A Year at River Mountain

by Michael Kenyon

  JUMPING CIRCLE

  A morning of complete harmony. Sun sat close with each blade of new grass down to the river. Beyond the courtyard, forests tipped the blue. We kneeled in a circle to share food, the village elders and the monks and some government members, to consider the future.

  “This monastery has retained its hiddenness, its secrecy,” said an official dressed in blue fatigues. “It is still a lost monastery.”

  “We know this,” said Frank.

  Carefully, I picked the blades of grass that threatened the stepping-stones.

  “A mushroom ring has appeared in the soil outside the cave,”

  said one of the new monks.

  “Why not?” said Frank.

  “Help will come the way it has always come,” said the governor, “from the river.”

  The elder women nodded. The crazy one who minded Song Wei’s baby said, “And on the next fire night the river will stop flowing and something new will step out.”

  “Thank you,” said Frank.

  “What is her name?” I asked the crazy one. “What is the baby’s name?”

  A politician read from a document and placed a cheque on the ground in the middle of the circle. The breeze promptly took the paper and the politician gave a little cry. His associate reacted quickly and snapped the cheque from the air. Everyone laughed.

  WIND MARKET

  Once I had a birthday cake, chocolate, with candles, all blue. Each slice had a candle. I held my breath. Eight, nine, ten. This was the year my parents emigrated and I lost my accent and my tongue got tied and the shapes of words were wrong in my mouth.

  MIDDLE DITCH

  There is the walled garden, not to be entered. No sign of Zhou Yiyuan.

  KNEE YANG GATE

  Frank is the new master. He sat on the seat outside the garden’s tall door in morning sunshine. Earth-moving machinery beeped: backing up. The wall coping made wave shadows, a fringe on the worn timbers.

  “I thought you were leaving.”

  He raised his head. “I thought you were staying?”

  “I am staying.”

  “That’s news to me.”

  YANG MOUND SPRING

  The crazy village woman boiled tea and we sat across from each other in silence. “Where is the baby,” I asked.

  She grinned and thumbed to the next hut where the woman I had treated in the winter was stirring a pot. The baby’s head covered her breast.

  Each bell today reminded me of Yang Mound Spring, Frank’s hut and the point in the tender depression below and outside the knee.

  Losing an accent is not like losing a language: it is a voluntary betrayal of identity, a sacrifice of ancestral music, a refusal to risk being misunderstood.

  YANG INTERSECTION

  Frank and I walked north along the garden’s east wall, listening to the two monks inside shovelling, scraping, chopping. Left up the steep rock along the north wall, left along the dark west wall, left, the south wall, and back to the door.

  “How has the quake affected what is inside?” I asked.

  “The gardeners sound busy,” said Frank.

  “I’ve imagined my parents inside, or Zhou Yiyuan concocting a brand new universe.”

  “Have you?”

  OUTER HILL

  Behind the wall was the noise of water running, perhaps a waterfall, and then a splash, as of a great fish leaping from the surface of a pond. The crunch of slow receding footsteps. A hummingbird twanged at my ear.

  Directly below, through the bamboo forest, was the stretch of deep river where the two children fell and Suiji drowned. Swallows hunted the surface.

  “How is the rest of the world faring?” said Frank. “The doctors? Their dewy lawn? Imogen?”

  BRIGHT LIGHT

  The garden introduces at least the notion of garden. Water flows, and since no water enters or leaves, the garden must contain its own weather, rivers and seas.

  Suppose the walls enclose a forest, ancient and thousands of meters high, the trees so closely packed that only a child can enter (I’m too big, too old) and standing by the open garden door are my parents, powerful demigods on holiday from their busy negotiations of immigration and shooting schedules and hospitals and ferries and pathology reports, and the gist of their wordless message is wait.

  When I told Frank, he said, “That’s optimistic.”

  “The quake, surely, was an aspect of a wider cataclysm. Just as the garden is the region in microcosm, this valley must be a kind of universal gazetteer.”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  “Can I go in?”

  “Possibly.”

  “When?”

  “I guess we could climb the wall.”

  “Don’t you have the key?”

  “Zhou Yiyuan has the key.”

  “Why? You’ve seen him?”

  “Not yet. I’m looking for signs of Zhou Yiyuan.”

  A goat approached, her new kid alongside.

  YANG ASSISTANCE

  The gardeners enter the garden, then there’s the sound of scraping. Asleep on my feet, bladder points all sore, I spent the afternoon digging a ditch above New East Shrine.

  SUSPENDED BELL

  Night rehearsal of the absence of children.

  HILL RUINS

  Sudden and brief torrents of rain. Ribbons of sun last thing before night. I tried to remember being a boy, a son. What did I do with my father? Cricket? Football? There: a rectangle of field beside the school; there: my dad’s voice, “Not like that. Not like that.”

  FOOT OVERLOOKING TEARS

  The past has receded leaving only worm casts, broken branches, debris, seed husks. Enough to build a life, perhaps. No matter. Life included joy. Now its erotic promise is enshrined in Imogen’s pending visit; one more season to see through, then summer and her arrival.

  EARTH FIVE MEETINGS

  “I dreamed I flew home,” I said, “and home looked exactly like this — same birds, trees, clouds, same people.”

  Frank chuckled. “Was I there?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Good.”

  In the paddies the grains were plump. I held his hand as we circled the garden wall, ears pricked for any sound; then I left him on the bench by the door and descended alone by a remote path to the bridge then uphill to the temple.

  I will find Zhou Yiyuan, get the key and take Imogen into the garden this summer, no matter what it takes — what a child I am! — and we will stage a wedding scene; but which scene, what play?

  PINCHED RAVINE

  Days have a shape. This day began slowly and was supposed to go slow, quick, slow/quick, slow, these time signatures pencilled across an indeterminate number of dimensions. Then, as morning got underway the first slow got quick too fast and the first quick vanished, then the second quick seemed endless cacophony, and then it collided with the last slow. Afternoon was a long unexpected dwindling and now, under the influence of a brief and gorgeous sunset, signalled by bird flight and the memory of Active Pass and snow on a girl’s shoulders, I anticipate the briefest quick and a slow evening.

  YIN PORTALS OF THE FOOT

  The first roses were open in the hedgerow along the road. The bridge to my young great grandparents in England, surely. Tapping sounds from the walled garden. The path to the river was loud: a monk with a chainsaw was bucking up a tree felled by the earthquake, sawdust streaming in early morning light. The scent of sap mixed with the memory of roses. Smell of roses.

  Yin Wood

  Large Hill

  “I don’t know about living in a monastery,” I said.

  Frank’s face looked soft, his lips curving. We were about to descend from the garden door to the river.

  “None of this is mine, none of it.”

  The familiar smile creased his face. “Am I here?”

  “Yes, Frank, you are still here.”

  Voices below caught his attention. “What is that?”

  “There are people on the bri
dge,” I said.

  He turned his head as if looking down to the river. “Are they leaving or arriving?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What would you guess?”

  “It looks like a meeting.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. Is Zhou Yiyuan among them?”

  I stared at the tiny figures on the bridge. “I can’t tell. I don’t think so.”

  He held up his hand and there was dirt on his wrist, his fingers. “It’s not your business anymore, but I’m expecting him.”

  “What have you heard?”

  “I have heard that your master—” He paused. “It’s always like this in spring,” he said. “The river brown and full of debris, people coming and going, monks asking idiotic questions.”

  MOVING BETWEEN

  “I’m tired of my own voice,” I said.

  “Stop speaking,” Frank said.

  He stood at my side in silence. The bell sounded and a fish rose from the deep shadow beneath the bridge, the carp’s sleek body working the current. High above the snowline three birds turned lazy arcs. Nothing today was rushed.

  GREAT RUSHING

  “How is your apprentice doing?”

  “Late, early, muffled.”

  “You should fire him.”

  “Perhaps I will.”

  “Every second person’s stumbling along with a crutch, arm in a sling, there are suits everywhere, and have you heard the howls at night?”

  “We have had an earthquake. I thought you were tired of speaking.”

  “I am.”

  We sat in the warm shrine.

  “I’m writing with a pencil.”

  “Where’s your pen?” he asked.

  “Lost.”

  “Brush?”

  “Lost.”

  “Mine too.”

  MIDDLE SEAL

  Sun on black bamboo. The sky silver inside, outside brass. I kneeled on the bank to wash a grazed knuckle and the river carried away my blood.

  The willows leaned over the water, tendrils in relief against an inverted silver plate. Gulls dipping wings.

  WOODWORM DITCH

  “I’m tired of my words.”

  “Stop writing,” he said.

  “All words. All signs.”

  “Where are they directing you?”

  We were in our shrine and a storm was approaching, trees hissing again at the edge of the forest. He washed his hands and dried them carefully before taking up a small bag. He produced two brushes and gave me one.

  “I have decided to map the old grounds while the memory of its shape is fresh.”

  “It hasn’t changed much,” I said.

  “You are blind.”

  The wind gathered force and shook the trees. He hunkered down to draw the mountain and river, using a grey wash for terraces and forests and stands of bamboo, an inkier wash for the village. Slow work for him, the temple, storehouse, shrines, huts, bathhouse, trees, paths, wind buffeting his bent back. After an hour he lifted his head and smiled. “Why did we not make maps before?”

  And I remembered it was Ophelia’s father, yes, Claudius’ advisor, yes. But it wasn’t wisdom that Polonius found in Hamlet’s madness, it was method. Ah, yes. Method. Plan.

  Frank set aside the large paper to dry, and I helped him anchor it to the boards with four stones. He stood and stretched and fumbled for his stick.

  I’m slow to make English words with a brush, but the labour gives me great pleasure. Who would follow a blind man’s map? Frank is the master I have been waiting for. Sun glints on the crude map he has made and it seems the work of a clumsy child. When I think this something squirms inside my belly. When I’m done, I stretch my hands high in the air.

  CENTRAL CAPITAL

  At dawn the monastery grounds lay in a slight mist, green and gentle, beautifully tranquil. Frank led a party of us through the bamboo forest, following the zigzag path to the edge of the wild land.

  Later, I found a letter addressed to the old master and postmarked Los Angeles in the company trailer near the bridge. I carried it through the courtyard, past the storehouse construction zone, up to Frank’s hut.

  We sat on the bench beside the window and he opened the envelope and felt the texture of the paper. As he stroked the words with a finger the bell sounded and he paused while the deep peals blew round us.

  “I did not fire him,” he said.

  “No.”

  “I hope this boy will learn to invite the bell. He is very bad.” He replaced the paper in the envelope. “Tell me what you expect.”

  “Nothing.”

  He held the letter in the air. “Read it to me.”

  KNEE JOINT

  I’m not afraid of losing track since I lost track long ago, left matters behind, all but this body and mental bits caught in transit, which I keep in a small valise in a corner of my hippocampus: the shopping lists and scout records and posters and programs and licences and passports. Undeniably mine, just less significant than the Italian hilltop church whose steps I once climbed. They come from my sixty-eight years. Broke another tooth last week. The letter from Imogen was imprecise as to her plans. I keep checking the bridge, afraid I might miss her arrival.

  This morning the deck was silver in the low east light and there were footsteps in the dew, two sets, one leading south, the other north. Someone had left and returned or someone had come and gone away again. Other possibilities existed but they were meaningless.

  Every day we work together, Frank on his maps, I on these words. Can’t help ourselves. We walk side by side in silence around the garden wall. We meditate. We listen critically to the apprentice ringing the bell.

  “He is getting worse, not better,” he murmurs.

  “Have you seen Zhou Yiyuan?”

  “He is alive.”

  “Are you leaving?”

  “Are you?”

  “Not before she comes.”

  “And then?”

  “Not only am I afraid of going away, I’m afraid of anything new.”

  “How are you at bell ringing?”

  “No sense of rhythm.”

  “Gardening?”

  “Did you get the key?”

  “I told the television people not to film inside the grounds.”

  Thirty-two deaths have transformed this place. Overseers and government agents and ministers are a weekly occurrence. Battle fronts have been reconfigured and nights are quiet. This afternoon the TV crew built a track along the south bank of the river and ran their camera back and forth, its long lens like a machine gun, while men and women with phones stumbled up and down our paths, all vanishing into the forest at the director’s command.

  SPRING AT THE CROOK

  The crew have retreated for now, but the grasses by the river have been trampled flat. I’m looking for that word again, the word to describe the kind of writing that concerns a journey divided into episodes, increasingly outrageous, the rhythm creating a mounting intensity. I catch it then it’s gone. A Japanese word? Haibun? No. Spanish, of Moorish derivation, the journey through a desert, Spanish or North African. A dusty lane through flat brown country, days of boredom between vivid encounters. Closer. Don Quixote riding the latest model through ranks of giant metal windmills shrieking and whirling under the stark sun. All the locals thin and savage. Give it up. No, what is it? Serial going, with flair . . . Before we spread east and west, didn’t we surge north, a small band of us, from Africa, and what did we call that? The word, should I remember it, would tie where we came from to why we are here. Would listing our sympoms jog memory? Buying and selling, keeping accounts, pulling up stakes. Sleep, work, eat, spend, migrate. I can’t remember cash in the pocket and haven’t received payment for services, haven’t paid a single bill, and haven’t bought anything, not even a book, for a long time. All gone, the things acquired sold, the money given away, the last spent on travel. Acquisition is the perfect betrayal of childhood. Acquisition of money, the adult symptom, distinguishes adul
t from child, separates the trader from the hunter.

  The cure is a deep settling.

  Do the garden walls contain Africa? A swatch of Europe, tribal wars and Ethnic conflagration? Atlantic? Pacific?

  Relax. Easy. I think it begins with p.

  Frank lets out a long sigh and lifts his head from his latest map as if searching the sky. It’s almost evening and darkness, texture ahead of the thing itself, has slipped in from the east. He bends to add a quick line between his thumb and forefinger planted on the paper.

  JUNE

  YIN ENVELOPE

  ACROSS THE LAWN THEY COME, THE DOCTORS, in a small group, laughing and talking together and, amazing thing, the central figure, a tall man in a white shirt with an open collar, stops, and a tear rolls down his left cheek, then a second. He holds up his hands to mask his face. There is a word to describe this kind of waiting, but I can’t remember it, only the shape, like the double curve a child draws to suggest a bird in flight. The other word, the writing-journey word, is more alive, closer but still elusive. The doctor’s hands meet in prayer, in front of his throat.

  Our son walked past the flowering trees in Amsterdam, his shoulders squared in the steady rain, his figure getting smaller and smaller, the street impressionist greys and greens and pinks.

  LEG FIVE MILES

  I remember going to the store to buy milk early in the morning, crows calling across the alley, spring sun after a long winter, my bike gliding around potholes, cat on a sunny fence. That word, that word. It is French or Spanish. The journey broken up, the hero a fool with barely enough wit to be a rogue.

  The doctors make trails in the dewy grass. They are like children on a free day walking to the river, all but the tall serious man, their bodies too jazzed not to play. It begins almost certainly with p, the journey-word, and perhaps the waiting word begins with r.