Collages (10 page)

Renate wondered how anyone had been able to put
the words of playwrights in her mouth when her own overflowed so profusely. But
she was able to quote Gertrude Stein accurately and sing a Mozart theme when she
mentioned the composer. So her memory was not lost in this multitude of
disconnected selves.

Bruce asked her questions as if he were a
reporter interviewing her, but a reporter accustomed to deal with the poetics
of space, air and water.

“Say something I will always remember,” he
asked, thinking that in this way he might solve the elusive nature of her talk.

She meditated silently and then gracefully made
five gestures. She touched her forehead, her lips, her breasts, the center of
her throat, then placed her hand under her elbow and held it there and said:
“Remember this.”

“As-tar-te,’” she murred. “Every word has
several personalities enclosed in it, and if you separate the syllables you can
catch all its aspects. Bruce is too short for you. It does not describe you.
Have you ever noticed how short American names are? They are like lizards who
have lost their tails. This happened when America was first settled. It was a
rebellion against the long European names. You should have a name like a merry-go-round.
It should have a joyous sound, and it should
turn.
”

Her body was thin and supple. Her eyes large
and green. She had a pure straight nose, finely designed lean cheeks, a tender
but not too full mouth and beautiful teeth. Her long curled hair covered her
shoulders. On stage she looked like Vivien Leigh. In life she looked as if she
had dressed in old stage clothes, an Indian print cotton not made for her,
which was off the shoulders and which she was too thin to hold up securely,
covered by a dusty violet cape.

Every now and then she exposed her teeth,
placed a finger on the middle tooth and hissed as if she wanted to let the
breath out of her body, like a balloon about to fly
.
With a long thin
finger she designed a large S on the bar table, explaining that this was the
sign of the Infinite. The hiss had been a prologue to S S S S S S.

“Julien and his wife do not want me to go out
alone because they think I am mad and that the madhouse people will pick me up
and that they will give a shock treatment to wake me up.”

“You are dreaming awake,” said Renate. “Many
people dream awake. And some are jealous of having no dreams and they either
drink or take pills to make them dream.”

“I am not going home to Julien and Juliana
tonight. I love them but that is not my home tonight. I must find my real home
tonight. The police will not let me sit on trees. I did once at Pershing
Square. I loved climbing the tree there, and listening to the preachers, and
watching the hoboes who listen to the songs and the prayers. They were all lost
people like me, and even their clothes did not belong to them. You could see
they were dressed with what people gave to charity collections and from Thrift
Shops. Each piece of clothing had belonged to a different human being. I sat up
there for a whole evening but then I could not get down again. And when the
police found me they took me to a big building and they gave me a shock to wake
me up. Silver Fox said to me once, ‘Nina, you have something to give to the
world and the world has nothing to give you.”’

“Who is Silver Fox?” asked Bruce who was
determined to find a key, and had hopes that this story would make sense and
that he might identify the characters.

Each word came out of her mouth caressed as if
it were a beautiful word, a sensuous word. When Bruce asked his questions she
looked as if her magic trick had failed. But she was indulgent towards his
blindness.

She drank wine, and when the glass was empty
she held it against her cheek as if to warm it, and no one could have sworn
they had seen her drink. Towards midnight she refused another glass but said
she was hungry. She paused to try and remember when she had last eaten. “Oh,
yes, last night.”

So Bruce ordered a sandwich. It was a big
Italian sandwich, clumsy and as large as her face. Before starting she pulled
up her dress once more because her breasts were too small to hold its strapless
top. Then she handled the sandwich as if it were a wafer. She looked
mischievously at Bruce as if she knew he did not believe she would eat it, and
he was amazed to see it vanish while her eyes remaining fixed on him seemed to
say: “I will swallow it but you won’t see me eat it.”

“You have magical powers,” said Renate, “and
yet Bruce and I feel we must protect you. Bruce and I will take you wherever
you want to go tonight.”

Nina asked for the time, although Renate was
sure she did not care. It was part of her exquisite politeness towards
conventions. Nina braided her long hair and took her bracelet off in
preparation for the journey.

“People are afraid of dreamers,” she said.
“They want to put me away.”

On the pavement they found giant pipelines
resting beside an excavated street. Nina bent over one of the openings and
laughed into the drainpipe and then ran towards the other end to see if her
laughter was coming out of it.

The friend she wanted to stay with was not in.
So Renate and Bruce drove her to Malibu. She thought the room was small; then
she opened the window and said: “Oh, but there is so much more to this room
than I thought. It’s enormous. There is a roar in my ears.”

“It’s the ocean,” said Renate.

Then Nina asked for silver foil paper. “I
always glue silver foil paper on the walls to make them beautiful.”

She wanted to mop the tile floor with beer.
“The foam will make it shine.”

“Do you want to sleep?” asked Renate.

“I never sleep,” said Nina. “Just give me a
sheet.”

She took the sheet and covered herself with it,
and then slid to the floor saying: “Now I am invisible.”

The next day she wanted to go to the theatre.
There was a play she had already seen but wanted to see again.

She carried a brown paper bag with her which
she would not allow Bruce to leave in the car when they entered the theatre.

During the play there was a scene at a
dining-table. The actors sat around talking and eating. At this point Nina
opened her brown paper bag, took out a sandwich and a pickle and began to eat
in unison with the actors. She whispered to Renate: “The audience should not
just watch actors eat. They should eat with them. They will feel less lonely.”

Then she laughed softly: “I have a friend who
says the best way to remember a beautiful city or a beautiful painting is to
eat something while you are looking at it. The flavor really heps the image to
penetrate the body. It fixes it as lacquer does a drawing.”

After the performance she insisted on visiting
the actors. “I don’t know any of them but they like to see friendly faces.”

A friend hailed her. He was a television actor.
He took her arm and guided her out of the theatre.

Bruce and Renate did not see her for several
days. Then she reappeared one day and she was wearing a new dress and new
sandals.

“I got a job,” she said. “Do you remember the
young actor we met at the theatre? They had just finished a reading of a
children’s play for a radio show but the star could not laugh like a witch. He
remembered that I had done this once to frighten people at a party I did not
like. So they put me in this soundproof room. I could see the men behind the
glass windows running their machines. They wore earphones and never raised
their eyes to see what I was doing. They blinked some red lights and I heard a
voice say: ‘Now start laughing like a witch until I tell you to stop.’ I felt
that I must laugh, must keep on laughing and attract their attention, or else
they would leave me in that room and forget all about me. I was all alone in a
room without echoes. You don’t know the loneliness of being in a room without
echo. I had to laugh like a witch with nobody to laugh for, or to laugh at. To wind
myself up I went to each corner of the room pretending each corner was a
different person, and I laughed, laughed, and finally I was laughing so hard I
was afraid I could not stop. I thought if no one comes into the room, if no
human being comes in and says: ‘It is enough,’ I will not be able to stop. I
watched the wheels turning and hoped the tape would give out. And finally it
did give out and its tail rose up like the tail of a snake and it slapped the
young man in the face, the young man who would not look at me. Then the young
man opened the door and said to me: ‘We got a lot of footage out of that,’ and
handed me a check. I bought this dress, do you like it? See, it is wide and
loose like a tent. All I need to do is pull it up a little above my head, and
then sink down, and I am completely covered and can go to sleep. And do you
like my sandals? I brought you a present. I found her waiting for an audition.”

It was Nobuko who came walking over the small
stones of the patio with short, tiny steps. Though she had walked up the hill
from the bus stop, no dust showed on her white socks and wooden sandals. She
was carrying flowers she had picked up on the way, which she offered to Renate.

NOBUKO WAS SMALL AND DAINTY. She carried her
head heavy with the bun of glossy black hair on a delicate neck gently
undulating as in classical Japanese prints. The flawless golden skin at the
nape of the neck exposed by the open collar of the kimono attracted the eye
with a delicate yielding quality and had been justly declared an erotic zone.
She had a chanting child-like voice, a laugh like windchimes and a graceful way
of standing and sitting creating an aesthetic delight. Her eyes were small,
narrow, intensely brilliant; her nose had almost no bone like the nose of a
child. She kept a precarious balance between sprite, woman and child. Her face
was the face of the moon become woman. Her talk was light and breathless, with
a tone of voice ranging from song to dove’s cooing to a schoolgirl’s laughter
in forbidden places.

She wore a kimono of white cotton embroidered
with eyelets, and over this a black transparent one, the layer of white like
the pearly glaze of pottery, a bride seen through a widow’s veil. The obi was
red. On the back of her black silk coat appeared a large red chrysanthemum.

“I must apologize, because in Japan my mother
owns a kimono for each day of the year as each design must match the season and
the flower or plant in bloom that day. I should not be wearing chrysanthemums
in February when they only bloom in May. I would like to learn American freedom
in clothes, in everything. I would like to be like you, Renate, you are the
freest woman I know. I only saw such freedom in Italy where they are so
natural, and in Japan everything is unnatural.”

With her two index fingers she held up the
corners of her mouth into an exaggerated grin. “We must always smile,” and then
dropped her lids and mimicked a flood of tears falling from her eyes, “even
when we feel like weeping.”

They were all sitting at the beach, and Renate
offered her a drink in a paper cup.

“It is not a very beautiful cup,” said Renate.

“But it seems beautiful to me because it is so
simple, it does not require a ceremony, to be polished, and served on the right
tray at the right moment. Everything is so simple here. In my country I was
considered a very advanced girl. But ever since I have started to travel in
order to become an actress I have learned that I am still bound to tradition
and conventions. When I went to Paris I was invited for a week-end in the
country. The young people had a guest house of their own. It was called
La
Maison des Oiseaux.
(When Nobuko said “
oiseaux
“it sounded like the
sibilance of bees, of breeze.) I was so formal and proper. They were sweet
about my fears. I came to America to learn to be free. Ancient beliefs are
still so strong in Japan, tradition is imposed on us by our parents, but the
new Japan pulls us away, the young are caught in this conflict. We cannot
emancipate ourselves if we stay there, we must get away. I love my family and I
do not like to offend them. I do not feel free.”

Renate had just visited cherry blossom trees
grown by Japanese gardeners. Nobuko laughed at Renate’s admiration of the
cherry blossoms. “They are so silly, they bloom so briefly, and the rest of the
time they drop worms on our hairdos.”

When Nobuko spoke of intimate things like the
Maison
des Oiseaux
, she bowed her head and closed her eyes as if she were in a
confessional. She locked her small hands as if to pray for this new Nobuko
trying to be born.

Nobuko was given the role of Cassandra in
Trojan
Women
of Euripides. She struggled to emerge from her Japanese print
movements. She rolled over rocks, fell on her knees, shook her long black hair
and collapsed in disordered grief. It was a caricature of a Western
interpretation of Greek tragedy. One feared to see her snap her fragile neck,
or force the exquisite lines out of shape forever.

After the play, receiving visitors and
compliments, she held her small hand before her mouth as if to screen the new
bold words she might utter, as if to muffle their effect
.

All through rehearsals she avoided using the
word “rape.”

She talked about the Sabine women being
deflowered. “The characterization of Cassandra,” she said, “is still a conflict
between the director and the chorus.” But for Nobuko it seemed more like a
conflict between a Western interpretation of Greek tragedy as chaos and a
classical Japanese elegance of style.