* * *
I. Significant biographical research in this story is drawn from Paul Strathern’s superb little book, Descartes in 90 Minutes (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996).
Kwoon
DAVID LEWIS’S martial-arts kwoon was in a South Side Chicago neighborhood so rough he nearly had to fight to reach the door. Previously, it had been a dry cleaner’s, then a small Thai restaurant, and although he Lysol-scrubbed the buckled linoleum floors and burned jade incense for the Buddha before each class, the studio was a blend of pungent odors, the smell of starched shirts and the tang of cinnamon pastries riding alongside the sharp smell of male sweat from nightly workouts. For five months David had bivouacked on the backroom floor after his students left, not minding the clank of presses from the print shop next door, the noisy garage across the street or even the two-grand bank loan needed to renovate three rooms with low ceilings and leaky pipes overhead. This was his place, earned after ten years of training in San Francisco and his promotion to the hard-won title of sifu.
As his customers grunted through Tuesday-night warm-up exercises, then drills with Elizabeth, his senior student (she’d been a dancer and still had the elasticity of Gumby), David stood off to one side to watch, feeling the force of their kiais vibrate in the cavity of his chest, interrupting them only to correct a student’s stance. On the whole his students were a hopeless bunch, a Franciscan test of his patience. Some came to class on drugs; one, Wendell Miller, a retired cook trying to recapture his youth, was the obligatory senior citizen; a few were high school dropouts, orange-haired punks who played in rock bands with names like Plastic Anus. But David did not despair. He believed he was duty bound to lead them, like the Pied Piper, from Sylvester Stallone movies to a real understanding of the martial arts as a way that prepared the young, through discipline and large doses of humility, to be of use to themselves and others. Accordingly, his sheet of rules said no high school student could be promoted unless he kept a B average, and no dropouts were allowed through the door until they signed up for their GED exam; if they got straight A’s, he took them to dinner. Anyone caught fighting outside his school was suspended. David had been something of a punk himself a decade earlier, pushing nose candy in Palo Alto, living on barbiturates and beer before his own teacher helped him see, to David’s surprise, that in his spirit he had resources greater than anything in the world outside. The master’s picture was just inside the door, so all could bow to him when they entered David’s school. Spreading the style was his rationale for moving to the Midwest, but the hidden agenda, David believed, was an inward training that would make the need for conflict fall away like a chrysalis. If nothing else, he could make their workouts so tiring none of his students would have any energy left for getting into trouble.
Except, he thought, for Ed Morgan.
He was an older man, maybe forty, with a bald spot and razor burns that ran from just below his ears to his throat. This was his second night at the studio, but David realized Morgan knew the calisthenics routine and basic punching drills cold. He’d been in other schools. Any fool could see that, which meant the new student had lied on his application about having no formal training. Unlike David’s regular students, who wore the traditional white Chinese T-shirt and black trousers, Morgan had changed into a butternut running suit with black stripes on the sleeves and pants legs. David had told him to buy a uniform the week before, during his brief interview. Morgan refused. And David dropped the matter, noticing that Morgan had pecs and forearms like Popeye. His triceps could have been lifted right off Marvin Hagler. He was thick as a tree, even top-heavy, in David’s opinion, and he stood half a head taller than the other students. He didn’t have a suit to fit Morgan. And Morgan moved so fluidly that David caught himself frowning, a little frightened, for it was as though the properties of water and rock had come together in one creature. Then he snapped himself back, laughed at his silliness, looked at the clock—only half an hour of class remained—then clapped his hands loudly. He popped his fingers on his left hand, then his right, as his students, eager for his advice, turned to face him.
“We should do a little sparring now. Pair up with somebody your size. Elizabeth, you work with the new students.”
“Sifu?”
It was Ed Morgan.
David paused, both lips pressed together.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to spar with you.”
One of David’s younger students, Toughie, a Filipino boy with a falcon emblazoned on his arm, elbowed his partner, who wore his hair in a stiff Mohawk, and both said, “Uh-oh.” David felt his body flush hot, sweat suddenly on his palms like a sprinkling of saltwater, though there was no whiff of a challenge, no disrespect in Morgan’s voice. His speech, in fact, was as soft and gently syllabled as a singer’s. David tried to laugh:
“You sure you want to try me?”
“Please.” Morgan bowed his head, which might have seemed self-effacing had he not been so tall and still looking down at David’s crown. “It would be a privilege.”
Rather than spar, his students scrambled back, nearly falling over themselves to form a circle, as if to ring two gunfighters from opposite ends of town. David kept the slightest of smiles on his lips, even when his mouth tired, to give the impression of masterful indifference—he was, after all, sifu here, wasn’t he? A little sparring would do him good. Wouldn’t it? Especially with a man the size of Morgan. Loosen him up, so to speak.
He flipped his red sash behind him and stepped lower into a cat stance, his weight on his rear leg, his lead foot light and lifted slightly, ready to whip forward when Morgan moved into range.
Morgan was not so obliging. He circled left, away from David’s lead leg, then did a half step of broken rhythm to confuse David’s sense of distance, and then, before he could change stances, flicked a jab at David’s jaw. If his students were surprised, David didn’t know, for the room fell away instantly, dissolving as his adrenaline rose and his concentration closed out everything but Morgan—he always needed to get hit once before he got serious—and only he and the other existed, both in motion but pulled out of time, the moment flickerish, fibrous, and strangely two-dimensional, yet all too familiar to fighters, perhaps to men falling from heights, to motorists microseconds before a head-on collision, these minutes a spinning mosaic of crescent kicks, back fists and flurry punches that, on David’s side, failed. All his techniques fell short of Morgan, who, like a shadow—or Mephistopheles—simply dematerialized before they arrived.
The older man shifted from boxing to wu-style t’ai chi ch’uan. From this he flowed into pa kua, then Korean karate: style after style, a blending of a dozen cultures and histories in one blink of an eye after another. With one move he tore away David’s sash. Then he called out each move in Mandarin as he dropped it on David, bomb after bomb, as if this were only an exhibition exercise.
On David’s face blossoms of blood opened like orchids. He knew he was being hurt; two ribs felt broken, but he wasn’t sure. He thanked God for endorphins—a body’s natural painkiller. He’d not touched Morgan once. Outclassed as he was, all he could do was ward him off, stay out of his way—then not even that when a fist the size of a cantaloupe crashed straight down, driving David to the floor, his ears ringing then, his legs outstretched, like a doll’s. He wanted to stay down forever but sprang to his feet, sweat stinging his eyes, to salvage one scrap of dignity. He found himself facing the wrong way. Morgan was behind him, his hands on his hips, his head thrown back. Two of David’s students laughed.
It was Elizabeth who pressed her sweat-moistened towel under David’s bloody nose. Morgan’s feet came together. He wasn’t even winded. “Thank you, Sifu.” Mockery, David thought, but his head banged too badly to be sure. The room was still behind heat waves, though sounds were coming back, and now he could distinguish one student from another. His sense of clock time returned. He said, “You’re a good fighter, Ed.”
Toughie whispered, “No shit, bwana.”
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The room suddenly leaned vertiginously to David’s left; he bent his knees a little to steady his balance. “But you’re still a beginner in this system.” Weakly, he lifted his hand, then let it fall. “Go on with class. Elizabeth, give everybody a new lesson.”
“David, I think class is over now.”
Over? He thought he knew what that meant. “I guess so. Bow to the master.”
His students bowed to the portrait of the school’s founder.
“Now to each other.” Again, they bowed, but this time to Morgan.
“Class dismissed.”
Some of his students were whooping, slapping Morgan on his back as they made their way to the hallway in back to change. Elizabeth, the only female, stayed behind to let them shower and dress. Both she and the youngest student, Mark, a middle school boy with skin as smooth and pale as a girl’s, looked bewildered, uncertain as to what this drubbing meant.
David limped back to his office, which also was his bedroom, separated from the main room by only a curtain. There, he kept equipment: free weights, a heavy bag on which he’d taped a snapshot of himself—for who else did he need to conquer?—and the rowing machine Elizabeth avoided, calling it Instant Abortion. He sat down for a few seconds at his unvarnished kneehole desk bought cheap at a Salvation Army outlet, then rolled onto the floor, wondering what he’d done wrong. Would another sifu, more seasoned, simply have refused to spar with a self-styled beginner?
After a few minutes he heard them leaving, a couple of students begging Morgan to teach them, and really, this was too much to bear. David, holding his side, his head pulled in, limped back out. “Ed,” he coughed, then recovered. “Can I talk to you?”
Morgan checked his watch, a diamond-studded thing that doubled as a stopwatch and a thermometer, and probably even monitored his pulse. Half its cost would pay the studio’s rent for a year. He dressed well, David saw. Like a retired champion, everything tailored, nothing off the rack. “I’ve got an appointment, Sifu. Maybe later, okay?”
A little dazed, David, swallowing the rest of what he wanted to say, gave a headshake. “Okay.”
Just before the door slammed, he heard another boy say, “Lewis ain’t no fighter, man. He’s a dancer.” He lay down again in his office, too sore to shower, every muscle tender, strung tight as catgut, searching with the tip of his tongue for broken teeth.
As he was stuffing toilet paper into his right nostril to stop the bleeding, Elizabeth, dressed now in high boots and a baggy coat and slacks, stepped behind the curtain. She’d replaced her contacts with owl-frame glasses that made her look spinsterish. “I’m sorry—he was wrong to do that.”
“You mean win?”
“It wasn’t supposed to be a real fight! He tricked you. Anyone can score, like he did, if they throw out all the rules.”
“Tell him that.” Wincing, he rubbed his shoulder. “Do you think anybody will come back on Thursday?” She did not answer. “Do you think I should close the school?” David laughed, bleakly. “Or just leave town?”
“David, you’re a good teacher. A sifu doesn’t always have to win, does he? It’s not about winning, is it?”
No sooner had she said this than the answer rose between them. Could you be a doctor whose every patient died? A credible mathematician who couldn’t count? By the way the world and, more important, his students reckoned things, he was a fraud. Elizabeth hitched the strap on her workout bag, which was big enough for both of them to climb into, higher on her shoulder. “Do you want me to stick around?”
“No.”
“You going to put something on that eye?”
Through the eye Morgan hadn’t closed, she looked flattened, like a coin, her skin flushed and her hair faintly damp after a workout, so lovely David wanted to fall against her, blend with her—disappear. Only, it would hurt now to touch or be touched. And, unlike some teachers he knew, his policy was to take whatever he felt for a student—the erotic electricity that sometimes arose—and transform it into harder teaching, more time spent on giving them their money’s worth. Besides, he was always broke; his street clothes were old enough to be in elementary school: a thirty-year-old man no better educated than Mark or Toughie, who’d concentrated on shop in high school. Elizabeth was another story: a working mother, a secretary on the staff at the University of Illinois at Chicago, surrounded all day by professors who looked young enough to be graduate students. A job as sweet as this, from David’s level, seemed high-toned and secure. What could he offer Elizabeth? Anyway, this might be the last night he saw her, if she left with the others, and who could blame her? He studied her hair, how it fell onyx black and abundant, like some kind of blessing over and under her collar, which forced Elizabeth into the unconscious habit of tilting her head just so and flicking it back with her fingers, a gesture of such natural grace it made his chest ache. She was so much lovelier than she knew. To his surprise a line from Psalms came to him: “I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Whoever wrote that, he thought, meant it for her.
He looked away. “Go on home.”
“We’re having class on Thursday?”
“You paid until the end of the month, didn’t you?”
“I paid for six months, remember?”
He did—she was, literally, the one who kept the light bill paid. “Then we’ll have class.”
All that night and half the next day, David stayed horizontal, hating Morgan. Hating himself more. It took him hours to stop shaking. That night it rained. He fended off sleep, listening to the patter with his full attention, hoping its music might have something to tell him. Twice he belched up blood, then a paste of phlegm and hamburger pulp. Jesus, he thought, distantly, I’m sick. By nightfall, he was able to sit awhile and take a little soup, but he could not stand. Both his legs ballooned so tightly in his trousers he had to cut the cloth with scissors and peel it off like strips of bacon. Parts of his body were burning, refusing to obey him. He reached into his desk drawer for Morgan’s application and saw straightaway that Ed Morgan couldn’t spell. David smiled ruefully, looking for more faults. Morgan listed his address in Skokie, his occupation as a merchant marine, and provided no next of kin to call in case of emergencies.
That was all, and David for the life of him could not see that night, or the following morning, how he could face anyone in the studio again. Painfully, he remembered his promotion a year earlier. His teacher had held a ceremonial Buddhist candle, the only light in his darkened living room in a house near the Mission District barely bigger than a shed. David, kneeling, held a candle too. “The light that was given to me,” said his teacher, repeating an invocation two centuries old, “I now give to you.” He touched his flame to the wick of David’s candle, passing the light, and David’s eyes burned with tears. For the first time in his life, he felt connected to cultures and people he’d never seen—to traditions larger than himself.
His high school instructors had dismissed him as unteachable. Were they right? David wondered. Was he made of wood too flimsy ever to amount to anything? Suddenly, he hated those teachers, as well as the ones at Elizabeth’s school, but only for a time, hatred being so sharp an emotion, like the business end of a bali-song knife, he could never hang on to it for long—perhaps that was why he failed as a fighter—and soon he felt nothing, only numbness. As from a great distance, he watched himself sponge-bathe in the sink, dress himself slowly, and prepare for Thursday’s class, the actions previously fueled by desire, by concern over consequences, by fear of outcome, replaced now by something he could not properly name, as if a costly operation once powered by coal had reverted overnight to the water wheel.
When six o’clock came and only Mark, Wendell, and Elizabeth showed, David telephoned a few students, learning from parents, roommates, and live-in lovers that none was home. With Morgan, he suspected. So that’s who he called next.
“Sure,” said Morgan. “A couple are here. They just wanted to talk.”
“The
y’re missing class.”
“I didn’t ask them to come.”
Quietly, David drew breath deeply just to see if he could. It hurt, so he stopped, letting his wind stay shallow, swirling at the top of his lungs. He pulled a piece of dead skin off his hand. “Are you coming back?”
“I don’t see much point in that, do you?”
In the background he could hear voices, a television, and beer cans being opened. “You’ve fought professionally, haven’t you?”
“That was a long time ago—overseas. Won two, lost two, then I quit,” said Morgan. “It doesn’t count for much.”
“Did you teach?”
“Here and there. Listen,” he said, “why did you call?”
“Why did you enroll?”
“I’ve been out of training. I wanted to see how much I remembered. What do you want me to say? I won’t come back, all right? What do you want from me, Lewis?”
He did not know. He felt the stillness of his studio, a similar stillness in himself, and sat quiet for so long he could have been posing for a portrait. Then:
“You paid for a week in advance. I owe you another lesson.”
Morgan snorted. “In what—Chinese ballet?”
“Fighting,” said David. “A private lesson in budo. I’ll keep the studio open until you get here.” And then he hung up.
• • •
Morgan circled the block four times before finding a parking space across from Lewis’s school. Why hurry? Ten, maybe fifteen minutes he waited, watching the open door, wondering what the boy (and he was a boy in Morgan’s eyes) wanted. He’d known too many kids like this one. They took a few classes, promoted themselves to seventh dan, then opened a storefront dojo that was no better than a private stage, a theater for the ego, a place where they could play out fantasies of success denied them on the street, in school, in dead-end jobs. They were phony, Morgan thought, like almost everything in the modern world, which was a subject he could spend hours deriding, though he seldom did, his complaints now being tiresome even to his own ears. Losers, he thought, who strutted around in fancy Oriental costumes, refusing to spar or show their skill. “Too advanced for beginners,” they claimed, or, “My sensei made me promise not to show that to anyone.” Hogwash. He could see through that shit. All over America he’d seen them, and India too, where they weren’t called fakirs for nothing. And they’d made him suffer. They’d made him pay for the “privilege” of their teachings. In twenty years as a merchant marine, he’d been in as many schools in Europe, Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong, submitting himself to the lunacy of illiterate fak(e)irs—men who claimed they could slay an opponent with their breath or ch’i—and simply because his hunger to learn was insatiable. So he had no rank anywhere. He could tolerate no “master’s” posturing long enough to ingratiate himself into the inner circles of any school—though 80 percent of these fly-by-night dojos bottomed out inside a year. And, hell, he was a bilge rat, never in any port long enough to move up in rank. Still, he had killed men. It was depressingly easy. Killed them in back alleys in Tokyo with blows so crude no master would include such inelegant means among “traditional” techniques.
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