THE POLICE SHOWED
up an hour later. The questioning began with a straightforward accusation. I had my work cut out for me. What was a Negro doing with an Asian girl in this filthy room in a seedy neighborhood? I didn’t know what to say. First they accused me of being her pimp. Then they questioned me at length about the Asian connection which, apparently, is taking on big proportions in Montreal. Finally they cast their eyes on the table and saw Noriko’s earrings and the letter addressed to her mother. The evidence was examined before being slipped into a small plastic bag.
On his way out, one of the two policemen told me, “That letter’s what got you off. We were sure you threw her out the window.”
It was clearly an expression of regret.
They looked me right in the eye. I suppose it was their way of adding a last helping of intimidation. The hardest part was behind me. It had happened so fast. But death would not go away. It was a suicide. She must have explained everything in the letter to her mother, which could have been her way of clearing my name, since she knew I’d had no part in her troubles. And what was the point of having at least three separate levels of meaning in her game? The letter was obviously not written to her mother, but the police. And, certainly, to Midori.
“What’s going to happen?”
“We’ll call you if we need you.”
I’d heard those words more than once during my glorious career as a seasonal worker. No one ever called me back. I wanted to be polite all the same.
“I never knew the police took such care.”
“It’s the new policy. We have to be civil to the civilians.”
They left, and I went back to bed. I couldn’t get that sharp cracking sound out of my head, the one Noriko made when she hit the sidewalk.
One of the policemen actually did call back. He told me Noriko was from Vancouver, and that they’d been looking for her. She had escaped from a psychiatric hospital in Toronto. Her parents were Japanese workers who had come to Canada just three years earlier. She had invented a twin sister for herself, completely different: Tsuki. As gentle as Noriko was, Tsuki was violent. Which one had I had? Sweet Noriko—that’s for sure. But who killed her? The other sister, maybe. Both were in love with Midori. Tsuki had enough time to leave a note on the table, requesting that the earrings be sent to her mother. She scribbled these words at the bottom of the page:
A
song for Mother.
AS I SIT
down to my souvlaki, the only Greek invention since democracy (I’m saying that just to bug my landlord), I wonder why Japanese modernity has been in such demand since the end of Mao’s reign. Of course, there’s the boom in Asian images, not to mention Japan’s ability to turn everything it touches into a cliché, a cliché about which we know almost nothing—to the point that we sometimes wonder if cliché is not a contemporary version of Greek myth. Did the Greeks call their ancient clichés Greek myths? The French kiss exists everywhere but France. When the French kiss, do they make sure their tongues never touch? In North America, when tongues touch, that’s a French kiss. I always thought it was a spontaneous act among all human beings. I remember the terror I felt before my first kiss. What if she devoured my tongue? It was my choicest cut of meat, and here I was, blindly trusting her with it. “Give me your tongue” doesn’t have the same meaning in the North as it does in the South. My mind wanders down every path. I’m not going to start putting up barriers, especially when I’m reflecting on the crumbs that fall from Pascal’s table. The cliché stands far above morals. It is there, round, mysterious, eternal. It smiles upon us. No personal use of a cliché is possible, except to return it to its sender. Everyone knows that Negroes are lazy. Now there’s a cliché. When a white man works too much, we say he’s working like a nigger. Everything stops. The cliché travels through time and space as fast as lightning. When it stops, it creates a silence. I look out the window and see three young women in a hurry. One of them looks like Fumi. It
is
Fumi. I recognize her dark smile. Fumi told me she was doing her work-study in a restaurant not far from here. She turns around at the last minute. No, it’s not her. On the sidewalk, a Japanese tourist is shooting away at our Greek cook. I always wonder: what does he see? To find out, you’d have to become Japanese.
WHAT DO YOU
know, it’s blinking. Two messages from the Japanese consulate. Already—those Japanese are fast! I called back immediately. A certain Mr. Tanizaki would like to speak with me. However, this Mr. Tanizaki has gone out to lunch with his superior, Mr. Mishima (they don’t mess with the hierarchy here). Actually, all I got was a machine that gently reminded me that the staff was not in during lunch hour, and would not be returning before two o’clock in the afternoon. I was to call back later, after mealtime. I did call back. They asked me to wait a minute. I heard my name spoken. It was the first time I’d been able to pick out my name in a Japanese conversation; it was like a salad to which someone had added a new ingredient. The next thing I knew, a rather nasal voice was speaking to me.
“Are you the writer?”
“Sometimes.”
“I am Mr. Mishima, but I’m not the writer. I am the viceconsul of Japan, and I would like to meet you.”
“For any particular reason?”
“I cannot discuss it on the telephone.”
“Next Wednesday, at the café Les Gâteries, at noon . . . Is that all right with you?”
“Of course. But why there?”
“Why not?”
Silence answered me.
“Fine . . . At the café Les Gâteries, Wednesday at noon. I’ll be there.”
I don’t know why, but I figured it was important to insist on that café. I set the time and the place for the meeting. You have to take the initiative in cases like this. I’d seen how it worked in
The Godfather,
the Coppola film. You set the place, you get there well ahead of time, you hide the gun in the bathroom, behind the toilet. But why the silence? It’s true, there are always periods of silence during this kind of telephone conversation. Sudden stops sometimes destabilize me. Absence of noise is not necessarily silence. And what is silence for the Japanese? Emptiness in a conversation does not have the same meaning in all cultures. Of course it’s not emptiness at all, but a subterranean conversation (we speak to ourselves as we talk to the other person). We hear the silence when both conversations stop at the same time. It’s like a Ping-Pong game: you have to wait until your adversary returns the ball. And if he doesn’t do it with a smooth rhythm, brief spaces where nothing is spoken occur. Sometimes it isn’t an accident. These days, you still meet professionals who can play silences on three levels: the short, the long, and the embarrassing silence. Since I couldn’t analyze his, I suddenly fell silent. Perhaps he wasn’t expecting me to stop so suddenly. In any case, he seemed to freeze (which happens when the body falls silent at the same time as the mind), and then I heard him murmur, “I will come with my assistant, Mr. Tanizaki. I hope you will not mind.”
I had made immoderate use of silence. That weapon can blow up in your face. “Not at all.”
“If anything concerns you in any way, for one reason or another, you will please tell me, sir.”
I had forgotten that style of politeness. One fact is always hidden behind another. Behind silence is politeness. Behind politeness—often cruelty.
“There’s no problem.”
Another lengthy silence (it was his turn now), though the onus was on him to thank me and hang up. Didn’t he know it was up to the person who called to put an end to the conversation? Was he, a diplomat, somehow unaware of this code? I decided to end things myself.
“Thank you for your call. I look forward to meeting you.”
Dead air, as if he were busy signing documents.
“Yes, I will see you soon.”
I heard a brief click, the kind that might betray that someone else was listening in on the conversation. Not being in the same room as Mr. Mishima, he couldn’t execute a fully synchronized sign-off. A tenth of a second too soon. It could have been his assistant, Mr. Tanizaki.
I OFTEN CHANGE
hiding places in order not to be identified with one particular spot. I cover my tracks. A moving target in a dazzling city. That should tell you just how disappointed I was when Mr. Mishima changed our meeting to a Japanese restaurant, rejecting my small, intimate café on Rue St-Denis where you can see without being seen. I hadn’t created all these identity displacements just to end up in a Japanese restaurant with Japanese people. In any case, that tells you a lot about the capacity of people to imagine the world, even those who are paid to be more curious than the rest of us. For them, the universe is narrowed down to their mental space and their petty diplomatic chicanery. They intend to die in the spot where they had their first shit. As you can see, I’m in a foul mood this morning. God! All that for nothing. I’m pissing and moaning but it’s far from over. And here I’d pictured our meeting in a restaurant other than Japanese. Chinese, for example. A Japanese guy in a Chinese restaurant is more interesting. And in a Korean restaurant—that’s practically subversive. There are so many sushi bars these days, they must sprout up overnight. How would I recognize two Japanese businessmen in a room full of Japanese businessmen? Two moon-shaped faces were shooting wide smiles in my direction from the back of the room. The same black suits, the same haircuts, the same smiles. Which was Mr. Mishima? Where was Mr. Tanizaki? I decided not to try telling them apart.
They both rose at the same time.
“I am Mr. Mishima, Japanese vice-consul. Officially, I am the cultural attaché, but I have no well-defined responsibilities. At the consulate, everyone does what he can. I am embarrassed to receive you so modestly.”
Nervous laughter.
“And I am his assistant, Mr. Tanizaki.”
“Please sit down,” Mr. Mishima told me.
Maybe it was Mr. Tanizaki who actually said that; I wasn’t paying attention to individual identity. I sat down. I wasn’t going to wait for their permission. Though actually, Mr. Tanizaki (or Mr. Mishima) monitored my seating arrangements with obsessive concern; he seemed on guard for the slightest detail that might compromise my comfort. He was like an entomologist slipping a black insect into a handsome lacquered case. Black was the establishment’s prime color. The tables, chairs, plates and tablecloths were black, while the knives and forks were red. Quite suddenly, Mr. Mishima demanded we be moved to another table. Since all the tables were taken, he wanted to change places with me. I had to assure him I was just fine where I was. But he wasn’t satisfied. He turned to Mr. Tanizaki, who immediately jumped to his feet to give me his seat, which offered a view of the street. Okay, okay. The charades continued until Mr. Mishima was completely convinced that everything had been done to ensure maximum comfort for me. I knew this was his courteous, Asian way of making me feel welcome, but it really wasn’t my style. Maybe they were expecting me to make a similar effort; I had no idea. No—they’re the thousand-year-old refined culture, whereas I represent savage young America. I sucked in my stomach, jammed my knees together and hunched my shoulders in order to enjoy the small space allotted to me. A compact kind of happiness. I looked around the place and saw it was designed for a certain size of person, as if they wanted to discourage larger formats—black American basketball players, for example.
“Do you like the restaurant?” Mr. Tanizaki asked me.
“It’s fine,” I said, in a neutral tone.
“I am happy it pleases you,” Mr. Mishima said, smiling. “Other places of this kind have no resemblance to a real restaurant in Tokyo.”
That’s another thing I detest: authenticity. A real restaurant. Real people. Real things. Real life. Nothing more fake than that. Life itself is a construct.
“Do you like sushi?”
“No.”
I decided to keep my bad mood a while longer. They looked totally lost. It’s true, if the guest doesn’t like sushi, his tastes can cause problems in a Japanese restaurant.
“I don’t like fish.”
Which is completely untrue.
“Oh, I see,” said Mr. Mishima, astonished that anyone could dare not to like fish. But he did his best to hide his disappointment.
“I’m not allergic to fish, and I’m not a vegetarian. I just can’t agree with the idea of eating fish. In my opinion, it’s just not a good practise.”
“Fortunately, Japanese cuisine offers more than fish,” Mr. Mishima said in a quiet voice.
“In any case, we would have found something else to eat,” Mr. Tanizaki chimed in quickly.
I ORDERED SOUP
. Another silence settled in. I don’t have the nerves of steel this kind of game demands. I decided to get right to the point—which is, apparently, contrary to the rules of proper Japanese behavior.
“I had no idea the Japanese consulate was aware of my humble existence,” I said, in vague imitation of their obsequious tone.
I heard a peal of authentic laughter, but I couldn’t tell if it was coming from Mr. Mishima or Mr. Tanizaki. Was one of them a ventriloquist?
“My assistant heard about you.”
“Really?”
“Are you a writer?”
“Not right now.”
They laughed.
“Are you writing a book?”
“Yes and no.”
“We are very interested in your book.”
“And that’s why you decided to investigate me?”
Synchronized laughter.
“No, we are not investigating you, sir. Nor can we do such a thing. It is all we can do just to read the newspapers. There are only three of us in the cultural sector. Tokyo is interested in economic aspects: there are seventeen agents in that area. We are not a priority, you understand.”
It wasn’t news to me that literature doesn’t count for much in the new world order. Third-world dictators are the only ones who take writers seriously enough to imprison them on a regular basis, or even shoot them. The waiter arrived with our order. How was I going to get out of this wasps’ nest? Four or five Japanese businessmen swooped past and conversed with Mr. Mishima on a subject that demanded smiles and cascades of laughter. I didn’t catch a thing because they spoke threequarters of the time in Japanese, and the rest in English—their Japanese wearing a strong English accent and their English equally weighed down with Japanese. They pretended not to notice I was there. Maybe they just didn’t see me. Some people speak only one language, and others have radar that picks up only one kind of person: people of their own religion, class and race. That behavior is found in all societies. Finally they scattered, one at a time, with lighter-than-air steps and brittle laughter—as if they were performing a musical comedy.