I Am a Japanese Writer

by Dany Laferriere

  “Where do you keep your country?”

  “Here, in my pocket.”

  His eyes took on a strange glow. I headed for the Librairie du Square where I’d ordered a book (Basho’s The Narrow Road to the Interior). I heard someone running after me. I turned around. The Korean was standing there.

  “Hey, I’m thirsty. You made me talk too much.”

  “What about it?”

  “Just enough for a beer.”

  “You didn’t do anything for me.”

  “Because you didn’t know what you wanted.”

  “I want Asia. Japan, to be exact.”

  I watched him dance back and forth. Some people think with their whole bodies. The possibility of a beer was doing its work.

  “Okay... she’s a singer.”

  “That’s exactly what I need.”

  “I’m not guaranteeing anything. I can just tell you where she hangs out .... But it’ll cost you twenty dollars.”

  I handed over the money, no questions asked.

  “Café Sarajevo.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Midori.”

  A place and a name. You don’t need anything else to start a novel.

  LIFE ON YOUR FEET

  IT’S A FIGHT to the finish between time and space. The space police help identify you (Where do you come from?). Cannibal time eats you alive. Born in the Caribbean, I automatically became a Caribbean writer. The bookstore, the library and the university rushed to pin that title on me. Being a writer and a Caribbean doesn’t necessarily make me a Caribbean writer. Why do people always want to mix things up? Actually, I don’t feel any more Caribbean than Proust, who spent his life in bed. I spent my childhood running. That fluid sense of time still lives inside me. Every night I dream of the tropical storms that made the sweet, heavy mangoes fall from the tree in my childhood yard. And that cemetery in the rain. The dragonfly with translucent wings seen for the first time on an April morning. Malaria that decimated my village and stole my first love, the girl in the yellow dress. And me, feverish every evening, reading Mishima under the covers, with no one around to tell me who Mishima was. I don’t remember whose books those were, but they were still in good condition. What were they doing in my sleepy little town? Which of my five aunts had a flirtation with Yukio? Was he the favorite writer of one of the young suitors who passed through the house? You never know how a writer comes into a family. I read him to escape the prison of the real. But I did not seek refuge in Mishima— literature was never a refuge for me. Neither did Mishima, I imagine, write to stay in his own house. We encountered each other elsewhere, in a space that wasn’t either of our houses, a space that belonged to imagination and desire. And here I am, thirty-five years later, caught again in the fury of adolescence. If time is circular, if the Earth revolves around the Sun, I’ll just stay right here and wait and the Mishima years will pass before my eyes.

  Please understand, I was never obsessed with Mishima. As a teenager, I came across one of his novels at the back of some old cupboard along with a bottle of rum. I began with a long gulp of liquid fire. Then I opened the book (The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea) and a swarm of buzzing vowels and consonants flew into my face. They had been waiting forever for a visit. In a case like that, you don’t start classifying. You don’t look that gift horse in the mouth. Mishima’s book didn’t say to itself, “Well, well, here’s a good old Japanese reader.” And I didn’t look for a kindred spirit, recognizable colors or a shared sensibility. I dove into the universe that was set before me the way I dove into the little river not far from my house. I hardly even noticed his name, and it wasn’t until long afterward that I realized he was Japanese. At the time, I firmly believed that writers formed a lost tribe and spent their lives wandering the world and telling stories in all languages. That was their sentence for some unnameable crime. Hugo and Tolstoy were convicts. I found no other explanation for them having written those voluminous novels I devoured each night, in hiding. I imagined them with their feet in chains, seated next to an enormous inkwell carved out of rock. Which is why, later, I was reluctant to write thick books. I didn’t want to frighten children.

  I don’t understand all the attention paid to a writer’s origins. Because, for me, Mishima was my neighbor. Very naturally, I repatriated the writers I read at the time. All of them: Flaubert, Goethe, Whitman, Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Cervantes, Kipling, Senghor, Césaire, Roumain, Amado, Diderot—they all lived in my village. Otherwise, what were they doing in my room? Years later, when I became a writer and people asked me, “Are you a Haitian writer, a Caribbean writer or a Frenchlanguage writer?” I answered without hesitation: I take on my reader’s nationality. Which means that when a Japanese person reads me, I immediately become a Japanese writer.

  BASHO IN THE METRO

  I TAKE THE subway with Basho, The Narrow Road to the Interior. I once met Nicolas Bouvier, the translator of the French version, in Toronto. We drank a coffee together. He was so full of life yet so exhausted, both at the same time. His suitcase at the foot of the table. A quick dialogue between two airports— he was running off to New York. We talked about the Aztec upper classes, who underpaid their workers and forced them to labor at least twelve hours a day on monuments that today are covered over with grass. His taxi came. His face was tanned brown and sweating. Already his mind was on his notes. The taxi rushed off through the fine drizzle. The years passed. His legend grew out of all proportion. An intimate society made him into a kind of saint. Now he has returned as Basho’s translator. I’ll read a few scraps of Basho, but never a complete text. The poet relates his trip on foot to the northern reaches of Japan. I am reading him in the subway, following his adventures in search of the Shirakawa Barrier as the Montreal metro moves beneath the city. Everything is moving. Except time: that stands still. I’m too absorbed by all this telescoping of time and crisscrossing of space to get interested in my surroundings. Except for that girl across from me, looking at me, unsmiling. Long and thin. Dark eyes—a brushstroke. Her name must be Isa. As soon as someone enters my field of vision, she becomes a fictional character. No borders between literature and life. I return to my book. Basho is preparing his final journey with extreme care. He can no longer tolerate his stifling everyday existence. Time is passing too. “The fleeting transience of life, soon to die, yet no sign of it,” murmurs the vagabond poet, without bitterness. He must get back on the road again and renew his acquaintance with the zigzags of random chance: “Not yet dead, at journey’s end, autumn evening.” He abandons everything, even what is essential. He keeps only a sturdy paper overcoat for the cold nights, a straw cape for the rain and a cotton yukata. And since he is a writer, he slips into his bag a writing-board, ink and brushes. Even these indispensable things weigh upon him. Only the self is necessary, as naked as possible. I first discovered Basho’s poetry in a page of newsprint that had been used to wrap rice. Ever since, I have sought his trace in all things. In a bookstore, I always see if there is something by Basho or about Basho. The man possessed a true science of the emotions. And he was stubborn, too. Nothing forced him to undertake a journey like that at his age, but no one could stop him once he had made the decision to go. Sora accompanied him, to free him of domestic tasks.

  They set out at dawn. The next time we see him, he is in the Nasu swamplands. Rain forces them to pass the night in a thatched hut. Basho seems in fine shape. Movement is his element. He moves as the landscape changes.

  I am in the Montreal subway, following the footsteps of a certain Matsuo Munefusa, also known as Basho. He was born in 1644 in Tsuge, a village close to Ueno. He admired the poet Tu Fu. Basho and Sora reached the prestigious Shirakawa Barrier, which all the old poets spoke of with great emotion. No sooner had they crossed the Abukuma River than they discovered, on the left, “the summit of Mount Bandai, whose vast height dominates the land of Aizu.” They paused at the house of a hermit who lived under a chestnut tree. Basho composed a haiku about the ch
estnut tree, which seemed to him more moving than the hermit. He no doubt recalled the banana tree that gave him his name: basho. The rains lasted the entire month of June.

  I look up. Isa is still there. Nothing has moved but the train. I go back to Basho. Matsushima! Our travelers have long dreamed of it. Finally they are there. They head for the beach at Ojima. Matsushima leaves Basho speechless. There are islands everywhere. Everything is graceful, especially the pine trees, “dense, green and dark,” whose elegance he sings. Death caresses him near the Kitakami River, where the Koromo joins it.

  The journey became ever more arduous. Thickets of bamboo, rushing streams, rocks, and, worst of all, the cold sweat along the steep path that led to the Mogami district. The two poets rested before resuming their journey. They hoped to travel down the Mogami by boat. The weather was so bad they had to wait days before taking to the road again. Peasants recognized Basho and asked him to give them writing lessons. He was moved: “Who would have thought that, during this pilgrimage dedicated to those who have gone before me, I would have the opportunity to teach my own style, and in such surroundings?” What delicacy of spirit! And here was the Mogami, whose source is the northern highlands.

  Basho was always ready to point out the places along the way so that other poets might make the same journey. This is the great game we have been playing for centuries. Basho tried to show us that all poets are as one, that the same spirit moves through them. The road is the same for all, though each poet travels it in his own way. And in his own time. The train has stopped without me realizing it. Just time enough to see Isa, from behind, in the crowd of hurried travelers. Her long fragile neck. Its sad nape (I project my sadness onto her nape). The train starts moving again.

  THE KISS AT THE CAFÉ SARAJEVO

  I HADN’T HEARD of the Café Sarajevo, even though it’s centrally located, not far from the subway station. I prefer the subway to the bus. In the subway, you see only faces. In the bus, only landscapes. I emerge from the hole, turn left, walk into the café. Good atmosphere. Every city has at least one place like this. Anyone who has listened to Joan Baez ends up here, sooner or later. The kind of people who’ve dropped off our radar, though we wonder where they’re hiding out. They end up in cafés like the Sarajevo. I haven’t come expecting to find Joan Baez here. Or even Suzanne Vega. The wheel has turned. I’ve come for Midori, the new Japanese singer who’s on MuchMusic from time to time. I’d never heard of her, either, but ever since the Korean told me about her, I’ve seen her everywhere. You don’t know Midori? There are posters of her in the bathrooms in bars. It’s hard to tell what she really looks like from them because she’s underwater and her face is slightly deformed. She’s holding her breath. The photographer waited till the last second. Just as she was about to explode. Her eyes wide with the beginnings of terror. The pink wings of her nose diaphanous. Her throat swelling. Click. Her torso bursts free of the water. Water pouring from her mouth, her nose, her eyes. Her name is whispered all over town: Midori. In every tongue. Montreal’s first Japanese star. The rocket Midori is launched: destination, Planet Bjork. Bjork—a muffled sound. A sound in water. Basho notes:

  The old pond,

  A frog jumps in:

  Plop!

  Midori is a flat object with contours so sharp she could slice through someone’s neck and leave the head standing there for a few seconds before it fell. A necklace of red pearls. Midori is polishing her act at the Sarajevo. I sit in the darkest corner of the place. The waitress shows up a half hour later. Green tea. The café is empty. Suddenly, Joan Baez. Joan Baez can be listened to only in a café like the Sarajevo. In an atmosphere like this, I could listen to Joan Baez for the rest of my days. Leonard Cohen chimes in with “Suzanne,” the song that defined Montreal in the 1970s, halfway between passion and nonchalance. So I already know the taste of the waitress, a small black-haired girl with a ring in her nose and flashing eyes. I go back to Basho. I like the idea of the journey, but I hesitate when it comes to getting on the road. Where to? The traveler has to come back one day or other; otherwise, he isn’t a traveler. You stay in your room and await his return.

  Customers start showing up. They sit with their backs to the walls. The center remains empty. The ones who like to sit in the center will show up later. Unless you arrive early, you think the room fills up in less than half an hour. But for someone who frequents small cafés, it’s not as simple as that. The customers arrive one by one. The waitress calls the owner to find out whether she ought to get an extra waitress or two. How come? There are fifteen customers in the place. How many are there usually at this time? Seven. And there’s a new guy who ordered green tea. Green tea—you call that a customer? Sure. What do you suggest? Two more waitresses. It’s your call, you know the place. She hangs up and looks at me with a big smile. I’d order another tea, but I’m afraid she’ll call in a third waitress.

  I go off to the washroom. Everything is black, even the floor tiles. A regular boudoir. The posters tell you a lot about the people who go to the café. Their tastes are exposed for all to see. This is a musicians’ café. The posters tell it all. Next to a choral group that sings medieval songs is an offer to help cure your backaches through acupuncture. Yoga classes too. A charter to India to go see some guru. And there are posters of Midori. Midori is at home here. Like Air France in Paris, American Airlines in New York or Alitalia in Rome. Midori at the Café Sarajevo. A poster of her naked—out of focus. We never see her clearly. Her narrow body, straight hips, no breasts. Her sex is shaved close. Swollen. I linger in front of Midori’s sex. Then I return to the room. It’s filled to the rafters. A boxing ring. Performances. A girl made up like Nina Hagen is writhing in front of a camera. It’s chaos. No borders between the customers and the stage. Everything’s shaking. A guy grabs the mike and starts in on a speech about the price of oil on the world market. Someone else weighs in about the famine in Africa. It’s back to the 1970s with its spiritual outbursts. Someone else wants to talk about the fabulous F1 race that afternoon. He gets shouted down when he bellows that Ayrton Senna was the best who ever drove. The crowd starts shouting the name Gilles Villeneuve, a native son. No more stage, no more audience. A sea of raised arms clamors for one thing after another. Nina Hagen’s double demands a kiss from her girlfriend, who looks like Suzanne Vega twenty years ago. A universe of doubles. Vega has a boyfriend. He looked worried at first, but he’s wised up. Nina Hagen leans over and kisses him gently on his left eye. The crowd is moved but unsatisfied. Then on the right eye, with the same light touch. Everyone holds his breath. The fantasies of heterosexual guys haven’t changed since the Neolithic era. Nina Hagen acknowledges the crowd and makes a show of returning to her seat. The crowd howls in protest. Hagen gets back to her feet, taking her own sweet time. She has us eating out of her hand. A kiss doesn’t mean anything. It’s only as important as we want to make it. Vega’s double seems to want to put an end to the waiting. Hagen is in no hurry. We know there will be a kiss, but we don’t know what will happen after it. The guy at my table starts chewing his nails. Hagen bends low and kisses Vega on the neck, then on each eye. The crowd wants more. Hagen holds Vega’s head in her hands and looks her deep in the eye (we wonder what the real Nina Hagen and Suzanne Vega are doing right now). This is the longest kiss ever recorded at the Sarajevo. A kiss that lasts until Vega feels really embarrassed, until she really understands what is going on. She snaps her eyes open when Hagen’s tongue touches hers. Hagen’s furious, dominating gaze. Vega’s imploring, submissive answer. The crowd, whose expectations have been surpassed. As she keeps kissing Vega, Hagen locks eyes with the boyfriend. He gets up to leave. The crowd follows each of his steps. Hagen’s lips still on Vega’s. Vega is the only one who doesn’t know her boyfriend is leaving. Finally, Hagen surrenders her prey. Sated. Vega’s head on Hagen’s shoulder, asleep. The crowd falls silent. The guy comes back into the room. Vega wakes with a saucy smile. Once more, Hagen acknowledges the crowd (the place is full by now). We
have just witnessed The Big Kiss, a Kiss Inc. production. The trio exits the café as the crowd applauds and the amateur photographers shoot off their flashes. The three waitresses are hopping.

  THE NIPPON AT THE EIFFEL TOWER

  I’VE NEVER OWNED a still camera. That’s because I’ve never quite figured out their purpose. If it’s just to take pictures I’ll never look at, then it has to be the stupidest invention ever. Anyway, I have one that works very well: this skull where I’ve stored fifty years of images, most of them repeated until they’ve become the fabric of my ordinary life. This day-today life made of a series of tiny explosions. An electric life. I’ve been told that these images belong to me only, and that other people can’t access them. That’s not exactly true—I can describe them with such precision that, in the end, they become visible to other eyes. Even better: I can transform these pictures into feelings. I can relate a moment without describing the people who were there, simply by bringing forth the energy that gave life to the event. In a photo, we rarely see the emotion that creates the story unfolding before our eyes. Except, maybe, in birthday photos, where we see the child’s enchanted eyes behind the lit candles. Of course, sometimes a whiff of nostalgia rises up from a picture yellowed with time, especially when almost all those who looked into the lens are dead. I keep all those photos in my head, and they have taken root there, the images falling one over the other, all wanting to surge to the front. As for the Japanese man, who never stops photographing the world: what does he see? He doesn’t even see the two elements he is trying to capture, his traveling companion and the monument that the companion is blocking out. The Eiffel Tower is there to show that this guy spent a day in Paris. But by cracking the same wide, impersonal smile in front of every monument on the face of the Earth, he is destroying the intimate nature of the moment. The Japanese man becomes as timeless as the tower itself. You’d think that the Eiffel Tower was being photographed as a backdrop for a smiling Japanese guy.