Anna leaned slightly forward and began to reach out one hand toward him, but she returned it to her lap to clasp the other. His story was only partly told.
“I refused to be destroyed,” he said. “I discovered a stubbornness in myself even while everything I tried—boxing, fencing, rowing, running—resulted only in failure and ridicule. I tried harder—and harder. And I survived. Perhaps I would have clawed my way up into the lower part of that middle group by the time I left boyhood behind. I was the heir to a wealthy dukedom, after all, and that would command some respect. But then something happened. A life changer. When I was walking back to school alone one day during my second to last year, I saw an elderly Chinese gentleman in a bleak and barren empty space between two buildings. He was dressed as I am now, even down to the bare feet.”
She raised her eyebrows while he paused and smiled, a distant look in his eyes.
“I stood and watched him for . . . oh, perhaps half an hour,” he said. “He must have known I was there, but he gave no sign, and I was unaware of anyone or anything except him. I cannot really describe it to you, Anna. I can only show you. Shall I?”
“Yes.” She slid along the bench to set one shoulder against the wall beside the window, and hugged her elbows with her hands while he got to his feet and went to stand in the middle of the floor. He pressed his palms together prayer-fashion and closed his eyes. She watched him breathe slowly for perhaps a whole minute, and she knew that he was somehow going away from her and into himself. He moved his neck in slow circles, first in one direction, then in the other.
She was afraid, Anna realized, though that was not quite the right word. It was more awe that she felt. She was in the presence of the unknown, of something strange and exotic, and it was embodied in the man she had married less than a month ago. It occurred to her that he was perhaps forever beyond her understanding. Yet she yearned toward him with a love that was almost physical pain.
And he moved—in ways so totally beyond anything she had ever experienced that all she could do was watch and hug her elbows.
He used the whole of the floor area. But the movements were slow, exaggerated, stylized. At first she thought they were simple moves, imposing no great demands upon his body. But then she could see that they made great demands indeed, for no body could be naturally as supple, as graceful, as precise in its movements without a great deal of practice and pain. She could see the stretch of arms and legs and body, the impossible arch of spine, the unwavering balance. His feet never once left the floor at the same time, but he could twist his body, extend the sole of each foot in turn toward the ceiling, his legs a straight line with only a small bend in the knee of the lower one. But in truth she did not observe verbally. It would have been impossible to capture in words the grace, the control, the power, the athleticism, the strength, the sheer beauty of what she watched for endless minutes.
It was lovelier, more moving than any dance she had ever watched, including the waltz. But it was not a dance. The movements were far too slow, and they were performed to a melody that was all his own—or to a silence that sang with an unbearable sweetness.
It was not a performance she watched. He was unaware of her presence.
And then he stopped as he had begun, and after a few moments he came back across the room toward her, moved his cushion, and sat cross-legged before her again, his knees touching the floor.
“Avery,” she said. She could say no more.
“I asked if he would teach me,” he told her, “and he did. But when he understood the depth of my desire and need and commitment, he taught me infinitely more than what you have just seen. He taught me that my body could be all in all to me, but only if my mind was under my own power and control, and only if I laid claim to the soul—he called it my real self—at the core of me. He taught me to impose my will upon my body, to make it do whatever I directed it to do. He taught me to make it into a weapon, a potentially deadly weapon, though I only demonstrated those abilities upon inanimate objects—and one tree. But he taught me, to go hand in hand with that physical power, self-control. For any deadly weapon does not have to be used—ever. It is very much best for everyone if it never is. Nothing is ever gained from violence but the brutalization of those who perpetrate it and those who are provoked into seeking revenge against it.”
“You could have killed him if you had wished, could you not?” she asked him, hugging her elbows more tightly.
“Uxbury?” he said. “I was not even tempted, Anna. I merely wanted to put an end to the idiocy as quickly as possible and get away from there. The thing is, you see, that when you know you have power, you do not need to demonstrate it. When you know you have a weapon that is proof against most aggression, you do not need to use it. And you do not have to boast of it or even talk of it. It is a secret I have always kept strictly to myself. I am not sure why. Perhaps at first I feared ridicule or being thought weird. And when people started to treat me differently, I accepted that as good enough, and the secret of how much my life had changed seemed like a precious thing that might only be sullied if I spoke of it.”
“The bullying stopped?” she asked.
“Strangely it did,” he said, “though no one knew of the existence of that Chinese gentleman or of the long hours I spent with him. I fought no one except during the regular boxing and fencing sessions, at which I never excelled. I said nothing to anyone. And yet . . . the bullying stopped. People fear me or at least stand in considerable awe of me, but they do not know why—or did not before that lamentably public duel. When you believe in yourself, Anna, when you are in command of yourself, when nothing derogatory anyone says of you or to you has the power to arouse your anger or any desire to retaliate, people seem to sense it and respect you.”