Part II
It’s time to tell you about people with whom your reporter shared all the difficulties.
…He was one of the biggest men in our group – Aleksey Sorokin. He was a kickboxer from Harkov. Studying the Kadochnikov Systema was not an easy thing for him. In all kinds of sports the heavyweights “ripen” for a long time. In our case for mastering the new technique you have to put away the old habits. Easier said than done. How can you get rid of all the reactions and skills you’ve been working out for years? When a teacher demonstrated new hold a shadow of a doubt darkened Aleksey’s forehead. He outstretched his arm while his mind was harried by constant doubts. He may have asked: “What if I hit him with the left arm here to the liver?” There might have been such variations as: “To the head with the right arm”. Being simple-hearted he sought for points of contact between the old and new knowledge. True to say he was good at hitting to the liver…
On the background of the giant from Harkov my new friend Mironich looked like a teenager. Valeriy Mirinovich Shevczov from Tomsk was the oldest hearer at the Kadochnikov Systema; he entered his fifties. He had rather prestigious job – a deputy of a principle in a medical school. He could have sit in an armchair in a relaxed manner but instead he got interested in the Russian martial art and was very fit, strong and agile like a devil.
He was one of the best students. His style was like a detonating mixture of Russian folk dance and Chinese wu shu. Who can guess that this man was an invalid in the past?
One day Mironich told me his story when we were preparing tea in a glass pot:
– I was a postwar kid. I even don’t remember my parents. I lived in a military unit. I had weak legs and used to get about on crutches. I got psychological scar because of the wound and started to stammer.
One day I dressed up because it was holiday on May and went outside for a walk. My constant enemies the brothers Dubrovini noticed me said: “Where are you going, all dressed up like that? Let us decorate you a bit more!” They knock out my crutches and threw me in dirt. At that moment I swore on blood to become strong. First of all I needed to recover… Old women who lived in a village cured me. This was the time I got my first athletic apparatus – a spare part from a tractor… In the army I’ve got the basic skills of the Russian hand-to-hand combat.
The story of the Ugly Duckling written by Hans Christian Andersen will live forever because there are such “ducklings” in each generation of each nation.
…These guys were like the rest of us and at the same time they were different. At first I couldn’t decide what was special about them. Anatoliy was a medium-sized man and Sergey was short. They wore old soldier’s uniform.
Even the most “peaceful” element of the Russian martial art they turned into a close combat so that the instructor had to interfere. “We’re just kidding” – they used to say.
– Nothing can change them, – explained my wise friend Shevczov, – In other words they are “Black horsemen”.
– What does it mean “Black horsemen”?
– Listen here. Once we set off to Ulan-Ude. There were me, my son Andreyka (he was a student) and Sergey Tregubenko. I should say that he was considered as the best hand-to-hand fighter in Tomsk. You saw me in the fight and my Andreyka despite young age is good at the close combat. We had the right company: we could rely on each other. You may ask why we went there? Curiosity. We wanted to know what these “horsemen” looked like, what were their holds and style. Sometimes they are called “a pack of wolves”.
In short, we came and met their chief – Boris Antonov. He was about thirty and Buryat by birth. For two nights we were running around hills and fighting each other. It was said that each should have fought for himself and they tried to separate our trinity. But we understood that we could survive only by covering the partners; otherwise “the wolves” would have torn us apart.
On the third night Antonov said: “Now you are going to overcome the most difficult test, of course if you are not weaklings or cowards. You will fight against the man with a whip. When a person is whipped he either breaks down and turns into a slave or exceeds the threshold and looses pain sensitivity. After this nothing will ever scare him”.
By that time we were slightly wounded. Fighting on the hilly surface Sergey twisted his ankle. I’ve got huge furuncle on the leg because of sweat and dirt. To have chance to evade the whip you have to be as fast as a fly. We have no other choice but to let my Andreyka take a test. The test should be 6 minutes long.
They offered me to leave the scene because it might have been very hard for a father to watch. I promised that I would cope with this. My son started to twist and turn trying to elude the whip. It was very difficult and sometimes he got the strike. In two minutes he managed to break through and get to the “drover”. He took the whip away from and knocked him down…
I happened to talk to Anatoliy and Sergey. Anatoliy did all the talk; Sergey nodded from time to time thinking over his friend’s words:
– The style of “Black Horsemen” is the tribal Buryat combat that passed to me from my grandfather.
This tradition has been kept in their clan and has passed from generation to generation almost since the epoch of Genghis Khan. This fact explains the name of the style: legs are you combat horse, body and arms are horseman, darkness is the colour of the night.
Blind and unconditional submission to a sensei removes all the kindness out a man. I didn’t want to be a beast. When I became the strongest among the Antonov’s disciples I understood that it was time to leave. He gave us an outstanding combat training but I am against all kind of suppression of a human’s personality. Actually many people left then.
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