The Witches' Book of the Dead

by Christian Day

  The disgusting effrontery of their moaning together, the humiliation of the beholder. The pale-blue iris of his eye at the hole, illuminated by the scene in the room, almost as if his gaze itself were the projector of this abomination. Nägeli swallows three times, it is as if he had molasses in his mouth, as if his diaphragm were melting.

  He swiftly descends the ladder, searches for and finds the exit, climbs out of the cabinet, and in anguish grabs the Bolex that has been quietly waiting for this moment on a side table. Now, quickly back into the innards of the house, up to the peephole, where the lens of the camera is inserted, the whole thing soundproofed with the sleeve of his sweater so that no whirring sound makes it through to the bedroom. He pulls the shutter release and waits until the film cartridge is filled with this crude mélange of slapstick and tragedy, infinitely thankful there is no soundtrack that could play back Masahiko’s and Ida’s cries.

  Back in the parlor Nägeli tears the wig from his head in disgust and throws it into the kitchen rubbish, wipes the vestiges of makeup from his face at the sink, sees the sharp tantō lying there, and briefly considers ramming it into his throat or else running upstairs into the bedroom to instigate a bloodbath.

  Nonsense, he thinks, wondering how he might contact Chaplin, ask him for his revolver, friendly-like, among filmmakers. Damn it, that’ll get him nowhere, they are all in league with one another—Ida has probably already slept with him as well. These harrowing visions martyr what were raw nerves to begin with, which feel like they have been dipped in an acid bath.

  39.

  He packs his suitcase and a duffel bag with the cameras and film cartridges, curses Masahiko and Ida, wishing that they should please die swiftly and painfully, gives a floor lamp a forceful but unimaginative kick, and hurriedly quits the villa.

  He rushes to the nearest train station and in the subsequent weeks travels aimlessly around the Empire, into the warm south, to Nagasaki and Fukuoka, then back again, far northeastward toward Tokyo, to Kanagawa Prefecture. He’s left his hat at the villa—oh God, if that isn’t symbolic.

  Deranged and befuddled, he sleeps for but a few hours in lowly flophouses, shooting some cartridges of a film that is meaningless to him; pilgrims heading out for this or that shrine, automobile accidents, lonesome country train stations illuminated at night, stooped old women helping with the rice harvest, bamboo groves waving in the wind, a paper cup heedlessly discarded and trampled flat. He eats almost nothing anymore, does not bathe, no longer brushes his teeth.

  One evening he is seated before a bowl of noodle soup gone cold, in a city whose name he has forgotten. An orange-red paper lantern covers the lightbulb at the door, next to which is leaned an old bicycle. The worried innkeeper serves the unkempt foreigner a large glass of tea, unsure whether she should not instead fetch the police; then she realizes that living directly beside her humble tavern is a man of letters who might understand the stranger’s language.

  She wipes her hands on her apron and walks next door to call upon the man who, grown curious at her description, allows her to lead him to Nägeli’s table and addresses him politely in English: Is everything all right, pardon me, the gentleman looks so desolate, couldn’t he perhaps help him, without of course wanting to offend?

  Nägeli glances up, swallows, and two tender tears trickle down his cheeks; the innkeeper looks at the ground, mortified at this open display of emotion, and the writer, who is a good-natured person, takes a seat at the table, removes his spectacles, and asks the woman for some rice wine and two glasses.

  And Nägeli, touched, invents some story about being a tourist whose wife left him in Tokyo or the like; by no stretch of the imagination can he, in this bleak place, tell the truth, which is that he is a has-been director who once made one good film many years ago and then, after his artistic bankruptcy and his father’s death, in a whiff of greed and hubris, let that German monster Hugenberg shuffle him to Japan to realize a project here that was whispered into his ear one drunken Berlin night by two film critics—it would all seem too outrageous (that in reality Amakasu himself invited him he suspects not at all).

  The writer takes the director, along with his baggage, over to his house, where a carelessly framed reproduction of Guido Reni’s Saint Sebastian hangs next to the kitchen entrance, and he orders him first into the bathroom. And all at once, after he has looked in the mirror and is shocked at his reflection—his buzzed hair has grown back only in patches—Nägeli, overcome with emotion, is on the brink of relating the unconscionable events that have befallen him.

  After washing his face and rinsing out his mouth, he returns to the kitchen, takes a seat, and bites into the rice cake so amicably offered to him, and he runs his hands through the damp tufts of hair. There’s the smell of Pears soap. It’s very possible that he’s begun to cry again.

  Stop, he is told, he must now get a hold of himself, please, the writer would very much like to massage him first, and anyway, it really just comes down to this: that there are only two great principles in the world closely related to one another, sexuality and suicide. Both topoi, as he calls them, are permeated by transcendence and mutual interference, and Nägeli, whose shoulders the man behind him now seizes and kneads fiercely, wonders how he might escape here unscathed.

  It’s very likely, says the author, as Nägeli slides back and forth on his chair, that the great rustling beyond God can be experienced only by the one who’s resolved himself to suicide, with concentrated, irrefutable, manly virility.

  Nägeli, who only now notices the many knives in the kitchen, forgets the tears circumnavigating his unshaven chin only moments ago and looks back with a stern Swiss glare at the man, who throws up both hands defensively, as if he hadn’t meant it that way at all.

  With clenched fists and the chorale of his singing blood in his ears, Nägeli rises from the chair, brusquely shoves the man out of his way, grabs his luggage idling by the entrance, and pushes open the unlocked sliding door to the street with a violent gesture: out, away from this place.

  PART THREE

  急

  40.

  Charles Chaplin deposits the white dimpled golf ball stamped with Veritas onto the spot in front of him marked with green chalk. The sky is cloudless, the Pacific conducts itself pacifically. The steamer’s screws twirl through the ocean in a monotone, as whisks would in an aquarium.

  Chaplin raises the flashing golf club behind his head. And no sooner has the iron swung in an immaculate silvery arc past his two-tone shoes than the ball hurtles aloft into the azure, projectile-like, only to splash down again finally, inaudible, invisible, and of no consequence, far out into the ocean. Ver-i-tas, Chaplin whistles to disguise his rage.

  They have made a hasty departure from Tokyo, said no farewells, just tossed the barest necessities of clothing into a few suitcases and made for Yokohama, to the harbor, under the cover of night. Amakasu had asked Ida at the pier if she really did want to come along, for there’d be no turning back later of course, and she’d smiled at him—in love is putting it too strongly, but then again maybe not. A deafening and melancholy blow of the steamship’s horn marked its departure.

  Amakasu, who has removed his white blazer and rolled up the cuffs of his dress shirt, lights a cigarette, wiping his lower lip with his thumb. When the next golf ball vanishes toward the horizon, he squints so as to better follow the parabola of the falling rubber star. Not wanting to accept Chaplin’s once more aggressively proffered golf club, he buries his hands in his pockets; his lack of athleticism borders on the pathological. Chaplin winds up and swings.

  The sorts of things people think up to pass the time on a sea voyage like this. One can borrow tennis rackets from the captain, play shuffleboard, Ping-Pong, billiards, even various footballs and rugby balls in all shapes and sizes are available for the passengers—to do so one must sign up on a list displayed prominently at the staircase to the salon.

  And every other evening there is a film screening, mostly, if the s
ea is calm, on the screen erected for this purpose on the quarterdeck of the Tatsuta Maru, bound for Los Angeles.

  Thus, of an evening, Chaplin, Ida, and Masahiko lounge about on the pretty striped deck chairs and probably watch every film shown on the sea crossing. All the while they drink large quantities of Brandy Alexander and many a cup of the free coffee on offer. They watch Karl Freund’s The Mummy, both ghostly and amusing, and Leni Riefenstahl’s The Blue Light, Murnau’s Tabu and Frankenstein with Boris Karloff, and an old film with Harold Lloyd is screened, too, which Chaplin, visibly rattled, shrugs off as uninspired; oh, he says, that’s just amateurish kinetics.

  Kono spends the entire voyage to Los Angeles sulking in his third-class cabin after Chaplin brusquely informs him at embarkation, after he is yet again about to puff himself up, that Kono should just keep his mouth shut for once, otherwise he’ll be fired, and he shouldn’t get the idea that Chaplin is an idiot and hasn’t noticed that he’s been stealing middling sums from him for years; that he can still stomach, but to have not only subjected him to this nation of insane people, but also hoodwinked him into an assassination attempt on his life? That’s just nefarious, and it borders on psychosis. Oh, come to think of it, he is simply sacked, right now, finito.

  At night—Masahiko has already fallen asleep next to her—Ida wakes up, leaves their shared cabin, proceeds barefoot to the quarterdeck, touches the railing, and stares up into the overpowering, random pattern of the nocturnal sky.

  Chaplin has prophesied to her, while drinking large numbers of cocktails, that her glorious triumph in American cinema, which he would like to launch for her, will immediately be without equal—to which she replies with somewhat put-on coyness that she unfortunately won’t be able to get rid of ze German accent so easily; but, but, that very thing is terrifically well received right now, she should just dive right into sound film, and anyway, her white-blonde hair and her freckles (and of course her great talent, too) guarantee quite a career, it often happens very fast, naturally he knows the right people and will introduce her to them all, he’s already got a few in mind. The whole time he charms her and flops around like an eel, but why should he say such things if there isn’t anything to them?

  Ida wishes fervently to see a shooting star burn up in the night sky over the Pacific—then she might have another wish—but the black firmament above remains uncrossed by comets; the stars flicker with inexorable indifference. By day innumerable golf balls are catapulted into the sea again, and during mealtimes a certain apathy surfaces, an odd flatness.

  One evening—they have been drinking more than usual and watching Howard Hawks’s Scarface together on the ship’s screen, which snaps in the wind—a nasty fight breaks out between Chaplin and Amakasu.

  Japan has been completely and utterly spoiled for the actor—he puts it like that, too—and then he swiftly becomes abusive and insulting as well. Enraged, he shouts that a peaceful, pan-Asian socialism under Japan’s guidance has no chance, if for no other reason than the Japanese are, quite simply, fascists; as a nation they obviously take pleasure in debasing and humiliating others. They presume that everyone around them is a barbarian—the whole globe, that’s how they see it, is populated with base, effeminate, and above all cultureless serfs.

  Ida heads off to bed, saying she wants nothing to do with this nonsense. Amakasu smiles a hint too smugly and likewise intends to take his leave, whereupon Chaplin grabs him by the sleeve and ushers him behind the screen, out of earshot, the whole while insisting how happy he is now to be returning to a free country, Amakasu will soon see how accommodating they are in America, the individual is in demand there, the individual bears responsibility, not the collective. And he empties his glass in one gulp.

  Amakasu waves it off condescendingly, the recent unspeakable press conference still in mind. He’s thankful that Chaplin and he will experience this sea voyage together, but not so blindly thankful that he need listen to such naïve commonplaces from a man who obviously lacks any political understanding whatsoever. Chaplin ought to rejoice in his magnificent film successes, in earning recognition and acclaim the whole world over. Or does he perhaps worry that he’ll miss the boat with sound film? For it’ll come, guaranteed, indeed it’s already here, except in Japan. But that is somewhere he never wants to go back to, he adds as a little dig.

  Aha, so I’m a little prole, eh? Chaplin says, and Amakasu replies that he never said that (can he perhaps read minds?). And then suddenly Chaplin draws his revolver from the waistband of his suit trousers, holds the barrel against the other’s stomach, tottering, and commands Amakasu to jump into the ocean or he’ll pull the trigger.

  Amakasu is aghast. Wait, just a minute. He can’t possibly be serious? Oh, he is, oh so very serious. It’s like this: Chaplin hates his guts, he always has, since that reception at the American legation. The Jap can choose freely: a hole in his innards or the minuscule chance of survival at swim in the Pacific. Hawaii isn’t quite sixty miles north, so take your pick.

  Amakasu considers whether he might be fast enough to grab the gun; Chaplin is visibly plastered, maybe he’s not capable of pulling the trigger so quickly; could also be that the pistol is not even loaded. In fractions of a second the limited options and their consequences race through his head, but it always ends with unimaginable pain in the pit of his stomach.

  He climbs the railing, carefully swinging one leg over to the seaward side. Chaplin staggers toward him and shoves him over into the ocean. Then he tosses the revolver in after him.

  Later he will tell Ida he didn’t see Amakasu, he, Chaplin, also went to bed—for God’s sake, the poor man didn’t perhaps tumble overboard at night drunk, did he? He says the same thing to the captain. He is the most famous actor in the world; people have always believed everything he says.

  41.

  Masahiko splutters, swimming a few strokes in whichever direction. Immediately sober, he sees the lights of the steamer growing smaller and smaller, and as he swallows a few mouthfuls of salt water, he becomes aware of the whole horrible enormity of his situation. If only he had something to hold on to, a piece of wood, it didn’t matter what. If only he knew what direction Hawaii was. If only he’d let himself be shot in the gut.

  He floats on his back and drifts up and down the wave troughs. The moon illuminates the dreadful scene, glassy and gray. The water is not especially cold. If the sea current were impelling him forward with a speed of perhaps four miles per hour, he would be in Hawaii in a good eighteen hours, provided, of course, that the current is moving him that way in the first place. This is it. Numbly he maps the position of the islands in the ocean, there are around eight, that much he knows; he imagines them to be like a rake in whose distantly placed prongs he will be caught. He has thirty hours left, but if by that point he has not reached land, he will die of thirst. If only he hadn’t drunk so many cocktails—Chaplin, that fucking lunatic.

  From wave to wave he keeps drifting off to sleep for a few seconds. The whole matter has something tremendously clear about it, and ridiculous, too; he doesn’t want to die, nor is he not dead. He hears a crackling and crinkling underwater at ear level; it is the primal sound of this planet, in the middle of which he perceives, a long way off, a submerged, oscillating noise—it is the skittish, modulated squeaking of sea mammals singing to one another in the ocean over vast stretches of loneliness.

  Nothing is without meaning, he thinks, and he imagines himself finally rinsed onto a beach by waves that foam over him, breaking with gentle and feeble softness; there on the shore he sees crabs and shells and rocks, the tangible, perceptible bleached skeleton of the earth, and above, stretching in breathless blue, the infinite gift of the heavens.

  42.

  After arriving by rail in northern Hokkaidō, Nägeli crosses over on a ferry to the Kuril Islands, that archipelago on the way to Siberia. At the harbor he walks up to a fishing boat, gesturing somewhat helplessly, bowing, pointing to the northeastern horizon. The shrimp fishermen ta
ke him along a ways, to the next island, and the following one, and he considers giving them the bag with the cameras in gratitude after filming their rugged, kind faces and their nets, but he thinks the better of it: could be that he may need the devices yet.

  At the border to Russia, the fishing boat is stopped by grim-looking Soviet naval troops; they set over in a dinghy and inspect the crew, while a heavy machine gun on the coast guard ship is trained on them. Nägeli babbles that he doesn’t exactly have a visa, but he’s a Swiss naturalist; might he at least ride along until just off Kamchatka? The Soviet officer on duty of course does not allow him to continue his journey and begins examining the sack with the cameras.

  Before he ends up in any further predicaments, Nägeli gives away all his cigarettes to the soldiers, hands the officer his remaining dollars, the fishermen and Nägeli bow, and amid thousands of apologies, the Japanese do an about-face and deposit him back on the coast of Hokkaidō. Leaving, they call out to him a friendly warning about brown bears that will sometimes attack humans this time of year.

  He crisscrosses wild Hokkaidō, where now, in the early Japanese summer, the slopes and coastal cliffs are engirdled by the violet blossoms of wild lilies and primroses. Nägeli wanders with neither route nor plan, farther and farther, constructs shelters for himself each evening from branches and twigs or sleeps under the stars, fills his water bottle in the brooks, catches fish with his bare hands and eats them raw, and attempts, treading cautiously, to film the brown bears that do show up now and again.

  Nature seems to him impetuous and lush and full of power, and at night he dreams of vast extinct volcanoes whose slopes appear all a-jumble in the distance. Many a time does he in fact see their orange, calming glow in the night sky, hundreds of miles away. A family of foxes follows him for several days at a safe remove; nesting birds tweet fee-dee-bus at their brethren moving westward in the sky.