I Am a Japanese Writer

by Dany Laferriere

  “You’ve been to Montreal?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know about the place?”

  “A colleague told me it’s your favorite street.”

  “Then you know everything there is to know.”

  “I’m just joking. I’m sitting in front of my computer, and it’s showing me everything you’re saying. Someone will call you to set up the interviews.”

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Kero.”

  “Kero, I’m going to go back to bed if you don’t mind.”

  “I was warned.”

  “About what?”

  “That you spend your life in bed. We would love to film you sleeping.”

  “That’s a private activity.”

  End of conversation.

  THE COLDEST EYE

  EVERYONE KNOWS THAT the camera has had the greatest success among the Japanese. I’ve long suspected them of not putting film in their cameras. Or, at least, of not looking at the photos once they return home from their trip. How can they tell the difference between the pictures they took and the ones their friends took, since they all take the same photo in front of the Eiffel Tower from the same angle with the same smile and even the same suit? In the photos, they all wear their cameras slung over their shoulders. A nation of smiling photographers. That kind of behavior must be hiding something. Maybe they’re stockpiling photos so that later they can get an idea of how we lived at the beginning of the twentyfirst century. The information would not be very diversified: billions of Japanese photos showing nothing but smiling Japanese. If one day we stumble upon these mountains of photos, we might well conclude that the earth was inhabited at the time solely by Japanese. There was not a single monument worth mentioning on this planet that they did not colonize. The conquest was worldwide. A universal point of view. If I want to become a Japanese writer, I had better rush out and buy a camera. But I think I’ll stick to my typewriter. At heart, though, it’s the same thing. You describe everything you see. I would like to be, not a photographer, but a cold, objective camera lens. To simply look at the person in front of me. Is that even possible?

  SOFT SKIN

  AS IT TURNED out, two days later a guy called from New York to rummage through the drawers of my memory. Of course he wanted to know where an idea like mine had come from. Haruki (Murakami was his last name) confided that his father was from Louisiana, a black soldier stationed in Tokyo whom, unfortunately, he never knew. His mother was working in a big sports equipment store in the center of the city when they met. He had come in to buy a basketball. She followed him through the store because of his smell. The smell of black men drove her crazy. The spices went to her head. She could spend hours with her head tucked under his armpit. But that got on his nerves. He wasn’t a violent man, but he could become irritable.

  “People talk a lot about the voice, the eyes, but rarely about smell. Yet it’s so important in the animal world. I went out with black men to try to understand my mother’s obsession. What touched me most was their skin . . . Some skins are so soft. Like the skin of a mouse. When I meet a man like that, I literally melt.”

  “Any man, or a black man?”

  “I don’t look at any other kind of man.”

  “So you’re in search of your father.”

  “That’s what my mother told me. She thinks that made me into a homosexual. But I know what made me gay: a guy from Harlem, a psychopathic killer with skin as soft as a baby’s. I was the only one who knew what he’d done. I would spend hours caressing him in the darkness of an abandoned house where we hid. The mob and the cops were after him. He trusted no one except his mother and me. He used to say I was his little woman. He had to get mad to get a hard on.”

  “Mad at you?”

  “Not necessarily... He would fly into a rage against anyone, anything, and he took it out on me. I loved it. He would pull out his gun and tell me he was going to blow my brains out. I didn’t care as long as he fucked me. No wonder: I was in love with him.”

  “He could have killed you.”

  “Yet he’s the one who ended up dead. When he was killed I was in Harlem, at a friend’s place. I hadn’t seen him in a week. I missed his sweetness. Funny: the guy was violence incarnate, yet all I can remember is the softness of his skin. You can’t have skin that soft if there’s not gentleness elsewhere too. I can tell you it wasn’t always easy. . .” He sighed. “I heard a gunshot that night. That was the music of Harlem. That’s what gave life its beat—they tell me it’s changed since then. I knew right away. I said to my friend, That bullet was for Malcolm. My friend bawled me out, he told me I must have been sick if I started naming everyone who was killed in Harlem during the night. He told me to go see a psychologist, the whole thing. I burst into tears and I left. I knew where Malcolm hung out, I went there and found him in a pool of blood. He died like a dog. I cleaned him up and called his father. Then I hid and waited, and I slipped away when the father showed up. I wandered for days and nights through Harlem. I wanted to get myself killed too. I did everything I could, but death wouldn’t touch me ... Why am I telling you all this?”

  “Because you can’t see me.”

  “I can’t see a psychologist.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m a fan of Woody Allen—that’s what my friends call me in Japanese. We have the same physique. He has a Japanese body. Try it yourself: take off his head and put a Japanese head on him, and you’ll get a Japanese filmmaker.”

  “I’d like to ask you a question.”

  “Go ahead. Otherwise I’ll just be talking to myself.”

  “Your father is black, your mother is Japanese, and only black men attract you ...”

  “But not the same way as for my mother. My mother was smell. I’m touch. Everything is concentrated in my fingertips. The story of my life is a story of electricity. If the lines don’t light up, there’s nothing I can do. But when they do, I’m a goner. Black skin in the darkness is a foretaste of hell. That skin shines brighter than any other. And some things burn harder than fire.”

  “Didn’t you ever think you were black?”

  “Never.”

  “But your father is black.”

  “YesbutI’mmymothernotmyfatherImeanI’mawomannotaman.”

  He said that as a single word, without pausing to catch his breath. I heard a sharp sob. Then he gently put down the phone.

  KAMIKAZE

  IS IT A form of suicide or an act of war? The idea of accepting death in order to kill the greatest number of the enemy. People here have lost sight of that simple but efficient method. The body as a weapon of war. That distance from death is impressive. Guys who announce their death and don’t hide from it. Meanwhile, in the West, we’re always looking for a back alley to escape into. We’re ready to throw ourselves at death’s feet just to be spared. The idea of a last chance is written into our Western genes, and it drives Hollywood screenwriters to unlikely acrobatics in order to get James Bond out of every unbelievable impasse. We’re sure that James Bond will never die, and that’s what gives him such importance in our inner landscape. Over there, heroes are the ones who lust after death. The will to die. I discovered that wonderment around the age of twelve as every night I devoured stories of the Second World War. The kamikazes never tried to leap from the plane at the last minute, like James Bond and his kind. It was the first time I’d learned that death could be that way. Except in voodoo. But in voodoo, death often has a sexual aspect. But here was heroic death. Pure death. The modern being is the one who is killed. Who wants to take his place? That’s been the problem lately between East and West. The conflict between two visions of death. One wants to get as close to death as possible, yet without dying. The other blindly follows the straight line that leads right to the explosion. But he doesn’t intend to go up in flames alone. His death will be used to create more death. The surprise effect is strong. Boom! The shattered body. Ecce homo. The dead body in the West was sacre
d even before Mary, with exemplary gentleness, received the body of her beloved son. The body is reclaimed, embalmed and perfumed, then placed in a box and buried in the ground. Every precaution is taken to forestall its decomposition. The cemetery too is protected. Inflicting indignities upon a body is on a par with incest: a major taboo. The dead body occupies a quarter of our minds. And death itself fills up the rest. There is so little space left for life. The shattered body, unrecognizable. No further chance for farewells. Everything happens at the moment of the explosion. When we die of a heart attack, the heart carries off the rest of the body with its death. In an explosion, everything goes at once. The entire body dies at the moment of death. But with the stupefying progress of medical science, the brain can die while certain parts of the body remain in perfect shape. If it weren’t for that little short in the brain, some corpses would walk to the cemetery under their own power.

  THE PUBLISHER OF STOCKHOLM

  I HAVEN’T BEEN sleeping well lately. It isn’t easy to sit in front of your typewriter, doing nothing, when you know that someone on the other side of the world is suffering the same pains you are. In this case, it’s my publisher. He can’t write the book for me, though he’d like to. That would spare him an ulcer. All he can do is wait. I once saw a Kurosawa film that perfectly explained the publisher’s function. It was about the shogun who must not move while the battle is taking place. The arrows whistle past his ears but he says nothing and moves not at all. He sits motionless. Impassive. And so my publisher determines the outcome of the battle of writing through his powerful immobility. I feel his presence most strongly when he doesn’t appear.

  “Hello!”

  “It’s your publisher.”

  “I was thinking about you.”

  “I’m in Stockholm for a colloquium about Andersen.”

  “But he’s Danish.”

  “The Danes hate Andersen because he made them look like monsters who would let a poor little girl die of cold. I don’t know how I got caught in this mess. Even when I was a kid I hated Andersen. The worst nightmares in my life came from reading “The Little Match Girl.” I ended up in this business because of that fairy tale. It ruined my life. I’m willing to bet it wasn’t written by someone who was moved by the poor little girl’s fate—oh, no, it was written by a sadist, a pervert, a bastard, a sick man.”

  “Okay,” I said to slow him down, “don’t get carried away, it’s only a colloquium. Stop stewing in your room and go out and get a drink somewhere.”

  “There’s not even a bar in this hotel. I got back an hour ago, completely exhausted by some wordy bitch who kept beating me over the head with her damned Andersen.”

  “You won’t escape him where you are. There must be a whole tribe of Andersen specialists where you’re staying.”

  “I’m afraid so... I called the front desk and asked what floor the bar was on. No bar, sir. Why not? You can drink in your room if you want to. You can drink in your room, but not in a bar. The guy probably thought I was an alcoholic. We argued back and forth for a while, then I lay down on the bed with my clothes on.”

  I’d rarely heard him so wound up. Andersen, plus the fact that he couldn’t have a nightcap in a quiet corner of a bar, in the shadows, must have disturbed him deeply. People have their habits. But why go if you hate Andersen so much? Probably for the free booze, and a little convention fling.

  “There must be a bar somewhere, I’m sure. Those northerners really know how to drink.”

  “The nightcap is drunk at the hotel,” he said categorically.

  “I’m in full agreement.”

  “So I fell asleep and slept a half hour. Then I woke up and went to smoke a cigarette by the window and look at the town—otherwise I wouldn’t have seen any of it. I went back to bed with a pile of manuscripts. I put two pillows behind my back and my head, and I got ready for a sleepless night. That’s what I like to do most of all: read manuscripts in a hotel room. That’s why I say yes to these trips. Those books were written just for me—or at least it seems that way. If I don’t like them, they won’t exist.”

  He was sparing me no details. His life was a regular novel.

  “The television was on, and all of a sudden there was your face, a close-up, looking right at me.”

  “What was I doing on tv in Stockholm? I don’t even know that town.”

  “That’s modern life, old man. We’re known in places we don’t even know ourselves . . . It was a piece from Japanese tv. You were walking in a park in Montreal. I thought I was hallucinating when I heard them talk about your novel I Am a Japanese Writer. I’d only been half paying attention, but now I jumped right out of the bed. It was completely crazy. . . A thousand possibilities went through my head. Like that some prankster had tinkered with the hotel TV system to play a trick on me. Maybe there really is a bar in the hotel— they’re just toying with my nerves. I don’t mind telling you, my problem isn’t alcohol, but the lack of it . . . I don’t know if you understand the position this puts me in. People will have seen the report on tv. Tomorrow they’re going to torture me with questions. Other publishers are going to want to buy the rights. What do I tell them?”

  “If you want to sell my book to a Swedish publisher, go ahead, but on one condition: I don’t want a title like ‘I Am a Swedish Writer.’”

  “Why not? That’s an excellent idea! We’ll do the same thing for every country that wants to publish it. It’ll be perfect for translation.”

  “I’ll end up looking like a chameleon.”

  “But what the hell is going on? I haven’t even got the book and already it’s been translated, and in Japanese. Am I the publisher or not?”

  “Don’t worry, I haven’t written it yet. The Japanese wanted to do a piece on a book that isn’t written. That’s their way of getting a step up on us. We’re old-fashioned, with our books that have to be written, published, critiqued and read—maybe. Too many steps.”

  “I want the manuscript in two weeks. I want to catch up with the Japanese.”

  “Two weeks!”

  “Look, I’m going out to get a drink at the corner bar. When I get back, I expect to have it on my bed. If you can do that, I’ll get you the Nobel.”

  “A drink would be good enough for me.”

  THE CANNIBAL IN HIS HOMETOWN

  SOMEONE IS KNOCKING at the door. I won’t leave this bed. It’s my place in the sun, and I’m sticking to it. I lie on my back and contemplate the stains on the ceiling. The guy upstairs must piss right on the floor. I am preparing for a long journey that might last hours, even days. There are times like that. My eyes are open, I hear everything, but I’m not really there. I travel that way at astonishing speed. I step across centuries as if they were minutes. I can do it without any chemical assistance. I knew a guy who could make the moon drop into a white saucer. He taught me how to travel across time. It’s more technique than magic. I am both the vessel and the traveler. I travel, not in space, but time. Time is vaster than space. That knock on the door again. I hear everything clearly, but my arms and legs have stopped obeying me. My face must be all twisted. There—stay still. Retrieve your human form. The traveler has returned. I crawl to the bathroom on all fours. Water restores life to me, extinguishing the last flames. I hadn’t realized how speed had sucked all the moisture from my body. The knocking continues. This time I’ll answer. I open the door. Midori is standing there. She backs off. I wonder what I must look like.

  “Sorry for being so insistent . . . but I heard voices and I didn’t understand what was going on. I heard a conversation but I didn’t recognize the language. I thought you were with someone, but the voices were so hushed.”

  I didn’t know I was speaking, or that I wasn’t alone. I thought I was a solitary traveler. “Well, come in.”

  Normally I don’t let anyone inside. Midori glances around quickly, then smiles.

  “This is exactly how I imagined your lair.”

  I allow only what is essential in this room.
A bed, a window, a little table on which my old Remington 22 sits, a pile of books on the floor. I turn to Midori. Still Midori. As sober as my room. She stands there with her camera, but I know she’s really somewhere else. Not that she isn’t present—she’s burning with intensity. But I know that she’s just as present, with the same strength, in the lives of so many other people. At this very minute she could be talking with a girlfriend in Manhattan, or running through a park in Berlin with a dog. Midori has the gift of ubiquity, and that’s not just a figure of speech.

  “It’s hot in here. Can you open the window?”

  I haven’t opened it since Noriko’s suicide. I open it for Midori. A wave of light enters the room. Midori is radiant in her tiny black dress—her version of mourning. Photographers have an intimate relationship with light. And so with shadow, too.

  “I like your room.”

  “I sleep, write and read here.”

  “You left a little quickly the last time,” she said, leaning on the window ledge.

  “I don’t like to wait around.”

  “Takashi’s been showing me how to take pictures. Can I take a few here?”

  “No problem.”

  She photographs the room from every angle. Afterwards, she is a little out of breath.

  “Don’t you have any questions?”

  “Why would I?”

  “You don’t even want to know what I’m doing here?”

  “You’re here—that’s all.” I know why she’s here, and I’m trying to avoid the subject.

  “I had a phone call from Kara Juro. Don’t you know him?”

  “Midori, I don’t know anyone in town.”

  “He doesn’t live here.”

  “Nor anywhere else.”

  “If you like.”

  “I like things to be clear so I don’t waste time in futile pursuits.” I can feel my nerves jangling.

  “Juro wrote that fascinating book, Letters from Sagawa. You’ve never heard of it? It tells the story of a Japanese man who ate a Dutch student in Paris, a woman. A true story. The guy lives in Tokyo now. He was in prison in France. When he returned to Tokyo, he was given a hero’s welcome. That’s why I would never live in that country, it’s too disgusting.”