The Sword of Heaven

by Mikkel Aaland

If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away,

  There’ll be no one to save, with the world in a grave.

  Take a look around you, boy, it’s bound to scare you, boy.

  An’ you tell me, over and over and over again, my friend,

  Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.

  —“The Eve of Destruction” sung by Barry McGuire, 1965’s number one song (P. F. Sloan)

  Juan Li, with his usual good timing, was waiting for me in San Francisco. He was visiting from Oaxaca, Mexico, where he now lived. Donna had told him my schedule, and he had postponed his return trip so we could get together. We met a day after I returned, at Donna’s spacious loft in the old Sears and Roebuck building.

  I sank exhausted into the couch. Donna, after talking with us briefly, excused herself to another part of the loft that had once contained the former department store’s garden and tool department. She had paintings to complete, and she’d already heard an account of my travels. She also knew I needed time alone with Juan Li, who, unlike Kazz, always seemed able to answer my questions.

  After she left, I immediately told Juan about the death threats, the tornado in Florida, the fear I experienced in the Philippines, and the frightening sword-waving scene I had just witnessed in Japan. I told him how I had refused the money the teacher offered me, but readily accepted the four gods Kazz had asked me to take back to San Francisco.

  Juan Li smiled. “They never offered me money.”

  “Made me feel like a mercenary or something,” I responded.

  “The group has money, you know. I’m sure they help Kazz.”

  “Not that I couldn’t use it,” I said. “But with my doubts about everything it just wouldn’t be right.”

  “But you accepted four more gods?” he asked.

  “Don’t ask me to explain. I also accepted this.”

  I handed Juan a small package. It contained a pair of miniature swords, not much bigger than kitchen knives. They were exact replicas of the original Sword of Heaven. Kazz had commissioned a famous sword maker to make three: one for him, one for Juan, and one for me. Juan handled the package carefully, clearly impressed with the gift.

  “How is my old friend Kazz?” he asked. “I haven’t heard from him in months.”

  “He seems fine,” I answered. “Drives me crazy with his inscrutable act. But I’m almost used to it.”

  Juan looked thoughtful. “When I first met Kazz he was very impatient. He was also full of pride and ego. I always felt that the teacher gave Kazz the task of placing the gods to help mold his personality.”

  “He has definitely mellowed since I first met him,” I said.

  “Sounds like the project has taken some of the edge off him,” Juan continued after a few moments. “Polished him. Given him a sense of purpose and a larger view of the world.”

  “What about you?” I asked Juan. “What are you getting out of this project?”

  He hesitated.

  In the silence I realized that if Juan had any emotional confusion or doubts about the Shinto project, he never showed them. His interest seemed more theological or intellectual.

  His belated response confirmed my impression: “I’m very interested in Shinto. It’s the last great Eastern religion to be closely examined by the West. I also like that Shinto demands respect for nature.…”

  “Nothing personal then, eh?” I asked.

  “Not like you.” As he grinned, I saw in him a confident, older brother, getting pleasure from watching me and Kazz and others grow through our struggles.

  “Before I forget,” Juan added quickly, “I need one of the gods. A friend—an American Indian—wants to take one to New Mexico, to the Trinity site where they tested the first A-bomb. I promised him one.”

  “Sure. It’s yours. They’re all yours if you want.”

  Juan declined, saying he didn’t have room in his luggage and that he would write if he planned on traveling somewhere where one was needed. I agreed to send the god to his friend.

  Just then I felt the floor beneath my feet vibrate. Juan looked concerned.

  “Don’t worry, it’s not an earthquake,” I said laughing. “This building sits on top of a BART tunnel. A train just passed underneath.”

  When I first started seeing Donna, there were other noises as well. Her loft was on the corner of two of the busiest streets in the city, Army and Mission. The sounds from cars honking, tires squealing, boom boxes blasting, and late-night reverie filled the bedroom until I bought -inch Plexiglas sheets and covered the windows. Even then, I couldn’t really get a good night’s sleep unless we stayed at my house, which was nearby but close to a quiet park. Donna had a higher tolerance for chaotic surroundings, and her indifference to noise was becoming an issue for me.

  The vibration stopped and I asked Juan, “So what do you think of the tornado after the placing in Florida? Coincidence? Why the deaths, the violence?”

  “You’ve tried acupuncture?” he responded.

  “After the car accident, to relieve the swelling in my wrist. It worked great.”

  “The Chinese believe that there are channels of energy crisscrossing the earth, much like in the human body. They call them dragon veins. Well, think of the sword as an acupuncture needle, and you hit one powerful vein. Recovery isn’t always pretty.”

  “And the Philippines?”

  “The project does seem to have a mind of its own, doesn’t it?” Juan said. “Who knows what that boy was thinking? Maybe he thought you were planting a listening device for the military island. Or maybe he is deathly afraid of the Japanese. Or…” his voice trailed off. “The Filipinos are a superstitious lot. Maybe he felt what you were doing and it scared him. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Don’t worry about it!” I cried. “I could get hurt.”

  Juan looked puzzled at my strong reaction. “Okay,” he said, “What do you think?”

  “I have no idea. But I’m going crazy thinking about it. I even considered bad spirits.”

  “Bad spirits? Oh, I remember, Kazz’s warning. But I thought you didn’t believe in them.”

  “I didn’t use to,” I said.

  Juan looked amused.

  Exasperated, I added,“But strange things keep happening.”

  I recounted to Juan my experience in the bomb shelter just before I tried to place a god at the Lab and my resulting ambivalence, and the storm on Mount Shasta.

  “And now you suspect bad spirits?”

  I shrugged.

  “That’s what the teacher said,” I said finally. “But I don’t know what I believe. When you first told me about the project, you told me the Sword of Heaven was broken. I liked the idea—swords into plowshares, that sort of thing. But I didn’t get it right, did I? The opposite was true. Each piece, each god, represents another complete sword, doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” Juan said.

  “And now there are many more swords engaged in a battle, right? That’s not very peaceful.”

  “No one is getting hurt, though,” Juan answered. “Unless you consider what happened in Florida.”

  “I always thought of Eastern religions as monks in quiet meditation, impervious to what was happening around them. Contained in their own world.”

  “Not Shinto,” replied Juan. “You’ve certainly heard that Japan is full of artists and warriors, haven’t you?”

  “Samurai stuff. Yeah. It’s a cliché by now.”

  “But there’s a lot of truth in it. They’ve really developed the warrior mentality. It’s been translated into ‘aggressive marketing’ in the modern world. Never resting. Always marching forward. Action.”

  “Fighting for peace never made sense to me,” I replied.

  “But it’s all done ritualistically!” laughed Juan.“It’s all about mental discipline. It’s an art to train the mind to respond in an active, positive way to events. The warrior energy gets things done. Think of Joan of Arc, think of Jesus in the Temple with
the money changers. It’s an energy that you access. It doesn’t control you. You control it. There is nothing wrong with warrior energy when it’s used consciously. It’s only when it’s not that all sorts of evil things result.”

  “Like during World War II. The atrocities in China, in Manchuria—the Japanese have a tendency to get out of control, don’t they?”

  “Could be, yeah.”

  I looked out the window for a minute. It was true: this aspect of the Japanese had bothered me from the beginning. They seemed to be perpetually in motion, like an engine stuck on full steam ahead. When did they stop to reflect?

  Then I said to Juan Li: “Maybe that’s why the teacher was so impressed with Jesus when he met him.”

  Juan looked confused, and I told him about the teacher meeting Christ and hearing about the “great love.”

  “He was so impressed,” I repeated.

  “Strange that it would seem so radical to him. Shinto isn’t only about swords and action, you know.”

  “I know, the teacher told me about the mirror and the jewel. The mirror symbolizes self-knowledge; the jewel, compassion. But I’m telling you, the idea of universal love spoke powerfully to him.”

  Juan laughed. “I just had a thought. Japan needs to learn about this kind of love, and you need to learn about the warrior.”

  I slumped into the couch, my mind elsewhere. “Growing up in suburbia, with a scientist father, hardly prepared me for all of this. It’s such a stretch.”

  “If you stretch too fast, you’ll hurt yourself. Sounds like you need some time out.”

  I agreed, at the same time motioning in Donna’s direction. “Donna and I have friends in New York who want to sublet us their studio during the winter. She’s always wanted to try New York. It would be good to get away.”

  “New York!” Juan’s eyes gleamed. “I’ve lived there. Yes, go there. Maybe it will give you the perspective you need.”

  Although I didn’t feel completely decided, I grabbed onto Juan Li’s encouragement in much the same way I soaked up the teacher’s advice on my first visit to Japan. I craved direction, and perhaps the move could give me that.

  chapter 13

  A view from our East Village loft.

  During the winter of 1986 the space shuttle Challenger exploded, showering the Atlantic with pieces of metal and flesh and the optimism and dreams of a generation. On the other side of the world, in another explosion, Chernobyl began to rain radioactivity over central and northern Europe.

  In the Philippines, at the end of February, nine months after I placed a god there, dictator Ferdinand Marcos was ousted in a peaceful democratic election, which brought the populist leader Corazon Aquino to power. For the first time, I saw a connection between the Sword of Heaven and a peaceful world event.

  I had arrived in Manhattan on the last day of 1985. Donna had flown out a few weeks earlier while I had crossed the country alone in a Mercury Marquis drive-away filled with my camera equipment, computer, and all the other things I needed to continue my freelance business in New York. On Juan Li’s suggestion I had brought along one of the three remaining Shinto gods in my possession. While it was possible but unlikely that I would have the opportunity to personally place the god, I figured that Juan or someone else might need it. I drove across Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and the Southeast to avoid the frozen north, and five days after I left my home in San Francisco, I crossed the Holland Tunnel onto the island.

  Following Donna’s directions, I drove to 390 East Sixth Street. It was immediately apparent to me that this was not a great neighborhood. Police were on every corner, slapping themselves vigorously to keep away the cold. Yellow street-lights illuminated cheap tenement housing in varying degrees of decay. Incongruously I also saw newly built condos with such pretentious statements engraved in the facades as “Built in 1984.” Everywhere I looked there were condemned houses and vacant lots.

  After I parked the travel-soiled car, one of the policemen strolled over, noticed the California plates and then peered into the packed car. He said that I shouldn’t stay long, that if I hadn’t noticed this wasn’t a safe area. I pointed across the street to a four-story building and said,“That’s my new home.” He looked at the low, rusty iron fence, at the glassless windows protected by iron grates, at the piles of garbage and the loose brick surrounding the building. Then he looked back at me and shook his head.

  At that moment Donna poked her head through the steel-reinforced double door, waved, and yelled nervously that we should get my things inside quickly. The amused policeman watched as we toted all my valuable equipment across the street and into the building.

  “We’re on the fourth floor,” Donna said. “No elevator.”

  I looked back to the car and watched the policeman walk back to his corner. A head appeared at an apartment window across the street, then quickly disappeared. Someone shouted in Spanish.

  Inside, a single bulb barely lit the four flights of stairs. Linoleum peeled from the floor, and the smell of heating fuel was everywhere.

  “The first floor is a social service agency for battered women and family counseling,” Donna said as we dragged my stuff up the wide stairs. “The women who run the program are gone for the holidays.”

  On the dimly lit landing of the second floor, a huge man appeared. I took a deep breath. Donna greeted him by name and introduced me as her friend. “Bo” gripped my hand with a bear-sized palm and said, “Hi, blondie,” with a grin. Glancing past him through the open door, I saw a pool table and a Ping-Pong table. Bo, it turned out, ran the New Life after-school program for neighborhood children. On a normal day, the place would be packed. Bo locked the door and carried his heavy frame down the stairs, wishing us a Happy New Year as he went.

  “Don’t talk with anyone on the third floor,” Donna whispered as we continued up. The third floor was a halfway house run by the Lower East Side Church, which also rented a room downstairs near the social services offices to use for Sunday worship. As we walked quietly past the third floor, I caught the scent of marijuana. Then someone cried out in a loud, piercing voice, “Ziggy! Ziggy!” A voice screeched back in answer, a voice that only could have come from living too long in places where no one listened. I cringed. What a hungry voice!

  “Come on,” Donna said, “let’s get out of here. These guys give me the creeps.”

  Our loft was nearly as big as a basketball court, with windows that looked out to four breathtaking views of Manhattan. From one window I could see the Empire State Building, its top lit with green lights to celebrate the season. Visible out the back was the Hudson river and the Williamsburg Bridge. Donna had divided the space. The walls on her side were bare so that she could hang her paintings. On my side was a long table which I could use as a desk and to organize my photographic prints and slides. I set up my computer and then rested a picture of Mount Shasta against it. Donna’s friends had left behind all the amenities we needed to make the loft quite livable including cooking utensils, a stereo, two televisions, and several phones.

  After the holidays there weren’t as many police prowling the streets, but behind the steel door, at the top of four flights of stairs, we felt relatively safe. At first it seemed easy to forget the outside world. We got along with the building’s other occupants, except for those on the third floor, whom we tried to ignore. Donna painted and spent countless hours visiting art galleries and museums. Her work, I noticed, was turning from harsh black-and-white images to paintings with softer, more sensual shapes and even color. She was able, it seemed, to create some peace in the middle of the crazy city. I spent my time on the phone arranging meetings with art directors and magazine editors, trying to hustle work.

  Outside our loft, however, was a war zone. Broken glass sprinkled the street, and there were random signs of violence everywhere. Mutilating phones was a particularly popular activity, and I saw lots of bashed receivers with wires dangling from the black plastic handles. One day I walked past at least fi
fteen police cars converged on a group of five or six teenagers, and that night the evening news reported it as the largest crack bust in U.S. history.

  A month after I arrived, the armored front door downstairs was torn off its hinges. The people on the third floor blamed the people on the second floor, who in turn blamed the people on the third. Whoever did it must have been desperate to get in because the door was solid steel. The damage amounted to $2,000, and the absentee landlord was in no hurry to repair it.

  Without the front door, the outside world rushed in. The third floor went from a halfway house to a flop house. The hungry screams of Ziggy grew as he tried to control his new friends. To get to the fourth floor, I regularly stepped over unconscious drunks and around ranting crack addicts.

  Even the house groaned under the new load. Inside our loft, particularly on a cold day, the radiator pipes began to rattle like an engine ready to die. As if this weren’t enough, demolition crews moved into the neighborhood. During breaks in the winter storms, huge cranes with steel bashing balls pounded condemned houses into rubble, making room for new buildings. When they were finished, the pile drivers arrived. Our building shook with the tremors as walls of brick crashed to the frozen ground and pile drivers pounded away. It was impossible to make phone calls during business hours, and finding work proved nearly impossible.

  “Donna, this is the worst,” I said one day in despair.

  “We can’t leave. What about Steve and Sheila’s stuff?”

  “The city is falling apart. I can’t stand it.”

  “It’s not the city; it’s here, this house, this neighborhood.”

  “It feels like the entire city.”

  “I don’t know what to do. Maybe you should try not to take it so personally.”

  “Right,” I answered sarcastically. I was hating New York. Nothing could have been further from my protective childhood bomb shelter than our fourth story loft, exposed to all the violence and noise of the city. I felt tremendously vulnerable and at my wit’s end. I felt as though I were on a ship that had just sprung a huge leak and I was drowning along with everyone else.