Almost Japanese

by Sarah Sheard

  I nodded.

  We are here. You get out here. He tapped his map with a pencil. Take east exit. Walk two blocks. To here. He tapped. You must buy ticket first. You like me to call?

  I nodded. How much are the tickets?

  You want best seat? Orchestra section?

  I nodded.

  He scanned the ad some more. Ah. Six thousand yen.

  I’d like to reserve one for tonight, please.

  He wrote it down.

  I call you. You want to pick up ticket at box office, before concert?

  He said concert just the way Akira used to. Cone-a-saht.

  Please.

  No problem.

  I went back upstairs to wash my hair, get flustered, get unflustered, organise my costume, do something with my eyes. I wanted to look terrific. Without looking conspicuous. Women didn’t wear much makeup here. They didn’t travel on the subway dressed to the nines.

  Oh, Marjorie, I wish you were here with me.

  Seven o’clock.

  I went out and ate dinner. I felt calm now. Unnaturally so. I pretended it was just another dinner for one at my Roppongi noodle house. Should I drink sake or not?

  I decided to have one tokkuri. A little carafe. To steady myself. To get loose enough to enjoy this exercise. I sucked the noodles in, cursing the way I was already beginning to revert to my old geeky self. Just as clumsy and self-conscious as ever. After a certain point, it was obvious, growing up wasn’t going to have any further effect on me. Years stacked on top of my experience could be peeled back like a sardine lid to reveal – voila! – the same little person peeking out from under. Floundering in the oil of her own foolishness.

  I looked at my watch. Seven-forty. Time to get changed.

  I got back to my room, peeled the cellophane off my dry-cleaning. A black dress. Stockings. Flat shoes. Hair pinned up. Not unlike the costume I had often worn backstage at home. Not so fancy that I got hopelessly self-conscious, nor so precarious that I was likely to trip or catch my sleeve on a doorknob. Appropriately subdued for this country.

  I took one last look in the mirror before locking the door behind me. Relax, Emma. If you don’t get to see him tonight, there’s always tomorrow. But I knew it had to be tonight.

  Oueno station was its typically nightmarish self with mysterious exits and sub-levels I always mistook for the one I wanted. Even though I thought I’d followed the concierge’s directions perfectly I had to stop and ask a passerby on the street. I showed her the newspaper clipping.

  Her face lit up. Ah so! Maestro Tsutsuma. Berlin Symphony Orchestra!

  She pointed.

  Two blocks. Not far. Her smile melted me. Everyone reminded me of A. right now.

  I thanked her and began to trot towards the hall.

  I found the box office and repeated my name at the window. Slid my yen through. The ticket was printed in Japanese.

  I was shown my seat and given a programme. And there was his face on the cover. Wow! He had aged. His hair was mostly grey now. Akira, your life has been rough on you. His face was lined around the eyes and mouth, fatigue lines that looked western.

  I scanned the programme. Dvorak’s fourth. My god. The last concert I’d ever seen him conduct. I had bought the record afterwards just so I could cry again over the oboe solo, trying to recall everything that night watching him on the podium, trying to memorise his gestures, clinging to him. Such clinging.

  People around me were fanning themselves with their programmes. Most people wore western dress. This was a western cultural event, after all, but a few old women wore formal kimono and obi. Nodding to one another, their fans tucked into their obis. It was a setting I had pictured to myself a thousand times and now it was –

  The hall darkened. A knife-thin figure darted onstage, pushing back a mop of hair with one hand, stooping slightly as he moved. He stepped up onto the podium, faced the audience and bowed. It was a Japanese bow. Deeper. A perceptible pause before coming up again. The audience applauded, then stopped abruptly. He had picked up his baton.

  How can I describe the feelings those opening bars brought back? An instant re-enactment of that moment, so long ago, when he had first walked onstage into my life. Look at him, Emma. Look at him. My eyes filled with tears, reconstituting cells I thought had long since died. And yet ...

  The concert was over. Akira waved the orchestra to its feet and bowed again, hand over heart. The audience loved him, their home-grown boy. They brought him back again and again and then finally the house lights came on and people began to gather up their things and make their way up the aisles to the doors.

  I jumped out into the aisle and swam upstream to the front of the stage where I found the side exit and the hallway leading to the backstage entrance. A guard stood in front of the door.

  Excuse me. I’d like to meet Maestro Tsutsuma. I said in Japanese.

  He held open the door for me and instantly an usher appeared on the other side. They whispered together and then the usher beckoned to me. This was going to be easier than I thought. I followed him down the labyrinth, past harp cases and percussion stands, players lounging about, their ties unravelled, smoking cigarettes, stagehands stacking chairs, gathering up scores. The usher pointed me towards a throng of people, all dressed very formally, holding large flower arrangements, standing outside the Maestro’s door. They looked like young musicians with their teachers or parents, everyone very nervous and excited, much shifting of the bouquets, clearing of throats. I realized again how much more famous Akira had become in the last few years, and especially over here. These people were preparing to meet a royal personage and their nervousness made me smile and almost relax. Maybe I was the only one who actually knew Akira – the guy. Whose car stalled on the hill in the winter. Who locked his dry-cleaning in the trunk and lost the key. Who laughed on the telephone and lost his balance, pushed the button down with his knee and disconnected himself. Who was on the other side of this very door.

  The crowd inched forward. I heard him long before I caught sight of him, greeting people as they came in, speaking rapid Japanese, his voice gravelly with fatigue. His end-of-tour voice. One by one, his fans re-emerged without their flowers, their faces glowing. I leaned against the wall, patient to be last. Finally, the usher signalled to me. My turn.

  I stood in the doorway, programme in hand. He was sitting, my solitary Shogun, surrounded by flowers, pen in hand. Blue kimono, hair glossy with sweat. I handed him my programme and he took it, glanced up for an instant and then back down. Then he looked up again. His face fell. A classic double take.

  Emma!

  Hello, Akira. I said.

  We talked for almost an hour. I asked him about his tour, his orchestra, life in Europe. He was a family man now. It had been in the papers back home. He asked about the street, had anything changed. Was I married and how were my parents. Catch-up talk that veered away from being very personal. Unconsciously, I found I’d reverted to the way I used to talk to him, in shortened, simple phrases, dropping the articles, as he did.

  From time to time, his Japanese manager peeked in, said something and disappeared again, leaving us to ourselves a little while longer. Finally he said, I must change.

  I stood up. He’d given me so much time already.

  You must be tired. I’ll leave you now.

  He took my hand and held it. Looked for a long time into my face.

  Are you happy? Your life, is it good?

  A shadow flitted across his face. It’s hard work being conductor. Always lots of meetings with management, lots of responsibility. Not enough sleep. I am tired often. He laughed. I am old man, Emma. Old, old man now. Please! You laugh at me!

  I couldn’t help it. I squeezed his hand.

  I should let you go.

  But Manager and some symphony people are going to dinner now. You must come. If you have time. I am so happy to see you, Emma.

  I nodded. I’d love to.

  But our intimacy was over. I knew e
xactly what the next two hours would be like. Akira as the gracious host-maestro. The cavalcade of cars to the restaurant, the seating arranged diplomatically, most important people next to him. The food and drinks pre-ordered for our group. The mixed up introductions in English and Japanese, most of the dinner spent making conversation with strangers on either side of me, musicians, the princes and princesses of culture inquiring eventually, what instrument did I play, or was I somehow, family, and he, the perfect host, always monitoring, leaning across to rescue me, putting me in context for them – She was old neighbour, small girl once, this big, – his hand indicating, his graceful, golden hand with flat nails – and now she is lovely young woman. Careful not to create any incorrect notion of our relationship.

  Yes, I could have added, once I was secretly in love with Akira. I used to keep a log of his comings and goings, the clothes he wore. I saved his hair. I once stood at the top of the street with a stack of records in my hand, waiting to ambush him coming home from rehearsal. When he moved away I thought my heart would break and I flipped out.

  And why had I come here? To tell him everything he had meant to me, how he had haunted my life? And for him to tell me why a man like him had befriended me in the first place, who I’d been to him? In order for me to separate the past from the present. I didn’t know. To kill Akira? Kill the Buddha! Shohokku, the Zen monk had shouted in the meditation hall. The moment He becomes an impediment to your practice, a concept instead of a real person.

  But here, seeing him again, I understood, finally, that that conversation was never meant to be. I didn’t need to know. And then it came over me – but by degrees, seeping into my hold, compartment by compartment.

  It was over.

  This dinner would end and I would go back to my hotel, put my costume away, get into bed. Tomorrow I would spend any way I liked, to follow my big feet down into the Shinjuku district and use up my last yen buying presents for my family and fly home. It was time to debrief. To move the needle to a new scratch.

  Suddenly I couldn’t wait to go. To say goodbye, and hail a cab out of here. I stood up.

  It’s late, I have to go now.

  He held out his hand.

  I came around the table and held it, conscious of the eyes on us. I squeezed it and let it go.

  Bye-bye.

  Bye-bye Emma. Thank you. You go back soon to Canada?

  Thursday afternoon.

  So soon. His eyebrows lifted. You must give your parents my best regards.

  I nodded. Of course.

  Auf Wiedersehen, Emma.

  I laughed. Auf Wiedersehen, Akira.

  Until I see you again.

  Special thanks to Peggy Atwood and

  Michael Ondaatje for their meticulous reading

  and Banzai! encouragement, Stan Bevington

  for blind faith, Val Frith for jasmine high teas,

  Maya Koizumi for lore, Masumi Suzuki for

  calligraphy, Roy Kiyooka for insisting I write

  from the heart and to D. Y. who shared the

  secrets of Discipline and Passion.

  Some sections of this have appeared in

  magazines – thanks to the editors of periodics,

  This Magazine and Scat. Thanks also to the

  Ontario Arts Council for its

  generous assistance.

  Cover photograph: Rick / Simon

  Any similarity between real persons or events

  and those depicted in this book

  is purely coincidental.