the door of the presidential suite, wished me luck, and hightailed it out of there before I did something that got us both fired.
I sat in the muted air of the reception room while prim and efficient secretaries shuttled to and fro. Phones chirped discretely. The furniture was cherry and polished and dust free. It was like being in a bubble.
Then the presidential portal opened. Polite laughter and the sound of gruff instructions spilled out into the hush and a cluster of harried suits tumbled out of the office, gazing back in there with the fixation of men who are still fascinated with their latest brush with death.
I was up. My basic plan for this interview was to say as little as possible, make the president feel I was competent, and escape with my life.
President Domanova beckoned magisterially from behind a desk the size of a pool table, inviting me in, and actually got up to shake my hand.
“Dr. Burke. Good. Good.” He had an exaggerated Mediterranean accent of some sort, all rolling r’s and carefully enunciated sentences. He talked as if he enjoyed the way words felt as they came out. “The Dean tells me that you are an accomplished Orientalist. Sit down.”
The president tended to talk at you, not with you. The sentences came out in tight little clusters, abruptly. They had more to do with some weird internal dialogue he was having in there than with anything occurring on the outside.
I shook hands, nodded at my Oriental expertise, and sat down.
Domanova picked up some papers and gave them a quick glance. “A decent university degree,” he mused.”Some articles in minor scholarly journals, two books, with one forthcoming.”
He looked up as if he was thinking. “You have been teaching for us for how long?”
He knew the answer as well as I did. It was right there in front of him. “Three years, sir.”
“Three years.” He smirked. “With our illustrious historians.”
“Yes.”
He got a bit more animated then, putting both hands flat on the slab in front of him and looking at me intently. “They are a total embarrassment, Burke. I wonder you can tolerate them.”
What do you say to something like this? That adjuncts are on the bottom of the university food chain and that down there you get acclimated to a great deal of murk? I just sat there.
He shot back in his chair. If I did that in my office, I would go flying backward and end up on the floor. The president’s chair was made of sterner stuff, however. Leather, with those tasteful little studs along the edges of the seams.
“So,” he said finally, indicating the snappy repartee was about over, “I assume Dean Ceppaglia has described the nature of the assignment?”
“You need someone with expertise in the martial arts and Japanese culture to develop some descriptive material for an art exhibit being run by a potential donor. I don’t see a problem, sir.”
“Yes.” Something shutterlike flickered in Domanova’s eyes. “You understand that remuneration will be arranged with the client and not the university?” I nodded, but I don’t think he was even watching for the prompt. The presidential close was coming. “Fine. My secretary will provide you with the name of the individual. Good day.”
And just like that, it was over. He shot back into his seat and whirled away to gaze out the window. Like posing for a portrait: Brooding Intellectual Surveys His Domain. The afternoon sun lit up his craggy face and the shoulders of his expensive suit. For a university president, he had an awful lot of dandruff.
The name in the file I got from the president’s office was Robert Akkadian. The martial arts universe is not that large, so I had heard of him. Akkadian, or Bobby Kay as he was known on the street, had been an early promoter on the New York karate tournament scene. He saw the business potential in the arts. Over twenty or so years he had gradually gotten his fingers into every piece of the martial arts pie he could. He was doing pretty well by now. I was surprised that he was rubbing elbows with Domanova, given his semi sleazy origins.
Then again, as the Chinese say, money has no smell.
Akkadian had gone upscale, with an office in Manhattan that was part of his Samurai House art gallery. I strode through the glass doors off the street and entered the lobby. It featured an eight-foot waterfall splashing down a black rock face. The water-works bifurcated the lobby into two halves—one devoted to the gallery and the other to offices. I wandered over to the right to the office suite area. It was sedate, with muted tans and greens, bleached wood wainscoting, and appropriately innocuous prints that Westerners would think of as vaguely Asian in character. The receptionist was blonde, with that shiny, brittle look you get from spending too much time worrying about how well your cheekbones are showing. She gave me a smile, though, and ushered me into Akkadian’s office.
Bobby had a horsey face and a mane of longish hair that looked like it was dyed to match the expensive camel-hair jacket he was wearing. His office was dominated by an expanse of U-shaped desk with the cyclops monolith of the desktop computer squatting in the corner-every modern executive’s little electric shrine.
The desk surface was uncluttered. Some papers were fanned out in front of his chair the way a magician spreads out a deck of cards before beginning the act. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out they were glued together to make that display. The whole office didn’t really feel like it was an actual work site. It had all the qualities of a replica showroom labeled “Important Executive.”
The Important Executive came around to greet me. “Hello, Professor, thanks for coming by.”He shook my hand and I noticed him taking a look at it. I was probably something of a disappointment. I’m not really big and I don’t look particularly dangerous. Akkadian was checking to see whether I had the signs of hand conditioning you see in some karate students: enlarged knuckles, calluses, etc. My fingers are a bit thick. Weird muscles have also developed in my forearms, but the only sign of advanced training in my hands is the bulge in the web between my thumb and forefinger I’ve developed from all the sword work with Yamashita.
He motioned me to a small sitting area of low chairs and we sat. Bobby and I chatted pleasantly, mostly about his experience training and deep love for the martial arts. He knew something of my background and I talked a bit about Yamashita.
“You know,” he smiled, “despite appearances, the Manhattan martial arts scene is a pretty small world.”
I nodded. “Seems that way sometimes.”
“But I don’t hear much about Yamashita Sensei,” he commented. Which was true. My teacher is almost as secretive as he is selective. “It would be fantastic to be able to visit the dojo. He really sounds impressive.”
The subject of visitors was not one I cared to bring up with my teacher just now. I smiled noncommittally and nodded again. I noticed I was doing a lot o
f it lately. After a while I said, “I hope I can be of some help to you. You need some PR pieces done for a sword exhibit?”
That got him back on track. “Yeah. Let me show you what we’ve got planned.” He gestured me toward the desk. It looked like it was made of marble.
We wandered over to the desk and he pushed the fan of papers to one side. To my surprise, they actually were unconnected. He ruined the display effect, but the creature outside would probably come in later and restore it. “I’ve managed to get some fantastic blades for this show. You would not believe what a pain the Japanese have been about letting this stuff out of the country. The security bond alone is killing me.”
He opened a manila file and spread out some papers. “What I’m putting together, Professor Burke, is a display of rare Japanese weapons, all of which have a documented association with some of the most famous warriors in martial arts history.”
I looked at one sheet of paper. It listed a series of weapons types, descriptions of individual pieces, and estimated value. There were katana—the long sword of the samurai —as well as short swords and knives, the spears known as yari, and naginata—long poles with wicked curved blades used to hack riders out of the saddle. They would interest any martial arts freak, but what was really fascinating were the names of the original owners of these items.
“Wow,” I said, looking at the list.
Akkadian looked pleased. “You bet. Some of these pieces are being allowed out of Japan for the first time. Some of them, as a matter of fact, are already here. And every one of them linked to famous warriors.”
He read aloud from the list: “Yagyu Munenori, Yamaoka Tesshu,” he paused significantly, then continued, “. . . Miyamoto Musashi,”
I could feel Bobby eyeing me for a reaction. He’s famous, but Musashi had never been one of my favorites. He’s known as the “sword saint,” but it was a funny kind of sainthood. He was a minor seventeenth-century samurai whose single-minded pursuit of dominance in swordsmanship carried him through untold duels. Musashi pioneered the simultaneous use of two swords in Japanese swordsmanship but often faced his opponents armed with nothing but a wooden weapon. Once he used a carved-down boat oar. Whatever weapon he used, the results were always the same: a crumpled form in the dirt and Musashi stalking away, never satisfied, always hungry for another opponent. He always struck me as a man with something to prove.
He’s known today for writing A Book of Five Rings, a treatise on strategy in swordsmanship. It’s been touted as some sort of major work on strategy for today’s businessmen, and deluded MBA students read it, thinking a tough merger negotiation is the twentieth-century equivalent of a sword duel. The dust jacket claims it’s the secret guide to strategy for Japanese executives, but if you go to Japan, it’s hard to come by and only antiquarians are familiar with it.
But I had to admit that it was a brilliant move. The weapons assembled were bound to draw a crowd.
Which was pretty much how he laid it out and where I came in. Bobby was a bit of an egotist, but he was also shrewd enough to know what he didn’t know. A show like this would have martial artists as well as scholars coming out of the woodwork. Some in both groups would be lunatics, but a significant number would be fairly well informed. As a result, Bobby needed to make sure that his display hype was historically accurate. He could have tried to get some reputable name to do it, but Bobby was not really connected with those circles.
Domanova, like a shark smelling blood in the water, had sensed that Bobby was rapidly emerging as a successful—and wealthy—entrepreneur in search of some respectability. If I could do Bobby a favor on the cheap, the relationship with Domanova would grow and everyone would be happy. The president would give him a patina of respectability. Bobby would be slowly courted and stroked—you could imagine the dorsal fins circling—and eventually cajoled into making a sizable donation to the university.
It was a very finely choreographed dance where need, ego, money, and illusion swirled together. In higher education they call it “institutional development.”
I don’t pretend to understand all that, but my role in the process was pretty straightforward. Bobby called in his shiny receptionist to make copies of the documents in the folder and asked me to come up with some stuff on the different historical figures and their role in Japanese warrior culture. “Nothing too complicated, now, Professor,” he reminded. “A little blood, a little guts, a little budo . . .” he grinned at me with that long horse face and I felt the urge to grin back. Bobby was not my kind of person, but it was hard not to respond to someone who was so obviously having so much fun.
“You ever been to Samurai House before, Mr. Burke?” I shook my head and he headed for the door, giving me a “come along” jerk of the head.
“I’ve been working on this place for years. Started as an Asian antique center. You know—vases, lacquer screens, that kind of stuff. I got a sense, though, that this martial arts thing was going to be big. So over time, I’ve been adding things-a mail-order house here, videos, a gallery for traveling displays . . .”
“Diversification,” I commented.
He smiled. “It’s a beautiful thing. My latest thing is the training and exhibition hall. Check it out.”
The office suite was tucked away in a corner of the business part of the complex. From the other side of the lobby waterworks, you entered the public area through large wood doors that matched all the furniture in the office suite. On this side, instead of an office reception area, there was a rock garden. You walked around it and could then access the training and exhibition hall. “Some of the stuff’s in there now,” Bobby said as we walked past the garden. “Got a special security detail to watch it.”
We went in through those sliding paper screen doors the Japanese call shoji. The dojo was bright and airy, with a good, hardwood floor and tasteful decorations. Of course, in a real dojo there are no decorations, but this was America. I had seen worse—a lot of people fill their schools with all kinds of Asian schlock and they end up looking like bad Chinese restaurants.
He watched me as I took a look around. “Pretty nice, huh?”
I had to admit that Bobby (or his interior designer) had done a good job. It was impressive. “Looks like you’ve got it all figured out,” I commented.
He grinned again. “You bet. And, as a perk, I get to work out here.”
“You still train?” I asked. What with all the diversification.
“I try to keep my hand in,” he said with the false-modest smirky kind of reply people use in the martial arts when they want you to understand that they are good. “I’m training with this guy now; he’s incredible.”
Bobby glanced at his watch. Was that alligator for the band? “As a matter of fact, it’s about time for my workout. Would you care to watch?”
And on cue, Mitch Reilly walked in to the dojo.
In street clothes he looked almost normal, although the tight polo shirt stretched across his torso gave the impression that this was a man who spent a great deal of time lifting weights and looking at himself in the mirror. He probably got along pretty well with Bobby’s receptionist. Reilly came up short when he saw us and glared at me for a minute.
“Mitch,” I said, just to annoy him.
He looked at Akkadian. “What’s going on here, Bobby?”
Bobby Kay did not get where he is by being dense. He looked at me, then at Mitch, and realized that what he had here were two unstable elements in very close proximity. He moved in so he was at least partly between us. “Professor Burke is doing some consulting for the gallery. I didn’t realize you knew each other.”
“It’s a brief acquaintance,” I noted.
Mitch muttered something under his breath. It sounded like “asshole.”
Bobby didn’t pick that up. “I had just invited him to watch our workout.”
Reilly bristled. “I don’t like outsiders watching me train, Bobby.” Akkadian looked a bit put out.
I jumped
in. “It’s OK, Mr. Akkadian. Maybe some other time.” I held up the file he gave me. “I’ll get to work.” For a minute, I had the urge to tell him to get someone else for his trainer. But, hey, he was hiring me to do some writing, not to manage his business affairs.
As I walked out, Bobby Kay looked a bit disappointed. But I figured he wasn’t half as disappointed as he would have been if I told him the last time I saw Mitch Reilly, Yamashita had knocked him out and Mitch had wet his pants.
4. Trails
Owl’s Head Park is in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and looks out over the Narrows leading into New York Harbor. It’s one of the few parts of the borough left where you can still see how hilly it was before all that building effectively erased any of the land’s texture. Every morning I run up the hill in Owl’s Head, down the other side, and onto the pedestrian walk that borders the choppy gray water that churns between Brooklyn and Staten Island. It was almost summer, and I was praying for an offshore breeze. They built a sewage treatment plant right near the park in a fit of excellent urban planning and now it pretty much smells like you think it would. It helps when the breeze blows in from the ocean.
Yamashita’s a big believer in running. He thinks it aids the cardiovascular fitness of his advanced students, and he’s right. Once you get to a certain level in martial arts training, the physical effort sort of peaks out and technique takes over. What makes a novice collapse in a sweaty heap, gasping for breath, does not have the same effect on you. But Yamashita insists that we stay fit, which means some sort of cross-training.
One of his favorite stories is the one about the American who goes over to Okinawa to live out a life-long dream of training with this karate master. The guy gets there for his first day of training and the master asks him, “What’s the best self-defense technique?”
The American is pretty pleased with himself because he knows the answer. “Run away, Sensei,” he says.
The old master nods sagely. “Good.” Then, he adds, “Start running.”