In my own way:
The whole world
In one mouthful.
DEATH POEM LEFT BY KENZAN OGATA7
The next afternoon I started walking the familiar route to your house. I made a mental note of every landmark, every small store selling mysterious candies and saucy girlie magazines, every shrimp-fried-rice place pumping the smell of cooking out onto the street, every one of the small sake bars competing with every other with colourfully designed signs that clamoured for attention in a language I could not read. I knew the visit would probably be the last I could make to your retreat on the hill. Sometimes you called it ‘my fortress against vicissitudes’. The world could change around it, you said, but as long as you were the tenant, the serenity it provided would remain exactly the same. There would always be your guardian, the paulownia, scattering its blue petals on you when you sat outside to write me letters. There would always be the array of cawing crows standing witness, malevolent, reminding you that you were ‘doomed’, you so often said. There would always be the 101 steps to Heaven. ‘This is the end of the road for me,’ you sometimes said. But you never explained what you meant, although you did tell me on the trip to Kamakura that you would like your ashes to be scattered on the hill because no one would grieve for an ‘ugly woman with no family to call her own’.
One day, as you were peering intently into the mirror at your house, I had asked you why you insisted on calling yourself ‘ugly’.
‘When I was a young woman,’ you said, as I watched you apply lipstick, ‘I was told my skin was as pure as the finest porcelain laid in a bed of snow. My breasts are not large because in my childhood I was encouraged to bind them tight with cloth so I would be able to offer myself with modesty. I was told frequently that big breasts are the curse of a loose woman. I was encouraged to glide graciously like a passing shadow. I discovered that when I read books late in the day, and the light is fading and my face has strong character, men are drawn to me. This encouraged me at an early age to read the most complex of the ancient classics.’ You knew by heart, you said, the key passages about lost love in the Kagero Nikki journals [The Gossamer Years], written by an unknown woman of the tenth century. You knew the best commentaries written by a woman about men in Lady Murasaki’s diaries. You turned to your notebook, always so close at hand. ‘For example,’ you said, ‘here is a very small poem from the Gosenshu [The Six Collections, AD 951].’
Dreams, listen, my dreams!
Do not bring me together
With the man I love . . .
When once I have awakened I would feel so lonely.
‘I can recite, like that, in a pleasant voice that will fascinate an intelligent man,’ you said, after you had put me in a trance. ‘Or, at intimate moments, I will speak as if all I can do is whisper, so that men have to listen closely to every word, knowing that if they fail to understand me they will not know if I am willing to submit.’
I was watching you from the shadows of your room as if I were your captive. On some occasions over the years I have watched closely as women apply make-up and attempt to define their beauty with various degrees of success, or no success at all if they have the fatal flaw of being modest. You were speaking as if you had been born in another age, as if you had been the mistress of a court noble – but then, that was just my interpretation. I was learning to write poetry. You can’t blame me for being a dreamer, seduced, without even a kiss, by your charm. You can’t reprove me for mentioning that you were the only woman I knew who was so conscious of her beauty that she called herself ‘ugly’.
You looked closely at the apparition I was to make sure I was paying attention. ‘I use a combination of ancient Chinese and Japanese techniques when I feel it is possible for me to feel beautiful,’ you said carefully. ‘I feel beautiful today because you are here and I thank you for that. I smooth on very lightly this bintsuke wax as a foundation and then gently dust my face and my shoulders and the back of my neck with rice powder,’ you said. ‘I use a pomade rouge on my cheeks to bring them to life, like this. I use a vermilion balm for my lips and a mix of dried flower petals and beeswax to make my eyebrows curve, like that. Not all of my lips should be coloured with the balm because I wish to stress the fullness and pout of my lips, like this. Then, after I am satisfied with that, I emphasize my nose and the corner sockets of my eyes with gentle touches of rouge, like this.
‘On my nails, I have a red tint made of gum arabic, egg whites, beeswax, and gelatin. Last month, my nails were tinted in the purple colour of a beating heart, but I decided to change to the most brilliant red today, just for you. I use a perfume I make myself that only releases its fragrance whenever I make love, or whenever I walk after making love, so that there is a trace of me that briefly lingers even after I disappear. I pretend that these jade earrings are a gift from the emperor and why not? Why shouldn’t I pretend?
‘All this is what men find beautiful, I was told when I was a young girl and still a virgin. But you know, when I became older, and my body became rounder, men were not interested in white jade skin or secret perfumes. For them, I was like a piece of ripening persimmon. They were eager to bite into me, but like the fruit I kept them waiting, waiting, waiting until that moment when I was sweet. If I had allowed them to taste me earlier, the taste would have been so bitter. It is like that with persimmons. It is like that with certain women who are no longer girls. That was my technique. These men could hover around me and offer money and gold. But I made them wait until they became acceptable to me. They found it irresistible. They found it incredible that they could not have me. They were not like you, Paul-san. But you are not yet a man.’
All of this was on my mind on that breezy, cheerful day as I made my way to your house.
Almost everyone I passed appeared to be busy. They were not just acting busy. It was as if the whole population of Yokosuka was pulling together to restore something lost: a moment from youth, maybe, or a vision of the village they abandoned. Millions of country folk had moved to the cities to look for work after the death and destruction caused by American bombs. This was not a day for thinking, it occurred to me. This was a day for doing. Schoolchildren were scampering home with their leather satchels bouncing up and down on their backs to study algebra and trigonometry and to one day start companies like Sony or Honda. Housewives were hanging out newly washed clothes to dry in the sun, and some were using bamboo paddles to whack dander out of the cotton-packed futon mattresses they used for sleeping. One woman with a big smile on her face called out konnichiwa [good day] to me and then walloped her futon in rhythm with a jaunty song on the radio that made her happy.
I picked up the pace of my walking. I was worried about how you were going to react when I sailed away. At times in your letters you had sounded almost frantic, asking – demanding – that I remember you forever. When I said goodbye, would you cry and cry and cry even though you told me you would not? Would you? I felt apprehensive about those final days and yet I felt good about this day on which you suggested that we meet.
We had walked out of the Mozart with Debussy filling every emotional void in our senses, and you had pulled on my sleeve and stopped me in the alley. Under the street light you had said, almost in a whisper, as if you were sharing one of your secrets: ‘Paul, I want to dulcify these days.’
‘Dulcify?’
‘Yes, Paul. If you are going away, I want to celebrate our brief life together. I want to dulcify every moment we have together. Do you understand?’
But I did not understand ‘dulcify’. When I told you that, you looked so disappointed. It was as if my inability to understand that word had reduced me in a flash from being an almost-man to a helpless child again.
You pulled hard on my sleeve and looked up at me with those ron-pari eyes and you asked, ‘Do you ever read the dictionary? Do you ever look for words that can make your ugly English language sound beautiful? If you don’t do that, you will have a miserable life, sailor boy, and you will
forget me. But you will remember me if you remember that this one word, dulcify, means sweetness and gentle and agreeable. That is the memory I want you to have when I say goodbye.’
A huge flood of emotions surged up inside me. I could not speak. My voice was locked, paralyzed. You used a finger to wipe a tear from my cheek. It had never occurred to me that despite the longing in your letters, you would be the one planning the last of our goodbyes, and I, who had spent the summer desperately trying to grow up, would be the one struck down with grief.
But that was yesterday.
Today I had my own list of things to do, the first of which was to do my best to help you dulcify. I had decided during the night that I was not going to be in mourning. Yes, that was it. I was going to be kind and generous and considerate and make these last days bearable for you because I was almost certain that your determined approach to the end of our affair was a charade and that you, a woman who had shuddered with joy when I gave you that ‘embrace of a lifetime’, would be on your knees begging me not to go. That thought frightened me. But it was a sunny day. Everyone was whistling and sweeping and dusting. At one household, a young woman had placed an easel in her tiny garden and was using oils on canvas to paint a likeness of your hill. She had already daubed the blue flowers of the paulownia and she had painted the steps, twisting and curving like a writhing snake upward into nothingness. I stopped to look and I smiled at her. ‘Hello,’ she said in really pretty English. ‘I have seen you before. You are such a gentle boy.’
How strange it was, I thought, to be able to tell such things just from a man’s quick smile, or the way he stands to look at her. What a gift. No wonder Japanese women were the poets in ancient times. No wonder I, as yet still a boy, could be called ‘gentle’ by a woman I did not know.
In the background I could hear the sound of Misora Hibari singing ‘Ringo oiwake’ coming from an open window. I have to tell you that when the woman painter told me the name of the song I wrote it into my notebook so that one day (and that day happened just last month) I could hear it again and know what the lyrics meant. Once the music begins like a soaring bird in a dark sky, it is impossible for me to move. When it starts, I have to sit down. If there is a cushion, I have to grip it. If I let myself go, that sweet summer unfolds again as if it were a record playing on the turntable. Listening to ‘Ringo oiwake’ causes the same reaction I have when I listen to Butterfly sing ‘Un Bel Dì’. Here are the words to the song, the translation courtesy of my Japanese friend Ogawa Wakako, who says she would have enjoyed knowing you, Yukiko.
Petals of apple blossoms have fallen in the wind
On a moonlight night, on a moonlight night, softly I heard a girl of Tsugaru crying, ah-ah-ah . . .
Crying for a painful separation, ah-ah-ah.
Petals of apple blossoms
Have fallen with the wind, ah-ah-ah.
At the top of Mount Iwaki
White fleecy clouds are
Floating in the sky . . .
Peach blossoms bloom, and cherry blossoms bloom,
Then early apple flowers bloom.
It is the happiest season for us,
But rain without mercy falls
and scatters their white petals . . .
Which reminds me of mother who died in Tokyo then.
[the singer gasps] . . . I . . . I . . .
I heard a girl of Tsugaru crying,
Crying because of a painful separation.
Petals of apple blossoms
Are falling with the wind, ah-ah-ah.
You might like to know, by the way, because you so love to laugh at the little eccentricities of life, that the ‘Ringo oiwake’ melody somehow found its way to Jamaica, where it became the foundation for the classic ska hit ‘Ringo Rock’, sung by all kinds of Rastafarians. Until recently, after a Jamaican musician visited Tokyo and heard ‘Ringo oiwake’ on the radio, everyone in Jamaica had believed it to be a Jamaican tune. ‘Everything of consequence in this world is a fable, and if you live in that world you become a fable too,’ you once said. I did not reply then. But now I am going to tell you that you were correct.
I was dulcified by the song. I was saddened too. You told me that every Japanese knew that the mother ‘who died in Tokyo then’ had been killed by American bombs, and that ‘then’ referred to a war in which so many people had lost someone. You said this without any bitterness. You said it with kindness. I was thankful for that. Despite my worry about leaving you, and how to leave you, and the stark truth about war, I still felt good about that day on which we had agreed to meet.
But then, just as I was approaching the steps to your house, I came across Detective Nazaka sitting on a park bench with his shabby raincoat unbuttoned and his thin black tie loosened. He was looking deceptively relaxed and confident as he took a drag from a broken cigarette. He squinted at me. His mouth twisted as if he had bitten into the sourest of umeboshi. He coughed and spat something horrific onto the pavement before sticking his hand up to signal vigorously for me to stop as if I were a speeding taxi.
‘Excuse me,’ I said gingerly. ‘I am on my way to meet Miss Kaji.’ I was desperate to get past him and climb the hill.
‘Yes, I know,’ he said. His voice was the usual harsh croak. He did an imitation of a smile. ‘The police know everything!’
‘It’s nice to see you, sir. But I don’t want to be late,’ I told him.
‘Yes, I will make this quick,’ he said. ‘I understand that you met Kaji-san at the Mozart café yesterday. She is Japanese, you know. We Japanese do not necessarily have to discuss certain concepts or subjects, even though you might have wanted that to happen. We can remain silent in our conversations and use our senses to know what the other person is thinking. We can talk silently. Foreigners cannot do that, you know. It is the Japanese sixth sense. We Japanese are especially sensitive people. The crimes I investigate excite the senses. Those are the type of crimes that cause poetry to be written.’
I had no idea what he was talking about. But I showed interest by nodding in agreement. It was a mistake. He continued.
‘For example, here is a crime I wish I had investigated but which I could not do because it happened in 1936 in Tokyo and I was living in Manchuria at the time. There was a woman, Abe Sada, who had been a prostitute. But then she started working as a maid in a cheap hotel. Kichi, the owner of the hotel, foolishly molested her and that caused the two of them to start a love affair in which they engaged in sexual experiments that were bizarre even for Japan. Miss Abe became more and more possessive and jealous. The hotel owner did everything he could to please her, but Miss Abe murdered him after he confessed to her that the sensation of strangling excited him. She cut off his penis and she used it to write in blood on his chest, “Sada and Kichi: together, forever”.’ Nazaka looked closely at me for some kind of reaction. But nothing in my experience allowed me to speak. I thought how little I knew about your life, Yukiko, and the relationship you had with the man who became a bear. He raped you: that I knew. You became his woman: that I knew. Would you kill him, I wondered?
‘Well,’ Nazaka said. ‘You can see that we Japanese are so very sensitive when it comes to matters of the heart. I think you know now we are a special people. Even without battleships we are a superior people. I believe Jewish people have this special sixth sense too.’
I told him I did not know that. Since I started writing poetry because you required it, I thought I had developed the skill of knowing and sharing thoughts without speaking. But that was a skill, not a sense. If it was a sense, it would have been a wu wei thing – not planned, not considered, but done.
‘People who write poetry,’ you told me with a chuckle, ‘are not normal at all. We are like messengers from somewhere. We are angels. Remember that, please, and always make sure that your private thoughts when you are with a woman are poems that you do not have to recite to her.’
‘I am sure you had a good conversation with your friend,’ Detective Nazaka said
. ‘You don’t have to answer me. I can sense that you did.’
No wonder that in Japan the police know everything, I thought.
‘Well, Mr Paul, there is some news that Miss Kaji did not announce to you because it is old news. It has gone. It is the past. She did not tell you about it because, being Japanese, she thought you would realize it already. But of course, you are a foreigner, so you don’t know . . . Do you?’
I shook my head. ‘Can you please give me the news,’ I asked before sitting down on the bench because I sensed there was going to be a shock to my nervous system.
‘Saaaaa,’ he said, as if he was struggling with something. ‘Saaaaa.’ There were a few seconds of silence.
‘You were gone for three weeks. The week after your ship left there was an incident. During the night, a certain Japanese man who was drunk attempted to attack Miss Kaji. He threatened to kill her if she refused to go with him. Do you understand?’
I did not understand. I saw that he could tell from the look on my face that I was incapable of visualizing scenes of violence, even after I had witnessed Nazaka’s struggle with Shinoda Yusuke, the bear of a man on the train station platform.
‘I am sorry,’ he said, coughing. He banged his fist against his heart. ‘Excuse me, please. My doctors tell me that every day I am practising the art of dying.’
Then he cleared his lungs with more spitting and he said, ‘You will never understand this explanation I give you, even when you are an old man and you have had much experience with life. But I have to tell you this because you are a nice young man. This is Japan. Remember, Miss Kaji and I are both Manchurian Japanese, and it is true that because of that we are different. But we are still Japanese even if we can speak English and we like classical music and Western literature and philosophy. You know, I like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and Betty Boop. At the cinema, they make me laugh, and it is unusual for me to laugh at anything. I do not have children of my own and I am a bachelor, you know. When I hear children laughing at those cartoons it makes me sad, so I have to laugh.’
Please Enjoy Your Happiness Page 23