An Exquisite Sense of What Is Beautiful

by J David Simons

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It is hard to explain.’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘I don’t know. Sometimes you make me feel I am not perfect for you.’

  ‘How do I do that?’

  ‘I can see it in your eyes.’

  Winter closed in, wrapping the hills in an icy mist. Gone were those wonderful days of writing by the waterwheel. Edward stayed in his room all day, radiators boiling, hardly changing out of his pyjamas and robe, ordering meals to his door. His whole world of sleep, work and play narrowed down to this one set of rooms. His cave in the mountains. He was hibernating. And he loved it.

  It began to snow. He watched the plump flakes fall, purifying his world into a muffled silence. Until a crow flew off a branch, loosening a white trail in its wake. The hotel boilers stoked up into a frenzy. Black smoke from the few village houses grazing the sky. No one ventured out. No footprints in the snow. No snowmen. No snowballs. Or the joyous laughter of the young. For there were no children here. No vehicles could make it up the hillside either. The hotel was cut off from the plains below.

  ‘Supplies are dwindling,’ Ishikawa told him with all the worried seriousness of a military officer at the front. ‘We can only last a few more days if this freeze doesn’t break. Let us pray the pipes do not break first.’

  Edward kept on writing, inasmuch a reaction to the blank canvas outside his window as from any inner inspiration. The snow made everything clearer, more defined, more true. Being stranded added a further dimension to his urgency. Page after page emerged from his typewriter. Accompanied by the sound of a clarinet, the soulful rehearsal of a member of the touring Japanese National Orchestra snowbound in the room above. Sumiko curled up on the bed reading her novel. She had found her own snow country and she was happy.

  ‘I want to go out of this room with you,’ she said sleepily. ‘It would be very great fun.’

  ‘It’s better for both of us that we aren’t seen together. You know that.’

  ‘Then let us go somewhere else.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘An onsen. I have a day off next week. If the snow goes away.’

  He didn’t want to go anywhere. He was locked into his magical world, why would he want to break the spell? But she persisted. The snow began to melt into marbled slush, the local bus company was getting vehicles through with fresh produce from the plain. He arranged to meet her at an onsen further down the hillside, away from the usual orbit of the other members of staff. Just before he left, he received a letter from Aldous delivered by the first mail-van to reach the hotel in ten days.

  “Eduardo, mon cher,

  I am delighted to inform you I have decided to sleep with the enemy. I am now a literary agent. A natural progression from my nurturing of neurotic writers at The Londinium which I continue to edit, of course – readership now close to two thousand and counting. I do believe people are beginning to read serious fiction again. I wonder if you have finished your own manuscript. If so, please send it over post haste. I am eager to read it. Love, your friend as always. A.”

  Typical Aldous. Short and sometimes sweet. Edward tucked the letter into his pocket, concentrated on his walk down to the bus stop from the hotel. Bellboys worked ahead of him shovelling salt on to the icy pathway. The ponds were frozen. The trees frosted white. As his eyes widened to take in his new horizons, he glimpsed a hawk trace a hungry path in the sky. It felt strange to move away from his base. He had spent months at the hotel hardly venturing outside its grounds. He thought he had hidden himself away in order to write. But as he stood waiting for the bus, his lips and cheeks already chaffed from the cold, he realised he was also emerging from a dark, womb-like period of mourning for the death of his parents. He felt like an invalid learning to walk again. He felt re-born. Aldous’ letter also cheering with the opportunity it presented. He clapped his gloved hands, stamped the cold from his feet, began to hum as the bus appeared, cautious in its slippery descent, but remarkably, still on time.

  Sumiko was waiting for him at the entrance to the spa hotel. Rosy-faced and smiling. She wore a fur hat, a long woollen coat and a matching muffler. He had never seen her in street clothes before. He had never seen her look so beautiful.

  ‘A friend borrowed to me,’ she said, touching her hat. She then linked her arm in his, and he let her lead him to their room.

  ‘However much time you spend washing your body at hotel,’ she told him as he changed into his robe. ‘Multiply by three.’ She nibbled on the tip of a finger in contemplation of this thought. ‘No, multiply by four. Only then can you enter the common pool.’

  He did as she advised, soaping and rinsing himself in the men’s washrooms until his skin emerged prune-wrinkled from under the foam. Yet still the other Japanese male bathers took longer with their ablutions. He felt like a dirty foreigner polluting their water. He would soak in the naturally heated pools until his skin bristled pink, his blood thawed, his limbs dissolved into a rubbery mass. And then plod back to their room to lie on the futon where his body merged with hers into a constant mineral heat. The kneading of sweaty flesh. His blood boiling into fists of erections. Spilling his seed and still he was hard. Pores open. Heart open.

  ‘I love you,’ she said.

  He watched her as she sat cross-legged on the tatami, towel-drying her hair in front of a low mirror. She turned to look at him. A tiny muscle twitched at the corner of her mouth. But he couldn’t bring himself to repeat her words. She turned back to the mirror, dragging a large comb so harshly through the tangle of her hair that he saw her eyes water from the pain. ‘I am not your panpan girl,’ she said.

  He knew what she meant. Panpan. A prostitute served up by the Japanese government during the Occupation to soothe the invading American hordes. The remark hurt him. He knelt down beside her on the tatami. A slither of space between them but it felt like a chasm to cross. He could hear her gulping for breath.

  ‘I am very happy here with you,’ he said. ‘I don’t ever remember being so happy.’

  ‘You make me feel like your panpan girl.’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘Tell me then, Eddie. Tell me what is fair?’

  Back at the hotel, he began to prepare his manuscript for posting to Aldous. A few last-minute pencil edits but generally he was satisfied. Except for the title. He had kept that for last. But really he had known from the beginning what it would be. The Waterwheel.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Hakone, Japan • 2003

  He had slept very late. He could sense that from the moment he awoke. The full morning light behind the drawn curtains still managing to filter through the fabric. The sound of a vacuum cleaner in the hallway. There was something reassuring about that hum. A feeling of order, of being looked after. A memory of his mother performing the same task. If he slept – which could not always be guaranteed – he was always a seven o’clock riser. On the dot. With or without an alarm clock. Then a movement of his bowels, a shower and a shave. Such regularity. Yet this morning, a deeper self had demanded more sleep, had overridden his usual methodical being. He liked that. There was still an ounce of anarchy left in him. He reached over to the bedside table, located his glasses. It was quarter-to-ten.

  He washed and dressed quickly but by the time he reached the dining room, he realised it was too late. The tables were already stripped down, the chafing dishes removed, a team of cleaning staff in motion between the chairs.

  ‘Ah, Sir Edward,’ Takahashi said, appearing so quietly at his side as to startle him. ‘I am afraid you have missed breakfast.’

  ‘So it seems. Such a pity as I am quite famished.’ He tried to remember when he had last eaten. A few canapés at the embassy party.

  ‘I am sorry. But the dining room must be prepared. There is an Old Boys party coming for luncheon. But I could organise something for you in the tea lounge overlooking the garden. It is quite pleasant to sit there. And I can arrange for the radiators to be opened.’


  ‘That would be very kind of you.’

  ‘My pleasure. Would scrambled eggs and toast be sufficient?’

  ‘And a pot of tea.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And Ms Blythe. Where is she?’

  ‘I believe she is hard at work in our small business centre.’

  ‘Perhaps you would like to join me then, Takahashi-san? We can have that little chat I have been so looking forward to.’

  ‘That would be most pleasant. I shall let you eat in peace. And then arrive to share some tea with you.’

  Almost as soon as Edward had popped the last slice of toast into his mouth, Takahashi appeared at his table, bowed, pulled out a chair.

  ‘Some more tea,’ the hotel manager said, wriggling his starched white cuff high on his forearm and pouring out two cups with a measured efficiency. ‘So refreshing this particular Indian blend. We have it specially prepared for the hotel, you know. For many years now. It is quite famous.’

  As he watched Takahashi sip his tea, Edward knew he was looking at the face of a lifelong smoker, the lines etched in the flesh holding a slightly grey tinge, the eyes bleary from years at the front line of such a habit. He could see the stained fingers edgy without their usual wedge between them. And on the back of one hand, the dried-up welt and blister of what appeared to be an old burn mark. Perhaps it was the taste of the hotel’s own quality brew that set him off or the mid-morning peacefulness from his position overlooking the gardens, but he suddenly felt an overwhelming curiosity about this man sitting in front of him.

  ‘Tell me, Takahashi-san. Was it hard for you after the war?’

  Takahashi gently replaced his cup on its saucer and smiled. ‘Hunger, Sir Edward. That is what I always remember. An empty stomach and a constant desire to fill it. But we were lucky. Although we lived in the city we had relatives who were farmers. My mother often walked miles out into the country to visit them, threw herself at their mercy so we could be fed. Traded heirlooms for handfuls of rice. Sometimes I had nothing to eat but grasshoppers.’

  ‘Grasshoppers? I really thought that was only a fiction.’

  ‘I can assure you that poverty drove my mother to such extremes. My brother and I were often sent out to catch them. Excuse me, but do you mind if I smoke?’

  ‘Please go ahead.’

  Takahashi turned to a waiter lurking by a far wall, mimed the flicking of ash into an imaginary dish.

  ‘You must forgive me, Sir Edward. But I do like a cigarette with my morning tea. My only vice.’

  ‘I fully understand. I was once a smoker myself.’

  ‘Fortunately you have had the discipline to forsake such an addiction.’

  ‘To be honest, now that I am in my seventies, I wouldn’t mind taking up the habit again. Now, to continue with your story, did you find it difficult coming here to attend to all these foreigners? After all, they had been the occupying power. The enemy. The very people who had caused your starvation.’

  ‘I’m not sure if that was true. I prefer to blame the lack of food on the poor way our own government dealt with the gangsters running the black markets. But to answer your question, I was quite happy to serve the Americans. I admired them very much. I still do. They dragged us out of a culture of imperialism and helped to modernise our country. I have always been very grateful to them for that.’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking this. But did you ever read The Waterwheel?’

  ‘Of course. Although it was many years ago. We retain several copies in our library here. In both English and Japanese.’

  ‘And what did you think of it?’

  ‘That is not for me to say, Sir Edward. I am just a humble reader. Your many awards and prizes speak far better on your behalf than I can.’

  ‘But I am interested to know what you think.’

  ‘I liked the love story with the panpan girl very much. I recall it was very moving.’

  ‘But did you feel the novel was balanced? Balanced in the way it portrayed both the Americans and Japanese during and after the war?’

  ‘Ah, Sir Edward, you always were interested in such ideas. Ishikawa-san, the manager when you were first here, do you remember him? He sadly passed away many years ago. He often talked of his conversations with you. Late into the night, a shared bottle of one of our fine malt whiskies from the bar. I was often envious of such occasions. And here I am now, faced with the same opportunity, yet I am at a loss for words.’

  ‘Yes, I do remember Ishikawa-san. He wore such large spectacles.’

  Takahashi nodded vigorously and slapped his thigh. ‘Yes, yes. Those spectacles. They were extremely large. And thick. They kept falling off his nose. We used to call him Binzoko. Bottle bottoms. Affectionately, of course. And never to his face.’

  ‘So you knew Ishikawa-san. How long have you been here then?’

  ‘Forty-eight years, Sir Edward. I retire next spring.’

  ‘My goodness. That means you were here during my first visit.’

  Takahashi tilted his head in acknowledgement. ‘Yes, I remember your stay very well. All the staff were very impressed that a person could take up residency here for such a long time in order to write a book. We all thought you were a famous millionaire.’

  ‘No such thing. I had just come into a small inheritance after the death of my…’ And then it struck Edward. A flash of a memory. A magician’s fiery fingers. ‘Now I know who you are. You’re the young lad who put out the fire. During the performance of the Chinese illusionist. That’s the burn mark on your hand.’

  ‘Yes, that is very true. It occurred after the visit of the Honourable Jawaharlal Nehru. Do you remember that? I was very fortunate an Indian doctor was in the audience to treat me so quickly. Otherwise, the scar could have been much worse.’

  ‘You were something of a hero that evening.’

  ‘Just performing my duty, Sir Edward.’

  ‘And so you must remember Jerome Fisk from that time?’

  ‘Of course, I remember him. Fisk-sensei went on to become a professor at one of our famous universities. Only two days ago we chatted when he called about the Shinkansen tickets.’ Takahashi brought his cigarette slowly to his lips for a deep inhalation, then turned to look out of the window as the smoke curled out of his nostrils. The tea lounge overlooked the pond with its backdrop of trimmed shrubbery and then across to the dining room. Edward couldn’t tell if Takahashi was merely enjoying the view or spying on his staff as they prepared the tables for the Old Boys luncheon.

  ‘This has been an extremely pleasant conversation,’ Takahashi said eventually, turning his attention back to the room, squashing out his cigarette in the ashtray. ‘But there is one question you have not asked.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Forgive me, Sir Edward. But one thing I did learn from the Americans was to speak directly when the situation demanded.’

  ‘Well, please do so.’

  ‘You asked me if I knew Ishikawa-san and Fisk-sensei from your first visit here. But you haven’t asked about one of my co-workers. Sumiko-chan. Why don’t you ask about her?’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Hakone, Japan • 1958

  ‘I’m going back to Tokyo,’ Jerome told Edward over a glass of Scotch and a game of draughts in the Magic Room. ‘My research paper is complete. Time to return to the real world. Do you remember that place?’

  ‘You think academia is the real world?’

  ‘For some. And you?’

  ‘I sent my manuscript to an agent about a month ago. I am presently residing in limbo land.’

  ‘Not a bad place to be. And your manuscript has a title?’

  Edward told him.

  ‘Aha,’ Jerome said, snatching two pieces off the board. ‘The waterwheel in the garden.’

  ‘The very same. That is the symbol I have chosen. The metaphor.’

  ‘For your anti-American diatribe?’

  ‘It’s a love story set during the Occupation. It would be hard to avoid
the Americans in that situation.’

  ‘In a negative way?’

  ‘In a balanced way.’

  ‘Well, I hope so, pal. Another game?’ Jerome had cornered his sole surviving piece with his crown.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Coward.’

  ‘Merely aware of my own limitations.’

  Jerome swept the draughts into their box. ‘Listen, Eddie. I’ve planned a little farewell trip to the coast tomorrow. To Kamakura. Home of the Daibutsu, the Giant Buddha. And a bunch of other temples and shrines. Want to come along for the ride? I’ve rented an automobile with a driver.’

  ‘Kamakura is also home to Yasunari Kawabata.’

  ‘A pal of yours?’

  ‘No, not at all. He is a well-known Japanese writer.’

  ‘Do you want to meet him?’

  ‘Not me. But I know someone who would like to.’

  ‘Yeah. Who?’

  ‘One of the chambermaids.’

  ‘You sly bastard.’ Jerome scratched his head as if he were genuinely puzzled. ‘You think you got a guy figured out for being straight-laced. And all the time he’s been warming his bed with the female staff. Are you going to tell me who she is? Or is this one of these novels-without-a-title kind of game?’

  Edward sipped on his whisky, excited by the prospect of finally revealing her name. Objectifying his relationship so that it would exist outside his head. Outside his room. ‘Sumiko,’ he said.

  ‘I knew it. Can’t blame you. She’s a looker.’

  ‘I am only involving you because you are leaving. Not a word to anyone, you understand?’

  ‘Yankee’s honour.’

  ‘It so happens she has the day off tomorrow. You will need to pick her up in the village if she agrees to come.’

  ‘Our automobile leaves at nine.’

  Edward felt it was going to be a great day as soon as Sumiko entered the car, settled herself between him and Jerome in the rear seat. The chemistry immediate, that peculiar alchemy of human personalities destined to relieve tensions and to create a heady mix. Rough edges, old wounds and unfulfilled needs all disappeared. The dynamic of this trio would be full of humour and easy banter, he was sure of it. Even the sun was shining for them on this early spring morning, so fresh and full of potential.