A Year at River Mountain

by Michael Kenyon

  CLEAR COLD ABYSS

  We left the river hours ago and came through the bamboo, past the cave, by forest path to North Gate, and climbed steadily through the evergreens, and were in snow nearly to the tree line. The new master strode ahead of us. We were to discover the doorway between physical and spiritual passion, he told us. We must release our thoughts. There were four stages to all human endeavours, he told us. This uphill walk, for instance. First the scrambling feverish hurly-burly dyslexic beginning, all of us panting and staggering, calling for rest. Then our rhythmic rolling gait through synchronous slips of fragile nature. He stopped and grinned. “Soon,” he said, “will come the weary dogged dreamy struggle. And last the terrible stumbling climb. But we will not reach the top today.

  “How do we achieve knowledge?” he asked.

  The two boys at his feet adored him.

  “By tracing the channels,” one said.

  “How often?”

  “Four times a day.”

  “Why do locals leave food near the spring?”

  “For the boy on the mountain!”

  “What is the point to save the world?”

  “The mountain!”

  “Let’s go.” He took each by the hand. “Let’s find a dry place for the night.”

  I held the question I wanted to ask, and found beneath a tree the broken blue shell of an egg and set it on a mossy stone. This secretive act reminded me of something I’ve been trying to do since the fall. My nest-building was a kind of self-promise.

  Below us the river was red with ore stirred in high streams. The mountaintop, pure white, looked near enough to leap over. I closed my eyes and flew over the summit into the next valley as easily as I once flew through life.

  DISPERSING RIVERBED

  The master looked at me for a long time. We were above the tree line, watching the sunrise and listening to the bell ringing far below, our breath pluming.

  “Zhou Yiyuan has been to see me,” he said. “You are in some trouble. Please think of one word a day for four days, then bring them to me.”

  UPPER ARM MEETING

  If experience is assimilation — adaptive process born of instinct — then choice is a mill whose flour is safety. But what words?

  SHOULDER CREVICE

  Knot.

  APRIL

  SKY CREVICE

  Story.

  WINDOW OF HEAVEN

  Chain.

  WIND SCREEN

  Nest.

  SPASM VESSEL

  “I like your words.” He smiled and the valley was like a small room. “Zhou Yiyuan, Song Wei, yourself, and me.”

  My first dog, a white poodle called Larry, wandered through the crowd of visitors and the few monks and villagers remaining, and I hadn’t the breath or voice to call out, though I wanted his eyes on me again. People thronged outside and inside the storehouse, and there was barely space this side of the bridge to turn around, and we all shuffled slowly uphill toward the temple, the faces near me preoccupied and sad, as more strangers stepped ashore from barge-like boats, and between the river and the mountain was an ocean of new people, and Larry was nowhere to be seen.

  At my confusion, the master leaned close and smoothed his hands through the air. He put his arm around my shoulder and led me to the well and drew a cup of water.

  The day was warm and a haze of cotton fuzz flew above our heads, while swifts danced along the river that swept pollen through farmland and a number of towns, past a city and into the sea. Perhaps there was no more than that to observe, nothing further to say. Merely a daydream and a redistribution of materials.

  “Zhou Yiyuan commands the respect of two warlords,” he said. “For this reason he has the ear of the government, though he is not trusted. His agenda is unclear and his methods unpredictable. Did you know his sister is a shaman?”

  I nodded.

  “However, he is unafraid and tireless and has been useful to the military when conventional approaches have been exhausted.”

  “His people originated here,” I said.

  “That is not true. He does not belong to these people.”

  “He told me you and he were on the same path but going in opposite directions.”

  “We are both eccentric,” the master said. “What does he want?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We sipped water from the deep blue cup, passing it back and forth.

  “The old master asked me to find the point to heal the valley,” I said. “Zhou Yiyuan showed me the point.”

  “Ah. Tell me, please.”

  “It is across the river.”

  He shook his head. “Not the mountain?”

  “No.”

  “No,” he said. “How did he show you?”

  I lay on my back on a rocky outcrop above the cave where the bear had come snuffling and watched the clouds. One over, one under, one faster, one slower. Redistribution of vapour. I dreamed the land was crumbling, these rocks about to fall into a cavern under the monastery, the earth already fissured with parallel cracks, and woke with late sun on my face.

  So I fetched my materials from the corner of West Shrine out into the last sunshine. I have told the master about the rape and the killing but not about my attachment to Song Wei. What does it signify? What would it signify if three points — the fallen tree, the nut tree, and Leopard Pass — were connected? The pen moves all by itself to record signs — reflected light, a twitchy yellow smell, a dog’s bark — as though they are beings with distinct lives.

  SKULL REST

  The villagers sweep the graves of relations who have died in our valley. At a pause in our chanting by the cave, we listen to their wavery singing. A bird is calling clear-and-bright, clear-and-bright. Since I have lost my country and countryside, my parents and wife, I own all rivers, all mountains.

  YOUNG ANGLE

  The villagers are busy planting. This slip of green belongs exactly here. This is mine . . . this is mine to give to you . . . this is yours . . . Why is possession a comforting thing? Why did I give up one place for another, one relationship for another? Do possession and comfort have no meaning without loss?

  “There are answers and accidents,” the master said, “the facts and the wobble. Answers are plentiful. We fill our talk with reasons. And since familiarity produces a kind of ownership, we are faithful to faithful answers. If you don’t change your life, accident will.”

  “Leap while the leaping is good?” said Frank.

  The master laughed. Between him and Frank ideas popped up like ducks, their beaks cranked with fish or snakes from the weedy depths. We monks sat in the courtyard and listened, unless he asked one of us a question.

  “The valley I’ve lived in all these years is changing,” said Frank. “There are young trees where the marsh has receded, and old trees have been cut down. Monks have died, and young men have taken their place. My old master has died; you have arrived.”

  Standing to stretch, fingers soothing kidneys, I witnessed some fussing thing catch a jagged black line — broken branch, crow — the gist of what they were saying. The gist I needed to record. Because I’m keeping secrets.

  Below us the elder women worked together, crouching low, their chins jutting. We plant a higher terrace, while the women peck at the soil and at noon hide chattering in the reeds on the bank of the sparkling river, dipping fingers into wooden bowls. All afternoon crows splashed in the puddles.

  “Mr. Western Philosophy,” the master said. “Please tell us about passion.”

  Above us, on the storehouse roof, pigeons rehearsed entrances and exits, and the sky held faint grey striations, a hint of gold where the sun would set. A hundred ducks took off from the lake fields and the women angled their faces and laughed. The light off their eyes diminished the river light.

  EAR GATE

  “Why did you come here?” the master asked.

  “My wife left me and then died and I lost touch with my son.”

  “Why are you still he
re?”

  “I don’t think I could live in a city again.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too many people, too many cars. Too much of everything.”

  “Not unlike this place,” he said. “Hold Leg Three Miles, both knees, to clear fire and steady your spirit.”

  We bent together under the warrior tree clutching our knees.

  He’s right. It’s the same here. Refugees drift downstream, more and more every week, and when I see hurt children, even one child, my knees weaken. Children loosen my ribs: the village kids, the youngest monks, those wild-eyed kids passing east on boats or rafts.

  So we stood holding Leg Three Miles and gathered earth through the gates of our knees. Anything might happen. No one was safe in the wilderness. There was only one big story with two strands: home, migration.

  EAR HARMONY CREVICE

  Woken by a bird shouting like an American robin, that sad frantic song. I dressed and went out to listen. A monk was wandering under the plum trees near the bathhouse in a storm of white petals; he stopped still on a white shining dais beside a dark trunk. He too was listening. South, under a grey sky, the bridge deck was wet, its hills dotted with white and pink. Overhanging the river, the willows were fresh green. I had to squint to recognise villagers in the middle distance. A twang: the narrow leather back of a hummingbird at a flowering current. The noise of equipment. Frank telling the new boys how to work the bobcat.

  SILK BAMBOO HOLLOW

  Zhou Yiyuan and Song Wei stood side by side on the bridge watching a piece of torn red cloth tied to the railing, flapping in the wind. A heron called from the tall tree near the road. Song’s belly was full and round and she cradled it in her hands. Brother and sister, heads bowed, studied the red cloth as it shivered, rippled and convulsed, its end secured in a fat knot. A barge floated under their feet, children curled asleep on the rough boards, while their mothers huddled under blankets and looked out and the fathers dipped poles and oars to keep midstream. Zhou raised his hands into the sky. He might be Song’s burly misshapen son. The day was one capacious grey cloud, gulls soaring high against its underlay.

  Yang Wood

  Pupil Crevice

  There you are, right behind me. You used to be in front, to the side. Remember that local play in Victoria, my last performance, breaking the fourth wall? I broke my hand, my writing hand, the next day. My ex-wife had just died. I didn’t mean to hurt it, but wanted to protect my body from hitting the cement. An accident. I’d been doing the same thing — leaping the steps from the back door — for weeks; she’d told me I’d break my back; “For God’s sake, how old are you?” Then I was on the ferry, replaced by an understudy, in mourning, one hand in a cast, free fingers tapping the keyboard, glancing out of the window at the sleek seal breaking the surface of Active Pass.

  “I don’t want to repeat myself,” I told the master. “I don’t want to keep doing the same thing.”

  “Every day is repetition,” he said. “Repetition helps us remember the points. We are in a major flow. You were an actor. You know repetition is rehearsal.”

  This sent me back to you, my old construction, my old friend. Every rehearsal, as it smoothes the snags and burrs of a production, invents a variation, subtle or coarse; every rehearsal digs a hole, shears a few molecules from the stage, and starts something fresh as it recycles the old tropes. What do you think? You of all people must know this! The trouble with performance, and this monastery — and every camp, prison, sanatorium, terminal, institution — is that it reminds us of what we have lost. I loved my fellow actors, but you only loved who they played. You are like this pebble. I will never lose it. There you are, little shiner, little one. I’m not going to let you go. Ever.

  HEARING LAUGHTER

  The deeper my son sank, the less detail and texture of his life I saw. I couldn’t even imagine his life. I worried about him, put off contact. I couldn’t face or imagine what might happen to him. What possible value was speculation, and what use was imagination, what use? And what did I do? It’s one thing to embark on an esoteric apprenticeship, fulfil the requirements, years later to emerge a prophet or healer, light sparking from every orifice, it’s another to give up on a boy.

  UPPER PASS

  I’ve got you now, Mother, you won’t get away this time. I was a better actor than you because you fucked around and I kept that part of my life under control. In the end it was my success kept you fed, kept you housed, right? You always said you wanted us to cosy up together, the two of us, buttered bagel cut in half, pack of smokes, brace of nice gin fizzes, film credits for me, for you TV, one of us drunk and the other stoned, neither of us good listeners. I can’t remember a time when you weren’t rushing through spilt perfume, busted zipper, the studio bloody with screaming. Take it easy, Ma. Calm down. After all, you got what you deserved after working so hard, hiding your need for approval. Alzheimer’s and a violent death. Ta da! Now we’re equal, equally forgotten. That’s it. I won’t talk to you anymore. We’re finished. You’re forgiven.

  JAW SERENITY

  The man returned from a long shoot to find his wife gone and several changes to the house: blinds on all the windows, new locks on the doors, and a hot tub in the back yard filled with snow. So tempted to smash a window to see what else. Wasn’t there supposed to be less after a catastrophe? It’s a lot of work, memory, the jerk to pull the logjam loose or the slow steady tow to free tree after tree, and after the initial thrill of clearing the channel, there’s only flow and the end of a season, end of a run. I’m no longer innocent, but I’m not guilty. I’m beginning to confuse my dad’s life with my own, though his absences were real and had nothing to do with acting. What do I know? I want a new window on my own passage from childhood to adolescence, from the seesaw to the first ejaculation, that basic leap. Because I forgot myself. Following my mother’s example, I abandoned my boyself in England.

  So rather than dismantle the jam, I idled on the riverbank on the off-chance that a window would appear. Casement, sash, skylight, porthole, leaded, diamond, rose. Water swirled around the roots of old trees, eating away their soil. When will our long affair with the sun end? Twenty-six dead in this tangled dam. Mother’s age when I was born, that brief coincidence. Go, go, enough, done.

  SUSPENDED SKULL

  At the meeting of all who live in the valley to find out what will happen the master pointed the directions. He called the unnamed ancestors.

  Zhou Yiyuan and his sister stolid at the edge of the villagers.

  The personal is like dew — it forms after midnight and evaporates, on a warm day, before noon. A good story is timeless. Song Wei eclipsed Imogen; her baby is close to being born. All is hard-edged mountain, river lickety-split.

  We looked at one another as the elder women warbled their hymns, and families on the wide river spun lazily toward the port. Zhou seemed almost humble, Song distracted.

  Our story, yours and mine, when I tell the master, will change everything.

  SUSPENDED LOCK

  Happiness. I love paths that feet have made and felt such joy descending the worn stone steps from the mountain after a climb to see the meadow flowers. While walking I thought about houses and theatres and banks and office buildings — how much of my time used to be spent indoors, looking out of windows — then I wandered through the monastery to the river and along the climbing bank and fell asleep on the red cliff, high above the torrent. Sun and cloud. Woke in warm sun, the air claggy with pollen; deer flowed through the bamboo: the shadows of deer: antlers and their echoes. A far-off sneeze. Down at the river, tiny green waves.

  TEMPLE CROOK

  “It will be cosy at home. What about it, buddy-boy? Will we light a fire and get some tea going? Hold your sister’s hand.” My father said such a thing after a failed meeting with Mum, before we left England, when we were caught in a storm and had to wait a long time for the bus. The three of us miserable and alone, about to leave our world. I missed my father when he died. What
I remember most vividly is not what he said, but once in a while feeling him behind me and backing into his legs.

  The temperature plunged in the night. Smoke hung in the tops of trees and a veil of rain chilled my skin as we went in to chant the middle of the day.

  I’m once again ensconced at West Shrine, waiting for something indistinct, the end of time, the end of our time. Up ahead is the end of my time, round a couple of corners and down that little hill. Perhaps soon. I missed my father and now I miss the old master. Why have I not spoken to Frank? The boats and rafts multiply daily. Has war consumed the rest of the world?

  LEADING VALLEY

  When the earth began to shake, water spurted from the well and packed dirt lapped the stone sides and ground waves tossed the long boulders into the west plums. Monks and families flew uphill. The storehouse groaned. Above the liquid earth the air was thunderous and thick with cherry blossom. Petals suspended. Earth’s weather an ordinary mirage: counterfeit: will all be as it was? How can anything groundless be this beautiful? When I looked, the river was fat, a series of silver crests undulating upstream. On my hand a wound and a moss-green stain. Then part of the mountain fell in a splintering of trees.

  SKY RUSHING

  Before dawn, among secondary tremors, the villagers cleared the ground inside the temple walls of debris and erected a tarp. They carried the bodies of their tribe up and lay them beneath the tarp, beside the dead monks. No one since the ancient battles has witnessed a morning like this. A long eerie silence ended with perpetual traffic teetering along the valley road, military trucks, ambulances, fire engines, buses, flatbeds with equipment, while above our heads helicopters scavenged. River-tumbled bodies. Rocking barges of injured and dying. Aftershocks. Our white-eyed fear.

  A day like this is unimaginable until it dawns, brimming with its own reality, the stillest day, the sky crystal blue, warm spring sun on our shoulders. We have broken bones, bruises and cuts. Who did not fall? Still standing are the temple walls, the shrines, the bridge, most of our huts, the bathhouse. A hundred and forty-seven humans, on whose faces grief blooms like a fungus. Our heads down.