The Metaphysical Ukulele

by Sean Carswell

  “Real unobtrusive getaway,” Tom said as the balloon soared above a stand of Douglas Fir. Praeti, who suddenly remembered Flatfoot from the previous Tuesday’s love-in, cast one final glance back at his big serious eyes ignoring the Mountie lowering a shoulder in preparation for a tackle. She blew Flatfoot a kiss and felt her heart, all out of control, inflate and rise quick as a balloon. The witch Jelly caught the thick vibe engulfing the gondola and remembered to tell Praeti, “Aw, quit being a sap.”

  The hot air balloon, being the slowest and most conspicuous getaway in use since the days when slug-rustling was outlawed, afforded Major Marvy plenty of time to regroup, commandeer an eight-seat Cessna in Mountie red, station a Mountie at every window, and chase the balloon down.

  Out of the blue, the refugees saw a dot in the distance slowly grow into a rusty old reconnaissance plane. They heard its engine snarling and sputtering. Remmy had time to articulate the group sentiment, “Aw, shit,” before the plane buzzed by a yard or two away.

  Without planning it, Jelly distributed the uneaten pies. Later, they would disagree, the argument spanning to subsequent decades, a couple of them in a new millennium, even, about who said what, who hit the mark, whose pies drifted wastefully into the southern Canada forest. All agreed that the gondola was filled with feelings that reflected, in sentiment if not in fact, ideas like “Fuck you,” “Eat my ass, Marvy,” and “I vant to be alone.”

  One pie landed on the face of the Cessna, blop, splattering across all lines of vision possible for both pilot and co-. Another pie hit the exposed engine on the starboard wing, muffling the sputters. Two more pies fluttered into the fog below.

  Before the blinded Cessna could limp into a wide arcing turn and buzz the balloon again, Praeti jettisoned the ballasts of sand, turned up the flame, and took them into a higher rung of clouds. When they saw the sun again a few minutes later, they found themselves floating quietly, shrouds dripping, gasbag still shiny with the moist cloud. No sign of the Mountie Cessna. Praeti Splorf adjusted the flame. They drifted away at a graceful clip.

  The rest came piecemeal over the course of several months, with drib following drab between sets at the Café Pick Me Up, or in walks through Tompkin’s Square beneath a statue of a robed woman holding what, once snow had accumulated looked like rice, or admiring graffiti-ed murals among the streets that Kristiani had deemed safe after long trials and errors walking to Incognito Players gigs and, more importantly, walking home from the gigs well within witching hours with nothing to protect herself but a hastily-stenciled sentence spray-painted on her ukulele case that said, “IF I HAD AN UZI I’D CARRY IT IN THIS CASE.”

  In the decades intervening between hot air balloon smuggling and the days when the quintet became a sextet, the Players had all gradually reassembled back in Manhattan, though drifting in and out at different times over the years, some moving temporarily to Mexico, Oregon, Majorca, Sofia, Prague, and other points literary and economic. They never explicitly said how they moved from the counterculture to those who lived in one of America’s most expensive zip codes and sported wardrobes valued at more than it would take to cover a year’s rent on a block of apartments in the Red Hook projects. Kristiani attributed it to the same old stories of refugees accepting the idea of drugs as all the same, willingly trading the mind-expanding for the manic, holding their weed at bay but opening the door to speed or worse, the eighties metaphor of cocaine which, as far as Kristiani could tell in her limited experience, did nothing except make you want more cocaine. They surely weren’t a part of the baby boomers who like their very own Eugene McCarthy switched over to Ronald Reagan’s side once the seventies had run their course. Still, their mystery had none of the appeal for Kristiani that Tom’s last name had.

  “You’re obsessing again,” said Bambina with as little peevishness as possible. Kristiani for too many nights had meditated wordlessly while stroking her cat, a short-haired orange tabby named Ruggles, which was all part of the problem as far as Bambina was concerned. Bambina, who’d been taking French classes at night school to keep up with the gaggle of Wesleyan grads recently hired at the MOMA, added, “You could pay a little more attention to ma chatte, non?”

  Kristiani’s fingers caressed Ruggles around the ears. “I found out today that Tom’s father was once an Oyster Bay supervisor.” It had come up during an afternoon tea with Praeti. The two had discussed parents in politics among the Players when Praeti dropped this bomb. If they were trying to keep Tom’s identity a secret, they were doing a bad job. Kristiani once again recited the evidence for Bambina: Tom had celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday the same week Pynchon celebrated his. Tom had a son named Jack who was in college. Kristiani wasn’t sure where but was just as sure it had to be Cornell. Tom had even slipped from his repeated references to “his wife” once and said, “Mel.” For what little biographical information existed about Pynchon, Tom had shared every hint. On top of that, Kristiani piled the repeated Pynchon references. Tea or coffee, grape or grain, hot air balloon getaways, dressing as a mythical pig man for Halloween, trips to South Africa and the Balkans. Hell, the man had vacationed on the island of St. Helena. Only military and scholars of colonialism go there, and not for vacation. Tom had even joined Kristiani once on a conversation about the fecklessness of ukulelists because of their almost exclusive employment of chords, a sound suspended in time, creating an Einsteinian relativity unmatched in melodies.

  Kristiani had plotted numerous ways to draw Tom out of his lair. She thought of introducing one of the songs from his books into the Players repertoire. She thought of sneaking her cat Ruggles into the Café Pick Me Up and nonchalantly calling her. She considered letting fall a tattered copy of Crying of Lot 49, psychedelic cover still visible under the many layers of tape that had held it together through repeated readings. She ran further plans through her head.

  Bambina broke through the late evening fog of thoughts with a text, though the two were in the same bedroom. “R U here” The absent question mark hanging above the room snapped Kristiani to life.

  “And where are you, saucy one, not down where you ought to be it seems, we must sort that out, musn’t we…” Shuffling Ruggles to the floor and taking Bambina by the hair, rather rudely, and in a single elegant movement lifting her own nightdress and straddling the impertinent little face…

  With the post-love-making vibrations dissipated and Bambina snoring next to her, Kristiani finally faced that last auction call from her obsession with Tom. She realized that the man was fine as the man. One more kook with a uke. One more incognito player to jam jazz non-standards with. And Pynchon was better as Pynchon. An enigma who could never be a man. A Figure amalgamated from the trailings of a million imaginations. After so long out of the public eye, no vision, no photograph could live up to the speculation.

  Kristiani wondered, though. Does the Figure, the imaginary amalgamated Pynchon, when he sleeps, dream? Are the obsessed like Kristiani his dream, in which all that cannot pass in a commodified marketplace for literature or even art in wordsmithing is allowed expression in the restless slumber of these dreams, ever deeper into tomes that break mail order shipping budgets and slump postal carriers’ shoulders? By keeping them ever out of the reach of our grasp, blurring out the borderlands one by one, never replacing the horror of collective histories with any hope more clear than the view through a gas fire igniting a hot air balloon, Kristiani and her pynchonmania returned into the bare mortal world that was her home, and her despair.

  The Reticent Corpse

  A crisp sun shone on the Naoshima seashore. Winds tore through red rental umbrellas like a stampede of sheep, stirring up the scent of coconut oil and rotting seaweed. The tide was out, and the jetty was half exposed, a jagged edge against the surface of the sea. Whitewashed waves hit one side of the seawall. A cove lay still on the other. Children ran across the slick rocks of the jetty and launched into the calm waters.

  The shoreline was crowded. Families gathered, backs to th
e breeze, box lunches in hand. Seagulls peppered the shore in search of scraps. A lone vendor buffeted herself against the wind and created rainbows of sticky syrup and shaved ices for sandy-footed children. A broken sandal stood perched in the pathway between the shoreline and the hotel.

  You could gaze at this picture all day—the afternoon bathed in light and comfort—and perhaps conclude the high winds pushed the scene closer to perfection.

  I could not gaze at this picture all day. I needed to return to my hotel room and prepare for my lunch meeting with the notoriously inaccessible author, Yoko Ogawa.

  My boxer shorts went missing. I don’t know why this was the first thing I noticed while preparing for my meeting, but it was. I searched the hamper, where I was sure I left them. I could still picture those boxers, their stretched-out waistband that had, at times, peeked out above my belt and gathered like black flannel cake frosting. I’d tossed them in the white plastic bag the hotel provided, where the worn and faded shorts created a chiaroscuro. The only other things that had followed them into the hamper were a pair of socks and a T-shirt. Yesterday’s pants hung from the belt around my waist. They had one more day in them.

  Despite knowing exactly where I’d left the boxer shorts, I searched the bathroom where I’d removed them for my shower. I checked under the sink and bed and sofa. I double checked my bag. The room was small, the options few. My boxers had definitely gone missing.

  My room had been cleaned while I’d walked along the seashore. The evidence suggested the maid must have taken the boxers. Why a hotel maid would want to steal a faded, stretched out pair of boxers that were thick with the sweat of my travels—the anxious sweat of waiting through customs, the reticent sweat of running uphill to catch a connecting shuttle, the relieved sweat of a stroll from a train station to a seaside hotel—would be a mystery whose solution needed to wait until after my lunch with Ogawa-san.

  The hotel restaurant redefined immaculate. The white tiles showed no sign of having been walked upon, much less having carried the weight of patrons who scraped their chair legs against it before standing. The tablecloths were a deep ocean blue. They combined with the floor to give the sense that you were hanging upside-down mid-air, gazing at sea and sky. The sneeze-guard glass separating the fillets from the sushi counter bore not one smudge. The stainless steel surrounding it glistened. The cleanliness seemed to make the sound of a briskly tapped triangle in a symphony. Ting.

  Ogawa-san and her dining partner had dressed with a care appropriate for such an establishment. Ogawa-san wore a simple blue dress, one shade deeper than the blue tablecloths. Her starched collar tented around her neck. She shifted her black cardigan as she stood, though it was not out of place before she stood and it ended in the same place after she adjusted it. She dipped her head and offered a smile so slight that it might vanish as the moment moved into a recollection.

  Her dining partner wore a navy cashmere sweater and gray slacks. His hair had turned white. He was an American and carried himself with the sure and steady movements of a man who grew up around money. His hands could have been made of porcelain.

  For my part, I counted on good posture and an air of confidence to compensate for sloppy sartorial habits.

  The dining partner extended a smooth hand to me, introducing himself as “Stephen.” We shook hands. He turned to Ogawa-san and introduced me as “Carasuwellusan.” She nodded and kept her hands to her side. We sat.

  Stephen said, “I’ll be your translator today.”

  I cast a glance at Ogawa-san and blurted, “I was under the impression you spoke English.” I’d been under this impression because, while researching the article I would write on Ogawa-san, I found video of her speaking English. The video was the low-quality variety slapped together at academic or literary panel discussions. Clearly, no budget for over-dubs had been provided.

  Ogawa-san responded to me with the slight rising of the sides of her mouth that might, in some cultures, pass as a smile.

  Stephen said, “We’ll eat first and talk afterward.”

  The sushi chef served us. He did not take our orders. Instead, he brought over nigiris one-by-one. I learned from Ogawa-san and Stephen to eat the nigiri as soon as it arrived. No sauces were provided, no dipping dishes to fill with soy and wasabi. The nigiri arrived perfect and risked losing its perfection with our hesitation.

  Ogawa-san ate with impeccable table manners. She sat with her back straight, her knees flush together, her feet evenly on the floor. She kept her eyes on her plate, and raised them only when answering a question and then only slightly, as though she were studying the center of the immaculate blue tablecloth.

  I glanced over at her whenever I had the chance. Her hair fell in wisps around her face. She had nice features—an intelligent brow, fine wrinkles around the corners of her eyes—but she was difficult to read. Stephen sat with an equally starched spine and ate with the manners of an effete who could gracefully work his way through a cherry in three bites. A heavy silence hung around us through most of the meal. Stephen smiled constantly, as if trying to carry the weight of the silence with the edges of his mouth. Ogawasan responded to most of my prodding by pointing to the food being served, motioning for me to eat. The nigiris ran from light egg pieces and slices of pompano to heavier ahi and salmon, finishing off with monk fish liver and saba. I felt my entire travel budget pass through my tongue and into my belly.

  “Enjoy this,” Stephen said.

  I did.

  After a dessert of fresh fruit, Stephen explained to me why Ogawa-san—the author known for guarding her privacy, for shunning the press—had agreed to speak with me. “She wants you to teach her the ukulele,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  Ogawa-san spoke to Stephen in Japanese. I cast a glance toward the front of the restaurant. A maid, perhaps the one who had cleaned my room, picked up an ornamental quartz obelisk and dusted it with a black rag. The rag had little silver fish—dolphin—just like the ones on my boxer shorts. There could be no mistake. Those were my boxer shorts in the maid’s hand.

  Not nearly enough time had passed for her to wash them prior to employing them as a dust rag.

  Stephen translated Ogawa-san’s Japanese. “First, she learns the ukulele,” he said. “Then you get your interview.”

  The hotel was U-shaped. Ogawa-san’s room was directly across the courtyard from mine. The curtains in all the rooms were gauzy, see-through. In the evening of my first night in the hotel, all of the east-wing guests’ lives played out before me in silhouette. Ogawa-san didn’t bother to close her curtains. I could see directly into her room. She sat hunched over a laptop, battering the keys with the speed and assuredness of a concert pianist. She paused only occasionally, and only to talk to herself.

  Beyond the east wing sat a hill. An orchard ran up the hill: some peach trees, some loquats, a few grape vines. The rest of the hill was covered in kiwi trees. During the day, it had been nothing but the most beautiful fruit. During the moonlit night, with the wind blowing, the whole hillside trembled as though covered with a swarm of dark-green bats.

  I alternately watched the moonlight glistening on the hotel pool in the courtyard, the trembling kiwi trees, and the rapid tapping of Ogawa-san’s fingers on the keyboard. I felt as if I should write something. I’d been paid to do so. The payment would pale in comparison to the time and money I’d invested in this venture. My travel budget was depleted on a plane ticket and a lunch for three. The rest of the expenses would be covered from my equally limited bank account. All of this effort and money in the hope of securing an interview with an author who seemed passively hostile to the idea of speaking to me.

  I wound up a toy robot and watched him take four steps across my desk. I wound him up again. He walked the other way. I’d brought this robot with me from California. He was a talisman, a way to calm myself before writing. I watched him pace along the surface of my hotel desk. I struggled to scribble a few notes, then went back to the scene outside m
y window.

  The maid scuttled from the back door of the hotel, down the hill toward the seashore. She carried a cardboard produce box. It sagged on the bottom. The maid was elderly. She’d been visibly working around the hotel since I’d checked in that morning. Despite the hours that had passed and her advanced age and the evident weight of the produce box, the maid raced down the hill as if the box and the burden were a part of her being.

  I couldn’t write. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stare at the lives of strangers anymore. I headed down to the moonlit pool for a late-evening swim.

  I dove in and counted my laps in the ten-meter increments of the pool. Ten, twenty, thirty, until I completed fifty meters in each of the four major strokes. My decision to end with the butterfly—the loudest of the strokes—seemed to have irritated one of the guests. His derisions echoed every time I emerged for a new breath.

  The next day, the maid caught me outside my room around noon. Jet lag and the residual effects of a late-evening swim kept me up late and led to me sleeping through breakfast. I’d made a plan to head into town and find food before my two o’clock appointment with Ogawa-san. The maid grabbed my elbow before I could make my way down the hall. She said something to me in Japanese. I shrugged and asked, “Do you, by any chance, speak English?”

  She shook her head. “Pero hablo un poco español.”

  “Muy bien,” I said, “¿Que pasa?”

  “¿Te gusta comer? Desayuno…” She paused, perhaps looking for a way to say “passed,” then simplified the sentiment to, “No desayuno.”

  I asked her to suggest somewhere I could eat. She led me to believe that this was her lunch break. I wasn’t sure if she was leading me to a restaurant or if she was joining me for lunch. Either way, I made sure to keep my hand near my wallet.