Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

sensed that this was what you needed most at the time. You are still more rigid than is good for
you, but in this scatterbrained culture a little mental discipline is always useful. I think you
should pursue Chinese calligraphy for a while. It can be either male or female."
Konrad was not surprised that the man had noticed his occasional absentmindedness.
"You are right, the idle, superficiality of life in St. Petersburg has been getting to me."
It had become late. El-Zafaran invited him to their sema on any of the following
Thursdays. Konrad would not be expected to participate in their turning, but El-Zafaran would
introduce him to their semabashi who could teach him privately.
On leaving, Anastasios hugged and kissed him as his student.
Konrad asked his Chinese teacher for lessons in Chinese calligraphy. She was aghast.
This was much too difficult for him and would take years. Konrad insisted, feeling that she was
considering him a Western barbarian who simply could not and should not penetrate the
secrets of her culture. If it was difficult, he would practice calligraphy for a few years. She then
confessed that her calligraphy had always been judged poor; her father had sent her brothers
to a calligraphy artist, but not her. She was a woman and could not teach him. But she
promised to ask an old Chinese acquaintance, whose hand was excellent, to take Konrad as a
student.
Konrad asked Alekseev about Ch’an. Alekseev was surprised, he did not know much
about Ch’an, but had a practical suggestion. In the Yellow River archipelago outside of
Shanghai lay an island, Putuo Shan Dao, inhabited by Ch’an monks. On the island was one of
the five holy mountains of Chinese Buddhism, and the Ch’an monasteries were exceptionally
beautiful. Putuo Shan Dao was an insider’s tip, few foreigners knew of its existence. But
Konrad should not get too hopeful of learning anything about Ch’an thought or literature there,
the monks practiced age-old meditation exercises, but knew little which they could put into
words.
The St. Petersburg university library owned several Ch’an texts, but they were poorly
catalogued and, of course, in Chinese. Even if Konrad knew Chinese, it would be an
impossible task to decipher the obscure, hyperbolic imagery of these texts.
"However, Ch’an is the most typically Chinese variant of Buddhism, laconic, ascetic, and
dedicated to radically abstract meditation exercises, an attempt to overcome the Indo-
European inclination to intellectually analyze fundamental religious insights. Ch’an claims to be
the fastest meditative exercise to reach nirvana. I have no experience with eastern meditation
exercises and cannot vouch for this claim."
Konrad’s Chinese teacher finally introduced him to a highly cultivated sixty-year-old
Chinese gentleman who, though almost offensively disinterested in Konrad, promised to teach
him calligraphy. Obviously the man did not believe Konrad would last long, and offered to teach
him strictly as a favor to Konrad’s Chinese teacher.
The man, Professor Li, or laoshi Li, as his students addressed him, gave him a long
Chinese brush and an ink-stone and first taught him how to rub a black sooty substance on the
stone with water into a smooth ink. Then Konrad had to practice teasing the brush into a fine
point and holding it in the right way. Laoshi Li was meticulous. No two right ways of holding that
twenty-centimeter-long bamboo stick existed. Next, Konrad spent two weeks practicing various
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