As I gazed I saw that Angus was the Mad Hatter, without the hat. The same nose down which he looked, the same mouth, the same eyes. He looked like the Tenniel illustration, and he spoke as the Hatter would have. “Years in the British Museum, years, I assure you. Imagine—books, handing books to elderly parties for years. Then putting them back. And all during this time, some modest writing about people I did not much like. Much? Well, what is much? And those books. Those years. Oh, dear.”
He leaned forward. “You see, success came so late, so very late, that it was natural that I am regarded as an upstart.” He glanced around the lobby of International House as narrowly as his wide, round, Anglo-Saxon eyes would permit. “And the jealousies, my dear, the jealousies.”
“To be sure, I do have a poison pen. Oh, you would be shocked to learn the number of people nightly praying that I do not do their portraits. This, however, is not what I do best, merely what I do most. I am, you see, a very good mimic.”
Then the stories, one after the other, unrolling, narrative ribbons festooning. A moment of repose, of silence, then another spasm, another story. But the stories after a time stopped. “You know, my dear, I am not actually like this at all. As you may have already guessed, I am a moralist.” And he turned to look at me with his large, round, gray, humorless eyes. “I am not in the Waugh line at all. Actually, I am Dickens. I am preparing a book on him at this very moment.”
I had earlier seen signs of moral earnestness. He had irritated Stephen Spender by springing to his feet at the PEN conference and—at the conclusion of a speech by the older poet—saying, voice waving like a tiny pennant: “We of the younger generation of British intellectuals would seek to differ . . .”
Later, speaking of Spender. “You see, he feels—feels mind you—that he has been passed over, become even something of a relic. Oh, I understand because the same horrid machinery has made me feel the upstart. Oh, yes, I can quite assure you that I am made to feel the parvenu.”
Then he looked out of the window and said, “Oh, we have this wonderfully remote place. And right in the middle is this entire Chinese room that came with the house. It is sort of bad Chippendale, unbelievably hideous, and I breakfast there mornings.”
With Tokunaga Osamu, Stephen Spender, Alberto Moravia, Angus Wilson. Koya-san, 1959. donald richie
“Tony has said time and again that we should raze it but I am adamant when I wish to be. I also managed some delicious drapes, very French, very old, shepherds and things on them, and amid all the red lacquer and teak the effect is simply unbelievable.”
“Tony dislikes these too, I believe. Oh, dear Tony, what do you suppose he is doing now? Heavens but I shall be happy to be home.”
Such serious moments were, however, few. Mostly Angus was almost excessively entertaining. “You see, I am quite good at this sort of thing. Quite amusing, good for picnics, much better than the ants.” And another part of the repertoire would spout—but the only story I remember is the one about the fog.
With Angus Wilson, Alberto Moravia, Tokunaga Osamu, Stephen Spender. Kyoto, 1959. donald richie
And at night, exhausted by his day, he always took his medication. “Triple the dose while I am abroad—always.” He composed himself on his futon . “Don’t mind me,” were his last words. “When I fall asleep everything falls in. I think the tongue gets swallowed, and the sinuses do something horrid—the entire palate collapses, you see. It will begin in just a second or two. Well, good night, dear.”
It began almost at once: a stern, nineteenth-century sound, iron on iron, Mad Hatter turned Mr. Murdstone, interrupted by barks and yips and growls. Lying awake I realized toward morning that it was also very deep, very strong, very male.
alberto moravia, 1959. “You must show us the real Japan, said Stephen [Spender], looking about the hotel lobby—the French windows, the Italian floors, the American cash register. “Yes, you must guide us,” said Angus. “We will positively penetrate those cunning paper doors.”
Already we were calling each other by our first names, indicating the relief that was felt that the PEN Conference was over, that they were no longer obliged to be Mr. Spender, distinguished British poet, and Mr. Wilson, eminent British novelist. Relief—and the prospect of leaving disappointingly modern Tokyo and discovering what Stephen called “the real Japan.”
“No,” said Alberto Moravia, who was joining us only because he did not want to be left behind. “Tokyo is real. Tokyo is real Japan.”
With Angus Wilson, Stephen Spender. Shirahama, 1959. donald richie
I agreed. Not, however, for his reasons. These I had already discovered, having noticed him at the celebrated temple looking at the attractive young lady guide, at the famous view regarding the excursioning schoolgirls, and at the holy shrine delighting in and then disappointed by the flapping skirts of the priests. Further, I had been pressed into interpreting for him with a young lady who worked as a cashier and was not averse to foreigners, particularly if they had written Woman of Rome.
The Italian author had taken us both to the Queen Bee Night Club where he had scotch, she had crème de violette, and I had a coke.
“Ask her if she honors me with a dance.”
“Would you honor him with a dance?”
“Yes.”
Once back, he said, “She is a good dancer. You tell her.”
“You are a good dancer.”
“But you haven’t danced with me,” she said.
“No, that’s what he said.”
“That you haven’t danced with me?” she asked.
“No, no. That you are a good dancer.”
“What she say? What she say?”
Despite my interpreting, Moravia was successful in his aims. I received his gratitude. “You are my only help,” he said, holding me with his dark gaze, his warm Italian smile. She received a crocodile bag.
Having discovered the real Japan, Moravia now wanted to stay in Tokyo. The other two, having not as yet discovered it, had no such reasons for remaining.
In a bar, late, with the poet, I said, “Stephen, don’t you think we could go now? Which one do you want?”
He gazed benevolently first on the left, then on the right. “Oh, it is so difficult to choose. I really don’t know. The problem is, you see, if you take one, then the other feels so terribly left out. And that would be unkind.” Being unkind called for the strongest censure.
But it was late and I was tired. “No, it wouldn’t. People who hang out in places like this are quite accustomed to being left out.”
“Oh, but it is so nice to sit here, choice unmade, but pregnant as it were.”
“You could take both,” I suggested.
“To that hotel?” He smiled at my absurdity. “Besides, it is so pleasant here, so—well—cuddly, don’t you think?” And he smiled, gripped hard, and closed his eyes.
So I said, “Of course we’re keeping the help up. They want to close. It does seem a bit unkind.” Instantly he was standing. “Oh, how perfectly dreadful. Why didn’t you tell me?” Shortly we left and he took neither.
With Angus the question of choice never even arose. He peered about in the gloom and said, “We have places like this back home. Why are they always so dark? Don’t tell me. I know. Same reason we keep the lights low in the house. Wrinkles, my dear. Wrinkles.” Then, eyes on the dim ceiling, “Oh, home. Would I were there. Dear Tony, what do you suppose he is doing now?”
With Stephen irresolute and Angus nostalgic, there was nothing to keep them in the capital. They were ready to be diverted by authenticity, and be quit of the summer heat of Tokyo. And the following evening we were in the coolness of Koya-san, holy mountain, which I had decided was the real Japan—dozens of temples, some with pagodas, lots of paper doors, a whole cemetery.
Their reaction to the real Japan was not, however, happy.
“Are we supposed to sleep there?” asked Stephen in dismay, looking at the thin futon spread on the hard tatami. “Are we supposed to e
at that?” asked Angus with disgust, looking at the frozen tofu. “We take a bath in that?” asked Moravia in disbelief, staring at the bubbling cannibal pot, the goemonburo in which he was supposed to immerse himself. And when my literary trio saw the real Japanese toilet, an enameled chasm, they turned away without a word.
They did not like the noted cemetery either. “Grey wouldn’t have made much of this,” sniffed Angus. “Oh, I don’t know,” said Stephen. “The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,” he observed, looking at the other tourists.
He was attempting to keep up our spirits. This was necessary since Moravia was unhappy. After the inedible dinner, the impossible bath, a night of insomnia on the dreaded mats, and the terrors of the toilet, he had after the hideous breakfast turned and snapped at the other two writers.
“Agh, so easy for you! So fortunate homosexuals. You run down beach, you find simple fisher lad, you come back radiant. But, agh, we heterosexuals. The hope, the failure. So difficult.”
“What beach?” asked Stephen.
“There, there,” said Angus soothingly. “He is missing his cashier.”
I looked sympathetically at the sufferer. Here we were in the real Japan and his manhood was steadily accumulating. And not, apparently, only that. He was not hungry, pushed away his tofu, his color was bad. “I am ill,” he said.
He looked ill. To cheer him up I told him that women were now admitted to Mount Koya, though they hadn’t used to be. But even the later sight of two sturdy females in climbing boots just outside our paper windows did not rouse him.
Feeling responsible I managed to discover the nature of the complaint, went to the drugstore, and bought some medicine, the kind marked strong. But he would not take it. Already he was breathing on his chopsticks, then polishing them, inquiring into the nature of the local water then dismissing news of its safety with a wave of the hand. Now he refused the medicine.
“If you don’t take the medicine you won’t get well,” I said, guide turned doctor. “And part of your trouble is that you aren’t drinking enough water.” But to this he only shook a gloomy head. “Idiot—water make me more ill.”
Eventually lack of water, food, medicine, proper toilet facilities, and female companionship rendered the Italian writer prostrate—he lay on his side, panting. Angus and Stephen exchanged worried glances and went shopping. I called the doctor.
The local practitioner was not certain that he wanted to treat a foreigner, particularly one with this complaint. But I persisted, spoke warmly of Woman of Rome, and he reluctantly agreed. So there Moravia was, on his side again, and the doctor was applying a clyster.
“Agh. Tell him he hurts.”
“He says you hurt.”
The doctor said he was sorry but that usually people performed this operation on themselves. Otherwise it was practiced only in hospital or upon the unconscious. And would I please help. “Here, hold this.”
But the author of Woman of Rome did not like my helping. He turned his dark gaze upon me. He did not like my being there. He did not, in fact, like me. Here I had dragged him into the wilderness, had made him ill, and was now enjoying his degradation.
“Tell him to relax.”
“The doctor said you are to relax.”
”You shut up!”
Despite the patient, the operation was a success and when the two British authors returned from their expedition—Stephen had bought some attractive Buddhist prayer beads, Angus had, however, found nothing Tony would have liked—the Italian novelist was sitting up on a number of stacked cushions, drinking tea.
“Well,” said Angus, “I see that at least one of us has—er—penetrated—ha-ha—the real Japan.”
After that I took them down the mountain to Shirahama, a resort town, where they had canned orange juice, innersprings, expensive steaks, and sit-down toilets.
They were much happier than they had been in the real Japan. Even Moravia brightened up and told long stories about women in Rome. Told to Stephen and Angus, however, not to me. Not only did he tell me no stories, he also did not speak to me—ever again. And when we returned to Tokyo he apparently found someone else to interpret for his love affairs and his illnesses alike.
One by one the unlikely trio left the country and I would have heard nothing further had I not met Stephen later. He was remembering our search for the real Japan.
“Such a good guide too. Even procured a bit, I believe.”
“No, he found the cashier all by himself.”
“Well, at least you provided the enema. And, oh, how tiresome Angus was, going on about penetrating.
Then, reminded, “Did you know that Moravia is writing about his stay here?” Long pause while Stephen looked at the French windows, the Italian floors. “Anyway, one story is about this dreadful American in Tokyo whose only pleasure is in forcing unprincipled women on famous and unwary visitors.” His pink laugh tinkled. Then he remembered to look sad and said, “But it is a bit unkind, isn’t it?”
stephen spender, 1959. “Yeats and the Noh—terribly interesting that. But, don’t you think, actually, that it is rather the case of his having found the perfect receptacle for his thought, rather than the other way around, if you see what I mean. What I really mean is that for him Hawk’s Well did not exist, as it were, on any definite level. Of course, he may well have thought it did, but it was, I sometimes think, a thing which was seized upon, quite outside any considerations of worth (and I must admit that I do sometimes think considerations of meaning as well) of the object itself. At any rate, so it has seemed to me. Don’t you think?”
Don’t you think? A phrase that hung over his talk, a demand for confirmation, a cry for understanding. Also a courtesy, opening the door and standing aside. A question completely satisfied with a simple yes.
No, on the other hand, would bring concern, the pupils suddenly focused. One had become very small, something to be searched for until the poet’s head with its mane, a corolla, would turn away, as though in consternation.
One consequently rarely said no. One wanted, rather, to emulate. To imitate this exquisite show of hesitation among shadings, to share a politeness, to cultivate a humbleness.
“Yes, right? Oh, one is quite afraid to move. Particularly in this mannered land. It is so easy to wound. So difficult not to. Still, if one stood very still, one might, perhaps, not, just might not injure. Don’t you think?”
Consideration for others continued. In the taxi, going to yet another literary gathering, I asked, “But if you hate them so much why go? It can only be punishing for you.”
“But, don’t you see? It will not be punishing for them. And they have invited me. They want me.” This graciously acknowledged failure. The smile implying that failure occurred, that nothing but failure occurred, yet one must somehow keep on trying.
His attempts were constant. Involved conversations with graduate students solemn about Firbank, Babylonian dialogues with professors during which Henry James grew gradually opaque and then slowly disappeared.
In the taxi going back I said, “Such verbalizing.”
“Yes,” he said, then, “but if I did not trust words, just what would I trust?” Then, the smile, “Oh, I know. It is ghastly, isn’t it.” Then, “Still . . .” and the qualifying statement.
On the other hand, yes, if one thinks about the matter, still, I wonder . . . he was conciliatory to the degree that the Japanese, unused to this prized quality in foreigners, were invariably charmed.
He could be provoked but the retort was then delivered in a manner that rendered it unnoticed. One tiresome literature student’s effusions on Lawrence Houseman brought forth: “Quite, but one must not forget the other Lawrence—Lawrence Hope.”
When I mentioned this he said, “One of the things you must understand about me is that I refuse to hurt.”
“That must be difficult.”
“Quite.”
“Even Beverly Nichols?
“If you knew him you would not say t
hat.”
“You would say worse.”
“You are very unkind.” This strong term of censure was accompanied by a quick look: I had become small, difficult to discern.
Such failures of communication—his with me—were acknowledged by a show of sadness. He was thus reminded that he had just seen Moravia in Rome. “Terribly sad it was. We were having a drink, sitting in a cafe and he was upset about something and said that all he ever seemed to do was to sit in cafes and have drinks with utterly boring people.”
“Now, naturally, I knew he didn’t mean it, did not mean me, but I felt sorry for him, so sorry, terribly saddened, that after an interval, I excused myself. I left.”
“I had nowhere else to go. I am not really that fond of Rome, actually. Yet I felt I must leave him. And you know he seemed actually distressed. And surprised. But then I could hardly have stayed on now, could I have. I mean, it would have been inconsiderate of me.”
“And so I walked away, and I am not all that fond of Rome, you know, and I looked back and there he was sitting, all alone, and it is so terribly, profoundly, well, sad, if you see what I mean. Don’t you think?”
The awareness of others. He was in a few days particularly aware of someone named [Tokunaga] Osamu. “Human relations are dreadfully difficult.” This was said pensively, eyes on an invisible horizon. “But,” and the gaze refocused, “dreadfully important, too, don’t you think?”
Later, “But you see, what makes it so difficult is that I am in love, I suppose. I do care, you see. And it is hopeless. Oh, I know all of this, don’t you see. But I will not be unkind. I refuse. I will not raise false hopes.”
“But you have already raised hopes and these, as you point out, can be nothing but false.”
“Oh, you don’t really think so, do you? How utterly ghastly.”
“Stephen,” I said, having had enough of this. “Someone once told me you had love affairs in all the great capitals of the world and after each, weeping bitter tears, you left them behind to run out in front of the airplane as you soared away.” Then I added, “He was very unkind.”
The Japan Journals: 1947-2004 Page 13
