The Character of Rain

by Amélie Nothomb

  It seemed clear the inhabitants of this crucifying country adhered to the same principles as the Japanese. Saving someone’s life reduced him to a lifetime of slavery of exaggerated gratitude. Better to let someone the than to deprive him of his freedom.

  Questioning this precept never occurred to me. All I knew was that it was terrible to feel yourself dying in front of people. I felt a strong bond with Jesus. I was sure I knew how he must have felt.

  I wanted to know more about the story. Because the truth seemed to be locked in the rectangular pages of books, I decided to learn to read them. When I informed my family of my decision, I was laughed at.

  As I wasn’t taken seriously, I decided to learn to read on my own. This wouldn’t pose a problem. I had learned to do equally remarkable things all by myself: walking, talking, swimming, ruling, and spinning the top.

  Beginning with my brother’s Tintin books made the most sense. They had pictures. I took one down at random, sat on the floor, and turned the pages. I don’t think I could tell you how it happened, but by the time a cow who went into a building came out through a faucet that made sausages, I had discovered how to read. I was careful not to reveal this fact to anyone. They would have laughed at me.

  April is the month when the cherry trees bloom. The neighborhood celebrated this in the evening by drinking sake. Nishio-san gave me a glass. I howled with delight.

  I SPENT MY NIGHTS standing on my pillow, gripping the bars of my crib, staring at my father and mother as if preparing notes for a behavioral study about them. They felt a growing unease about this. The steadiness of my gaze intimidated them to the point that they started to lose sleep. It was time I slept somewhere other than in their room.

  I was moved into a kind of attic, which thrilled me. Here was a whole new ceiling to look at, and from a first glance the cracks seemed more expressive than those on the ceiling in my parents’ bedroom, the ones I had been observing for the previous two and a half years. There were also piles of objects to subject to my avid visual interrogation: trunks, old clothes, a deflated kiddy pool, beaten-up tennis racquets, and boxes.

  Soon I was staring at the boxes, thinking that what-ever they contained must be very precious. The crib was much too high for me to climb out and investigate for myself, much as I wanted to.

  At the end of April, a wonderful new thing happened: the window in my room was left open at night. I didn’t think I had ever slept with an open window, and what an incredible thing it turned out to be. I could register all those strange sounds that those who sleep remain ignorant of, interpreting what they meant, endowing them with meaning. My crib was placed directly below the window, and when the night breeze blew the curtains open I saw the violet sky. It was comforting to learn that night was not jet black.

  My favorite noise was the distant barking of some unidentifiable and tormented dog, which I baptized Yorukoé—“evening voice.” His howling irritated the entire neighborhood, but I thought it possessed a melancholy beauty. I wanted to know why the animal was in such pain.

  The sweet night air flowed through the window and straight into my bed. I drank it in and became intoxicated. I would have loved the universe for nothing else than for this alone.

  My hearing and sense of smell worked full time during these endless April nights. The desire to look out the screenless window was almost overpowering.

  The window was like a porthole in the dark hold of a ship. It drew me irresistibly.

  One night I couldn’t bear it any longer. Climbing to the top of the bars, I stretched my arms as far as they would go and found that my hands could just touch the sill. Drunk with success, I managed to haul myself up and perch my upper body on the window ledge.

  I peered out into the nocturnal landscape, gazing wonderingly at the dark silhouettes of the mountains, the majestic roofs of the neighboring houses, the phosphorescence of the cherry trees in bloom, the mystery of the dark streets.

  I wanted to lean out farther, so that I could see the spot in the side yard where Nishio-san hung the laundry. When I shifted my weight, the inevitable happened. I fell.

  Instinctively spreading my legs, somehow I managed to hook my feet on the inside of the window frame, wedging my calves and thighs against the edge of the roof and my hips against the gutter. My head and upper body dangled over the void.

  Once the first terror had passed, I found this position afforded me a new observation post. I looked with enormous interest at the back of the house. I also found that I could sway back and forth, and make my spit perform balletic exercises.

  When my mother came into my room the next morning she cried out in horror. Above the empty crib were the window with the curtains pushed open and my feet on either side. She grabbed me by my ankles, hauled me inside, and gave me the spanking of the century.

  IT WAS DECIDED that the attic would become my brother’s room, and that I would take his place in Juliette’s room. This began another new life for me. We would share a room for the next fifteen years.

  Now I spent my long nights observing my sister. The fairies that had visited her in infancy had blessed her with the ability to sleep deeply and gracefully; in fact they had made her graceful in every way possible. She wasn’t in the least bothered by my staring. I learned by heart the rhythm of her breathing and the music of her sighs. No one knew so well the sleep of another.

  Twenty years later, I read a poem by Louis Aragon and felt a shiver of recognition:

  I returned home in stealth as do prowlers

  You were already in the heavy sleep of flowers [… ]

  I’m afraid of your silence, yet you breathe still

  Against me, holding you, imagination Jills

  Next to you, I am the watcher who is troubled

  With each step he takes he hears its echo doubled In deepest night

  Next to you, I am the watcher from the walls Who winces when one leaf dies and falls

  Murmuring

  In deepest night

  I live for this plaintive song at your hour of repose

  I live for this fear of all things closed

  In deepest night

  O my gazelle, tell those who inhabit the future

  That here the name Elsa alone is my signature

  In deepest night.

  All I had to do was replace “Elsa” with “Juliette.”

  She slept for us both. In the morning I woke up, refreshed by my sister’s sleep.

  MAY STARTED OFF WELL.

  The azalea bushes around Little Green Lake began to bloom gloriously. It was as if a spark had set off an explosion; the color spread across the entire mountain. The place where I swam was surrounded in brilliant pink.

  I was on the point of believing May a most excellent month when a crisis erupted. In the garden, for reasons that escaped me, my parents hoisted up, like a flag, a giant fish made of red paper, which clattered in the wind.

  I asked what it was for, this red fish, and was told it was a carp, and that it was customary to raise one up in May, because it was the month of boys. I didn’t see the connection, I replied. I was told that the carp was the symbol of boys and that one raised it in the homes of families hoping to have a baby boy.

  "Which is the month of girls?” I inquired.

  "There isn’t one.”

  This dumbfounded me. What sort of staggering injustice was this?

  My brother and Hugo gave me a teasing look.

  "Why does a carp stand for a boy?” I asked again.

  "Why do children always ask why?” was the only reply I got.

  Deeply irritated, I left the garden, still sure that my question had been highly pertinent.

  I had, of course, already noticed the difference between boys and girls, but this had never particularly concerned me. There were lots of differences here on earth—between the Japanese and the Belgians (I assumed all white people were Belgians, except myself, of course; I was Japanese); little people and tall people; nice people and nasty people; Nishio-s
an and Kashima-san; and so on. It seemed to me that the male and female opposition was but one of many. For the first time, I suspected there was more to it.

  I sat beneath the pole and observed the paper carp. Why did it express my brother’s identity more than mine? And why was masculinity so terrific that it deserved its own month—not just any month, but the month of sweet air and blooming azaleas—while femininity didn’t get so much as a pennant, or even its own day?

  I kicked the pole. Perhaps May wasn’t so great. The cherry trees had lost their flowers—it had been a kind of fall in spring. Freshness had begun to fade.

  Perhaps it was right that May be the month of boys. It was when things started to decline.

  I DEMANDED TO BE SHOWN some real carp, the way an emperor might demand of his subjects that they show him a real elephant.

  Nothing is easier than finding carp in Japan, particularly during May. In fact, you can’t get away from them. In any public garden, as soon as there is any water, there are carp. These koi are not intended to be eaten—carp sashimi would be revolting—but to be observed and admired. Going to a park to see them is considered an activity as civilized as going to a concert.

  Nishio-san took me to the famous Futatabi Arboretum. I strolled with my nose in the air, awed by the splendor of the unbelievably immense and ancient cryptomeria. I was two and three-quarters; these trees were two hundred and fifty years old. That meant they were nearly a hundred times older.

  Futatabi is a plant sanctuary, and even if, as I did, you lived in the heart of Japan’s most beautiful countryside, you couldn’t help being captivated by the magnificence of its garden arrangements. The trees there seem aware of their special status.

  We came to a pond. I could see a tumbling of color. On the other side of the pond a priest had just strewn some crumbs on the water, and the carp were rushing to catch them. Some of them were huge. They left an iridescent trail of color, ranging from steel blue to orange, and including white, black, silver, and gold.

  If you squinted, all you could see were bright sparks of light, and think how marvelous this was. But opening your eyes forced upon you the loathsome sight of these corpulent aquatic divas, these farcically overstuffed aristocrats of the fish world.

  Lying on the bottom, they looked like mute Lady Castafiores—the fat lady in the Tintin comic books, the one always singing loudly off key. Their modey colors made them seem like plump, fur-coated sausages, or like great chunks of ghosdy white bacon fat with bright tattoos. There could be nothing more repugnant than carp, I concluded. No wonder they were the symbol for boys.

  "They live to be over a hundred,” Nishio-san told me in a tone of great respect.

  I wasn’t sure that was anything to boast about. Longevity wasn’t an end in and of itself. The long lives of the cryptomeria lent amplitude to their venerable nobility. Old age only emphasized their regal dominion, and earned these monuments of power and patience the reverential awe that was their due.

  A hundred years for a carp meant a century of stewing in its own lard, watching its moist, fetid fishy flesh grow saturated with stagnant water. Only one thing is more revolting than young fat—old fat.

  I kept these opinions to myself. We returned to the house. Nishio-san assured everyone that I had loved the carp. I didn’t deny this, too wearied by the thought of explaining my views.

  ANDRÉ, HUGO, JULIETTE, AND I took baths together. The gangly, knobby-kneed boys looked nothing like carp. That didn’t prevent them from being ugly. Maybe that was it, I thought—the basis of this boy-koi connection: being gross. Girls could never have been represented by so repugnant a creature.

  I asked my mother to take me to the “apuarium” (I was strangely unable to pronounce the word “aquarium") in Kobe, one of the finest in the world. My parents were surprised by my sudden passion for fish.

  I only wanted to see how other fish compared to carp. I spent a long time standing in front of the glass tanks, and each creature I gazed at seemed more admirable than the one before. Some were as phantasmagoric as abstract art. They were so ungainly and yet so graceful.

  My conclusion was categorical: of all fish, the one at the very bottom—the only one at the bottom—was the carp. I snickered. My mother noticed this and was delighted. My little girl will be a marine biologist, she thought.

  The Japanese were absolutely right. The carp was the ideal symbol for boys.

  I loved my father, I put up with Hugo—he had saved my life, after all—but my brother was the worst nuisance imaginable. His sole ambition in life seemed to be to torment me; he took infinite pleasure in it. When he had succeeded in enraging me for hours on end, his day was complete. I wondered whether all older brothers were this way. Perhaps, I thought, they should be exterminated.

  WITH JUNE CAME THE HEAT. I started living in the garden, never leaving it except when I was forced to go up to bed. The fish flag had been lowered on the first day of the month; the season of honoring boys had ended. It was as if someone had toppled the statue of an oppressor. No more carp marred the view. June promised to be a good month.

  The temperature meant outdoor performances. I was told that we were going to hear my father sing.

  "Papa sings?"

  "He chants Noh.”

  "What’s that?"

  "You’ll see.”

  I had never heard my father sing.

  Twenty years later, I learned why my father, about whom nothing had predisposed to a musical career, had become a Noh singer. In 1967, he had left Belgium for Osaka to serve as consul. This was his first posting in Asia and the young diplomat had instantly fallen in love with the country. Japan became, and has remained, the love of his life.

  With all the enthusiasm of a neophyte, he wanted to discover every single one of its wonders. As he didn’t yet speak the language, an interpreter accompanied him wherever he went, acting both as translator and as guide to all manner of Japanese culture. Given that he was so enthusiastic about Japan, she got the idea of introducing him to the least accessible and yet most revered of all traditional arts: Noh. At the time, Westerners were as closed to it as they were fond of kabuki.

  She therefore took him to the famous school of Noh in Kansai, where the master teacher was considered a Living Treasure, to see a performance. My father said he felt he had stepped back a thousand years in time. This feeling became more acute when he heard the singing, which, at first, sounded like prehistoric rumblings. He experienced the sort of nervous hilarity you feel when you look at panoramas of historical scenes in museums.

  But as the performance went on, he began to appreciate that what he was hearing was the very opposite of primitive; nothing could be more sophisticated and civilized. Still, to go from mat to finding Noh beautiful was a step he had not yet made.

  Despite the eerie, unnerving sounds, he maintained a rapt and serious expression on his face. The threnody went on for many hours, but he managed to keep his boredom from being apparent.

  Merely my father’s presence at the school had created a stir. After the performance was over, the Living Treasure himself approached my father and said, "Honorable guest, this is the first time an outsider has entered this place. Might I ask your opinion of what you have heard?"

  He had spoken in Japanese, of course. The interpreter did her job.

  Not knowing what to say, my father offered a few harmless clichés about the importance of ancestral traditions, the richness of the artistic heritage in this country, and other touching inanities.

  The interpreter, an educated and refined woman, was horrified by such banalities, and decided not to translate so inadequate a response. She formulated her own elegant opinion and exchanged it for my father’s.

  While she was “translating” my father’s reply, the venerable old master’s eyes grew wide. How was it possible that an uninitiated white, who had only recently arrived in Japan and just heard Noh for the first time in his life, had already grasped the essence and subtlety of this supreme art?

/>   In an extraordinary gesture for a Japanese—especially a Living Treasure—he took this foreigner’s hand and said with great solemnity,

  “Honored guest, you are a prodigy! An exceptional being! You must become one of my students!"

  And because my father, though young, was already an accomplished diplomat, he immediately replied,

  “Nothing would give me greater pleasure.”

  He didn’t have a clue such politeness would have any consequences, and assumed that any arrangement would soon be forgotten. Then the venerable old master instructed him to come to his first lesson the day after tomorrow, at seven.

  Any sane man would have known the simplest thing to do was have his secretary call the next day and simply cancel the appointment by phone. Instead, my honorable father got up at dawn on the day in question and arrived on time for his lesson. The venerable old master seemed not at all surprised and launched straight into the lesson, making no concessions whatever to my father’s linguistic weaknesses, believing that so great a spirit as this had earned the honor of being taken seriously.

  By the end of the lesson my poor father was exhausted.

  “Very good,” said the master. “Come tomorrow at the same hour.”

  "Ah, well you see … the problem is that I have to be at work at eight-thirty,” he said through the interpreter, who had, of course, accompanied him to the lesson.

  "That is not a problem. You will come at five in the morning.”

  His new student meekly consented. From that day on, my father went to the school every morning at this ungodly hour, inhuman for someone with such a demanding day job, except on weekends, when he was permitted to take his lesson at the very leisurely hour of seven.

  The truth was my honorable father felt crushed by the immensity of what he was trying to absorb. The man who had arrived in Japan loving football and cycling wondered by what bizarre sequence of events he found himself sacrificing his life at the altar of so abstruse an art. It seemed to him that Noh matched him about as well as Jansenism would a bon vivant or asceticism a slob.