Redemption (7 page)

They dispatched themselves to pulling their two friends, who had begun to regain consciousness, to their feet. The two were bleeding and they were confused. Danny watched them leave, satisfied. He was surprised how easy it was to knock them out in a few seconds. He could see the others’ surprised faces when he decided to launch his attack and he was delighted to have created fear in those who had taken pleasure in spreading the same sentiment through maliciousness. He found the humiliation through which he’d lived a good thing and he was proud of it. On top of everything, Danny Namara had learned a great lesson today: to face one’s fears is to overcome them. Today, he discovered a skill in combat. He had blocked the attacks of two bigger and stronger kids in several seconds before his heart had had time to race. He had remained calm in the face of his enemy and he was proud of it. He continued on his way to his current house. Once more, he came home with bruises, but this time on his hands from the impact of the blows on his aggressors. He was proud of his bruises today, because this time they weren’t those of a victim, but the wounds of a warrior. He knew something within him had changed from that moment. He had won confidence in himself. He continued his walk with a smile, massaging his hands.

*     *     *

“Danny, I would like to introduce you to
Mook Jong
. He will be your new training partner when I’m not here,” said Sifu Kwan, presenting the wooden dummy.

“I’m going to start practicing on the dummy?”

“Yes, your training is going well and it’s time for you to learn the techniques on the figure. The Mook Jong will help you to dissect your movements, correct your positions, harden up your forearms. When you train with him, it’s as though you’re in combat with a real adversary.

“Ok, Sifu.”

Danny began to train with the dummy. Danny’s blows were audible throughout the training space. Sometimes, he became too concentrated and put out too much force so that he hit too hard and hurt himself.

“Ow!” cried Danny, holding his fist. He had thrown a straight punch and hit the dummy with a jerk. He felt shock waves vibrate his bones.

“
Mook Jong
has won this round!” cried Sifu. “You need to learn how to control your hits. Continue!”

*     *     *

Over the months, Sifu Kwan noticed on Danny’s impressive progress and after three years at his school, he had already surpassed many older students, despite his young age. Sifu Kwan had often remarked on Danny’s skill from the beginning, but he really took conscious at age twelve. Sifu arrived one afternoon at the school when he saw him train in combat with an advanced student. There was no-one but them at the Kwoon. The radio played in the school and the two didn’t notice Sifu enter. He stayed there, watching the two in friendly combat and watched Danny beat his adversary. The movements were sharp, rapid, parse and precise. He chained the hit sequences with a speed too great for the eye. He stayed calm and relaxed. He dominated his opponent who was twice his age and double his size. He continued to admire Danny performing the art to which he had dedicated his life benefitting from each movement that he made to imagine how he would do against his attacks. He couldn’t stop himself from watching the flurry of Danny’s attacks and hearing his impacts which resonated through the school.

*     *     *

Adolescence was hard for Danny. He was closed off. He never stopped grieving for his parents. What made him sadder was that he didn’t have but a vague memory of them and that made him angry. He forgot them. A sadness and rage within him burned and the only peace he found was in his training.

He didn’t like school and he got into too many fights. One time, a group of kids had tried to steal his pocket money in the lockers. The three kids were found unconscious. He had to explain to the staff later that he’d been simply defending himself. The event came hot on the heels of a warning to control his temper. He had average grades, but he put no effort into them. The lit teacher, a mildly obese man who loved the sound of his own voice, detested Danny’s attitude of flagrant disinterest. Known among the students and faculty for being one finger short to be an alcoholic, it wasn’t rare for a smell of alcohol to accompany him into the classroom. Danny found him condescending and ridiculous with his fat stomach. He found that he preferred to show his knowledge to appear intelligent more than to inspire a love of literature in his students. He often joked at students’ expense in front of the class in expressing certain comments that Danny considered disrespectful to their face. He watched him gesticulating at the front, sweating just from talking. Danny found that he resembled a huge talkative pig pulled right out of a child’s fairytale. In the last year of high school, nearly done his studies, Danny was at the back in the process of reading a magazine as the fat teacher blabbed at the front. However, Pork chop had caught him reading his magazine. He intended to ridicule him in front of all the other students, given that it was the last class of the year. Proud of his plan, he decided to make his attack at said at top volume:

“Mr. Namara, could you tell me what exactly you think of the excerpt I’ve been discussing?”

“I don’t think too much about it.”

The fat teacher had a little arrogant grin looking at the other students in his class. “Ahhh. I see! And why is that, Mr. Namara?”

“I don’t really like the book in question.”

“Ohhhhhh. Mr. Namara has his opinions on the pertinence of the course syllabus. Could you at least name the author in question in this case?” he sniggered, proud of the turn of events.

Danny began to boil with rage.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t listen to you,” he snapped.

“Of course you didn’t listen! You are above everything, aren’t you? Bravo, Mr. Namara, you have a good future ahead of you. You are the perfect example of someone with no future. A good-for-nothing. Your nonchalance is pitiful. In short, Mr. Namara, you could say that you are living proof that pickles aren’t always found in pots!”

“Yes, it’s possible, sir. However, you are equally living proof that beer guts aren’t always found in bars.”

The class guffawed. All the pupils couldn’t stop laughing and they applauded. Some cried tears of mirth. The fat teacher turned red with frustration and sweat dripped down his face. He looked at Danny with flashes of rage in his eyes, but Danny held his gaze without flinching. He said to himself that the pig was asking for it.

“That’s enough! Stop laughing! There’s nothing amusing!” he yelled.

The more he yelled, the louder they laughed. He left the class in a gust of smelly wind and slammed the door. That would be the last time he saw the fat teacher and the last class he had before receiving his diploma at graduation.

CHAPTER 8

Quebec City, September 2001.

“Are you coming to see me tonight?” asked Chandra over the phone.

“I’m working at the restaurant tonight. I’ll come after,” Danny responded.

“I have to get up early tomorrow morning,” she said with a slight contrariness.

“I know, but we still have time to see each other.”

“Yeah, ok. Are you thinking of me?”

“Absolutely. In fact, I was just imagining you in that sexy little black thing I love.”

He heard her laugh over the phone. He adored hearing that laugh and he adored that woman. They met some months ago in class at the university. Chandra was white, tan-skinned and tiny. He noticed her the moment he saw her. She had been sitting beside him and she smiled at him. They had been inseparable ever since. She was a part-time student, aesthetician by profession. He had fallen in love with her from the beginning. She had been for him a deliverance, because she had given him a sense of life. Every day, he stood stronger with her.

“Hmmm. That’s interesting. Maybe you’ll get a surprise when you come to see me tonight if you’re good,” she said sensually.

“What’ll the surprise be?”

“You’ll see tonight,” she said in a seductive tone.

“I can’t wait.”

“Do you love me?”

“Of course, what a question! And you?”

“ Yes. ‘Til tonight, then, for your surprise. See you later, alligator!”

She hung up the handset and he asked himself how he would hold out until tonight. She made him happy. She had been discreet on her past. He knew little about her and he hadn’t asked many questions. He understood that she didn’t want to mention certain details. He told himself that she would give them to him in time. Time had fixed things for him, so that must be true for her also.

*     *     *

“You can go, Danny, have a good evening,” said Sammy with a wave of his hand.

“You sure you don’t want help with the tables?” Danny asked.

“No, no. I’ll do them tomorrow.”

“Ok, Sammy, good night.”

Danny had worked as a waiter in a Chinese restaurant the Red Lotus for several months part-time. It let him pay for his university courses in translation. Sammy was himself Chinese and he was the owner of the restaurant. The rest of the staff was Chinese, but Sammy hired him anyway. Everyone was friendly with him and they worked hard when the restaurant was open. Both servers and cooks were busy with their tasks, because there were plenty of clients. Sammy had put him to the test for several weeks and he was very satisfied with him. He liked him well and he found him hardworking. But more than that, he found Danny serious and reserved, a quality he appreciated. Danny was always the first to leave the building. Sammy told him that he could leave and he, tired and happy to go see Chandra, never asked questions. That which intrigued him was when he had found a trap door on the kitchen floor. He had tried to lift it to see where it could lead, but Sammy had held up his hand and cried,

“No, no! You can’t go there. There’s rats. Don’t ever open the trap, they could spew out and spread the plague! Don’t ever go down there!”

“Ok, ok, I get it!! How could there be that many rats?”

“It’s an old building, we have a recurring problem. I’m trying to fix it soon. Don’t worry about it.”

The trap door intrigued him more than ever, but Sammy’s reaction all the more. The rats in the building, that made no sense. The restaurant was impeccable and he had never seen vermin in all his time working here. Never would Sammy have tolerated rats under the kitchen. No, it was something else, but he hadn’t tried to return. He found it equally curious that he has always left first. Why Sammy and the others stayed when the restaurant closed. He had decided that night to find answers. He left as usual and Sammy closed and locked the main entrance after he had left. However, there was a back door that was always closed and that lead into the kitchen. Danny had taken care to leave it open before leaving.

He waited twenty minutes, hidden in the shadows of the building’s exterior. He decided to enter through the back. Still ajar, he entered through the door. He inspected the kitchen: empty. He surveyed the restaurant: no-one. By all appearances, they hadn’t left the restaurant, because he had stayed on the scene the whole time and saw no-one leave. He returned to the trap door and tugged at it; it gave way to a staircase of a dozen steps. He could hear voices below. They were definitely there. Danny thought of closing the door and leaving as though he’d found nothing, but he couldn’t do it. He began to descend quietly and when he made it down, he realized where he was. It was a relatively vast concrete basement. Several blue neon lights hung from the walls and candles burned here and here. He could see a photo on a wall with a little altar fitted with a vase of incense. All his work colleagues were there in the middle of practicing kung fu. They had no similarity to the people he thought he knew, that is, reserved in their waiter’s uniforms. Most were nude to the waist. Some among them were covered in tattoos. The first to see him was a cook.

“Danny! What are you doing here!”

Sammy turned, surprised to see him on the staircase.

“Danny! How did you get here! You can’t stay here, it’s a private assembly. Just leave!” he said forcefully.

“Why do I have to leave? I’m as much a part of the restaurant as anyone else.”

“Listen, we practice, let’s say, a family style, and we train among the Chinese, and only the Chinese, to guard our tradition...and you are not Chinese!”

“Sammy, come on, try me.”

“No, I’m sorry, Danny”

“Come on Sammy,” said a practitioner in the group. “After all, he is practically more Chinese than several among us. He’s taken pains to get here.”

“ Ok, ok! Fair enough!” said Sammy. “Let’s go, get down here and join me!”

Danny was delighted. By all evidence, he had fallen on a secret school. After all these months, he had never thought that a restaurant employee could practice kung fu. It was a big art, he had to admit. He had been mystified and they had kept the secret absolutely the whole time, he who had practiced kung-fu for several years.

“I know that you practiced martial arts for years, but don’t deceive yourself: this school isn’t  neither traditional nor orthodox. I teach Pak Mei, also called the Boxing of the White Eyebrow. Our style is secret… like our school. You are in a school of the shadows of a sort, the dark side of Chinese martial arts! It’s not a philosophy for everyone and our style is complex. Only some people have the capacity to master this art. Our style has a bad reputation, I could say. It had long since been forbidden and banned in China. Today it’s passed down in secret by adepts like us. It has a reputation for being an efficient and ruthless art. For that which has the possibility of learning this system and mastering it, no doubt that his person will be the most dreadful. “Who is that?” Danny asked, pointing to the photo on the wall.

“The monk Pak Mei himself. They say he was traitor to the Shaolin temple for having killed several other monks in perfecting his style. Maybe it’s the reason for the bad reputation…”

“In what is your style unique?” he asked, a little perplexed.

“The answer is simple: it attacks the vital organs. First you must learn to hit with the Phoenix fist.”