The Eater of Dreams

by Kat Cameron

  Kawabata-sensei wraps me up, first in a white long blouse without buttons; then the kimono itself, folded left over right, the sleeves long and square, the collar scooping away to reveal the neck; then the obi, a stiff red sash that surrounds me like a chastity belt, holding me in so tightly I have to take quick, shallow breaths. My chest sticks out above it like that of a matron in a firm corset. She secures the obi over a large block of material with a red iris embroidered on it, and then knots a white cord around the obi. I’m feeling more and more like a brightly wrapped package: Western omiyage, wrapped and wrapped again in the Japanese way. On my feet are the split-toed white socks called tabi, usually worn with waraji, a sandal made of rice-straw. Thus adorned, I make my way downstairs in short, short steps, walking as carefully as a pregnant woman trying not to trip.

  The ladies who come to tea all sigh and wave their hands, like a field of rice bowing in the breeze. I am the guest of honour. I kneel and bow, almost knocking my head against the floor, before entering the tea chamber. The tatami flooring is bare, no furniture at all. Rather than plain shoji screens, the walls are ornamented with sprays of pale pink and white flowers. In the raised toko-noma, a wooden dais at the far end of the room, is the flower arrangement, which looks bare to me: a single stalk of flowering cherry in a vase shaped like a tube of bamboo. Above it hangs a scroll with a verse in kanji dripping down its length, black smears of ink.

  Kawabata-sensei explains. “The scroll expresses a feeling for the season. The poem is one of Ono no Komachi’s. It translates roughly as The flowers fade too swiftly / So too does my body / As the rain falls endlessly. When we see the flowering blossoms, we are reminded of their short lives and our own short lives.”

  “Life is transient,” I say. “As Shakespeare says in Macbeth: Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more.”

  “Ahh, so desu ka.” I hope I’ve impressed her. Sometimes I feel so uncultured here, a piece of grit that needs layers and layers of oyster spit before I’ll glow in pearly splendour.

  I’m introduced to the six other ladies, all in plain rich kimonos of dark green, crimson, pale amethyst, grey-blue, silvery-grey, and bronze, whose names slide by my ears in liquid consonants. I smile and bow, then try to arrange myself as gracefully as my companions, but the kimono bunches under my feet and gaps as I carefully lower myself to my knees. My knees begin to ache immediately as I fold myself into seiza position, with my feet tucked under my ass.

  The tea lady, in a pale kimono patterned with a delicate grey landscape, is an expert. A section of tatami has been lifted out, revealing a small area for boiling the water. An iron pot holds the water, which the tea lady gently ladles out with a bamboo scoop into the tea bowl, then adds the powdered green tea and whisks it. As the bowl goes around the half-circle, each lady rotates the bowl, admiring the green of the tea against the bowl’s rough rim of mottled orange and the glazed gold interior, and then takes a sip and wipes the edge with a fukusa, a square cloth of royal purple. The colours of the kimonos glow in rich jewel hues against the white walls.

  When the tea bowl comes to me, I smile and take it carefully, concentrating. I don’t want to spill anything on the kimono. I look down and see green foam, thick as paint. And something else. Lafcadio’s wrinkled face, one eye smiling, the milky eye obscured by his white hair.

  I look up, startled. Kawabata-sensei murmurs encouragingly, “Just take a small sip, Elaine. It is bitter, but it does not taste so bad.”

  Looking down again, I see Lafcadio’s face is still there, framed on all sides by foamy green.

  “What are you doing here?” I whisper harshly.

  I sense unease on either side. I’m disturbing the serene peace of the ceremony. Grimacing at Laffy, I set my lips to the edge of the bowl, take one small sip. He winks at me and disappears. I pass the bowl to the lady on my left.

  The tea bowl has gone around the circle; the utensils have been washed. My knees are screaming for release and my feet are numb. Once the obligatory photo has been taken, I carefully slide my feet out and to the side.

  The lady to my right smiles as I slump over towards her. She murmurs something and I catch the words seiza and muzukashi, the expression for difficult which I hear every time I give one of my classes a pop quiz.

  “Hai, muzukashi,” I nod.

  “Ohh, jozu desu.” The standard Japanese politeness, complimenting me on my nonexistent language skills. She then speaks with the lady on her right and they smile and nod.

  Kawabata-sensei leans over. “She says that you are very tall. Japanese people are short because we spend so much time kneeling. It shortens the legs.”

  That’s a different explanation. I always thought it was genetics and the diet which, until thirty years ago, was high in rice and fish, low in red meat and dairy products. Certainly, some of my grade eleven boys are my height, five foot, eight, or taller. Maybe they don’t kneel much.

  “My father is tall,” I explain. The struggle to translate. “Watashi no otoo-san wa . . . ” What the heck is the word for tall? Ooki! “Ooki desu.” Actually, ooki might just mean big, but what the hell, last time I saw him, Dad needed to lose some weight.

  “Ahh, so desu ka.” We have achieved cross-cultural communication. Fortunately, we can stop, as the tea ceremony is finally over. I stagger to my feet, an awkward giraffe unfolding my limbs, to a chorus of polite giggles. Kawabata-sensei takes my elbow, probably worried that I’m about to crash through her fragile shoji walls.

  “Now we will have lunch,” she announces. She goes into the kitchen and ties a lacy white apron around her kimono. I follow her so I don’t have to sit down again. I’m feeling a bit odd, light-headed. What was Lafcadio doing in my tea bowl? Is my subconscious playing tricks? I’ve never seen him outside my apartment before.

  Returning home, an hour later, I call, “Shitsurei shimasu” as I open the door and slip off my shoes. No response. I check the bedroom, the kitchen, calling “Laffy, are you here?” but he doesn’t answer, doesn’t appear. This is nothing new as he often vanishes for days at a time. Typical man. He shows up when he wants, disappears for days. I have no telephone number for the other side. I don’t know what he does there. I still don’t know why he’s here, in my apartment.

  Jules and I leave Monday morning for Tokyo. After a day of shopping and a movie, we catch the overnight bus to Kyoto, leaving at eleven from a bus terminal that looks like bus terminals everywhere: blue and orange plastic chairs in the waiting room, scruffy backpackers waiting outside under the neon glow of bright lights. The bus itself is surprisingly luxurious; the seats recline and we’re provided with pillows and blankets.

  We settle in for a good chat. I tell her about the tea ceremony, leaving out Lafcadio’s surprise appearance.

  Jules falls asleep around two. I am staring out the window, marvelling at the utter blackness of the night, when I hear a voice.

  “Elaine, thank you for taking me to Kyoto.” It is Laffy.

  “Where are you?” I whisper.

  “I am with you. I am now a part of you.” This is sufficiently mystical to creep me out, until he starts making demands.

  “Do you think it would be possible to see Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji. And the cherry blossoms along the Path of Philosophy? And Heian Shrine? The tori gate outside the shrine almost reminds me of Itsukushima shrine, rising from the tranquil blue waters of Hiroshima Bay. I have written a fascinating sketch of my travel experiences there.”

  “Do you have any other requests?” I ask, hoping no one can hear me.

  “If only you could travel as far as Matsue, so that I could see my house one more time. But that would be difficult.”

  Jules and I walk the winding streets of Kyoto, accompanied by an invisible tour guide, murmuring comments in my inner ear. At Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Temple, burnt down in 1956 by a mad monk and completely rebuilt and reguilded by subscriptions from the Japanese people, he marvels, �
��It is exactly the same as before. This is most astonishing.” Ryoan-ji, with its raked garden of white gravel and fifteen rocks. I sit on the raised wooden balcony along one side of the garden, with Lafcadio admonishing me: “Look carefully, Elaine. If you open your inner mind, the rocks become the islands and the white gravel is the sea lapping at the bosom of Japan.”

  At the youth hostel, he discreetly vanishes and Jules and I can bask in peace in the women’s onsen, the steaming water sloshing against our bodies. I start giggling at the sight of my breasts and knees rising out of the water like islands and suddenly I’m crying, and Jules is asking, “Are you okay, Elaine?” and I can’t explain what’s wrong.

  The next morning, the cherry trees nestle against the striking orange walls of Heian Shrine; the trees in the inner courtyard blossom with white paper prayers. “Elaine, could you tie a prayer to the tree for me?” I purify my hands with icy water from the fountain at the base of a granite dragon statue, before writing a prayer. I use one of Lafcadio’s epigraphs, an old Japanese love song — Mijika-yo ya! Baku no yume ku, Hima mo nashi! — and tie it on a branch in the cluster of trees below the row of iron lanterns and swooping green roof tiles.

  “The Eater of Dreams,” he whispers in my inner ear. “Alas, our life is but a short night. The Baku will not have time to eat our dreams.”

  Jules goes shopping the third day, to buy farewell omiyage for her favourite students. I walk along the Philosopher’s Path, from the Silver Temple, Ginkaku-ji, heading towards Kiyomizu Temple, criss-crossing the canals of Kyoto, wandering in a daze under the clouds of trees. Pale pink cherry blossoms lie scattered in the stone urns that are massed over with green moss, thick as wet velvet; cherry blossoms drift over the lion-faced stone dogs guarding the entrances to wooden houses; they float on the flat serene surface of the canals. I am falling under the spell of sakura no hana. They have no scent, they are as fragile as a dream. Lafcadio is silenced by their beauty.

  The fourth day. Kiyomizu Temple. We climb upwards through narrow streets, lined with shops selling fans of silk, paper and ritual fans made of bamboo; Kyoto pottery and kyo-yaki ceramics; cloisonné jewelry and pillboxes; postcards, coasters, key chains, and pens; sake sets with two cups with no handles, a larger one for the male drinker, a matching smaller one for the female; long tubes of red and green fish kites for Children’s Day; good luck charms for exams, their red, gold, and blue tassels dangling in bunches; Kyoto washi, delicate paper with gold and silver flecks pressed into a nubby, uneven surface; boxes and boxes of omiyage — bean-paste cakes and chocolate shaped like miniature temples and cherry trees. We wind our way up and up, along Chawan-zaka, Teapot Lane, towards the twin temples, finally reaching the bottom of the stairs framed by pines.

  In the centre of the group of temples is Kyoto Jishu Shrine: the dwelling place of the god of love and matchmaking. In front of the shrine are two stones, several feet apart, both with ropes tied around them and jagged paper lightning bolts attached to the ropes. Groups of giggling school girls are lining up to walk from one stone to the other. Jules reads the notice aloud.

  “If you can walk from one stone to the other with closed eyes, your love will be realized.” She laughs and closes her eyes, staggering from one stone to the next in a parody of the uniformed girls, who laugh discreetly, hands over their mouths, at the gai-jin freaks making fools of themselves.

  All around the temple are booths selling paper good-luck charms. I buy a paper inscribed with a love knot for a thousand yen, but I don’t tie the paper to the board, where charms and wooden plaques, ema, testify to the efficacy of the god.

  We leave the shrine, walking down the stairs, leaving behind the doubled temples, one larger, like the sake cup for males, the one beside it smaller, female, down out of the eastern hills of the city and come upon a Shinto graveyard. The grey markers of the dead blanket the hill in ascending terraces, like rice fields, but grey and black. Pillars incised with black kanji surround us. I think of graveyards at home: flat and neatly spaced, the rectangular graves and upright tombstones dotted with fluttering flags and fake-flower arrangements.

  Even the dead crowd together here.

  Laffy is with me, his ghost hovering around my head like a cloud of mosquitoes. “You have not performed the rituals for the one-year anniversary of Jeff’s death. But here you can say good-bye.”

  “I think I’m going to rest here for a while,” I say to Jules. “I’ve walked too much today. I’ll catch a taxi back to the hostel later.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes. It feels peaceful.” I sit down on the square base of the nearest pillar. There are three small holes, an incense stand. Fallen cherry blossoms have left pink splotches against the stone.

  “The flowers fade too swiftly,” Laffy whispers. “Only in Japan did I understand the beauty of transience. Everything ends. Everyone dies. You understand that now, Elaine.”

  I touch the cold grey granite, trace the black kanji name. In my knapsack is the prayer. I will write my name and Jeff’s above the love knot, take it home, leave it on his grave.

  7. Reflections in Water

  June 1 and the skies open. My new supervisor, Abe-sensei, tells me that rainy season lasts all month. Rain, rain, go away, I’ll change my mind about staying in another day. It rains for two weeks, stops for one day, rains for two weeks more. The Daily Yomiuri calls it a “stagnant rainy season front.” I feel stagnant. Wet clothes hang in my room, the futon feels flatter and harder every night, the musty tatami smells of damp straw. When it isn’t raining, the humidity stays high, the temperature soars, and faster than Dorothy can throw a pail of water, I’m melting. I buy two tank tops and a short skirt at Daie, lie on my futon sweltering in the heat, watching The Woman in the Dunes. Monstrous women everywhere.

  When I arrived back from Kyoto for the start of the new school year, Kawabata-sensei was gone, whirled away with no trace. My new supervisor is Abe-sensei, a compact man with a rare beard and a slight American accent. He’s very excited when he hears I’m from San Francisco, telling me that he studied English for a year in San Diego. He used to teach in Hitachi. Suddenly I’m sempai, or as much of a sempai as a gai-jin can be. Abe-sensei asks my advice about the classes we teach together. He helps me fill out my forms for renewing, three months late. He invites me out for okonomiyake.

  “You must try okonomiyake,” he says. “It is very Japanese.”

  I don’t tell him I’ve had it before. Instead, I smile, say “Tanoshimi ni shite imasu,” showing off my latest Japanese phrase. I’m learning deference, the soft-spoken way.

  The local JET council organizes a joint Canada Day-Fourth of July party. The party is held in a second-storey bar off a side street, next to a flower shop with white buckets of roses, carnations, pink tulips, freesias, and clouds of baby’s breath. Thirty of us gather on a muggy Saturday evening, spilling out of the small room, down the metal staircase, and into the street. I stand with Kim on the balcony, drinking white wine.

  Kim looks unusually soignée, her hair up in a French twist, in loose linen trousers and a sleeveless fuchsia top. She’s wearing sandals with a three-inch sole, but I still tower over her. I dropped twenty pounds when I was sick in March and I feel like a scarecrow, my clothes hanging off me.

  Abe-sensei has implied that he’ll turn a blind eye if I take August off without nenkyu, so I’m going back to the States. A stop in San Diego, and then to Abilene, to see my parents for the first time in four years. Click my heels three times. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.

  Kim asks me, “So where are you going for your holidays?”

  “San Diego and Kansas.”

  “Do you have friends in San Diego?”

  Now is the time to tell someone about Jeff, someone besides Lafcadio. I wanted to tell Jules in Kyoto, but the words wouldn’t come. I cannot keep this secret bottled up inside me forever.

  “My fiancé’s parents live there.”

  Kim smiles with interest. “
I didn’t know you’re engaged. Why didn’t he come over with you?”

  “He died a year ago. He was biking home from work and a drunk driver hit him.”

  “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”

  It’s a conversation stopper, this death, a roadblock thrown between two people. I must learn to go around it.

  I take out my wallet and show her Jeff’s picture, a black and white shot from a photo booth. Jeff looks serious, frozen in a moment of stillness, his bald head and firmly set lips making him look like an adult. Usually, he looked about twenty. He was carded at most clubs. In the classroom he was hyper-kinetic, a whirling dervish. I sat in the still centre and he spun around me, shooting off light like a firecracker.

  Kim glances at it. “Had you been together long?”

  “Almost four years.”

  “That’s a long time.” After a pause, she says, “I broke up last month with my boyfriend, Mick. He’s back home. We were supposed to live together next year, but I don’t think that would work out. My Board of Education wouldn’t approve.”

  She’s not looking at me as she says this. There are layers beneath her words, but I don’t need to know. We all carry our secrets, hidden beneath our skin.

  All around me, I hear snippets of conversations. People exchanging addresses, making travel plans: Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Bali, all the hot travel spots for the young and restless. I could attend the same farewell party in ten years and hear the same comments.

  “Are you looking forward to going home,” Kim asks.

  How do I answer? Should I forgive my parents for not accepting Jeff? I don’t know.