Vaseline Buddha (17 page)

I came to have personal feelings about the Eiffel Tower because I could see the Eiffel Tower out the window the whole time we were quarreling, and I was as tired of seeing the Eiffel Tower as I was of having a long quarrel with her, and grew angrier at the Eiffel Tower than I was at her, and in the end, I was glaring at the Eiffel Tower like someone learning to express a certain kind of anger. It seemed that the Eiffel Tower out the window, soaring high into the sky, was urging me to come to a decision, as if to egg us on to fight, without helping me come to a decision, and it also seemed that everything in the city wanted us to break up. A storm was raging outside as if on cue, as if a huge animal were showing discomfort, a storm that was like a huge animal in itself. And at one point, a bright light that shone in through the window seemed to inflict a wound, almost, like a rock that broke a windowpane and came flying in.

And I hated everything about Paris, which had become the stage for our breakup, even though it wasn't responsible for our breakup, and I felt that my resentment was justified. I wanted to leave Paris as soon as possible but couldn't easily do so, perhaps because I thought that the woman I'd broken up with may still be somewhere in Paris.

And there was a certain banality in the Eiffel Tower, the symbol of Paris, which could be seen out the window, a banality that was in everything, which could be found if you looked for it, and I felt the same way about Paris when I left the hotel and wandered around downtown. But it wasn't just because I was in a poor condition that everything looked poor in my eyes. Everything has its own inherent banality, and I saw such banality in Paris, a city of great cultural heritage. (Writing about a terrible trip I took, as I'm doing now, brings me a strange sort of pleasure. And I watch my pleased self as if I'm watching someone else, confirming once again that I'm a strange person who's pleased by strange things, which pleases me.)

That night, taking a bath in my exhaustion, I looked at the Eiffel Tower, thinking for a moment about the nature of banality that could be found in an object itself, or in a consciousness interacting with an object, then fell asleep in the bathtub, and had
a dream that I was rolling a ball that grew larger or smaller, on a tiny star that, too, continued to grow larger or smaller, and had great difficulty rolling the ball when the star grew even smaller than the ball, which wasn't a nightmare but gave me a hard time as I dreamt, but when I woke up, I felt nothing, nothing at all indeed, and I thought that the reason why it was difficult for me to have a lasting relationship with someone was because it was difficult for me, even when I met someone and continued to see her, to find a reason to keep seeing her, and thought that perhaps the ball in the dream represented my thoughts. And yet it wasn't easy for me to find a reason to break up with someone, either, which made it difficult for someone to keep seeing me, as well as break up with me.

Nevertheless, for some reason, I went to the Eiffel Tower area the next day, and snuck my way into a group of tourists and listened for a moment to the guide's explanation, and in the end, I tried to climb the massive steel tower—perhaps because of the long queue under the tower, made up of people who wanted to climb it, which gradually grew shorter but seemed as if it would never give you a turn, and perhaps I just wanted to stand in the queue without thinking about anything—but when I was almost at the ticket booth after waiting in the long queue, I broke away from it, again for some reason, a reason that may or may not have been reasonable, and then queued up again, once again for some reason—I was making an effort not to climb the Eiffel Tower, which seemed to be beckoning at me with effort, telling me to climb up its body—and when it was my turn, I left the queue like someone who had changed his mind at the last minute, and vowed that I would never come near the Eiffel Tower again, and left the area and checked into another hotel from which, of course, a part of the tower could be seen. I thought of the museums I'd visited on my previous trip to Paris, but I didn't want to see any paintings this time.

As I lay in bed looking at the Eiffel Tower, which could be seen only in part through the hotel window, I once again had a vague thought that there are certain scenes, objects, that you can see freely at last when they're seen only in part, and that there are moments in which a part of something becomes equal to the thing itself, although it doesn't surpass the thing. And I thought that the reason why I didn't climb the Eiffel Tower wasn't because I had lost my nerve at seeing the massive tower, which could be seen only in part through the window at that moment, but which stood in stately glory when seen from just below. What did make me lose my nerve, for no reason, was the statue of a peeing boy I saw in Brussels.

In the hotel room I felt uncomfortable looking at the Eiffel Tower, which could be seen only in part through the window, and which reminded me that I was in Paris, and at one point, I leapt up from the bed and ran to the window as if in a race, and closed and opened the curtains several times, repeating the act until the scene out the window looked resigned, and, in the end, I closed the window and the curtains completely so that it could no longer be seen. And then I had the sudden thought that a part of the top of the tower that could be seen from my house, one of the symbols of the city in which I lived, could be seen from my bedroom window, and I felt at ease, thinking that I was in a hotel somewhere in the world. I lay still in bed, listening to the sound of quiet footsteps of people passing through the corridor from time to time, which the carpet absorbed, and when the sound faded away and silence fell again, I mumbled some words that sounded like footsteps.

And at one point I took out the map of downtown Paris I got from the tourist information office, and put a candle flame to the spot I assumed to be the hotel I was staying at and made the small flame spread out in a circle, swallow some areas here and there in downtown Paris, and, in the end, turn the map into ashes, rendering downtown Paris void. And looking at the faint circle of light, created by the candle flame that had set all of Paris ablaze, I came up with the expression “corrupt light.” And I thought of Kafka, who died a terribly painful death due to laryngeal tuberculosis at a sanitarium in Austria—for at the time I was on the last page of a thick compilation of his letters—and pictured myself pacing around the sanitarium courtyard for a moment, looking at the window of the room where Kafka must be dying, and at one point the sanitarium overlapped with the Parisian hotel in which I was staying, for I was coughing severely, like a tuberculosis patient, from a cold I'd caught earlier.

Looking at the ordinary wallpaper in the hotel room in which I was staying, I briefly considered death in a hotel room in a foreign land, which I'd always considered, and how a hotel room was a good place in which to have such a thought. But taking my own life still seemed premature, and I thought about suicide only in a vague and faint way.

And I recalled the time several years earlier when I went to France and stayed in a small town with no clear purpose or reason, in order to leave the country where I was born and lived in because I couldn't stand almost anything about it.

When I thought of the small town, someone always came to my mind before anything else. In a little square in that French town I stayed in there was a statue of someone who was a scientist as well as a cyclist, and a beggar who was the spitting image of Karl Marx always sat next to it at a certain hour. But the beggar, at whose side was a bag which looked as if it would contain
The Communist Manifesto,
didn't do anything at all, as if he had forgotten his duty as a beggar, or as if he were doing his duty as a beggar. I'd never seen a beggar who didn't do anything, not to that extent. It seemed that the man, who looked questionable as a beggar, carried out his routine activities such as eating or receiving alms in other places, and his spot next to the statue seemed to be a place he visited in order to not do anything. No, it's not true that he didn't do anything at all. He did one thing, which was to take out some kind of a candy from his pocket at a certain time of the day, take off the plastic wrapping and put the candy in his mouth, and suck on it quietly like someone lost in meditation, and when he did, it seemed as if the present world, whose ideals haven't been realized, were quietly, sweetly crumbling away. No, this isn't true. He didn't do anything at all, not even suck on a candy. It was my imagination that put a candy in his mouth. That didn't suit him. He was better off doing nothing, which, fortunately, was what he was doing. In that town, where I saw a dolphin tube float down the river one winter, or which I left, thinking I saw a dolphin tube floating down the river, I dated a French woman for several
months, and we would drive to nearby castles in her little car, and take walks in the woods, or hold each other in the woods, smelling the grass and talking, or taking a nap. One day, awake from one of those naps in the woods, I saw her, still in her sleep, and suddenly felt as if my life were happening out of my hands, which felt pleasant beyond description, which made me smile, and she, awake now, asked me the why I was smiling. When I didn't tell her the reason, she didn't pry, and I said it would be nice if we could come like this more often and take naps, and we did so several more times. And I would go see her on the bicycle she lent me, and the handlebars of the old bicycle were slightly turned to the left, so in order to go in a straight line, I had to mentally turn them slightly to the right, and do so in reality. Anyway, one day, I found that the bicycle, which I'd placed in a park, was gone. Someone had brutally severed the chain and taken the bicycle. We didn't go around looking for the lost bicycle, but for several days after that whenever we sat in cafes we would stare fixedly at passing bicycles, and she said that her bicycle was easily recognizable. I felt as if she were saying that she could recognize her own baby, so I felt it imperative that we find the bicycle. But finding a lost bicycle was harder than finding a lost baby, and we never did find the bicycle. And we seriously discussed stealing someone's bicycle, but we didn't actually commit theft. Still, we kept our eyes on bicycles when we took walks, and all the bicycles were brutally chained up. I don't remember much else about her, but I do remember that thanks to her I learned French very quickly, and that she made me feel awkward by crying when I left the city. I awkwardly took her hand and tried to respond in a way you
should in front of someone crying, but it wasn't easy. Fortunately, she didn't seem to notice that I felt awkward, because she was busy crying. With that, I could sum up what happened between us. (It may be wrong to talk about your relationship with someone, short or long, and furthermore, about someone's life, in such a way, but everything can be summed up in a few sentences.)

In the end, I came out of the hotel, and before leaving Paris, went again, for some reason, to the Eiffel Tower area that I'd vowed never to go near again and sat with my back to the tower on a bench from which the tower could be seen in its entirety, and, seeing the person sitting on the bench next to mine staring off into space, I, too, stared off into the space into which he was staring, but then he suddenly turned away his gaze, as if angry at discovering that someone was looking at something he alone was looking at, something that he alone should look at—I couldn't understand the reason at all, for the space into which he was staring was an exceedingly blue sky with no clouds at all, and there being no signs of weather change, it seemed that the space, in which there was nothing but the blue sky, wouldn't change at all no matter how he stared at it, no matter how much he stared at it—and glared at me, which made me realize that space, which I thought was for everyone, and something at which anyone could look at any time, wasn't something at which you could look thoughtlessly at anytime, that there was something in space that people shouldn't look at together. No, I think it was more because I had a hangover and was quite red in the face. But looking with such disapproval at someone who was red in the face because of a hangover was something that no human should do. I turned my
gaze to something else, and saw a black dog. It would be very big when full grown, but it was still small. The dog didn't yet possess the dignity that dogs of that breed have when full grown. In a little while a white dog—it was a kind that doesn't grow to be very big, and was small, although it was already an adult dog—appeared, and the two felt each other out for a moment, then sniffed at each other and barked. The dogs seemed to be communicating perfectly with each other. Then in a moment, the white dog went off somewhere else, and the black dog, left alone, went to a flowerbed nearby and ran around among the flowers playfully, wantonly. The dog, like all dogs, demonstrated that dogs want to run around every chance they get, and never miss an opportunity to do so. At that moment it suddenly occurred to me that one night, while spending the night with the woman I'd broken up with, I might have strangled her at one point when it seemed as if I would pass out. I was drunk, and extremely tired, and it seemed that I unwittingly strangled her with my hands, then came to myself when it looked as if she had stopped breathing and let go, and woke her up by slapping her cheeks several times. But it wasn't clear if such a thing had actually happened.

In the flowerbed, there were roses and other pretty flowers of various colors, and I casually hoped in secret that the dog would trample on the flowers even while being pricked by their thorns, as if it couldn't help itself, and thoroughly ruin the flowerbed. But the dog was careful in its own way not to ruin the flowers, although it didn't look as if it would be, and wasn't injured by the thorns hidden by the trees, either.

Thinking about how many different breeds dogs and cats have developed into, and how nice it would be if someday humans would do so as well, I thought again about the woman I'd broken up with, and thought that it was for the good of both of us that we broke up, and pictured the day when humans would have evolved into as many different breeds as there are of dogs and cats, and thought, as to the breakup, that we had merely found one of the countless reasons for which we should break up. Perhaps the reason why we broke up was because I couldn't find a reason to keep seeing her, and I thought such a reason was sufficient for a breakup. And I thought that everything that can happen in the world only happens because it can, that what happens is just that something among the things that can't happen loses its possibility of not happening—everything that has happened up to this point could have not happened—that if there is a purpose to the world, it's to make everything that can happen, happen. And I thought, as if coming to a conclusion, that my mind was made up while I was looking at a part of the massive steel structure called the Eiffel Tower out the window, and that I, having always pictured the end of my relationship with someone, had always pictured where and how my relationship with her would come to an end. And it seemed that the fact that I thought about her for a moment told me nothing as to if I still had feelings for her, or if the opposite were true, and that's what I believed.