Aleph

Again, it isn’t Yao before me but Hilal. I immobilize her arms, first with my hands, then with my knees. I start to unbutton her blouse.

I fly through the air again without realizing how it happened. I’m on the floor, staring up at the fluorescent lights on the ceiling, unable to understand why I’ve let my defenses get so ridiculously low. Yao holds out a hand to help me up, but I refuse it. I can manage alone.

Once more we grab each other’s collars. My imagination once more travels far from here: I’m back in bed, and her blouse is now unbuttoned to reveal her small breasts and hard nipples, which I bend over to kiss while she struggles a little with a mixture of pleasure and excited anticipation of the next move.

“Concentrate,” says Yao.

“I am concentrating.”

That’s a lie, and he knows it. He may not be able to read my thoughts, but he knows that I’m not really here. My body is on fire from the adrenaline coursing through my veins, from the two falls I’ve suffered, and from everything else that fell along with the blows I received: her blouse, her jeans, her sneakers flung to the other side of the room. It’s impossible to foresee the next blow, but it’s perfectly possible to act with instinct, attention, and…

Yao lets go of my collar and bends my finger back in the classic finger lock. Just one finger and the body is paralyzed. One finger stops everything else from functioning. I try not to cry out, but I can see stars, and the pain is so intense that the dojo seems to have suddenly disappeared.

At first, the pain seems to make me concentrate on the one thing I should be concentrating on—the Path of Peace—but it immediately gives way to a feeling of her biting my lips as we kiss. My knees are no longer pinning down her arms. Her hands are grasping me hard; her nails are digging into my back; I can hear her moans in my left ear. Her teeth release their grip, her head shifts slightly, and she kisses me.

“Train your heart. That is the discipline every warrior needs. If you can control your heart, then you will defeat your opponent.”

That’s what I’m trying to do. I manage to extricate myself from his hold and grab his jacket again. He thinks I’m feeling humiliated; he has noticed my lack of practice and will almost certainly let me attack him now.

I have read his thoughts; I have read her thoughts; I surrender. Hilal rolls over in bed and sits astride my body. Then she undoes my belt and starts to unzip my trousers.

“The Path of Peace flows like a river, and because it resists nothing, it has won even before it has begun. The art of peace is unbeatable, because no one is fighting against anyone, only themselves. If you conquer yourself, then you will conquer the world.”

Yes, that is what I’m doing now. My blood is circulating faster than ever. The sweat runs into my eyes so that, for a fraction of a second, I can’t even see, but my opponent does not seize the advantage. In just two moves, he’s on the floor.

“Don’t do that,” I say. “I’m not a child who has to be allowed to win. My fight is taking place on another plane right now. Don’t let me win without having deserved the pleasure of being the best.”

He understands and apologizes. We are not fighting, we are practicing the Path of Peace. Again he grabs the collar of my jacket, and I prepare for a blow coming from the right, but, at the last moment, it changes direction. One of Yao’s hands grabs my arm and twists it in such a way that I’m forced to my knees to avoid having my arm broken.

Despite the pain, I feel much better. The Path of Peace appears to be a fight, but it isn’t. It’s the art of filling up what is missing and emptying out what is superfluous. I put all my energy into that, and gradually my imagination leaves the bed, the girl with her small breasts and hard nipples, the girl who is unzipping my trousers and then stroking my penis. I am fighting with myself, and I need to win this fight at all costs, even if that involves falling and getting up over and over. The kisses never given, the orgasms never achieved, the nonexistent caresses after the bout of wild, romantic, abandoned sex—all those things disappear.

I am on the Path of Peace, and my energy is being poured into that tributary of the river that resists nothing and thus follows its course to the end and reaches the sea as planned.

I get up again. I fall again. We fight for nearly half an hour, completely unaware of the other people there, all of whom are equally focused on what they’re doing, looking for the right position that will help them find the perfect posture in their everyday life.

Afterward, both of us are exhausted and dripping with sweat. He bows to me, I return his bow, and we head for the showers. He beat me every time, but there are no marks on my body; to injure your opponent is to injure yourself. Controlling your aggression in order not to harm the other is the Path of Peace.

I let the water run over my body, washing away everything that has accumulated and dissolved in my imagination. When desire returns, as I know it will, I will ask Yao to find another place where we can practice aikido—even if that place is the corridor of the train—and I will rediscover the Path of Peace.

Life is one long training session in preparation for what will come. Life and death lose their meaning; there are only challenges to be met with joy and overcome with tranquillity.

“THERE’S A MAN who needs to talk to you,” Yao says, while we’re getting dressed. “I said I’d arrange a meeting, because I owe him a favor. Will you do that for me?”

“But we’re leaving early tomorrow morning.”

“I mean at our next stop. I’m just an interpreter, of course, so if you don’t want to meet him, I’ll tell him that you’re busy.”

He isn’t just an interpreter, as he well knows. He’s a man who senses when I need help, even if he doesn’t know why.

“No,” I say. “That’s fine.”

“You know, I have a lifetime of experience in the martial arts,” he says. “And when Ueshiba was developing the Path of Peace, he wasn’t just thinking about overcoming a physical enemy. As long as there was a clear desire on the part of the student, he could learn to overcome his inner enemy as well.”

“I haven’t fought for a long time.”

“I don’t believe you. It might have been a while since you practiced aikido, but the Path of Peace continues inside you. Once learned, we never forget it.”

I can see where the conversation is leading. I could stop it right there, but I allow him to continue. He is a man with great experience of life and who was honed by adversity, a man who has survived despite having to change worlds many times in this incarnation. There’s no point trying to hide anything from him. I ask him to go on.