Facing the Bridge

by Yoko Tawada

  Irritated, Tamao went outside for a walk only to run into Manfred, the man he’d met on his first day here. Manfred was in the process of crushing a cigarette underfoot, so perhaps he’d been standing there, waiting for Tamao to appear. The moment he saw Tamao he called out, “Hey there, Amo,” with a sarcastic grin. After their first meeting, Tamao had immediately gone to the library where he discovered that Amo, brought here from Ghana in the eighteenth century, was the first African to be awarded a doctorate in philosophy from a European university, which was precisely why he couldn’t forgive Manfred for calling him that name.

  “Bet you’re thirsty, aren’t you?” Tamao retorted, trying to sound tough. Apparently he succeeded, for Manfred gaped at him in surprise, then meekly nodded. “Come along then,” Tamao said, assuming a casual air as he led the way into an upscale restaurant he'd been eyeing for some time. His old jacket hanging limply from his shoulders, Manfred followed. When he opened the menu, Tamao was disappointed to find the place cheaper than he'd expected. He ordered several hors d’oeuvres that looked expensive and were served in small portions. Tamao planned to keep Manfred cowed by acting like the last of the big spenders. He had money to spare as he had hardly bought anything since he arrived. Manfred soon grew very quiet.

  When Tamao asked, almost angrily, “What kind of wine do you want?” Manfred replied in a tiny voice, “Your choice.” Tamao knew his Italian wines, so he quizzed the waiter before deciding on one.

  “I’m treating,” he announced, feeling bolder. With his confidence turning to arrogance, he said, “I see you hanging around all the time—exactly what do you do for a living, anyway?” Cringing with fear, Manfred peered timidly up at Tamao, his mouth half open. No words came out, but his lips spluttered loudly. Alarmed, Tamao quickly added, “Not that it matters to me, of course.” As soon as the hors d’oeuvres were arranged on the table—first a plate of eggplant, zucchini, red peppers and mushrooms, each gleaming with a faint sheen of oil, then slices of tomato and mozzarella, followed by foie gras—Manfred grabbed his knife and fork. The words “God is…” escaped from his lips as he stuffed a piece of zucchini into his mouth, swallowing his sentence. He then started to say, “Things that pass away…” but quickly broke off a piece of bread and crammed it into his mouth as well. The trembling of his lips gradually subsided. With a wry smile, Tamao realized he was watching over Manfred like a nurse. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Manfred drank some wine. By the time he finished his tortellini and polished off the last of the tiramisu, he seemed perfectly calm, and, smiling in spite of himself, Tamao remembered how “Pasta soothes the soul,” in the words of a certain TV commercial. Then Manfred blurted out, “I’ll treat you to Chinese sometime.” Tamao automatically shook his head in refusal. Manfred looked puzzled. Tamao searched in vain for a good excuse. Didn’t that foreign student Nana say she was working part-time in a Chinese restaurant? He would be lumped together with Nana and the other waitresses, reduced in Manfred’s eyes to a mere speck in an Asian throng. He would have to dissuade Manfred.

  “Don’t you like Chinese food?” Manfred inquired.

  “It’s not that I don’t like it, but my doctor has forbidden me to eat it.” It was a peculiar lie. He hadn’t seen Nana again since that first meeting, though the same night he had a dream about her. On the condition that she leave Wolfenbüttle, he was sleeping with her. “We can’t have two people from the same country here at the same time, both studying Lessing,” he told her. And she replied, “You can’t—it doesn’t bother me in the least.” She was like an octopus’s sucker, and try as he might, Tamao couldn’t ejaculate. She drew him in and spat him out until he was gasping for breath, his belly hurt, and he wished for the end. But if he said something wrong, causing Nana to announce that she wasn’t going to leave after all, he didn’t know what he’d do. Tamao egged himself on. There’s Manfred outside the window, green with envy, he told himself to keep from going limp. Professor Meyer’s there with him—the pair of them wish they were me. At that very moment, a searing pain tore through his lower body, and Tamao woke up.

  5

  “The soul itself does not suffer,” wrote Amo. “It appears to be in pain when a new connection forms, an invasion takes place, or a collision occurs. Still, it is not actually the soul that is suffering. Connection, invasion, and collision occur between the various parts, aspects, or elements within one existence,” he continued. Since meeting Professor Johan Peter von Ludwig, Amo’s passion for reading had increased. Professor Ludwig had a habit of lingering over the names of philosophers and their works when he spoke, savoring them like wine on the tongue. Perhaps that was why the books he recommended seemed to speak directly to Amo from the very first page. When Amo wrote papers of his own, though, he temporarily cleared his mind of the books he had read, rarely quoting from any of them. The words flowed smoothly from the tip of his pen. As he gazed at the quill, lost in thought, memories of birds would materialize. When he was a child, he observed every bird that flew past him, even noting the expression in its eyes. Now as he formed the letters on the page, the quill moved as if the spirit of the bird whose feathers had been plucked to make his pen were speaking. It wasn’t Amo who wrote. It was the spirit of the dead bird.

  Amo was so engrossed in his studies that he rarely went out. Professor Ludwig encircled his body like an invisible protective spirit, binding him to his books. The idea of a soul that did not feel pain comforted Amo. Even the stones people threw could not injure his soul. And, what’s more, his soul was always present. Though friends might seem close, eventually they would depart. His fathers would also leave him someday. But as Amo moved from town to town, his soul would always travel with him. It had been with him since his childhood.

  The only time his soul left him was at night, while he was asleep. With his soul no longer near, bad dreams were free to hurt him as much as they liked. Amo continued to have violent nightmares. The worst recurred again and again during what should have been the most memorable time of his life, when he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy. During the day he was showered with praise, surrounded by the proud faces of his professors and colleagues. Hoping to catch a glimpse of him, students would loiter outside his house early in the morning. Then at night when he closed his eyes, vaguely familiar men he couldn’t see clearly ganged up on him and tied his hands and feet to a tree. With the tips of quill pens they stabbed the insides of his elbows, his thighs, his chest. Amo would be too shocked to speak. More from surprise than pain, his chest would almost burst. To avoid seeing who his attackers were he squeezed his eyes shut and moaned, bearing the pain until his moans grew so loud they woke him up, his back drenched in sweat.

  Hounded by hunger, Tamao walked the streets until he finally stopped in front of the Chinese restaurant. There was only one in Wolfenbüttel, so he knew there was a good chance he’d bump into Nana. He shuddered at the thought. In the end, though, his longing for rice and soy sauce was too strong. Finding ma-po-dou-fu on the menu in pinyin and in Chinese characters, Tamao read off the four syllables in a monotone and then sat waiting, his eyes downcast to avoid seeing the faces of the waitresses walking by. With a platter of tofu drowned in spicy sauce in front of him, he forgot all about Nana, and when he paid the check and she still hadn’t appeared, he decided she must have been fired, run out of money, and gone back to Japan.

  He left the restaurant and was strolling back to his room when he found himself in front of Lessing's house. He was marveling at the longevity of the cherry blossoms and their deep, rich hue when he heard a voice behind him: “So we meet again.” Tamao cringed as if a policeman had ordered him to halt. He prayed that Nana didn’t know he’d gone to eat ma-po-dou-fu on the sly.

  “How are your studies coming along?”

  She was carrying a wicker shopping basket filled with library books, their spines lined up neatly inside.

  “Oh, so it’s the girl radical who was spouting off about Lessing….”

  Tamao felt sure hi
s sarcastic tone gained him the upper hand. With a pained expression as though someone had tried to yank her earlobe off, Nana launched into a diatribe about how as long as scholars continued to read the problem of sex in Lessing’s work through the veil of idealized romantic love, they would remain blind to the pitfalls of 18th-century Enlightenment. Her spittle flew. “If you’re still stuck on that old saw you’ve got a long way to go,” Tamao interrupted, repeating a handy retort his friend often used, which didn’t mean much but at least put the other person on the defensive. Nana’s eyelashes twitched violently until she suddenly blurted out, “That means you must be … MA-PO-DOU-FU!” and burst out laughing. Her figure began to twirl like a windmill. His equilibrium destroyed, Tamao tried to say, “No I’m not,” or “You’ve got it all wrong,” but realized his voice was drifting farther and farther away. He knew he was talking. He just couldn’t keep up with the continuous spray of words and lost all track of any meaning. Only when Nana grabbed his arm and shook him did the mechanical noise spurting from his mouth finally stop. He sighed with relief. When his speech ended, the scenery returned. Nana peered into his face with a worried look.

  “I’m all right. It’s really nothing at all,” Tamao managed to whisper. He was afraid that if he spoke any louder, he would be spirited away by the sound of his own voice.

  6

  Amo didn’t have much trouble getting a position at the University of Jena. He simply had to emphasize the fact that he was a young man from a poor family under the patronage of the Duke of Braunschweig, and permission was granted. Although poverty was hardly a shameful condition, Amo wondered how the authorities would react if they discovered his brothers had been sold as slaves.

  “The aim of philosophy is the moral perfection of the mind and of the body,” said Amo in his first lecture as Doctor of Philosophy. The people in the audience were drawn by different kinds of curiosity. Some were Orientalists, and thus interested in Africa as an exotic whole, while others merely wanted to see a black man at the podium. A serious-looking student of about twenty who was totally absorbed in Amo’s lecture wanted to know what he meant by “the morality of the flesh.” “Morality lies not only in the mind, but also in the body,” Amo answered cautiously. No other philosopher had said this; it was an idea that had grown out of Amo’s own experience. And because everyone’s experience is different, arguments grounded in personal experience must be developed with great care. “For example, when you’re about to throw a stone at a person or other living thing and your arm falters, or you feel pain in your heart, that is physical morality,” Amo said. “Human beings who do not suffer in this way have not perfected their physical morality.” He surveyed the audience but saw no reaction, only faces stacked like bricks. The student who had asked the question was no longer there.

  Though Amo now rarely saw Professor Ludwig, he heard that he was sick. This man who had shielded him like a fur coat was growing more and more distant, and just as he was beginning to get used to the cold, the rumors of illness arrived, followed by the news of his death. Amo recalled Fraulein. She, too, had fallen ill and quickly vanished. Sobs rose from deep within his throat.

  One night, Amo dreamed about Professor Ludwig. The professor looked like a doll kneaded from mud, and when the light struck him at certain angles, his face resembled that of different men. He didn’t have eyes. Perhaps they still existed beneath the surface of his skin. Amo touched Professor Ludwig’s cheeks, which really did feel like mud, his fingers sinking right into them. Then he woke up. In the morning, as he was walking through the university gate, a colleague hurried over, grabbed him by the arm, and whispered something in his ear. Although he couldn’t make out what the man said, Amo sensed without having to ask that Professor Ludwig was dead. Instead of heading straight for his lecture, Amo walked along the dusty road. He wasn’t sure where he was going. His soul followed, not far behind.

  Tamao’s studies still weren’t progressing. He wanted to remain shut up in his room with his eyes riveted to his books. The walls frightened him, though, and when he was alone in his room, he broke into a cold sweat. One self could think, “I am here, now,” and another self was capable of sensing his physical presence, but somebody who was no one at all had quietly slid a scalpel between the two. Without bothering to put on his jacket, Tamao left the house, pretending he was just stepping out for cigarettes. Once outside, walking the streets with studied indifference, he felt a little calmer. He passed the backs of strangers until he’d reached the outskirts of town, then turned right and continued on. When he saw a back he recognized, his pace quickened.

  “Oh yeah? So what of it—I didn’t make you any promises. That deal went bust all right, but I wasn’t even there, so why don’t you ask someone else what happened? You can’t blame me for everything.”

  It was Manfred, mumbling to himself, fuming and sputtering. He was too engrossed in his monologue to notice Tamao walk up behind him, slightly to one side. Hesitating to speak, Tamao listened to him talk as if he were spitting out something foul while making excuses in a wheedling, whiny tone. When Tamao couldn’t take anymore, he pummeled Manfred’s meaty back. The man slowly turned around and stared straight at Tamao’s nose with no sign of recognition. The appearance of those eyes, hard and as expressionless as marbles, startled Tamao so that he took a step back. Could these be “the eyes of one without a soul”? “Hey Manfred!” he shouted, much louder than he intended. This was the first time he addressed him this way. He would have preferred to use his surname—the unadorned Christian name was somehow embarrassing—but he felt that this was what was needed to bring Manfred’s soul back. And in fact, after blinking rapidly a few times, in a startled voice Manfred uttered the syllables, “TA-MA-O.” As his slack facial muscles tightened, his lips even managed a smile.

  “What do you think you’re doing standing here in the middle of the street?” Tamao demanded, but Manfred, apparently unaware that he’d been wandering around talking to himself, just stood there grinning.

  “How about a drink?”

  Side by side, the two set off. Manfred wobbled along, his pace fast then slow. Having to keep in step with his irregular gait irritated Tamao.

  “You’re worried about something, aren’t you?” Tamao asked, putting on the big brother act. Manfred stared down at him in utter contempt and replied, “Amo, the likes of you could never understand what’s bothering me.” Clenching his fist, Tamao glowered at Manfred’s fleshy jowls. They had come to the foot of a small bridge in an area the townspeople called Little Venice. Tamao pictured himself lunging at Manfred’s side, pushing him straight into the water. Boy, would that feel good. Then he caught sight of Nana up ahead, walking toward them, waving both arms over her head. Like a kid in elementary school, Tamao returned the greeting. Manfred seemed to have forgotten all about Tamao and strolled on alone.

  “Hey, wait up!” called Tamao, racing after him, but like a balloon carried off by the wind, Manfred’s body receded farther and farther into the distance. “Hey, where’re you going?!”

  Tamao, in a daze, ran faster than he could ever remember. Manfred was floating away on a spring breeze. In time Tamao heard the approach of rhythmical footsteps and turned to see Nana beside him. He kept his pace, calling Manfred’s name over and over again. When his breath was spent the name shattered and its fragments fell to the earth. He was gasping, but with Nana by his side he couldn’t stop now. How could she run so fast? Tamao was certain he had never reached this speed in his entire life. Manfred grew smaller and smaller. The stones beneath Tamao’s feet rose from the ground and leapt before his eyes, just when he thought he could go no further Nana stopped and bent at the waist, panting. Tamao looked back at her and stopped as well, breathing hard.

  Though neither suggested it, they entered the nearest cafe, side by side.

  “Two budding Lessing scholars running all over town chasing after a weird guy like that—rather droll, isn’t it?” said Tamao, trying to sound scholarly, but Nana just lau
ghed and said that she had decided to switch her research topic. Early in the eighteenth century there was an African philosopher who had studied here under the patronage of the Duke of Braunschweig, and eventually went on to get his doctorate, she started to tell him….

  7

  When Amo’s old servant fell ill, her daughter replaced her. Sometimes while cleaning a room, the younger woman would suddenly stop and stand motionless, staring vacantly into space. Or she would tenderly caress a book as big as a brick on Amo’s desk. The neighbors said there was something odd about her. Amo often lost his temper in those days. When he flew into a rage, he would hurl his syllables through the air to wound his listeners’ hearts. He didn’t get angry at home, though, and always spoke to Marguerite—for that was her name—in soothing tones as if he were casting a spell on her. Nodding slightly, Marguerite would listen carefully to everything he said, although now and then she would throw him a spiteful glance for no apparent reason. She was always on the move: when her work in the kitchen was done she’d examine every corner of the house, dusting, polishing, picking up the carcasses of dead insects and tossing them out the window. Amo, who couldn’t sit still either, would stride through the house, lost in thought, sailing between tables and chairs. Whenever he and Marguerite nearly ran into each other from opposite sides of the same piece of furniture, he’d burst into laughter. Amo had never been able to understand how his colleagues in the philosophy department managed to keep their hips and torsos so rigid when they walked. He certainly couldn’t move that way. He observed them sitting in the library, submerged in their chairs like toads, and wondered if they were of the same species as himself. He knew Marguerite was, but those scholars could be beings from a different world. When Marguerite helped him put on his coat, their bodies would play a little game, swaying first right then left, or descend to the floor in a spiral motion, yet somehow she always got the garment on him. Marguerite saw that Amos bottom was round and hard, and moved as if it had a life of its own. She watched his bottom as she held out his coat with both hands. Fully aware of this, Amo would give it a little twitch. Then he'd spin around to peer into her face, remembering how freely he’d played with women as a child. With the dramatic flourish of an actor, he’d plant a kiss on her cheek. She’d let out a squeal, but far from trying to escape, she’d stay glued to the spot still holding the coat, waiting for another surprise. One day Amo wanted her to run an errand and while looking for her behind the house, he overheard some women from the neighborhood gossiping around the washtubs. They were quizzing Marguerite about what Amo ate, whether his whole body was black, the size of his penis. He was always aware of their eyes watching him—in the shadow of a fence, behind the trees, from inside their houses. Yet whenever he approached and tried to speak to them, they looked terrified and ran away.