I Am a Japanese Writer

by Dany Laferriere

  A FORGOTTEN SECRET

  WHAT GOOD IS a secret if it lies hidden in the deepest reaches of a person? Can it be forgotten? Is it a secret if you forget it? Where do forgotten secrets go? And what is a secret anyway? A thing you want to shout from the rooftops but know you can’t. A virus placed in quarantine. It doesn’t only belong to the one who keeps it. Where can it be hidden? Somewhere in your body. But not in the heart; there are already enough passions crowded in there. Bury in it your flesh. The famous promise never to reveal it. One of the two holders of the secret has given it too great an importance, while for the other it’s just an everyday story. The one whose secret it is ends up reactivating it in the other’s mind. Because a forgotten secret is a danger. It can burst forth at any moment in the middle of a wine-fueled conversation. By trusting another person with your secret, you give him absolute power over you. But you bind your fate to his as well. And so the secret has a sexual aspect. Someone gives himself to another. Agrees to be naked. Lets that person enter his private being through the back door. The narrow gate of the ass. You don’t hide your secret in your heart, but in your ass. Hence that cry of despair, just before talking: “I’m in deep shit!” What you really want is to drag the other person into your shit. We’re behind the scenes—the obscenes. Where everything seems truer. Whereas actually, the ceremony is extremely codified. Nothing is more rigorously governed than the atmosphere of a secret. You don’t reveal a secret without a ceremony. You set up a meeting because it’s not done over the phone. You choose a quiet restaurant (or a bedroom). It takes all kinds of time before you get to the real subject. The one receiving the secret has to wait until the other agrees to talk about it. It’s a long process and silence plays an important role. The more banal the secret, the longer the waiting time. True, we don’t know who is passing out the gold stars here. Then you test the other person to see if he’s worthy of the secret. Even if it’s your best friend. You have to know what a secret is in order to hear one. You don’t confess to a murder or an act of incest every day. Since it’s often something that touches the ego, you have to make sure the other person won’t laugh at you, or say, off-handedly, “Oh, that’s nothing,” then confide that he slept with his mother. That’s not elegant: one secret must never cross paths with another. Yet some derive pleasure in watching them touch each other. One secret always hides another—the one that you really do want to hide. There are layers of secrets. When everything is secret, you wonder what’s left that’s really secret. Something spontaneous, perhaps.

  THE QUEST FOR GOLD

  WHEN I’VE READ too much at the library, I go and relax in the little park at the top of the hill. I sit down on a bench in the sun and think about the Midori book. Though I’ve been trying since the very beginning to distance myself from writing, I go right back to it every time. Why isn’t there another way of doing it? Through assertion, for example. I assert that I’ve written a good book about the multiple lives of Midori and her group (I used images from the short film to reconstruct the troubling atmosphere of those quiet days). I already have the title: A Song for Midori. I’ve said it before, once you have a good title, the rest falls into place. You just have to wait. That’s not so easy. It’s a lost art. I can’t even take a good nap, let alone empty my head. A film or a book always starts off great. You have that clean energy that beginning something gives you. But after the first quarter, it goes off track, and every time for the same reason: you’re not letting things follow their natural course. It’s not that different from planting peas: you make a hole, you put the seed in and cover it over with earth, then you water it and move on. No use waiting to see if it’ll sprout. You have to trust nature’s healthy logic. Literature doesn’t like those people who wait for it, sitting like fools in front of a typewriter. I go out for a breath of fresh air. Two guys are unloading cases of beer. A black man and a white man. I think of the south of the United States and Faulkner. And I fall out of my simple little story. Here I am back in the political world out of sheer lack of concentration. Basho’s art is one of concentration. I should have learned that lesson after all this time. The truck is spitting black smoke in front of the bar. One of the two men is naked from the waist up. The other guy is running with sweat. They’re working fast, talking the whole time, telling stories. Real pros. I write fast too. Maybe badly, but always fast. I assert that I am the fastest sprinter of my generation. People should take my word for it, because not everyone makes such audacious claims, saying he’s the best. In other trades, yes—but not in literature. Athletes don’t hesitate to say they’re out to win gold. But writers get artistically fuzzy when you mention awards. They should seek inspiration from kids—they don’t think twice about showing off their biceps. The problem is, people distrust those who move through life with an open face. And people also believe, naively, that art isn’t created in a gym. In fact, you have to train hard, which is why I’m drenched in sweat. I picture myself again in Midori’s universe. Before my closed eyes, scene by scene, the entire black-and-white film of my stay there rolls past, with Hideko, Noriko, Fumi, Tomo, Haruki and Eiko. I picture myself walking in Basho’s footsteps. The purple party at Midori’s place. Wandering through the city. The brilliant landscapes of autumn. Already the air is warmer beneath this splendid sun. Its heat spreads across my face. I could spend days on this park bench watching the young squirrels climb trees. I feel the surrender of sleep overtake me. I shiver: a cloud has passed by. Everything will disappear (what we lived and what we dreamed). A radioactive future awaits us.

  I'M NOT BORGES AND MR. TANIZAKI

  ISN'T MR. TANIZAKI EITHER

  I SLOWLY OPENED my eyes, only to discover Mr. Tanizaki’s laughing round face.

  “It’s like a revolution over there. Your book is becoming a social phenomenon.”

  “What book? I didn’t write any book.”

  “I mean the book you’re writing.”

  Mr. Tanizaki was completely wound up. He waved a slender volume in front of my face. I looked at it but couldn’t make out a single word: it was all in Japanese. He pulled it away.

  “The title is ‘I Am a Malagasy Writer’ and it’s written by a Japanese guy.”

  “So what?”

  “That’s how young writers are displaying their contempt for literary nationalism. For them a Japanese writer doesn’t necessarily write a Japanese book. In fact, a Japanese writer doesn’t even exist any more.”

  “Too bad, because that’s what I am.”

  “Over there, their new slogan is, ‘A writer is a writer. A Japanese is a Japanese.’ For them, these are parallel lines. They paraded around the Tokyo Book Fair chanting that slogan. There was something about it on the news, in between a story about agriculture and the latest banking scandal. Such a thing would have been unthinkable just a month ago: literature on the news. And in Japan.”

  He was as red as a squash player at the end of a game.

  “And then there’s the tv host who wrote some shitty book.”

  He seemed to have recovered the energy of his student protest days.

  “It’s called ‘I Am a Japanese tv Host.’ But everyone let him know that he was completely not getting it. He was trying to proclaim his Japanese pride. Baudrillard—you know, the French philosopher—wrote a long article about how it sounds less Japanese when a Japanese says he’s Japanese.”

  Mr. Tanizaki was turning circles around my park bench. I listened to him half-heartedly, though I felt his passion for the issue. If I understood correctly, the whole thing started with a cultural program I was featured on, then the tv got involved, and pretty soon it hit the streets. Even the army got into the act: on the nightly news, in front of his whole family, an officer declared, “I am a Korean soldier.” A Japanese officer said that! Of course he was thrown into the brig, but then the student press went wild. In the end he was sent to the north, a kind of internal exile. But the high point of the whole business was this truck driver, rippling with muscles and covered in tattoos,
who did a transvestite number late at night in a little club on the outskirts of town. Everyone rushed to see him. His hit song played on every radio station: “I Am a Japanese Geisha.” Everyone was singing it in the subway, even kids.

  Mr. Tanizaki was out of breath by the time he finished his story.

  “How’s it going for you?” I asked him.

  “Couldn’t be better! They’ve been taking me seriously at the consulate since all this began. They even talked about me on tv. My father wrote to me, the first time in his life that he’s opened his heart to someone. He certainly never did that with my mother. He said he regretted never having told her he loved her. He told me about the war. He was a career soldier. The Army was his whole life. In the end, he sent me his love. And, most amazing of all, he didn’t say a single word about the homeland or the Emperor. I cried when I read his letter. A dozen sentences written down in pencil . . . I’m going back to Japan. I’ll be able to go back to my old job at the college, teaching poetry.”

  “That’s good news.”

  “Remember back in the restaurant, you asked me right out, ‘And the poets?’ I didn’t answer. That’s what rekindled my desire to take up teaching again. Never forget poetry. . . Oh, and a major publisher asked me to write the preface to your book. I’m going to take a few days, then get down to it. I wanted to tell you what an honor it was to spend time with you. Your book changed my life.”

  “But I haven’t written a book.”

  “You did better than that,” he said, his voice low and full of emotion.

  It’s good to write a book, but sometimes it’s better not to write it. I was famous in Japan for a book I didn’t write. I was starting to get hungry. I decided to walk downtown and buy myself a hamburger with fries and a Coke, the only American contribution to world gastronomy. And if the fries were soggy and cold, the way I figured they’d be, I would console myself by thinking about how famous I was in Japan.

  “Let me wish you good luck, Mr. Tanizaki.”

  “You know me as Mr. Tanizaki, but that’s not my real name. Tanizaki is my favorite novelist. You can’t imagine how much enjoyment you have given me... And now, what are you going to do?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “You’re not going to spend the rest of your life sitting on this park bench?”

  “Not a bad idea.”

  Once he’d left, I sent a telegram to my publisher: “I am no longer a writer.” That’s not the title of a novel. Mind you, it wouldn’t be a bad one—in perfect harmony with my progress towards minimalism. Absolute zero, though, would be: “I am no longer.” I’ll keep those two titles for later on, when my belly is scraping my backbone. I won’t be able to use “I am no longer” until I’m at least ninety years old.

  I went down St-Denis and turned right on Ste-Catherine, disappearing into the downtown crowds. It was one of those sunny autumn Montreal days. The air smelled good. The girls were still wearing their summer skirts. Right then, no one knew where I was. Or who I was either. But I was still famous in Japan.

  LANDSCAPE

  BASHO DIDN’T LOOK at the landscape like a geographer. He perceived only its colors. An exacerbated visual sensitivity to the detriment of a waning sense of smell. Good hearing, that’s for sure. He heard music (falling snow) that a normal ear could not pick up. Basho took nourishment only to continue his journey toward the Deep North; he set out to walk across Japan in order to see a sunset. During his long journey, we rarely see him eating, and he almost never speaks of the pleasures of food. He’s certainly no Caribbean. On the other hand, he does know how to contemplate. An endless gaze that makes us feel as if he were motionless. But intense activity is stirring underneath. We feel a strong passion in his descriptions, which at first might seem cold—winter was his season of choice. The smell of fresh snow wipes away all others, except that of the fish called konoshiro, whose odor recalls charred human flesh, and which he will not eat. Basho doesn’t face the landscape he wishes to describe; he stands behind it. He is so quick we never catch him slipping over to the other side—except that suddenly the colors start to vibrate before our eyes. The thousand nuances of green of the bamboo shoots. Basho acknowledged but one master: landscape. A master who did not know he was one. He seemed in harmony with nature. As for me, nature puts me to sleep. The peasant disappears into the landscape. His song is the beginning of art. In another time, traveling into the north of Haiti, I came across peasants working a rice paddy. I was in a red Jeep with an agronomist, a rice specialist who had named a strain of rice after his beloved. We’d gotten ourselves stuck. The peasants came to help us, and they never stopped singing. What is the importance of song in agricultural work? Does it help give energy? At times we scarcely heard them; then, their voices would swell anew. Sometimes the voices were high-pitched; at other times, the bass prevailed. The feminine mixes with the masculine. Peasants aren’t concerned with genres. Sacred songs, bound with voodoo, serve as a curtain separating two worlds. Between the two stands Legba. Legba must open the gate for you if you want to change worlds. He is invoked in the first couplet of the first song. Song keeps the peasants in a world of pagan gods and voodoo ceremonies. Faces appear in the landscape. Other names are heard: Damballah, Erzulie, Zaka. Zaka, the god of agriculture. Zaka, so stingy that even when he dances, he keeps his eyes on his wallet. I watched their show and thought that people of the earth are the same everywhere. Caught inside their songs and rituals. Basho sought to penetrate the secrets of this obsession. He believed the origins of poetry were to be found there. I certainly don’t believe in the peasant, who is often fascist, nor in popular culture, which is always reactionary (Mishima is the perfect example of the writer falling into the trap of “pure” identity). But Basho—Basho amuses me.

  THE FINAL VOYAGE

  I CROSS THE street. The snow is heavy and wet. Evening falls quietly. The brake lights suddenly glow sharper. Red reflections in frozen slush. A snowflake falls into my eye. A young woman, her arms loaded with packages from a department store, smiles as she goes past. How does she manage in the snow with shoes like that? Some art forms are harder to master than others. A man runs into me as he goes by. I stumble. He turns around to say he’s sorry but already his voice is fading. I go on my way without quite recovering my balance. Horns are blaring at me from all sides. Urban music. Through a fog I see a woman screaming something at me, her eyes and mouth wide open. Among the cars, I search for the celebrated barrier that Basho was so happy to cross to take the narrow road that led to the Interior.