“And the poets?”
A moment of surprise. I always ask after the poets.
“Do you write poetry?”
“No.”
“Do you like poetry?”
“Why do you ask?”
“We know you are fond of our great poet Basho.”
“How do you know that?”
“You read him wherever you go.”
“You’ve been following me!”
“Please do not be alarmed, sir.”
“Listen, I have other things to do.”
“My assistant Mr. Tanizaki is an eminent translator.”
“You want to translate my book?”
“We would love to,” said Mr. Tanizaki. “Though I am no more than a humble teacher.”
“It’s easy. You contact my publisher...”
“We are speaking of your latest book, of course.”
“What latest book?”
“The one you are writing, about Japan.”
“I never write about anything but myself.”
Mr. Mishima and Mr. Tanizaki exchanged quick glances.
A moment of panic in Mr. Tanizaki’s eyes. Now I could see the difference between them. Mr. Tanizaki is the one who’s always afraid. The reason lies in the hierarchy.
“Isn’t there some sort of relationship with Japan in your new book?” Mr. Tanizaki ventured, timidly.
“Besides the title, of course,” Mr. Mishima put in.
“My Japan is invented and concerns only me.”
Mr. Tanizaki sighed in relief.
“We would like to help,” said Mr. Mishima calmly.
“Even if I haven’t even written the book.”
They grew lively all of a sudden, and their masks began slipping out of control.
“We know you have not yet transcribed it onto paper, but it is in your head,” said Mr. Mishima knowingly.
“For once Tokyo is interested in one of our projects,” Mr. Tanizaki added quickly. “If you wanted to visit Japan . . . We have an excellent guide to help you follow in Basho’s footsteps. We can organize a tour that will take you on the road our poet took 250 years ago.”
“But I don’t want to visit Japan... What kind of idea is that?”
“This is the perfect season for a trip,” Mr. Mishima said smoothly.
“You are a true artist,” Mr. Tanizaki summed up. “Your clear and open-minded answers have proved that. Of course we would not want to disturb you too much ...”
“Allow me to say, all the same, that the consulate of Japan and its personnel would be only too happy to serve you in any way in order to ensure the success of your literary project,” declared Mr. Mishima, vice-consul of the Land of the Rising Sun. He was a second away from calling it my “literary mission.” This was getting out of hand. If I surrendered the slightest authority over my work to them, even just a single comma, they would write the book for me. Behind their obsequious manners was an iron will. Whatever the reason, they wanted to control this book.
“We understand that artists hate it when governments want to involve themselves in their work,” Mr. Tanizaki added quickly, giving me a conspiratorial wink. “Naturally, you are completely free to say whatever you wish about Japan. I have been reading your books. I went right to the bookstore after I heard your declaration.”
“What declaration?”
“I was truly touched when I heard you come out and say, in the middle of that North American shopping center, that you were a Japanese writer.”
“I am not a Japanese writer. I’m writing a book called ‘I Am a Japanese Writer.’ That doesn’t make me a Japanese writer.”
“Excuse me, I’m a bit lost. Mr. Tanizaki, who is a specialist in literature, will surely understand what you mean.”
“Absolutely! That’s when it becomes interesting. It opens every possible perspective ...”
“Unfortunately, I have to go—I have another appointment,” I said, getting to my feet.
The two of them stood up so abruptly they almost knocked over the table. There were endless expressions of regret. I left with my soup untouched. I watched them for a moment from the street. They were talking so adamantly I thought they would come to blows.
THE EMPEROR REPRESENTS
time immemorial, that fabulous Japanese treasure that cast the author of
The Sailor Who
Fell from Grace with the Sea
into a state of vertigo. Mishima was so moved by the Emperor’s personification of time that he offered him his own death as a rhetorical flourish. He committed hara-kiri on November 25, 1970 in the company of his young lover. Perhaps death is sweeter when your eyes are fastened on the nape of a man’s neck, offered up to your gaze, or when the object of your desire finishes you off. Mishima wanted to eliminate the present by establishing Japan in the future perfect, a tense that lives only in grammar books. Fascists are obsessed with rules, which allow them to intervene in the passage of time. In the real world, the past can be bought with a single currency only, and that is death. One’s own death. What a strange bird that Mishima was! Interesting, but a little nutty around the edges. There’s something manga about hara-kiri. Mishima should be reread in the context of graphic novels. The whole world witnessed the scene on
TV
. Mishima immediately became a rock star, the first writer whose death was filmed according to his wishes. And so he was able to steal the thunder from his old master Kawabata. Kawabata might have won the Nobel Prize, but Mishima came to represent Japan itself. Watch out for intellectuals who lift weights until their eyeballs pop out. This double potency (a refined mind in a muscled body) can go to a person’s head. An intellectual who can put you down for the count will always end up haranguing a crowd, sleeves rolled up and bathed in sweat. Mishima’s crowd didn’t show up that day, though he wanted his death to lift up the nation’s youth. Youth, rising to its feet, singing the pure song of the people. Mishima’s crowd was sitting in front of the tv set. The seated crowd. The “sitting men” who provoked such disgust in Rimbaud. Mishima refused to accept the new values Japan had adopted after Hiroshima, and he wanted to return the Emperor, the last guardian of Time, to his former glory. But by trying to legitimize the Emperor, Mishima himself became the Empire of the Rising Sun for the length of time it took him to die. The shepherd who counts his sheep is also the guardian of sleep. Now that Mishima is dead, Japan sleeps on.
I EXIT DOWN
the fire escape to avoid the landlord, since I owe him two weeks’ rent. He’s Greek; hence my little jokes about the necessary relationship (even a philosopher has to eat) between Plato and souvlaki. He doesn’t know who Plato is. As a man of the sea, he’d likely be more interested in Ulysses. I couldn’t care less whether or not he knows who Plato is. I’m just trying to right the balance of power. He’s got me with money; I’ve got him with the mind. The fact that I know Plato doesn’t help me in any way whatsoever in our weekly confrontations. They come around much too fast. I’m supposed to pay the rent every Thursday, which I do at exactly ten minutes before midnight. That’s still Thursday, as far as I can tell. Then I settle in with Tolstoy in the bathtub. Only a guy on unemployment who’s paid his rent can read
War and Peace
without skipping any of the descriptions of the landscape. I’d add to this short list of marathon readers the secretaries who plough through Stephen King’s massive bricks with shawls around their shoulders because of the Arctic cold that reigns in the downtown office towers. Most people prefer slimmed-down books. “No more than two hundred pages or I won’t even crack the book,” a celebrated literary critic recently declared on German television. I belong to that group of people who don’t watch tv, but who can’t stop quoting it. It’s like a Chinese proverb: you can make it mean anything you want. You know that nobody can watch tv in every language, twentyfour hours a day. But let’s get back to the urgent business of me marshaling some resources this evening in order not to indispose my landlord. Sometimes I forget to pay the rent by avoiding my place on Thursday nights. I spend the evening in some crummy bar, watching the clock and imagining my landlord turning in circles like a caged beast. But when I do have the cash, I make a great show of my presence. I make a racket going up the stairs. I dance all by myself, making sure I’m right above his head, since I know he often stands by the window. On my seismograph, without even seeing him, I can trace his slightest movements. He always holds out for a while before knocking on my door. I open up and, before he can say a word, I trot out a quotation from Plato, ancient Greece’s intellectual superstar. He doesn’t know who I’m talking about; he figures Plato must be one of those bums who hang out in the park across the street. But the landlord is Greek, he must have heard Plato’s name at least once in his life. I’m almost proud of knowing a Greek who doesn’t know who Plato is. Besides, I can’t stand all that propaganda about Greek philosophers— give me an enigmatic Japanese poet any time.
“I won’t be able to pay you until later,” I tell him, not batting an eyelash. “Plato will be dropping by any minute now to pay back a debt.”
I always come out with long sentences when I talk to him. The less verbose the person is, the more pompous I become. I can’t stand taciturn people. They’ve got nothing in their heads: reactionary peasants, all of them—or old farts, if they happen to live in town. The landlord retreats, since only money interests him, whereas my wealth is in words. I can pay him his rent in words right on the spot, all the way to the end of the year. Ten minutes later, I hear him racing back up the stairs, no doubt suffering from a fit of panic—my crowns, my crowns!
“That friend of yours, that guy, he’d better pay you,” he stammered, out of breath.
“What guy?”
“Your Plato guy.”
“Play-doh is for kids. I’ve gone beyond that, haven’t you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Play-doh. If you ask me, it’s just occupational therapy. It keeps your hands busy and your mind empty. Like your worry beads.”
He took a step closer to me. He knew he was being insulted but he didn’t know exactly how.
“Play-doh, Plato—for you, it’s all the same.”
“Have you gone crazy?”
“I wouldn’t tell you if I had, would I? It’s up to you to decide if I’m crazy or not. Maybe so. . . Maybe not . . . Maybe so. . . Maybe not.”
I started dancing circles around him. He stalked off, more furious than before. People who are always furious impress me; I imagine them giggling to themselves on the sly. I have to find some way of spying on him when he’s alone in his room. Drill a discreet hole in the floor. I picture him sitting on the bed, watching a vhs tape of some old match between young Greek boxers who’ve been dead forever. One of them must come from his village . . . Maybe he’s a former folk dancer. I imagine him dancing, sweat running down his face. His legs: he is all legs. They are the heart of Greek folk dancing. My Zorba is dancing, his eyes straight ahead. Beneath his heels, the earth. At his feet: his people, his culture, his cuisine, his music and his woman. I can mock him all I want, he always has the last word. Sooner or later, I’ll have to fork over the dough. Plato can’t argue with that immutable fact.
IT’S ALWAYS THE
same thing. You think you’ve finished, then you have to start all over again. The imaginary producer wants a final scene. Why? The film’s too short. Besides, you don’t end a film with a question, he told me. Who says so? Money. Even imaginary money is irresistible. Where was I, again? Hideko’s secret. What’s her secret? Shame. The shame of loving a woman no one else loves. We start off by seeing her the way everyone else does. She’s ugly. She’s the one who must always sacrifice herself. Her sexuality is buried so deep she’s even stopped masturbating. She couldn’t find her sex if she tried. To masturbate, you need to imagine yourself with someone else, to take him against his will, or make him take you, kiss you, and this is an operation that demands a minimum of self-esteem. She doesn’t have it. Neither does she have any malevolence or ambition. She is a tree waiting to be watered. Nothing sexy about that. She knows nothing about power, and less about seduction. I’m not talking about Hideko, of course, but about the woman she loves. Her secret, her shame. Unlike her, there are those made beautiful by evil—like Lucretia Borgia, who tormented my teenage years. Evil is a strong spice. Hollywood has taught us that truly evil women are those who thirst after power. But first, they must be beautiful—like Fumi. Black hair, eyes like pools, full lips. Fumi doesn’t waste any energy. She will seduce only to get closer to the throne. Otherwise, she uses her mind. Unfortunately, the other girls do the opposite: they wear their ability to seduce down to the nub and keep their intelligence under wraps. The machine grows rusty, and they lose their resources at the very moment they need them most. Fumi is the most careful of them, as hard-working as an ant. Cinema, once again, has shown us the evil heroine’s detailed preparations for the big seduction scene. She unties her hair and it falls freely down her back. A flowing river. Her makeup is subtle; the evil heroine knows just what to do. She appears to pay no attention to her intimate apparel or to the shades of color she applies to her skin, but, in fact, she knows every perfume and every jewel on the market, the poetry of fabrics and the temperature of colors. She dresses elegantly, but without ostentation. The final touch is the makeup she applies to her soul. She becomes resplendent with goodness, and we pray it will be real. No man ever rejects her. A solution from above (the arrival of the angel of purity) always appears at the last minute to save the married man or the virtuous wife. No one ever points out that the femme fatale was already holding her conquest in her arms, and that he or she was already elsewhere, on the island of temptation. The ugly woman whom power tolerates at its side is quite different from this heroine. She plays the same role as the court jester. Sleepless Hideko, wandering down the hallway, comes upon Tomo in her room. The door is half-open because of the heat. Tomo doesn’t know she’s there. Hideko watches her reading Mishima—
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.
The strange story of a young counterfeit monk who finds himself in the presence of the Golden Pavilion, a marvel of balance and grace. The young monk refuses to share the universe with the Golden Pavilion, and decides to burn it to the ground. Hideko knows the story; it was her mother’s favorite book. Then this strange event occurs: Hideko falls suddenly in love with Tomo. Hideko retreats to her room, clutching her belly. She lies down on the floor and waits for sleep that does not come that night. What’s happening to me? And why me? Did it all start with my mother falling in love with a Mishima novel? Hideko scolds herself: no matter what, she must hide this weakness. Fumi, the black terror, must never know. She must be silenced before she can speak. And don’t imagine that an event like this could escape Fumi’s piercing eyes.