The Lady and the Monk (7 page)

When we returned to our places in the monastery, we found beside every seat an elegant purple carrier bag with golden lettering, loaded high with gifts; in front of each setting, two wooden boxes on a tray, stuffed with every kind of delicacy; and — since there was no way that anyone could begin to eat all this — another elegant bag, and a stylish lavender cloth, or
furoshiki
, in which to pack the boxes and take them home.

Again I found myself next to the decorous Japanese woman. Again the obligatory questions began. Who was my favorite musician? What was my age? How did I like Kyoto? Apparently, my answers were the right ones — she, too, was thirty and liked Bruce Springsteen and felt that Kyoto was “little magic town” — and so, as we munched our inexplicable food, she ventured a little further. “Sunday, my daughter little have birthday party. Please come here my house.” Sure, I replied, game for anything, and she wrote down meticulously the name of a train station and then her telephone number. “Please you come. Maybe two o’clock, begin.” “Thank you very much,” I said, and then, with a mother’s brisk efficiency, she whipped out my
furoshiki
, packed my food away into my boxes, wrapped the boxes in the lavender cloth, and handed it all back to me as if it were her gift.

Later, back home, I peeled back layer after layer of the elegant cloth. Simply opening the temple’s treasure was an almost sensual experience. Caskets of Japanese cake sat inside, and bottles of expensive sake; a poem in flowing calligraphic script, written by the
rōshi
himself, and a screen on which to mount it; and, of course, the purple cloth, touched now with the lady’s perfume.

Five days later, I was spending all morning writing on Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, my mind on the follies of credulity, when suddenly I remembered the woman’s birthday party. It had been a fairly casual invitation, I thought, with no meaning
attached to it, but I felt that courtesy alone suggested I attend. “You never know what to expect with these things,” Mark had advised me, but I felt pretty sure that children’s birthday parties must be something of a universal: fifteen or twenty kids careening around, amidst a mess of many-colored balloons and party hats, alternately laughing and screaming, while mothers stood by the kitchen, enforcing order and swapping gossip. So I packed the bear that I had bought as a ceremonial offering, and timed my arrival to be a safe forty-five minutes late. That way, I thought, I could slip into the background and easily make my escape.

When I arrived at the station written down by the mother, I walked out into the street and found myself inside a honeycomb of unmarked alleyways. Streets forked this way and that on every side of the diverging railway tracks. Narrow lanes led off into the distance. Signs were nonexistent. I looked for the nearest phone.

“
Moshi-moshi
,” came an excited voice at the other end, up to its neck, I assumed, in children and chaos.

“
Moshi-moshi
. This is Pico Iyer.” There was a silence. “The man you met in Tōfukuji Temple?”

“Ah, hallo. How are you? What place you now?”

“I’m not sure. I’m just outside the station.”

“What name street?”

“I don’t know. I came down the stairs, and I’m standing outside a coffee shop called U.C.C.”

“U.C.C.?” she repeated, incredulous.

“Oh, I’m sorry. That’s the name of the coffee they’re advertising. Anyway, I’m near the stairs.”

“Stairs?” She giggled nervously. There was a long silence. “You come here my house?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought it was your daughter’s birthday party.”

“I think maybe you no come. Now three o’clock.”

“Oh, I’m very sorry.”

“Please you wait station. I come.”

Two minutes later, a small and pretty figure bounced up to
me, long hair tumbling over her shoulders, a bright turquoise scarf over her black shirt, and leg warmers covering her acid-washed jeans. I was not quite sure who this was, but I assumed it must be the funky teenage sister of the woman I had met at the temple, maybe ten years younger than that elegant matron with the severely swept-back hair and the long brown dress. As she flashed me a dazzling smile, though, I recognized the look, and the soft, melodious voice — and realized that this was the same woman, remade now in a different role. She led me down the station stairs and, breathless, filled me in on the plans.

“Other person little telephone my house. They little late. Maybe five o’clock.”

“Oh fine. Well, if it’s easier, I can come back then?”

She looked at me, confused. “You no want come my house?”

“Either’s fine really. Whatever’s easiest.”

“You not want come
ima
now my house?”

“Sure — if it’s no trouble.”

“Maybe other person come five o’clock. Maybe six. Are you okay?”

“Oh yes. No problem.”

She led me through a sliding door, and I found myself inside a compact modern flat. The main room was utterly silent. It had the look and feel of a teenage girl’s bedroom. On the walls were two posters of the teen-idol pop group a-ha (a latter-day Osmond family from Norway, so far as I could tell) and one of Sting, in all his open-shirted glory. Album covers of Sting hung from the doors, and more beefcake posters of a sultry-eyed a-ha. From the ceiling, an upside-down sea otter chuckled down at me, and all along the gleaming bank of high-tech stereo and video equipment that were the room’s main decoration were stickers from Tokyo Disneyland. The teenage artifacts sang out strangely in the quiet of the room on this sleepy afternoon.

“Please you sit,” offered Sachiko-san, motioning me towards her small paisley sofa. “You like Sting?”

I felt I could hardly admit that I found him one of the more
disagreeable creatures on the planet. “Oh yes.” With that, she gave me a pretty smile of delight, pressed a few buttons on the stack of gleaming black consoles, and disappeared. I sat alone in the silent, empty room and listened to the maestro sing dirges about Quentin Crisp and Pinochet.

A few minutes later, Sachiko-san reappeared, bearing two cups of Twining’s tea on a tray (I recalled that I had mentioned,
en passant
, at the temple that I preferred English tea to Japanese). She sat down beside me and smiled shyly.

“You seem to like the West,” I began.

She nodded gravely. “My brother go Kansas City study. Three year. My mother very sad, many time say, ‘Don’t go!’ But then he send picture from your country, always biggg smile! America, he say, little animal country. He think he living movie world — little Disneyland cartoon. But he much much want return.”

“So he’s here now?”

“Now Switzerland. Jung Institute. You know this place?”

“Oh yes. Have you visited him there?”

“I like.” She paused. “But now I am mother part. Japanese system, man visit other country, very easy. But woman must always stay Japan.” A long pause. “Very sad.”

A difficult silence fell. Then she brightened up. “But my son now little learning English. He want go Switzerland. He much love Matterhorn. T.G.V.”

“Really?”

At that moment, the record finished, so she popped up and stepped over to the tower of video monitors, laser videos, and speaker systems. “You like Chris Lay?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know him.”

Her brow creased up in confusion. “You not know Chris Lay?”

“No.”

“Please you try.”

At this, she put on another record, a very, very slow love song, delivered by a husky, infinitely gentle male voice, about a
lovers’ parting. We listened in silence to the slow, heartfelt ballad, with its drawn-out, wrenching climax: “I’ll always love you … September Blue.”

There was silence.

“Very nice song,” I said brightly, hoping to lighten things up.

“You like? Please one more time.” She bounced up again, pressed a button, and again, in silence, in the empty room, we sat side by side on her couch, listening to the husky, heartrending strains of the teary love song.

When it was finished, Sachiko-san jumped up again. “I write word,” she announced proudly, and then pulled down from the wall a computer printout on which was typed, “ ‘September Blue’ by Chris Rea,” and all the words in English.

“You have a computer too?”

“My husband buy.”

“Is he here?” I looked around. Now it was my turn to be confused.

“Not here. He cannot holiday. Every day, much much work.”

“Sunday too?”

“Sunday too. Every day, he come home twelve o’clock.”

A long silence.

“Your country same?”

“No, not really.”

At this point, two small heads suddenly peered around the screen door: one belonging to a boy of about seven and the
other to a five-year-old moppet. “Ah, please,” said Sachiko-san, smiling happily. “Please you see. This my son, Hiroshi. This Yuki.”

They stood in silent shyness at the door.

“And today’s her birthday?”

“No. Today no birthday. Two day before.”

“I see,” I said, though of course I didn’t.

Both children stared at me in neat decorum, at once intrigued and, I assumed, faintly unsettled by this funny-looking foreigner. Then their mother invited them to sit down, and the four of us sat in silence in the small room, presided over by rock stars, and listened again to the slow and emotional ballad, with its air of tender intimacy. “I’ll always love you … September Blue.”

The song was just starting up again when Sachiko-san vanished into the kitchen. I looked at the children. The children looked at me. Chris Rea murmured his love. Then Sachiko-san emerged again, bearing a beautiful cake, with fresh strawberries and melon slices — the ultimate Japanese luxury — pieced around the message
O-tanjōbi Omedetō
(Happy Birthday). Lighting the five candles, she went over to the system, turned off “September Blue,” and turned off all the lights. Then, flashing a smile of encouragement at me, by the light of five flickering candles, she began singing, in quavering, high-pitched English, “Happy birthday to you …” I joined in, and her son did too, three wobbly voices in a plaintive refrain in a room lit by candles. When we finished, the birthday girl blew out all the candles, and we were left again in the dark. I felt Sachiko-san stirring beside me, and then the lights came on again, and she brought us all orange juice to enjoy with our cake, and Chris Rea began to sing of love once more.

I liked Sachiko-san very much — she seemed unusually warm and openhearted, as well as demure and chic in the approved Japanese fashion — and her sleek-haired, almond-eyed, utterly quiet children were entirely irresistible. My sense that mothers and children were the two great blessings of Japan was only
getting confirmation. But still, I thought, this was a rather sad and awkward way to celebrate a fifth birthday, and I could not help shuffling a little in embarrassment as we sat there in a silence broken only by the song and my occasional mutterings of “
Yuki-chan, O-tanjōbi omedetō!
”

Then, suddenly, I remembered the bear that I had brought for Yuki and withdrew it from my bag. And Yuki, in delight, bundled off and brought back a rabbit, a koala, a fluffy bear called Pooh, and even an orange raccoon. Delighted in turn, I inquired after their particulars and then, pointing to the Tokyo Disneyland stickers on the front of the stereo system, mentioned how much I enjoyed the place, and the children scurried off to show me their photos of their visit. Paging through the album, I pointed to photos of Yuki and asked if she was Mickey, pointed to Mickey and asked if that was Goofy, pointed to her mother and asked if it was her father, and the next thing I knew, the little girl’s sides were shaking with laughter, and she was beginning to tickle me, and I was retaliating with the aid of a bear, and Hiroshi was making a counterattack with a rabbit, and all of us were making mayhem.

A few moments later, the children were pulling me out, one by each arm, into the street to play ball, and we were bouncing a tennis ball back and forth while Sachiko-san kept throwing her long hair back and saying, “Oh, I’m sorry. Children very happy. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” And then Hiroshi decided that I must see his school, and all of us marched off to the shrine of the Meiji Emperor nearby, and then to the shrine of General Nogi, to play hide-and-seek, and soon the children were racing off to bring me sprigs of flowers, and Hiroshi was feeling bold enough to tell me the name of his best friend, which I ritually mispronounced, and his mother was smiling anxiously, and clicking away with her camera, and saying, “You tired? I’m very sorry. I’m so sorry,” and Yuki was clinging to my hand, and we were all running races up and down the darkening lanes.

By the time night had fallen, all four of us were back home,
and Yuki was clambering all over me, giggling helplessly as I pointed to pictures in her new Richard Scarry book, of hippos in aprons and rabbits playing golf. “
Tanuki wa doko deshō ka?
” (Where is the raccoon?), I kept asking. “
Kono dōbutsu wa tanuki deshō ka?
” (This animal here, is it a raccoon?) As one whose Japanese was strongest when it came to animal words, I realized that this was a conversational opportunity not to be missed. And Hiroshi was driving his trains all over my stomach, and Yuki was bouncing her flattened orange raccoon up and down on my chest, and Sachiko-san, as if in proof of Ruth Benedict’s claims about the blurring of apology and gratitude in Japan, was saying, “Thank you. Sorry. Thank you. I’m so sorry.”

And then I threw still more oil on the fire by teaching all three of them the English word “raccoon” and telling them how much I had always been taken by the
tanuki
, the mischievous masked figure, half badger and half raccoon, who stood outside most sake bars, advertising in his potbelly the Dionysian pleasures of the open road. All the while, Sachiko-san kept asking me, doubtfully, “You like raccoon? Really? True you like raccoon?” and I kept saying, “
Hai, hai!
” until she told me that the Japanese, as a rule, were not very fond of him: the raccoon was the rival to the fox, the other malefic trickster said to disguise itself as a beautiful woman to bring down innocent priests. Undeterred, I recounted how the Germans called them
Waschbär
and explained how they were famous in California for making raids on carp ponds.