Mothership

by Bill Campbell

  Most of the sculptures had been cordoned off. Now and then we passed artisans who would turn from their work, bow smartly, and bark out the word “sensei”. Aki walked ahead. We did not touch. Public displays between the sexes are frowned on here. I had been relieved to learn that.

  “It was a shame about that Danjigu girl,” Aki said. “I have seen her many times, at the karaoke club; Mayuzumi rather liked her, I think.”

  Molly had said something about fat rich businessmen. I wished he would change the subject. I said, “Tell me something about your art, Aki.”

  “Is this the interview?” Our footsteps echoed. Ice tinkled on the trees. “But I have already talked about beauty and transience.”

  “Is that why you were sketching Molly’s corpse? I thought it was kind of … macabre.”

  He smiled. No one was watching us. His hand brushed against mine for a fleeting second. It burned me. I walked ahead a few steps.

  “So what are you looking for in your art, Mr Ishii?” I asked him in my best girl-reporter voice.

  “Redemption,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

  I did not want to think about what I was looking for.

  “I feel a bit like Faust sometimes,” he said, “snatching a few momentary fragments of beauty out of the void, and in return giving up … everything.”

  “Your soul for beauty?” I said. “Kind of romantic.”

  “Oh, it’s all those damned Germans, Goethe, Schiller: death, transfiguration, redemption, weltschmerz—going to school there can really fill you with Teutonic portentousness.”

  I had to laugh. “But what about being Ainu?” I said. “Doesn’t that contribute to your artistic vision too?”

  “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  So we were alike, always running away from who we were. He strode purposefully ahead now, his shadow huge and wavery in the light of the full moon.

  A wall of snow towered ahead of us. Here and there I could see carved steps. “I’ll help you up,” he said. He was already climbing the embankment. My Reeboks dug into the snow steps. “Don’t worry,” he said, “my students will smooth them out in the morning. Come.”

  The steps were steep. Once or twice he had to pull me up. “There will be a ramp,” he said, “so the spectators can cluster around the other side.”

  We were standing on a ledge of snow now, looking down on to the tableau he had created. Here, at the highest point in the park, there was a bitter breeze. It had stopped snowing and the air was clear, but the sky was too bright from the city lights to see many stars. The artificial mountain wrapped around us on three sides; the fourth was the half-built viewers’ ramp; the area formed a kind of open-air pavilion.

  Aki said, “Look around you. It’s 1200 BC. We’re on the slopes of Mt. Ida, in the mythological dawn. Look—over there—past the edge of the park—the topless towers of Ilium.” It was the Otani Prince Towers, glittering with neon, peering up through twin peaks. It was an optical illusion—the embankment no more than thirty feet high, a weird forced perspective, the moonlight, the fog swirling—that somehow drew the whole city into the fantasy world. “Come on,” he said, taking my hand as we descended into the valley. A ruined rotunda rose out of a mound of rubble. A satyr played the panpipes and a centaur lay sleeping against a broken wall. It was hard to believe it was all made of snow. On the wall, sculpted in bas-relief, was the famous judgment: Paris, a teenaged version of Rodin’s Thinker, leaning forwards as he sat on a boulder; the three goddesses preening; the golden apple in the boy’s hand.

  “Now look behind the wall,” Aki said.

  I saw a cave hollowed out of the side of the embankment. At its entrance, sitting in the same attitude as the bas-relief, was a three-dimensional Paris; beyond, inside the cave, you could make out three figures, their faces turned away.

  “But—” I said. “You can’t see the tableau from the spectators’ ramp! At best, you’d see the back of Paris’s head, the crook of Athena’s arm. You can only see the relief on the ruined wall.”

  “But that is what this sculpture is all about, Marie,” Aki said. He was talking faster now, gesticulating. “I hold the mirror up to nature and within the mirror there’s another mirror that mirrors the mirrored nature I’ve created … reflections within reflections … art within art … the truth only agonizingly, momentarily glimpsed … and that which is most beautiful is that which remains unseen … come on, Marie. You will get to see my hidden world. Come. Come.”

  He seized my hand. I climbed down beside him. A system of planks, concealed by snowy ridges, led to the grotto. Like a boy with an ant farm, Aki became more intense, more nervous as we neared the centre of his universe. When he reached the sculpture of Paris, he became fidgety. He disregarded me completely and went up to the statue, reshaping a wrinkle in the boy’s cloak, fussing with his hair. Paris had no face yet.

  Curious to see how the Grandmaster had visualized the three beautiful goddesses, I turned away from him towards the interior of the cave. The chill deepened as I stepped away from the entrance. The tunnel appeared to descend into an infinite darkness; another illusion perhaps, a bend, a false perspective … unless there were really an opening into some labyrinthine underworld.

  The goddesses were not finished yet. Two had no faces. The third—Hera, goddess of marital fidelity and orthodoxy—had the face of Molly Danzig.

  I thought it must be some trick of the moonlight or my frazzled nerves. But it was unmistakable. I went up close. The likeness was uncanny. If the snow had started to breathe I would not have been more startled. And the eyes … what were they? … some kind of polished gemstone embedded in the snow … snow-moistened eyes that seemed to weep … I could feel my heart pounding.

  I backed away. Into Aki’s arms. “Jesus,” I said, “this is sick, this is morbid—”

  “But I have already explained to you about beauty and transience,” Aki said softly. “I have been watching this girl ever since she started at the karaoke club; her death by violence is, how would you say it, synchronicity. Perhaps a sacrifice for giving my art the breath of life.”

  Molly Danzig shook her head. I think. Her eyes shone. Or maybe caught the moonlight. She breathed. Or maybe the wind breathed into her. Or my fear. I was too scared to move for a moment and then—

  “Kiss me,” he whispered. “Don’t you understand that we are both bear people? You are the first I have met.”

  “No!” I twisted free from him and ran. Down the icy pathway, with the moist wind whipping at my face, past the Parthenon and the Colosseum and the Sphinx. Past the piled-up snow. Snow seeping into my sneakers and running down my neck. It was snowing again. I crossed the street. I was shivering. It was from terror, not from cold.

  Jesus, I’m getting spooked by illusions, I told myself when I reached the facade of the Otani. I took a deep breath. Objectivity. Objectivity. I looked around. There was no one in sight. I stood on the steps for a moment, wondering where to get a taxi at one in the morning.

  At that moment, Esmeralda and her portly aide swept through the revolving doors and glided down the steps. She was wearing a fur stole, the kind where you’d be mugged by conservationists if you tried to wear it on the street in California. She saw me and called out, “Marie, darlin’, you need a ride to your hotel?”

  I nodded dumbly. A limousine pulled up. We piled in.

  As we started to move down the street, I saw him again. Standing at the edge of the park. Staring intently at us. Sketching. Sketching.

  2

  Das Unzulangliche

  Hier wird’s Erreignis.

  Faust

  Bear people—

  When I was a child I saw my grandfather speaking to bears.

  The hotel I was staying at was a second-class ryokan, a traditional-style hotel, because I wanted to get the real flavour of the Japanese way of life. The smell of tatami. The masochistic voyeurism of communal bathing. I tossed and turned on the futon and wished for a waterbed in San Mateo. And th
e roar of the distant surf. But my dreams were not of California.

  In my dream I was a winchinchala again. In my dream was my father’s shack. Midnight and the chill wind whining through the broken pane. I’m twisting on the pee-stained mattress on the floor. Maybe there’s a baby crying somewhere. A damp hand covers my mouth.

  “Gotta see to the baby, até,” I’m whispering.

  “Igmu yelo,” says my father. It’s only a cat. The baby’s shrieking at the top of his lungs. Dad crushes me between his thighs. Even his sweat is turning to ice. I ooze through his fingers. I run down stairs that lead down down down down caverns down down to—

  “Don’t!”

  From the dirt road that runs alongside the frozen creek next to the outhouse you can see a twisted mountain just past the edge of the Badlands. The top is sheared off. I wish myself up to the ledge where I’m going to stand naked in the wind and I’m going to see visions and know everything that’s to come and I’m going to stand and become a frozen woman like the other women who have stood there and dreamed until they dreamed themselves into pillars of red and yellow stone.

  “Tunkashila!” I’m screaming. “Grandpa!”

  I’m running from the wind that’s my dad’s breath reeking of mniwakan.

  Suddenly I know that the man who’s chasing me is a bear. I don’t look back but I can feel his shadow pressing down on me, on the snow. I’m running to my grandfather because I know I’ll be safe with him, he’ll draw a circle in the ground and inside everything will be warm and far from danger and he’ll put down his pipe inside the sacred circle and say to the bear: Be still, my son, be still.

  I’m running from the cold but I might as well run from myself. I’m going to be frozen right into the mountain like all the other women from now back to the beginning of the universe, women dancing in a slow circle around the dying fire. I’m running through the tunnel that becomes—

  The tunnel beneath the sea. I’m riding the bullet train, crossing to Hokkaido Island, to the Japan no one knows, the Japan of wide open spaces and desolate snowy peaks and spanking-new cities that have no souls. I’m staring out as the train shrieks, staring at the concrete cavern. I see Molly Danzig’s eyes and I wonder if they’re real, I wonder if Aki has plucked them from the corpse and buried them in the snow woman’s face.

  The frozen woman shakes her head. Her eyes are deep circles drawn in blood. “No, até, no, até,” I whisper.

  Be still, my son, my grandfather says to the bear who rears up over the pavilion of frozen women. My grandfather gives me honey from a wooden spoon. He puts his pipe back in his mouth and blows smoke rings at the bear, who growls a little and then slinks, cowed, back into the snowy forest.

  Circles. Circles. I’m running in circles. There’s no way out. The tunnel has twisted back on itself.

  Molly Danzig’s card: an apartment building a few blocks west of the Sapporo Brewery. It was about a fifteen-minute ride on the subway from my ryokan. The air was permeated with the smell of hops. Snow piled against a coke machine with those slender Japanese coke cans. At the corner, a robocop directed traffic. Its metal arms were heaped with snow. The first time I’d seen one of those things I’d thought it must be a joke; my Tokyo guide told me, self-importantly, that they’d had them for twenty years.

  The afternoon was grey. The sky and the apartment building were the same dead shade, grey grey grey.

  I took the elevator to the tenth floor. I don’t know what I expected to find. I told myself, Hey, sister, you’re a reporter, maybe there is a gag order on this story now but it won’t last out the week. I had my little Sure Shot in my purse just in case.

  The hall: shag carpet, dull modern art by the elevator. This apartment building could be anywhere. The colour scheme was nouveau Miami Vice. I followed the apartment numbers down the corridor. Hers, 17A, should be at the end. There it was with the door ajar. An old man in overalls was painting the door.

  Painting out the apartment number. Painting out Molly’s name. A brush-stroke could obliterate a life.

  I pushed my way past him into the apartment. I’d had a notion of what Molly’s place would look like. Molly was always laughing so I imagined there’d be outrageous posters or funky furniture. She loved to talk about men—I don’t— so I imagined some huge and blatant phallic statue standing in the middle of the room. It wasn’t like that at all. It was utterly still.

  The windows were wide open. It was chillier here than outside. A wind was sighing through the living room and the tatami floor was peppered with snow. No furniture. No Chippendales pin-ups on the walls. The wind picked up a little. Snowflakes flecked my face.

  The kitchen: two bowls of cold tea on the counter. The stove was still lit. I turned it off. A half-eaten piece of sushi lay in a blue-and-white plate. I took a few snapshots. I wondered if the police had come by to dust the teabowls for prints.

  I heard a sound. At first I thought it must be the wind. The wind blew harder now and behind the sighing I could hear someone humming. A woman.

  I stepped into the living room. Snow seeped through my sneakers. I was shivering. It was a contralto voice, eerie, erotic. I could hear water dripping too. It came from behind a shoji screen door. A bedroom, I supposed.

  I knew I was going to have to go in. I steeled myself and slid the shoji open.

  Snowflakes whirled. The wind was really howling here. Through a picture window I could see the Sapporo Brewery and the grid of the city, regular as graph paper, and snowy mountains far beyond it. I smelled stale beer on the snow that settled on my cheeks.

  The humming grew louder. A bathroom door was ajar. Water dripped.

  “Molly?”

  I could feel my heart pounding. I flung the bathroom door wide open.

  “Why—Marie darlin’—sure wasn’t expecting you.” Esmeralda looked up at me from the bathtub, soaping herself lazily.

  “You knew who she was the whole time,” I said.

  “It’s my business to know that, hon,” she said. “Not too many American citizens in Sapporo, as you might have noticed, but I keep tabs on ’em all. Hand me that washcloth? Pretty please?”

  I did so numbly. Why had she asked me who the dead woman was if she already knew her? “You tricked me!”

  “In diplomacy school, Marie, they teach you to let the other person do all the talking. Oftentimes they end up digging their own grave that way.”

  “But what are you doing here—?”

  “This is my apartment. Molly Danzig used to sublet. I’ve got a suite in the consulate I usually end up crashing out in, but the hot water in our building never works right.”

  She reached for a towel and slid out of the tub. She steamed; she was firm and magnificent and had a way of looking fully clothed even when she was naked; I guessed it was her diplomatic comportment. The Lakota are a modest people. I was embarrassed.

  “Believe me, this ain’t St Louis. I mean, girl,” she said, reaching for the hair dryer, “here’s me, on a GS salary with perks up the wazoo, housing allowance, no mouths to feed … but if it weren’t for all those receptions with all that free food, I’d be lining up at a fucking soup kitchen. Let’s forget this and just go shopping somewhere, Marie.”

  “All right.” I couldn’t see where I could go with the story at this point. I had three or four pieces, but they didn’t seem to fit together—maybe they didn’t even belong in the same puzzle. Perhaps I just needed to spend a mindless afternoon buying souvenirs.

  Esmeralda drove me to the Tanuki-koji arcade, a labyrinthine underground mall that starts somewhere in the middle of town and snakes over and under, taking in the train station and the basement of the Otani Prince. She parked in a loading zone (“Gaimusho tags, darlin’—they’re not going to tow any of us diplomats, no way!”) and, although it was afternoon, we descended into a world of neon night.

  When you’re confused and pushed to the limits of your endurance and you think you’re going to crack up, sometimes shopping is the only cure. I ne
ver went shopping when I was a kid. Yes, sometimes we’d take the pickup and lurch towards Belvidere or Wall, where at least we could play the mechanical jackalopes for 25¢ or gaze at the eighty-foot fake dinosaur as it reared up from the knee-high snow. Shopping was a vice I learned from JAPs and WASPs in Berkeley. But I had learned well. I could shop with passion. So could Esmeralda. It was an hour or two before I realized that, for her as well as me, the ability to shop effusively was little more than a defence mechanism. As we warmed to each other a little, I could see that she spoke two different languages, with separate lexicons and gesture and facial expression; they were as different as English and Lakota were for my parents, except they were both English, and she could slide back and forth between them with ease.

  We moved from corridor to corridor, past little noodle stands with their glass cases of plastic food in front, past I Love Kitty emporia and kimono rental stores and toy stores guarded by mechanical Godzillas, past vending machines that dispensed slender cans of Sapporo beer and iced coffee. People shuffled purposefully by. The concrete alleyways were slick with mush from aboveground. Glaring neons blended into chiaroscuro.

  By six or so we were laden down with shopping bags. Junk mostly—fans, hats, coats, orientalia for my apartment in Oakland, postcards showing the Ainu in their native costume, with ritual tattoos and fur and beads—not that there were any to be seen in the antiseptic environs of Sapporo.

  “What do you know about the Ainu?” I asked Esmeralda.

  “They’re wild people. Snow people, kind of like Eskimos maybe—they worship bears, have shamanistic rituals—only for tourists—the Japanese forced them all to take Japanese names and they can’t speak Ainu anymore.”

  It was a story I knew well. My grandfather Mahtowashté had told me the same story. “I can speak to bears,” he said, “because once, when I was a boy, a bear came to me in a dream and gave me my name.” And he’d give me a piece of bread dipped in honey and I’d say, “Tunkashila, make it so I can get out of here … make it all go away.”