by H. K. Bush
Forgive my smoke and heat, Joe; it’s been a rather humdrum morning, with rain pouring down and the women off at a gallery showing. They left here with higher expectations than I was able to muster. And so here I sit, remembering the old days, when bloodshed and horror in the name of God were carried out, at least, against our own countrymen, and not upon these innocent and freedom-seeking outsiders whose very language and culture remain a mystery beyond our grasp. It can be a tiresome and even shameful thing, being an American abroad these days.
As for that “Red Robin” that I had mentioned, and her foolishness in such matters: Yes, it is a terrible thing to be lumped in with the rest of the crass Americans, who are all up in a lather about God and country and so forth. I did tell her a thing or two, and I suppose in the context of what the British think of as “high society,” well, yes, it was rather unexpected. But mark my words—it’s a dinner that none of them will very soon forget!
Affection all around, Mark
The letters appeared to be very much like the ones between Mark Twain and Joe Twichell that I had read in the past, both during my graduate years at Yale, where many of them are stored, and at Sensei’s, the day he had shown me some unknown others. However, I did not recognize any of these, either.
I thumbed through this sheaf of pages. Overall, it was made up of approximately a hundred pages of autograph letters, all of which were written during the years 1898-1902, back and forth, from these two close friends, probably almost forty individual letters and postcards total. Obviously the ones by Twain were far more valuable individually; but as a complete lot, this was a terrific cache for scholars, since they looked to be a sequential “run,” each letter responding to the previous one, roughly speaking.
Meanwhile, as I continued to examine the cache, Gluckstein calmly ordered an aperitif and croissant, watching the colorful Parisians tread by on the sidewalk. A few times he let his eyes rest happily upon me; he was the kind of dealer who took real joy in presenting to his eager clients a trinket that gave them pleasure.
Finally, he spoke. “Well, monsieur? What do you think of my merchandise?”
“Where did you find these?”
He grinned, wiping his mouth with a napkin. He sipped at his drink. “Monsieur, that is of course a matter of no concern to you. My clients, as you must know, wish to remain anonymous. And my business must rely on this aspect. Otherwise, my clients would go elsewhere, as you can imagine.” There was some real delight in his eyes as he told me this. “I am a man of some secrecies, you see.”
As I listened to Gluckstein from across the table, it was like a spotlight went on in my brain, and I suddenly realized that there might very well be something illegal going on in all of this. Now, looking back and retelling this adventure in hindsight, this sounds so naïve as to be almost laughable. But in all honesty, up to that very moment, it had not really occurred to me. Or else, perhaps I should say, whatever possibilities of impropriety might exist in all of this, I had suppressed somehow. But now, seated at a tiny table in a café in the Marais, it dawned on me. This might very well be hot merchandise, stolen from an archive, or perhaps a rival collector.
“Can you tell me how much Sensei is offering for these letters?”
He chewed on his croissant, slathered in jam. Then he wiped his mouth with his linen napkin, put it down, and winked audaciously. I almost laughed out loud. “Monsieur, this is of no real concern to you, as I told you. Professor Goto is a gentleman who insists upon all matters remaining confidential. I am of course also a businessman who works under such conditions.” His very Parisian English, according to which a word like “conditions” came out “con-DEE-She-ONS,” sounded rather like Inspector Clouseau. Any moment he might stand up and fall to the ground, his cape flying into the air, or else he might bowl over a waiter with a tray full of dishes.
“My understanding is that it is your task to inspect these documents, report back to your superior, and if he accepts your evaluation as definitive” [day-FEEN-it-TEEV], “for you to take possession of them and hand carry them back to Japan for delivery to Professeur Goto. That is all of the instructions I have been given, and to go beyond them is not in my interests. The Professeur has been one of my great and trusted clients for many years, even longer than you might imagine.”
And so I did it. I counted up the number of leaves, the number of letters, and the dates, and found a telephone to call my “superior.” I provided my report, barely able to hold back my enthusiasms, though I still suspected there was something fishy going on. Within minutes, Sensei made up his mind and spoke very briefly to me in the following manner:
“Yu-san, please tell Gluckstein to proceed with the arrangements as discussed before. Within twenty-four hours the transaction should be completed, through the agreed upon agents. Once he has received the payment, he is to deliver the goods to your apartment, at which time please verify that the entire package is the same. I would ask you to hand carry all of these documents back through customs. As old letters you can report that they have negligible value, and the customs people will not question you on this.”
Here again was another hint that something was slightly out of whack, similar to my feelings of confusion at the end of my trip to Manila. Once again, my ignorance of the value of the papers, from Sensei’s point of view, was strategically an advantage when reentering Japan. And, once more, Sensei was telling me to shut up and obey— which was, for the second time, exactly what I did. And once again, it ticked me off. Again I felt presumed upon. And again I felt betrayed.
It was another two weeks before Sensei and I met again. When I got back to Japan, he was away in the south again, and I was jet-lagging anyway. Since school was out, I had almost nothing to do regarding my teaching for another two weeks, so I spent much of my time worrying about the meeting. I didn’t want to compromise our relationship, but I needed to somehow convey how I felt about being manipulated during the recent trip to France and on my prior trip to Manila. The problem was I had no idea how to even broach the subject.
On the day of our meeting, I trudged up the hill as a light snow mixed with occasional sleet swirled down from the cold, gray March clouds above. When I finally arrived at his house to deliver the goods, Mika met me at the door. It had been awhile since I’d seen her, but I was prepared, just in case. I presented her with a gift-wrapped box of candy purchased at a famous boutique near the Arc de Triomphe. Like Sensei, I had learned she cherished nothing but the best.
“Ah, Jack-san, domo arigato!” She seemed genuinely pleased.
We bowed at one another, still quite formal in our approach. Like with some of the overly eager young students in the first row of my classes, I regularly imagined a sexual spark with Mika, but I could never tell if I might be able to turn it into a raging bonfire. I remained confused about the possibilities of our having a relationship, though, in fact, it had been many long weeks since I had even glimpsed her. Since meeting her for the first time, I had suppressed those types of thoughts. Or at least I tried to suppress them. I could still feel the daggers of Sensei’s glowering look, the day he discovered us sitting alone in the tearoom. I even pictured the limpid Miyamoto, slamming his forehead into a stack of bricks, and screeching at the top of his lungs. Thus did my fears curtail my lingering lust.
Anyway, I couldn’t quite figure out how to play it, I guess—and thought of it as a stalemate. But in my daydreams, Mika’s long swaying hair tumbling down onto her silk kimono, which was wrapped tightly around her lithe body as she leaned forward gracefully to refill my teacup—this had become my image of a sort of feminine beauty that was both exotic and down-to-earth. My Muse, so to speak. Ironically, it was on this cold afternoon of what would turn out to be my ugliest confrontation with Sensei that I was destined to comprehend the extremity of my desire to know Mika on some other level than mere waitress. But for now it would have to wait. So I asked, “Is Sensei ready for my visit?”
“My apologies, Jack-san, but he has b
een detained with other things and begs your forgiveness. Please come into the sitting room and he should return shortly. Can I offer you some tea?”
We went into the room that had grown so familiar to me. I thought of it as if it were a place frozen in time, like a reading room in one of the world’s great museums, a place where the past brushed up against the present, and the passage of time was irrelevant, if only for an hour or two. The table at which I had sat and studied Sensei’s wonderful collection awaited my leaning elbows, but today it was empty save for an old Japanese fan and a single, bright green and red volume.
As I sat and waited for Mika to return with a tiny porcelain teapot filled with steaming green tea, I thought about how much I had come to love these Sundays with Sensei. Leafing through his many portfolios, often filled with autograph letters or manuscripts by my favorite authors—a set of pages from a diary by Stephen Crane, some unpublished letters of Willa Cather, a few rejected early song lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin, the receipts from an Italian vacation of William Dean Howells—had become an addictive behavior pattern.
Mika entered the room, bringing her tray of tea and snacks. She poured and started to leave just as I opened my mouth to ask that she stay. The words died on my tongue when I heard the front door open and “Tadaima!” ring out. Then the sound of shoes brushing against a mat, then slipped off, the rustling of a coat, a cabinet banging shut, a sneeze, and finally someone walking down the creaky wooden hallway toward me.
Mika was still standing beside the table when Sensei entered the room. His eyes flickered between his niece and me before he spoke. “Yu-san, my apologies for being delayed. Have you been treated well by Mika?” There was a tiny inflection of jealousy and alarm in this question.
“Hello Sensei, yes, she has been most gracious, as always.”
He gave her a slight nod and then turned to me again. “I met an old friend whose husband was long ago a colleague of mine. I had not seen her for many years—her name is Toyoda-san, her husband was a great scholar of Keats. He died about three years ago, and by chance I saw her today, and we talked for some time.”
He seemed to be rambling and I remembered the awkwardness of the previous time, now months ago, when he had caught me sitting alone with Mika. I cleared my throat. “I’ve just been sitting here, reading this odd little book.” I showed it to him. It was another of his treasures: a first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It just happened to be out, lying on the table in plain sight.
Still standing over me, he shook the folds of his robe, brushing himself off. With what I thought was great deliberation, he lowered himself to the tatami across the table from me. “Mika! Ocha!” This command for tea was slightly more testy than usual, and I couldn’t stop myself from glancing up at Mika as she hurried from the room to get more tea. Sensei and I sat in an awkward silence a moment. “It is a curious book,” he agreed. “The poor wizard. A charlatan from the plains of Kansas. I often felt just as weak and empty as the wizard, in my work as a teacher. Worried that my own … ignorance, and imperfection might be revealed for all to see.”
“Why did you put this particular story out today?”
He stopped to think. “It was not me. Perhaps Mika was looking at it?”
That was all we said about Frank Baum’s children’s book. I waited for another opening. Silence.
“So how was your friend?”
“Friend?” He had forgotten his own story.
“Toyoda-san? Your colleague’s wife?”
He faintly recalled the episode, seemingly still worried that I had once again besmirched the honor of his precious niece, I supposed. Then he stroked his chin and paused. “Ah yes. She is not well. She looks rather haggard.” He sniffled, rubbed his nose. “I assume that there are financial difficulties for her and her daughter. They live near Kobe Station, in a shabby old apartment that is rather poorly constructed, she told me, and I believe she is not able to find other arrangements.”
I nodded. Time drifted for a moment, then I mentioned the papers. “Sensei, I wanted to ask about my assistance. In fact, I think we may have some problems.”
“Problems?”
I struggled to find the way to explain my regrets. Although I had rehearsed my complaints many times, now my mouth went dry, and the words I wanted were nowhere to be found.
“Well, I wondered about the customs on the documents. I had the same questions when I brought back the copy of Moby-Dick from Manila, of course. I had not quite realized—”
Mika reentered the room, bringing another tray of tea and snacks.
“I mean, I wondered if … well, doesn’t sneaking documents or valuable books through customs amount to illegal activities?” In Japanese conversation, that last sentence was pretty American, meaning blunt, and as soon as it was out of my mouth I realized it was not how I wanted to say it.
Sensei appeared to take it in stride, but I could tell he was upset. He tilted his head to one side, as if considering something of great import. He picked up a teacup and brought it to his lips, blowing on it. Then he put it back down without taking a sip.
“Are you referring to bringing the items through customs without notifying the authorities?” he said. “Or do you have other concerns?”
At that moment I wanted to ask about Gluckstein, and how he was able to find the documents, and whether working with such an “agent” was itself shady, but I hesitated. “Well, to tell the truth, yes. I wish you could explain to me why you failed to warn me about this whole smuggling operation. It put me in a rather uncomfortable position.”
“Smuggling?” he said with a laugh. “You make it sound like some sort of drug business!”
I did not smile, and he quickly realized I was not in a humorous mood. He looked me straight in the eyes. “Yu-san, this is just a minor act of rebellion against rules that are simply outdated and unnecessary. As you Americans like to say, we do not need the government poking into all corners of our personal lives. Anyway, there is no customs charge on works of art or rare books. What the Japanese government does not know about my personal collections is really none of its business. I do not think that there is anything wrong with what you did to assist me.”
This last statement sort of irked me. “You don’t think so? Well, isn’t that the sort of decision I should be involved in?”
“You seemed quite willing to go to France on my behalf, and through my arrangement, to undertake this work. I had assumed you would trust my judgment.”
Tempers were on the verge of flaring, and we both felt something new and sinister brewing between us. I waited a moment, just looking at him with a grim resolve not to lose my temper, but that last line about “trusting his judgment” also began to irritate me. So I said, “I’m old enough to know the facts and to make my own decisions!” It came out like something a petulant teenager would tell his domineering parent, but I went on anyway. “And who is this Gluckstein fellow? He comes across a bit slimy for my tastes. Is he some sort of underworld figure? Where does he discover these priceless documents? Tell me there isn’t something fishy about all that?”
Sensei was fluent in all sorts of idiomatic terms, like “fishy,” but that word did catch his attention. “Fishy? Do you mean illegal, or even immoral? Yu-san, I have known Mr. Gluckstein longer than you have been alive. His business caters to many of the finest residents of Paris and throughout Europe. I believe his credentials are impeccable. As for where he gets his merchandise, I am not privy to such things. Perhaps you would like to interrogate him about all of that. For nearly forty years, I have instructed him to contact me whenever he learns of literary or historical materials that might fit my collections. You are insinuating that it is stolen merchandise, or some such thing as that, but this is where I believe you are overstepping your boundaries into my own business. Your charges are against Gluckstein’s character as well as against my own. What you are saying implies a complete lack of trust in who I am.”
I was just as tense as he w
as, but I reached for some words that might cool off the situation. We were fast approaching a point of no return. “Sensei, you’ve been a friend and a sempai, and I’ve valued our times together. It’s been a great honor, looking at all of these items you’ve collected over the years. But surely you must realize how this last experience raised certain questions for me. And how it compromised my own sense of personal conscience. I felt violated by doing things with no understanding or context. I feel like you used me.”
Looking back, I now see that for Sensei, I had crossed a line. For him, it was my trust in his integrity that had been violated, and challenging him face-to-face was the final insult. Sensei evidently desired a Samurai-like loyalty of unquestioning obedience from one like me—a student much younger, much more naïve, and untested in the world in which he lived. He not only desired it; he required it. And so he turned on me.
“Are you really so high and mighty, Jack-san? Are you truly beyond such moral equivocations? I do not think so.” He waited a moment for effect, then revealed his trump card. “Did you enjoy owning, if even for a short time, those first editions by Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac? How did you live with yourself, after stealing those valuable books, and taking them back to your own apartment?”
This brought a smile to his face. No, it was a sneer. My jaw dropped open, literally. How could he have known about that? My mind whirled as I tried to work it out, and my only answer was that somehow there were devices within the library for surveillance. I fumbled for a response. “Sensei, I simply borrowed those to read. I did not feel any need to sign them out. And I returned them a week later.” All three sentences were lies; my intention at first, when I put them in my backpack, was to keep them, which I did for over two weeks, till my conscience forced the return. So now I was lying about my own actions. “Anyway, what gives you the right to snoop into what goes on in the library? And if you thought my intent was to steal those books, why did you wait until now to confront me?”
