The Involuntary Sojourner

by S. P. Tenhoff

  Yeah. Us in-between people, I said. (I’ve started to like the name, by the way. In-between people.)

  Well, the results are inconclusive . . . He picked up a plastic action figure.

  Baku-baku chan, I told him. An anime character. It was big when I was a kid. She can like turn herself into a bomb. A love bomb. Hearts everywhere. She explodes and everyone stops fighting.

  He set it down. Obviously, there’s individual variation. And even if you . . . I can’t assume, I don’t want you to think you’re necessarily representative of all involuntary sojourners, he said.

  You said.

  I don’t know if I’m even representative of me, I said.

  I’m writing this so you’ll remember it Victor. In case you weren’t recording everything secretly.

  Oh. Don’t try to pet the dogs. I meant to tell you that at the market. I wish I could have helped. With whatever it is you needed from me. Good luck.

  This was to be L’s final entry. But we may as well dispense here with pseudonyms. “L” is gone; she was in a sense never there. She is Lauren. Let her be Lauren then. Shortly after the exchange recorded above—by “recorded,” the author is referring to Lauren’s own journal entry; naturally the author had not, for both ethical and legal reasons, recorded conversations without permission—Lauren disappeared. The author learned of this through a phone call received in his hotel room. The consulate, hoping to forestall the troubles which, it was felt, would inevitably arise if the Gandarvan government became aware of her disappearance, were conducting their own discreet search. It was believed that she was still in the country—her financial resources were limited, and consular officials were in possession of her passport. As the author, seated on the bed’s edge, alternately winding and unwinding telephone cord around index finger, explained repeatedly to the voice on the other end of the line that he had no idea of her whereabouts, he found himself wondering: were there, in the journal entries, foreshadowings of what was to occur, warnings ignored, clues—possibly even deliberately planted but in some manner encrypted—to where she might have gone? . . .

  These thoughts, these doubts, had not abated when, an hour later, the author entered her room at the consulate, having been allowed in by an official who promptly disappeared. Her journal was found on the desk, open to the final entry. Had she left it that way, as a kind of letter to the author? Or were consular officials the ones who had left it open there after searching the journal for information? The author read her final entry a number of times—good luck; good luck—and then proceeded to reread the entire journal. Finally it was closed and placed in the author’s backpack. Her bed was small and (one discovered upon reclining) rather uncomfortable. I wish I could have helped, she’d written. With whatever it is you needed from me. The ceiling plaster described patterns—lakes, isthmuses, tributaries; islands and peninsulas. Would she have seen these, noticed the same patterns, the same topography, as she lay staring upward as the author was doing?

  Tom the diplomat, shirtless, traditionally skirted, sandaled, swept into the room. He glanced over at the author, supine on the bed. A blue smear of paint transected his otherwise unlined forehead.

  “Right,” he said, crossing palms over chest in perfunctory Gandarvan greeting. “Her disappearance.” He leaned against the desk. “Worries aside—I’m worried, you’re worried, I think it’s safe to say we’re all worried—it’s a little thorny is the word I want. Professor Kalvan? Are you listening?”

  The author asked whether it was possible that Tom was in the habit of overusing the word “thorny.” Alternatives were suggested.

  “Professor, you are a regular walking thesaurus,” he said. “Very professorial. Which don’t think for a minute I don’t appreciate it, but is now the time would be my question. When the situation is less than ideal. Your situation, I mean. When I say ‘situation’ I mean the responsibility you’ve taken with respect to our compatriot. Or how the government here might interpret said responsibility. I mean, look, she’s not a child. You’re not her chaperone. Et cetera. It would be nice, Professor, to feel I have your undivided attention. The situation being what it is. A ball having been dropped. Which I say with all due respect and without finger-pointing. And she may still turn up. Or she will turn up, one way or the other. She may have gone on a little excursion. Unplanned. Seeing the sights. We can hope. Or maybe we’ll find her, safe and sound, or safe at least, wandering the aisles of that department store again. Perfect for us, in a way. Professor?”

  Why has there, until now, never been an incident such as this, a case of a subject “going native,” to borrow the term used by Tom the diplomat during the monologue which followed, the words emerging briefly from the clutter of distant noise that his monologue had otherwise become? One need look no further, perhaps, than the constant official scrutiny focused on the involuntary sojourner once discovered, scrutiny which would make slipping away into the host culture a near impossibility. Perhaps, given the opportunity, every involuntary sojourner would have behaved as Lauren did; perhaps the uniqueness of her case was due to nothing other than the “dropped ball” with respect to adequate supervision on the part of those (e.g., the author) responsible for her care. Unimpeded, does the process of involuntary sojourning end in complete integration, in a final merging with the culture to which a subject has been irresistibly drawn? Although one can’t avoid suspecting that Lauren’s disappearance was more, that it amounted to an attempt on her part to leave the author stranded mid-research, to deny him an opportunity to finally understand “in-betweenness.” Once again, the subject of a decade of the author’s professional life moves away; this time, however, out of sight altogether. (Offering those researchers, or one might as well say researcher, in the singular, by which the author is referring of course to Pflogg, offering him a marvelous gift in his efforts to discredit the author and his work.) Of course, her disappearance may have had nothing to do with the author. It is difficult, though, to imagine such a thing happening, for instance, to Takahashi; difficult to imagine him being called “weirdly intense” by a subject under his care; difficult to envision his aftershave lotion or smile receiving criticism. Takahashi’s smile the author found quite disarming when they finally met at a conference in Vancouver. Affable, tall, loose-limbed, full-bearded, Takahashi in the flesh was quite unlike the image one had formed of the man based on his written work. (Although isn’t that always the case?) The author approached him tentatively following his presentation, due in part to his formidable reputation, but also in part to concerns regarding a possible language barrier: Takahashi had presented entirely in Japanese, aided by a translator; all of his research over the years had been originally written in that language as well. His near-fluency in mellifluously British-accented English (not to mention the vigorous handshake in place of the expected bow) therefore took the author by surprise. This conversation, the one and only time the author and Takahashi actually met in person, led eventually to the collaborative effort Methodological issues in the investigation and analysis of Involuntary Sojourning Syndrome: An interdisciplinary perspective (2004), carried out long-distance via online correspondence.

  Was all of this somewhere in the author’s mind when he named Tokyo, spontaneously and seemingly at random, as his destination later that afternoon at the airport ticket counter? There were no more direct flights to the U.S. that day (which is to say today), and the author was impatient to leave the country as soon as possible after the meeting with Tom the diplomat and his menacing talk of responsibility. (Could the presence of soldiers lounging with their semiautomatic weapons near the magazine kiosk have also played a subliminal role?) Still, other destinations must have been available, destinations bringing him closer to his familiar world rather than in the opposite direction. When one finds oneself suddenly presenting behavior consistent with the DSM-IV criteria for panic disorder, or possibly instead symptoms of delirium caused by the bacterial or viral infectio
n which the author suspects has been plaguing him almost since his arrival, it becomes difficult to assess accurately one’s own intentions, however much one tries as one sits here in the departures terminal, hurriedly typing these words and hoping they are coherent while awaiting the boarding call for the flight to Tokyo. Certainly, there is a curious sense that the impulse to leave comes from outside oneself rather than from within, as if this country itself is, whether through induced panic or microbial invasion, expelling the author, casting him out, a foreign body being purged by the Gandarvan immune system . . .

  Is this what the in-between people experience: a simultaneous sense of being cast out and drawn in as they make the journey from home to host culture that they can later never recall?

  One is tempted here to write ENTRY 1. The subject, which is to say me, or rather I, I could be Subject 2, or if Lauren were changed in the article above to Participant A, I could become Participant B. Or VK. Or simply V. (I’m too tired at the moment to devise a pseudonym.)

  Any minute now the boarding call. I will board the plane. I’ll behave normally. I’ll find my seat, make myself comfortable, fasten my seat belt when instructed, avail myself of peanuts and let’s say penne pasta Bolognese and even request a glass of wine; I’ll choose two or three films from among the in-flight entertainment provided; I’ll present my passport to an immigration official upon arrival; leaving Narita airport, I’ll hail a taxi. (Let Pflogg sue me for plagiarism.) On the ride into Tokyo I’ll think of Lauren: What was she thinking on her own taxi ride into Vivasha? Was she thinking? How does one render oneself into a trance state? Or can one be in a trance state already without realizing it? Can actions, seemingly conscious and deliberate, in fact be the product of an impulse one can’t understand? Or would one only be pretending? “To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.” Whose words? Foucault’s? Derrida’s? Pflogg’s? I can provide no citation at the moment. No name, no year, no page number . . .

  Then out of the taxi, lugging luggage. Or wait: no: no luggage—I’ve left it behind in the Vivasha hotel room, too late now. Any minute the boarding call. I’ve embarked (voluntarily?) on this sojourn without luggage, with only my “jingling and jouncing” backpack.

  Out of the taxi then, having been dropped off on a random street. Is that what they do, the in-between people: choose a random location? Or is their destination predetermined, according to rules, forces, principles they needn’t understand? Around me office buildings perhaps. Tokyo after all. Through windows I’ll see workers at desks, segmented into vertical strips by ivory blinds. I’ll walk.

  To walk without purpose. To find your purpose in the walking . . .

  The sky will gray, clear, gray again. People will pass through glass doors. Then I’ll be inside as well.

  To actually do the thing, I pretend: I have therefore only pretended to actually do the thing.

  A woman (in a lemon-colored uniform?) will bow and say something—a greeting—as I enter. Will I know what she’s saying? Will the Kalvan Effect come to the rescue? I will bow in return; or maybe not; whichever I do, it will be right; or she’ll smile, or rather smirk, a momentary flaw, an instant of failure in the composure of her face, informing me of my faux pas.

  Then aisles. Jewelry. Accessories. Escalator. More aisles. Handbags. To pretend to pretend. Children’s clothing. Where do I stop? Will I know?

  The sporting goods section, let’s say. As good a place as any. Fishing rods, lures, I-don’t-know-what. I’ve never been a fisherman. The fish would pound and paddle at my feet, flapping silver things beating themselves against the duller silver of my grandfather’s boat, their flapping at the same time desperate and mechanical . . . I wasn’t allowed to throw them back . . .

  The boarding call. No more time.

  The Takahashi Loop is a figure-eight pattern representing a closed loop, interrupted only when the involuntary sojourner, passing hooks, nets, fishing vests, is addressed or physically restrained—by Takahashi himself perhaps, come to pursue his research, to take his new subject away, at which point—final boarding call—at which point, pattern disturbed, the subject wakes up, becoming

  About the Author

  S. P. TENHOFF’s writing has appeared in Conjunctions, the Gettysburg Review, American Short Fiction, the Southern Review, the Antioch Review, Ninth Letter, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and elsewhere, and has been excerpted on Longform.org. He is a recipient of the Editor’s Reprint Award and Columbia University’s Bennett Cerf Memorial Prize for Fiction. His short fiction has been selected as a finalist for the Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction, among other awards. The Involuntary Sojourner was a finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize and the Autumn House Fiction Prize.

  About the Publisher

  SEVEN STORIES PRESS is an independent book publisher based in New York City. We publish works of the imagination by such writers as Nelson Algren, Russell Banks, Octavia E. Butler, Ani DiFranco, Assia Djebar, Ariel Dorfman, Coco Fusco, Barry Gifford, Martha Long, Luis Negrón, Peter Plate, Hwang Sok-yong, Lee Stringer, and Kurt Vonnegut, to name a few, together with political titles by voices of conscience, including Subhankar Banerjee, the Boston Women’s Health Collective, Noam Chomsky, Angela Y. Davis, Human Rights Watch, Derrick Jensen, Ralph Nader, Loretta Napoleoni, Gary Null, Greg Palast, Project Censored, Barbara Seaman, Alice Walker, Gary Webb, and Howard Zinn, among many others. Seven Stories Press believes publishers have a special responsibility to defend free speech and human rights, and to celebrate the gifts of the human imagination, wherever we can. In 2012 we launched Triangle Square books for young readers with strong social justice and narrative components, telling personal stories of courage and commitment. For additional information, visit www.sevenstories.com.