12. The shock

 

HIRO walked between the stones which had rolled with the ices of the brook behind the Western palisades. It was already the night. One night with a moon round like a hilarious Mongol face. The one who was a little stupid and who helped for the cooking, sang. But this time he did not make laugh the Master cook who came back from the Temple with the empty soup bowl. He has placed the container close to the sinks of stone and he remained one moment thus, motionless so much that the aids keep silent. They were not accustomed to seeing him interrogative, like undecided.

It is true that fear lived his belly. He was not afraid. Only fear.

Then he turned over and went directly to the door of behind which gave on the reserves. He pushed it in a movement of the shoulder which said his rising anger. The monks have waited for the door to be closed by the weight of the wind to look at each other. But they did not say anything. A force has been on the monastery since yesterday. Since the Master was seen in the mountains with the one who pulled the sledge.

 

The old monk crossed the courtyard of the reserves and pushed the door of the bottom which went to the gardens. The sharp wind took him at the chest and he shivered. He did not close his hood. He was satisfied to breathe in the flesh which said their cold and he reached the Western palisade at the end of the vegetable plot. The earth was frozen. It transmitted the noise of the paces. He did not seek to deaden the noise. On the contrary. It had to show noise to the Universe because what he had seen in the eyes of the one who was lying, turned him upside down deep inside. He knew these eyes there a long time, very a long time ago. Well before he meets the one who was going to become the ROSHI.

These were then eyes in skulls which covered their veins because there was no more flesh on these bones. It was moving eyes which followed you with the interest of the one who knows that nothing of good can come from the other and that this one will again do harm to him, like the others have already made. These were eyes of those who do not hope for anything anymore. Not even the death because the death did not want them and they do not know anything anymore except the abandonment of the life. As if this latter had forgotten them. However they remembered that this had existed and it was that their suffering because they did not understand why they were there. They did not know anymore. It was as a wrench which had divided the life in two. There was the before and the after. But the after, they did not know how it had arrived and they did not ask it anymore because the memory had its limits and these limits one had made them cross them. To make experiments. For experiments of the possibilities of the retreat of the life under the force of death.

He had believed that he had forgotten. He had thought that these forty years with the ROSHI had washed his memory and he was once again confronted with it with an acuity which made it present in the moment.

It was as if he was fifty years back. When he came down from his mount and that he is progressed towards the barricades. They were there and they did not say anything. They looked at him approaching, the reins of his horse in the left hand, the right near his weapon in the belt.

They did not move when he was one the other side of the grids. However, he touched them with his hands these bloody barricades! He held them so strongly that he started to howl while shaking them like a frenzied one. He has howled that one comes to screw up these cages for men! He howled while shaking the scraps and his hands put red on the rust.

His companions came while shouting and howling. They gave each other courage. They had jumped of their nasty horses and they did not even look at where they were going feeling free of their master.

His companions have come towards him and have shaken the wire fences. They have howled with terror, the eyes stared at those who were on the other side and which did not say anything. Those there looked at. They looked at as they have done it since the memory of “before” had left their forehead and that they did not remember anymore why they were there. They only knew that breathing is done one after the other because there is no means to do some other way.

Then HIRO has howled orders which he does not remember anymore. He has howled and his companions have rushed at the doors.

Now the doors were open. There was nothing anymore. Except those who remained their hands fixed on the rusted grids because it is thus they have been since moons and that they did not know anything else anymore.

HIRO started to run in the hollow path full of stones which were going to hurt his feet. He had removed his clogs close to the brook. It was necessary that he was barefoot to find the Earth that the look of The One who was lying had withdrawn to him in one instant.

 

Because this one there who opened the eyes, he has looked around him. He has felt the odor of the men, the presence of the life. Then he has placed the look on the two old men above him. He has scanned them. He has plunged into the deepest of their orbits and it is there that HIRO received the nightmarish sight of his past. That one there looked at him with the same peace as the others. Fifty years ago!

Because that one there who looked at them as if the Master it was him, as if one could not make him reconsider his decisions and his choices. HE stared at them with the arrogance of The One who knows that one will not make him bend. And that he says it in the flame hidden at the bottom of the osseous cavities of his skull. And that he says it with a crumpling of the eyebrows which would make become furious insane a torturer who would have only the will to lacerate the flesh to put an end to this smile there.

But at the very bottom of this gleam of arrogance of the one who knows himself being the strongest, there was the small black flame which was old of fifty years. There was this flame which looks without quivering but which says “Again!”.

 

Then HIRO has diverted his eyes from this look there which did not bat an eyelid. He has been unable to raise the face towards his old companion. The ROSHI did not retain him. He has followed the sounds of the heavy paces of the master cook who went towards the door of the temple. He heard him on the way picking up the soup bowl on the small table. The Master left him with his loneliness. Him, he had seen the “Again!” of his son. But him, he is the Master and he knew already. He has not protected this body there of his own body for nothing!

Then, him, the Master, the ROSHI of the very dreaded Family SHIN, he knew that the one who came now behind him knew even more than him about the suffering of the men. But he will know even more closely the movement of healing to be implemented in these degenerated times.

- But me, I must teach you how to love again the life, my son, he muttered.

 

 

The young man had followed the departure of HIRO. The old Master observed him behind his half open eyes in the half-light of the temple.

He has seen that the one who was so young, had not lost a single movement of the cook. He has seen him closing the eyes when the half-light took possession of the silhouette of HIRO and he has followed him with the sounds.

Thus that one there knew the force of the attention in all its forms! He could not be some other way. The Gods cannot be mistaken. That one there was a Great. But he had to be brought back to the will of the life. Because his eyes did not say anything of this desire. There was at the bottom of the orbits this black flame which had made flee HIRO. His old companion has never spoken to him about this period of his life. But he is the Master and the Master knows what one hides to him.

He has seen the flame of the death and of its abandonment.

He had thus well known. There was well a man whom the men have decided to kill. Not only one man who wants to die.

And this observation made ascend a heat in his heart which radiated in the eyes. Mist had to be placed there. But he did not make it leave with a back of the palm because the one lying stared at him now. He must not see his emotion.

Then he spoke in his language at him because he did not know which the language of his son was.

- You come back from far, Little…. But now, do not fear anything, we will take care of you.

He said words without continuation. He has spoken about HIRO, the cook and healer doctor of the monastery which had left because he had had a great sorrow to see that his first new look on the world is the one of violence. He has said on the monastery and the mountains. That he did not fear anything here.

 

Then the words left his throat and were not carry anymore in the air. The sounds felt silent. They remained those of the silence and the wind against the doors. There were the words of the statues around. Of those of gilded wood above them.

But there was the silence of the one who remained on the back, the arms along the flanks. There were the eyes of that one and these eyes there did not follow the words but their sound as soon as it was born in the belly of the one who spoke.

When the old man realized this look there, he has continued the words and the sounds. But his belly felt heat. It was the one of the eyes of the young man who penetrated. They were going to seek the sounds and their origin.

He understood what he said to him!

 

Then the old ROSHI continued the words and the sounds knowing that the young man captured them at the beginning and he concentrated on the flexible heat which started to radiate in his belly. The young man was scanning him. The old man would have cried of joy! But at this one there one must not show his wonderment on his exceptional capacities. At this one there it was necessary to hide that he was respected from the first look because this one there had already received a divine teaching.

And the ROSHI has had confirmation of it while following the heat which slipped on his bones. He went until there with his look! He had to close the eyes. The feeling became too strong. His son was making enter in him the force of the Illumination to test him. He wanted to know if there was Recognition!

 

 

Then the old man lifted up the shoulders and crossed his thighs on his round cushion. His son took him between the two eyes and made go down the radiant Force by the front part of his belly. The ROSHI did not need to push downwards. His son took care of it.

Then, it was the lapse of memory of the space and the place. The lava flow in fusion flowed on him and once again he received the bag of kindness and of vision. He did not seek anything anymore because nothing else was possible now.

He forgot the one who had just provoked intentionally this state. To test him. To know if he recognized.

Because this one there had recognized the root of his words and he had gone immediately further. At the Source.

 

The old man seized by the sight of the fundamental kindness escaped at the time and the place.

He did not see the young man sitting up and sitting down against the thigh of the statue of the compassion. He did not see the broad hand slipping on the gilded wood, nor the eyes to go up towards the bushy eyebrows of the divinity

He did not see the smile being born on the thin lips. He would however have been happy. It was a smile curiously similar to his. A stretching of the lips on the cheeks to reach the ears and which did not discover the teeth.

 

The young man started to breathe gently. He stared at the motionless old man with an eye, sitting in lotus on his cushion and the hands joined on the top of his thighs.

Then he stretched the hand towards the ROSHI and he made the flat palm going down from the eyes towards the belly, at some fingers of the body. He inspected the energy. He captured his origin.

Then he smiled more largely and this time his eyes took part in it. There was tenderness in these eyes. They looked at the old body in meditation as a grandfather would take care of his grandson.

 

The old man returned gently to the conscience of the space around him. It was at each time also beautiful. Nothing among the men could compete with this perception. It was there when the remainder ceased. It does not have past and it is the last and ultimate refuge of the man. The one that he is looking for so much and which however he has within easy reach because nothing is hidden. It is him who does not want to see.

He cannot. But how this one who is his son now knows this beauty there? He makes more than knowing. He handles it as a Master!

 

The old man asks himself these questions. Rather these questions come all alone, quietly, in the return among the space of the look of the men because this space there he did not leave it. He has only seen it differently.

 

Then, thus, this young fellow there knows this Power! He knows how to handle it and to insert it in a hard nut to crack such as him, the old ROSHI! Hum! that will not be a piece of cake to deal with the terrestrial education of this young fellow. Worse than the scale he will be, with such knowledge of the Heaven and of its Forces which obey to him. Moreover, it is already certain, to see him looking at the old rind that I am as a cat observes the mouse. Of course that he is taking me for a little mouse smarter than the others, this one there who eyes me up while smiling. Hum, You will see, my son! It is pointless to lean you nonchalantly on the thigh of the statue, it is not to an old monkey in my kind that you will learn how to make funny faces! Hold, you are strong, and I recognize it. Nobody yet has sent me the Illumination between the gums to test me. Bravo, son! But do not forget that I am the Father of this place and now your father what’s more. Then, if you believe to impress me and make me forget my duties of teacher, I believe well that you’ve got it all wrong, my son.

 

- Would you be a little less idiot than the others, says suddenly the young man.

He had hardly opened the mouth. Just a thin airflow between the lips. However the words had touched.

The voice had a deep tonality, a little slow. One felt it leaving the throat reticently because in this throat it had not been born. It came from the belly and even beyond. The old man realized that as soon as the breath went up in the throat and well before the sound is transmitted in the space after the lips.

Also the sound did not surprise him. The voice either. It is this roughness that he waited for. It carries well. Clear.

It was the words which have surprised him. Words which he has understood, the old man. He did not think of remembering this language that he heard a long ago. Thus this man came from there! From so far.

But by all the Kamis of the mountain, what a vocabulary! It will be necessary to call him to order this young cock.

- I am the ROSHI of this monastery, says calmly the old man while sitting up straight himself. He stared at the young man right in the eyes by adding to it the force coming from his belly which he pushed while expiring on the words.

In front of this force, one had always bent oneself. But not this young cock who continued to smile with mischievousness on the lips. Of course, he could have little thicker lips, this young fellow. He is not beautiful and he does not smell good as it is, if in addition one must support the irony on the thin and scorning lips, it will be worse than hell!

- Thus something like the prick chief of a long string of incredulous idiots, whispers the young man.

The smile widened on his lips and these last ones half-opened on the pointed teeth.

Hum! What’s more he has teeth of shark. Hey, by all the Gods of the Universe, You are quite certain that you were not mistaken?

- No, my son…. On a handle of humans who seeks the truth of their being, answered the ROSHI by smiling him too.

With such a demon, not possible to oppose the force to his force. He would be able to be nourished from it. Then, better to make a good impression. It is necessary not to forget that he is now my son. But by the Kamis, what a foul temper which takes shape there!

- Your son? ….

He frowned and sat up straight against the thigh of the statue. His eyes threw already flashes for the combat.

The old man knew then that this man there was also a frightening combatant. To see his right foot which returned on him to take support, the left leg already ready to sweep the air in front of him.

- Yes, my son. It is thus that the Tradition wants it because I have saved you from the death of the men and now you owe me obedience.

- I owe nothing to you, old wrinkled man not beautiful! belched the young man…. You saved me. Of what? I have asked you nothing, old senile who stinks and this was not the best thing that you have done! So, for the recognition, fuck off! …. Hey, you believe may be that a man like me will accept one bald and very wrinkled and stinking old man like you like Father. Hey!

 

The old man listened like a mother does it of her child in anger.

- Yes, young man…. You are now my son and I must educate you according to the Tradition.

He gently leant the head on his right shoulder. He had folded up his left leg under him, ready to leap up in the event of attack. Because that one there was capable to strike him and he knew it.

 

The young man breathed gently and the old man was filled with wonder at the fluidity of this breathing. It indicated an enormous control of oneself. This breath ascended from the belly and was going to feed all the centers of energy before passing the lips and mixing with the space. The old man was happy but he could not say it. His son was great among the Greats. The oldest of the combatants whom he trained in this monastery were not yet able to have this breathing. Not so fluid.

Then, the old man relaxed himself. This man there will never lose the control of himself. This is a cold. A steel man and quite insane the one who goes on appearances. That one there is a brain. The Gods could not be mistaken.

- You can kill me if you want, he says…. You can. You have the powers and the knowledges of them…. But afterwards, will you be able to better act among the men?

- I do not want of men, howls the young man while sitting up straight.

He had raised the buttocks of the parquet and his heels came under him. The old man followed the movement. Both of them had the body leaning slightly ahead.

- You cannot make some other way, blew the old man in the space in front of him.

- I know well, worn out old man not beautiful, belched the young man.

- So, what do want you to do now? …. I’ll do a deal with you. Stay here the time of five full moons. In any case it is necessary for you to hide. I will teach you what I know and you after you will do what you want.

 

The young man made a grimace which was about making laugh the old man but this one was prohibited by the circumstances.

They had said words. The air had received words. But it is not what they said. The young man has permanently tested the old man by the vibrations of the words. He wanted to know until where the recognition of the old man in front of him went.

Then, the old man had opened his body so that the sounds can resonate and that the young man hears them. But he has channeled the vibrations. The sounds were then deformed and provided a slightly false data. But this falseness was mortal for the knowledge.

The Young man realized it. Then he lost his temper. But the old man knew that the purpose of that was only to destabilize him. To check.

He returned a sound of drum without resistance and the young man knew that the match was going to be null.

This old man there knew as much as him!

 

- Then, thus you are a ROSHI. I have sometimes heard spoken about these beings from the place where I come. It is said that they are exploiters of the desire of discovery of the men.

The ROSHI smiles.

- Stay five moons and you will do your own opinion.

- Hum…. Five full moons, it is ages. I am not certain to enjoy being among you. You understand, little old man, it is not that you are really beautiful. You would not have a small pretty one for my evenings.

- I have that, says the ROSHI.

The two bodies spoke gently in the half-light almost black. Many oil lamps had died. The monks were not allowed to come today.

The two bodies approached. Their foreheads were touched almost now.

- Hey, my son…. What is your name?

The old man has made the last movement. It was to him to do it. The other would never have been able. Too proud.

- Angel, blew the young man while accepting the forehead of the old man.

He moved slightly. The two skins slipped one against the other.

 

 

 

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