A Year at River Mountain

by Michael Kenyon

  CENTRE OF THE SPINE

  We walk around the garden wall. Swim in the river, look out for whirlpools. Zhou Yiyuan has claimed Song Wei’s daughter; she is a nomad among nomads.

  CENTRAL PIVOT

  I crossed the bridge and walked the highway to the next village and thought of my sister last time I saw her, a strong solitary woman planting tomatoes under the huge cedars of her cottage, her restless past behind her. Dust flew up when trucks rumbled past. Heavy skies, black to the north, presaged rain.

  Once upon a time, when the four of us still slept under the same roof and I had just learned to drive and was out cruising at night, I picked up two girl hitchhikers. Spoke with the girl in the passenger seat beside me, a stranger. To find out later it was my sister. Back at the bridge a flash in the reeds caught my eye — jewel, tin, glass — and I tripped and fell to my knees. We’d carried on a conversation in the dark and I had not recognised her.

  Only what’s important. The bridge. A mother’s wishes for her children. Home. I crawled to the edge and looked down at the shining bone and wing of a bird snagged in the weeds, tugged by the current. A gap called Change between the body and the wing.

  SINEW CONTRACTION

  Past the spring shrine to North Gate. Dawn birds chattering and bathing. Returned to the courtyard for meditation, but couldn’t stay focussed. The routine and place shifting, dry and warm weather. Frank and Zhou Yiyuan trading places. I know what is adrift.

  “My energy is too great for working on others.”

  Frank passed without answering. Our exchange was antique and only gleamed briefly. A felt thing. A cloud through the forest.

  Before sleep, I gather in all the objects I brought with me, all I’ve collected since, a small hoard. I don’t know what to do with it. Friends. Bowls of tea. A dream the master dreamed.

  REACHING YANG

  Cancer, in the world since the beginning, rampant cells, Dad in the flow, Mum anxious on the bank. Waking up disrupted the dream and I leaned back and scanned the forest from the open shrine. No one.

  This afternoon session a leopard wandered the perimeter of our circle, pawed the garden wall, then leapt over. A hawk flew from the new well to the warrior tree. The cat was changing its life. The bird shrieked. Qi pulsed at my fingertips, fire, wood — a powerful surge between my fingers and the monk’s skin. Our lives quitting the west, quitting the east. The sky a ferocious blue bowl.

  SPIRIT TOWER

  Zhou Yiyuan assembled the monks behind the temple and invited the bell. The North Valley abbot led a chant.

  “There is not enough money to rebuild the storehouse,” Zhou Yiyuan said. “There are options, none easy. Businessmen would like to buy the land to build a lodge and retreat centre. These men are constructing a series of factories in North Valley.”

  The North Valley abbot looked round at the rest of us, embarrassed, pale. Thinner than when I saw him last fall.

  “They want you to move to the mountain,” Zhou continued. “They want to open the monastery to visitors. A few monks would remain. The shrines would be protected. The garden would be opened.” His fingers held the edges of his too-long sleeves. “They will finish the storehouse. They have promised that.” He looked at the abbot.

  “We must meditate on the possibilities,” said the abbot.

  SPIRIT PATH

  No sleep because of the heat, and the problems multiplying, and no rain yet. We wade into the river, soaking our robes several times a day. Meditate all afternoon. In the evening, I watch herons walking slowly across the garden’s shallow lake, back and forth, the light falling sideways, red from the western sky.

  My gut worse, the pain intense — life a list and gloss and letting go. Yet such clarity near the sealed garden in the open garden. A shift in my spirit. You are still with me, thanks for that. Not long now.

  Then fitful sleep, nonviable dust sifting to the bottom of things, nothing to fathom.

  BODY PILLAR

  She is coming. The crews have mysteriously vanished, replaced by birds in large white flocks, and tonight five fires are burning — the last of the villagers’ dwellings by the river — at this time of year a dangerous event. Acrid smoke everywhere. The fires refused to spread, despite the dryness and the heat, and they burned themselves out by morning.

  I took a path through the paddies to the abandoned storehouse to watch Zhou Yiyuan’s Warrior Tree Ceremony. Two women elders from the departing village linked hands; between them Zhou turned a complete circle, a dwarf between ordinary women, a child playing Blind Man’s Buff.

  Tock-tock of woodpeckers in the nut trees across the river. I was waiting for the year of waiting to catch a spark. He feels heavy though his heart is old bleached wood exposed to the summer sun. Nothing left to accomplish, but Imogen will come next week. Something still for you to witness.

  WAY OF HAPPINESS (KILN PATH)

  A circle. A square. A circle. A desk lost in brambles, priceless measuring instruments in the top drawer. Callipers, scale, meter, level. A book with uncut pages; I open the board: the frontispiece is a woodcut called Childhood.

  Silken movements, tracking the body’s twelve-part river, meridian by meridian, then holding Kiln Path, the hole below the first thoracic vertebra. This is the route back: retracing paths through winter to find the snow-covered entrance to the cave, crawling hind-first into an ice tunnel, through fall and out the other side to summer. Winter before winter, fall before fall.

  Please don’t let this be a false start to the mountain. What is mine? My ancestors’ birth dates, every day of the year? Anything else?

  Here’s a beautiful drinking glass and a few inches of golden liquid Dad blamed me for stealing. Blamed me for stealing the whisky and borrowing the car and returning it dirty. Half-jokes. The house was dark. It was just before dusk and I’d been out playing all day. The air gentle through the sheer curtains: summer rain on tarmac.

  “Don’t forget to be good,” Dad said. He was resting in his favourite chair.

  I was about to step into my own life. I needed to think, needed to work through a last few shapes, but there he was.

  GREAT HAMMER

  The river was once called Red. Red River, from the cinnabar leaching from the hill mines. Higher, it had a different name, the accounts vary — Snake, Rushing, Green — and toward the sea it was called Black because no light penetrated the high walls of the gorge. Old maps. But no one refers to it by name anymore. It is golden now, from the pollen that floats on its surface.

  I’m avoiding something. Some part of my life looming and not wanting to be named. When I close my eyes I see a perfect red half-open rose.

  MUTE GATE

  Rose in a narrow square glass vase. I was reading a script at the table and you were behind me. Then I was on stage, sweeping the kitchen floor, clumsy with my arm in a sling, and you were in front of me. (I broke it, remember, leaping from my front door.) My son once tried to piggyback my wife late one night just before bed. Step on a crack. My father showed me the high rose window setting the air on fire.

  I am waiting.

  Expecting cogs to engage through a shift in the orientation of my soul to simple gravity. What do I really possess? My poor teeth. Two whole arms. Feet on the ground. What is it about Imogen that draws me and promises transformation? She is a public figure (I was a public figure), a screen figure (I was a screen figure); she seeks depth of experience (I seek depth). We are English.

  I remember a film, years ago, sitting bolt upright in the communal dark, alive with lust and longing, staring at the screen, the air on fire. She was texture and light only, texture and light. Vancouver afterwards, grey buildings and wet sidewalks, seemed flimsy and tawdry, too complex and detailed. One rainy summer afternoon.

  Then recognising her in the little boat, led ashore by monks, green water streaming at her feet, summer clouds blowing north, one rainy summer afternoon, the whiteness of her skin and hair and dress, the sun haloing her — I could not push out a single word
, not even hello.

  WIND MANSION

  Closer! In the air, crossing water. Quick, what’s left to jettison? What do I possess? Could possessions be reduced to longing and uncertainty? As a child I waited for food, for Mum and the pussy-cat, night-night, sleep tight (the record still occupies a drawstring purse in the valise). I waited for my dad. I waited for adoration, acclamation. I waited for money and acceptance until I understood what they were good for. She is in the air now, crossing an ocean, flying toward the valley. Time and space wrestle like a couple of greased kids, one shy, one robust. I am waiting for grace and a flint. For picaresque to meet romance. Her foot on the bridge.

  I swam with Frank, old dear fool, and we drifted as usual, then he said this may be our last swim. Fractures in the bridge pilings, in the footings, visible now the river level was low. As we dried ourselves, he clapped for my attention, as if I was blind, then smiled and said: “Are you paying your best mind?” After dressing, we walked to the bridge, but did not cross. We stood in hot sun, listening to the water, to the voices of children.

  I was not able to sleep more than a few hours last night. Eating was out of the question. I went through the day’s routine in a state of extended awareness, even to the knowledge that many parts were engaged elsewhere. What to do with these fragments of a long life, inside the valley, outside the valley, these mazy squiggles? Delete the non-essential bits? How can we tell what doesn’t matter?

  Zhou Yiyuan touched my sleeve. “You remember when we met here?”

  I scuffed my feet against the rough fibres of the new bridge deck. I watched him raise his long arms into the air, heavy with pride. We stared into the murky water streaming past the pylons. The cracks in cement, stones working loose. Upstream, children were swimming in the pool where an hour earlier Frank and I also had felt the silk-cool water on our skin.

  When I fell, doubled over in pain, others gathered around me, the monks and villagers.

  “I’m okay. Fine. I’m fine.”

  Imogen is the single point, high above the earth; hers is a short path amid billions of stars. She is like you, her path like yours.

  Today, like all days, was built on ritual, prayer and chanting and long hands on bodies. Invisible parts were in flux, of course, waiting for a spark, waiting for flight. How much we regret losing our bodies’ beauty and youth and strength.

  Frank stood below us on the dock, his grey narrow face lopsided, lips curving, pointing.

  BRAIN’S DOOR

  The boy’s father again, down by the first bridge piling, as always distracted, smoking and looking off upstream, downstream, while no small boy plays quietly at his side. Whatever comes at him (monks, soldiers, double agents) will be spotted long before it arrives, because he did not know how to protect his son.

  Smoke from the offering fire, rippling shadow-lines of sun through trees in front of the cave, reminds me of the lighting design for a play I once was in: drunk farmers laughing and nudging one another and sharing cigarettes on one side of the stage, while on the other a projector threw light at a threadbare sheet hung between potted trees.

  I worked on two monks and discovered in each a shame, a sense of not deserving. One thought he was detestably ugly; the other believed he was too old to feel the passion he felt for a young monk.

  The monastery, its future uncertain, seems unmoored. The unbearable heat of the past two weeks has burst into rain and slow rivers of mud. Long tendrils of willow drag in the water. The valley wobbles and may vanish in the night. High on the mountain is a grey smoke smudge. Crews with shovels trench around the storehouse, pushing soft wet earth. Papers have been signed. Frank’s smile could mean anything. Zhou Yiyuan and the abbot entertain businessmen who come in private cars and stay a few hours, visiting the warrior tree and one shrine, before recrossing the bridge, their shoes caked with mud. Experts in lab coats are resorting and tagging the bones. An architect from the city is angry with the ditch crew. Shouts echo from on top of our hill. The bell keeps perfect time. The bus flashes by, windows crammed with faces. I count seventeen sky gods outraged by the forces working the margins.

  UNYIELDING SPACE

  She is here. Sleeping. Young skinny crows scream and scream.

  BEHIND THE CROWN

  Zhou Yiyuan and the abbot guide her around the damage and the rebuilding to the cave fire.

  In meditation I look for accidents to hurl us together.

  “The grass is heavy with seed,” Frank told me. “Go and sit inside her room.”

  HUNDRED MEETINGS

  A boy ran down the mountain path shouting, then he vanished in trees. Reappeared on top of our small hill, slight body charging the spring shrine. From the shadows of the temple, he emerged, wings flapping for arms. Storehouse workmen shaded their eyes to watch him fall to his knees by the well.

  He had a golden eagle.

  The valley quiet in the sun and steam.

  Down by the river, new migrants were bent over, ankle-deep in slime. Picking small objects from alluvium, they filled their bags.

  The door grated against stone and I stood watching her face, pale and slow against the brown pillow, streaming with bright summer light.

  “What is happening?” Her lashes raised, incandescent blue eyes on me, shadows tilting.

  “It is a boy.” I stepped into the green sunny hut.

  She smiled like a child. “You are still here.”

  We listened to voices laughing in high summer. “A boy has come down the mountain with an eagle. A golden eagle.”

  IN FRONT OF THE CROWN

  I sat at her side and watched her sleep. She is beautiful. We kneeled together and she allowed me to look into those blue eyes. I don’t know what mine were doing but there was mild apology in hers, and pleasure. The boy. The eagle. “I have been thinking,” she said. “I have been thinking about you all night.”

  FONTANEL MEETING

  I couldn’t contain myself as we swam in the river, Frank and I. We drifted and I watched Imogen pause on the bridge. This was the culmination. Trees and river were green phenomena, ceiling blue-and-white trompe l’oeul. A steady breeze supported squadrons of iridescent turquoise dragonflies; shadows flickered on bleached river grasses; seedheads burst against the sky.

  She stood still, fingers on the rail, on a high platform; new lines round her small mouth.

  Our play beginning.

  Water gently dripped into the glossy river from Frank’s sunburned hands as he held them out for balance.

  “She’s on the bridge, Frank, looking along the river, and she can’t see us.”

  His whole face opened, a kingfisher’s quick passage. “Now what will you do?”

  Accumulations of human seasons dispersed into summer dark.

  UPPER STAR

  The boy sat on a long white stone near the old well, holding a feather. I saw him and crossed from the warrior tree through the ripening plums, to his side. White ash whirled like snow. Ruined books and prints were burning, the texts of our work. Salvaged documents were to be moved by stages to a city vault.

  One moment the boy was wrestling the eagle, the next he saw his dad fall. They’d been climbing the mountain for two days, crossing to a safe place. His dad had heard there was work north; cities were being built.

  “The eagle attacked him.” The boy mimed wingspread, talons.

  All set to go home, the little pain in my side hot, wind rustling the flags, the birds singing, the bell and machines chatting. As soon as I raised my arm, the grieving spy joined us.

  No need to go on. There is no reason to stop. A new moon and the monastery at night is still, with Imogen asleep in its grounds. If she’s the river, I’m the valley, and she’s the boy on the mountain. If I’m a patient, we are actors, and nothing if not adaptive. Skirt the crumbling cliff, go further into chaos; for now the ground feels solid. Our lives overlap.

  And then through vast darkness I staggered up the mountain and stared down at the valley where she slept, a snug earthwor
m, heart of centuries. My son would arrive with his own son and see the new storehouse, the monastery, incomplete, and tell me what was whole, what was a fragment. We were his fragments! Monastery, mountain and river. From the ridge, through the trees I could see a light dancing at the edge of the west plum border.

  The nut grove above the river was where we met, in the flattened grass where deer had slept, mist a tongue over water, the sun just risen. She greeted Zhou Yiyuan, who kept glancing up at her face as he showed her the battle sites, and then faded away. Inkling of “nut grove.” Inkling of “the two of us.” And a jasmine vine.

  She was restless, then calm, then up to pluck a bud. “My last film was a failure. Never accept roles like that!”

  She fell on her back, her forehead troubled. Sun climbed into the clearing.

  My finger, heavy, hovered over Sanjiao-3, wood-fire, shu-stream. Her belly opened. The heart’s minister, Zhongzhu, abandoned Central Islet; scarlet robes flickered through the trees.

  The doctors cross their lawn. So I’m free to go.

  I followed her along the smooth track through a tangle of vines back to the river.

  Next morning she led me past shrines and battle sites to the green nut grove, our brief settlement, cathedral of buzzing bees, to Mum and Dad, my sister and her child. My son’s cry never woke me; my wife always heard him; she always heard his cry. But now I hear him, if only a word, and the river, the cave, the grass, sun, reed bed, the bamboo spirit, Imogen, everything slips away. Clouds race the day-moon.

  SPIRIT COURTYARD

  Song Wei and Frank fly away, low over River Temple and Mound Bell, through the North Gate

  WHITE CREVICE

  and up to North Pass and nameless darkness. “Not so strange,” she whispered.

  HALL OF IMPRESSION

  Fresh paths filling with leaves again, too quickly for a monk to sweep. My old broom’s settled high between two tangled stems of the jasmine vine. Why not cast all this as high as I can one last time before I leave? Stop work and listen to the bell ringing the end of the summer day?