The Hidden School

by Dan Millman

  I spent the next two days in my room or at a local park, studying Soc’s notes, letting his words penetrate me—until finally I sat again at Hua Chi’s low wooden table, sipping tea. She handed me some papers. “Keep them safe,” she said. “It can be difficult sparring with bureaucrats, but a few friends and relatives in positions of authority can move mountains.”

  “Why do I need a letter when you’ll be—?”

  “I have obligations here. I’ll join you later this month or the next. As soon as I can.”

  “But I assumed—”

  “Assume nothing,” she said, “especially in China, given the current political climate.” To her, I supposed, politics were temporary, but pop culture lived forever.

  I unfolded the rice paper and saw a letter in Chinese calligraphy, with brief instructions for me in English, which she proceeded to repeat aloud: “Show these to the boat captains. Show the letters, but keep them in your possession.” To emphasize her instruction, she slapped the papers out of my hand and pushed them against my chest.

  Everything happened quickly after that. On our way to the dock, as I hurried after Hua Chi through the crowded streets, she gave her final reminders: “Even after your President Nixon’s visit,” she cautioned me, “a foreigner is viewed with suspicion and could even be arrested as a spy. Don’t draw attention to yourself! Remain quiet and friendly. Make no disturbance. Keep to yourself whenever possible. You’re young and strong, but fate is a jester.”

  “What will I say to Master Ch’an when I meet him?” I asked, striding rapidly to keep up with her as we neared the docks. “How do I know he’ll even accept me as a student?”

  “He speaks only Mandarin, so you won’t speak directly to him. Someone will translate—a woman. But if you reach the school, you’ll be welcome.”

  If I reach the school? Had I heard her correctly? There was no time for pondering or reassurance; the captain of the fishing trawler nodded curtly to Hua Chi and motioned me aboard. I felt the engine’s vibration.

  Then I suddenly remembered—I’d intended to call Ama one last time before I left, but in the sudden rush I’d forgotten to do so. I quickly grabbed a pen and wrote Ama’s name and number on a piece of paper. Stretching out from the boat, I handed it to Hua Chi.

  As the boat began to pull away, I shouted over the thrumming engine. “Please, call this woman! She needs to know I found the journal!”

  Hua Chi smiled and waved as if I were only saying good-bye. I heard her say, “Good journey, Dan. And don’t forget—”

  Her voice was lost as the engines turned to full power. I yelled out, “Don’t forget what?” But my words fell into the sea.

  It wasn’t until later that I realized we’d never discussed how I would arrange my return trip. Only that she’d join me when she could.

  Seized by a mixture of anticipation and dread, I stood on deck and watched the shoreline disappear into the haze. What have I done? I wondered, gazing at the map she had drawn. I’d embarked on a one-way journey by sea, then river, followed by a trek through Russian territory into China to find Mount Tai and the Taishan Forest in its foothills, where I might or might not find a school.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder. The captain held out his hand. I thought he was gesturing for money, then realized that he wanted to see the letter. He grabbed it from my hands, read it, and gave a tight-lipped smile, bobbing his head. Still holding the letter, he said something and gestured for me to follow him to a small room, the size of a closet. I saw a bunk and a small washbasin. My sleeping quarters. He pointed to another room near a cooking stove, presumably where I’d eat with the crew. Last, he led me down the gangway to another door, where the odor told me the purpose. Then he waved me away, and walked off with the letter!

  When I caught up to him on deck, he’d already put it away. I spoke and gestured, trying to make him understand that I wanted the letter back. As he called out to the crew, his attention elsewhere, he reached into his jacket and returned the now-wrinkled sheet of rice paper that I’d need to show to the next captain.

  According to Hua Chi, my eventual destination was the Taishan Forest in the Aihui District of the Heihe region—a supposedly isolated woods in an otherwise populated area. When I showed the map to one of the sailors, he traced our route northward through the East China Sea, passing between mainland China and Taiwan to the east.

  Over the next few days, we motored past South Korea and up into the Sea of Japan, moving due north from there. During our voyage, the ship anchored several times to fish, dropping the catch into an ice-filled hold. When we docked at each of several ports, I retreated to my cabin, awaiting a signal from the crew (when they remembered to give it), after which I was again free to wander the decks.

  Somewhere on an isolated inlet of South Korea, I disembarked without ceremony. About ten minutes later, I was met by a gray-haired man who took me to the next captain Hua Chi had mentioned, a man named Kim Yun. I handed him the letter. He glanced at it, frowned at me, tore it up, and walked away, boarding his ship. Dropping to my knees, I gathered the shredded letter and followed him up onto the boat, babbling. “Why? What’s wrong? Hua Chi—”

  At the sound of her name, the captain turned again. He clearly didn’t understand anything else of what I was saying. The gray-haired man appeared at my side. In broken English, he said, “Show me,” gesturing to the fragments of the letter. Reading what he could, he said, “Not letter.” He spoke sharply to Kim Yun, who said little in return, but apparently they came to an agreement.

  The gray-haired man turned back to me. “You work, he take you,” he said, miming what looked like mopping the decks.

  About to protest, I shut up, thinking, Why not? I’d done practically nothing resembling simple labor since I’d left Oberlin months before. Something about the idea energized me. I quickly nodded. Moments later, my gray-haired Good Samaritan was gone, and I was pulling away from the shore once again.

  Either my initial mopping was clumsy, or the captain changed his mind; during the three days I spent on the second boat, no one asked me to do any work beyond that first round, much less swabbing the decks, though I bunked with the crew this time. For the most part, they ignored me as if I were a ghost.

  Only one good thing came out of the experience: alone in the crew quarters, once again drifting through time and the sea, I had time to take out Soc’s journal and study his fragmented thoughts and commentary. Despite the occasional full sentence or even paragraph, he’d mainly scrawled phrases in an outline of insights I’d have to make sense of before I could expand upon them. A larger theme gradually began to take shape in the pages of my mind. It was something that had begun when I’d first met Socrates. Back when I was a college athlete who would rather attempt dangerous new moves than write an essay.

  I couldn’t do any real writing now; the seas were too rough, and wielding a pen made me seasick. But the time would come after I reached the school. This period at sea forced me to contemplate before I began writing. So as I lay curled on my bunk, feeling the swell of each wave, I watched thoughts and ideas congeal like planets formed from stardust. And I began to see . . . Soc had indeed found a way to “attain eternal life.” Not in the sense that many might imagine or hope for, but in a way nonetheless.

  The sound of footsteps woke me. My hand found the journal before I opened my eyes. A nod from a crew member told me it would soon be time to disembark. I organized my knapsack and hurried up on deck just in time to see us motor past the port of Vladivostok, Russia.

  I couldn’t disembark at the port, which would have required a visa. But forty-five minutes due north, at an isolated coastal inlet, I left the boat at a small Russian outpost, little more than a hut selling basic supplies. I traded a few American dollars for enough Russian rubles to purchase food, a compass, another canteen, and a cap with a red star. In the interest of traveling light, I’d abandoned my desert sleeping sack for a tarp I could pull over me if needed. I also managed to acquire some Chinese curr
ency even though Hua Chi had told me I wouldn’t need money during my journey or at the school.

  She’d advised me to avoid populated areas—“Tighten your belt and push on!”—which I intended to do. There would be food enough, and rest, when I reached the farm or school or whatever it was. If I reached it. Am I crazy to trust her? Socrates had once advised me, “Trust should not be given quickly—it has to be earned over time.” I knew next to nothing about Hua Chi except that we shared a fondness for a television show and for t’ai chi. She could be sending me to some prison cult, I thought, a Chinese Heart of Darkness or a scenario straight out of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

  In the brief time we’d spent together, however, Hua Chi had impressed me as sincere. I couldn’t fathom why she showed such interest in helping a visiting professor, but could anyone ever be certain about another’s motives?

  SIXTEEN

  * * *

  With a map, a compass, and Hua Chi’s directions to guide me, I hiked into a Russian woodland, heading toward the eastern shore of Lake Khanka. Crossing rough, thickly forested terrain, taking shelter during the occasional rainsquall, I traveled two days to reach the lakeshore. I skirted populated areas but caught glimpses, in more rural terrain, of peasants knee-deep in rice paddies—men and women working side by side, plowing with oxen under sapphire skies tinted with layers of yellow dust. A few sheep grazed on small patches of arid land.

  Thankfully, I saw no military or police officials. I continued north until I found the mouth of the Ussuri River, marking the border between China and Russia. That’s where the river-going flatboat and her captain found me pacing when they showed up three hours after our appointed time.

  Fortunately, this captain didn’t care that I had no letter—only that I held out the right denomination of Chinese currency. He took me upriver for a day to where the Ussuri met the broad river called Amur by the Russians and Black Dragon by the Chinese, as Hua Chi had told me. We made our way north until I disembarked abruptly when the captain nearly pushed me and my knapsack out of the boat, then pulled away.

  Now I was truly in the middle of nowhere. The boat disappeared, taking with it the comforting chupa-chupa of the engine. If I were injured or incapacitated, I could die here. And if I died, my young daughter would never know what had happened to me. Socrates would never learn I’d found the journal. So you’d better not die! I told myself.

  On the brighter side, Pájaro could never, ever track me here. In an effort to lift my spirits, I struck a martial arts pose, imitating the posture of David Carradine on Hua Chi’s poster. I’m an adventurer, I told myself. He only plays one on TV.

  I checked the compass again and began hiking west under cover of trees and shadows as I set out on the last leg of my journey, overland toward the promised Taishan Forest in the foothills of Mount Tai.

  Three days later, tired and hungry, having finished most of my remaining food, I passed near Heihe. Against my better judgment, I felt an urge to enter the city and walk through crowds of people instead of endless trees. But Hua Chi’s advice held me back. I had to avoid the authorities. What had that bearded driver asked me on the ride to Los Angeles? Now I really was sticking it to the man. Buoyed by that thought, I continued onward, recalling a proverb I’d read: “When on a long trek, it’s okay to quit whenever you like, as long as your feet keep moving.”

  That evening sheer exhaustion turned the ground to a featherbed, and I slept like the dead. Near dawn, I emerged from a strange dream of a sunlit pavilion and a woman dressed in white, until her tunic turned into a shaft of sunlight striking my closed eyes. At first I didn’t know where I was. Then it came rushing back. I rose, stiff and hungry, and ate half of my remaining rations. My shrunken stomach growled for more.

  After days of hiking on little food, I found that the forest itself took on a dreamlike quality. Several times a day I reached into my knapsack, taking comfort in the presence of Soc’s journal, an anchor to a reality beyond my immediate destination. I shoved my own notebook to the knapsack’s bottom, aware that it too was hungry—hungry for the words I had yet to write.

  According to the map, I should have arrived by now. But distance on a map and in a forest can be deceptively different. Searching for higher ground, I stepped into a clearing and saw a man pissing against a tree. Before I could move, he saw me, smiled, and asked something in Mandarin. I could only reply with a good-natured shrug.

  He looked me up and down, taking in my dirty trousers and sweat-stained shirt, my knapsack and Red Army cap. Pointing to his nose, he said something that sounded like “Wu Shih.” Nodding, he pointed at me.

  “Dan Millman,” I said, touching my own nose.

  Without even attempting my name, he nodded, then beckoned for me to follow him. We soon approached a hut with a primitive water pump and cistern outside. He indicated that I could use the water to wash by splashing his face. I followed suit, wondering how badly I smelled—I hadn’t washed for a few days. The water was clear and fast running. I gestured with my canteen, and Wu Shih seized it and filled it himself.

  Now Wu Shih pulled at his shirt and gestured at me. I took off my shirt and splashed the cold water on my underarms and back and chest. After I’d put my shirt back on, he invited me into the hut. There I met a woman, presumably his wife, who bowed and then hurried to scoop some rice gruel into a small ceramic bowl. She added a few nuts that looked like almonds and chestnuts. Bowing again and smiling, she held out the bowl. We enjoyed a companionable silence as I ate until my stomach bulged. We laughed together at this.

  Still, I felt awkward, as anyone might who must limit conversation to bows, smiles, gestures, and grunts. When I finished eating, Mrs. Wu Shih offered me a cup of tea and a piece of steamed bread. “Ishi!” she said, raising a bright red enamel cup. I wanted to offer them something in return so I held out some of my scant remaining store of raisins and mixed nuts. Bowing, Wu Shih graciously accepted just a few and put them into his gruel. His wife, however, waved my hand away.

  Before I took my leave, I asked, “Zai . . . uh, forest . . . uh, senlin na li?” I gestured toward the trees to indicate a forest. Wu Shih just stared at me and shook his head, unable to make sense of my garbled language, or failing altogether to comprehend my meaning. “Taishan Forest?” I said in English, too loudly and with exaggerated gestures. Realizing they wouldn’t know the word forest, I said “Taishan” again, trying to make it sound as Chinese as possible.

  Their puzzled looks turned into another wave of laughter. Wu Shih waved his hands all around. Ah, they couldn’t direct me to the mountain called Taishan, like the forest, because we were standing on it. I wanted to ask Wu Shih if he’d heard of a farm or school, but I had no way of doing so.

  Moved by the hospitality they’d shown to a stranger from another land, I could only say the few words of Mandarin I knew—“Xie xie! Thank you!”—and bow as I moved away. They bowed back. I turned once again and entered the forest.

  After another hour of walking and sweating, I came upon an impenetrable wall of foliage that looked like a larger version of Hua Chi’s garden hedge—only it had no visible opening. Imagining myself back in Hong Kong, I positioned myself in front of what might have been the entrance to her home, closed my eyes, and stepped forward.

  Entering the thicket, I found no small house beyond, but an altogether different landscape: Cedar and pine trees grew thick as grass. Twisted vines hung like huge snakes from massive trunks. Branches seemed to reach out and block my way every few steps, as if they resented my intrusion. A path appeared, then disappeared, like a flickering illusion as I pushed onward through the labyrinth.

  I remembered having asked Hua Chi if there was a map of the Taishan Forest itself. She’d said, “It’s not possible to map the forest because it changes. And compasses don’t work there. Just travel with a clear intent.”

  A clear intent, I thought, trying to imagine a school, a farm, or a giant sign that read: YOU’RE HERE! As I plodded onward, pushing branches
and vines out of the way, my hands sticky with tree sap, a flock of birds flew up from the underbrush, one of them just grazing my head, startling me. Moments later, I nearly walked through the gelatinous web of a hand-size spider. A few minutes later I pushed aside another hanging vine—only to realize that it was a sizeable snake as it slithered off.

  In the shadow of the trees, I also encountered a scarlet parrot and a cascade of lemon-yellow cockatoos that whistled and chirped as they fluttered up into the boundless sky, soon hidden from my view by the canopy of leaves. The sunlight glimmered as solitary rays cut through the foliage overhead. The sun was descending sooner as the early autumn days grew shorter.

  When I felt something move in the bush near my feet, fear slithered up my spine. I quickened my pace, hurrying up a gentle slope. That’s when confusion came over me, as if I’d stumbled into a maze of mirrors. I began to wonder if I was traveling in circles. Another hour passed, or what seemed like an hour. I had no way of knowing since my watch battery had long since died.

  I should turn around, I thought as I grew more disoriented and my heart pounded. But in what direction? Which way is out? In a rush, I burst out of a thicket and nearly fell over the edge of a sheer cliff. For a dizzying moment, I thought I was back on the rocky plateau in Nevada—that I’d never left it.

  I blinked and saw my current surroundings once again—overlooking a deep gorge in a Chinese forest. I kicked a small stone. It fell toward what looked like a strong-flowing stream some forty feet below. If I could have turned back, I would have. But there was nowhere to go but forward, across this narrow gorge—a twelve-foot distance between myself and the opposite cliff. I could jump over it with a running start, but I had only a little clear space behind me. I looked slightly up and spotted a tree limb stretching out over the chasm. If I could grab the overhanging branch, I might be able to swing across to the other side. It was doable, especially for a former gymnast who had swung on many a branchlike bar.