The Naked Eye (New Directions Paperbook)

by Yoko Tawada

  Eliane and the Vietnamese girl, who is now approximately seventeen years old, dance the tango together in their living room. The sweetly undulating melody binds them together like lovers. With the movements of their chins, they challenge one another to a duel. When you dance the tango, you are not allowed to laugh, but these two laugh every time they stumble or fall on the sofa. Missteps are fun. This ballroom dance is taking place without a ballroom, for they are dancing all alone in their own living room. Thus everything is allowed. Another misstep. Who kicked whom? Eliane is the first to tumble to the sofa and is speechless for two seconds. Has Camille tossed her over her shoulder like a judo expert? Is this a martial art? Suddenly both of them collapse in communal laughter until they’re out of breath.

  The whip stops swinging. Eliane stands with the whip in her hand, and at her feet kneels an old plantation worker. He is wearing a tattered shirt and gazes up at Eliane with red eyes in which a sort of gratitude is trembling. Eliane speaks to him affectionately. The workers are her children—they must be loved, shielded, punished, and fed. The rubber trees behind her are like the columns of an invisible palace.

  Eliane is eating mango with a spoon. She puts every other spoonful in the mouth of her adopted daughter, as if she were still a baby. One spoonful of mango for her own mouth, one for the mouth of Camille. Eating mango makes the body green inside. Eliane wants Camille to become just as green as she is. The curve of the spoon resembles a mother’s breast, the roundness of buttocks or belly, but the spoon is cold. Camille’s face would look distorted if mirrored in the spoon. Her face is no longer a child’s face, nor does it bear any similarity to the face of Eliane.

  I would like to eat a mango again. It’s been five years since I’ve had one. Give me a bit of mango, too! Now! Me! Me! Me! My language becomes childish when I speak to you. The words ramble around discretely, without a goal, my voice rises into the heights like a twittering bird, and suddenly I see you standing before me. Your eyelashes slant toward me in pity, your lips faintly follow mine when I speak, as if you were repeating my words. Truthfully, you are dubbing my story as you place one piece of mango after the other on my tongue. The juicy fruit fills the hollow of my mouth, and now I speak only French without understanding what I am saying.

  You are wearing a modern dress that resembles a traditional Vietnamese áo dài. The straight lines of the narrow dress camouflage your shapely, feminine contours, giving you a figure like bamboo. Even your hair, which usually dances curly and golden in the air, has now been woven into an elegant nest. This is your way of adapting to the Southeast Asian landscape.

  A boy and an old man, both wearing brown, tattered clothes, stand on a ramshackle sailboat. Apparently, they are being interrogated for something they’ve done. The Frenchmen in white uniforms refuse to accept their words, set fire to the sailboat, and push it away from the hull of their own boat. The two remain standing on the burning boat, making no attempt to defend themselves. The boat becomes smaller and smaller, or the landscape on the screen becomes larger and larger. Soon the only thing visible is a tiny flame flickering in the night sky.

  “What movie did you see yesterday?” “I’ve forgotten already. It wasn’t so interesting.” “Not so interesting? But you go to the movies every day.” “To pass the time.” “But you have a job. Surely it must be exciting to work in that mysterious clinic.” “Sometimes I feel dizzy. I’m short on blood.” “You’ll manage. You should try to earn as much as possible now that you are making good money. Soon you’ll have enough saved to be able to go home.” I tried to conceal my horror. For a long time, returning home had been my only wish. Now it felt like a trap.

  Hats make the man. The natives are wearing cone-shaped straw hats, while the Frenchmen wear military caps or top hats. The hats of the French women are elegant: a different butterfly flutters on the top of each. When you change your hat, you change your identity. Jean-Baptiste takes off his navy hat and at once stops sacrificing himself for his fatherland. His soft hair clings to his damp forehead; his eyes have a wild, vulnerable gleam. What remains of his former pride now only fills him with rage. He is being hunted and pursued as a traitor. Once he was the little finger of his fatherland, entrusted with the task of saving the sinking colonial ship of Indochina. Now he is merely a chunk of enamored penis, that is, an individual. Again and again his skin gets wet: with rain, sweat or blood, tears, river water, amniotic fluid.

  Jean-Baptiste never smiles, he never blushes or winks. He is a green papaya—he speaks passionately, furiously, nakedly to Eliane, while she looks off to one side coldly. One day he gets a nosebleed and falls to the ground. When Eliane bends over him to wipe his nose, he tries to pull her torso down to kiss her. But he’s rejected. You are now Eliane, not Carol, not Tristana. As Miriam from the clan of the vampires, you might have drunk the blood of Jean-Baptiste. As Eliane you will inherit your father’s plantation and raise an adopted daughter. You are a new woman whose acquaintance I must make.

  On another day, Jean-Baptiste enters Eliane’s house without knocking. He silently walks up to her and tries to capture her lips with his own. Or he dashes out of a casino, leaps into the car in which Eliane is seated, climbs on top of her and gropes her thighs. The Indian chauffeur gets out of the car, opens his big umbrella, and waits in the rain until the two finish wrestling.

  At dawn the workers are striding between the trees. Tiny lamps are affixed to their foreheads; and in their hands they hold knives. At first glance, this march looks like an uprising; in truth these men are on their way to work. They will use their knives to cut into the skin of the rubber trees to collect the milky blood of the trees in containers. Nonetheless, the colonial regime will soon collapse.

  Studying revolutions at school, I sometimes felt pity for the countries that had accidentally developed capitalist governments, forcing the people to play an unsavory role in history. Capitalism can sustain itself only by exploiting other countries, my teacher said. And so the first countries to develop capitalism were compelled to first exploit us and then feel ashamed, while we were always able to hold our heads up as Heroes of World History. If new wars were not always being waged, I wouldn’t be demanding apologies from the miscreants of bygone eras. Inevitably, new situations constantly arise, each more secret and cruel than the last. As you play a role in a movie, I, too, play a role in History. Sometimes I wonder who’s directing my film.

  I used to have conversations with my girlfriends about how we should behave so as to be revolutionary. My mother, on the other hand, was not at all interested in revolutions; what interested her was the theater, romantic novels, and the love affairs of her neighbors and acquaintances. When, for example, we heard that a married woman had run off with her lover, my mother would remark with a sigh: “It was Buddha’s will.” I would contradict her: “Why should we do what Buddha wants? He may be Indian or Nepalese, but he certainly is not in charge of our nation!”

  Since Ai Van asked me several times over breakfast which film I had just seen, I finally revealed the title Indochine. The word sounded like a botched tofu dish. The movie was about neither India nor China—it was about us. How could they have come up with such a name?

  Ai Van told me she’d just read something about this movie in a film magazine. Wanting to avoid telling her about the heroine’s beauty, I gave a brief, objective summary of the film, adding that it offered a suitably critical look at the late-stage colonial period that paved the way for revolution. Ai Van’s response was irritation. “It’s easy to criticize colonialism. Freedom and independence, however, are French products, like foie gras." Jean, who usually kept out of our conversations, asked Ai Van what was going on. Ai Van translated what we’d said. Jean gave a bitter smile. “Vietnam was quick to go up in Communist flames. If France had behaved in a gentler, more adult way, perhaps the idea of independence wouldn’t have fused with that of Communism. And then the Americans would have stayed away, there wouldn’t have been any war, and Vietnam today would be at l
east as wealthy and peaceful as Thailand.” When Ai Van translated this for me, the blood shot into my temples. “What nonsense! That is completely wrong! The flames shot out of the boat that the boy and the old man stood on! And who set the boat on fire? Not the Communists!” Jean seemed taken aback by my vehemence. “What boat are you talking about?” “The boat in the movie.” “Oh, I see. I haven’t seen that film yet. But the French administration in Indochina was never as destructive as the Japanese one that preceded it. Besides, we later opposed the Vietnam War. It really might have been possible for Vietnam to develop into an industrial nation in cooperation with us, without Communism or the war. What a shame that things turned out so differently.” I said: “Jean, don’t you know that Ho Chi Minh always named independence and freedom in this order and never the other way around?” Ai Van laughed dryly instead of translating and asked, “Are you still in love with him?” Jean immediately wanted to know what I had said. Ai Van translated. He replied: “Independence is an abstraction. The main thing is to escape being murdered and become as rich as possible.”

  Enraged, I left the house. The street wasn’t telling me which way to go. All I could think of was the word cinéma—the meeting place of “China” and “Ma.” The entrance of the movie theater welcomed me like the arms of a “Ma.” She never thrust me away, not even today, though I’d seen the same film three times already.

  The red velvet cloth is removed, revealing a gramophone. The invited guests applaud, delighted. Even Eliane’s face is beaming with joy. She asks Camille to dance the tango with her. Camille shakes her head no, but Eliane will not be deprived of this pleasure. Eliane gets up, takes off her jacket, and removes the silk shawl from Camille's shoulders. They dance, neck and arms bare, the two of them as one. Even their glances and gestures, admittedly reminiscent of a duel, are nonetheless signs of their inseparableness. The eyes of the guests are transfixed by the sight of the dancing couple. The Indian chauffeur is proud of his mistress and her daughter. A housemaid, too, is gazing at them with dreamy eyes, but she is soon shooed back to her task of fanning the gramophone, which otherwise might melt in the tropical heat.

  Then Jean-Baptiste appears in his white navy uniform. Camille abruptly tears herself from the hands of her stepmother, who was just speaking some affectionate words to her. Camille wants to leap into the arms of Jean-Baptiste, but at the door she is held back by a fat man, a friend of Eliane’s, an anti-Communist who has been caring for Camille as a father would. Eliane rushes out the door and has an argument with Jean-Baptiste. She gives him a melodious slap, which he returns.

  The workers defiantly sit on the ground and do not move. The machines grind to a halt, everything is at a standstill. Eliane, distraught but just as resolute as the workers, enters the workshop and begins to operate the machine. An old man, her father no doubt, begins to knead the rubber mass and feed it into the machine. The workers are surprised at the unexpected reaction of their employers. They are moved, and this human warmth destroys their will to revolt. Hesitantly, they rise to their feet and return to their places in the workshop. The old order has been restored to its quotidian state. For the moment: Eliane’s two human hands alone will not suffice to uphold the old colonial world order much longer.

  “Independence? Yes, that’s what people say nowadays. In reality, things look different. Independence is a trinket one gives a woman to make her happy.” Jean’s words reached my ears through the mouth of Ai Van. “What are you trying to say?” “For example, we give economic support to the former colonies in West Africa.” “Support? The investors need someone who is dependent on them,” I said to Ai Van while keeping my eyes fixed on Jean. “When we support others, we gain no profit from this.” “Yes you do. Those who support others always get the sweetest juice to drink—juice with no brand name. Therefore, I can’t be more specific.” “You still have all that old propaganda in your head,” Ai Van interrupted me, horrified. “It isn’t propaganda, I saw it in a movie!” “But a movie is a work of fiction.”

  I wished I were able to vanquish Jean and Ai Van with incisive arguments. But I couldn’t even speak properly. And my words lacked legitimacy, for I was sleeping in an apartment for which Jean paid the rent and eating from Ai Van’s pots and dishes.

  Camille marches through the city alongside her French classmates, all of them light-footed, singing and dressed in school uniforms. A procession of prisoners trudges in the opposite direction. Perhaps these are the men who tried to escape their work, or even were planning an uprising. In any case, it is foreseeable that their march will end in death. One of them breaks away and starts running. A Frenchman in uniform shoots and misses. The prisoner dashes into the midst of the schoolgirls, seizes the girl standing beside Camille, and holds her body in front of him as a shield. He is about to flee again when there is another gunshot. The prisoner is struck, blood spurts out of him, landing on Camille, who closes her eyes. There is a faint taste of blood on her lips. I know how it is with blood: He who drinks the blood of a snake that has been killed will later understand the language of birds and become a prophet. Camille is still an inexperienced, spoiled girl from the plantation, but the blood spattered on her lips will be her first taste of the Communism that will gradually spread throughout her body.

  When Camille regains consciousness, she is a baby, bare-chested, lying on her back. A new mother wipes the sweat from her breast. Oddly, Camille’s breasts are not the breasts of a baby but rather those of a pubescent girl. Her nipples harden with arousal, her sweat is red, and the mother is a man: Jean-Baptiste, who found her unconscious and rescued her.

  Because she is so in love, Camille is paralyzed for days. She does not speak, and she secretly weeps in the garden pavilion. Eliane is worried; she asks her what’s wrong. With naïve candor, Camille replies that she’s in love. Eliane’s face distorts with pity. Apparently, she is convinced that being in love must of necessity be a torment. Off-handedly she asks, “With whom?”, knowing this to be a question of little importance as a girl’s love is not dependent on the object of this love. Still, Camille’s response slices Eliane’s heart in two.

  In an old fairy tale I knew, a stepmother gave her stepdaughter shoes made of stinging nettles. When the girl refused to put them on, her stepmother stuck a pin in her eye. This took place beside a spinning wheel. I couldn’t quite remember how the story went. Perhaps the stepmother forced her stepdaughter to drink her blood from one shoe or sleep in a bed of cold cinders. I also had read a modern novel in which a mother fell in love with a man and for his sake left her own natural-born daughter. Eliane, though, wasn’t a character in a fairy tale or modern novel. Her stepdaughter was a thorn that Eliane always wanted to keep at her side, even if it cost her an eye.

  Eliane seems not to be struggling with Camille over Jean-Baptiste, only with Jean-Baptiste over Camille. Camille loves Jean-Baptiste; for her, he is a substitute mother whom she is allowed to desire. Regardless of how much Camille loves Eliane and vice versa, they cannot remain together. Eliane could go on living with Camille and forget Jean-Baptiste. But Camille leaves Eliane’s house. If Jean-Baptiste were now to return to Eliane, she wouldn’t give him Camille’s room.

  An adoptive mother chooses a daughter for herself. This is not the same as a natural mother who becomes pregnant against her will and gives birth to the child because she wasn’t able to abort it. With a natural mother, you can never be sure whether or not she wanted the child. Nor can you ever know if she truly wanted to have a daughter and not a son. This is why I always found the love of an adoptive mother more credible than anything else. My aunt once told me the story of Racine’s Phaedra. The stepmother in this play was in love with her son, which was unacceptable in her social circle. Therefore she tormented her son so cruelly that he left home. Since then I have understood why stepmothers in fairy tales must always be unkind to their children.

  “There also used to be a lot of love stories involving a princess and her stepmother, but unfortunately all these
tales have been lost,” my aunt said. Stepmothers like that must have been burned as witches along with their love stories.

  This is a revolution of the family novel: Eliane is not jealous. She leaves her lover because she prefers her adopted daughter to him. Initially, I was quite certain that Eliane wasn’t jealous of Camille. The fourth time I saw the movie, however, I felt slightly unsettled, for I saw that your beauty was a carefully prepared surface free of any expression. No straightforward message forced me into the narrow space of understanding. Particularly in close-ups your face was fascinatingly open, like a screen before the movie begins. It was my own illness that I always wanted to project a feeling onto it.

  When the last name flew by and the music stopped, I noticed that the man sitting two seats over did not get up; he was observing me. Usually I didn’t look the other moviegoers in the eye, but in this case I couldn’t avoid it, for the man spoke to me while moving his hand across the back of the seat until it reached my shoulder. A Frenchman, roughly thirty years old, khaki-colored corduroys. His jacket was of the same material as his pants, his black hair was curly at the nape of his neck. I didn’t understand him. He continued to make an effort, speaking ever clearer and louder, in shorter sentences. I recognized your name. He pointed at me and said, “Tristana.” “No, I’m not Tristana,” I replied. He shook his head and said, “Miriam.” He seemed to have noticed that I only went to movies with you in them. Then he wrote down a sentence on a piece of paper, along with a time, a date, and the name of a movie theater and handed it to me. His sentence even contained a word I could understand: rencontre, meeting. He wanted to see me again.