by Yoko Tawada
“Is Professor Kanatsu well? It’s been more than fifteen years since I’ve been in Tokyo—the city must have changed.”
More harmless questions were beginning to relax him until a huge German shepherd padded out from one of the inner rooms. Tamao, who hated dogs, clutched his wineglass in both hands and struggled to keep from quivering all over. The beast sniffed at his shoes. Immediately sensing Tamao’s terror, Professor Meyer laughed heartily and said, “Our guest doesn’t like dogs, so you run along now.” Without further ado, the shepherd turned around and left the room. At dinner, the pork and potatoes and green beans Tamao took from the silver platter in the center of the table rolled around on his plate like sunbathers on a beach. Tamao was not a big eater, and meat never agreed with him, but remembering his friend saying that with enough practice anyone could eat loads of meat, he attacked the slab like a warrior facing battle. He was so engrossed in his fight with the pork that when Professor Meyer suddenly inquired, “Do you have any brothers and sisters?” he wasn’t sure for a moment whether he did or not. He broke into a cold sweat. Could he have forgotten that he had a brother after only a week in Germany? But if he were to answer, “I have an older brother,” the question “What does he do?” would naturally follow. He would be embarrassed to admit that his brother was doing nothing but dinky part-time jobs. The Professor and his wife surely wouldn’t approve. What kind of future would they see for the younger brother of someone like that? Tamao finally decided to reply, “No, I’m an only child.”
The meat, which had looked lean enough, turned into a chunk of solid grease on its way down his throat. After a while, the Professor said, “Many Japanese come here to study music. Do you like music?” At Tamao’s answer, “Yes, I love Wagner. I have his complete works,” the Professor’s face darkened. Realizing he’d said something he shouldn’t have, he quickly added, “But I like Michael Jackson, too,” in what he meant to be an engaging manner, but this time, the Professor’s wife grimaced.
When he watched Michael Jackson’s videos, every cell in Tamao’s body started to seethe; he even felt his appearance begin to change. His friends all said plastic surgery was in bad taste. But didn’t everyone harbor a secret desire for a new face? His own was as plain as a burlap sack, so he put it out of his mind and studied hard to compensate for how dull he looked. He told himself that fretting over one's appearance was a job for women. But deep down, doesn’t every man who lacks confidence in his looks yearn for that moment when the Beast turns into a handsome young man?
As he watched Tamao take a second helping of green beans and the smallest piece of meat, the Professor quickly remarked, “You like vegetables, don’t you? That’s good for your health,” and laughed. The Professor certainly was observant. In a town this size, where you could go anywhere on foot, it would be impossible to keep anything, no matter how small, a secret. Nothing ever really happened here, so outsiders were carefully watched, examined, assessed. If you rated highly enough, they would probably accept you. In a big city you would forever remain a stranger without a name, so perhaps it was actually easier for foreign elements to be welcomed into a little place like this, Tamao concluded.
3
On the days his tutors came, Amo felt bright and sunny inside. Of course each tutor was of a different type: some sat in front of him like a wall spouting knowledge, while others treated him like a friend. Herr Kaiser, the Latin teacher, acted like Amo didn’t exist, droning on and on as if reading to himself, occasionally glancing down at his pupil as if he were a piece of broken pottery. Herr Kaiser also never laughed. Even so, Amo found Latin grammar as much fun as a puzzle. Herr Petersen, who taught history and literature, was just the opposite, bending over to look him in the eye as though they were planning some mischief together, chatting confidentially through the lesson. Poring over a map seemed to give Herr Petersen the illusion that he was aboard a ship, for he would gaze up at the dark ceiling as if it were a blinding sun, and sway back and forth as he talked, tossed by imaginary waves.
At the mention of ships, Amo’s whole body stiffened. He had nightmares about them. When he awoke with a cry the boat would be gone, and much to his relief, he’d find that the legs of his bed were planted firmly on the floor. Sometimes he had similar dreams during the day, when he dozed off on the sofa after lunch. The lurid colors he saw in these daytime nightmares made them even more terrifying than the ones he had at night. The ship in his dreams always possessed a complex web of corridors; Amo would be feeling his way down a dark, narrow staircase, or crouching to squeeze through a tiny entrance, crawling further and further into the interior of a snail. He didn’t know what he was searching for. But then a door covered with black mold would appear, and though he dreaded opening it, someone would push him from behind, sending him sprawling straight into it. The door would crumble softly like a wall kneaded from wet earth, and Amo would pop out on the other side. His nose would hit the floor; then, planting his hands on the damp stickiness, he would lift himself up. The place reeked of blood and rotting flesh. Knowing this stench might draw hyenas, he would anxiously look around. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he’d see prostrate human figures. What he had mistaken for the rumble of the sea was actually the moaning of men. Rows and rows of men. Amo would peer cautiously into their faces: drawn, swollen, with sunken cheeks. The flesh of some men would be torn from their shoulders like rags, revealing white bone underneath. Something would be crawling among the bones, a mass of movement.
Amo was always relieved when dawn finally came after a sleepless night. The maid would bring cold water in a china basin. As he stood in the water while she washed his sweaty skin, the oppression of the nightmare would gradually lift, and his chest would lighten. By the time his tutor appeared and the books were open, the dream would be far away.
Sometimes Herr Petersen asked Amo how he’d slept the night before. Even when he didn’t feel tired, his eyelids drooped a little, giving him a sleepy look. He never told Herr Petersen about his nightmares. If this kindly tutor were to know about his ship dream, Amo was certain the connection between them would be severed.
He had another recurring nightmare about sharks. As he gazed at the sea the wind skimmed its surface, creating a lovely pattern of waves that opened out before his eyes. Something, though, was not quite right. Why didn’t the water flow naturally, and what was that nasty glare? he wondered. Then it was too late. Amo would be gulping sea-water as the waves pulled him under and, before he knew what was happening, he’d be sucked straight into a shark’s mouth. Teeth sprouted like icicles above and below; through them he could see water and sky. Perhaps he could jump out if he set his mind to it. But his uncle had told him that a shark has three rows of teeth. Even if you managed to get past the first, the second would surely crush your backbone. And if you succeeded in maneuvering through the second, then the third would come crashing down on you. He simply couldn’t muster the courage to jump. It was definitely much safer to stay here, inside. Through the window of the shark’s mouth, he could see the ship. On board, the Bad Spirits were hurling people into the sea. Perhaps the people had already lost consciousness, for they didn’t cry out or struggle, but fell in like dead weight. Other sharks rose to the surface, their fins breaking the water, gleaming like metal as black blood stained the seafoam.
A magnificent cherry tree with spreading branches stands in front of Lessing’s house. Tamao was secretly proud of it. People thought of this as the symbol of Japan—not bad, he thought. Every time he went out, he made a point of walking by the tree. Even if he had to go out of his way, it wasn’t far in such a small town. Today, though, he saw a Japanese woman walking toward him from beyond the tree. Tamao was shocked. His first thought was, I mustn’t let her take my tree away. The figure grew larger. Tamao wanted to erase her from the scene.
“Well, hello. Are you from Japan, too?” the woman asked. Her greeting was a bit loud, though not too annoying. The next bit was what really grated on him. Her name was Nana,
and she was also a student, paying her own way. As she didn’t have much money saved, she was working part-time at a Chinese restaurant. Lessing was her specialty, and she was now working on her M.A. thesis. Tamao seethed inside, and nearly blurted out, What makes you think you understand Lessing? The very idea of there being two Japanese people in such a little town at the same time, both with the same research topic, seemed unbearable to him.
“No use studying Lessing in this day and age,” Tamao countered, digging earnestly at the ground with his right shoe. He felt a sneer spread from his mouth up to his nose.
“Why do you say that?” Nana looked straight at him, not even bothering to brush back her hair blowing across her face, which irritated Tamao even more. He began to ask her what meaning 18th-century Enlightenment could possibly have today, now that even postmodernism was over and done with, but Nana cut him off with a torrent of words. She talked on and on as if censuring someone who wasn’t there, speaking so fast he hardly had time to digest what she was saying. “Even if the three great religions make peace by signing some sort of civil contract, it would be like three sons killing their younger sisters and then sitting down to discuss their inheritance rights,” she said, and finally realizing that she was talking about Lessing’s play Nathan the Wise, Tamao retorted, “Look, I don’t need you to throw that radical stuff in my face. What do you take me for anyway?”
Nana fell silent. Countless beads of sweat clung to the tip of her nose. He couldn’t tell which direction her eyes were looking in. A few seconds later, she started laughing like a glass bottle rolling down a concrete slope. There was definitely something strange about her. Remembering what his friend said about people who blew a fuse while they were studying abroad, Tamao cringed.
4
Amo loved the word “soul.” At first he couldn’t imagine what a “soul” could be although he sensed it must be different from things like walls or candles. Every time he heard the word his heart beat faster. In time, an oddly vivid image formed in his mind. The soul was an invisible mass of power that was always very near him—inside his chest, or perhaps wedged under his arm, or floating above his head—he couldn’t tell exactly where, but it was there. And being there, it affected his feelings. When something he thought he’d never understand became crystal clear, he had his soul to thank for it; and if he was able to speak eloquently, it was because his soul was animated. His soul, though, didn’t serve Amo. He was always the one who obeyed. If his soul told him to cry, he would immediately burst into tears. “The human soul is one kind of spirit. Spirits are living beings that cannot be seen and have a will of their own. They cannot describe this will with words, but we know by observation that it exists. Spirits have a purpose that they act toward. When this purpose is achieved, they are at rest.” After writing this composition, Amo showed it to Petersen. Although impressed, the tutor couldn’t see why his pupil had suddenly decided to write about such a topic, and asked if he had been reading some philosophical works that might have influenced him. When Amo told him this was something he had thought of himself, Petersen felt the unexpected appearance of words like “soul” and “spirit” in the boy’s writing uncanny. Understood by no one, Amo continued to work on his compositions. His hunger for knowledge expanded and no one could suppress it. People found Amo’s voice and the brightness of his face unsettling. When Petersen suggested that he be sent to university, and the Duke of Braunschweig agreed, no one was surprised. In June of 1727, Amo was sent to the town of Halle in Saxony as a student of philosophy.
When people saw Amo on the streets of Halle they stopped in their tracks, their eyes widening as if they were staring at the Devil. Some of the women screamed. In the little town of Wolfenbüttel, the baker’s wife, the shoemaker, the farmer’s wife who sold apples—everyone knew Amo, so no one stared at him. Familiarity allowed him to lead a normal life and forget how different he looked. But in Halle, he was painfully aware of the strangeness of his face in the eyes of the natives. He would be walking along a fence in an alley near the town square where the fountain was, and rocks would come flying. He initially thought it was children until he once peeked through a break in the fence and saw two men in ragged shirts glowering at him, each with a pile of stones clutched to his chest. When he went into a bakery, no matter how hungry he was, the baker would stand frozen and refuse to sell him anything. Some months later, when he transferred to the University of Wittenberg, nothing changed. This wasn’t Amo’s decision. The Duke, concerned about the heightening tensions between Prussia and Braunschweig, wanted him to move. It made no difference to Amo where he was. As long as he had a “father” to watch over him, one town was as good as another. He now lived in a lodging house for students. The landlady was stingy, though fortunately Amo didn’t seem to frighten her, for she treated him just as she did the other students. They all had the same hard bread and milk in the morning, potato skins and soup with grease floating on the surface for lunch, and red wine with black bread spread with pork fat for supper. The landlady often told them with great pride that she was actually the daughter of a wealthy Portuguese family. She was raised surrounded by servants, including a number of African slaves who looked like Amo, she said, so far from upsetting her, the sight of his black face brought back nostalgic memories of her privileged childhood. After they lost their fortune, she traveled east with the husband her parents had chosen for her, but then he died, too, and she had been running this student lodging house ever since, though she was born into a great house with black slaves waiting on her—she repeated this story so many times that the students started doing amusing imitations of her. Black slaves. Wondering how he could have failed to see the huge tree standing in front of him, Amo slapped his forehead—a habit hed picked up from Petersen. How could he have missed something so obvious? The ship was a slave ship. His father, his uncle, his brothers were captured and loaded onto it. But where were they taken? He remembered the many lands he had traveled through by carriage. Since leaving Amsterdam, he hadn’t seen one black person. Where did they all go? Amo wanted advice about researching the slave trade but was afraid that if he asked, even the professors who had treated him kindly would see him differently once they realized his family were slaves. They might think him ungrateful. Here was the Duke of Braunschweig, paying for the education of a man who might have been a slave, and now that same man was planning to use the knowledge he received with the Duke’s money to cast aspersions on the slave trade. His patron was supporting him not to waste his time on such matters, but to study philosophy. Herr Petersen said that the goal of philosophy was the moral perfection of human beings. Amo, however, didn’t have a clear image of what the word “human” meant. People said that a human being possessed the ability to think. Yet no matter how complex a bird’s thoughts might be, it was not human. When he asked a fellow student if a scullery maid was human, the student sneered and didn’t reply. Another student explained with a lewd smile that for a human being to be born from a scullery maid’s belly, she merely needed a human seed to produce the child so that even if the scullery maid were a horse she might give birth to a human baby. Undaunted, Amo posed the same question to one of his professors. After warning him against getting sidetracked by insignificant details, the man advised him to deal logically, and more severely, with the definition of “human” itself. The question, “Are black people on a slave ship human beings?” stayed on the tip of Amo’s tongue.
Though Tamao spent most of his time cooped up in his room, his studies were not progressing well. When he opened the dusty old library books that he had borrowed, his mind wandered, leaving his eyes to vacantly skim the same page over and over again. He would walk down to the kitchen not so much out of hunger as from a vague desire to put something into his mouth. The landlady, hearing his footsteps, would emerge from her room. She was in her mid-sixties and extremely proud of having been to Japan, which her neighbors must have been sick of hearing about, for whenever she could, she would try to tell Tamao how s
he had seen the rock garden at Ryoanji and had bought a transistor radio at Akihabara. Tamao found it unbearable that people here saw him not as a student in the philosophy department, but above all as a Japanese. If his friend were to hear about this he would surely laugh and say, “Didn’t I tell you not to bother going abroad? Europe will only get in the way of your studies.”
