by Arturo Silva
***
Ah, this city!, Cafferty peruses, the best years, each year, and they proceed. How many more, Lords? Constant delight, continuous surprise. Or is that the reverse? better look them up once again; ditto principle and principal, and throw in capital and capitol – which one is Tokyo? The city a spelling lesson.
***
Kazuko is spending her first year at university, sharing an apartment with three roommates in Tama New Town. She is extremely depressed. (Tama is a “new town” on an old river. Actually, it was once called ((it still is)) “new town,” but it is better to consider it just another part of the westward move of Tokyo.) The willows of the Ginza came here. It was supposed to be one of those models for a comfortable life in the sprawling metropolis. But it has been absorbed by something greater than itself – the spirit of the city, so that by now, apart from a bit more greenery than usual, and some apartment blocks that look just a bit the other side of the ordinary, it looks like “any neighborhood, Tokyo” – and is the happier for being so.) The three other girls, having successfully entered their particular school and thus graduation guaranteed, are now only interested in partying. Besides, this is their first time in Tokyo. The opportunities are endless. Kazuko wants to be easygoing and friendly, and so occasionally she wastes a Saturday with her roommates. On this particular occasion, she is in an apartment in Tama where one of the girl’s boyfriend lives. Whiskey seems to be the order of the day. Already Kazuko has drunk too much. Two boys are fighting in one corner, play wrestling, but it will conclude with a serious accident. The apartment gets bigger as the dream goes on. In another corner are Lang and Roberta and Van Zandt (whom Kazuko did not know at this time of her life, of course), eating sandwiches. Now her roommates are berating her, needling her for being so studious, threatening to frame her for cheating (which she has not done, of course), threatening even to have her raped by three of the boys at the party. Kazuko is totally helpless, on the verge of tears, she is too drunk to see or think straight and to get out; she can not call across to her foreign friends. The only soothing thing happening – the last thing she remembers before passing out (and hence to enter a dream within a dream) – is hearing Coleman Hakwins’ “Body and Soul.”
Marianne is at a party playing her alto sax. She is wearing a very short black skirt and a pink t-shirt. Her body is glistening with sweat. She is very thin and her hair is all curls. One moment she is the center of attention; another she is in a corner, mellow. She is only playing tonight, and refusing to speak Japanese. She is in what her friends call her “Polish mood.”
***
It was Roberta’s worst night in the six months she’d been in Japan. It began with the disaster of van Zandt’s film in Yanaka – or at least the disaster she created. The plan, following the successful premier, was for everyone to head back to Roberta’s small apartment in Yoyogi, and then continue the evening with a party celebrating not only van Zandt, but her finding a new place in shitamachi – she was to move the following day – and to equally honor Lang, who’d decided to stay a while longer, and had recently found his own apartment in Kichijoji (and thus too becoming less of a burden on his estranged wife). Following the disastrous film showing, however, Lang and van Zandt decided they would walk to Yoyogi. By the time they arrived at Roberta’s, some three hours later, they’d consumed a good deal of beer and saké from vending machines, and had shared many confidences concerning the woman who had once been van Zandt’s best friend, and Lang’s loving wife. For some, the temperature rose considerably when the pair entered; even the two electric fans were useless.
What’s more, everything about Roberta’s party plans had gone wrong. (This the Roberta who only a few years earlier had gone through her delightful “party phase” – parties to which all were required to dress in red (and VZ came in white), or bejeweled, or as their literary hero. She was the expert hostess. “Anyone who can afford the booze can give a party, but it doesn’t guarantee fun.”) The Japanese she invited – the vegetable man and his wife, the old woman on the first floor, some young people she’d met in the neighborhood – were overly dressed and polite, and obviously unable to eat the cold cuts she offered them. And her overly casual western friends too were not keen on natto and the various country pickles they were offered. On the other hand, the Japanese guests freely offered the whisky they had brought, while the westerners happily shared their saké. The alcohol level was rapidly rising while the level of mutual incomprehension remained at an absolute zero. The girls too were at an impasse: Should they translate? Should they eat some natto as well as prosciutto? What should they drink – some Japanese wine (and thus possibly make everyone ill)? And what about van Zandt and Lang – whenever would they show up?
And when at last they did – to continue from the paragraph before last – freely drinking whatever was near to hand, swallowing makeshift combinations of sembei and camembert, swearing in half a dozen languages, including Japanese – all hell broke loose. But not before the three men from the corner sushi place knocked and entered bearing three large round lacquer plates of sushi, courtesy of Lang. They – no one more working-class – were his new buddies – and he who could often be the most elitist of individuals. They were very polite, while also becoming rapidly drunk. Almost no one could understand a word they said, whatever was this sushi chef code anyway? Meanwhile, Lang and van Zandt condescended to all the others – no prejudices here – or almost all, van Zandt came on too roughly to Hiromi, while Lang scorned one of Roberta’s student friends by insulting his knowledge of kanji, while also refusing to admit that he, Lang, was wholly incompetent in the language. “You don’t need a goddam school to learn a language. You need the streets, you need lovers, you need to get drunk, man, drunk on the word! You need to fuck the language, that’s right, fuck Japanese, then you’ll understand what it’s capable of!” Roberta was horrified and ashamed, and only too happy that her Japanese guests had no idea whatsoever what this madman was saying – or almost none, for Lang’s gestures were fairly clear to all.
“Stop it, Lang,” she tried to say calmly. And he, just as calmly, ceased to talk, rose, walked to her small stereo, said, “Ok, if you like,” and he stopped the gidayu recording (Roberta so hoped to come to appreciate this art too), and replaced it with some Thelonius Monk. “Now there’s a man who would understand me,” he proclaimed.
Roberta shouted. She’d had enough, and was near tears of rage and shame. She grabbed Lang’s arm; he shoved her back and she fell on to the floor, hurting her wrist, spilling some food and drink on a couple of guests, and only becoming more embarrassed and ashamed. The Japanese all together rose and left quietly but not too politely. The girls were too aghast to giggle. The other guests tried to leave – “No, stick around!,” Lang exclaimed as he poured them more to drink. Half-drunk already, and half-afraid to disagree with him, they too soon became wholly drunk, or ill, or argumentative. The next day there was a story of one of the couples getting into a fight on the street. Van Zandt began to go home, but stumbled down the stairs and fell asleep in the small genkan. Lang – made of stronger stuff – Monk’s man, recall – managed to get away, never revealing to anyone how the rest of that night proceeded for him – or even what little he remembered.
As for Roberta, she was haunted, in close-up, by that awful night, that awful party (and awful film too, she would forever insist), and for weeks thereafter would cry herself to sleep, saying over and over again, “I only wanted to do good. I only wanted to do good.”
***
He greeted her in the Dutch manner, three kisses. What a wonderful custom!, she thought. Why stop at the sober and merely friendly two, add this small excess, this promise of three meaning four and four ... the night.
***
It’s a terrific city Tokyo, but tormented -- and tormenting. But terrific, Hiro reels.
***
The whole damn thing? Nah, can’t see it. Where are those quotes from Bernhard that Lang gave me? Oh yeah, here.
“VZ: Catch the spirit! See you on the pavement, Lang.” Let’s see ...
“I hate nature, because it is killing me. ... In fact I love everything except nature, which I find sinister … I fear it and avoid it whenever I can. The truth is that I am a city dweller who can at best tolerate nature.”
Ah, now that’s the Lang I know! Probably can recognize two types of trees – bamboo and willow – and three at most flowers. Tulip, Iris, Rose. Girls names too. (Is Tulip a girl’s name? In some country, sure. Are bamboo and willow?)
“For in the country the mind is drained just as fast as it is recharged [in the city] – faster, in fact, since the country always treats the mind more cruelly than the city ever can. The country robs a thinking person of everything and gives him virtually nothing, whereas the city is perpetually giving. One has simply to see this, and of course feel it, but very few either see it or feel it, with the result that most people are sentimentally drawn to the country, where in no time they are inevitably sucked dry, deflated, and destroyed. The mind cannot develop in the country; it can develop only in the city.”
That’s our Lang! Now there’s no arguing with that, surely? Didn’t Lang tell me once that he isn’t a native of Vienna – and that I should never let anyone know? That he spent his first few years in the countryside? Only he’d be embarrassed about something like that.
***
–Two questions. One, Thai food tomorrow night in Shinjuku?
–Yes, of course, but why not the new place in Jimbocho?
–Two, will you love me tomorrow?
–Yes, of course; but why not the new place in Jimbocho?
–That’s all I wanted to know.
–We’re agreed then – the new place in Jimbocho?
–One more. What new place in Jimbocho?
–Will you love me tomorrow?
–...
–Depends on the new place in Jimbocho?
–Forget Shinjuku.
***
Keep my lips moving, for what? For whom? For no one. I wander, wander who? Oku-Tama, sounds like someone from a cowboy movie. And why not, the city’s wild west. Oh, who did write the book of love? Did I miss some chapters? Can it be rewritten? Is there a sequel? Can the crazy cat lady help me? Something brief. Just so. An encounter. “An encounter in sensible shoes.” Now that sounds dowdy. I am witty, I am not unattractive. I only lack nerve. Gentleness. “Nous ne pouvons vivre …” Or some rough stuff? Could I really? Oh, I suppose. But gentleness. I want a man. No. I want a woman. I want a voice of my own. What would the Cat Lady say? What would Zonar? They’d understand. Who writes the script? This is silly. Ok, in Japan I can walk around and talk to myself. Or can I? But back in the Midwest? No way, Sister. A lover. No circle, no giggling girls. No lesbian club, no bar. Like Japanese kids on a date reading separate comic books, we’d lie in bed back to back, talking to ourselves. Occasionally listening in. We’d go for hikes, she goes this way, I go that. We’d send each other postcards about our adventures, “Dearest Arlene.” We’d write kanji on the back of each other’s hands. And we’d walk hand in hand – in the Midwest, and in Tokyo. The rest of the world would come to understand.
But for now, I must keep walking, perhaps head back to the city, keep talking. To myself.
***
Yoshiko is in love with her music teacher. They visit the “B Flat” love hotel, a pink synthesizer in each room, “wrinkle chapeau” condoms too, with a cute Godzilla saying “I love you”” on each wrapper.
***
Van Zandt thinks of Hiroko’s eyes, pools perhaps but no space for sinking, all the more reason he thinks to forget about Arlene as he thinks of Arlene, her lips, her voice as he forgets about Hiroko whose eyes. … And he recalls what he said to her that day of the frank talk: “Geez, Arlene, you’ve come only once and that with a woman. Fine, why would you want to forget that memory, what are you scared of?” And she had no response, other than to add that now she would be content the rest of her life just designing paper clips, or better, post-its, all those pastels, helping people retain their memories.
***
“The California River is at its widest one mile, at its narrowest, a stream through which young lovers regularly wade in a few tense moments of hand-holding that has determined a great number of families. It is located high in the hills of Nagano Prefecture in the center of Japan.”
All I want to talk about is you – or is you not – the whole he and shebang of it all plain as the setting sun – what does Carole say – “Whenever there’s a chance to take the spotlight away from me ... if I start to tell a story, you finish it. If I go on a diet, you lose the weight. If I have a cold, you cough. And if we should ever have a baby, I’m not so sure I’d be the mother!” – ah, two butterflies in the window, a double halo – like that walk of his describing greater circumferences – perhaps he will encompass us in time – he’s performed other miracles I certainly never expected – I want to talk – I have an address, an ID, fingerprinted – and where do you lay your silvery head tonight? – one of us must go – isn’t that a song? – no, neither of us need go – stay if you like but for chrissake, for our sake, yours – my circumference here – I need only a few steps in all directions – oh, you try not to listen but I know you’re there – to talk about you – and here I am still wet with you – whole bereft happy and ... what’s the word – the turtles were screwing under the rosemary plant – you haven’t changed much in how many years has it been now we’ve had more or less together – “I can change, I swear” and other crap – no you see you just don’t see, don’t swear, show, put out, prove it as some singer says – but do I expect any change – maybe I did at one time but you know me – I’m a fast learner – should I care – about you changing I mean – well I do and I don’t mostly – but there’s oh so much more that you’ll see in time I hope – not lose like Lisa in Letter – a moment ago you were here and now you’re gone so what else is new – ah, this is: the address is mine and you’re jealous of a city I have made my own and you’re only now beginning to realize – you’ve never been so slow before – jealous that the love you proclaim for the place is not being reciprocated – well, what did you expect, is it a true full love or the half-measure – your style of love is not the city’s – and though yes you feel a great deal for the scene – feel really far more than almost anyone who says they love the place – still it’s not enough because we both see through you – see you have to change your style of loving and that means oh so many changes – and now only now are you beginning to wonder about mine – now when I am so obviously at home here – now when love presents me no problem you see the love I have always offered you – this totally committed thing isn’t so scary after all, in fact its very comfortable exciting even – never seen me so content before have you – and neither of us even really chose the place – it was a place to go an available opportunity to arrive – and see now the changes that are being wrought – O damn you – yes perhaps sometimes you’ve seen who I am – but this time the love the city is mine first and you do not know what to do with it – I’m not flaunting, just stating the fact, ok, with pride – but do nothing with it other than accept it see it for what it is and work with it not against – I brought my love here – and that did not include you – you see we each can have our exclusionary policies our extraterritorialities if that’s the word – oh yes you’re welcome – but on my terms this time – I have my long-term visa and you can only renew yours a short number of times before its not even back to go but you’re off the board completely – we’ll deal with that if it comes to it – all my love that does not include you – but so much does too – remember those early years – me in your Europe – you in my America – we seemed to contain a future and now all present and alone sir – it’s not even a question of … no matter no matter now – there is so much now that I no longer have to deal with – god how I loved you tried to make you see that love – but enough – I have come to love the city th
at I chanced upon – the city of chance – la bella fortuna – and I will stay and you might leave – never wanted to be here and now that you can go you – which can’t you bear to leave, the city or me? – which? could it possibly be both? – no, you needn’t choose, we’ll see – yes because I love this tortured and tender city sometimes it seems even more than I love you – she reciprocates after all, she talks to me she walks alongside me in her own curious step but never missing a beat – I love the prospects that are no prospects the city that is not one but all these villages and this one is my own I love my vegetable seller my fish monger and my rice lady who laughs at the thought of me eating brown rice the sushi shop around the corner where I stop once a week on the way home from work and a few restaurants in town to meet Arlene Kazuko and I love the dry cleaner and the tailor of whom I make extraordinary demands but to him I am just a crazy woman foreigner and he accepts me and when the earthquake strikes I know his family will take me in if need be ... I love my moldy walls my tatami that need to be replaced the one and a half sakés a night I love the noisy kid next door but not so much his long suffering mother because she’s made a cult of it and those friends who are beat and broken and need a new visa and god knows if I am breaking the law in giving them a place to stay – and I certainly must love the dirty cat who comes begging every morning after all I’ve given him your name – and no I can’t say that I love them but let’s say I am enchanted by the advertising and the TV and radio stations but this is silly this list who cares what I love – oh jeez but I love everything I do, everything, no matter what it is no matter how trivial I give it all I’ve got and I love it – so who cares what but the lover responsible for it all – walking alongside, that curious step of hers – we talk well together on our walks – yoo-hoo are you listening! – the kids just got up and it feels like rain – and your love – could you ever love – oh sure I know Arlene is in love with me but she’ll get over it these infatuations – I know I do that you love me really love me – you have you do – sometimes – but will you ever be able to love me really the way I need – but that is you and this is me and I no longer want or expect change much less try to bring it about – if it wasn’t meant to be – definitely rain refreshing – oh I tried – you know that much – the early years – we sound like a record collection – for serious collectors only – Europe California – a citystate – for serious lovers only – my big bed and breasts that summer ... yes some talk remains fine – or me going down on you for an hour or more and then you came and I giggled – my parents who couldn’t stand the thought of you – the very – and we walked all those cities all night talking – and all our friends and all the parties we gave each other – in the cities and in their countries – all those homes we were together in – and then the first in a series of splits, divisions, you from me me from you – I gave myself a few months on you here ... and I lingered and you couldn’t take that this time I wasn’t coming back – finally for once it was you who didn’t like the tone and turn of things – now you who’d always denied tones to anything weren’t keen on the tone of my letters especially as their frequency decreased – ok so you had to come and retrieve, rescue, claim me, whatever offensive term like one of those guys who gets kids out of cults as if I were being held hostage against my will you thinking I’d made some sort of mistake been fooled by some Japanese she can’t surely be happy there you were going to play the hero but you couldn’t even see then that you had nothing to do with me but your own insecurity don’t you get it yet you were threatened by ... by what? by Tokyo by me liking it by me feeling comfortable here by the very thought of me not needing to be with you I couldn’t be happy here on my own and without you and with a group of friends I was lucky to make on my own and whom typically you claim for yours that’s ok friends are ... no you couldn’t be happy with the thought … oh damn you! – and then here you were here check in and get out with her quick mission and now look at you (look at us!) so much longer later.
