length, thick, lush fur, the splash of white at her front like a bib of pearls. Her feet were white, too, as if she had delicately dipped them in gesso. Her tail was tossed majestically over her back, the white tip resting lightly on her flank. A symbol of good health in the breedâs native country, she radiated her own vigor. She stood above me, her head cocked to the side, her brow wrinkled, her intelligent brown eyes alive with light. I loved her on sight.
I looked at Dashiell. He had fallen hard and fast for the Akita, too. His eyes were absent of all intelligence. He had moved, lock, stock, and rawhide, into pheromone city.
As if on a signal from each other, the dogs turned, taking the stairs at a speed I couldnât even aspire to, and disappeared. I climbed to the fifth floor at my usual pitiful, human pace. Because Lisa never took the elevator.
âSheâs called Châan,â Avi said. At the sound of her name, the Akita turned and looked at him. She was large for a bitch, probably about eighty-five pounds. âOutside,â he said, waving his arm toward the windows, âthey call her Charlie. But of course Lisa did not name her Charlie Chan.â
âYou mean she gave a Japanese dog a Chinese name?â Châan , I had read recently, was the Chinese term for Zen, or meditation.
Aviâs eyebrows went up. âYouâve been studying. You are so like Lisa.â
âItâs just that Iâm walking in her shoes, trying to understand her life so that I might, one day, understand her death.â Avi winced. âI love the tâai chi, Avi, but I donât know much more about Lisa now than I did the day I met you, certainly nothing that would explain in the slightest what happened.â
âIn China,â he said, âif one wants to study tâai chi, seriously study it, the way Lisa did, it is necessary to be accepted by a master. You cannot go to a school, pay your money, and be taught tâai chi, the way you can here. Every family guards its secrets,â he said. âThey will not teach just anyone.â
âIââ
He raised his hand to stop me. Both dogs, thinking his gesture was meant for them, lay down.
âIn China,â he said, âtradition dictates that the student follow the teacher, and that is how he learns. Here we place great emphasis on education. It is different. But even the way we teach here, giving our students helpful images and patiently correcting postures, we still count the time of study in decades instead of years. Even that may be optimistic. So we try to find peace and beauty along the way. Now, about Lisaââhe pointed to the black shoes, their toes touching the wallââa few days, Rachel, would be on the optimistic side in this study, too, wouldnât it?
âTwenty years or forty years, there isnât enough time in the world to know someone after they are gone. Itâs just not possible to get a true portrait of a human being from the detritus of his or her life and the opinions of others.
âZen teaches you who you are, Rachel. Once you know that, you will know everything you need to know.â
Then why, I wondered, had Alan Watts said, âTrying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teethâ? Or was that my grandmother Sonya, the night her false teeth fell into the split pea soup?
âAnd tâai chiââ I interrupted him.
âYeah, yeah, Zen in motion.â
So what else could I do? I took off the pink high-tops, put on Lisaâs tâai chi shoes, and silently, standing behind my mentor, I practiced the form. Afterward Avi asked me to do a silent round, and this time, instead of working with me, he watched.
Something was different. Perhaps the study now had forged a link with the past, with the tâai chi I had studied so long ago and thought I had forgotten. Or perhaps concentrating on what I was doing rather than on
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