Part 14 (1/2)

He felt the rus.h.i.+ng of the wind in his face and hair. He heard the thrumming of the horse's hooves, felt the complex coordination of muscle, bone and tendon as the great creature carried him along on its back.

He opened his eyes, and almost pa.s.sed out, as the first wave of vertigo swept over him. The world rushed by in a blur of brown and green and blue.

The sense of rapid movement without a vehicle's intervening walls and floorboards turned Zilin's stomach upside down. As a child suffering with a high fever and uncontrollable shakes, he had vomited up the warm fish soup his mother had fed him. He had been old enough and aware enough through the gauzy layers of his illness to feel the shame at wasting the food that other members of the family had foregone for him.

Now, as he felt the nauseating contractions in his lower belly, he became terrified that he would do again as an adult what he had promised himself as a child he would never do a second time. His loss of face would be incalculable a and to a barbarian. It was unthinkable!

So he closed his eyes and prayed to Buddha to calm his tumbling innards enough to keep his gorge down. Toward this end as well he began to exert the power of his inner discipline. He concentrated on his inner core, seeking the place where his qi resided.

Zilin was not yet as well acquainted with the extraordinary power of his qi as he would be in the coming decades. It was still an essentially raw and primitive source over which he exerted only sporadic and limited control.

Now he made his connection to a place known as shuijing ban de xiao-lu, the crystal path. It was a place midway between the conscious and the unconscious mind, a place where contemplation couldwith experience and practicebe transformed into action, deed, positive strategy. It was a s.h.i.+ning field with a vantage point on the world akin to no other. From its heart one could discern the strategy of one's foes, formulate one's own strategy by a.s.sessing the whole rather than a series of disa.s.sociated pieces. Within the aura of shuijing ban de xiao-lu everything was seen to fit into everything else, the connections like glimmering skeins, illuminated by an inner-directed light. It was qi, intrinsic energy, but it was something more as well.

Without quite knowing how, Zilin reached out and gained the crystal path. Now he was no longer afraid. Rather, he was connected with the powerful beast beneath him; he could see it for what it was: a mighty engine.

He felt with all of his senses the superb coordination of this animal and its power became his. Zilin's eyes opened and his heart expanded to the elation such a swift pa.s.sage through the world could bring.

High atop the galloping stallion Zilin embraced the streaming foliage all about him. He flew with the plovers and skylarks as they raced just above the treetops, below fleecy scudding clouds. He bounded through forest pathways, an animal on the move. He was one with the universe.

Much later, they rested in a glade beside a sparkling stream where water spiders skidded and frogs watched from the indolent shade of overhanging ferns. The buzzing of the insects was thick, the sound somehow applying itself to the honeyed sunlight, lending it a heavy, aqueous quality.

At their backs, giant Jinyun Shan, the Red Silk Mountain, rose on long, steeply sloping ridges, hairy with growth. The peculiar scent of the tea plants, young green shoots not yet ready for the harvest, laced the air.

The horse was gone, back at its mundane but crucial labor for the Pu family. Still, they smelled its essence on them, a rich musk that wafted like perfume from a row of jasmine.

Ross Davies pulled out his silver case, lit a cigarette. He squinted as he stared out into the deep golden light that lay along the slopes like a carpet. ”One of these days,” he said, ”I must really give these up.” He smoked leisurely, truly enjoying it; Zilin knew that he never would quit.

”How is it,” Davies said, ”that you never ask questions? I ask questions all the time; that's what I was taught to do. This cigarette case was a present from my father, a kind of graduation present. He was the first person who taught me to ask questions. How do you learn anything if you don't ask questions?”

”Perhaps,” Zilin said gently, ”there are other ways to learn.” He watched an ant make its laborious way toward them. ”I do so by observation.”

”That's what I don't understand. In China, I've done my share of looking but I'm none the wiser for it. There are still so many things I can't fathom.”

”That may be because you look but you do not observe. The two are hardly the same.”

Davies sat up. ”How d'you mean?”

Zilin pointed. ”Take this ant, for example. What do you see?”

Davies shrugged, watching as the ant approached the line of his outstretched legs. It began to climb his trouser and he brushed it off. ”All I see is an annoying insect.”

”Now you must observe him, Mr. Davies. Watch him with your heart instead of with your eyes.”

”I haven't the vaguest idea what you mean by that.”

”If we were back in our courtyard at Number Fifty Zengjiayan, beginning our tai chi, you would not say that.”

”Mental discipline is one thing”

”Excuse me for interrupting, Mr. Davies,” Zilin said, ”but mental discipline is not merely for certain times in one's life. One does not turn it on and off like running water. Mental discipline must be employed at every moment if one is to take advantage of life.”

”But what does that have to do with an ant?”

”You see how it comes back from the tremendous blow you have dealt it?” Davies nodded and Zilin continued. ”Now it approaches the spot where it was defeated before. What does it do?”

”It climbs.”

”Yes, Mr. Davies. And without hesitation. To the ant, you are shan, the mountain. Imagine yourself climbing Jinyun Shan, Mr. Davies. Imagine further that you get to a certain spot and a storm of furious proportions throws you back down the mountainside. What will you do? Will you retreat? Or advance?”

”I'm a man, not an insect, s.h.i.+ tong zhi,” Davies said. ”I possess the ability to reason. This creature merely knows that it must go forward, even if that means being killed by some unknown force.” Here he reached out and, taking the ant between his thumb and forefinger, crushed it into dust.

”Ah, Mr. Davies,” Zilin shook his head, ”tell me how you can have so much love and compa.s.sion for the stallion you just rode, and yet have none for the ant you have destroyed.”

”How can an ant be useful to me?” Davies said.

”I see. That is your criterion for life and death.” Zilin stared at the American. ”Tell me, then, Mr. Davies. Would you kill me if you found that I was not going to be useful to you?”

”Don't be ridiculous!”

Zilin rose, ”It is not I who has been ridiculous, Mr. Davies.” He began to walk off.

Davies jumped up, came after him. ”I have offended you, s.h.i.+ tong zhi,” he said, ”Please excuse me, though I confess I have no idea what I have done.”

”That, I believe, is the heart of the matter.” Zilin stopped and contemplated the other. ”What is of concern to me is whether or not you can be made to learn.”

Davies bridled visibly. ”Like an animal.”

”Or, to be blunt, a barbarian. Quite correct, Mr. Davies.”

Davies blinked his large blue eyes. ”I suppose I should be offended.”

”Don't be. Most of my brethren believe that the faan gwai loh are without the ability to learn a that they can never become civilized.”

I see.

”No, Mr. Davies, I regret to say that you do not.” Zilin sighed. ”You speak without sufficient thought; you see without observing. In short, you go through life as if the world were your own private playground, taking this and that at will, at your own pleasure, as if there were no other consequences involved.

”You are here but this is not your land. You are an alien and you are unwanted. You are feared, hated, at times barely tolerated. I should not have to remind you of this. It is humiliating for both of us.”

Davies's boyish cheeks were flaming red and there was a look of pain and hurt in his eyes. ”d.a.m.n you,” he said. He was shaking with rage. ”You certainly are a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.”

Zilin said nothing. His ears took in the sounds of the birds twittering, insects humming, the wind ruffling the treetops. These were sweet sounds; they were the sounds of life.

In time he said, ”I meant what I said before. I think you can learn. I think, Mr. Davies, that you possess the ability to make your time in China constructive. This is, I believe, exceptionally rare in a Westerner, and I would give it the maximum amount of thought were I you.”

”But you're not me, s.h.i.+.” Davies's voice was strained with anger. He took out a sidearm from a hidden pocket. It was not particularly large but Zilin judged that its discharge would be lethal just the same. ”You could never know what it's like to be me; to be Caucasian. You've got yellow skin and slanted eyes and you talk a bunch of nonsensedangerous nonsense, if you go by what's said by some mighty powerful people back home.”

He c.o.c.ked the hammer of the gun. ”I could kill you now just as easily as I killed that ant. How do you like that for power?”

Zilin shook his head. ”What you present to me here is not power, Mr. Davies. It is force. The two are often confused and that is most often when lives are lost.”