by Kenzaburo Oe
One afternoon, after Kogito had finished both his formal lecture and the subsequent Q-and-A session with students known as office hour, he had just stepped out into one of those typically dark, overcast Berlin afternoons, where the sun isn’t really shining but doesn’t seem quite ready to set, either, when he heard the familiar voice of a Japanese female calling his name.
In short order, the woman caught up with him as he walked down the narrow road, which was piled high on both sides with plowed snow. She looked rather odd, wrapped in a heavy greatcoat that fell nearly to her ankles, but even though Kogito had been approached by a large number of people during his stay in Berlin, he remembered this person immediately, with her cryptic talk of a Mädchen für alles and her curiously puffy, oblong harmonica mouth.
“I hope you won’t mind if I keep you company while you’re riding home on the bus,” the woman said. “Though I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to say everything I want to in such a short time.” Without waiting for a reply she fell into step beside Kogito, so close that their shoulders were almost touching. And then, abruptly, her previously polite way of speaking changed into a style somewhere between inappropriate intimacy and outright intimidation. “Just as I thought, you don’t have any sort of assistant or Mädchen für alles yourself, do you?” she demanded. “I’ve tried telephoning you a number of times at the office, but even when the switchboard forwards the call to your apartment, there’s never any answer!”
During all his years in Tokyo, Kogito had hardly ever been subjected to this sort of behavior: having someone lie in wait for him, then brashly invite themselves to keep him company. In Berlin, though, it took a good ten minutes to walk to the bus stop from the Free University’s classroom buildings (which, as mentioned before, were in a residential district), and Kogito seldom walked alone on his customary route, which involved trudging down the slope of a wide, shallow former pond that had, at some point, been drained and turned into a park, then climbing up the path on the other side. Most often, he was accosted by students who still had questions about the lecture he’d just given; other times, he was joined by Japanese expatriates who were auditing his class or young journalists from Taiwan who were living in Berlin and sending articles back to publications in Taipei. If he could just manage to get past his instinctive negative reaction to the intrusions, he sometimes ended up feeling that the ensuing conversations weren’t entirely meaningless.
As for this vivacious person who was marching along beside him with long strides, kicking up the hem of her ankle-length overcoat: although she was clearly the same person who had first approached him on the night of the panel discussion, on this day she seemed very different from that rather glum, tired-looking Japanese woman, teetering on the brink of late middle age. Indeed, she reminded him of a certain type of local woman he often saw around Berlin, standing on some street corner waiting impatiently for the light to change—extremely energetic and completely self-centered. The things she said when she approached him this time had an aggressive edge that seemed to be in keeping with her costume and even with her way of striding along, like a man.
“You hear this a lot here,” she said, after she had finished berating him for not answering his phone every time it rang. “The German people I’ve been around often say that Japanese people talk too much about personal matters—even the writers and film directors who have given public talks here. I’ve had my doubts about that, but after hearing your lecture today I found myself thinking they were right. Maybe it’s just because you are who you are, but you really do seem to talk an awful lot about your private life.”
“As you know, my English pronunciation can be hard to follow, so I’ve been distributing copies of lectures that I’ve given in the past at universities in America,” Kogito responded. “Then, while reading those lectures aloud to the class, I incorporate additions and digressions, rather like footnotes. When the text is something with a hard context, I add personal notes from time to time in the hopes of softening the lecture a bit.”
“I sat in on your lecture today, and I noticed that the text you used was the same speech you gave in Stockholm,” the woman said. “That lecture began with some personal reminiscences, right? You started off by talking about the music composed by your disabled son, Akari, and from there you extrapolated into universals. It was very moving, but I suspect that there are some Germans who might feel that it was more than they wanted to know about your personal life. Too much information, as they say.”
“No doubt you are entirely correct about that,” Kogito said stiffly.
They had reached the basinlike bottom of the slope, and the notoriously frigid Berlin wind was swirling around them. Kogito’s head felt feverish from the strain of having been forced to speak English (not his strong point) for two solid hours, and the radical disparity between that cerebral heat and the profound chill that permeated his body left him feeling somehow detached, as if he were suspended in midair between the two extremes. The woman evidently sensed his discomfort and adroitly changed the subject.
“There’s a high place over there, where the snow is still piled up because no one steps on it. Down at the bottom, a woman is walking her dog—do you see? And the man she’s with is sitting on a big, round boulder? They say that rock was dislodged by a glacier somewhere around Norway, and it ultimately ended up tumbling all the way down to Germany.”
“That one rock came all the way from Norway, by itself?”
“That hardly seems likely,” the woman retorted. “Surely there must have been others.”
When their climb brought them to an overpass above the train tracks, Kogito spotted a tall bus approaching in the far distance, but he couldn’t very well say an abrupt good-bye and sprint off to catch it. Office hour had ended around four o’clock, and he knew that this bus ran only three times an hour, so he resigned himself to being trapped in a prolonged conversation with this woman while he waited for the next one to come along.
That was when the woman got down to business. “I wanted to introduce myself again, properly,” she began. “Please don’t lose this one.” As she spoke, she thrust a business card in the direction of Kogito’s sternum. She evidently expected him to be less than eager to accept it, because she held on to the card for a few extra seconds even after he had it firmly in his hand.
“I think you’ve probably heard about me from Goro, by my former name,” she continued. “The name I’m using now is a combination of my own surname and that of my current husband. He came here from what used to be East Germany, and he’s involved in the redevelopment of the East Berlin area. Let’s just say he’s in the real-estate business. But he’s very cultured, and from the beginning he has been very good about allowing me to continue doing my own work, without restrictions.
“One important aspect of my work is still in progress, but perhaps you might have heard something about it from Goro? In any case, there are some very talented people in the new generation of German filmmakers—following in the footsteps of Volker Schlöndorff, the famous director—and the plan was to have some of them work on bringing one of Goro’s screenplays to life. And then that heartbreaking thing happened to Goro ...
“Anyway, as I told you before, that whole thing with the tabloids was the revenge of the Mädchen für alles—the girl Friday from hell. All that turmoil and scandal caused poor Goro to suffer so much. Be that as it may (and quite aside from the earlier work that Goro and I did together) I really do feel, after all is said and done, that Goro meant to entrust me with his posthumous request, and I’m determined to make this project happen. He even sent his written declaration of intent, both by fax and in a personal letter. Anyway, there’s someone I’d like you to meet, in connection with that project. He is a very distinguished man in film circles, one generation older than the director whose name I mentioned a while ago, Schlöndorff. The current generation of filmmakers values him as a master and a mentor. At present he has stopped making movies and is concentrating his
energies on philosophical writing. However, he’s still involved in creating a long-form series for serious television. This illustrious person is interested in making a new program, focusing on Goro’s life and work. As part of that process, he told me that he is very eager to do a one-hour interview with you while you’re in Berlin. The time has been tentatively set for next Sunday morning, and, on the assumption that you would be free then, I went ahead and talked to a professor of Japanese studies at the university. He agreed to come along as your interpreter, so how about it? Will you join us?” Overwhelmed by the torrent of persuasion, Kogito could only nod in silent agreement.
“You will?” The woman looked surprised. “That’s great. Thank you very much. So the plan is, we’ll stop by your apartment on the day in question and take you directly to the meeting place. It’s a famous hotel, right on Potsdam Square, where they’ll be holding the Berlin Film Festival starting next week. Come to think of it, Goro showed his films in that festival from time to time, didn’t he? That really takes me back. Anyway, your interview will take place in the main hall—as I mentioned just now, the director who will be handling it is very distinguished, so the powers that be are allowing him to use the large hall for filming.
“Unfortunately, the delegation of Japanese movie people won’t yet have arrived in Berlin. If our appointment were a few days later, I would have been able to introduce you to some very famous celebrities. That’s really a shame—although on second thought perhaps it’s just as well, since I’ve heard that you’ve been keeping your distance from everyone in the film industry for some time because of your relationship with Goro.”
The bus stop was just a square pillar with a sign that read H. On the other side, down the hill, was another, much larger park; Kogito had never been there, but he knew that it was the location of the university’s medical school and the renowned Max Planck Institute. As he stood there being buffeted by the icy wind, he had long since given up trying to hold his own against this insistent woman (whose name, according to her business card, was Mrs. Mitsu Azuma-Böme). All he could do was listen in silence to her relentless chatter, which made him think, ruefully, about the old saying: “No matter how bad your aim, if you fire off enough bullets you’re bound to hit something eventually.”
Contrary to this Azuma-Böme woman’s supposition, Kogito had no recollection of ever having heard anything about a plan for a German director to make a film based on one of Goro’s original screenplays. He thought it likely that Goro, who was somewhat weak-willed (or, more charitably, softhearted) and hated to say no to anyone, might simply have been unable to summon the energy to resist this woman’s blandishments.
The likelihood increased if you considered the possibility (again, this was wild surmise) that Goro might have had some kind of involvement with the woman’s daughter and that relationship had become complicated and problematic. What Kogito did remember hearing spoken of as a certainty, while Goro was still alive, was a plan to take the American profits from Goro’s most recent hit movie, bank those funds in Los Angeles, and then embark on a new film project there, using local actors and crew.
If that was the case, given that Germany had always warmly embraced Goro’s films, with box-office numbers second only to those they racked up in America, it was entirely possible that Goro had thought about setting up a similar project with a German cast and crew.
On top of that—this was something that happened three years earlier, immediately after Goro’s last sojourn in Berlin—Kogito remembered hearing that there were some young German film students who wanted to take the movie Goro had made from one of Kogito’s novels (Der stumme Schrei, in German), dismantle it, and reassemble it as an experimental film. At that time, Goro had also asked Kogito whether he would need to be paid for the right to use the film or whether he might be inclined to let the young scholars use it for free.
This conversation took place on an evening when Goro, Chikashi, and Kogito, along with their assorted offspring, went on a rare group outing to have dinner in Roppongi. On that night, Kogito wasn’t able to do anything more than listen to Goro’s proposition and promise to think about it later. That was because Chikashi openly criticized the plan, pointing out that it was uncommonly inconsiderate of them not only to ask Kogito, the novelist, to allow his work to be used without any payment for the film rights, but also to give carte blanche for the work of art to be freely taken apart and rearranged. After Chikashi’s tongue-lashing, Goro retreated into a timid, cowed silence, but Kogito remembered having the distinct feeling that Goro hadn’t come up with that idea on his own.
Under the cloudy Berlin skies, with dusk darkening into evening—it wasn’t long past 4 PM, but it already felt like night to Kogito—the tall double-decker bus finally hove into sight, pitching and rolling like a ship at sea. Kogito started to say his polite good-byes to the woman but she winced, and the expression on her small face, enveloped in that cloud of unnaturally black hair, suggested that he had done something terribly rude.
“Don’t worry,” she said coldly. “I’m not planning to follow you all the way to your apartment. This same bus goes to Potsdam Square. Didn’t you know that? Were you afraid that I was going to start acting like some crazy Mädchen für alles or something? How would you have dealt with that?”
Huffily, Mrs. Azuma-Böme clambered quickly onto the bus and began to ascend the steep, twisting staircase to the second deck. Kogito somehow ended up following her, and they sat down side by side on the right side of the front row. He found it difficult to say anything to the woman, for fear that her present fierce silence might revert at any moment to the equally intense loquacity she had displayed at the bus stop, so he just stared out the window at the grocery stores and other shops that were just beginning to buzz with early-evening activity.
The bus approached Rathenauplatz, and at the point where Kogito could look out over the lively bustle of Ku’damm from his high second-floor seat, he bowed to Mrs. Azuma-Böme and started to descend the stairs alone. She returned his bow with an authoritative nod, bobbing the mass of hair whose inky blackness looked so incongruous on someone her age, and two perfectly straight parallel lines appeared where her lips should have been. Once again, Kogito had the illusion that the woman was holding a small harmonica in her mouth.
As he waited to cross a wide boulevard, heading toward the bus stop where he would transfer to his final conveyance, Kogito looked up at the already black sky, then lowered his eyes to monitor the color progression of the stoplight. That’s when it hit him.
“Aha!” he said out loud, more like a sigh than an exclamation, as he put two and two together. (Soliloquizing to himself in public was a habit that always seemed to be resurrected whenever he was living abroad.) But wait—did the “scandal girl” whose photograph had been splashed across the cover of the tabloid magazine really resemble the woman with the harmonica mouth? Everyone said that photo was a deliberate setup staged by the girl and her unsavory boyfriend, who worked for the tabloid publisher, but in any case that was definitely Goro sitting next to her, looking uncommonly depressed.
If, indeed, the girl in the picture (the purported M. für alles) had the same harmonica mouth as her mother—two straight, parallel lines—and if Goro had nicknamed her “Bean Harmonica” ... Well, Kogito thought, my powers of observation regarding women never could hold a candle to Goro’s gifts in that area. Yet Goro’s extraordinary perceptiveness had almost never prompted him to avoid (much less run away from) trouble with women.
And that, too, was classic Goro.
CHAPTER TWO
This Fragile Thing
Called Man
1
Kogito taught at the Free University twice a week, and on the other weekdays he went there to eat lunch with his colleagues. But he spent the majority of his time in Berlin by himself, and one of the things he thought about in his solitude was how many times his conversations with Goro had turned, over the years, to the subject of suicide. That topic cropped
up frequently in the Tagame talks, as well. Of course, ever since Goro jumped to his death Kogito hadn’t had the slightest desire to talk about suicide—indeed, avoiding that subject was one of the cardinal Rules of Tagame. On the other hand, Goro himself had freely discussed that very topic on the tapes.
“From the first time I met you in Mat’chama, I felt that I was destined to play a certain role in your life,” Goro said on one recording. “There’s no way of saying whether I played that role effectively or not; maybe the ‘problem’ was all in my mind, and I was just wrestling with myself—doing one-man sumo, as the saying goes. In any case, when our circumstances changed and we weren’t seeing each other as often as before, there were people who came along and assumed that role in my stead. Still, it might not have been entirely my imagination that you needed looking out for. I mean, the people who took over that role from me weren’t freewheeling yakuza-hipster types like me.” (The self-deprecation was typical Goro, and so was the hyperbole.) “You’ll probably deny this right off the bat, if only because you have a deep-seated tendency to be contrarian, but the truth is you’ve really been a very blessed human being. Now that you’re within hailing distance of your sixties, isn’t it about time to get rid of the basso ostinato in your way of living? You know what I mean: the bass notes of your relentless self-mockery.”
When Goro started talking about his predestined role in Kogito’s life, Kogito always wondered whether Goro was really trying to say that he had been Kogito’s tutor and mentor and, apparently, his guardian angel, too. But then he realized that a thought like that was exactly the sort of naïve oversimplification that deserved to be subjected to self-ridicule. At that point, he pressed the STOP button and asked, “Now that you and I hardly ever see each other anymore, who do you think has taken your place?”