My face was known not only at the Kodokan in Tokyo, but also at Carlinhos Gracie’s jiu-jitsu academy, where I’d trained obsessively for the year I’d lived in Rio. No one at either club knew my name, but if someone from either happened to be training in Paris, I didn’t want to deal with questions about what I was doing here or where I was living. There’s a cost/benefit equation in all decisions, though, and my need to train was strong enough to outweigh the risks involved. It wasn’t just a question of keeping my skills sharp, although that was part of it. Like my nocturnal excursions, training soothed an anxious part of me. So I worked out five afternoons a week at a place called the RD Sporting Club, on the boulevard Saint-Denis near the Saint-Martin canal. The club had a variety of equipment—mats, gloves, bags—and plenty of tough partners to train with. And I was glad for the opportunity to use my French, too. Every day, usually after a workout, I would stop by an Internet café, always a different one, to check the bulletin board I used with Dox.
