Third Floor Right, I

This will be a drawing room, alomost bare, with polished floorboards. The wall will 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 furnitures 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 initated 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 enterprised.