Blog

And yet, thought David, the grim face before him had once turned skyward, on a spring night, telling him the names of the stars.

III.

T

HE other man, Ohara, was good, third-degree black. But finally his alertness wavered. He moved in unwarily,

and Seiichi Nakamura threw him with a foot sweep that drew approving hisses from the audience. Seeing his chance, Nakamura pounced, got control of Ohara from the waist down by sitting on him, and applied a strangle. Ohara tried to break it, but starving lungs betrayed him. He slapped the mat when he was just short of unconsciousness. Nakamura released him and squatted, waiting. Presently Ohara rose. So did the win­ner. They retied their belts and bowed to each other. The abbot, who was refereeing, murmured a few words which ended the match. The contestants sat down, closed their eyes, and for a while the room held nothing but meditation.

Nakamura had progressed beyond enjoying victory for its

own sake. He could still exult in the aesthetics of a perfect maneuver; what a delightful toy the human body is, when you know how to throw eighty struggling kilos ~irtistical1y through the air! But even that, he knew, was a spiritual weakness. Judo is more than a sport, it should be a means to an end:

ideally, a physical form of meditation upon the principles of Zen.

He wondered if he would ever attain that height. Rebel­liously, he wondered if anyone ever had, in actual practice, for more than a few moments anyhow . . . It was an unworthy thought. A wearer of the black belt in the fifth degree should at least have ceased inwardly barking at his betters. And now enough of all the personal. It was only his mind reflecting the tension of the contest, and tension was always the enemy. His mathematical training led him to visualize fields of force, and the human soul as a differential quantity dX—where X was a function of no one knew how many variables—which applied just enough, vanishingly small increments of action so that the great fields slid over each other and—Was this a desirable analogue? He must discuss it with the abbot sometime; it seemed too precise to reflect reality. For now he had better meditate upon one of the traditional paradoxes: consider the noise made by two hands clapping, and then the noise made by one hand clapping.

The abbot spoke another word. The several contestants on the mat bowed to him, rose, and went to the showers. The audience, yellow-robed monks and a motley group of towns­people, left their cushions and mingled cheerfully.

When Nakamura came out, his gi rolled under one arm, his short thick-set body clad in plain gray coveralls, he saw the abbot talking to Diomed Umfando, chief of the local Protector­ate garrison. He waited until they noticed him. Then he bowed and sucked in his breath respectfully.

“Ah,” said the abbot. “A most admirable performance to­night.”

“It was nothing, honorable sir,” said Nakamura.

“What did you . . . yes. Indeed. You are leaving tomorrow, are you not?”

“Yes, master. On the Southern Cross, the expedition to the dark star. It is uncertain how long I shall be away.” He

laughed self-deprecatingly, as politeness required. “It is al­ways possible that one does not return. May I humbly ask the honorable abbot that—”

“Of course,” said the old man. “Your wife and children shall always be under our protection, and your sons will be educated here if no better place can be found for them.” He smiled. “But who can doubt that the best pilot on Sarai will return as a conqueror?”

They exchanged ritual compliments. Nakamura went about saying good-by to various other friends. As he came to the door, he saw the tall blue-clad form of Captain Umfando. He bowed.

“I am walking back into town now,” said the officer, almost apologetically: “May I request the pleasure of your company?”

“If this unworthy person can offer even a moment’s distrac­tion to the noble captain?”

T

HEY left together. The dojo was part of the Buddhist monastery, which stood two or three kilometers out of the town called Susa. A road went through grainfields, an empty road now, for the spectators were still drinking tea under the abbot’s red roof. Nakamura and Umfando walked in silence for a while; the captain’s bodyguard shouldered their rifles and followed unobtrusively.