I Am a Japanese Writer

by Dany Laferriere

  By suggesting I talk to Noriko, Takashi gave me an idea: draw Midori’s portrait by talking to the girls. Never to her. Midori is a black hole that sucks in everything around her. Every electron is free as long as it stays in the magnetic field. Noriko is Fumi’s scapegoat. Tomo, Midori’s guardian angel. Hideko touched Midori’s ear, that fragile, perfect instrument (I got a close-up of that scene). Takashi going click, click, click. He never stops. He’s at one with his camera. Midori is considering doing a show about a photographer no one ever sees. According to Midori, the photographer is the true witness of our times. Takashi is obsessed with the napes of their necks. For a time, that’s all he photographed. Noriko tells me about Takashi, though Takashi pointed me in her direction first. She whispers in my ear that Takashi is a toxic, jesting little god with a rancorous heart. What? Her eyes look frightened. She urges me over to the window to bestow further confidences in a voice so low I can’t hear anything. What? I ask gently. Midori is in love with Eiko. No one knows, not even Eiko. Noriko laughs silently. She takes my hand and holds it longer than necessary. I feel my bones melting. My body, without structure, is about to slip to the floor like a dress. I pull my hand away and rush off to the bathroom. Don’t tell me I’ve been caught in the net of one of these vampirettes! Noriko watches me. I feel the intensity of her gaze on the nape of my neck. I follow Takashi without thinking and end up in the girls’ bathroom. In the mirror I spot Midori kissing Hideko. Takashi is dancing around them. The flash goes off. Midori smiles at me in the mirror. Hideko hasn’t noticed me yet. Midori passes Hideko, still in a fog of ecstasy, over to Takashi, who is too thin to hold her up. He tries every possible position to keep her standing. It looks like a scene from They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? I take her off Takashi’s hands and set her down gently on a cushion next to Fumi. I sit with the camera still running. Fumi tells me Midori will eat only a certain kind of fish, whose flesh contains a poison. Just enough to lightly paralyze the lips and tongue. Midori keeps a bit of fish in her mouth, then chooses a girl to kiss. They all avoid Midori’s lips. Hideko is the only one dumb enough to fall for it. A long hetaera kiss. Now Hideko is lying languorously on the cushion. Her eyes unfocused. A vague smile. The poison lasts only a few minutes. Midori bends and strokes her hair.

  EIKO'S ENDLESS BACK

  I GO BACK into the bathroom and discover Midori conversing with Takashi. His eyes are overly bright—the result of his last hit of heroin.

  “I’d like to tell you something about Bjork...”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Are you sure? Because the girls like playing jokes.”

  “What kind of jokes, Midori?”

  “If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then I guess you don’t interest them.”

  “I see...”

  Midori glances past me, over my shoulder. I turn and see Eiko applying her makeup in the mirror. Eiko’s endless back reminds me of a stand of bamboo. All Midori’s energy is drawn into the nape of Eiko’s neck. Midori tries in vain to resist. In the mirror I catch Noriko watching Midori watching Eiko. You can read all of it in Midori’s face, drowning in one final wave of feeling. Midori, a master in the art of revealing other people’s secrets, is unmasked. Her face naked. Our very own Marquise de Merteuil, caught in her own game. In her armoire, each drawer is dedicated to a girl she has seduced. She keeps underwear, letters, miniature red daggers (she has an entire collection), inexpensive perfume (to make sure no one else wears it) and a black notebook in which everything is recorded, from the first gaze to the farewell kiss. Midori is always the first to leave. One night, Takashi slipped into Midori’s room and spent hours reading passionate letters written by girls who kept announcing their imminent suicide. The letters all shared the same morbid preoccupations. These girls adore toying with the idea of death. In Takashi’s opinion, they’re just bursting with so many useless tears, because suicide is a man’s business. As for death, a young virgin gives herself only to the bravest of samurai. Japanese identity has been built on trashy romanticism. Midori, face to face with Eiko. The light is so dazzling Midori has to close her eyes. She stands straight, motionless. I hold my breath. Captivated, Eiko watches Midori move towards her.

  CRISSCROSS

  I DELIVER MIDORI to Eiko to trap Fumi. Fumi, whose heart is black with bitter passion and revolt, who dreams only of ending Midori’s reign. Fumi is secretly in love with Noriko. Hideko discovered her secret by keeping a small notebook where she noted all of Fumi’s underhanded actions for an entire year. Noriko was the victim of a good number of them. Hideko began by noting the circumstances in which the barbs were launched. She also noted the positions of the characters at the time the action took place. The atmosphere that held sway before she turned to Noriko and jabbed a banderilla into her back. And, of course, who laughed first? All of it written down, day by day, for an entire year. Hideko spent the long winter nights committing all this to paper. The work necessitated a good grasp of mathematics, which Hideko does have, since she’s doing her master’s at McGill. One evening, Hideko finally discovered the equation that would allow her to conclude without a doubt that Fumi was in love with Noriko. There is one constant: Fumi shoots her poison arrows at Noriko every time Midori seems interested in her, every time she turns to speak to her, touch her or even smile her way. Fumi then quickly moves to ridicule Noriko, who lowers her head. Fumi knows that Midori holds losers in contempt. Then Fumi quickly takes up position between Midori and Noriko. For a long time, Hideko thought Fumi was in love with Midori and simply wanted to eliminate a rival. Hideko had the idea of noting down the movements that followed and discovered that Fumi always arranged it so that Haruki came and placed herself between her and Midori. It took a while before Hideko understood that Fumi didn’t want Midori, but Noriko. By giving herself to Midori, Eiko brought down the house of cards. The center was emptied of its substance. Why did Hideko act that way? Whom did she want to destroy, besides Fumi? End. The credits roll. Ending a film with a question mark is not recommended. Which means we won’t see this one anywhere but the Museum of Fine Arts—on a rainy day. There are too many characters for the producer’s liking. Better cut them down to three. Who will make the cut? Midori, Eiko, Noriko. Or Midori, Fumi, Hideko. Or Midori, Tomo, Haruki. I know three is a good number, but I had a group in mind. A complete cluster of girls—an adolescent fantasy. You know that in a group, the girls who don’t say anything are as important as the ones who are front and center. The space between the girls, the time granted to each—this is the director’s work. Haruki is no less important in his eyes than Midori. And if Midori is in the foreground, that’s only because there is a background. Overly dense, you say? True, I could have singled out each girl with a particular detail. A color, a sign, whatever. But I film the same way I look at a film, and I get bored if the descriptions go on too long. I like it when things start fast, even a little disorganized, and at the end, a certain flavor lingers. I like to dally over the more pleasant scenes, which can open up the short film. And since all Japanese girls look the same to Westerners, I figure no one will see the difference anyway. So don’t strain yourself.

  THE HUMAN MACHINE

  I GO INTO this crummy restaurant on Boulevard St-Laurent. I sit down at the back with my Basho book, which I’ve been reading non-stop. The waitress shows up immediately. She’s wearing an embroidered “Suzie” on her breast. Her eyes are empty. A fat green vein runs along her neck from her right ear to her shoulder blade. She must have done more than one job in the district. A lot of women in the neighborhood have been through the same thing. Most of them started as teenage girls, leaving their narrow-minded little villages for the highway leading over the bridge to Montreal. They end up unemployed in the city, then they find work waitressing, then unemployed again, then waitressing, then prostitution. They won’t go much further. Lower, yes. There’s always room for lower. They find a way to have at least one child, and send it back to their mothers i
n the country—the only real gift they can give them. Some money too, but that’s only at the beginning. The mother will hide the money at the back of the cupboard and never touch it. It will be there for her funeral or maybe her daughter’s. Her daughter who, in the end, will have only one choice: slit her wrists or take the last bus for Rimouski or Sept-Îles. There’s a third possibility—trying to swim in this shark tank. I turn briefly to Basho as he bends over a cherry tree.

  Basho examined this small tree that had already started to flower. It is always astonishing to come upon life in certain places. Buffeted by winter’s glacial winds, it did not forget to flower in the spring. What courage! It seemed to be alone, neglected by all—except Gyoson, who wrote a stanza to honor the glory of solitary cherry trees.

  Suzie slaps down a cup of coffee on my table.

  “I only drink tea, Ma’am.”

  Her cold eyes.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you mean what do I mean?”

  “We don’t serve tea here.”

  She stalks off and I go back to my reading. I dip in and out of the book. I open it, I read a stanza or accompany Basho for a time, then close the book again. Lost in my dream. Basho has this ability to be immediately alive, every time. Here, only Whitman has the same energy. Now I’m back in sync with Basho. Just as I feel my backache returning, I come upon this passage where Basho is complaining about the same pain. Often, pain allows us to recognize another human being.

  A terrible day! His backache has returned. This is the first time he has complained about it. Just after Sakata. The heavy air, the rain, worst of all the humidity. But, as he says himself, “Enough of that.” He pushes on despite it all and stops in front of the “Send-Back-the-Dog” which wears its name so well. He cannot wait to be inside the inn and asleep. But two women and an old man are chatting away in the next room, and it proves impossible to rest. Finally, sleep comes, but too late. Tired again this morning.

  I order a hamburger. That’s what you do if you want to go unnoticed in America. The service is efficient here. A big empty expanse, except for a few grayish customers lost in the decor. It smells of wet carpet and cold sweat. At the bar, the waitress is talking with a young dishwasher. Her laughter is strange, a mixture of nervousness and malevolence. A stooped-over man has been trying to talk to them. They pretend they don’t know he’s there, they don’t even bother to turn their backs on him. Someone standing right in front of you but who doesn’t see you. Deep and endless indifference. As if people had no link with one another: the heavy reality of the end of the afternoon. Everything’s gone to hell since the siesta disappeared from our sundials. The human machine is not made to be awake and alert for eighteen hours straight. A time of rest is essential. Industrialized society did away with the siesta and cranked up the machine further. To keep up, you have to use drugs. All kinds of drugs. Suzie is on both cigarettes and coffee. It’s free for her here.

  Basho imagines foot travel as a way of washing the dirt of reality from his skin. Haiku is just a cheap bar of soap. I’m still with Basho when she plops herself down in front of me.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean, nothing?”

  “I’m finishing my fries.”

  “What are you reading?”

  “Basho.”

  A suspicious look.

  “Who’s he?”

  “A Japanese poet.”

  “Are you shitting me?”

  “No.”

  “You Japanese or something?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Are you a cop by any chance?”

  “Hardly.”

  “’Cause we’ve had the cops here three times this week. Ever since that business at the Dog Café. We’ve been in the Red Light since 1954 .... Get the picture?”

  We size each other up for a while.

  “Why would I be a cop?”

  “People come here to eat . . . In ten years, I’ve never seen anyone with a book, let alone a Japanese book.”

  “It’s only a translation.”

  The young dishwasher calls out: “Suzie!” She waves in his direction, she’ll be right there.“You can finish your fries, then you’re gone.”

  “I didn’t know this was a private club.”

  “I serve who I want to .... and you’re bothering the customers. Look, Réjean got up and left. The people you see have been coming here for at least twenty years. This is their last stop before the street. I have to protect them. . . Can you understand that?”

  She goes over to the cash register where an old man has been trying to count his change for the last fifteen minutes. She grabs the coins off the counter and throws them into the cash drawer. The person who doesn’t count will always have an advantage over the one who does.

  While I was locked in conversation with Suzie, the restaurant filled up with threatening shadows. Silent men, colorless and odorless. As they eat, they look up and shoot me glances that are neither curious nor mistrustful. What name can I give that look? I feel like I’m being sized up by someone who already saw the film and didn’t like it. Apparently our smell is what bothers them, the odor of ambition, since they are completely devoid of it. Meanwhile, we’re still making plans. Our plans are a mixture of money, will and clichés. What do they smell like? They have lost their smell. They’re at the end of the line.

  Basho reaches Tsuruga with Tosai. The sky a clear, hard blue. But the innkeeper tells them the weather could change at any time. Hard to believe that this beautiful sky could fill with black threatening clouds at any moment. Yet that’s what happens. The innkeeper was right; he knows his country.Basho will not see the full moon on the Bay of Tsuruga, the secret goal of his journey.

  As I go out the door, I turn and see Suzie’s satisfied smile, her false teeth sparkling white. I understand that she never wanted me here in the first place. Not again!

  THE NEGRO'S DEFEAT

  THIS WILL BE the most difficult thing to decode. First we’ll have to agree on the meaning of the word “smile.” I have a thousand questions about it. What does a smile mean for them? Is it an expression of the face or the mind? What importance do they grant it when they’re at home or elsewhere? Can you smile all by yourself, in your room? If that’s ever happened to me, I’m not aware of it. How many can you execute in a day? I feel as though I’m slowly slipping into a universe where I need to use a language whose grammar escapes me completely. What is a smile worth? I have no idea. What is its function? Do we smile to hide or to reveal something? I wonder if a real smile is given only when we are unaware of it. How is a social smile done? Can it be practised in front of a mirror? Each of the girls in Midori’s group seems to have a particular smile. What would be the difference between Eiko’s and Fumi’s smile? Midori rarely smiles. In any case, I feel it’s a weapon. The British have tried to conquer the world with their stiff upper lip and their umbrellas. The Japanese, with a wide smile and a camera. The Louvre rakes in a bundle with Mona Lisa’s smile. No one laughs in the West. Smiling gives power. Laughter declares the Negro’s defeat. I spend entire days trying to learn the Japanese smile. A smile removed from the face.

  A SUNDAY IN THE PROVINCES

  MY BODY IN the bath. My mind on the ceiling. Once in a while they unite. And I come to the surface at the point of drowning. A spasm of life. I gasp for breath. Rub my thighs, arms and face hard, awakening the waterlogged cells. I have left the world of water; now I am in the world of air. Bent, my hands over my face, I try to recover my spirits before joining Basho on the road. I write the word “road” and immediately think of Kerouac—an automatic response. Basho did it centuries before he did, and on foot. But now he is on his own, without his friend Sora.

  Sora, recovered now, was waiting for him in Osaki.Basho was so celebrated in Osaki that he felt as though he were attending his own funeral. Etsujin danced. The young disciples were joyful. Everyone at the samurai Joko’s house.Basho
seemed to have regained fresh strength. It’s always strange to see someone in such good health when you know they’ve been dead for so long: the triumph of the mind.

  I watch a sunbeam’s progress across the floor. The telephone close by. I like to read in the bath. I’d always rather read than write. I see myself walking the sunny streets of my childhood, holding my grandmother’s hand. A Sunday in the provinces. A man sitting quietly on his gallery in front of a large table covered with books, all of them open. He was leaning over them, as if contemplating a rich and varied buffet. He moved from book to book with equal excitement, a gourmand. Nothing around him seemed to matter, nothing outside of those appetizing dishes. He seemed so far from us, so beyond our reach—we could see him, but he was obviously elsewhere. My grandmother whispered to me, “He’s a reader!” Right away I thought, “That’s what I’ll do when I grow up. I’ll be a reader.” In the few photos from my teenage years, I always have a book in my hand. Even in the pictures of me talking with my classmates. The ones I run into now remind me of that habit of mine. There was no way, it seemed, to communicate with me. I always had my nose in a book. I have a photo that shows me lying on the floor, reading, with my mother in the background, ironing my school uniform. It must have been a Sunday afternoon. My mother must have urged me to go out, to the square or to the movies with my friends, but I wanted only to read. Back then, neither the sun nor the moon nor girls interested me. Only the journeys that books could provide. I could never get enough. I dreamed that, one day, I would enter a book and never come out. It finally happened with Basho.