Sensei of Shambala
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“Not only. I’ve heard from the senior guys that have been training here for a long time that he perfectly mastered the Dragon, Snake, Wing-chun, Cat, Mantis, and Monkey styles, and a who le range of other styles that I just can’t remember.”
I gave her a distrustful gaze, “When did he have time to master all that? He looks like a young man. People sometimes spend their whole life mastering just one style.”
“I was also surprised at first,” she went on. “But the guys say that, according to the Teacher, a young body doesn’t mean the age of the soul.” My new acquaintance answered, shrugging her shoulders.
“Who is he, then?!” I started to become nervous, and my old thoughts, together with this new information, once again began tormenting my unsatisfied curiosity.
“An ordinary man,” I heard in reply.
Having changed, our company crowded before the exit and contemplated with admiration the unusual technique of a couple of athletically built guys who were training with the others who had stayed. I’d never seen such genuine, naturally beautiful undercuts, overturns, elusively smooth withdrawals, even in movies. But what struck me the most was the speed of their movements. “Is it really possible to move at such speed and still be able to orientate yourself so well in space?” I thought to myself. “Great! And where is Sensei among them?”
Sensei turned out to be sitting quietly aside, looking through a pile of papers and books with bookmarks, presented by Dumpling. Two more men were sitting nearby carefully listening to the explanations of the Teacher. Then Dumpling unfolded a yellowed map, and all four inclined over it as if it were a priceless treasure. Sensei started to mark something there with a pencil, constantly commenting and explaining it. I really wanted to get my curious nose in there, but at that time we were gently pushed by guys trying to get out.
“Hey, guys! Why are you standing here? Don’t you know the law of this dojo? You either train here or you stay on the other side of the door. If you want, go back in, and if you are going out, go out, don’t disturb the others.”
Together we streamed out outside. “It’s not fair!” I thought jealously. “They’ve stayed, why can’t we?” But, of course, I didn’t say anything aloud.
5
We spent almost one whole hour waiting for the only bus in that district, strenuously tamping the earth that was called the bus stop. But the bus didn’t come. So we walked to the tramway, which the locals said was fairly close: only some thirty or forty minutes of walking. But since we weren’t familiar with the area, we spent an hour and a half getting there. But nobody paid attention to those unpleasant circumstances. Every body passionately shared impressions of the training.
“So,” said Kostya smiling, “are we going to the next training?”
Almost simultaneously we all said, “Yes!” “I don’t know about you,” said Andrew, the biggest fan of martial arts among us, “but I think I found what I wanted, at least for now. Cool training!”
“Yes,” Kostya interrupted him, “today I learned a lot more than during all our visits to different schools.”
The guys nodded in agreement. Suddenly Slava stopped, tapped himself on the forehead, and said with horror, “Shoot! We forgot to ask how much it costs!”
Andrew placed his hand on Slava’s shoulder and reassured him, “Don’t worry, old man, I’ve asked Sensei. He said: ‘The more the better. But not more than five rubles. Preference will be given to the pure gold of royal coinage’.”
Everybody laughed. Slava even took a deep breath of relief, which was understandable be cause he was a good guy but from a poor family. He could not afford to pay for the training in the other schools. To get fifteen or twenty rubles a month meant a real fortune for him. Loudly recalling some episodes that happened during the training and the Teacher’s funny jokes, we didn’t even notice how we got to the tram stop.
6
The working week had begun. We got very interested in the vagus nerve story and body innervations in general. For the remaining days of the week, we tried to uncover details from our biology and anatomy teachers. But they didn’t give us any concrete answer, saying only that most likely it had to do with advanced anatomy, which was studied in medical universities. This fanned the fire of our interest even more and gave us an impulse to search for these kinds of books through our friends and relatives.
All that time, I was trying hard to search through my memory in order to figure out where I knew Sensei from. I even took time and went through all my family photo albums. But my attempts were in vain. As before, life went on in a continuous search for answers to unknown questions.
We could hardly wait for the next training. So as not to be late, we departed two hours earlier. When our company arrived at the sports hall, we were surprised to discover that we weren’t first, even though there was still half an hour before the training. There were thirty people already waiting, like us unwilling to miss something interesting right from the beginning. Our guys, getting acquainted with some of them, jokingly came to the conclusion that we, in comparison to those poor guys, live quite close by. Because they lived in such distant districts, some people had to spend almost half a day on their journey, changing a couple of different types of transport and wearing out their soles walking a great many miles. And only a few lucky ones drove here in their own cars.
“So, guys,” Andrew concluded, “you may show off and yell that we are locals!”
Sensei arrived soon, surrounded by a group of guys. People started to smile and act friendly. Separate groups merged into a single crowd greeting the Teacher and entering the open sports hall. We also got caught up in this wave of good feelings. But our joy didn’t last long.
At the very beginning of the warm-up, two respectable looking men walked in and, approaching Sensei, began whispering something to him in a familiar way. Having agreed upon something, the Teacher entrusted the senior sempai to continue the training, and having slipped on a jacket right over his kimono, walked out with them. From that point forward, there was endless suffering of our extremities.
The senior sempai, obviously planning to train us the same way he trained his muscular body, carried out a warm-up in a tough tempo, as if we were being prepared for a gold medal. There was such a difference between Sensei, with his graduated exercises, and the senior sempai, who tried to make us Olympic champions with a full set of medals before the Teacher returned. At the end of the warm-up, we heard the command to relax, which for some reason was named by the sempai the “dead body position.” People in the sports hall, including me, fell down to the floor with such a loud sound that it really seemed that exhausted dead bodies were lying all around. Later, I found out that the sempai interpreted some commands in an unusual way because he was a policeman.