Vaseline Buddha (11 page)

And the fact that I was in a situation that was still obscure but no longer seemed so unpleasant, in which I had come to a strange little town to see a girl I didn't know very well, whom I knew nearly nothing about and who knew nearly nothing about me, thinking of possibilities of one kind or another regarding her, then was turned away, made me feel so content and pleased that I had to smile, for it let me devour the yellow flower that made me think of crocuses, and think arbitrarily, after finishing the last of my coffee, and looking at the dregs, that my luck had run out.

And after a short while, when the workmen took a break even though they hadn't done that much work, and lay sideways on the roof enjoying the warm rays of the sun, I too buried myself deep in my seat, and bathed in the peace of the little town that could be seen out the window. I heard the quiet murmur of people talking near the kitchen, but there was no one else at the restaurant. The town made you feel as if everything were passing slowly.

It looked as if the workmen had fallen asleep in the sun, and a very light breeze stirred up their hair and shirts and pants, taking them into pleasant dreams, and the breeze, which had come in through the open windows of the restaurant, was taking me into such a state as well. On the rooftop there was a weathercock in the shape of a rooster, which kept stirring very slightly and then stopping, for no other reason than that there was a very light, irregular breeze, and it seemed as if the rooster, too, were sleeping and dreaming, squirming lightly. The rooster, with a red comb on its head, was moving very minutely, and seemed to be quietly enjoying everything about the moment in its own way.

Anyway, there was a framed painting hanging by a window in the restaurant, which depicted a scene that was almost exactly the same as the scene out the window, seen from where I was. When I moved a little to the side, the painting looked the same as the scene, as if I were where the artist was when he was painting it. But there were no workmen in the painting, and there was a crow sitting on the top of the rooster-shaped weathercock, and when I moved my gaze from the painting to the scene outside, there was a crow sitting on the weathercock. The crow was at an angle slightly different from that of the crow in the painting, but it still looked like the crow in the painting. The scene seemed just perfect for looking at while passing time in leisure after breakfast.

I suddenly recalled that Napoleon kept “Mona Lisa” in his bedroom in the Tuileries Palace for some time. Perhaps he could feel, while looking at “Mona Lisa” before he fell asleep, that he really was an emperor who enjoyed all the privileges in the world, and felt that the greatest of all his privileges was having “Mona Lisa” in his bedroom and looking at it before falling asleep. Perhaps there was no painting like “Mona Lisa” to hang in someone's bedroom. And perhaps Hitler tried to lay his hands on “The Art of Painting,” an enigmatic painting by Vermeer, for the same reason. Looking from the scene out the window to the painting depicting the scene, I felt that, in that moment at least, I was enjoying some kind of a privilege.

In that small town, there was a feeling of coziness found in all places where everything happens so slowly that time, too, seemed to pass slowly, and the feeling allowed me to stay lost in leisurely thoughts that rambled on because they were leisurely. I recalled my long-held belief that the roof, like the living room, should become a part of everyday life, and that people should spend more time on the roof, and also thought that the roof, indeed, was the most peaceful place in the house, that most quarrels take place in the living room or the kitchen, that people don't go up to the roof to quarrel, and that the roof is a good place to calm yourself down when you're angry. But soon it occurred to me that if the roof became a part of everyday life, a lot of quarrels could take place on the roof, which then could become even more dangerous than the inside of the house.

I came out of the hotel and went to the station that was at the hub of the town, and even when I was on my way to the station, I was thinking that I could go to the Lascaux Cave, which I knew was not too far from the station, and see the paintings there and think for a little while about how short the history of the present civilization was, and how it hasn't been that long since humans came out of caves, or go a little further to the island of Mallorca, where Chopin wrote the “Raindrop Prelude,” and spend time in
a room there listening to the sound of rain falling, or by a window where the sun shone through, feeling, to my heart's content, an anxiety different from what Chopin felt, preferably of an unknown nature, or go to Turin, the city that Nietzsche, who planned from very young to write a little book of his own, and who in a way carried out the plan, said was the city he loved the most. Turin was also the city where Giorgio de Chirico, who saw countless riddles in the shadow of one human being, read Nietzsche, found “a strange, profound, mysterious, and infinitely lonely poem” in Nietzsche, painted “Melancholy in Turin” and “Spring in Turin,” and said that the city was the source of a series of his paintings, found melancholy. Perhaps in Turin, you could feel, as Chirico said, statues “come to life, talk, and even begin to walk, and come down from the pedestal and disappear.” Turin, where you could pass by countless statues depicting humans in squares and streets, as if passing by passersby, seemed to me like a city of statues, a city where the silence of statues ruled over noise. It seemed that in such a city, I might be able to dispel the gloom that always accompanied me, or at least feel differently about it. But it was certain that Turin was no longer the Turin that Nietzsche loved.

But for some reason, perhaps for no reason at all, I began to walk along the street opposite from the one I'd come from. Perhaps it was because of a vague thought that came to me while I was looking at a gently winding railroad track several hundred kilometers outside the train station, at the railroad track beyond the curve, which disappeared, drawing a curve, or came from beyond the curve, or stayed where it was as a curve, and bending the curving railroad in my mind into an angle that would make train service
impossible, or while I was watching a station employee waving a flag, as a train left after coming into the station and stopping for a moment. Or maybe it was because at that moment, I thought, Here's a man who came to see a woman he knew nearly nothing about, who knew nearly nothing about him, and he's in a dilemma because the woman, who invited him, rejected him for some reason, and he's somewhat curious as to what would happen to him if he stayed in her town for a little longer, so let's give him a little time and see what happens to him, making him walk into a story, one way of which would be to give him a little push and let him walk as his footsteps lead him, and with that thought, I began to walk blindly, and felt that I was walking into a story with him, entering naturally into a story. And I might have thought that when you don't know what to do, especially when you don't know what to do, you can do something that makes you feel even more as if you were doing something that didn't make sense, that you should do such things, and that I could do any number of such things, thereby trying to convince myself with a thought that wasn't very convincing even to myself.

I cut across the town and walked along a little country road that suddenly began where the town came to an end, and when I thought that it was like Molloy's town, it really seemed to be Molloy's town, although I wasn't sure what resemblance there was between the town and the idea I had in mind of Molloy's town, and then there were hills and forests there, and the landscape and terrain were such that the place may well have been where Moran, a character in
Molloy,
wandered around with his son, so it was fit to be called Molloy's town, and it occurred to me that it was because
of
Molloy
that we became friends soon after we met, and again, I wanted to meet the girl who had stood me up but resisted the desire, and thought somewhat absurdly, but quite benevolently for her, that perhaps what she'd wanted to do for me was to let me roam aimlessly in Molloy's territory, thinking about him. And I thought of a vague story titled, “Roaming in Molloy's Town,” and thought that I was already in the story, and, thinking about getting lost in your own story, kept on walking.

Looking at a white goat standing on a rock on a low hill, I walked around the hill to where the field began, and saw something blocking the path. It wasn't the goat I'd just seen. So it wasn't that the goat had come down in the meantime and was blocking my path. What was blocking my path was a cow.

Because the path was so narrow that someone had to step aside, we stood, hoping that the other would step aside, but the cow stood in a respectable and dignified manner, with no signs of being flustered. The cow had very large breasts with many nipples under the belly. Strangely, I felt a little intimidated before the cow, and thought that if I had a tail, I may well have lowered my tail completely. And I suddenly recalled the fact that T.S. Eliot was afraid of cows, and somehow I understood him completely, and wondered if one day, perhaps in his childhood, he had an experience involving a cow, which remained in his subconscious mind, and came to fear cows since then, or if he came to fear cows for no reason after seeing a cow one day, or after thinking a certain thought about cows, or if he decided to fear cows so as to think that there was nothing as frightening as cows in the world, causing a fear of cows to take root in his heart and body, as compassion or love for, or fear of, someone takes root and sprouts in the heart, but I had no way of finding out the exact reason. Perhaps Ibsen, too, came to have a fear of very small dogs for such reasons. But it didn't seem like such a bad thing for there to be something in the world you were particularly afraid of, whether cows or dogs, or a coat hanging on a hanger in a closet or a ball of yarn with a long strand of yarn unraveled on the floor, or the red comb of a rooster or the eyes of a dead fish.

And again, through a strange chain reaction of thoughts, and being aware that the chain reaction was working in a strange way, I had the somewhat ridiculous thought that the misfortune of cows began when humans began to fill their hungry bellies with cow meat and bones, and as if that weren't enough, to squeeze out every last drop of milk from their large breasts. And as I thought about it a little more, I became curious as to what cows and sheep and goats and camels and horses and such thought of humans squeezing out every last drop of their milk, but in any case, they didn't seem to have any great complaints. No, it seemed that they did have great complaints, but were hiding the fact and letting their anxiety grow. Whenever I saw them quietly ruminating, it seemed to me that they were gnashing their teeth. Even though I had walked only a little ways from the hill where the goat was to the field where the cow was, I felt as if I had been wandering around somewhere for a long time, which pleased me even more.

Because there was plenty of time to think about who was blocking whose path—the cow seemed to be dawdling in its own way, as if it didn't have any pressing matters to attend to—I concluded that I was blocking the cow's path—the path, in fact,
wasn't so narrow, so we could easily pass through without either of us stepping aside, and I thought we were blocking each other's path, even though it was more likely that I was blocking the cow so that it couldn't pass—but still, regardless of that, I was conflicted for a brief moment as to if the cow, which was bigger than me, should step aside, or if I, who was smaller but older, should, but I didn't think of it in terms of us being human and not human. But in the end, I, a civilized man, gave way, and broke off a piece of a baguette, a staple in the French diet, that I happened to have on me at that moment, and proffered it to the cow, which sniffed at it and declined, not because it couldn't tell if it was edible or not, but, as it seemed to be saying when it looked at me, because it couldn't trust me. So this time, I gave the cow the apricots which I also happened to have on me. And the cow ate them, and blinked its eyes a few times in my direction as if in gratitude, but again, it looked dignified, without making the kind of a face that some animals do, asking for more, when you give them something to eat. I felt pleased to have seen the cow eat the apricots with relish, and I felt grateful for the girl who stood me up, and for the fact that I was stood up, and felt almost happy because of it. After a little while, the cow, which would soon be forgetting its encounter with a stranger, went on its way, looking carefree, and I, too, went my way, feeling carefree. As I walked away from the cow, which I thought must be feeling good because of its encounter with me, I felt that my steps had become lighter, and regardless of that, looking back at the cow, I thought that we were all just going past ourselves to arrive at ourselves.

Anyway, at that moment, something that often frightens me
happened and I was about to get diarrhea, and I was put in a situation that required that I run into the forest nearby, but I didn't like to run so I walked into the forest, barely managing to keep the diarrhea from spilling out, and as I relieved myself (so far in my life, I've never run in fright, or away from a great danger, but countless are the times when I've had to run to a nearby bathroom or woods because of diarrhea), I thought that there was no song that I'd prepared for singing birds, when there were no singing birds, or at least, no sound of singing birds, and I let the birds that must be singing a song somewhere do the singing, and I became lost in my thoughts. Anyway, as I was relieving myself, I saw mushrooms, which I couldn't tell were edible or not, but seemed edible because they weren't colorful, growing here and there around me, and picked a mushroom near me while having diarrhea, but I couldn't tell whether it was okay to eat it or not, or whether it was good for diarrhea or not.

I suddenly remembered how someone who often experienced crisis as I did because of diarrhea told me that he always carried around a roll of toilet paper in his bag, and had relieved himself in the woods a few times, on which occasions he broke off a branch that his hand could reach and put the toilet paper on it, and whenever he did, he felt very pleased because he felt as if he were relieving himself in his own toilet in the woods, and I thought that I could do the same in the future. Perhaps I could show, by hanging a roll of toilet paper on a branch in the forest, that someone was relieving himself in the bush below. Or a roll of toilet paper could come in handy when you go into a forest where you might get lost and want to make your way back out,
and it would also be helpful in a strange city where narrow alleys are intricately intertwined like a maze. In that case, you could mark your path by tearing off the toilet paper piece by piece and throwing it on the ground. This method could be very helpful in London, England. According to an investigative report, London is the easiest place in the world to get lost in. In London, the chances of getting lost are twice as high as those in Bangkok or Beijing, which is twice as large in area as London, with one out of every ten people getting lost in London, because one out of every three Londoners give you wrong direction on purpose. In light of this report, it would probably be better not to ask for directions in London even when you're lost. (By letting the story deviate like this, I could remain in a state like that of being lost in a story. I can't prevent the stories that branch out of a story and deviate from doing so.) In addition, Germans are the best at finding their way, and they say that one third of all Germans have never been lost. This goes to show that Germans, who prepare for things thoroughly in advance, are an amazing people who suffer from an obsessive compulsive disorder. And they say that one out of every ten Russians ask for directions not because they're lost, but in order to seduce the opposite sex.