Cutting Back

by Leslie Buck

  I asked Shannon if she wouldn’t mind going ahead, that I’d catch up with her. She strode off toward the plant bazaar. I waited at an inconspicuous corner of the room until the old man vacated his spot. I didn’t want to rush him. After about fifteen minutes, he left, and I walked quickly to his warm seat, trying to act nonchalant. I wasn’t sure why he was looking so intently at the pomegranate, but I felt drawn to sit where he had sat.

  Delicate bright green leaves covered the small plant, which was dotted with red fruit. A skinny, twisting, sinuous trunk led down to a wide root base lifted so high off the soil I could see a hole through it. This hollow spot reminded me of a favorite tree at UC Berkeley—a buckeye with a rotting lower trunk, rumored to perhaps be the oldest tree on the 150-year-old campus.

  The pomegranate leaned to the right, its branches spread out like bird wings, with leaves for feathers. Less than an inch wide, miniature pomegranates dangled enticingly. I assumed the bonsai artist who guided this plant had purposefully left these fruits. Perhaps there had been more and he had removed them. Or maybe less fruit had shown up in previous years, and he waited till the right year in order to display this plant. In my imagination, the pomegranate sat in an abandoned orchard, hence its untended, asymmetrical look. Upon more careful inspection, I noticed that a few of the pomegranates had popped open, bruised and slashed, as though a crow had just been pecking at them. I pictured the pomegranates ripening in late summer, about to drop and rot into the earth.

  I marveled at how every detail of the small plant presented a thoughtful collaboration between the plant’s will to grow and the patience of the bonsai artist’s hand. A slit in one of the fruits exposed its fertile seeds. I laughed, remembering how the other day I’d tried to explain to Kei the difference between the words fertilizer and fertile, as in “a fertile woman.” That conversation had ended quickly.

  I couldn’t help but stare at the pomegranate searchingly. I had turned thirty-five that year. I felt strong but also a little ripe myself, or at least heading that way. My heart felt pecked at. Wind, cold, trees, and men had pushed me quite a lot of late. The little bonsai also looked lonely among the bonsai giants, many of which had thick trunks and vibrant needles.

  Then something occurred to me. The plant before me wasn’t just an old plant to be pitied. No. Its bruised fruit captivated me, just as it had the old man. The pomegranate had been placed at the end of the table not because it was to be ignored, but so that it could be admired. It drew me over to take a closer look. In its story I found emotional resonance and beauty. I rested there awhile longer until I began to feel guilty about taking up the seat. So I got up to find Shannon.

  My shoulders ached by the time we left the exhibit, because I carried all the work clothes I’d need for a three-day work trip to Hishima. I planned to meet Kei at his house for dinner prep and sleep over there so we could bike together to work in the morning. No buses ran that early. Kei had kindly, but with some hesitation, offered to play host. What would we talk about for so many hours? I wondered. I looked forward to our dinner—homemade pizza.

  Kei took the duffle bag and groceries from my hands as soon as he opened his door. We fell into an easy rapport. I told him about the bonsai show—a geeky pruner subject. I mentioned that one of the prize plants in the show had been done by a student of my American mentor. Kei did a subtle double take when I mentioned this tidbit, as had Nakaji when I’d told him. I enjoyed trying to get an emotional reaction out of the men.

  After I gave Kei a pizza-making lesson, we sat satiated on the tatami floor, still talking about this or that. Since Taylor’s departure, I couldn’t help but continue to admire to Kei. He could prune like an Olympian and nurse tiny plants on the same day. He had become a symbol of human connection in Kyoto, where sights, sounds, smells, and taste were all foreign.

  Could there be something between us? I dared wonder. Something more than just being friends? Is this why he grew so silent before my boyfriend’s visit? Or was he simply becoming a quiet friend? Or worse, was he angry at me? I fretted. I felt a growing desire to know the answer so I could cancel out the what-ifs and move on. Loneliness caused me to feel even more reckless. So I considered exploring the Do Not Enter garden of my friendship with Kei. Unlike almost everyone I’ve ever met from Japan, Oklahomans are direct and to the point. So I knew I should just end the conversation right there before my impetuous ideas took hold. But then I thought, Oh, why not ask? I need to find out what’s going on. “Kei,” I ventured forward softly. “So,” I meandered as my pulse rose. I thought fleetingly of the image of Taylor saying “I love you” through the taxi window, and then how he’d made no effort to contact me since. “What do you think, Kei, about—” I stuttered down a sharply curved Japanese garden path, its destination hidden. “Kei, what do you think about us being more than friends?”

  Lately gardening had become a muddled meditation. I’d focus on pruning the plants one moment, and then quickly other thoughts would enter my head. I’d try to return my focus to the plants, but over the past few weeks my main thoughts had been as repetitive as sheared azaleas in Kyoto: Plants, tired, plants, boyfriend. Plants, tired, plants, hmmm, my friend Kei. Back and forth I went. I looked to Kei; he remained silent. He lay on his back, looking upward thoughtfully. Not a single movement or expression allowed me entry into his thoughts. What an idiot I am! I fretted, hoping for something positive to arise out of the mess I’d just created.

  With the calm voice of someone used to reining in his emotions, Kei finally responded, “I like Leslie as a pruner.” He hesitated before continuing, “I like Leslie as a friend.” He seemed to be composing a haiku. “That is how I like Leslie.” Then he smiled all friendly up at the ceiling, signaling an ending to his poem. Brilliant! I thought, rejected without the use of a single negative word.

  After a second or two of prolonged silence, I popped out, “Okay!” and we picked up our conversation about whatever we’d been talking about before my inquiry. Eventually we went to sleep, he in his tiny bedroom, me on the tatami near the toaster oven. I slept restlessly, destined to feel lonely in Kyoto forever. But I still had to smile at Kei’s cleverness with the expressive Californian. To my surprise, I’d also felt an immediate sense of relief that Kei and I would remain just friends. That feeling lasted, so I knew it was the right one. I appreciated Kei for his translation abilities and for his diplomacy with a sometimes emotional American gardener.

  By the time we reached Hishima the next morning, the birds hardly peeped; their dawn outburst had ceased several hours before. As Masahiro and I sheared like the dickens, running from shrub to shrub, I had time to study all the varying landscape styles on the large estate. Each garden had a different atmosphere. Beds leading to the front door felt like walking through a modern art museum with all the tightly sheared shrubs and symmetrical marble sculptures. The landscape facing the back bedrooms looked like forests of fall color, with maples and evergreen live oaks. Near the side kitchen, I discovered farm-to-kitchen vegetable beds. I even peeked around a tall fence enclosing a tiny garden off a bathroom window. This scene, with the right imagination, might turn a brief shower into a mountain waterfall plunge.

  On the outside, the gardens felt disjointed. But because the Japanese mostly view their gardens from inside the house, one room at a time, the variety of the gardens was just fine. At new California jobs, I ask my clients if I can enter their home to look at the gardens from inside. American homeowners walk, play, and relax in their yards much more than Japanese do. But busy Americans forget that most weekday nights and many cold winter days, they also view their gardens primarily from inside.

  I have a client with a large backyard apple tree outside her dining room. It offers shade to an outdoor picnic table and provides her fruit. She leaves most of her apples for birds because the tree produces so many and the fruits are mushy. I call her fruit Snow White apples because of their black-red color. Each year I cook with them, labeling my jars “Snow White Apple Sauce.
” I asked my client if I could sit in her dining room chair the first time I worked on the tree, as she told me that most days of the week she liked doing office work in that spot. I’d found the primary viewing point for the apple. From there I could see where to prune the Snow White tree, high enough so a view to an uphill neighbor could remain screened, and low enough so more sunlight could enter the room.

  Masahiro and I raked up enormous piles of leaves. On my way back from one particular dump run, I took a shortcut around a rather huge sheared shrub and found myself in the company of some new, and friendly, colleagues. Snow White and the seven dwarfs, painted statues each about a foot tall, marched in formation beneath a wide azalea shrub, which I hoped might bloom in spring Technicolor. I wondered if these statues emphasized the garden’s deep forest theme or just held our Japanese client’s imagination in the light way the fable held mine. This was indeed my most interesting question of the day.

  When we arrived at the Japanese inn where our client had paid for us to stay for several evenings, a receptionist whisked me away to my private room. The men would sleep in a shared dorm room somewhere else in the hotel. She opened the door onto a luxurious space with a central futon covered with a cloth of such delicate floral print, the woman might just as well have strewn fresh petals on top. Perhaps she’s taken me to the wrong room! I thought anxiously. A glossy lacquer tray with a tea set sat nearby on a short bedside table. An elegant wooden screen hid my private bathroom. With smudges all over my face and my clothes covered in dirt, I felt like I’d entered the magical attic room of one of my favorite childhood books, The Little Princess, only set in Japan.

  The inn’s thick futon bed looked inviting after a long day. The receptionist mistakenly thought I was staring at the lacquer tray, so she walked over to show me how to use the teapot, cups, and strainer. She opened the tea tin and tilted it for my inspection. Inside I saw shriveled green tea made from the leaves of Camellia sinensis, the shrub that Nakaji had me smell. As soon as the receptionist left, I tipped my weary body onto the bed and remained motionless, looking up at the ceiling, corpse-style, for a while.

  For once, I thought, being the only garden girl at Uetoh Zoen has paid off. According to Kei, the men had to share one big tatami room. I wondered if they were jealous.

  Glancing around, I noticed a small rectangular alcove built into the wall, about the size of a wine crate. Inside rested a vase of holly branches with a painted scroll of a snow-covered forest scene hanging behind. The alcove reminded me of a tokonoma, a much larger display shelf commonly found in Japanese teahouses.

  A typical tokonoma alcove—about six feet high, five feet wide—might display flowers with a calligraphy scroll behind them. Regardless of the physical size of the tokonoma, the scene is meant to represent a much bigger, or even limitless, scene in nature. Just as a poem is the essence of a story, the tokonoma represents the essence of nature, hinting at a certain scene, atmosphere, or message. I looked at the little alcove in my room and imagined a winter holly shrub inside a snow-covered grove of pines. Although my inn bedroom had no windows, which normally might have felt claustrophobic, the little alcove acted as a make-believe peephole into imaginary nature.

  I also found that my room had a real tokonoma, a large, tall alcove raised slightly off the floor. In it sat a television, computer, and telephone, with a factory-made landscape scroll hanging on the wall behind. Did this display represent a landscape of technology coming to the Japanese countryside?

  The idea of my own room sounded fun, but as I looked at the blank computer screen, I sensed loneliness creeping up. I pictured the men spread out in their huge tatami room, joking around, snoring in unison. Back home in Kyoto, I’d gotten used to the company of traffic horns and the morning monastery drums.

  Silly Leslie, I told myself, trying to cheer myself up, you know the men envy you getting a private room! Right before I’d separated from the men in the lobby, Kei informed me, “We’ll eat in the main dining area at seven. Normally we wear pajamas.” Before I could ask what that meant, the men walked off. I showered and waited on the futon, which was so much more luxurious than my flattened futon back in Kyoto, contemplating pajama options.

  My relaxation ended when the phone jarringly rang at six-thirty. Masahiro, who could hardly speak English, said in a shaky voice, “Dinner is now,” and hung up. I had decided that I definitely wasn’t going downstairs in my preferred bedtime attire, a thin cotton shirt and undies, so I stepped out in a fleece sweater and sweatpants.

  I found the men in the dining room sitting quietly, legs crossed, on flat pillows. I thought at first that they were meditating. But it’s just that I was late, and they’d been waiting for me. They hardly spoke during most meals. The guys wore T-shirts and pajama bottoms. I’d guessed correctly this time on the Western ladies’ proper inn attire, although a pink negligee might have livened up the serious group a bit. I tried not to stare at Nakaji’s outfit, a stiff, perfectly ironed kimono with a bold abstract print. I found out later that Japanese men and women often wore yukata, kimono robes worn after the bath, at traditional Japanese inns. Masahiro’s hands shook during the whole meal. He came from a rural island in Japan, and the guys told me that this was his first experience eating freshwater fish, perhaps eating in such a fancy restaurant. I felt a bit jittery myself, sitting across from my boss while he was wearing a bathrobe, even if it was hand-stitched and manly looking.

  Our table had a lovely view of an outdoor stream and landscape through a wide glass window. Just like a tokonoma, the inn courtyard garden was small, but it felt much bigger in my imagination. As the meal progressed I wanted to ask questions I normally didn’t have time to ask at work. Nevertheless I held my silence, not wanting to bother Kei for translating. I had a whole reservoir of questions saved up. I’d learned that in Kyoto if I waited before asking a question, the answer would usually appear on its own. I thought up what seemed like millions of questions each day. Yet I had to pick and choose the most important ones to avoid overwhelming the men.

  That day, I asked Kei just two questions: “When do we bike to Uetoh?” and “What time is dinner?” Some of the questions I wanted to ask him were: “Where else does Uetoh go on work trips?” And “How much did this cost our out-of-town client?” (At the end of the trip I estimated nearly three thousand dollars for one fall pruning.) And “Do any of the men have hobbies like ikebana (the Japanese art of flower arranging), bonsai, or poetry outside of pruning?” A month later Nishizawa told me that he did ikebana, “as an amateur only, for fifteen years.” And “What was Nakaji’s favorite garden?” Nakaji happened to answer this question during a tea break, saying his favorite garden was Katsura Imperial Villa, “for the pines.” I held myself back from asking what I needed to know that night: “Does my inn room have a heater?” I never found one; I just used lots of blankets and two hats.

  The moonlight struck the little pine in the courtyard garden, rendering its needles a mass of green spider legs. I nibbled quietly on my fish and pickled vegetables, gripping my chopsticks tightly for fear they’d tumble out of my hands and onto the tatami, disturbing the peaceful meal. The men finally relaxed and began to chat, in Japanese. So I pretended I traveled alone on vacation, enjoying a delicious meal in an inn on my own with a fine view of a forest and stream, which anyone would enjoy in solitude, wouldn’t they? Keeping me company during my dinner was the feminine maple that leaned over a rock, gurgling water flowing among boulders, a prickly pine pruned by someone else, and the reflected moonlight, which captivated my attention the most with its fleeting spirit.

  Feminine Strength in the Maple Grove

  One morning the following week, I showed up at the office looking like the incredible garden-girl hulk. I’d overslept through two alarms, thrown my work clothes right over my pajamas, and run to my bus stop with my hair crammed into a bright blue fleece hat. Wearing two layers of clothing, and with my hair a mess, I had a difficult time walking and felt even more self-conscious than
normal traveling through town. Later that day, I met some women whose uniforms were different, and much more beautiful, than mine. I sat in the back of the bus and tried to comb my hair with my fingers. But no one gave me a second glance. I had a chance to “slim down” in the women’s bathroom, undressing to take off my pajamas. Ironically, I made it to work on time, and by chance the men showed up late, so I got to act as number-one worker for half an hour.

  Loading the truck under Bossman’s loud instructions made me physically jittery, but mentally I was unfazed. I understood at this point that when it came to yelling commands, Nakaji was an equal-opportunity boss. Once the men arrived, we zigzagged through the streets of Kyoto. We passed commercial shops blanketed in neon signs and street-side altar gardens brimming with plants. The city was modernizing at an unstoppable rate, but tradition and nature were still held closely.

  I became distracted by memories of Berkeley’s November lemon and orange trees ripening in the sun. I looked out onto the cold Kyoto street and noticed we’d entered a completely different neighborhood. The buildings had turned from busy glass-fronted shops to simple wooden structures of traditional design, with almost no signs. The neighborhood looked old and handcrafted. Pedestrians, who filled the Kyoto main streets during rush hour, had all but disappeared. It felt as though we’d driven onto an empty movie set of The Twilight Zone. The only movement was that of bamboo blinds swinging back and forth in an invisible morning breeze.

  I turned to Kei and tilted my head. Still my closest friend in Kyoto, he understood my question. “We are in Gion, Leslie, a historic neighborhood where geisha live,” he explained. “Today we are working at an okiya, a traditional lodging where women live when they are training to be geisha. Okiya are almost like family.” “It’s so quiet,” I couldn’t help but mention. “The geisha are still asleep. They worked very late last night at the bars.” He spoke the last sentence as though he had personal knowledge of this fact. This made me feel a bit annoyed, and amused.