by Yoko Tawada
Jean was a lawyer. Sometimes he had to go to the office late in the evening or on weekends. Some days he could stay home. Whenever Jean left the house Ai Van would rise from her desk. The vacuum cleaner would be pressed into service, its droning buzz disturbing the quiet I needed to study. The vacuum ruthlessly sucked up every bit of knowledge that had accumulated on the desk along with the dust. Then Ai Van would pluck the withered leaves from the flowers in the vase, hunt for missing socks, or scrub the dirty stovetop. Soon there was no longer anything that required her attention and she would return to her desk. As a housewife, however, she had invisible antennae like those of an insect that were constantly sensing new tasks in the air. For this reason she could not sit still for very long. Do we still have enough salt in the salt shaker? Ai Van retrieved a box of salt from the cupboard and filled the tiny container. The white powder whistled and glittered as time ran through her fingers.
Jean came home with a bouquet of roses. “Is it your birthday?” I asked Ai Van. “No, today is…” Then she whispered something in French and giggled, while her eyes sought Jean’s approval. I saw age spots on the back of his hand. Instead of commenting, Jean stroked the back of his own head and let his nose stick out in the air a little. Somehow people who project happiness look a little like dogs.
Ai Van was proud of Jean. When he wasn’t home, she sang his praises: a man like that, with broad shoulders, tall, well educated, who earned quite a bit of money. He was so terribly in love with her that he often couldn’t concentrate on his work. At its worst he would simply cancel important appointments with his clients and come home early with his loins on fire. He said sweet things about her at every opportunity and never missed a chance to take her to a fête so that people could get a look at her. “A fête?’ I asked, suddenly feeling agitated. “Isn’t that what the Americans call a party, and doesn’t the word ‘party’ mean the Communist Party as well?” I don’t know what made me think of that. Ignoring my association, Ai Van blew her nose loudly and went on: “Today is the birthday of one of Jean’s friends. Would you like to come along?” “I can’t today. Today I’ve got to go to the movies,” I said. “What a coincidence! You go to the movies every day.” “But today it’s especially important.”
I missed the smell of Marie’s perfume, her perfume that used to pierce my nostrils like a toxin. I missed the delicate airborne particles of dust that used to appear in the shaft of morning light slanting down into the basement. I couldn’t talk about these things with Ai Van.
Ai Van kneaded her own flesh into the shape of a woman she could present in public. She coordinated her hairstyle with her shoes, her smile with her lipstick, her fingers with her handbag. She glanced about almost coquettishly, yet no one would despise her, let alone laugh at her, for there was nothing ridiculous about her at all. If I were to stand before your poster at the cinema and start a conversation with your picture, people would laugh at me even though nothing was ridiculous about my actions. People would either laugh or walk past me in silence as if I weren’t there. If I were to say at a party that the silver screen was the bed-sheet upon which I did all my living and sleeping, no one would want to talk to me anymore. I had never been to a party. Ai Van explained to me that a party was a place where you could show off your lover or husband and tell stories about your vacation. “So you really don’t want to come?” Ai Van was using a silver shoehorn to insert her feet into particularly tall high-heeled shoes. “No, I really do have to go to the movies today.” Jean was already standing outside the apartment door, groaning with impatience.
I was in bed already when Ai Van and Jean returned from the birthday party. At first I heard footsteps on the stairs, then the door opened, a whispering crept into the apartment, followed by irregular steps in the hall. The water faucet turned on. The rustic of fabric. Steel springs creaking in the mattress. And breathing, breathing, breathing.
In the early morning hours Jean appeared to resist protracted physical contact with Ai Van. He would hold her face between his hands and kiss her carefully and conservatively upon the lips while she attempted to press her entire body against his. “I always need skin contact. The only people who can understand this are ones who grew up in a tropical climate like we did.” Ai Van expected me to agree with her, but I couldn’t identify with this tropical skin lust. “Wouldn’t you say the climate I grew up in was more Communist than tropical?” “No, you are a tropical human being, just like me. Jean is completely different, because the air in Paris stays cool and dry for months at a time.” “But in the summer it’s hot here, too.” “Summer doesn’t count. It’s winter that makes people who they are.”
Jean was a lawyer, but he wasn’t always able to use law to help people. One day Ai Van asked him to help a relative of hers who lived in Marseille. He had loaned money to a native Frenchman that had never been repaid. I met this relative one day when he visited us in Jean’s absence. He was an angular man with a hoarse voice. When he sat down on the sofa, I noticed that his right leg didn’t bend. He responded to my look of surprise with a disarming smile and rolled up his trousers to show me his prosthetic leg. A cousin of mine had been given a similar leg after he’d lost his old one to a landmine.
Ai Van’s question for Jean was lengthy. I certainly would not have understood it had she not translated it for me. Jean’s answer was monosyllabic: “Non.” I was happy because for the first time I completely understood what he said. Ai Van’s face turned stony. After a while she tried to appeal to his reason and at the same time repair his heart; he, meanwhile, withdrew behind the curtains of his face. Later Ai Van translated Jean’s justification for his refusal: It was problematic when the client was in precarious financial circumstances. Jean could not work for free as it was forbidden. And if the client happened to be lacking a legal residence permit, Jean could be charged with supporting an illegal entity. Ai Van couldn’t believe that her husband, who never hesitated to buy her dresses and earrings, would deny such an urgent request. “Illegal, you say? He isn’t an illegal person, he’s my relative!” Jean added sympathetically that even if he were to take the case, the man might be arrested instead of getting his money back. It wasn’t possible to call attention to one’s rights without displaying one’s dirty laundry as well. A lawyer had no power to bend the law.
Ai Van went back to bed after Jean left for work. I went to the movies so as not to have to remain alone with her in a single room. In the snack shop attached to the cinema I studied the flyers and programs that were scattered around, looking for a film in which you appear.
“Tristana”: The color of this name is brown. The drone of church bells drags each letter of this name down with it. On the screen, the air takes on the hue of autumn leaves. Even your hair is brunette this time. Human beings live through four seasons, like trees. Our hair changes color like leaves.
You’ve had your hair woven into two braids. The way you look reminds me of a girl in a Communist youth organization or, better yet, in an old French children’s book. Your name is Tristana. You use your fingers and lips to speak with a boy who is deaf and dumb. You will be able to speak with me as well.
A paternal figure, Don Lope, pulls the girl Tristana to him and presses his rotting lips against hers. The girl laughs like a broken windup doll. I too used to laugh like this when I felt ill at ease. Don Lope’s face still wears its serious/sexual expression; he is refusing to loosen the reins. My grandfather used to say that even an eighty-year-old man can still learn things from an eighty-one-year-old, as human beings grow wiser with each year.
It was particularly late when I returned from the movies that night. Standing in the kitchen, Ai Van told me that Jean still wasn’t back yet. He’d come home earlier, but the argument had flared up again. Ai Van had jabbed him with her elbow as he tried to bite off her earlobe. He’d fallen awkwardly backwards, striking his head against the edge of the sideboard. “Murderers, every one of you! The war went on too long, it’s driven all of you mad!” he shrieked i
n a magpie voice. Without thinking, Ai Van reached for a jar of jam and hurled it at his mouth. She wanted to run out of the apartment, but Jean was faster.
Jean and Ai Van drank their coffee without a word. In the milk foam I could see my desire to leave them. I remembered the warmth of the paper cups Marie had brought back to the basement room with her. To Marie I was perhaps nothing more than a little blister on her skin that didn’t hurt much but didn’t mean anything either. I had to earn some income of my own before I returned to her. I was surely not a burden to Ai Van. On the contrary. She needed me to establish a united female front against Jean. She enjoyed looking after me. Every day, like the mother of a thirteen-year-old girl, she would ask: “Where are you going?” “To the movies.” “Again? Are you going by yourself?” “Of course. I don’t know anyone. I don’t speak French.” “Why do you go to the movies if you don’t speak French?” I didn’t reveal to her that Tristana had her own language of signs and therefore was able to communicate without the use of her tongue.
I saw the film for a second time. As a child I would read a book so often that the pages flew out of it. Why shouldn’t I keep watching a movie until the screen was in tatters? I felt guilty seeing a film for the second time. Ai Van always looked perfectly content when she opened her wallet to give me pocket money, but I felt as if I were betraying her.
Tristana makes the acquaintance of a painter. And right away the bell that swings in the tower of the church is transformed into the head of Don Lope. Who chopped his head off and hung it there? Perhaps a girl who is shy can become an insolent murderer in her dreams. Would the judge then refer to the case of Repulsion and say that the murderer might repeat her crime? In reality, Tristana is not condemned to death. She doesn’t even get arrested, for old Don Lope is still alive. He is immortal, as is often the case with actors. He stares into a mirror, carefully grooming his beard. Dry bits of food and saliva cling to the hairs—his beard is the second-rate pubic hair of men. Along with his accessories, including his beard, cigars, and hat, he goes into a bar filled with exclusively male amusement-seekers. The men wear black top hats and spit out jokes from the pudendal crevices hidden in their beards. Sometimes they burst into communal laughter, but even then their eyes remain cold and malicious.
A dog is standing on a street corner that is strangely cut off from the city. The city’s inhabitants are uneasy because they are unable to pinpoint the location of the dog. The dog is mad and enraged; it is lonesome and delicately boned.
One of Tristana’s legs is amputated. The leg that has been cut off turns into a wooden leg that lies on the narrow bed as if it were just tossed there. Tristana has assumed a facial expression reminiscent of a piece of furniture carved of ebony. Perhaps we all are on our way to becoming pieces of furniture in order to make everything more tolerable. Then we are locked in an interior containing a camera. Only the rabid dog is free, for no one knows where it is. Perhaps the dog was spliced into this film by accident.
Rather than knocking on the door, the deaf-and-dumb boy throws a rock at the second floor window behind which Tristana is undressing. The window opens like an altar, and Tristana displays herself in a morning coat. Beneath the coat she is naked. The boy moves his hands as if he were taking off a morning coat. Tristana copies his gesture. The boy steps back, trembling, his eyes wide open, he steps backward into the bushes as if someone were rewinding the film.
Jean’s eyes lingered on the autumn leaves outside the kitchen window while his lips still searched for a good spot on his coffee cup. Ai Van cried out: “Watch out! You’re spilling!” Jean gave a start, and a brown drop fell on his white shirt. The spot enlarged like the pupils of a cat that has stepped into a dark room. “It’s going into the washing machine anyhow,” Jean remarked, annoyed, and left the table. I, too, got up and quickly left the room. “Where are you going?” Ai Van employed this question to detain me. “To the movies.” “At this hour?” “To the ten o’clock matinee. They start showing movies at nine,” I responded hastily, retracing my steps and sitting back down beside her. Before she could start in on her litany of complaints about Jean, I asked if he already had a beard when he was young. Ai Van smiled ironically. “When Jean was young, I wasn’t even born yet.” “But it is surely advantageous when a man has reached the age of maturity.” Ai Van drew her eyebrows together. Behind her I saw the second hand of the wall clock stumbling forward. “You have the wrong idea about older men. There are some that have remained capable of reproduction. Sometimes they are even stiffer than the younger ones.” “I meant that they are emotionally mature.” “Jean is still a child. If we had a real child, maybe things would be different. Jean hates children. He can’t even enjoy eating at a restaurant if there’s a family with a child at the next table.” The conversation was developing in an unexpected direction, and my head began to fill with Tristana’s sand-colored world. “I’ve had some of Jean’s sperm frozen. When he is dead. I’m going to have it defrosted and inserted in my uterus.” “But then the child would be fatherless from the very beginning.” “Oh, nowadays it’s normal for children not to have a father. Jean will make his contribution as a father in the form of an inheritance. I don’t want to burden him with children. As long as he’s alive, let him enjoy life.”
“You’ve spilled again,” Ai Van exclaimed. Jean tore the shirt from his body, displaying the chest hair sticking out from the semicircular neckline of his undershirt. Then he took off his trousers as well. I fled from the sight of his hairy legs. Ai Van blanched, and Jean closed the door of his study behind him so quietly it was almost eerie.
Ai Van made us green tea and began to tell me about her father. He, too, had studied law, but since he didn’t think he would be able to have any sort of career in Vietnam, he resolved in 1975 to leave the country. I felt the anger of former times awaken within me and said: “If all the intelligent people had left the country, there would have been no one left to improve it. There would never have been any Doimoi politics, no reforms.” Ai Van responded, her voice filled with venom: “And why did you leave the country? If you really loved your country so much, you never would have left.”
There was a scene in the film Tristana where the workers threw stones at men wearing uniforms and then ran away. I didn’t know the time period or the city in which the story was set, but apparently class struggle existed there as well. The lens of the camera was on the side of the poor. Isn’t this why Don Lope was always shown in such an unattractive light while the deaf-mute and the impecunious painter appeared so simpatico? What would things have looked like if the camera lens had chosen to show the world the other way around? And what if I could see the same way without the help of the camera? But that would be impossible—without the camera’s lens I would never have the chance to see these people.
Tristana was one of the paupers, and unfortunately this character was being played by you, making Tristana so beautiful that the rich man would never leave her in peace.
Tristana flees from her marriage on two legs and comes back on one. Then she continues her life with the rich Don Lope. One evening while a snowstorm is acting crazy, Don Lope has a heart attack. Is it itself a form of class struggle when Tristana opens the bedroom window instead of calling the doctor, so that the sick old man freezes to death?
“What movie did you see?” Ai Van asked. I hesitated with my response. “You’re hiding something from me. Do you sometimes watch indecent films?” If I hadn’t paid the admission with Ai Van’s money, I wouldn’t have felt obligated to tell her about the movies. “Luis Buñuel,” I answered quickly so as not to reveal your name. Ai Van knew of this director and told me about another film of his with the title Terre sans pain that she had recently seen with Jean. “Jean was horrified that poverty was being depicted so blatantly. It was a documentary, set in a village in Spain in the 1930s. The people were just lying about as if paralyzed, and yet only their poverty was to blame, nothing else. The end of the film was propagandistic, the messages were even
spelled out in letters, not just shown in pictures: ‘Comrade, rise to your feet for the Revolution’ or something of the sort. Jean was shocked. I already knew more or less what poverty looked like.”
One week later, Ai Van and Jean began to eat croissants with jam. At night I sometimes heard a series of vigorous noises emanating from their bedroom. Not every night, not even every fourth night, but precisely every third. Apparently everyday life had been restored. The stuffed rabbit in my room looked browner and more naked than ever. Its nose, made of a soft synthetic material, was gradually decomposing.
Ai Van failed to keep her promise to find a way for me to study. Perhaps she needed to have me at home, in case she ever had to battle Jean again. Jean was friendly toward me. At least I never had the sense I was disturbing him. I was a few years younger than Ai Van, he said to me, and he was much older than she was. He wanted me to think of him as a father, Ai Van translated for me with a superior smile in her eyes.
“Do you think there’s still a chance for me to enroll in a language school?” “As far as I’m concerned, you can do so right away. But are you sure it’s the right thing for you?” In Ai Van’s eyes, I was a girl with holes in my mouth. To protect oneself from cavities was easy enough, but these holes in my organ of speech were incurable. “You aren’t a natural at speaking; I think it would be better for you to learn some sort of handicraft that requires a great deal of patience. Patience you have.” “I like to talk.” “Your lips are a good shape for sucking, not speaking.” “That’s not true. I learned Russian.” “That’s not a real language.” “Why not?” “It’s incomprehensible.” “I’ll leave this apartment next week if you don’t bring me some information about language schools.” “Blackmail? Well, all right. I’ll see what I can do.”
