CHAPTER THREE
Third Floor Right, 1
THIS WILL BE a drawing room, almost bare, with polished floorboards. The walls will be covered with metal panels. Four men squat in the middle of the room, virtually sitting on their heels, with knees wide apart, elbows resting on knees, their hands together with middle fingers hooked and the other fingers stretched out. Three of the men will be in a row, facing the fourth. All will be bare-chested and barefoot, wearing only black silk trousers printed with a repeated design representing an elephant. A metal ring set with a circular obsidian will be worn by each on the ring finger of the right hand.
The room’s only furniture is a Louis XIII armchair with whorled legs and studded leather arms and back. A long black sock is hooked over one of the arms.
The man facing the others is Japanese. His name is Ashikage Yoshimitsu. He belongs to a sect founded in 1960 in Manila by a deep-sea fisherman, a post-office employee, and a butcher’s mate. The Japanese name of the sect is “Shira Nami”, which means “The White Wave”; in French it is called “Les Trois Hommes Libres”, or “The Three Free Men”.
In the three years following the founding of the sect, each of these “three free men” managed to convert three others. The nine men of the second generation initiated twenty-seven over the next three years. The sixth level, in 1975, numbered seven hundred and twenty-nine members, including Ashikage Yoshimitsu, who was given the task, along with some other members, of spreading the new faith in the West. Initiation into the sect of The Three Free Men is long, hard, and very expensive, but it does not seem that Yoshimitsu had much difficulty in finding three converts rich enough to set aside the time and the money obligatorily required for such an enterprise.
The novices are at the very first stage of initiation and have to overcome preliminary trials in which they must absorb themselves in the contemplation of a perfectly trivial mental or material object to such a degree as to become oblivious to all feeling, even to extreme pain: to this end, the squatting tyros’ heels are not resting directly on the floor, but on large metal dice with particularly sharp edges held in balance with one side touching the floor and the opposite side touching the heel: the slightest tautening of the foot makes the dice tumble instantly, causing the prompt and irreversible expulsion not only of the inadequate pupil but also of his two companions; the slightest relaxation of the position causes the edge of the dice to cut into the flesh, with an ensuing pain which quickly becomes unbearable. The three men have to stay in this disagreeable position for six hours; two minutes’ break is allowed every three quarters of an hour, but recourse to this concession more than three times per session is frowned upon.
As for the object of meditation, each has a different one. The first novice, who has the exclusive sales rights in France for the products of a Swedish manufacturer of hanging files, has to solve a puzzle presented to him in the form of a small square of white card on which the following question has been finely handwritten in violet ink:
above which a bow has been drawn around the figure 6.
The second pupil is German, the owner of a baby-wear factory in Stuttgart. He has in front of him, placed on a steel cube, a piece of flotsam of a shape quite closely resembling a ginseng root.
The third – who is French, and a star singer – faces a voluminous treatise on the culinary arts, the sort of book that usually goes on sale in the Christmas season. The book is placed on a music stand. It is open at an illustration of a reception given in 1890 by Lord Radnor in the drawing rooms of Longford Castle.
Printed on the left-hand page in a frame of art-nouveau colophons and garland decorations is a recipe for
Take 10oz. wild or cultivated strawberries. Strain through a fine sieve. Mix in 3oz. icing sugar. Whip 1pt cream until very firm and blend in the mixture. Spoon the mixture from the bowl into small round paper cups, and cool for two hours in a cellar that is not too cold. To serve, place a large strawberry in each cup.
Yoshimitsu himself is sitting on his heels, but without the encumbrance of dice. Between the palms of his hands he holds a small bottle of orange juice. From it a straw sticks out, connected to several other straws in a line, in such a way as to reach as far as his mouth.
Smautf has calculated that in 1978 there would be two thousand one hundred and eighty-seven new members of the sect of The Three Free Men, and, assuming none of the older disciples dies, a total of three thousand two hundred and eighty-seven keepers of the faith. Then things would go much faster: by 2017, the nineteenth generation would run to more than a thousand million people. In 2020, the entire planet, and well beyond, would have been converted.
Nobody lives on the third floor right. The owner is a certain Monsieur Foureau, who is said to live on an estate at Chavignolles, between Caen and Falaise, in a farm of thirty-eight hectares, with a sort of manor house. Some years ago, a television drama was filmed there, under the title The Sixteenth Edge of This Cube; Rémi Rorschach took part in the shooting but never met this owner.
Nobody ever seems to have seen him. There is no name on the door on the landing, nor on the list fixed on the glass pane of the concierge’s office door. The blinds are always drawn.