Tokio Whip (29 page)

–
But it does, it really does.

–
You're insane. What kind of a place is Tokyo anyway, by your standards?

–
Well, I'd call it a city.

–
But you just said that properly and technically –

–
I know, I know, but you said that it's a city that contains cities, and that doesn't sound quite right to me.

–
I know, but the fact is –

–
More like the fantasy is.

–
But what about Ogikubo?

–
What about it? Is it a city too that contains cities? Will I turn out to be a city – not technically or properly speaking of course, I beg your pardon – that contains cities?

–
No, all I wanted to say was to get back to the original question: is Ogikubo part of one of the twenty-three wards?

–
Well, no one here knows for sure, not anymore.

–
So, let's go into that bar and ask –

–
And linger over the question.

–
Good idea, Kaoru

***

Monday. It was the evening before the Emperor's 60th anniversary, it was the same street I'd dreamed of – a gray sky like a monk's robe, a suggestion that it had recently rained, the few pink leaves of the cherry blossoms scattered here and there – so all this wet pink and gray all like a tinted photograph – and it was my street, the street leading to my home!

***

Notwithstanding?, but shouldn't the costs be a delight? Why negativize, Cafferty, as usual, connects. I delight in not knowing where I am going – apart from those promised appointments, about which I am exact and punctual. To discover the city, to make it my own ... what does Henry James say? Oh, I'd forever rather be lost in Tokyo than found in any other city.

***

–
You slippery fish, I know you, van Zandt, I know you through and through, like I know … like I know .. uhm, whaddo I know? .. like I know my mother's backside – uhn, no, that's not what I meant –

–
Your mother's backside!?

–
Wait a minute. Like I know, my mother, my backside.

–
Your backside!?

–
Frontside, too, ha! But no, like I know … the way home from the station in the snow when I'm crawling dead drunk like I will be tonight if I can't catch my last train. How d'ya' like that?

–
You're comparing me to a zigzag in the snow?

–
Not very complimentary, I'll grant you. Let's see, no, I know you like I know all 47 ronin. No, too complimentary.

–
Ouch. But do you really know them all?

–
Oh yes, they were my heroes when I was a kid. But no matter. I know you like I know my bankbook. No, I don't, my wife knows that, I certainly don't. I know you then like I know … oh damn, you're a foreigner, what is there to know? No, don't take that in the wrong way, please. It's just that we Japanese tend to see you all alike.

–
Oh, I know that alright. Thanks very much. And so do we foreigners tend to see you all alike as well. How's that?

–
Undeserved! But you are a foreigner, and a rather different one, I'll grant you that. Hell, van Zandt, maybe I don't know you at all.

–
And I'll grant you that.

–
But I don't even know your first name.

–
Van will do.

–
... an ancient race ...

–
Do you know him?

–
Who? You? I just said I don't.

–
Not what I meant. But skip it.

–
Hop, jump. Two more beers?

–
By all means.

–
I take it you're not American?

–
No, Dutch.

–
We have long relations with your people.

–
Yeah, yeah, but you do not have such a long one with me.

–
True. So, do you think you know me?

–
Can't say that I do.

–
Then we're off to a good start.

–
Start? I thought we were finishing. I do have a last train, you know.

–
I know alright, just as I know that it's not for a few hours yet – and quite a few more drinks I hope.

–
That's the spirit. Waitress! Two more, please.

–
Anyway, Kaoru, as I was saying, or trying to say, we've met a few times now, here and there, and I am glad we happened to run into each other tonight, and have a chance to talk alone. We've met at a few gatherings of mutual friends, not really met or talked together, so I was just happy that we could get together casually and by chance this way. Get to know each other a bit more, you know. Those other times we've never really talked, you've kept rather to yourself, and if we are going to keep being in the same room together now and then, I thought it might be a good idea if we got to know each other a bit better. You know, instead of, as – what's the phrase? – nodding acquaintances.

–
Is that a Japanese phrase? It ought to be.

–
I'm not sure, my Japanese isn't that good.

–
I know that.

–
But good enough to know who my superiors are.

–
Then it must be very good.

–
Not really. Set phrases.

–
Like many foreigners.

–
Now don't start generalizing again. I'm certainly not about you.

–
No?

–
No. I have no idea who the hell you are, but as I say, we do keep running into one another, and so maybe I ought to have a better idea of you.

–
Yes, have a better idea of me alright. Instead of a bad idea, is that what you have?

–
No, I mean that I have no idea, good or bad. All I know is that you're a salary-man, and that you lived in Gunma until you had to come here. And that we have a couple of mutual friends.

–
Oh yes.

–
Yes, and they are good friends of mine. Lang and Roberta, Hiroko and Hiromi, your friend Hiro. How do you know him?

–
Hiro? Oh, he's a nice kid. Lives with his parents in Setagaya-ku. Works for a PR company. His company did something for my company once. That's how we met. When the work was finished there was a party at the Imperial Hotel. Hiroko and Hiromi were there, working, you know, like waitresses, pouring drinks, lighting cigarettes, that kind of thing. Afterwards, we all went out together, seems he knew them outside of their work. We kept in touch, Hiro and I. Some time later he invited me to a party and the girls were there, and so were your foreign friends.

–
My friends who happen to be foreigners.

–
Whatever. One thing lead to another, and now occasionally I am invited to parties where all these people are. It is an interesting experience.

–
What is? The parties?

–
No, being among this group of foreigners whom I do not really know. They're always talking.

–
Well, that's what people do at parties.

–
Yes, yes, of course. But they are always talking so well. The foreigners talk about their life in Japan, and the girls respond in their silly way that is not always so silly, they seem genuinely interested in the foreigners, and they all talk together, if you know what I mean.

–
Uhm, I think I do. But is that all so strange?

–
Strange? Perhaps not, just not part of my experience, you see.

–
Not really. I don't know you, after all. I don't know your experience.

–
Well, there has been very little with foreigners, until now, and I have to confess, I do not always know what to say.

–
Such as?

–
I am used to making what you call small talk. These people want to make what you might call big talk. I cannot do that with a foreigner. I always think he or she wants something more from me than I can offer.

–
Kaoru, we too are experts at small talk. Big talk is just talk, like you and me now, making conversation, talking about whatever interests us. No big deal.

–
But sometimes it seems to me that you, they, want to know secrets, how we feel.

–
What's wrong with that if it's sincere? It's just a way of getting to know a person, getting closer.

–
That's what I mean. Why would anyone want that?

–
To know another person.

–
Again, why would anyone want that?

–
You're married, right?

–
Yes.

–
Then presumably you know your wife.

–
More or less, sufficiently. What's your point?

–
You know her feelings.

–
What does that have to do with anything?

–
You do, don't you? Or don't you?

–
She is my wife, we have a family, I have a job and responsibility. We respond to one another, our feelings are not a part of it.

–
Then are you saying that you do not know her?

–
No, of course I know her.

–
Does she know your feelings?

–
What feelings?

–
Look, I do not want to sound too much like an American, but don't you think that a husband and a wife have to share certain feelings together?

–
You mean our intimate relations?

–
No, or not necessarily. But to understand one another day by day, the things you do –

–
What I do is my feelings. What she does is hers.

–
I see.

–
Do you?

–
Not exactly, but that's good.

–
Good that you do not see?

–
Good that I can see somewhat.

–
Maybe. I don't understand.

–
I maybe don't either. But that's ok. So, Hiro introduced you to the bunch, eh?

–
You mean Lang and the others?

–
Yes.

–
Yes, he did.

–
And what do you think of us all?

–
Oh, like I said, you're a curious group. That Roberta's ok, she speaks Japanese alright too, I have to admit. But that husband of hers, that Lang. Let me ask you – are they really husband and wife?

–
Well, yes and no. You see, they once were, really were. That was in Europe, some time in America too. Then she got it into her head to come to Japan. He never really wanted to, come here, that is. So they took a break, their marriage took a break. But then it lasted too long. He always thought she'd come for a few months, have her “Japan experience,” and be back in his arms again. But she liked it more than ever, and he couldn't handle that. Thought he'd have to come here and get her back, back to Europe, that is. Or at least I think back to Europe. He'd had a passing interest in Japan, everyone does – no offense here – but he could only imagine a full life in Europe, and with her, as wayward as he may have been in the past – I think that's over now – and so, anyway, he came here some months back thinking to retrieve her. Trouble is, she held out, and he had to make his way here, hold on till she saw the light, and was ready to leave. So he lingered and in time, he got to like the place too. In his own way, of course.

–
Yes, I've heard parts of this story here and there. But how do you fit in?

–
Me? Oh, Roberta and I have been great friends from long before she married Lang. I was able to get here on a grant, I had an idea for a film. Well, to make a long story short, she helped me out when I first arrived, then I got to work, liked the place well enough to extend my grant, and really work on a very serious film. I got to the point where I thought it was pretty well finished and decided to show it at Image Forum one night. Well, to make a short story even shorter, Roberta hated it and said so. And that was that.

–
What do you mean?

–
Uhm, well, just that Roberta and I have not really been the best of friends ever since.

–
All because of a movie?

–
Because of my movie. My movie about my Japan.

–
But you're still friends or not?

–
We speak to one another. Can we change the subject?

–
And Roberta and Lang?

–
Well, she was living in Yoyogi at first, that's where she was when Lang first arrived, and then she moved to
shitamachi
, and did not want to live with him. It wasn't so much a rejection of Lang as simply a move for herself.

–
I cannot understand this at all, but please continue.

–
So he found a place for himself in Kichijoji.

–
They were on opposite sides of the city.

–
Yes, where the famous twain never meet.

–
They never met?

–
Oh no, they met. They proffered compromises to one another.
They'd meet once or twice a week, she chose the places, a classical café in Nakano, tempura at the Hilltop Hotel – you know, the writer's hotel – another restaurant in Nakano-Shimbashi, the Vietnamese restaurant in Okubo – they carefully avoided the West and … and eventually they extended their borders, began to explore Nishi-Ogikubo, Hakusan, Kunitachi, the Pond, that street where the calligraphy shop is – and eventually he began to explore the city more, came to be intrigued as she'd known he would and hoped he would, the Lang she knew, the Lang she suspected – Lang, liking Tokyo! – all of it, or almost all, hers was becoming his, theirs.