I Am a Japanese Writer (11 page)
I get up to lower the volume. He’s still there with his frozen smile and his collapsed hat.
“It’s Leo.”
“What?”
“You asked me my name.”
EVER SINCE OUR
aborted meeting, I’ve been running into Mr. Tanizaki every time I step outside. At the fish market, of course, but also at the bakery and the wine store. It’s as if he’s making sure to be in my path while pretending to avoid me—as if I were the one following him. Sometimes he waves to me discreetly. Always a smile pinned to his face. I feel like I’m in a Polanski film,
Rosemary’s Baby.
I come back from my errands and discover my mailbox full of Japanese underground magazines. In the evening I watch tv (the Japanese cable channels) or eat dinner—sometimes both at once, sometimes neither. I stare at the ceiling. Sometimes I read, and it’s always the same book. I open it and find myself in a Basho haiku. That’s where I’d like to live: in a line of Basho poetry. The telephone makes me jump. It always rings at the same time; it’s taken me a while to figure that out. When I pick it up, I hear Japanese voices, very young voices, often against a background of strident music. Rock, sometimes heavy metal. Judging from the kind of music and the uproar, the calls are coming from the latest hip discotheque. As soon as I say something, the voice on the other end of the line apologizes in English and immediately hangs up. Sometimes I wait more than a minute before saying anything. I listen to the music, I overhear the conversations—always in Japanese. No one ever speaks to me directly.
At noon the other day, a meal showed up that I hadn’t even ordered. When I tried to pay the bill, the young Japanese delivery boy told me it was taken care of. I ended up with dishes I’d never tried before. No challenge there—I know next to nothing about Japanese cuisine. I only know that they consume an incredible quantity of fish. Actually, I’m just repeating what I’ve heard about Japan, since I haven’t bothered to do any research. I’m a flawless mimic. My ear picks up everything. My eye sees all. And my mouth swallows it whole. For the last few weeks, they’ve been careful to deliver meals containing no fish.
Finally it got to be too much. I dressed and went to the shopping center where I immediately spotted Mr. Tanizaki, choosing a bottle of wine.
“What do you want? What’s going on? What do you want from me?”
He began stammering in a strange cocktail: half English, one quarter French and one quarter Japanese, all on ice with a twist of lemon.
“But . . . but . . . I don’t understand what you are talking about,” he finally said.
“This is harassment.”
He changed color three times: yellow, green, then red. A parrot—I just knew it.
“I ... I ... I don’t understand.”
“What you’re doing is illegal, you know.”
The word nearly made him faint dead away. “I’m being harassed,” I went on, unaffected by his embarrassment. “I feel like someone’s always spying on me. And the person I seem to see every time I go out is you.” “Me?” he asked, pretending to be surprised. “Yes, you, Mr. Tanizaki.” He was sweating abundantly. “Can we get a coffee?” he stammered, and pointed to a little restaurant a few doors away.
We went and sat down. A coffee for him, tea for me.
“I’m listening,” I announced, without giving him time to compose himself.
“Believe me, I am very sorry.”
We stared at each other for a while. This time I held out. He lowered his eyes.
“I was a literature teacher in a high school in the Tokyo suburbs. My brother-in-law is an important person in the government. I was tired of teaching. He found me this job. The problem is, the job doesn’t exist. I have worked in every section of the consulate. I have been everyone’s assistant.”
“And?”
“And when I heard that you were writing a book about Japan...”
“Listen, I’m not writing about Japan, I’m writing about myself. I’m Japan. How many times do I have to repeat it? I thought you understood.”
“I understood that you were not necessarily a Japanese writer... But the word Japan is in the title.”
“I can choose any title I want.”
“The title intrigues us very much.”
“Who’s ‘us’?”
He took a deep breath.
“I work for a cultural magazine in Tokyo. I’ve been writing about this story for some time now, adding a little bit extra, of course . . . You know that the Japanese are very interested in questions of identity.”
“But you are a people with a long history...”
“Sir, all peoples have long histories. Otherwise they would not exist. There is no spontaneous generation, am I right?”
“Okay.”
A silence settled in.
“It began after the defeat. The fact that we lost the war. . . the humiliation the Americans publicly subjected our Emperor to. We are very proud, you know. We had built everything upon our pride. Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we have had to build everything on our weakness . . . This desire for power that refuses to leave us . . . So we simulate a strength we no longer have. Do you understand?”
“What do I have to do with that?”
He began sweating again. He repeated my question before answering it.
“And now someone comes along who claims he is a Japanese writer... I know, I know, you did set the record straight. I announced that in my country. All right, it was in a small journal. Everyone was so fascinated: a foreigner who is not particularly impressed by all the objects we produce, or all the fish we pull out of the sea. I told them you don’t even like sushi, and that intrigued them. Nor are you interested in our yen, or our geishas, or anything else.”
“Now don’t put words in my mouth! I have nothing against your yen. As for the geishas, we’ll see about that.”
He laughed heartily.
“You are interested in what is most fragile and intimate: our poetry. I told my countrymen about you and Basho.”
He stopped suddenly, overwhelmed by his own monologue. “I also pointed out that you are black ... which brought out one of the unpleasant aspects of my country.”
“How is that?”
I knew exactly what he was talking about, but I like to play dumb.
“They took it as a terrible insult.”
“I don’t see how that could be insulting. I don’t consider being black an insult.”
He laughed uncomfortably.
“Yes . . . of course . . . Let’s just say that certain people, fortunately not everyone, believe that the country has fallen pretty low if we have to pay a black man to take on the identity of a Japanese writer.”
“What is this crap? No one’s paying me anything! It has nothing to do with Japan! This is my business!”
There—I’d finally become angry. Not because of the racist color the whole business had taken on, but because of the attack on my freedom as an artist.
“Of course, but you must understand them. When they discovered I was working at the consulate ...”
“Did you tell them I was being paid, yes or no? You haven’t paid me anything!”
He wallowed in endless excuses. Considering he excused himself when he was in the right . . . He was practically drowning in his own sweat. I wondered if he would commit hara-kiri, right here, with the butter knife.
The waitress brought my tea. She must have been seventy years old. I felt embarrassed for her. Waitressing is a student job. Students do it to pay their tuition, unless they strip for businessmen, downtown, on Thursday nights.
“What’s with all the plotting? The phone calls late at night, the magazines, the meals that show up—you’re behind all of it, right?”
He was gripping the knife tightly in his fist. The veins in his neck were rising and falling.
“I’m doing it for my column. There are people interested in this story. They would like to know how you can become a Japanese writer if you know nothing about Japan.”
“And that’s why you’re trying to feed me a little Japanese culture.”
“I’m only trying to direct your curiosity to something besides the clichés about Japan. You’re enthusiastic about this ancient Japan they keep beating us over the head with. As if we had nothing else to offer. . . We would like Western artists to get interested in today’s Japan, not just in geishas and cherry trees. Young Japanese aren’t interested in Basho, you know.”
“They’re interested in America, and I’m not interested in them.”
“What would interest you?”
“I don’t know.”
“I would like to be able to help you.”
“Anything but that ... On the other hand, yes, there is one thing. I’d like to know where the phone calls are coming from. I like the atmosphere. I’d like to drop in there some evening.”
Mr. Tanizaki looked chagrined.
“I’m afraid you can’t. It’s a game my readers thought of. They’re calling you from a discotheque in Tokyo.”
“What’s the game?”
“Whoever can keep you on the line longest wins. Now, I am sorry, I came here to buy wine, there is a small reception at the consulate this evening. If you could come, it would give us great pleasure. It would, in fact, be a honor for us.”
For a moment he hovered in a position that was halfway between sitting and standing. Too much in a hurry to wait until I got up, but too polite to get up before me. In the end I stood, which allowed him to go on his way.
THEIR WARRIORS WORE
colorful costumes and applied violent makeup. After the Americans defeated them, they became Americans. One way of absorbing those damned Yankees. A double culture: their own and that of the conqueror. Which explains the monstrous success of the double hamburger. The Japanese produce the best one-hundred-andten-pound Elvis doubles. In certain small villages, you can meet highly educated jazz fans. Or John Lee Hooker without the wounds of racism. Bob Dylan without the silliness of the 1960s. Marilyn Monroe without the antidepressants. They do for stars what Las Vegas does for the world’s monuments. Copies made while you wait. The young Japanese girl’s insatiable appetite for American gadgets. She talks fast, breaks off words so quickly she cuts them in half. Since time refuses to lengthen, she shatters language into an incomprehensible mishmash. She devours the world, speaks it, breaks it, transforms it, hoping to turn the defeat into victory. She wants to secretly penetrate the heart of American desire to change it into desire for Japan. Americans will never become Americans again because they don’t realize they’re already Japanese. And here I dreamed of becoming a Japanese writer—I wonder what’s hiding behind that label. And most of all, where such an obsession could have come from.
OVER THE PHONE
, his voice was suave, his language impeccable, with a slight accent I couldn’t quite place.
“We’ll need a day, no more.”
“A day out of my life! I don’t have that kind of time to give to someone I don’t know.”
“Excellent! Bravo! Thank you very much! Ah, if only you knew...”
“What did I say that was so special?”
“We’ve been searching for a title for our profile all week, and right away, the first thing you say... A day out of my life— a perfect title! We’ll put the rest in the subtitle: I don’t have that kind of time ... Whatever.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We are at your disposal: a day out of your life, no more. We’re based in New York. What do you say we arrive Wednesday and spend Thursday together?”
“What will we do?”
“What else—a documentary about you.”
“What for?”
“What do you mean? Didn’t Mr. Tanizaki say anything to you?”
One of those silences.
“Okay... do I get to choose?”
“Of course.”
“Friday.”
“Fine. But we have to set up the day before. Don’t worry about anything.”
“Now you’ve got me worried.”
“We’re a very small crew. No more than three. And we won’t break anything in your house.”
“You won’t shoot in my house.”
A lengthy silence.
“In that case we’ll film on the street. Someone will call you for the details. Thanks again for the title.”
“What’s your name?”
“Dazaï.”
“Like the writer?”
“Like the writer. My mother knew him. See you soon.”
It’s not often that someone is in more of a hurry than I am to get off the phone. This young man, for that reason alone, struck me as remarkable. And then there was his impeccable way of speaking. (I love this old fart way of assessing everyone, giving out points.)
Two days later. A small voice woke me up. A feeling like a mouse had crept into my dreams. I often dream of animals that speak to me.
“My name is Kero. We are doing a ‘Zoom’ on you next Friday.”
“Who are you?”
“Dazaï didn’t call you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Japanese television ...”
“Oh, yes.”
“You scared me. . . We are coming Thursday. Everything must be ready beforehand.”
“Where are you calling me from?”
“Tokyo. That is where we are based. We do portraits in New York, Berlin, Amsterdam, Milan, but more and more we are going to faraway places like Dakar and Montreal. You see, we are everywhere. We do a lot of fashion programming, that’s why we are doing Paris.”
I’ve always been fascinated by the way people have of calling you from anywhere in the world and babbling like a brook. I talk only to Diderot and my landlord. Which makes me wonder why he hasn’t been by yet to demand the rent money. As I daydream, Miss Kero keeps on talking.
“Are you still there?”
Amazing she could feel my absence. How do they know when your mind has been wandering? Is there something, a sound, that signals that you’re elsewhere? Even talkative types know when you’re daydreaming. I’d better stop asking and answering questions in my head. That’s the curse of the solitary man.
“Yes, go ahead.”
“Thank you very much . . . I was saying that we only do ‘Zooms’ on major designers and top chefs in the nouvelle cuisine movement. You know, in Japan, we adore everything new. We love creativity, and we are always on the lookout for the latest trend. Why? We hate being caught in a situation of ignorance. We want to be up to date .... But if I am talking too much, you will tell me.”