"Yes, it is rather voluminous for a book about Nothing, isn't it?"

I didn't answer the question. It was clearly a signal that the last thing I had said was unwise, perhaps even – well, not fatally, but… - perhaps even very unfortunate. I didn't want to make a habit of it.

He draws a finger across the volumes, as though trying to remember something. When I had gotten here I hadn't expected a man who would try to do things; I was expecting, perhaps, a sort of unmediated nexus between intention and effect. A volume of light in the shape of a man, not a man itself, furrowing his brow like I furrow mine, trying to think sincerely. I had expected something whose lack of imperfections would condescend to instantly evaporate my own, not –

"But it's not a book about nothing, not really, any more than the journey is the destination or the maze is this room. It says little about Nothing, which is of course too much, admitted blasphemy; 'whereof one cannot speak,' as the scriptures say,'one must remain silent.' That's blasphemy too; one cannot silently prescribe silence."

"So the scriptures contradict themselves?" There is a sense in which he does wash my imperfections away, but it is a slow way, scraping off the lacquer first to reveal the grime underneath. I am totally honest in his presence; it is a magnification of my faults. The heretic is revealed, when he had hidden so successfully from himself.

"Of course. That should be obvious." Now I am castigated for my stupidity instead. "And contradictions are to be…?"

"Resolved."

"Resolved, yes. Eliminated, is another way of phrasing it. The point of the scriptures is not to describe reality as it should be, but as it is, and what it is is contradictory. That's why change happens.

"In the First Age of Men, when philosophic controversies were a matter of popular dispute, metaphysical positions were divided north-by-south and east-by-west: 'Unity' against 'Multiplicity,' 'Being' against…"

He lectures on known matters; as punishment, I think. My obviously dull answers thus far have robbed me of the right to protest my scholarship, and yet I retain enough that I don't listen fully, stewing indignantly instead. Should I seize the moment at one of these pauses, complete a sentence? But I've missed enough, and the teacher is peripatetic enough, that I might well have missed his already saying it, and so dig my ditch deeper.

"…exile here, realized that the second dichotomy was quite wrong, or incomplete, and that we should be asking about the Unity or Multiplicity of Nonbeing or Cessation. In truth, there are two poles. Of the Unity of Nonbeing we can say only as much as you do now. 'Of the destination I cannot speak, and I cannot see, but commit the Practices and I can non-see it.' But of the maze… Existing reality is a multiplicity of cessation. One can, and must, write volumes about it, for its contradictions beg resolution by the honest scholar. That is what brought you here, isn't it?" He looks at me quizzically, with enough compassion to imply that he has forgiven me so long as I have not forgiven myself.

I consider my answer carefully this time. Perhaps silence is correct – that's what my instinct would be if this scene were a riddle told – but he doesn't look satisfied by it. Perhaps honesty is the best policy – no, no, absolutely honesty is the best policy, have I any doubt that he can read even the consideration of dishonesty on my face? I did not come here to usefully solve conundra for him; just the opposite. My braving the maze would prove my devotion, and my own problems would resolve in his mere presence, and after that there would be nothing, not so far as I'm concerned. But that's my subjective intentions only. He didn't ask about those, did he? He asked what brought me here in fact, what transformed my being elsewhere to here. And as a matter of simple logic, it follows that:

"Yes, but not from my knowing so."

He smiles with a compassion that this time is full; overflowing, even, and I feel the tension melt from my body – ascending upwards from my feet, as in meditation; first my toes, feet, legs, torso, and on to the rest of me, scrunching up and then relaxing. He picks up a knife and then it's all jolted again, with something like sexual anticipation, and he places it in my hand.

"Transformation through contradiction," he says. "Now, my daughter, I want you to freely do what you came here for, but not to intend to – do you understand?"

I nod – first lying, then truthfully. I press the knife lightly to my throat. Blood trickles out. I want it; for I am at the gate at the end of the maze, beyond which one can say nothing, certainly nothing stupid. It's so close. He cannot enforce his command; certainly not the latter half, why should I obey it? Because of the conviction that brought me here? I thought only that the desire for death was enough, but I now realize it was not – that the scriptures are correct when they say it is universal, and that the virtue in admitting it is only the first of many. Ten thousand virtues, ten thousand paces in the maze.

I realize the knife is digging in deeper, and more fully than before how much pleasure I've been feeling at it – stop, stop… Stop! The knife has to work its way through when I don't want it to, and now I do. How? Only if I am not at the one moment the same as the next. Only if I murder genuinely, kill a victim who is screaming out to live, and will to survive as that killer. I focus on that thought, shunt away the pleasure, plunge in,

Yes! I shall bear every burden! All sorrows, all calumnies, on me! There's another voice in my head, a gentle, prodding voice, asking me something, but I only scream assent at it. Make my pilgrimage as long as it must!

I'm already dying in every moment, I realize, that's the trick; the me who is now is not the me who is to be, is not this now, or this. The only moves I can ever make are altruistic; I can only ever spare, or need to spare, others, perhaps others very similar to myself. We are, this world, a multiplicity of cessation, yearning towards a unity of nonbeing.

He stands over me and smiles. I do not feel me breathing but I can feel me being. There are ten thousand paces in the maze and I have only been two.