Prologue

At first, it had been just an experiment. A little movement, a little structure. But by now it was more. Much more. They were the exercises. That’s what she called them. Not sport, not training, not yoga or stretching. No—exercises—as if it were something higher, almost sacred.

She no longer remembered exactly when it had begun, that her whole day started to revolve around one hour in the morning. Everything else was prelude or aftermath. The exercises were the center, the real life.

She thought about them even before she got out of bed. How her body would feel. Whether the stretch would go deeper than yesterday. Whether she would balance better. Sometimes she sensed, half asleep, an inkling of which movement was “next.”

After the hour, she put her experiences into simple language: “Left hip soft today … don’t forget to breathe.”

She lost herself in these reflections. There was no striving for improvement in the usual sense. She enjoyed the repetitions. She never had to motivate herself.

Years Later – Playful Seriousness

Professor Goya heads the German Studies Institute. He is the Master of Language. That fits the historical description of his position. The first professor of modern languages at Ederthal’s Landgrave Philip University bore the title “Master of Language.”

Goya’s personality fits no modern narrative. He allows himself, with cutting calm, a reactionary attitude—not out of agitational intent, but as an aesthetic statement. He quotes Novalis and Joyce with both freedom and precision, wears pocket squares, scorns pedagogical zeal, avoids conferences, and speaks of “the students” just as an enlightened monarch once spoke of the unruly bourgeoisie.

He makes no secret of his contempt for the academic establishment, to which he himself primarily belongs. Nana is fascinated by Goya’s autonomous presence. She imagines addressing him in an erotic charade called “Master of Language”—with a hint of submissive mockery. She trusts his mastery in her favorite genre too—the playful seriousness.

For Nana, there is no doubt—the Master of Language is a magnificent Dom. Not in the obvious, cliché-laden sense, not as a caricature from a fetish forum. Goya is a man with innate leadership abilities. An Alpha, just as written in the books.

Finally, Nana makes her first move. She contacts him via email under an academic pretext. He responds immediately, signaling subtle receptiveness. Has he seen through her right away? In any case, he encourages Nana without overextending his interest. He presents himself as the determining force, setting tone and course. He lets Nana come. His sparse, often cryptic messages charge her. Sometimes half a sentence from him is enough to make her erotic horizon light up three times in a row. He awakens her willingness to take risks but remains reserved… until she writes to him multiple times daily. Stories, experiences, fragments. All slightly skewed and detached. The hints are sophisticated. Nana reveals nothing that could be used against her, yet enough to electrify a receptive reader.

She constructs narrative connections for the detention wing of the medieval-style university. She illuminates a vignette with a nod to the university court and the glory of a Master of Language in earlier centuries.

“Would you—as Master of Language, as you rightfully are—have resorted to such measures?” she asks, immediately relieving Goya of having to give a compromising answer. She builds phantasmagoric settings with mummified mice and buttonholes in time. She invents dreams in which etymologically strange words develop a life of their own. She creates the figure of a somnambulist postdoc fellow who falls for the Master of Language while he instructs her.

She pushes her game to the extreme.

And Goya? He does not respond daily, and never in detail. His game is dangerously slow. Nothing is said aloud, nothing denied.

Nana often pleasures herself in front of the screen, imagining the Master of Language enjoying the scene on the other end as she does. She makes suggestions. Nothing risqué comes back.

She attends his lectures, meets him by chance in any somewhat noble setting. Ederthal is a largely forgotten small town with a past as a Landgrave’s residence. Its historical importance brings her nothing now. There are a few grand buildings, a magnificent church, an English landscape park. Nana imagines moving through these settings under the Master’s directions. His office is in the oldest wing of the German Studies department. A massive oak door separates it from the corridor, where linoleum modernity and Gothic masonry have formed a reluctant alliance. In the dean’s office, there is a historically grown half-darkness. Bookshelves rise to the ceiling, full of leather-bound volumes, worn originals, and newer collected editions. Among them, an hourglass from the household of Philip the Magnanimous, a horn letter opener by Georg Forster, and an anonymous skull as an anatomical specimen.

Goya’s desk is almost an empty plane. Paper in hand-cut trays. A fountain pen. A notebook. No photos, no plants. On a side table, a silver teapot on a warmer. The air smells of furniture polish, Molton Brown, and leather.

Goya sits upright in a high-backed chair reminiscent of a cathedra. He is not yet forty, single, athletic. An iron will permeates his appearance. Nana’s entrance earns him a glance. No smile, no greeting. A moment of silence. He lets her stand in the doorway. She wears a black, tight satin dress with an extremely low-cut back. She leaves no doubt—this is not an academic visit.

Goya does not rise. He gestures with barely perceptible nod to step closer.