From Alisa's Chat Log

To a surly admirer who lustfully wants to know what she wore to a reception at city hall, she denies him the favor of an immediate answer. Yet she replies promptly enough to avert the sudden onset of a dopamine-deficiency depression.

"I apologize for not thinking of keeping you informed myself. First, the lingerie status. White underwired bra. White thong made of transparent lace. That was for Virgil, with whom I shared an intimate moment in front of the hallway mirror shortly before the appointment. I gave him a quick handjob on the way out. It excites both of us. When you can have everything, sometimes a sausage is the sexiest thing imaginable. Virgil skillfully ejaculated past my coat rack. In honor of my aunt, the mayor, I wore a lemon-yellow satin A-line dress with spaghetti straps and a square neckline. What else would you like to know?"

It is also an addiction, bending down mentally again and again to some fool and delivering arousal material right to his doorstep. She had been a good pupil and later a conscientious student. She respected the intermediaries of knowledge at grammar school and saw herself on a line connecting intelligence, diligence in learning, discipline, precision, and integrity. An academic aura had long since shaped her bearing. She was a teacher. Yet it would never have occurred to her to burden her profession and its practitioners with the terms that seemed appropriate to her when it came to martial arts, the inner craft, and meditation. No one had ever detected a tendency toward grandiosity in Alisa. She was restrained even in her formulations. Her exuberance and occasionally effervescent nature belonged to other spheres. As an adult she still romped, danced, and played with complete abandon. But none of that helped: whenever she came together with the single-minded martial artist Aslan, she felt in sacred categories. Passion was then too weak a word. In her reverence she felt herself to be another person. No one else knew her like that. Of course Aslan also experienced her, freed from all spiritual anchors, in her lovely everyday life in Ederthal as a delightfully carefree creature. Yet the slightest hint was enough to set Alisa's genital pulse racing.

Just a brief recap for those arriving late. Alisa is with Virgil, and Aslan is with Aiko. These constellations are not supposed to change. Or perhaps they are?

He had promised her a surprise and asked her to visit him in the afternoon. His house stood amid a fruit and vegetable garden—cultivated like a poem written in green language. Wind chimes moved almost inaudibly among apple, pear, and plum trees. A narrow, carefully raked gravel path, whose Zen quality was evident to the trained eye, led to the front door. A burned inscription proclaimed:

止観 – Shikan – Seeing and Resting. Within Aslan, an aesthete and an ascetic wrestled for supremacy. No superfluous utilitarian object stood about. And yet there were plenty of devotional dust collectors of Asian provenance. An uninstructed observer might have taken them for souvenirs from Okinawa, Luoyang, and Kathmandu. A pennant from a Shaolin monastery, a worn prayer fan, a bronze singing bowl—wasn't it all merely exotic knickknacks? There was also a colossal black-and-white photograph of a Tibetan monk touching the shaved head of a child in blessing.

Alisa removed her shoes in the profane sphere, bowed ceremonially, and entered the zendo. The floor was covered with tatami mats. A hanging scroll read: Mushin – Mind Without Attachment.

The living space possessed a restrained beauty. A single stone lantern stood in the corner; an antique incense burner (from a princely household in Kyoto) exuded the scent of sandalwood. In the center of the room lay one low and one raised zafu cushion. The zafu lifts the pelvis and straightens the spine. Centuries-old kimonos with indigo-blue shibori patterns had been sacrificed to create the hand-sewn covers. They came from Fukuoka Prefecture on Kyūshū, the homeland of Kurume-gasuri—a form of traditional Japanese weaving and dyeing. Because of its simplicity, connoisseurs regarded Kurume as the perfect cross between Zen and rural craftsmanship.

"A zafu is a place. A mirror. And a teacher who never speaks."

Aslan had already made the covers themselves a subject of contemplation. Perhaps an eighteenth-century geisha had once worn the kimono that now clothed Aiko and contributed a note of splendor to the moment. I shall spare us the preliminary banter. Let us imagine the moment as the expression of an arrangement. Aslan joined with Alisa in the manner she had seen in woodblock prints—observing bushi etiquette. The point was not historical authenticity but a fitting refinement of qi-eroticism. Aiko assisted with the reserve of an adjutant.

The union of qi and eroticism provided the transformative energy for Alisa's will to change. She already knew that this was, first and foremost, a spiritual undertaking; that spiritualized sexuality—or, in Chinese terms, Daoist healing sexuality—bestowed a surprising fullness upon life. And that one missed the greatest opportunities of this cultivation if one saw in these processes merely energetic upgrades. It was something far more comprehensive: a revitalization of the mind as well.

The patterns on the cushions made Alisa think of a patience rooted in a conception of time that remained incomprehensible through Western notions of time. She imagined herself in Kyoto's temple alleys, in the shadow of the imperial residence. The folds of the tied fabric traced clouds, blossoms, fleeting spirals. They invited excursions of the imagination that always had an erotic destination.

"The way you treat your cushion is the way you treat your mind."

Daylight filtered through paper slats and surveyed the room. The space was a core chamber of love and a stage for intimate illuminations. Sex beyond the threshold of enlightenment—I shall return to that.

Alisa observed the ritual sequence, just as Aiko and Aslan did. Order was a guardian of happiness. One must not anger it. For the second round, Alisa took a seat on one cushion while Aiko received Aslan in the half-lotus position.

I know myself that I am describing a betrayal in all its refinements. Alisa is being unfaithful while Virgil is sweating in a lecture hall. He is lecturing on Beckett. In the 1950s, Beckett began translating his own work into his native language. He translated himself out of French, just as he had begun translating himself into French in the 1920s. He synchronized his languages of thought, initially driven by the ambition to be able to clear things away completely freely in French. He searched for words equal to reality. Ornament and excess—mere furnishings of language—were an abomination to him. He wanted to strip the protective covers from the sofas of words.