by H. K. Bush
Reading this account of Professor Goto’s supposed meetings with Pound, I admit I was deeply skeptical. And yet, like Jack, I could hardly wait to hear the rest of the tale.
CHAPTER 9
Sensei sent word (through my nemesis) that he must be out of town for awhile, and that our meetings would need to be postponed, so the next few weeks crawled by—long, dreary conversation lessons littered with bad grammar and unread assignments. I did manage some time in the library, rooting around to discover what I could about Pound’s final years in Italy.
I killed some of my free time by taking walks, reading, and doing a bit of writing of my own. And one Friday night, I went out for drinks and dinner with my old buddies from the introductory Japanese class. We met downtown, at our old stomping grounds near glittery Sannomiya station in Kobe, and haunted the back alleyways in search of the best sake, gyoza, or yakisoba. I had become a connoisseur of gyoza, small fried pork dumplings, a staple of late-night pub grub throughout Japan, and was eager to share my expertise.
Predictably, we ended up in one of the gaudy karaoke parlors, drinking pitchers of beer and taking turns belting out old tunes by the Beatles, Motown, Elton John, Rod Stewart, or Frank Sinatra, howling slightly off-key into microphones that often screeched and popped with feedback. Of these old friends, my favorite was Richard, who announced that his three-year commitment was up, he would not be renewing, and that he was heading back to the UK. He missed his “Mummy’s shepherd’s pie,” he explained.
He had been downing beers for a couple of hours, and spoke passionately into the microphone that he was officially tired of living in Japan, disliked being a mere “Japan-hand,” and desperately required a return, as he put it, to the “real world” of British wheeling and dealing with the Royal Bank of Scotland. He was sloppy drunk, and was actually swinging a bottle of Irish whiskey around like a flashlight, pointing it at us one by one as he spoke, so it was hard to tell at the time whether there was any truth to his confession. I only vaguely recalled Richard’s announcement the next morning, severely dehydrated and with a blinding headache, and needed to confirm that it wasn’t something I’d dreamed. So as soon as my headache subsided, which took a few days, I called him to find out. Yes, it was true, he reported. He would be leaving by the end of the month, and was holding a “sayonara sale” to unload everything he wasn’t taking with him. Such sales were frequent occurrences in the gaijin-world of Japan business life and offered a last chance for those leaving to sell their stuff and for those left behind (like me) to find major bargains. For one thing, Japanese generally dislike used products, unlike their thrifty gaijin counterparts. As a result, it was usually Americans or other foreigners who swooped in to buy various household goods for pennies on the dollar.
So I went up to Richard’s place to check it out. I knew my position at the university would not be renewed after the end of my contract and doubted I would stay in Japan even though there were other opportunities for well-connected gaijin English teachers. As a result, I only scooped up a stack of books and an old reading lamp for my desk. I headed for the door as other scavengers appeared, but just as I was saying so long, Richard stopped me.
“How ’bout my car, Jack?”
“Your car?” His remark caught me off guard.
“Well, we had some nice times with it, hey? And anyway, it’s over four years old now, so nearly worthless to the Japanese. Anyhow, I only got a week to sell the damned thing. What of it, hey?”
I eyed him with some residual envy. Yes, I remembered sailing up long mountain passes into the Japan Alps, with “Dark Side of the Moon” blasting from the speakers. But I didn’t have that kind of money. “Richard, that would be great, but I couldn’t possibly pay you a fair price.”
He eyed me right back. “Well, old mate, how does this sound, hey? If I can’t sell it by next weekend, it’s yours for whatever price you can hand me as I bolt for the airport. Nobody’s even looked at it so far, and I’m so busy with everything else, well … Can you think about it?”
For a moment, I hung fire; then relented. “OK, Richard. If you can’t sell it. I’m sure someone will want it, though.”
But the following Saturday morning, the phone rang at 7:00 a.m. “Hey, mate, you up?” Richard. “Meet me down here at my place at eight. The car’s yours, hey? My flight’s at three.”
I got ready in a huff, hustled down to the train, stopping quickly at the bank to withdraw as much cash as I could afford (300,000 yen), and arrived at Richard’s just past eight. The money was in a fancy envelope, Japanese style, and he didn’t even look at it. He handed me the keys for the cash. “Thanks, mate, I owe you one. Enjoy the car. Papers are in the glove compartment. Decent deal, hey? Sorry to be so rushed, but I’m meeting someone in ten minutes. Can you give me a ride down the hill?” Which I did, depositing him at the arranged location, outside Sannomiya Station. He got out, then leaned into the window, and grasped my hand in farewell. “Thanks, old pal, we had some fine times, hey? Gotta run now. I have too much to do. Best wishes.” And with this, he palmed his hands together and performed a small Japanese bow to me, both honorifically and comically. Then he was gone.
And that’s how I ended up with such a fine ride in the Land of the Rising Sun. It was perfect for the American in me, and my spirits soared—temporarily, at least. After considerable searching, I finally secured a tiny parking spot a few blocks up the hill from my condo. I paid a hefty fee and the car spent most of its time squeezed into the small space, but on weekends, I would get up early on a Friday or Saturday morning, just as the sun peaked into my windows, make some strong coffee, and head out into parts unknown in my blazing Nissan, often with no map and no destination in mind. I’d throw in a change of clothes or a book I was reading, but a few times I just hit the road with a fresh steaming cup of coffee.
It was an inviting way to begin my days off—not knowing where I would be as the sun went down, and in fact not really caring very much. Typically, it was somewhere in the towering mountains of central Japan, which were always calling to me. Gasoline was expensive, but I had little else on which to spend my generous salary, and with nothing going on until my meetings with Sensei resumed, I had no particular reasons to be back till Sunday evenings, or even early Monday mornings.
Finally I received word (again through my nemesis, Miyamoto) that I had been invited to spend the following Sunday afternoon with Sensei. Eager to hear more about the intrigues of Hemingway’s manuscripts, what Pound had to do with any of it, and the tale of Sensei’s encounter with Pound in Venice, I showed up early. I admit I was also eager to see Mika once again. But it was Omori who answered the door, and Omori who directed me into the room to wait for Sensei. He bowed, pointed, and left. Not seeing Mika’s graceful movements, not watching the swinging curtain of her jet-black hair, not inhaling the aroma of her powdered skin—well, it was a major disappointment.
As I waited patiently in the sitting room, Sensei lingered for twenty minutes elsewhere. I fidgeted with my notebook, looked at the various books on the nearby tables, and thought sullenly about the absence of tea (and its server).
Finally he emerged, smiling and ready to talk. “So you wish to hear about Venice, yes?” He rubbed his hands together, and sat cross-legged, as alert as I ever recall seeing him. “Those were my glorious days, Yu-san, and so it is a pleasure to tell you about them. I was so young, and in good health. My job here at the university allowed me to do as I wished, and in 1966, I had arranged to be stationed in Freiburg, Germany for a year, as a visiting professor. I learned from a colleague there that an older professor in the French department had known Pound from the pre-war days, and still corresponded with him on rare occasions.
“I made it a point to get to know her, and we became rather friendly. She was an Alsatian French woman called Hélène LeComte, obviously of fine breeding and magnificent natural beauty, though she was by then quite aged.”
He remembered this unexpected good fortune now with a kind of
bliss. “We became a bit of a pair as the year unfolded. Hélène was large, amiable, and liked to drink good whiskey. She also knew all the finest wineries in the region, especially in Alsace, just across the border in France. And a region in Germany called the Kaiserstuhl, near Breisach and the Rhein. She taught me how to taste wine, actually. Wonderful, white Burgundies, and crisp Rieslings and Pinot Gris. It was nothing romantic; she was already rather old. But she still had great charm and retained some of her youthful beauty. She showed me around town, and we took walks into the Schwarzwald. Many boat rides on the river. Yes, we were quite friendly.” He took a moment, relishing images of dinner with Hélène, perhaps enjoying schnitzel and wine together at some outdoor café in the Schwabian Alps. “Honestly, I never understood what she saw in me! Yes, Yu-san, she must have been quite a beauty in her youth, before the War!” I could see that Sensei was still intrigued by her, and that he may have entertained a small crush on her back in the day.
“Finally she told me one day about Pound. I never asked, rather she just instinctively brought it up. She described her correspondence with him, and I asked her for more details. Suddenly one day, she showed me a few of Pound’s letters. They were quirky, often incomprehensible, but also at times hilarious in that odd style of his. She offered to introduce me to him, and I managed to arrange, through her aid, a couple of interviews with him in Venice.”
“But Sensei, I did some reading this past week, and some biographers describe Pound in those last years as unwilling to speak or be interviewed. Some make it sound like he was even demented, near the end.”
He found this amusing. “Nonsense! Pound played his little games. These are all well documented. And he was wracked by guilt and shame for all his political mistakes. But his grasp of history and art was still monumental. He simply wished to choose when to speak and when not to. He was certainly clear and articulate whenever I spoke to him, I can assure you. After my visits, I heard he even welcomed Allen Ginsberg, who sang Hare Krishnas to him, smoked marijuana, and insisted that Pound listen to records by Bob Dylan and The Beatles. What a scene that must have been—it was at Pound’s 82nd birthday party! Yes, he was all there.”
I tried to picture Pound listening to Ginsberg’s loud cries of ecstasy. “So what was he like? What did he say?” I was nearly panting with anticipation. I wasn’t interested in any more stories of Hélène LeComte.
Sensei took his time, now recalling that first meeting over twenty-five years ago. He must have been himself a relatively young man—about forty-five, certainly no older—a rising literary scholar going to meet one of the most influential minds of the century.
“He wore an old black robe of some sort. Silk, probably. He spoke very little, but when he did, it was deliberate, often brilliant, with a kind of vocabulary that can only be described as wayward, weird, yet compelling. He could be extremely funny, then angry. Occasionally he made odd references to people like Cicero, or he would quote some obscure historical figure like Martin Van Buren, as if everyone should know all about him—it was all very off-putting. He made reference to obscure historical points, or esoteric poems I had never heard of. I believe he expected everyone else to be as brilliant as he was, and if not, then to hell with them.” He smiled. “Very American, I remember thinking. But I had gone for a purpose, and that was all I cared about. It was still rather early in my career and, like our old Captain Silsbee, I knew precisely what I wanted.”
“And what was that?”
He looked at me with some surprise. “Why, Hemingway’s valise, of course!”
Sensei got to his feet, walked over to the corner of the room, near the alcove, and there he lifted up for me to see a small briefcase, yellowish and slightly soiled. It was one of those old style cases, covered in dyed leather, metal at the corners, and it had evidently seen some duties over the years. He looked at the case as he held it in both hands, then brought it to me, and graciously handed it down toward me. “Look inside,” he told me. “Carefully!” And he handed me yet another pair of white gloves.
I opened the valise by snapping the locks holding down the top, and an earthy aroma, the smell of old books and library stacks, slightly damp and mildewy, rose to my nostrils. The first things I saw were two old, dog-eared manila folders, each holding a sheaf of paper, typewritten, and battered. And each folder had a penciled title: “Bread and Wine” on one. “Big Shoulders” on the other, thicker file. I gently pulled both folders out and opened the thicker one first. The top page, faded and dirty, was bundled together with forty or fifty pages. On the top page was typed:
“Big Shoulders”
by Ernest Hemingway
Barely breathing, I set that file down and opened the other one to reveal what appeared to be the first page of a story titled “Bread and Wine.” I set it down and looked back in the valise to pull out several more old manuscripts. My heart thudded against my breastbone as I sat there stunned, confusion muddling my thoughts. This valise supposedly did not exist. It was like the jarring moment in Poe’s tale, “The Purloined Letter.” I suddenly realized that the object I had been searching for had been there in front of me, right in the room with me, all along.
I looked up at Sensei. My mouth was agape, in awe I guess, and I just shook my head, almost as a complaint, not really knowing what to say. Then, finally, “But … how can this be?”
Sensei had been working on some rice crackers as he watched me open the case and examine its contents. His fingers fumbled with the plastic wrappings while studying me with his eagle-eyes. He was like an old grandfather, watching a child open a longed-for Christmas present, looking for the sheer joyfulness to take over the child’s face. He seemed to savor the silence as I sat there, absolutely dumbfounded, still looking through the contents of what appeared to be Hemingway’s valise, circa 1922, Paris, France.
“Yes, it is true, Yu-san. The valise does survive, along with its contents. You see it with your own eyes, yes? You hold its contents in your own hands. And the irony of all of this is that the biographers had the evidence available all along, but were simply not able to put the clues together because of the Hemingway myth. The myth tells us that all of his great early work was lost forever. And Hemingway played that myth for all it was worth.”
“So he knew all along that the valise survived?”
“Well, that is one possibility. But I do not suspect that to be the case. It is well established, however, that Hemingway knew that some of his acquaintances wanted very much for him to destroy those early manuscripts. They felt that his simple tales of America, Chicago, fishing in Michigan, and so forth, represented an old-fashioned art. One person in particular was insistent about this, and felt that Ernest’s youthful works were holding him back from becoming the true artist of the new style. This critic felt that such stories were not worthy of Ernest’s talents and efforts. I have personally received evidence from this person, and can prove it is true: two letters from this most famous friend, stating these things very clearly.”
“Which friend?”
He looked surprised. “Are you not able to guess, Yu-san? I am a bit disappointed, actually. It was Ezra Pound, of course!”
“Pound? Why would he care even the slightest about Hemingway’s stories? I don’t get it.”
He was ready for my questions, and patiently opened one of the thick biographies he had set on the table earlier. James Mellow’s Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences, complete with Post-it notes sticking out. Sensei turned it toward me and showed me a quote from Pound calling Hemingway’s loss an “act of GAWD.”
“But what does that prove?”
“In hindsight, everything. You see, Ezra thought of himself as God!”
I grimaced at his point. “That’s it? Your theory is based on that?”
He found this amusing. “It is no theory, Yu-san.”
I was getting irritable and called his bluff. “Sensei! Please finish the story!”
He chuckled, shaking his head at me slowly. “
You Americans! So impatient, and impertinent.” He was pulling me along, playing with my short fuse, and enjoying every minute of it even though it was clear I wasn’t enjoying it at all.
“Very well,” he said finally, after eating yet another cracker. “It is quite simple, really. Pound thought Hemingway was stuck, his writing stale, and that he needed a fresh start. Hemingway obsessed over those old manuscripts. Pound had read it all, including the parts of the novel set in Chicago. He told Hem it was terrible; that he should put it aside. Pound emphasized that the true, the beautiful parts of the work would remain with him, that he would retain the valuable material in his mind and heart, that the essence and greatness was a part of him and would stay with him, but that he needed to look at it anew. But Hemingway was very obstinate, a stubborn young man. He wouldn’t listen. Finally, Pound decided there was only one thing to do: destroy all the stories and old manuscripts himself. Which is precisely what he did. Well, he didn’t destroy them, exactly, but he got them away from Hemingway, which was the whole point. With the help of a co-conspirator, Pound arranged for all of those materials to be gathered and placed in a small valise, ready for his select agent to take it all away at a moment’s notice. And that is how it happened. It was an inside job, Yu-san!”
