On my way out, just to gauge his reaction, I tell him, “I am a Japanese writer.”
His eyes cut back to me.
“How’s that? You changed nationality?”
“No. That’s the title of my new book.”
A worried glance at his assistant, a young man busy wrapping fish. My fishman never looks at the person he’s speaking to.
“Do you have the right?”
“To write the book?”
“No. To say you’re Japanese.”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you going to change your nationality?”
“No way... I already did that once, that’s enough.”
“You should find out about that.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know, at the Japanese embassy. . . Can you imagine me waking up one morning and telling my customers I’m a Polish butcher?”
“I’d think you’d be a Polish fishman, since you’re in fish.”
“Anything but a Polish fishman,” he answers, turning back to the next customer.
A guy who gives you his opinion about everything always ends up planting a seed of disquiet in your brain. I decided to call my publisher and ask him. He shouldn’t have any objections.
I HAVE A
special way of cooking salmon. It has nothing to do with the salmon itself. What’s special is me. I put a very small amount of water in a pot with the juice of one lemon, thin slices of onion, fresh garlic, salt, pepper, hot chilis and a large ripe tomato that I crush, keeping only the juice. I boil everything together for no more than three minutes. I lower the heat to minimum and place the salmon in the sauce. Then I leave the kitchen and come back twenty minutes later to begin cooking the rice and the vegetables. But this time, I don’t leave. I stand and watch the salmon simmering. For no good reason, I start worrying. About what? About everything. Why? I can’t say. Don’t worry about my worrying. I ask questions, then answer them myself to forget I’m alone. Otherwise, I’d be dead silent. It’s incredible all the things you have to do just to maintain life. Right now, wave after wave of worry is washing in and threatening to drown me. I’m sweating anxiety. I start worrying about my mother, back home. I didn’t like the way her voice sounded the last time we talked on the phone. Her small, frail voice. I know my mother’s voice is never strong, but that time it was really alarming. That call dates back a month, but I’m only reacting now. I’ve been busy, it’s true. Busy doing what? I don’t remember. Right now, I don’t have anything to do but watch my salmon simmering. She told me she wished I had a more secure job, and that makes me sad. Now, even after my fiftieth birthday, I still don’t know what kind of writer I am. I hadn’t thought of this before, but back home, what are they going to say about me having become a Japanese writer? I watch the salmon slowly firming up. I’ve ended up communicating my anxiety to the fish. Now I’ll have to eat anxious salmon one more time. I don’t even know if the anxiety comes from starting a new book or from becoming a Japanese writer. And there lies the fundamental question: what is a Japanese writer? Someone who lives and writes in Japan? Or someone who was born in Japan and writes in spite of it (there are nations that are happy without writing)? Or someone who was not born in Japan, who doesn’t know the language, but who decided one fine day to become a Japanese writer? That’s my situation. I have to get it through my head: I am a Japanese writer. As long as I’m not that naked writer who enters the forest of sentences with no weapon other than a kitchen knife.
I DON’T KNOW
anyone from Asia. I would fall for any girl named Asia—the name makes me think of silk. “Asia” makes me think of a blade, too. One thrust and the throat is slit. A necklace of blood. A quick death is almost reassuring. I think of that continent the way a nineteenth-century explorer would. My ideas are born in my room. I did know a guy who used to hang out in Carré Saint-Louis. I never really knew where he was from. Asia is so big. Does he even know where he’s from now? When someone doesn’t go back home for so long, origins lose their relevance. What good is coming from a place if you don’t even speak the language?
“You wouldn’t be Japanese, by any chance?”
“Korea. I’m Korean.”
“Japan, Korea, isn’t it the same thing?”
He gave me a furious look.
“Still,” I told him, “I get the feeling you have something in common.”
“What?”
“Asia.”
Obviously I’m in love with the word. It’s the continent closest to America. One is too old; the other, too new. Both start with the letter A. In the presence of this flesh-and-blood human being, I confine myself to semiology. That must be my European side.
“What do you want, anyway?”
“I’d like to have a Japanese experience.”
The Korean wasn’t sure if I was serious or not. I put on my most serious face. For me, it’s easy: everything is serious, yet nothing is. That’s how I move through life. I can’t even separate what’s true from what’s false in myself. I don’t distinguish between the two. To tell the truth, all this business about authenticity bores me to death. I’m talking about the concrete fact of dying. When people start conjuring up their origins, I literally find it hard to breathe. We’re born in one spot, and afterwards we choose our place of origin.
Suddenly the guy figured he knew what I was looking for.
“
Kama Sutra
,” he said.
“That’s India.”
“Sure, but everybody thinks it’s Japanese.”
“I’m not everybody.”
“So what
do
you want?”
“Just to be in the surroundings . . . The smells, the colors, the brush of fabric ...”
“I know this transvestite ...”
“It’s better if it’s a girl.”
“What about Chinese twin sisters?”
“I didn’t say China.”
“But all of it’s Asia, you said so yourself.”
“I’m not just talking about geography. . . For me, Japan is masculine, and China is feminine. I can screw China, but Japan will end up screwing me.”
“You think you can screw China! Why not Korea?”
“Japan is more modern.”
“Workers with movie cameras.”
“So you really don’t know anyone from Tokyo?”
“If I find something, I’ll let you know.”
“Can I ask you a question? When was the last time you were back in Korea?” The question combined space and time.
“I don’t remember... I lost my passport.”
“Where do you keep your country?”
“Here, in my pocket.”
His eyes took on a strange glow. I headed for the Librairie du Square where I’d ordered a book (Basho’s
The Narrow Road
to the Interior
). I heard someone running after me. I turned around. The Korean was standing there.
“Hey, I’m thirsty. You made me talk too much.”
“What about it?”
“Just enough for a beer.”
“You didn’t do anything for me.”
“Because you didn’t know what you wanted.”
“I want Asia. Japan, to be exact.”
I watched him dance back and forth. Some people think with their whole bodies. The possibility of a beer was doing its work.
“Okay... she’s a singer.”
“That’s exactly what I need.”
“I’m not guaranteeing anything. I can just tell you where she hangs out .... But it’ll cost you twenty dollars.”
I handed over the money, no questions asked.
“Café Sarajevo.”
“What’s her name?”
“Midori.”
A place and a name. You don’t need anything else to start a novel.
IT’S A FIGHT
to the finish between time and space. The space police help identify you (Where do you come from?). Cannibal time eats you alive. Born in the Caribbean, I automatically became a Caribbean writer. The bookstore, the library and the university rushed to pin that title on me. Being a writer and a Caribbean doesn’t necessarily make me a Caribbean writer. Why do people always want to mix things up? Actually, I don’t feel any more Caribbean than Proust, who spent his life in bed. I spent my childhood running. That fluid sense of time still lives inside me. Every night I dream of the tropical storms that made the sweet, heavy mangoes fall from the tree in my childhood yard. And that cemetery in the rain. The dragonfly with translucent wings seen for the first time on an April morning. Malaria that decimated my village and stole my first love, the girl in the yellow dress. And me, feverish every evening, reading Mishima under the covers, with no one around to tell me who Mishima was. I don’t remember whose books those were, but they were still in good condition. What were they doing in my sleepy little town? Which of my five aunts had a flirtation with Yukio? Was he the favorite writer of one of the young suitors who passed through the house? You never know how a writer comes into a family. I read him to escape the prison of the real. But I did not seek refuge in Mishima— literature was never a refuge for me. Neither did Mishima, I imagine, write to stay in his own house. We encountered each other elsewhere, in a space that wasn’t either of our houses, a space that belonged to imagination and desire. And here I am, thirty-five years later, caught again in the fury of adolescence. If time is circular, if the Earth revolves around the Sun, I’ll just stay right here and wait and the Mishima years will pass before my eyes.
Please understand, I was never obsessed with Mishima. As a teenager, I came across one of his novels at the back of some old cupboard along with a bottle of rum. I began with a long gulp of liquid fire. Then I opened the book (
The Sailor Who
Fell from Grace with the Sea
) and a swarm of buzzing vowels and consonants flew into my face. They had been waiting forever for a visit. In a case like that, you don’t start classifying. You don’t look that gift horse in the mouth. Mishima’s book didn’t say to itself, “Well, well, here’s a good old Japanese reader.” And I didn’t look for a kindred spirit, recognizable colors or a shared sensibility. I dove into the universe that was set before me the way I dove into the little river not far from my house. I hardly even noticed his name, and it wasn’t until long afterward that I realized he was Japanese. At the time, I firmly believed that writers formed a lost tribe and spent their lives wandering the world and telling stories in all languages. That was their sentence for some unnameable crime. Hugo and Tolstoy were convicts. I found no other explanation for them having written those voluminous novels I devoured each night, in hiding. I imagined them with their feet in chains, seated next to an enormous inkwell carved out of rock. Which is why, later, I was reluctant to write thick books. I didn’t want to frighten children.
I don’t understand all the attention paid to a writer’s origins. Because, for me, Mishima was my neighbor. Very naturally, I repatriated the writers I read at the time. All of them: Flaubert, Goethe, Whitman, Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Cervantes, Kipling, Senghor, Césaire, Roumain, Amado, Diderot—they all lived in my village. Otherwise, what were they doing in my room? Years later, when I became a writer and people asked me, “Are you a Haitian writer, a Caribbean writer or a Frenchlanguage writer?” I answered without hesitation: I take on my reader’s nationality. Which means that when a Japanese person reads me, I immediately become a Japanese writer.
I TAKE THE
subway with Basho,
The Narrow Road to the Interior
. I once met Nicolas Bouvier, the translator of the French version, in Toronto. We drank a coffee together. He was so full of life yet so exhausted, both at the same time. His suitcase at the foot of the table. A quick dialogue between two airports— he was running off to New York. We talked about the Aztec upper classes, who underpaid their workers and forced them to labor at least twelve hours a day on monuments that today are covered over with grass. His taxi came. His face was tanned brown and sweating. Already his mind was on his notes. The taxi rushed off through the fine drizzle. The years passed. His legend grew out of all proportion. An intimate society made him into a kind of saint. Now he has returned as Basho’s translator. I’ll read a few scraps of Basho, but never a complete text. The poet relates his trip on foot to the northern reaches of Japan. I am reading him in the subway, following his adventures in search of the Shirakawa Barrier as the Montreal metro moves beneath the city. Everything is moving. Except time: that stands still. I’m too absorbed by all this telescoping of time and crisscrossing of space to get interested in my surroundings. Except for that girl across from me, looking at me, unsmiling. Long and thin. Dark eyes—a brushstroke. Her name must be Isa. As soon as someone enters my field of vision, she becomes a fictional character. No borders between literature and life. I return to my book. Basho is preparing his final journey with extreme care. He can no longer tolerate his stifling everyday existence. Time is passing too.
“The fleeting transience of life,
soon to die, yet no sign of it,”
murmurs the vagabond poet, without bitterness. He must get back on the road again and renew his acquaintance with the zigzags of random chance:
“Not yet dead, at journey’s end, autumn evening.”
He abandons everything, even what is essential. He keeps only a sturdy paper overcoat for the cold nights, a straw cape for the rain and a cotton
yukata.
And since he is a writer, he slips into his bag a writing-board, ink and brushes. Even these indispensable things weigh upon him. Only the self is necessary, as naked as possible. I first discovered Basho’s poetry in a page of newsprint that had been used to wrap rice. Ever since, I have sought his trace in all things. In a bookstore, I always see if there is something by Basho or about Basho. The man possessed a true science of the emotions. And he was stubborn, too. Nothing forced him to undertake a journey like that at his age, but no one could stop him once he had made the decision to go. Sora accompanied him, to free him of domestic tasks.
They set out at dawn. The next time we see him, he is in the Nasu swamplands. Rain forces them to pass the night in a thatched hut. Basho seems in fine shape. Movement is his element. He moves as the landscape changes.