An Exquisite Sense of What Is Beautiful

by J David Simons

  It was quieter on this side of the station. He brushed down his coat, blinked in the light of the sun disappearing behind the hills. He loved this time of the day, this suffusion of colours that the dusk brought. Especially in the autumn when the sky was shot through with that pale, pale blue. And there was always a certain melancholy to these November sunsets tinged as they were with the approach of winter. He bought a bag of chestnuts from a nearby vendor who had set up a little brazier of hot coals outside the station. Just one bite through the shell into that bitter-sweet softness was enough to draw him back for an instant to his childhood.

  ‘Doko desu-ka?’ A taxi driver shouted to him through the open window of his cab. ‘Where you go?’

  ‘One moment, please.’ He put his hand into his jacket top-pocket, plucked out the piece of paper, handed it to the driver. The man scanned the sheet.

  ‘Abunai-desuyo. Tsunami ga kimasu. Very dangerous. Back way only.’

  ‘Back way only?’

  ‘No seafront.’ The driver held up four fingers. ‘Yon-sen en.’

  Four thousand yen. That was twice the amount he’d been charged for the journey to the station.

  ‘All right then. Yon-sen en.’

  As if by magic, the taxi door flew open and Edward lowered his tired limbs on to the plastic sheeting covering the back seat. The door closed by itself, followed by the clunk of the locks. The driver bent forward, muttering close to his windscreen as he edged his vehicle though the crowds until he could finally break free and shift up the gears.

  ‘Tsunami ga kimasu,’ the driver said, leaning back now to talk to him half over his shoulder. ‘Tsunami come. Back way only.’

  ‘Back way only,’ he repeated with a tired sigh that he hoped would discourage any further conversation. The driver nodded and turned his attention to the road. The piece of paper with Kawabata’s address was wedged into a heating vent on the dashboard, vibrating in the flow of warm air.

  The ‘back way only route’ was quite pleasant. Dark lanes skirting the base of the hills surrounding the city. Earthy embankments. The smell of burning leaves. Temple gates. Roadside shrines. Sometimes even a temple itself lit up by rows of lanterns. It felt good just to sit back and relax. Perhaps, he should tell the driver to continue on like this all the way back to the hotel. Or just to keep driving on. Driving on in the back of a taxi. Forever. Such a comforting thought in its own way. He bit into another chestnut. Delicious.

  ‘Kochira ni narimasu,’ the driver said, pulling to a stop in the middle of a residential area. ‘We are here.’

  ‘Where is the house?’

  The driver tapped his finger on the piece of paper. ‘Here I know.’ And then he shrugged. ‘House I don’t know.’

  Yes, of course. He had forgotten the Japanese way of organising addresses. Houses were numbered according to when they were built within a particular area rather than according to their order in a particular street. Sometimes these two elements would coincide and a Japanese street would be numbered like any other street. But more often than not, they didn’t. Then it would be a search on the basis of time rather than space. He would have to get out and ask or otherwise just look around. He paid the driver, thanked him, took back the piece of paper.

  ‘One hour,’ the driver said, holding up a nicotine-stained digit. ‘Tsunami kimasu. Tsunami come one hour. Kyoskete-ne? Be careful.’

  It was dusk now. Streetlights blinking on. The wind had picked up, the temperature had dipped. He buttoned up his coat, tightened his scarf. Sirens still wailing somewhere in the distance. He stood all alone in a residential area, not a soul on the streets, not a light on in a house, a single piece of paper flapping in his hand. He searched for his glasses, tapping each of his pockets. He thought back. He must have left them in the soba shop, lost them in the tunnel. He walked over to a street lamp, held out the paper in the glow. He could just make out the numbers of the address. 2-6-3. Assuming the sequence moved left to right as it narrowed down the location, the house number must be ‘3’. He walked over to the gatepost of the nearest residence. A sign on the wall said 2-6-21. ‘Good’, he thought. ‘I am on the right track.’

  The street appeared to continue in a regular sequence – 2-6-20, 2-6-19, 2-6-18 – and he felt heartened at the prospect of being so close to his destination. Yet these houses were quite modern, bungalows in the European style, too modern, he worried, to be around in Kawabata’s time. Too modern to accord with what he imagined to be Kawabata’s aesthetic. Whatever that was. Something exquisitely carved and crafted, full of light, full of ancient pottery. By house number 2-6-9, the street began to narrow. Ahead of him, he could see a thin wedge of two-storey wooden buildings looming in the dusk, forming a narrow lane. He stopped at the entrance to this alleyway. There were no more street lights. He was tired now, hot and out of breath. He could hear the sirens wailing louder. Perhaps he should have remained in the taxi, instead of embarking on this wild goosechase. He gulped in some air, wandered into the lane.

  There were only six houses in this short narrow stretch, three on either side, tall wooden structures shutting out any natural light. No lights either from any of the windows. An airless little alleyway, impossible to see any house numbers, hardly possible to see where he was going. He was glad to emerge from the other side. But instead of any continuation of the original broad residential street, he realised he had arrived at the seafront.

  First there was the coast road and beyond that the beach. Not a car in sight. Not another person in sight. Traffic lights jammed on green. A full moon high in the sky. Loud speakers on lamp posts spewing out siren sounds intermingled with tinny warning messages. ‘Please move to higher ground. Please move to higher ground.’ He wandered across the road to the railings separating the pavement from the beach. Where he was confronted by an awesome sight. The sea had retreated. Not just drawn back as at low tide. But sucked out so far that the ocean bed stretched bluish and exposed as far back as he could see, as far back as the horizon. The huge bay was empty of water. That’s what chilled him. It was like coming across an empty swimming pool. But on a vast scale. This void where there should be the fullness of the ocean. This silence where there should be the lick-lapping of the tide.

  He stepped on to the beach, his feet heavy in the sand, struggling for balance on his cane. He could hardly believe this was the same place he had stopped by earlier where surfers had bobbed in the deep water. It was like walking towards a battlefield littered with corpses, a river gulch full of sun-bleached bones. Shapes rose out at him from the night. Beached boats. Bundles of fishing nets. An anchor. Seaweed drying racks. A loose umbrella, half-shut on broken spokes. An uprooted chair. Which he set upright, this rusted-metal frame lashed with broad strands of plastic. But still strong enough to take his weight, as he sat down, facing the sea.

  This would have been Kawabata’s beach. An early morning venue for that frail, lonely, detached man. Why did that poor soul, who loved beauty so much, commit such an ugly death? Inhaling those filthy, toxic fumes escaping from the mouth of that brown rubber hose. At least Mishima had the courage to go the way of the elegant sword. At least that death was an act of beauty in itself. But to gas yourself? At the age of seventy-two. This writer who with great sensibility had expressed the essence of the Japanese mind. This writer who had not even penned a note of farewell.

  He plucked the bag of chestnuts from his pocket. The little nuggets cold now but again that taste reminding of his childhood. His father and the knife with the ivory sheath. His mother stoic and uncomplaining, showering him with dust from a yellow rag. These thoughts interrupted by a police car driving along the empty highway blaring out its bulletins. He ducked from the glare of the headlights, the twin beams casting elongated shadows across the empty bay and then disappearing. He was alone again.

  Again the ringing from his phone. Da, da, da, da, da. Da, da, da, da, da. He plucked it out of his pocket, switched it off, tossed the contraption as hard as he could, watched it skid acro
ss the wet sand. The night stretched wide before him. Pagan moon. Blue seabed. Distant stars. An icy gust hinting at the arrival of snow. He shivered. What was out there in the dark, raging ocean, gathering tide-blood into its wake? A puny ripple that would do no more than lap at his toes? Or a mountain of water building its sheer walls higher and higher until it blocked out the eerie moonlight? He smiled in the face of his fate. He would wait. For death was the greatest denial of them all.

  SELECTED EXTRACTS FROM

  THE WATERWHEEL

  BY SIR EDWARD STRATHAIRN

  1928–2003

  (Missing, Presumed Dead)

  We were ten minutes out of Yokohama before anyone said a word. It was the soldier next to the driver who turned round. The one who had given the order for the jeep to stop and pick me up. I could see his rank. And the tag. Feldman. Captain Feldman.

  ‘Where you from, lieutenant?’ he asked.

  That was the question the Yanks always put first. Never your name. They wanted to place you. A state, a city, a town, a zip code. Then the inevitable follow-up jibes about the Mets, the Redskins, the Cowboys, the Bulls, the Bears. Stuff like that. Friendly but never intimate. It was an illusion I knew all about.

  ‘England.’

  ‘I can see that from the outfit. Where ’bouts?’

  ‘London.’

  Feldman had a pleasant face. Tanned. From lazing about sunny Okinawa, no doubt. A couple of days’ stubble. Skin slack, like an old hound-dog, giving him a weary but kindly look. He scratched his cheek, thoughtful, as if he were scraping up a memory.

  ‘I was stationed near Oxford couple of years back,’ he said. ‘Before this gig. London was a great place for R&R.’

  ‘Still is,’ the corporal beside me said. Large man, all crouched up in the small space, rifle between his knees. Black skin. Sleeves rolled up tight to reveal bulging biceps below the two stripes. Red-eyes. Faint moustache. Skin pocked like the road we were on. The name “Winston” on his tag. ‘I’m from Atlanta,’ he told me as if this somehow explained his presence in the jeep. ‘Atlanta, Georgia.’

  ‘Georgia’s always on his mind.’ Feldman half-sung the words.

  ‘Good jazz,’ Winston muttered softly so only I could hear. ‘Them clubs in Soho.’

  ‘You know where the fuck we’re going, Sam?’ Feldman shouted at the driver whose skinny head was bobbing in front of me.

  ‘I just keep going north, captain,’ Sam shouted back. ‘We’ll hit Tokyo soon enough.’

  ‘Just follow the smell,’ Winston said.

  The smell was the rank odour from the shanty towns sprung up along the road. Corrugated iron structures propped up with salvaged pieces of wood. Futons airing in the sunshine. A few weedy patches of vegetables. It was where the first survivors would have reached before giving up and deciding to live where they stopped. Must be a river nearby. Others following until a makeshift village was born. Six months later and it would be a town I’d be looking at. Children poured out of these hovels to run after us.

  ‘Give chocolate,’ they shouted. ‘Give chocolate.’

  ‘Fuck off, you little brats,’ Sam shouted back, snaking the jeep over the road in a shake to get rid of them.

  ‘Lay off, Sam,’ said Feldman. The words came out friendly but it was an order nevertheless.

  ‘Give chocolate.’ One little boy was right up racing beside me. He must have been about eight years old, yet he had the face of an old man. Wrinkled forehead. Ancient eyes. Two front teeth missing. A cigarette stub tucked behind his ear.

  Corporal Winston reached into his breast pocket, pulled out some sticks of gum and tossed them. The chasing horde stopped for the pickings.

  ‘So what’s your business in Tokyo?’ Feldman again. ‘Or is it all top secret?’

  ‘Nothing so exciting,’ I said. ‘I’m a translator. Seconded to GHQ from the Foreign Office.’

  Feldman laughed. ‘Did the General send for you then?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Winston poked me gently. ‘Well, say “hi” to ol’ Douglas MacArthur for me when you see him,’ he drawled. ‘Tell him old Billy Winston here would be mighty pleased to make the supreme commander’s noble acquaintance.’

  ‘Oh, stop jawing back there,’ Feldman said.

  But there was no need for the captain to silence his man. We had fallen into speechlessness anyway, letting the road jostle and shake us into witnessing what was before us. The shanty towns had petered out and we were into some razed flat-lands. It wasn’t like any other bombed-out city I had seen. I knew London from the blitz. And so must Feldman and Winston. The Germans had left craters where whole streets might have been. Tenement buildings blasted open like dolls’ houses to reveal their innards. Gaps in what I could still see was a city. London with holes in it. But a city nevertheless. Here there were no gaps. Or at least just one big gap. For this was it. Miles and miles of rubble with the occasional scorched pillar or post still standing. Unobstructed. Occasionally a clue that human beings had once inhabited this place. A blackened safe. A burned-out oven. What were once the outskirts of Tokyo were now a petrified forest. Flies everywhere. My God, I thought. If this was Tokyo after the fire-bombings, what must Hiroshima and Nagasaki be like?

  Feldman took off his cap. Military crop flecked with white. He wiped the back of his hand across his brow. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘What have we done?’

  I was glad this hadn’t been my war. At least, that was how I saw it. The Brits might have been slugging it out with the Japs in Burma, Malaya, Singapore, Sumatra and Borneo but over here on mainland Nippon this was Uncle Sam’s backyard mess. I wasn’t losing any sleep over the pulling of any bomb-hatch trigger on the Enola Gay. And I wasn’t taking any responsibility for this either. This was heavy-handed stuff. Typical Yankee bullying. So let the poor bastards see the result of their handiwork. They deserved to.

  As we moved closer to the centre of Tokyo, I noticed the men in the jeep begin to relax. Sam the driver started to whistle while Feldman, and Corporal Winston beside me, waved casually to a few of the people who had stopped to watch our passage. Some pedestrians waved or bowed back, expressionless, politely, their faces wan and drawn, their clothes hanging loose from undernourished bodies. The scene was still very much one of devastation but at least a few buildings had survived the fire-bombing. These were the concrete structures of ministries, banks and office blocks, walls blackened and charred, windows blown out and boarded up, metal signs twisted from the heat. Not the flimsy wood and paper houses of the poorer people that had served as mere kindling for the ferocious onslaught. Over one hundred thousand people had been burned alive that horrendous day in March, the smell of barbecued flesh even wafting up to filter through the bomb-hatches of the B-29s circling above.

  Now, where building blocks had been reduced to ashes, residents had planted meagre rows of vegetables as they tried to eke out survival from the sooty soil. I saw beggars on the streets, pavement hawkers with a few precious possessions laid out in a barter for food, a lane of stalls where a thronging black market had sprung up. Skinny, hollow-chested urchins too weak even to chase us in the usual pester for gum and chocolate. A few leafless trees. Not a bird in the sky. Black clouds overhead. It was hard to believe the sun would ever shine on this city again. And if it did, people would probably retreat indoors from the heat.

  Sam pulled up outside the Imperial Hotel. So Frank Lloyd Wright-famous, even I had heard of it. The building was an amazing feat of architecture, a bizarre combination of faux-Mayan and art-deco design, stretching back in layers of yellowish brick from the portico to a seven-storey tower at the centre. The bombing had roughed up the facade, but the hotel still boasted a faded grandeur. Feldman insisted we all got out and have our picture taken by the pool in front of the entrance. No fountains flowed and the water was sooty black. Sam fumbled with the Brownie as Feldman and Winston took up position on either side of me. They held up their hands in a Churchillian victory-salute as I tried to manage a smile
.

  ‘It’s a wonder it survived,’ I remarked to Feldman as we walked back to the jeep.

  ‘It outfoxed the Great Kanto earthquake as well,’ he said, pushing back his cap, smiling at me. ‘Designed by a Yank, of course.’

  We all settled back into the jeep and Sam drove us towards Supreme Allied Command HQ somewhere in the heart of the city’s financial district.

  ‘One of the few areas left standing,’ Sam said. ‘I guess we need the money machine to get things rolling again.’ He had been there a few times as part of his duties, ferrying personnel arriving to and from the ships at Yokohoma.

  Winston plucked out a cigarette from a packet wedged tight in the pocket of his uniform shirt, flicked open the lighter cap, thumb-sparked a flame into existence. Took a deep inhale, offered me one as an afterthought. I refused, even though I was dying for a smoke.

  ‘So what are you men here for?’ I asked Feldman.

  ‘Winston and me are assigned to ferret out the war criminals.’

  ‘You mean government ministers, generals, people like that?’

  ‘Naw. We’ve already got these slimeballs locked up. We’re after the ones who captured the bombing crews. The B-29 guys, shot down on their missions, but managing to bail out in their chutes. Some are POWs but God knows how they’ve been treated. We’ve got intelligence saying others were executed. Heads cut off with ceremonial swords.’

  ‘Livers gouged out, fried and eaten for dinner,’ Winston added on a slow exhale of smoke.

  ‘Bastards,’ Sam hissed.

  THE WATERWHEEL, CHAPTER 4