15. The resistance

 

He had said “You will give birth in the pain”.

Why thus this truth came now to his spirit? The one who had said that was so far from them in the space of time and of the earth!

But it came back under the bones of his forehead and settled between his eyebrows.

Thus he has welcomed it.

 

The old man stirs up the hard ground with his fingers because they are them which will be the claws of the life and which will have to face death. He saw the death in the eyes of his son. He sees it now every day and that is suffering in his heart.

The young man does not say anything. He does not complain. On the contrary, he is gentle with those who take care of his body.

But he stared at them in the bottom of the orbits and nobody manages to support this look. They have the impression that he searches in the bottom of their soul and they are afraid.

The old man told them that they are quite simply afraid of themselves. Of nobody else. And that one did not have to be afraid of this one.

Because him, he knew that the flames which left the eyes of his son were warmth for the one who received them. Gentleness in a pure state. It will be necessary that he learns to him how to refine his force. He must teach him a lot.

- You see, my son, but you do not know yet to hear the clamor of the one who listens to you. You do not feel yet the wound of the one who is in front of you. Your hands are not yet able to follow the bleeding contours of them and to calm the pain of it. You See. You see simply. Very simply, my son. But your eyes are your pain because you cannot use your other powers.

 

Thus the old man spoke to himself loudly while digging the ground of his naked hands. He scratched it and withdrew the broken stones from it.

He had wanted this morning to prepare this corner of garden on the side of his pavilion. He does not know yet what he will plant there. He had to prepare the earth. It is the certainty which was in his body while waking this morning.

One very cold, almost frozen morning. But the sun said that it was going to appear behind the summits. Then he waited for it, quietly sitting cross-legged on the wood of the veranda. He was wrapped up in his pelisses and he folded back the hood on his skull.

He waited. Gently. Simply sitting. He put the breath in his belly and the belly made breathe the whole body.

The sun came. An enormous red ball as it is here, before turning into the gold color of the day of the men. Morning and evening, it is red and enormous. It is the color of the one which comes in and comes out of the cavern of the Gods.

Then the old man sighed. He has breathed with the rising ball and he knew that he must go and prepare the earth. Just the plot which was between his pavilion and the one of his son who him either did not sleep. He felt it in his flesh. He looked after him late in the night. He has supervised the care that he received. His son did not bat an eyelid one moment and lowered the eyelids on the pain.

It is this hardness in the suffering which frightens him, this old man, because that one there is metal that one does not break and which does not fold either. Too much proud!

Then he will have to search in his heart and his belly the ways which will lead him to the sensitivity of this man. These Ways which will reveal the movement of the god-men and of which he will not be able to speak with anybody. Not even with Hiro because these forces there are of those which one keeps silent.

- Yes, my son, you will have to lead me to the silence of my knowledge and it is well thus. I have already so much spoken in this snap of the fingers which is now my finished life! For nothing. Since there was no successor who rose from the Earth. Nobody has understood the bouquet which I offered.

But now you are there. Tell yourself that if I had to choose I would not have put the hand on such a monster that you! Of course, with in more the acid odor that you drag, it is not now that I will be able to breathe the softness of the peonies.

But you are there and I am quite happy. Of course, that I will not tell it to you! A boy like you, one must not tell him that one is happy with him. You have the eyes filled with the pride of what you know that you are. Even under the intense pain you do not lower the forehead! Of course, that I will teach you to embrace the ground. Do not worry, I will be at the height of my task, my son.

 

Thus he muttered while scratching the frozen ground with his naked hands and a smile was stretched on his cheeks.

 

The sun had climbed the Eastern mountains by going up the small valley. The gold of the light had penetrated along the brook then had gone up the stones.

Now there was also noise in the main courtyard of the monastery on the other side of the stone wall.

The old man had not raised the forehead of the ground. He remained on his knees, scraping with his naked hands and the furrows were born under his dry fingers as the vine shoots which gave to the men this rough nasty wine for the palate that they made in the valley, much lower, at almost two days of walk.

It was Hiro who had said to him one day by treating a wound that he had the hands as the branches of the vine. Him, he had smiled because he had known the wine only once and he had sneezed when the liquid had gone up from his belly to pass again in force in his nose. It is thus that he had known that it was acid and raspy. The men had laughed and him, he had mingled his voice with them because it is thus that it is necessary to behave with the men of the valley. Then he had swallowed the ice-cold water of the brook rising up between the rocks of the mountain when he had gone back to the monastery. He drank the ice-cold water and has rejected it several times from his belly until his belly was clean again.

Then he had washed his eyes and his nostrils.

It is after that he sat down behind the rocks of the East, just behind the large flat rock which overhangs the valley. Only afterwards. Then he has prayed. The evening has found his body right on the stone still hot of the sun. The hood was on his head and those who passed down did not see this motionless dark stone .

Those there who passed went back home. The dark mass remained motionless part of the night. Then the moon of the first quarter has left the clouds torn by the wind which was born.

Then he knew it was time to rise and to stiffen his legs between the stones which went up towards the summits.

 

- You see, my son…. Only “afterwards”. You, it is “during” that you exert your force and thus you become exhausted. Here is again what you will have to learn because it is not good that you frightened thus those who look after you.

 

He had not raised the head of the ground and it is at the heat of his back that he knew that the sun had climbed the slopes of the mountain.

He continued. Nothing imported more than to engrave his furrows between the loosen stones.

It is what understood Hiro. He has closed again gently the wooden door taken between the ivies of the wall. The Roshi had not turned the head when the half of the door swiveled. However he had perceived the vibration of the air. Then Hiro looked at the thin squatted silhouette and he has closed again the door. He has gently placed the wooden closing on the flat stone which he used as support.

 

Hiro has turned the back to the wall and has straightened his big size.

The monks in the courtyard swept the floor of the ground. They did not lift up the forehead. Only the eyes swiveled in the orbits to follow the movements of the Master cook.

One spoke much about the one who was treated in the pavilion beside the one of the Master. The three monks who looked after him have been at the isolation in their cell since now two moons. They cannot tell them the secrecy of the Master and of the one who came with him.

So, they observe the paces of the Master and of Hiro. They observe and they speak during the work of the ground.

 

- It will be necessary to tell them once and for all who the one who will become the Master of this monastery and all the Family is!

Hiro had come to speak to the Master about it this morning. But the day had not come yet and he set off again while grumbling because he thought that he would be worried much of the future. Too much.

The Master has always showed him the perfection of his actions. However this concern has always risen in his belly and he is dissatisfied with him when it comes to the edge of his skin and that to be released of it, he must then make move the words with his tongue.

 

Because it is one of the teachings of his old friend, may be one of those which have stirred up him the most, when he said to him that it is the tongue which spoke and no one else.

Then, he has observed. He has to look at and to feel his mouth and his throat during months while the thought ran behind the bones of his skull like an insane mare seeking its small.

Then gently he knew. He does not know the moment of the perception of this knowledge.

It was simple. One day, he could make another thing but to strike his forehead on the soil of the earth.

It is may be the day when he knew his existence between his hands when the knowledge burst between his eyes and that his tongue and his throat ceased being adversaries at his will.

 

- You speak about what you do not know!

The young man raised himself on an elbow of his bed soaked of the sweat of the disease and of the exhaustion.

The old man did not bat an eyelid. He did not move either in spite of the magnetic discharge which went out of the hands of the young man which were held out towards them.

Hiro had quivered. His fingers which held the copper bowl had tightened the golden metal. Under the nails the skin had turned white.

It is true that the power had come suddenly to strike them head-on.

Heidi had closed the eyes in reflex and her jaws of country-woman took the teeth like support for her will. She knew these sudden bursts since the two moons that she looked after him. But each time she is gripped by fear. She does not know why. Just a contraction which tightens her entrails and which goes towards the throat so much that it seemed to her that she cannot breathe anymore.

 

At each time it is like the lightning which crosses the room and cuts all what it meets from end to end.

At each time she must close the eyes and tighten the teeth. At each time. And the tears come in her eyes and she is not able to hide them under the eyelids tightened on her cheeks. Then it is water which runs and she hides behind the head of the young man straightened from his bed warm of the night.

 

He never complains about the pain which must grip his body. The remedies of Hiro are powerful. Even dangerous. But it is necessary to awake the Life in this body which does not want anymore of the Men and the Master cook said it to her when she is indignant about what she had to do to the young man each morning at the waking.

The old Mongol then looked at her without a word, then he has raised the hand and the palm fell down on his cheek.

She did not let the tears gain her eyes. She has blocked them in the throat. As also the cry of suffering because the slap was among those that the old men sometimes give to the young people to teach them a thing essential for their life. Hard! Very hard.

The hard skin had grated the fine skin of the cheekbone towards the ear and blood came under the eye.

- Does it hurt? asked the Mongol.

- No, she answered in reflex.

She had not planned her answer. The words came in spite of her and they passed between her lips whereas her look examined them on the way, as curious about what occurred.

“These are these eyes which made me say!” Here what was essential under the bones of her skull. Instantaneously. As a double vision of what occurred now. As if only her body was concerned by the roughness of the slap but that this one there had resounded its vibration on another level.

The eyes of the Master healer did not leave her eyes. As if they drew them towards a world that the young girl did not know, but whose she had guessed the existence.

“No”.

Because it was indeed “no”. The slap did not hurt, in the end.

She did not lower the eyelids and supported the flame which left from underneath the heavy hollow orbits.

- Go now and cease crying over the Life!

Then, she headed with small steps in the central courtyard of the monastery and has pushed the door of the stone wall giving on the small garden of the Roshi.

 

But it is the third time that he was rising this morning, such a furious God who requests accounts from the men who worry his body.

It is thus that Heidi understood it when he escaped from her hands and seemed thus to want to leap beyond his bed.

But the weakness of the body was there and he fell down on an elbow. She, she had been moved back behind his back and the breathing blocked on the tightened jaws, she accompanied with her hands the shoulders which collapsed after the effort. She did not touch him. He would not have accepted. Her largely open palms followed only the shoulders, ready to slip under the armpits and to support the Son of the Master. But he never slumped. That will never occur and she knows it. But it is stronger than her. She can only make this gesture while moving back behind the head which has escaped to her and mask the contraction of her belly.

She has also to prevent the tears from slipping from her cheeks to the head underneath her. He does not accept! He has once turned the head towards her and she would then have liked to disappear from the earth.

- We say nothing, says the Roshi!

The young man tried to sit up higher and to escape to the elbow which supported him.

Heidi wanted to help him with her hands under the armpits. She felt immediately a sting between the two eyes and she raised the forehead. The eyelids of Hiro like slits were on her. She let her hands fall down on her thighs.

In front of her the body wavered. He tried to sit up by his forces of exhausted man.

The Roshi did not bat an eyelid. Here, he has done nothing. He remained motionless on his cushion. He looked after the care of the morning, next to the door of the pavilion. Like each morning, it is him which made burn the incense in the vase at the foot of the bed. Like each morning it is him which opened the day on the dark room. It is him who has said the place of the bed. He wanted that the sun of the East touches the face of his son.

The Roshi did not bat an eyelid. Here, he has done nothing. Precisely he has done nothing. Even when the body of his son slumped on the side and that the dull sound of the hard wood has resounded.

 

He has only said: “We say nothing”.

Because indeed, for two hours that the care of the morning lasted, not a word has crossed the room. Even not a complaint of the young man when the hard fingers of Hiro searched under the ribs and pressed on the organs such blades of fire.

Heidi maintained the head right between her hands, strongly pressed on the thighs.

The head of the young man was hot with sweat. She felt in her palms the vibrations of pain which inflated the veins under the skin revealing the bones.

But he did not let the cry pass his lips. In her hands, she felt it being blocked between the two eyes. He has never allowed it to go further. The mouth does not have the taste of it or the throat. He kept the lips half-opened. With the contraction of the throat under her fingers, she guessed that the tongue was welded with the palate behind the teeth.

 

Then by three, he has burst thus.

- You speak about what you do not know!

 

He speaks to the Roshi.

The old man did not say anything. Never. His eyes were only one slit in a wrinkled face. Just a slit which did not lose any vibration coming from the body of his son. Because that one there he had to know him even better than the skin of his hand. He was going to have to enter the suffering of the other and to become his friend. As a friend, he will have to then lead the suffering in its field to it and to convince it to leave the remainder at what must exist too.

 

But today, for the first time he has said “We say nothing”.

Then the young man did not want to collapse on the back when the elbow could not carry him anymore.

He has stiffened the kidneys and his thin legs came towards his basin. The back has taken a curve compensating the weakness of the kidneys which could not carry much. His thin hands have hung his feet and they have pulled. The body came. The spine was sitting up.

Then, he has sought a balance with a seesaw motion of the basin.

 

The Roshi did not bat an eyelid. However, he was suffocated of happiness that his son knows these principles of alignments and he knew that it is his only chance to enter the world of the attention.

 

 

 

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