When we sat again for the next demonstration, it wasn’t in rank order. I sat between Petra and an older man with red cheeks and grizzled hair, and the sensei held his wrists out behind him for a man with a tense face and long, black hair to take in ushiro tekubitori. The student flinched, even as he grabbed the wrists, and the sensei stepped backwards into tenchi nage. The student was already up on the balls of his feet, longing to go down so that he wouldn’t have to anticipate it anymore. Sensei threw him; the student rolled out well enough for me to guess he was perhaps yonkyu rank and to wonder why he would keep studying if he were so afraid.
We stood. Petra hesitated just a fraction before turning away and bowing to the student on her left, which left me with Mike.
Mike knew what he was doing. When he took my wrists, his arms were relaxed. It was clear he was ready to deal with a complete beginner or a master. I swept my right hand up and left down, stepped back smoothly with my left foot, then scissored my arms and sent him flying into a forward roll. He rolled like a big cat and came up grinning. I grinned back.
This time when we knelt, sensei beckoned me onto the mat to be his uke, and held out his left wrist. I grasped it in my right, careful to grip with my little finger, which so many people forget. We didn’t look into each other’s eyes, not yet, because this was for the class, not between us, but he paid me the courtesy of not holding back when he whipped me into kotegaeshi, and I had to twist in midair and break-fall to save my wrist and ribs, and when he flipped me onto my stomach, he moved fast and not gently and he not only put me in a wrist pin but locked out my elbow and braced my upper arm against his thigh to torque my shoulder at an uncomfortable angle. I slapped. When I stood, the row of kneeling students were sitting very straight, eyes wide, except Mike, who was grinning even harder.
This time when we paired, Petra didn’t hesitate.
She was light and whippy but I took particular care to guide her neatly. “Wow,” she said, when she came up. Her eyes were wide-set and hazel, under straight brows. “Your energy is, like, really clear.”
I smiled and held out my other wrist, and she took it. It was like playing with a lariat: twist this way, twist that way, and everything is neatly coiled on the floor and perfectly still, with no more ability to get up and move without permission than a piece of old rope.
She held her left wrist out, and I took it with my right, and she frowned in concentration, turned her left hand over and out, stepped back with her left foot, pulled her elbow close to her body, put her right hand over mine and turned. I went down, but in real life I would simply have moved behind her on the diagonal, put my hand up, and kept turning until she was unbalanced and I could flip her over my hip. Or I could have twisted faster in midair and turned out of the wrist lock. But I went down, and waited patiently until she decided which way to step over me to flip me onto my stomach. A bit more fiddling and she had me in a decent shoulder pin.
I got up and took her wrist again, but this time before she moved, I said, “Spread your fingers. Just imagine it for a moment, then do it.” She frowned again. “Relax your shoulders. Imagine you can do this perfectly, and then do it.”
She did. She beamed. Held her left wrist out eagerly.
“This time, with your right hand, guide mine, turn it as though you’re rolling a fat sausage over in the air.” She did, and it gave a tighter, faster torque to the wrist lock. This time I wouldn’t have been able to do anything but go down.
“Cool,” she said.
The dojo was not air-conditioned. Soon everyone was glowing with sweat. Mike was drenched. Every time he rolled, sweat spattered the mat.
The tense student, whose name turned out to be Chuck, was hard to work with. It was like dealing with a panicked deer. When he was nage, he would begin a technique, then stop and say, “Shit, shit, no, no, let me try again,” pleading as though I were a judgmental father who would beat him for any mistake. I found myself moving very, very slowly, breathing loudly so that he would take an unconscious cue from my respiration rate and slow his own, and keeping my face quite still. Once or twice I found myself trying not to get between him and the light in case he bolted.
The grey-haired man was Neil, and although he was competent, it was clear he was not well. His cheeks acquired a faintly purple tinge and he ran out of breath very quickly, and had to rest every now and again. Everyone seemed used to that.
We knelt again. Sensei surveyed us, paused, and said, “Free play.” Electricity rippled down the line of students. Petra and Jim moved regretfully off the mat and sat to one side. Free play is not for beginners.
Chuck, Mike, Neil, the two men I hadn’t worked with, and I ranged in a circle around sensei, Mike looked around, nodded, said “Hei!” and Neil charged at sensei, and then flew through the air in a tucked ball, and one of the anonymous students ran and was flung on his back, and then Chuck, whom sensei stepped to meet so he couldn’t collapse with fear before making contact, and then Mike, who rolled backwards, then me. I ran without breathlessness, smiled as the currents brushed and I described an elegant spiral and rolled out and was on my feet again even before Neil came charging in once more.
The more truly expert an aikido player is, the more closely movement on the mat during free play resembles the Brownian motion of particles in suspension. Sensei moved slowly across the canvas, flinging bodies random distances, never letting the group close in or a pattern develop. But against six opponents no one can keep that up forever without taking them out permanently, one by one, which is why, generally, only those who aren’t too far from being yudansha take part in free play: gradually, no matter how good one is, things start to get just a little ragged, just a little rough. The goal becomes one of pushing away rather than guiding. I’ve seen more than one person get hurt in such situations.
Sensei lasted two and a half rounds before the raggedness became serious. He stiff-armed Mike in the center of the chest and he went down with an ashen-faced thump; sensei immediately stood straight and clapped his hands twice. Everyone sagged a little. Neil was gasping; the others were breathing fast. So was I, but not in distress.
Sensei offered his arm to Mike, who came off the mat looking fine.
“Angelo,” he said, pointing to the student with the mustache whom I hadn’t worked with, and we began again. Angelo was ragged after two people: shoulders tense, fists clenched, steps small and abrupt. Sensei let everyone have a go at him before pointing to someone called Donny. Then Neil.
And then it was my turn, and Mike charged first, like a young bear, and I smiled and bowled him neatly into the path of Chuck and they went down in a tangle, and then I turned to help Neil fly, and then sensei ran at me and dived to roll and come at me feet first and I refused the challenge and leapt over him like water bursting over a stone and sparkling clear and bright in the sun, before dipping and rising under Angelo, tossing him up like a whitewater rapid flips a raft, and joy fizzed under my skin as he turned turtle and came down flat on his back and I was spinning, taking Donny into a headfirst fall that would have broken the neck of anyone who didn’t practice falling two hours a day. Blood rushed sweet and hot under my skin and laughter bubbled up through me and I loosed it. It was a lovely day.
DORNAN WORE black jeans and a jacket and had taken the sapphire out of his left ear.
“What are you smiling at?” he said crossly as we drove north to meet my mother and Eric.
“Not a thing.”