"What would you like to do, then?"
"If I could do anything? Oh, God . . . Let's see. I bet it's a prett^ good life being rich and haing a second house in South America, somewhere along the coast. Colombia has incredible beaches—my mother always talks about that—and I speak the language, so I could have a great time down there. Could you tell Spanish was my first language?"
I hadn't noticed any accent at all, but as soon as she mentioned it I started to hear one, and it made her even more attractive. I tried to isualize her in a hammock on the balcony of a South American villa, and, best of all, speaking Spanish on a cordless telephone. It was a delicious image.
"Or maybe a singer. I think it must be wild to be on a stage and have people watching, and getting into the song. I don't know—I'm sure there are downsides, but I think that must be a hell of a lot of fun. Plus, if you're in classical music you get all that respect, and you don't have to worry about getting too old for it like rock musicians do—you can be eighty and still play classical, right?"
Yes, I thought, but only if you can still play well. She asked
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me what it was like to play on a stage, and I told her that the whole day before a concert I couldn't eat or sit still. It wasn't from being nervous; it was impatience. I wanted to play, I didn't want to wait. I knew I was going to play well, so why wait.> All day I'd be running through the music in my head. I'd wake up early that morning and jump out of bed— nothing could keep me lying there. I'd take long showers, I'd walk around inside the hotel, and then wander around the neighborhood with my mother. She and I would have lunch someplace nice, but I would have no appetite.
"So your mother went to all your concerts.^" Maria-Teresa asked blandly. I could tell she was trying to hide something in her voice. I had to explain to her that the concerts I was describing all happened before my eighteenth birthday. Her face registered surprise, then relief
She wanted to knovv^ if I was able to enjoy the concerts as I was playing, or if I had too much to think about to take it all in. I said that I wasn't able to think verbal thoughts like This sure is fun or Look at all those people in tuxedos listening to me, but I was able to enjoy a glorious sensation of power. I told her about seeing a documentary where a scuba diver was underwater filming whales when one swam right past him, and all of a sudden he reached out and grabbed one of its fins and hitched a ride. It was a spontaneous decision, the diver explained as he narrated over the footage, and it was the most incredible experience of his life. He said the feeling of being pulled along by such an immensely powerfial creature was simply indescribable. I told Maria-Teresa that it couldn't have been that different from playing onstage.
Just talking about it to her gave me goose bumps; I rolled
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[
up one of my sleeves to show her, and she was impressed. I can see now that the main reason I believed so strongly for so long that I would play onstage again was that I had to believe it. I was so unhappy as a nearly middle-aged virgin, a has-been concert musician giving cello lessons, that I simply had to believe great things would happen to me again someday. Otherwise how could I face myself? What else could I think.^
Showing her my goose bumps seemed to embolden her. She leaned forward on her elbows, her chin resting on one hand, and asked, "You said you were never even close to being married. Is that true.^ You never had a serious girlfriend.^"
Before that instant I would have thought that the closer one approached a morally corrupt situation, the more inner conflict one would feel. But it wasn't like that at all; the further things went with Maria-Teresa, the easier it felt to go the next step. When she asked me that question I felt intense pleasure, as if I'd been hoping that she would ask about my barren romantic life. Although I still couldn't imagine a relationship with her, other possibilities—fantasies I could briefly imagine—were starting to appear in my thoughts. I told her the truth, which was that until I was performing again, I couldn't see how anyone would want to date me, and I didn't want to put anyone through the embarrassment of turning me down. I wasn't trying to manipulate her feelings, but whether I intended it or not, she seemed to decide that I had just crossed an invisible boundarv' and had invited her to do the same.
"Life is short," she said, looking right at me with those sad, beautiful eyes. "Why waste it thinking about crap like
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whether you're famous enough or not when there's so much right in front of you? You're an extremely datable guy, if you ask me."
At that moment we were suspended. The situation could have gone either way. It hung there and swayed; it might have fallen over, but it tipped back toward the safe side. I don't even remember who talked first, but we fell into nervous chatter about how no one ever feels he or she deserves to be happy, how unfair life is and so on.
It didn't last long, however. The situation was still ripe; we were so close that the slightest push would have done it. On the way out of the hotel we saw a young couple sitting close together drive by in a convertible, and that was it. Suddenly Maria-Teresa stopped walking. I stopped also and looked at her achingly beautifril face, and my resistance utterly disappeared, like a puff of smoke. It was overwhelming; there was no room at all in me to think why I should not touch her.
I remember once seeing one of my colleagues in the faculty center having a Bloody Mary when suddenly, noiselessly, the bottom of his glass simply dropped out. One moment he was dry and happy; the next he looked as if he'd been gored by a bull. You couldn't have said precisely when it happened, and it took all of us, including him, several long seconds to figure out where all the red liquid had come from.
As on that occasion, it took me a few seconds to realize what exactly was going on. When I did, I found myself far along in the first passionate kiss of my life. It lasted for a long time. When it ended, I asked her if she would have dinner with me, and she agreed.
I wondered if the whole courtroom knew that something had happened. What with the excitement, the two drinks and
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that kiss, Vm sure I was blushing. Maria-Teresa looked sublimely content. Her face had the same color as usual, that of coffee and milk the way they serve it in Europe, but there was a patch at the base of her throat that was flushed deep red. We must have been quite a sight, floating there light as feathers among all those bored, morose jurors.
I don't remember much about Ms. Doppelt's cross-examination of the psychiatrist because I wasn't really paying attention. I know that she attacked the doctor's view that only a sane person could accomplish the complex psychological feat of using Zen to justify^ crazy behavior. 'This is a religion that vigorously encourages people to act impulsively!" she said, exasperation showing in her voice. "Someone like my client, who you readily agree suffers from a grave mental disorder, who you said yourself stands poised on that fine line between sickness and craziness, could easily be pushed across that line under extreme conditions. And what do you call what they were doing at that religious retreat, where they were barely eating or sleeping and were obsessing on those puzzles.^"
The doctor didn't seem shaken by this attack on his testimony. He continued to stroke his beard and insisted that regardless of what one thought about Buddhism, Philip Weber seemed to know what he was doing when he killed the Zen master. ''The proof, for me," he said, "is Weber's claim that according to his enlightened view everything is an illusion. He says he felt no hesitation doing what he did, and now feels no remorse over killing the man because in his expanded view he wasn't killing a real man; it was all just part of this great illusion we call life. That's the giveaway for me. Psychotics don't play-act—it's all for real to them. Weber says he knew all along that none of what he was doing was
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real, that he did it as an inspired, religious gesture. I don't believe it."
During the afternoon break Maria-Teresa and I didn't say anything to each other; we had our date for dinner, and the rest was just wait
ing. She went out for her cigarette and I, for form's sake, sat with the other men and pretended to listen to Roy, the retired factory manager. He was complaining to the others about all the dirty tricks the Japanese were playing to upset the trade balance. Whenever his eyes met mine he gave me a slightly combative look, as if expecting me to challenge him. He'd been wary of me since the trial began— my age, my last name and the fact that I taught at a university no doubt put him on guard—and once, out in the shuttle lot, he'd pointed at my car and asked me if I planned to buy American next time. Yet I wasn't really following Roy's speech during the break; my mind was all over the place. I was trying to commit myself beforehand to a decision about that night so I wouldn't spend the whole evening wavering back and forth, only to freeze with indecision at the critical moment. I didn't have a specific moral problem with having an affair; if Maria-Teresa was unhappy in her marriage and was willing to stray fi-om it, I wasn't going to try to convince her otherwise. I'd never been religious and I'd never been married, so neither of those institutions held much sway over me. The risks, if there were any, were hers to take.
My problem was that I knew I could never really see her as a companion. I felt like a prude for thinking in such grand terms, but I couldn't help it. If I had felt that there was even a remote chance of our having a long-term relationship, it would have satisfied my conscience—but there was no chance at all. I was not going to become seriously involved
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with a twice-married woman with a daughter in military school who liked music I couldn't stand. Although I enjoyed her company and enjoyed talking with her, most of that enjoyment came out of my intense physical attraction to her. I knew that once the novelt>' of her beauty wore off and we got to know each other better, we would have less and less to say to each other.
On the other hand, Maria-Teresa was bored with her life and had a right to enjoy herself; if sleeping with me would please her, and me, why should I prevent it from happening? I'd denied myself so many opportunities over the years by thinking 6% steps ahead, but had never bothered to really wonder if any of those women truly cared if I ever concer-tized again or would have insisted that I offer them marriage after a few dates.
My mother used to tell me what schmucks men were because they would take a girl out but then never call her again. She would tell me how girls would sit by the phones waiting for the phone call that never came while their hearts slowly broke. It was awful to contemplate. Unfortunately, this might have something to do with why I was so inexperienced with women; I rarely dared ask anyone out because I felt so strongly obliged to take them out a second, third and fourth time. But the few times I did so, out of politeness rather than sincere interest, it was much worse when I stopped calling because by then the woman had assumed I was serious about her. It almost seemed that it had to be marriage or nothing; otherwise you caused someone to suffer in the worst way by making her think she wasn't good enough to inspire love. You can't make it up to someone once you've done that.
The other, less abstract problem for me had always been
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that I felt unable to make my carnal intentions clear. I could talk fairly easily with a woman, could even come to know her quite well, but at the point where I had to tell her I was attracted to her, or touch her in more than just a friendly way, I turned to ice. I always felt acutely self-conscious then; it seemed to me that I might as well just unzip my pants, point downward and say, "Would you mind if we included this in our plans.>"
I felt I could only make that transition if it happened gradually, if I knew it was a mutual decision. I didn't want to shock or disgust anyone, and I certainly didn't want to be let down under such circumstances. I'd much rather be turned down in a restaurant or on a doorstep than while sitting on a sofa with my hand up someone's shirt. The right opportunity never came to cross that boundary. There was friendship, the exchange of ideas, art appreciation and the enjoyment of good food and wine . . . and then, it seemed, there were genitals. I never got to that part, even with Naomi. In other words, I was a coward.
Meeting Maria-Teresa threw me into turmoil. She didn't appear to have any indecision about crossing boundaries. She'd been married twice and had a kid; I knew I could count on her not to burst into tears after having sex, or to seem shocked if I tried to unbutton her shirt. But what if I made a fool of myself because of my inexperience.> I was a virgin, after all, and not just in the purely sexual sense; if it showed, wouldn't it seem ludicrous to someone like her, who'd had so much life experience.> The thought of being ridiculed or held in contempt by her terrified me. Even if I could make love to her successftilly, what if she became attached to me.> What would I say to her.> Would she accuse me of continuing
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the relationship just so I could see what it felt like to have intercourse with her? Which of course was the truth.
But what if she only wanted to see what it felt like to have intercourse with me? Why did I have to assume she was burdened with the same cloying rnnhs about sexualit' that I carried around with me, the mnhs that weld sex to the notion of virtue? Maybe she simply liked sex, and didn't think it necessarily had to lead to anything else. If so, Td be a jackass to call the whole thing off—I would be denying both of us the chance to enjoy ourselves, and it would be purely out of fear.
Needless to say, my attempts to car'e out a decision only unearthed deeper layers of conflict. At last I resigned myself to having dinner with her without a plan and to see what happened.
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The last witness, Mr. Tokku Hayashi, was a Japanese American man who looked to be in his early sixties. He had silver-gray hair combed neatly back, wore a modest gray suit and shoes polished to military standards. He was a commercial architect, but had also completed four terms as director of the Los Angeles Japanese Buddhist Association, and had published a book and several articles about Zen in English.
Mr. Graham began by asking if he had known Kazuo Okakura, the murdered founder of the Los Angeles Zen Foundation.
"Yes. I first met him ten years ago, just after he came to this country."
"In your opinion, was he qualified to teach Zen Buddhism?"
The witness nodded and answered in a clear, pleasant voice, "Yes. Mr. Okakura was qualified."
"Mr. Hayashi, the defense is arguing that Mr. Okakura, by assigning the puzzle about killing the Buddha, provoked Philip Weber to violence—that supposedly, Zen approves of and even encourages impulsive, irrational behavior, so Philip
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Weber shouldn't be held responsible if Zen drove him to commit murder. Would you care to comment on that argument?''
The old gendeman cleared his throat politely and agreed to do his best, but said that it was never easy to determine where religious experience ends and delusion begins. His unaffected manner reminded me of von Kempen, who could, without any trace of contrivance, lend dignity to even the most ordinary situations. Just the way he entered a room put other people on their best behavior.
Mr. Hayashi began by explaining that Zen was not a religion, in the sense of worshiping a god or supreme being, but was more a kind of therapy for people who worried too much. He said that for the purposes of simplicity ail those worries could be represented by one question, which he phrased as Why don't I feel free.^
He paused to take a drink of water from the glass on the witness stand. He was the first witness to take advantage of this convenience; the others had looked at the glass or moved it around in front of them, but had all seemed too nervous to drink from it.
"Let's say," Mr. Hayashi continued, "that a fish is happily swimming along in the ocean and doesn't have any worries beyond finding things to eat. One day somebody tells the fish, Tou know what.^ The ocean is only so big, and you are trapped in it. You can't live outside the ocean, so you will never be free.' Suddenly the fish feels constrained, and resents his fate. He's trapped forever, after all.
"Now let's talk about human beings. Most people
resent the fact that they cannot always do what they like. Some days even the most privileged of us feel we have no freedom at all. Zen is like medicine for that kind of thinking. Zen tells you,
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Yes, you are limited by society and by your body and mind, but so what? Within those limitations you can find endless variety and opportunities."
Then the witness quoted Gandhi, who apparently once said, "Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment." Mr. Hayashi told us that Zen meditation was an exercise for people who wanted to learn how to make a greater effort in their ordinary moments, as opposed to only their extreme moments. He said that the entire purpose of Zen was to get you in the habit of paying attention and feeling more involved in your ordinary life, with all its limitations and shortcomings.
"But, Mr. Hayashi," the prosecutor asked, "what about the puzzle.> To most of us, I'm afraid, it's difficult to imagine how that puzzle would make someone more involved in ordinary life."
The witness paused to adjust his sitting position, as if giving testimony were a physical activity that required good fx)sture and sound placement on the chair. "First of all, are we all familiar with the story in the Bible where Jesus said that if your eye offends you, you should pluck it out? Do Christians take that literally and tear their eyes out if they see something ugly? Not that I know of. I think the phrase means that if you feel an impulse or desire that you know is wrong, you should make an effort to put that evil desire out of your mind.
"The koan about killing the Buddha is not too different from that. If you are always daydreaming about how nice it would be to be an enlightened Buddha, and how everyone would look up to you then, that is exactly the kind of silly thinking that prevents you fi-om appreciating yourself fliUy just as you are. You'd be like that poor fish wondering what
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