I Am a Japanese Writer

by Dany Laferriere

  “The Japanese have always been daring when it comes to food. They’re not afraid to take chances. They must have appreciated the guy’s attempt to try something new.”

  “I’ve always wanted to work with Kara. He called me a while ago. I was very excited. Then, nothing but silence for two months. Yesterday his agent called me and asked if I knew you. I said yes. He told me Kara wanted me to photograph you at your place. What kind of photos? He told me Kara never gives directions, but he needed the pictures right away. I don’t know what he wants.”

  “He wants you.”

  “Me?”

  “Not necessarily in a sexual way. It’s bigger than that. The same thing is true in literature: the publisher doesn’t want anything in particular, he wants the writer.”

  “I’d like to do a book with my photos. And I want you to write the text.”

  “I don’t know your world well enough.”

  “I think you know it very well. Takashi says you don’t even need a camera to take pictures. You have a lens in your head. Coming from Takashi, that’s the greatest compliment. I’ve watched you do it. I like the way you observe things. You were at the apartment, you saw the girls, you were at the parties, you know my little zoo.”

  “I don’t write about other people’s lives.”

  “Look at the photos and write what you like.”

  “I don’t like looking at things that don’t move.”

  “That’s exactly what interests me: the perspective of someone who hates to look. We’ll talk about it later, all right?”

  METAMORPHOSES

  MIDORI PACES the room, then locks herself in the bathroom. Cocaine. I know she’ll turn circles in here for hours like a caged beast, banging away on the shutter release. I saw her do the same thing at a party at her place. She comes out of the bathroom, her eyes glittering, her nostrils flaring, as if she’s been fucking.

  “Can I take a few pictures while we talk?”

  She photographs me as if I were an object, or some insect.

  “The first thing I did was call a girlfriend who’s super plugged in to the Tokyo theater scene. She knows everything about me. There’s nothing crazy I do that she doesn’t know about. We met in Vancouver. Later we hooked up in New York, at Columbia, where I was taking an acting class and she was studying to be a critic, and that’s where we really got close. She told me Kara seemed really interested in some story about a black guy in Montreal who thought he was a Japanese writer, and that he was following the story in a magazine where they compared you, or so Kara said, I don’t want to get it wrong, to the character in that Kafka story who woke up one morning, completely metamorphosed. I hadn’t known anything about it . . . I was knocked out. I told him the black guy had lived at my place and that I’d never suspected . . . I looked totally clueless! Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

  “Midori, there’s nothing to say. It’s all a misunderstanding. I just said I was going to write a book. They asked me what the title was and I told them. That’s all.”

  “And what is the title?”

  “‘I am a Japanese Writer.’ But that’s only the title.”

  “Oh, man! You couldn’t have picked a better time. They’re into this really big identity debate over there, and all of a sudden you come up with a book like that.”

  “There is no book—that’s what I’ve been explaining to everyone.”

  “That doesn’t matter. They’re completely obsessed with identity, I’m telling you.”

  “I don’t give a shit about identity.”

  “So you say, but then you write a book with a title like that. What does that mean?”

  “It means I did it to get away from the whole business, to show that borders have disappeared. I was tired of cultural nationalism. Who says I can’t be a Japanese writer? No one.”

  “That’s exactly where the debate gets interesting. In Tokyo, a lawyer has claimed he can get an injunction against your book.”

  “Midori, look at me. Look me in the eye: there is no book.”

  “I’m telling you who’s saying what in Tokyo, and you keep coming back with Montreal stuff. I need work. Now I have a photo contract, and afterwards, who knows, maybe I’ll do something in film. I could sing. For an American girl or a French woman, it’s easy to make a name in Japan, but if you’re a Japanese girl living overseas, you’re screwed.”

  “Sure. But you just told me you didn’t want to live in Japan.”

  “That changes if Kara is calling, and it’s a short-term project. The latest news, my girlfriend told me, is that this lawyer got on tv and said that the word ‘Japanese’ belongs to the Japanese government, who should bestow it only on its legitimate citizens. Not anybody can become Japanese just because they want to. And another lawyer who wanted to be smart—it was a televised debate with a bunch of lawyers—asked whether a serial killer from some other country could publish a book called ‘I Am a Japanese Serial Killer.’ That would sully Japan’s reputation. That show was on a real popular channel, and it set off an uproar among the Japanese right.”

  “‘The Japanese right’? Aren’t they all on the right?”

  “If you go there, be careful, the issue is no laughing matter for them. Some nationalist publishers, the ones who publish mostly ‘novels of the soil,’ signed a manifesto not only to protest against your book coming out in Japan, but anywhere in the world.”

  “They’re crazy!”

  “The funniest thing is, a major critic from the biggest daily paper in the country said that the reputation of all Japanese writing would be in danger if your book turned out to be bad. With that title, it’s as if the writer had become—and I quote— ‘the Japanese writer par excellence.’ Foreigners might well avoid Japanese literature if they don’t like your book.”

  “I didn’t say I am the Japanese writer. I said I am a Japanese writer. It could be good or it could be bad.”

  “I can see you don’t understand Japanese nationalist sensitivities. And a black man on top of it ... That’s what interested Kara. And here I am.”

  “You know the book hasn’t been written yet.”

  “But its impact is real. People might be disappointed if you wrote it.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t care about their feelings. Why does this guy want pictures?”

  “Kara doesn’t want any real contact with you. For him, the whole thing’s a fantasy. In the end, he might turn you into an eighteenth-century samurai. He does what he wants to. He’s an artist. My girlfriend told me she’s seen him a lot lately, she knows him real well, and that’s all he talks about. He calls up everybody at two in the morning and goes on and on about it. He thinks there’s some kind of connection with the guy who ate the Dutch girl. For him, it’s all about metamorphosis. It has nothing to do with sex or cannibalism. The eater wanted to be something different—another gender. You want to be something else too.”

  “Maybe Japan wants to be something else as well.”

  “No. Japan just wants to be Japan. That’s the saddest part of it.”

  Midori took a few more shots.

  “Okay. I’ve got enough. I have to go.”

  She hasn’t said so much as a word about Noriko.

  A SPLENDID VIEW OF THE RIVER

  I KNEW I had to move out of my room when a Japanese tourist, a magazine in his hand and a camera over his shoulder, came knocking at my door.

  “Hello,” he said, with a beaming smile.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Are you the Japanese writer?”

  “No,” I said, and closed the door sharply.

  I pressed my ear to the door. I didn’t hear footsteps. I went to the bathroom and moved aside a piece of tile. That was my window onto what was happening in the hallway. A long line of people were waiting patiently—all of them Japanese. I left the rent money on the table. I pictured Zorba banging away at my door all night long, only to open it in the morning, muttering to himself, and discover the closet empty and the money waiti
ng. I packed my bag and slipped out by the fire escape. I went down the alley where kids were running like crazy. Their mothers watched casually as they hung out their laundry, knowing that cars rarely came that way. Except for cop cars, which hid there sometimes. A spider feigning sleep, patiently awaiting its prey: I stopped just in time. I recognized the scar on the arm of the cop who’d recently paid me a visit. What was he doing here, right underneath my window? I didn’t move; I held my breath. He was sipping his coffee. He must have known I was home. Another cop got out to stretch his legs. They were the same age, with the same hard faces. Were they waiting for nightfall to make their move upstairs? I knew what would happen next. They would take me to some spot considered dangerous for the police, then rape me before using their nightsticks. If ever an accident happened (though they were too experienced to let that occur), they’d blame it on a settling of accounts among rival gangs. The city desk journalist would write what the cops told him, otherwise he could kiss his scoops goodbye. And a city desk reporter without a scoop is no better than a penniless mafioso on the run.

  My intention is to live like Basho this time. Underneath a banana tree. But the winter is too harsh. I sleep here and there. Sometimes on a hot-air grate in front of a downtown building, a warm breeze on my back. Other times in the subway. If you don’t sleep two nights in a row in the same station, you can get away with it. The police keep a lazy watch. Sometimes I spend the night in the Voyageur station where the buses head out for the great American cities. I just say I’m going to New York or Chicago and they leave me alone. Watch out for your smell— it’ll give you away. The cops do their rounds at the smaller bus station (the main one is downtown and not to be recommended), sniffing at people to ferret out the scent of poverty. Here, race isn’t much of an issue (we all belong to the loser race); smell determines everything. And it’s not easy getting rid of that smell, believe me. I go for a shower at the SaintVincent de Paul. I soap myself down till the smell disappears. I put on a clean shirt. Everything goes according to plan until I start sweating. I’ve got a trick: I replace the identifiable smell of poverty with another one. I go and I sit in front of the Da Giovanni restaurant until the smell of spaghetti fully permeates my skin. I want to change smells.

  It’s easy to find something to eat in a big city: you follow the first guy you see walking south with his head down. South is always poorer than north. The man led me to the docks. He sat down and looked at the boats. It was child’s play: the lapping of the waves, a few white birds attracted by the crumbs he was throwing. I stood there, knowing this wasn’t his final station. After getting his fill of the horizon, he stood up, adjusted his old bones and got back on the road. I followed him like a shadow. We all have an itinerary in a city. His was mine too. The difference is that I had chosen my path, while he was passive. I could tell by his slumped shoulders. He stopped a minute, turned around as if he suddenly felt he was being followed, then stepped through a doorway. I followed him in and discovered a giant room where all the city’s down-andouters seemed to have their meeting point. The place smelled like vegetable soup. It didn’t smell bad; it smelled of poverty. A smell of wet canvas and rotting fruit. A sweetish smell. We were in the bowels of the city. Someone motioned me forward. I hadn’t even noticed I had joined the ranks. There was one line and one menu. A nun was doing her best to make us feel at home. Everything came to a standstill. A man wanted two portions. Impossible, the nun told him with a sad smile. We don’t know how many people will be needing us. There were the usual visitors, then there were people like me who followed some miserable old guy, not realizing he was part of the slumped-shouldered crowd. My bowl of soup. I went and sat down in a corner near the window with a splendid view of the river. Two or three people burst out laughing. It’s always dangerous when poor people laugh. I spotted a shadow on the floor stretching out in front of my shoes. I looked up and discovered the exact reproduction of the Indian who acted in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I understood what he meant before he said it. I’d looked for the most uncomfortable spot and I’d found it. I was halfway through my soup when a man kneeled down in front of me. What did he want? My soul, I guess. It’s the last thing I had that I could sell. He took my measurements and assured me that next time, he would bring me a pair of boots so I could get through the winter with warm feet. Later the nun told me he’d been doing that for twenty years. No one knew his name. I wasn’t afraid of him, but of the guy he works for. What does he want from me?

  CHRONICLE OF A DISPOSSESSION

  I RAN INTO François near the little store that sells fish, fruits and vegetables where I’d bought, not so long ago, my last salmon. We had lost track of each other. We’d always done everything, not exactly together, but at the same time. When we needed to express ourselves publicly, in our twenties, we did so: he on the radio, me in an entertainment weekly. When things got too dangerous, we left the country together. In Montreal, we refused to live in a ghetto. We liked Malraux, and we got sick of him at the same time too. We did so many things in the same way without even asking each other. Then came a time when our paths separated. Life is like that. I would hear about him, but through friends in common. I suppose the same people kept him up-to-date about me. Then time began to do its work. Slowly, his image faded from memory. And now life brought us together again. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the complex network of events that had been necessary for our reunion to take place. He told me this wasn’t his neighborhood, he never went to this store, he’d stopped off here only because he’d forgotten to pick up his salmon at his usual fish market. He understood the situation immediately, I could see it in his eyes, when he noticed my jacket was missing two buttons. He must have spotted the spaghetti-sauce stain on my shirt, too. He saw I was going through a rough period, but he couldn’t have known that that was exactly what I was looking for. His greeting was manly and his warmth sincere; that’s the way he’s always been, with that surface strength. Of course he did his best not to sniff that soup-kitchen smell that clung to my skin: the perfume of poverty. I did the same thing for his chartered-accountant odor. Our smells tell others where we’ve been. Lately, I’d been finding what I needed in Chinatown, in the alley that runs behind the grocery stores. Tuesday and Saturday are garbage pick-up days.

  Despite my fall, I still mattered to him—I was the only one who could appreciate his ascent. I knew him back when he hadn’t even climbed the first rung. He wasn’t going to let me get away without telling me the story of his struggle, step by step. And he wouldn’t settle for a simple recounting of events: with my bare hand, I’d have to touch every trace, every sign, every object that spoke of his rise through society. What good would it do to tell him I’d spent my life scribbling down stories that I tore up once I’d finished them, not because they were bad, but because I was writing them for myself? I am both writer and reader. Totally autonomous. I would have kept on like that if I hadn’t got sick of working at the factory. I stopped working, but I wanted to continue writing. I found a way of getting a publisher. A publisher, I understood, gives you money in hopes of getting a book at the end of the line. The perfect deal for me. I negotiated over a book I hadn’t written, and knew I wouldn’t write; the only proof of its existence was the title. They gave me five thousand euros upon signing the contract. I hardly even saw the color of that money because of the debts I’d built up over the years. They promised me the rest, another five thousand, when I submitted the manuscript. In other words, I made five thousand euros for nothing. In the meantime, I became a filmmaker, I made a short film about a group of Japanese girls, a film that even the most experimental festivals wouldn’t touch. Everyone wants a neatly tied-up little plot. I get bored too quickly to begin a story and then finish it. Once I can picture the ending, I move on to something else. I write as long as I’m not hungry. When I feel like eating, I wrap up the story in a hurry. Maybe I’d get something from Midori. I didn’t know how much she’d be willing to put out for her photo book. I could
write it over a weekend, but I’d make her believe it’d take me months of effort. I’ve noticed that people are unhappy when they get something too easily. You have to sweat—that’s the only moral they know. Maybe this wasn’t the kind of story you could tell an old friend on the first night of your reunion. I trusted him to serve me up a better fable.

  We went into the bar where he stops off for a drink once or twice a week with his colleagues. I knew he wanted me to observe the position he occupied in his world. François likes concrete things. I remember he used to love acting out the anecdotes he’d tell me, and if a story took place in a discotheque, he’d start dancing. I tried in vain to make him see he could achieve the same results with words. He smiled, then applied a gentle slap to the face: “That’s something a writer would say.” Back then, I hadn’t written a single line. And when I did write my first story, after he read it, he was practically angry. “You want the Nobel?” he said. “Is that what you want?” And now he was being greeted noisily by his group of friends—which is a figure of speech, because I’m his only friend. Hearty slaps on the back. He introduced me and I received a vague welcome, but he wanted everyone to greet me with greater respect. “Listen, guys, he’s the one I’ve been telling you about. Ask him anything you want to about what’s going on in the world—he’ll have the answer.” Everyone waited a moment or two, but no questions came. An embarrassed silence settled in. Finally, a mercantile murmur arose (they’re accountants, after all). A chalet in the Laurentians, the new model that bmw had just come out with, the chances of winning that night’s hockey game. The price of pleasure, above all else. After five minutes, my head was spinning. Still, I could see that he was the prince of the evening. The waitresses took his order first. And when he laughed at a joke, everyone’s laughter ratcheted up a notch. But we weren’t going to put down roots here. We said our goodbyes and headed out. Fat tips on the table. I didn’t even look at the bill. Such figures didn’t concern me. He was taking me to his place. We got on the expressway. He wanted to spring a surprise on me. He rummaged through the glove compartment and finally found a Skah Shah cd, the group of our tender years. He danced as he drove—and so did the car. Dancing was his thing. Not mine. He used to say, every time, “Sure, but you know how to make words dance.” We finally got there. His house stood at the end of a dead-end street, behind a barrier of rosebushes—his colleagues must have the same set-up. Off-handedly, he introduced me to his wife, Shônagon. I’d always thought François was the kind of guy who would settle down with someone of his own blood type. We entered the living room. Sober decoration. He didn’t walk, he glided. Cognac? Whiskey? He had rum too. He laughed. People laugh as soon as he laughs. His laughter always was contagious. He wanted to give me everything he had: his house, his wife, his car. Nothing new there; he’d always wanted to be me. Even as a teenager, he had everything he wanted: girls, money, freedom. I was a shy guy, I didn’t know how to dance and I didn’t have a penny. Worse, my mother wouldn’t let me go further than the Paramount movie house. Why? What did he see in me that he didn’t have? Finally, his wife smiled. I began to see her differently. An overseas call he’d been expecting came in. He went into his office to take it. I was alone with Shônagon. The silence was awkward. Then, in a small voice, she began to tell me what her life with him was like. François talked constantly about me. It was a regular obsession. I avoided her eyes, so sad and resigned. A magnificent Hokusai on the wall. Not a single Haitian painting. The decor was entirely Asian. On the outside, he’s a Quebecker. Within his own walls, he’s Japanese. Everyone is always telling him that Haiti is a disaster. Does he ever dream of Haiti? Does he remember the country? He returned with the rum (Haiti in a bottle) in the middle of a silence. Now he began telling me about his wife. He started with her origins. Her father is Spanish and her mother Japanese. She inherited from both sides: Spanish fire and Japanese sobriety, he added without a smile. As if the thing that had once seduced him no longer meant much. An interesting mix in bed, I imagined. Those are the qualities I’d like to have as a writer: a classic style fueled by devastating passion. François told stories from our boyhood as he drank. He remembered tiny things my memory could not hold. I imagined him in front of a bottle of rum on a Saturday night, performing a heartbreaking solo. In life, we fight but a single battle. The more he drank, the more he wanted to recall the smallest details of his life before the big departure. He seemed desperate that he’d forgotten the title of a Tabou Combo song. And when I said—it was a pure guess—that it was “Bébé Paramount,” he was even more distraught that I, to whom music meant nothing, could remember the title he’d been searching his memory for all these years. It was typical of our strange relationship, of how he’d always claimed I was a genius, worthy of the Nobel. The only song whose title he’d forgotten, and I remembered it right off. That happens only with him; otherwise I don’t know anything in life. By the way he looked at his wife, I saw that what she had been trying to explain to me was true: I really was the focal point around which his incredible energy revolved. Every detail he conjured was about me, as if he had spent his entire life analyzing my being. Shônagon’s smile (his last piece of property) grew thinner as I, a helpless witness, was forced to watch the film of my life. Life before Shônagon. Every time I broke in to tell a story about him, he cut me off, the better to batter me with compliments. I felt as though I belonged to him. With his prodigious memory, so flattering to me, he had taken over my life. I had been dispossessed of myself. Beware of those who love you.