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by Nina Schuyler


  She finds a seat near the front, on the aisle, and skims the program. Moto, who has appeared in over 2000 productions, a Japanese treasure, on and on. A Noh play depicts one sweeping emotion that dominates the main character. As in life, words often fail to adequately express emotion, so Noh fuses music, dance, costume, song, and mask. She glances through the texts of the plays; though most Japanese already know the plays, the text is provided for people like her, word-bound, because even native Japanese-speakers don’t understand the words sung by the actors and chorus.

  Before she can read the first play, the lights flick on and off. Renzo scurries over, takes the seat beside her, and squeezes her hand. “Here we go.”

  Four musicians shuffle onto the stage. The theater darkens and a flute fills the theater with a spectral sound. Minutes later, drums join in and a rhythm emerges, the flute flinging off light, airy notes, and the drums thudding low. But before the rhythm becomes predictable, the tempo changes, one drum beats faster, more insistent, demanding. She settles into it, but then it changes again—a beat goes missing, as if it found something better to do.

  The music lulls like a habit, then disturbs. But given time, even the unexpected becomes predictable. This goes on for a while, a long while, and she listens, anticipating the disturbance, guessing when the music will change, guessing right nearly every time. Soon this game becomes tiresome. She looks around to see who’s fallen asleep. On the other side of the aisle, a gray-haired man’s chin is pressed to his chest; the slow steady rise and fall of his shoulders keeps its own beat. Someone two seats in front of him has assumed the same pose. She closes her eyes. She hears Renzo’s raspy exhale. She listens to that. Then back to the music. Renzo’s exhale, the music. Back and forth until she’s sliding through memories, one after another, landing at her old desk, once her mother’s, made from the sturdy boards of a German cargo ship. As she worked, Hanne used to rub her fingers against the grain, back and forth, the good years, thick and pronounced; the bad years, barely discernable to her fingertips. But her fingers knew and she heard the hum underneath her translation, a bad word choice, a good choice, a bad, a good, imprecise, perfect, horrid, perfect, dreadful, dreadful that diamond stud in Brigitte’s left nostril that provoked and gleamed and dared, dared Hanne to say something, anything about it. “You’re only fourteen,” said Hanne, trying to use a level voice. “Get that thing out of your nose.”

  Brigitte stood in the doorway, expressionless. Hanne was so tired of the fighting, the sniping. Hanne looked at Brigitte’s unwashed greasy hair, her dirty white T-shirt, her baggy sweatpants. How had her daughter become so thin? So unkempt? To herself she quoted Keats, “Much have I traveled in the realms of gold, and many goodly states and kingdoms seen.” Why must Brigitte forsake everything she’s been given, that Hanne labored to give her? Out of love, mind you, to show you your wealth of possibilities.

  Renzo bumps her elbow. Hanne opens her eyes. A whispered apology. No one new on stage, nothing has happened. She stares at the stage. Friends had often insisted she see a Noh production—you know the language, of all people, Hanne, you’d appreciate it. She doesn’t understand a word. Why did she let Brigitte’s physical appearance bother her so much? A faulty assumption that slovenliness meant laziness and the puncturing of her nostril meant disrespect. It all seems so mortifyingly trivial now. How small of her to care how Brigitte looked. How unkind, how unloving, because Brigitte—she’s thinking of Moto’s three-day stupor now—must have been trapped in grief over the loss of Hiro. And in need of Hanne. Not her firm hand or harsh rebukes. Or banishment across the country. That’s how Brigitte saw it, according to Tomas. Hanne abandoned her in her time of need. And what did she need? Something far more generous, Hanne sees that now.

  Hanne tries to concentrate. The music changes, the flute is gone. As she stares at a musician’s shiny white shirt, her mind drifts again; then out of nowhere, the image of a white bowl of blueberries being rinsed under tap water. The tap water comes out orange brown. Rust in the pipes. What memory is this?

  The flute rejoins the drums, like a wisp of a woman weeping.

  Blueberries in a white bowl. How to translate that? In a white bowl, blueberries. Blueberries. In a white bowl. A bowl of blueberries. Her mind rearranges the words until finally she sees herself, seven or eight years old, sitting on the sun porch eating a bowl of blueberries, doing a crossword puzzle. Her father sat next to her smoking his pipe, the air filling with the scent of cloves, his lips kissing the pipe stem. The faucet ran in the kitchen, and from her parents’ back bedroom a radio played something slow. Hanne put a spoonful of sweet berries in her mouth and bit each one separately, telling herself to remember this moment, sitting in the warm air, next to her father, her mother inside, humming something sweet in German, remember life could contain this extraordinary happiness, and that it would eventually disappear. Later, she looked back at herself and marveled at her clairvoyance. Soon after that bowl of blueberries, she and her parents moved again. She remembers weeping, “I don’t want to go.” Which was dismissed with silence. She was once again taken away from her few friends whom she had so patiently and carefully courted.

  Compared to what has previously occurred, what follows on stage is a frenzy of activity: eight men file onto the main stage, carrying colorful fans, and sit with their legs tucked beneath them. Expressionless, their faces reveal nothing.

  With a swish of silk, an actor finally steps onto the bridge in a black robe patterned with white squares. He wears the old man’s mask, with a wrinkled, gray complexion, a topknot of gray. His white-socked feet skate along the floor, his upper trunk slightly ahead of his lower, as if there is an invisible force urging him along. It’s Moto’s manner of moving—is it him?

  The old man on the bridge raises his arm and the chorus begins to chant. “Yo! Oh! Oh!” The voices fall at the end of each of the sounds in a monotonous cadence. And then more sounds, incomprehensible with the dragged vowels, the strange enunciation that resembles the chanting of an ancient Greek tragedy. She can’t make sense of it, as if she’s been sent to a foreign country and doesn’t speak the language, and there is no hope of learning it.

  The old man skates back and forth on the bridge, as if the air has currents that sweep and circle him. The chorus chants its gibberish and minutes go by, though it feels like hours. Finally, another actor emerges on the bridge in the mask of a young woman. The actor sings something in a low monotone voice. Except for the mask and costume, she’s no different than the other actor. Her song, if it can be called that, is a shredding of words into their fundamental elements of sound and air. Hanne gropes for something, a word. It must be archaic Japanese. She steals a glance at Renzo. He’s smiling, nodding, visibly enjoying the performance.

  After some effort—that back-and-forth motion—the two actors finally make it to the stage. She peeks at her watch. An hour! Something should happen now. But the actors glide and whirl, waving their fans, the monotonous beat of the drums, the moaning vowels. There seems no point. It’s akin to watching someone cook, fold laundry, read the newspaper, on and on, until the day dims and dies out and it’s time for bed. There is no crescendo; nor, she suspects, will there be one. Closing her eyes, she wills herself to think of something pleasant.

  Swimming, of all things, she finds herself in her mind swimming. The waves are choppy, the water ice green-blue. She’s floating, drifting, staring at the cloudless blue sky. When she turns on her stomach, there’s no sight of land, blue sky and ice green water—how did she float so far? Moto appears beside her. He nonchalantly nods hello.

  How did we get out so far? she says, trying to keep fear from her voice.

  He shakes his head. Don’t know.

  Which way is land?

  He shrugs.

  Which way are you going? she says.

  This way.

  Why? She hopes he says land, safety, she’ll be safe if she follows him.

  Current’s going this way.

 
She must have dozed because when she opens her eyes again, new actors populate the stage, different costumes and masks, but it might as well be the same play. The same movement, the same dull droning of words. Is Moto on stage?

  The play grinds on. During intermission, she’s supposed to rave to Renzo about the stunning costumes, the captivating dances. Thankfully, Renzo is surrounded by friends who are doing just that. She overhears someone say Moto has yet to appear.

  She steps outside, hoping the fresh air will ease her irritation and wake her up. Rain floats down, a soft misty rain. How little space between things, she thinks, growing more agitated and annoyed. Every single building abuts another building, and the sidewalks are so narrow that people must crowd, bump shoulders, jostle and almost collide, murmur apologies, and the alleyways are crammed with more shops, more signs, more carts and vending displays, more and more people.

  She steps back inside and waits in the lobby. Before the lights turn off, she reads the title of the fourth play, The Bridge to Nowhere. It’s a new play, not part of the traditional repertoire. Bare bones of a story: a woman’s son runs away to the big city to seek his fortune, only to end up living on the street. She turns again to the front of the program. Noh is the display of yugen or quiet beauty. A nebulous, mysterious word, she thinks. “Yu,” she knows, means dark, phantom-like, and “gen,” subtle and profound.

  When the lights flicker, she sighs and returns to her seat. An old man comes onto the bridge. Him again, she thinks, rolling her eyes. She looks around. The audience is Japanese, and they are, for the most part, alert now. Possibly even enjoying this. She couldn’t feel more alien in this moment. Arrogant of her to profess that she understands the Japanese. One of their oldest art forms and she doesn’t have a clue. Then she thinks she hears the word “depraved.” She decides the old man is depraved and perhaps deranged because of the odd angle of his mouth, with its slackened lower jaw. He, too, moves in that strange way, which, by now, looks familiar, so familiar that she wonders if she began walking now, walking right out of here, she’d float along in the same manner.

  More time passes before the second actor appears. Again it takes a while to make out a single word. “Beggar.” He’s the beggar. Then she hits gold; in quick succession, she hears “clouds,” “mist,” “obscure.” A speck of satisfaction surges, and she tries to draw it out, savor it.

  Now there’s the haunting music to contend with. Again she’s lost the lexicon. One of the drums sounds like raindrops hitting a steel roof. Is it supposed to signify rain? It probably means absolutely nothing.

  Her only consolation: after this one, there’s only one more play, then she can leave.

  The air suddenly turns charged. The theater swells with the stillness of stunned absorption. She opens her eyes. The theater is silent except for the rustle of silk as someone moves on the bridge in the same stylized fashion as the other actors, but not like the others because he’s barely moving at all, yet there’s a force to his being, a magnetism that grabs and holds the eye, her eye.

  She sits at the edge of her seat, her heart pounding. It’s Moto, she has no doubt. Wearing a sumptuous robe of bright gold, embroidered with orange and red fans. His mask is smooth, with arched eyebrows, and his mouth slightly open, revealing white teeth. Black strands of hair fall in curls on his smooth forehead. She recognizes the mask, that of a beautiful young boy. He looks like the embodiment of purity, of innocence, of vulnerability.

  “Look at him,” whispers Renzo, a white shine to his voice. “Do you see him?”

  Moto glides over to a post along the bridge and gazes at the actors on the main stage, his mouth at a palsied slant. He seems to be emoting longing. But how? He’s wearing a mask. Raising his arms over his head, he opens his mouth, or so it seems, and out comes metal scraping against metal. Is he beseeching the beggar? The old man? What does he want?

  Moto edges toward the main stage, but before he reaches it, he stops. Somehow the expression on his mask changes. He looks out toward the audience, his eyes seem to open wide, as if searching, and calls out—what? From the strain in the chant, it sounds like he’s asking for help.

  An anxious stillness grips the theater as everyone waits for an answer. It’s as if a spell has been cast. She can’t take her eyes off Moto, his mask is moving as if it’s made of real skin. Pinpricks of perspiration seem to appear on the boy’s upper lip and now tears run down his face.

  She’s glued to this moment, to Moto not as Moto but as a young boy. He raises the fan above his head, slowly opening it as if each newly unveiled fold contains the hidden meaning of everything. Hanne holds her breath. A brown fan with six white birds. Meaning? Meaning what? His voice is ringing out, vibrating the air molecules; it rings and rings, then slowly fades, dies out. There is no answer. The boy’s face crumples. Hanne feels something lurch inside.

  The beggar and the depraved man beckon to Moto to come over, promising to tend to his needs. Or maybe they don’t. From the strange shrieks and silences, Hanne feels herself making up the words, a story, trying to hold on to something familiar. Moto glides onto the main stage, and the depraved man moves close, too close. Scrapes a long fingernail along his cheek. When the boy cringes and shrinks away, so does Hanne. A chill runs through her, then settles as a hard ball in her stomach. The old man and the beggar circle the boy, leering, running their hands over his pure gold robe. Run away, thinks Hanne. Go!

  The frightened boy stands perfectly still, but at the same time motion sweeps over him, and now he’s whirling around, then plummeting to the ground, whirling, plummeting, caught up in some sort of chaotic wind. She can’t say how he’s standing still, and at the same time generating a flurry of frenzied movement. The beggar and the old man back away, as if the boy has gone crazy and is giving off some horrible scent. The scent of fear and anguish, thinks Hanne.

  “We are sundered,” the chorus sings, “O sorrow: Nothing else remains.”

  When Moto finally sings along with the chorus, she falls into his voice, as if it’s calling out to her, only her, falls all the way into the agony.

  What follows is a blur. The final play—a demon with a red mask moving around, other characters, that’s all she remembers. When it’s over, Renzo murmurs something about a restaurant across the street. She hears herself tell him she wants to sit a moment longer. To gather herself, she thinks. But what needs gathering? What has been sundered?

  The rest of the audience clears out and the theater is empty. She hears someone sweeping. The janitor, most likely. Slowly, she tries to stand, holding on to the back of the chair for support. Something is in her mouth. She touches it with her tongue. Inches it forward to her front teeth. A strand of hair, twisted around itself. She plucks it out. Black. About four centimeters long. It could be hers.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Outside, it’s dark. Night has lowered itself onto Kyoto, bringing with it a chaos of cars, swarms of people, and bright blinking neon signs. Hanne heads through the soft rain, chin tucked down, passing plastic-covered fruit stands and shoe stores and camera shops, not knowing where, exactly, she’s going. The rain comes down harder and she follows the crowd, until she veers off into the small lobby of a ryokan, enveloped in a hush. She wipes her wet face with her sleeve. From somewhere she hears gurgling water. In a small alcove behind the check-in desk, a single bare bamboo branch rises out of a white vase, like dark smoke. She pries off her soggy shoes and, through thin, damp socks, feels the tatami mat’s polished strands.

  An older woman dressed in a dark blue kimono and white obi appears at the front desk and bows slightly. With her powdered white face and her lips painted red, in another time in her life she might have been a geisha.

  “May I help you?”

  The transaction of securing a room is surprisingly easy, as is the encounter with Renzo, whom she finds with his gaggle of friends at the restaurant.

  “I’ll be staying in town to see the plays again,” she says.

  He nods and gives
her a knowing smile, as if he understands; but how can he, because she does not. Why is she compelled to watch Moto again? And why is she trembling?

  The older woman leads Hanne down a long narrow hallway, Hanne following the swish of the woman’s narrow hem, the rustle of her underclothing. Her room is two adjacent rooms, with a sliding shoji door between them. In one, there is nothing: no television, no paintings on the wall, no phone, no table, no chairs, only a long stretch of tatami mats and wheat-colored walls. The connecting room holds a single black lacquered table, where, the older woman tells her, she’ll be served her meals.

  The woman opens the closet doors and pulls out pillows, blankets and a futon, and places them on the tatami mat. When the woman leaves and the door shuts, Hanne breaks into a cold sweat. Her stomach feels as if it is pressed against her heart. She slips out of her clothes and into the white bathrobe hanging behind the bathroom door and lies on the floor. The sliding glass door, which leads to a small enclosed garden, is open a crack, and a cool breeze moves underneath her robe. A board creaks, footsteps pitter-patter in the hallway. Then quiet.

  Slowly her breathing deepens. She lies there a while longer, letting everything settle. Something tickles her hand and she remembers the game she and Brigitte used to play. Back and forth, tracing words on the back of each other’s hand. Guessing the language, the word. When Brigitte guessed right, she’d squeal “Again, Mama, again!” “Okay, my love,” Hanne said, laughing, “close your eyes.” Over and over, Japanese, German, Spanish, French, Korean. And then when Brigitte learned Greek, “I’ll teach you, Mama, if you want to know.” And though Hanne already knew it, she said “I’d love that.” Because it meant sitting beside her daughter, her body squirming with new knowledge.

 

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