Then I slid my right hand around his neck, grabbing deep inside his left collar. My left hand passed the opposite way, grabbing his right collar. Then I pulled back, drawing the cutting edge of my right wrist into his neck, shifting a bit to nudge the muscles over the carotid arteries aside. It was the okuri-eri-jime strangle.
But Uke had a strong neck. He ducked his head down, his chin blocking my wrists, and tried to buck me off. My hold slipped a trifle, but I reapplied it immediately. Then he got his hands up and pulled hard on my fingers when the referee wasn't looking. This was an illegal tactic, and it hurt my fingers. But then the referee looked, and gave the man a chui or half point penalty. I tried to complete my strangle, but could not, and finally time ran out.
Uke had a yuko for him and a chui against him. The penalty was stronger than the positive score, and so he lost. My victory, but hardly a proud one. And now I had a wrenched middle finger. And one match to go.
Well, it wasn't the first time I'd fought in an adverse situation. Back at the Martial Open, when top representatives of seven major martial arts had competed against each other for a kind of world championship, I had gone up against a devastating karateka, my hand injured. I had been marked for death—but my ki had saved me.
The ki—that mysterious inner force that emerged sporadically to tide me through my worst crises. I had no real control over it, and could not summon it at will, but it was terrific when it came. But of course I would not use it in an ordinary judo situation like this. It was my skill that was at issue here, not my paranormal powers.
The last Uke was comparatively small, about 150 pounds, and fast. Oh, was he fast! I reached for him but could not get my grip; he avoided me, and there is no rule in judo saying you have to let your opponent take hold. He was fighting me edgewise. I stepped around, seeking a better position—and he caught my descending foot with a de ashi barai foot sweep. It was like stepping on a banana peel; my foot went out from under, and I went down. I tried to turn out, to void the throw, but succeeded only partially; Uke had been too fast, his timing perfect.
"Waza-ari!" the referee cried, and the judges concurred. And so did I; it had been a very nice technique. But it boded ill for me; I needed at least a tie, and so far I was losing.
Naturally I had no chance to bring him into matwork; he was lightning on his feet, and not about to let me slow him down with my grappling technique.
I was in trouble. The smallest man in the line had thrown me. All he had to do was stay away from me for the rest of the match and he would win. I had to catch him.
Easier decided than accomplished. I stepped in—and he tagged me again with de ashi barai. I didn't go down this time; I learn such lessons very quickly. But his motion was so neat that I did stumble, clinging to him momentarily for support. Here his strategy worked against him; he should have swung into another technique while he had the advantage, perhaps finishing the match with another waza-ari. Two such scores are the same as one ippon. But he was geared to strike and withdraw, avoiding any counter-technique. He was too defensive, and so he missed his opportunity.
There was my opportunity. I had less than a minute to go in the match, but my greater experience was already translating into a tactical advantage. He wanted to be defensive—let's encourage him!
I feinted, trying for a big technique, and he drew his legs back. I tried for a shoulder throw, and he ducked his head and shoulders down, moving fast. I shoved him further down, reached my right hand over his shoulder, grabbed his belt, and leaned hard on him. As he tried to come up, I put my left foot between his legs, sat down, and boosted him over my body in a sumi-gaeshi takedown.
For some reason referees don't score this kind of throw high; all I got was a koka. But now I had him down on the mat.
I never let him go. I rolled on top of him as he came down, still gripping his belt, and applied the kuzure kami-shiho-gatame hold-down, a variant of the upper four quarter hold, a good one. Now he was mine; no matter how he jumped, he could not get away. Ten seconds, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five—
Uke gave a sudden terriffic wrench, throwing his feet up and over my head, jerking his whole body in a kind of back somersault. There was no warning; he caught me counting seconds instead of concentrating on the business at hand. His head slipped free and he was loose.
Time was called. The match was over. I had been so close, so close...
But then I remembered: twenty five seconds on a holddown constitutes a waza-ari, matching his prior score. And I had made a koka on my takedown.
I won the decision by the margin of one slim koka. Now my injuries were as nothing. I had made rokudan! The official was holding out the coveted red and white checkered belt. I reached to take it.
And it faded. "No, no!" I cried, trying to hold it together—but it was all only a dream, and I was falling awake.
I opened my eyes. I was sitting up in bed, reaching for the footboard. It was gaily painted red and white, but it was no rokudan belt.
I certainly had ambitious dreams. To be the highest ranking white judoka in America, or some such—and I didn't know a thing about judo! As far as I knew, I had never practiced it or any other martial art at all.
Of course, I didn't know much about myself. I had been staggering along the burning edge of a Florida highway, sick and half starved, until a well-intentioned stranger had given me a hand. He had thought I was drunk or spaced out, but when he talked with me he realized I was an amnesiac. So he fed me and gave me a place to stay for several days while we tried to find out who I was.
We had no luck; he offered to take me to the police, who might identify me by my fingerprints, but I balked. Suppose I were a criminal? I didn't like that notion at all. I wanted to remember on my own, so I could make my own decision, rather than having it made for me. Suppose, for example, I had been framed and conked on the head? I could find myself in jail with no way to recover the truth.
My benefactor was understanding, but felt he could not ethically do more for me, in the circumstance. I don't blame him. He did help me get a temporary job and a room of my own. So I became the pole man on a survey crew, lining up my pole for the transit man to orient on. Unskilled labor, but I still managed to foul it up a few times. The pay was enough to sustain me, and it really was not demanding work. Just as well, because I was a pretty weak character. I weighed about 130 pounds at the start, which was pretty thin for a man standing over six feet tall.
I seemed to be recovering from some sort of injury or operation. There were scars on my stomach, and at times I suffered dizzy/weak spells. And I had nightmares-inchoate, fevered things, snatches of terror in some deep jungle, of being chased by someone wielding a huge sword, or drowning in a river swarming with crocodiles—that sort of thing.
But this last dream had been different. For the first time it had been pleasant, in a violent, rough-hewn way, and I had been sorry to awaken. True, I had been hard-pressed, even hurt in that experience, but I had felt competent to handle it. I had been a real man.
I'd be willing to go through a lot of pain to have that feeling again, mine to keep awake as well as asleep.
Now all I had was the pain in my back and hand. The dream was false, but my pains were real; they had been with me when I found myself on the street. I had been roughly treated, somewhere, somehow, somewhen. How ingenious of my subconscious to build this into my fleeting dream of glory!
Still, if there was judo in my dream, maybe I had known something about it once. Maybe I should look into that, in case it offered any key to my lost identity. Probably wasted effort, but...
So that evening after work I went to the local club whose advertising poster I had seen. It was Taizo Sone; they seemed to have two or three clubs in the area, and this was the closest one. I was in luck. They met in a community center, two or three times a week, and I had come on the right night. Students in pajamalike uniforms were putting mats into place. Someone directed me to the instructor, whose name was Steve. He was a young m
an, in his early twenties, and not large or muscular or rough-spoken. In fact not at all the way I'd expected a martial artist to be.
"Sure," he said. "Sit down and watch the class. If you want to join, fill out this application form. It costs ten dollars a month."
"Thanks." I sat down and looked at the form—and hit a snag. For the name I filled in the one I had taken to get me by until I found out who I really was: CAESAR KANE. And my current address. But age—I didn't know my age.
"How old do I look?" I asked Steve.
"Maybe thirty five," he said.
"That old?" I was shocked; I certainly did not feel middle aged.
He shrugged. "That entry is mostly for the children. In tournaments they are graded by age and size."
"Oh." So I gritted my teeth and filled in 35, sure it was wrong. But amnesiacs could not be choosy.
"Time for class," Steve said. "Why don't you try it?"
"Why not?" So I stripped myself of liabilities like shoes, wallet and keys, and went to join the line forming for class. Except that I didn't really know where I belonged.
I must have looked as bewildered as I felt, because a cute little girl took me in charge. She had long yellow braids and bright blue eyes, and seemed three sizes too small for her uniform. "You have to stand at the end," she explained. "You don't have a gi."
I took her word for it. The others were arranging themselves by size and the colors of their belts, the darker belts seeming to have more authority. The little girl's belt was white, and she was the smallest of that color, so she was at the end, except for me. I towered over her, feeling like the scarecrow of Oz. What was I doing here, anyway?
"My name's Penny," she said brightly. "I'm six."
Introductions, yet! "I'm Caesar. I don't know how old I am." Damned if I'd say thirty five!
She went into a giggle. "Everybody knows how old he is!"
From way down at the far end of the line someone called "RE!" Everybody bowed. Belatedly I bowed too, a stiff little effort from the waist. We were bowing to the instructor, Steve, in his black belt, and a taller friend beside him, a brown belt.
"Move out, spread across the mat," Steve said.
We spread out. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, but at least I could follow the leader.
It wasn't hard. Steve led us, so all I had to do was copy him. First we just sort of jumped around, limbering up. Then we whirled our arms around, twisting at legs and hips. If this were all there was to it, I'd have no trouble.
Then Steve sat and spread his legs out wide. "Grab your right toe, keep your knee straight, touch your forehead to your knee," he said, doing it easily. I tried it with confidence.
It felt as if the back tendons of my thigh were about to rip out. I could almost hear the piano-wire sproing! as my head balked a good foot from my knee. Touch? Not in a lifetime!
"Oooo, it hurts so good!" Steve remarked. I could agree only with the first three words.
But my surreptitious glance around reassured me: a number of the others couldn't do it either. Some children, like little Penny, were limber and/or soft-boned, but others were groaning.
At last, after several similar contortions, we proceeded to something different. "On your backs!" Steve cried. "Hit it!" And he slammed one hand into the mat beside him.
I was completely lost. What was the point of this? But in a moment a green belt came over and explained it privately: "These are breakfalls. You hit the mat to take the shock when you fall. Your arm's a lot tougher than your gut. Like this." And he whammed the mat with a sound like a pistol shot.
I copied his position and threw out my arm. It struck with a sound like bubblegum popping, and my hand stung.
"Not like that," he cautioned me with a straight face. "Open your fist, put your palm down, not up, and cup your hand. Make the whole arm level." He demonstrated with another detonation. Somehow, with the green belt's help, I got through the assorted breakfalls, which proceeded from lying-on-back, to sitting-on-mat, to squatting, and finally to standing. But I was bruised, my left elbow skinned, and I wondered how I was going to survive the hour, let alone the course.
"Form two lines for rollouts," Steve cried next.
The students lined up off the mat and took turns doing forward rolls on the main section. These looked like fouled-up somersaults with crash-landings. I went out, put my head down, pushed off as I had seen the others do-and plowed shoulder-first into the mat. Ouch! It felt as though my collar bone had fractured. But I guess it hadn't, because I could still move my arm. After that I lacked the nerve to try it again.
"Tonight we'll start with the o-goshi, the big hip technique," Steve announced. "Watch as I throw Paul." And he took hold of his friend the brown belt, whirled around, and heaved him over his back. Paul went tumbling to the mat, striking it with bone-sundering force. I winced; there went one friend! This class was murder, in the most physical sense.
But the brown belt jumped right back up, smiling. Some how he had survived that devastating crash unhurt.
Now Steve went through it slowly, stepping in close, bending his knees, putting one arm around the victim's back and heaving.
Paul went over, landing with less of a smack. I watched every motion, and it was completely clear. Anybody could do it, once he knew how.
Nevertheless, Steve demonstrated it several times, explaining the position of the feet, arms, head and knees, as though such details mattered. I wondered why he went over it so much when it had been obvious the first time.
"Now take your partner and throw it five times each," Steve said.
The others paired off. I didn't know anybody, so I just stood there awkwardly. Then a girl trotted up. She was small, pert, and wore a kind of double pony-tail. The baggy gi masked her other attributes, but I judged her to be in her early twenties. "You look lost," she said. "Okay, you can throw me."
Anywhere but in a judo class, that would have sounded funny. "Throw a girl?" It hadn't occurred to me that these exercises were coed. At least, not in the adult division. Obviously they were, however.
"Well, I can't throw you, because you don't know how to take a fall yet."
That seemed to make sense, though how this maybe hundred pound girl would throw a man my size even if he could take a fall was unclear. So I stepped in to throw her, and suddenly discovered that I had no idea how to do it. Steve's demonstration had made it look so easy, as though there were no other possible outcome but a smooth flip to the mat. But seeing and doing were vastly different things. "I don't know this throw," I confessed.
"I'll show you," she said brightly. "By the way, I'm Vonnie."
"Bonnie?"
"Vonnie—with a V. Everyone confuses it."
"Caeser," I said. "I think."
She laughed without affectation. She was a very pleasant, open sort. "Now you put your right foot across the front—there, that's right—sort of half turn—put your arm around my waist—bring your left foot back more—"
I followed her directions with a certain difficulty. It wasn't that I had any wrong idea about where I was, but my natural inclination when I had my arm about a girl was to draw her in facing me, rather than across my rump. Vonnie was a good deal shorter than I was, so my hand fell mainly across her back up near her shoulders, and I knew that wasn't going to work for a throw.
"Bend your knees," she said. "You have to get down low enough to pick me up. Pull on my sleeve with your left hand. Pull harder, forward. Turn. No, the other way, away from me, look to your left—that's right."
That was right? I was twisted up like a corkscrew, with her half sprawled across my side and back. This would never work!
"Now, heave forward," she said. "No, go ahead, put some oompth into it—that's it—straighten your knees as you go around-there!" There was a slap on the mat. "You did it!"
I looked, astonished. She had just landed on the mat in front of me. I had thrown her—and I had no idea how I had done it. She bounced up. "That was very good. Now try it again
, faster. O-goshi."
"Oh, gosh," I echoed.
And about the third time I threw her, I began to catch on to the nature of the throw. Instead of seeming impossibly awkward, it became almost natural. "Wonderful!" Vonnie encouraged me. I had learned the O-goshi hip throw!
There was more practice that evening, but I knew the high point had been passed. I was tired, sore and confused by the multiplicity of Japanese names and techniques, but I was actually learning judo.
The class concluded with some practice with the instructors. We formed two lines. Steve faced one line, and Paul the other. The first students went out, bowed, and took hold of the instructors, trying to throw them—whereupon the instructors threw the students instead. I was near the end of Paul's line, so I had plenty of time to watch. The students looked so clumsy I was sure they were faking it, just going down to make the instructors look good. Yet when little yellow-braided Penny hooked Paul's leg and pushed, he went down on his back, slapping the mat, while she clapped her hands for joy. Hmm.
Then my turn came. I stepped up to the edge of the mat and bowed, and from the center Paul bowed to me. A nice formality, this careful judo courtesy; I liked that. But now Paul looked like a giant, there in the splendor of his brown belt, and my confidence evaporated.
Well, nothing ventured, etc. We came together. I grabbed his left sleeve and pulled—and he just looked at me curiously. I couldn't even remember the proper grip.