We’d left the cab and had been walking for some time along a deserted road when, coming up to an abandoned intersection, we were witness to a radically bizarre and silent scene. In the middle of the street, down on the asphalt, there was a racing cyclist in a pair of tight-fitting black cycling shorts and a shiny pink polyester jersey with a blue and white pattern. Beside him on the ground was a twisted racing bike, and beside that a car had come to a stop at right angles to the traffic, a perfectly normal car of which all we could see was a bit of the front end, slightly damaged, one broken light bearing solitary witness to the accident. There was no other damage, nothing but a small heap of tiny glass fragments lying on the road. The most astonishing thing about the scene was the absolute stillness of the central figure, the cyclist, not lying on the road but sitting in despair in the middle of the intersection like a tableau vivant, his two hands on his neck, like an apocryphal image of the sufferings of Christ. More or less at the same time, getting louder in the silence, the echoes of an ambulance siren could be heard far off, which, by I know not what perfect spatiotemporal coincidence, pulled up and parked right in front of me the moment I was about to cross the road, even blocking my view of Romano for an instant, who, in a manner less Nipponese than Neapolitan, had rushed over and knelt down beside the injured cyclist to find out how he was. I could see him talking in a low voice (in Italian?), one hand on the cyclist’s shoulder, softly stroking his head to comfort him, while a bit further off a uniformed policeman stuffed the twisted racing bike into a large transparent plastic bag with the help of a gloved assistant. I walked around the ambulance while the stretcher bearers, after asking the few onlookers to make room, carefully lifted the cyclist, still mummified in his sitting position, set him on a stretcher and carried him off precariously balanced like a figurine in a Holy Week procession, before loading him into the back of the ambulance. Romano crossed the street once more amid the glass debris and posted himself at the angle of the intersection, where I saw him suddenly lift his thumb to hitch-hike as the next car drove by. I don’t know if it was because of the red light or the ambulance (in any case you’re guaranteed success if you hitch-hike in front of an ambulance), nevertheless the car screeched to a halt in front of him and I saw Romano lean in the window and talk to the driver, holding Hans-Joachim von R.’s finely embossed little visiting card in his hand. After a moment he opened the rear door and turned toward me, beckoning for me to come over. I trotted across the road and got into the car, sliding over the back seat as far as an empty baby seat would let me, and nodded politely to the young couple up front. The car started off and we raced after the ambulance, escorted by two police motorcyclists who cleared the way. Sitting in the back of the car I didn’t say a thing, somewhat embarrassed to impose on the kindness of this couple and to use Japanese public funds to get an escort to the house of this Hans-Joachim von R. (who wasn’t at home, it turned out).
nara, historic capital of japan
Sitting with Professor H. in one corner of the covered café terrace opposite the main entrance to the Nara train station, we kept our eyes peeled for the three people we were supposed to meet. Like a couple of cops on a stakeout, in front of the large window, an old Japan Times spread casually out in front of us, we turned our spoons slowly in our cups while casually glancing down the esplanade which bustled with hundreds of people, trying to pick out Charlie or Rémi in the crowd, while I vaguely tried to picture the young woman Professor H. wanted to introduce me to (an admirer, he’d told me, which augured well).
A passionate Francophile and skillful go-between, Professor H. had planned to get the five of us together that day at Nara to take in the city’s traditional holiday, On matsuri, the last preparations for which were just underway: a couple of guys in fundoshi and long blue socks bearing the colors of their brotherhood scuttled across the esplanade with wooden rams in their hands to catch up with a procession that had just departed. Our quintet finally assembled, we hastily introduced ourselves to one another under a driving rain and left the station to go take up a position at the top of a sloped street where we waited for the procession to arrive, Rémi and Professor H. under a huge black umbrella, Charlie and my admirer squeezed together under a smaller transparent one, and myself a little to one side, my hands in my pockets, head down, my black wool hat pulled over my ears. Soon the first horsemen appeared, followed by a long silent procession bearing immense warlike standards that twirled in the wind and sagged under the rain. Unfathomable samurai in damascened armor filed slowly by, followed by hundreds of extras dressed in sumptuous costumes, pleated blue and lilac silks that the rain pressed against their bodies. Soaked and heavy, the tissue finally shed its colors bit by bit, which trickled down into the gutters in blue and white rivulets. Immobile, my collar pulled up around my neck, a few raindrops dribbling down my nose and cheeks, I watched the last breathless figures walking up the street in their soaking sandals, bent double under a torrential rain which became stronger and stronger, a thick, heavy, driving rain like a mobile wall of water that the wind spun in whirls under the stormy black sky; children of around three or four with swords at their belts whose mothers trotted along beside them, all tangled up in their drenched kimonos, trying to cover them with umbrellas blown inside-out in the gusts of wind; stoic, impassive old men on horseback with hundred-year-old stable-boys clutching the reins in both hands, when suddenly the animal bucked in the street in an effort to free itself, whinnying up at the storm, shrieking its rage at the inclement skies (too bad it’s raining, huh? I said, leaning over to Professor H.).
After lunch, coming back into the center of town under the persistent rain, I’d let myself fall back and was walking along dreamily beside my admirer. She’d prepared a whole list of questions for me, on my work and my methods, my tastes and how I spent my leisure time, and I felt more like I was giving an interview than engaging in tranquil conversation with a young woman after lunch. To this rather unpleasant impression of being grilled while still digesting my food was added the fact that my admirer remained icily cold in the face of my attempts to break up her interminable seriousness with a bit of humor (she didn’t laugh and never smiled), and, as I spoke, I had to face the obvious: she didn’t understand French, or just a little (and above all she pronounced it very badly, I had to strain enormously to understand even a word of what she was saying: she pronounced, for example, a word like “fear” as though it were “weeuhh!” which caused me to raise a perplexed eyebrow while continuing to wonder what answer I might possibly give her). To attenuate the disagreeable picture these remarks might give of my admirer, I must admit she got things off to a very good start by telling me that my books had the same beneficial effect on her as Chinese medicine, in that, while never resorting to direct or invasive procedures, nevertheless brought her a strange sense of well-being. I’d been enchanted by this metaphor (a Chinese doctor, that’s what I was at heart), and I walked along beside her with an impetuous stride, my shoes light and carefree, avoiding with rollicking dexterity the numerous deer droppings scattered here and there in strands along the ground (you’ve got to watch out, Nara is full of deer), when I noticed, as we walked, that she was staring at me. I even had a fleeting feeling at the time that she was going to declare her love for me. You know, you’re not at all the way I imagined when I read your books, she avowed in a hushed voice. (What did I tell you?) Oh no? I asked, full of curiosity, suavely stroking a deer under its neck. No, no, she said, in fact I imagined you more small, more intelligent and more blue. More small and more blue! I said, digging in to the deer’s fur and twisting it discretely in my fingers to hide my nervousness. (Certain great successes can be founded on immense misunderstandings.) No, no, whiter, she meant more white (more pale, let’s say). I had heard wrong (she pronounced blanc like bleu, which of course might lead to some confusion). We started walking again, I took a disgruntled little kick at an old newspaper lying on the ground. You imagined me more intelligent? I asked in a conversational tone.
Yes, she said. We kept walking along side by side. I turned and gave her a fixed look (no, she really didn’t speak very good French). We could go stroll ourselves along the river, she said (oh yes, why not, I said, if you like). Stroll ourselves along the river!
When we returned, Professor H., having examined the sky and foretold more rain, proposed that rather than spending the afternoon viewing traditional Japanese art or visiting the Shin Yakushi-ji Temple or the Kasuga Taisha Shrine (we’d already seen Todai-ji that morning), we could take in a more popular although in his view equally instructive spectacle: the striptease. From that moment on he decided to do his best to get rid of the only young woman in our midst, my admirer, judging it better not to involve her in this venture because, even if he was willing to have us, his foreign guests, slum it with him (we were obviously his cover-story), he still retained some sense of decorum, gallant enough to wait until after the young woman’s departure, even hurrying it along somewhat, before leading us down his favorite dark alleyways. You have to go back to Kyoto now, Yoshiko, he said, looking at his watch with hypocritical concern. I’ll go with you if you like, said Charlie (strippers aren’t exactly my thing, he said, and they walked off arm in arm toward the station). The last little setback Professor H. had to deal with before satisfying his unavowable desires in Rémi’s and my name was our desire to do a bit of Christmas shopping beforehand. Then, our shopping done, just when he must have thought he’d almost reached his goal, we said we wanted to make a last detour to a shop we’d heard sold authentic handmade paper lanterns. Only then, having each acquired one of these expensive lanterns, our arms loaded with two large paper bags full of Christmas presents for our wives and children, costumes and brushes for our daughters, sandals and incense, trinkets and lacquers, we arrived at the entrance to the strip club. Having bought our tickets, we penetrated into the dubious dark of an old theatre smelling of urine and fermented soy and followed a corridor covered with obscene kanji and scrawled katakana where, here and there in the shadows, banged-up and abandoned vending machines displayed cans of Kirin and Sapporo beer. Professor H. couldn’t be restrained, and deserted us as soon as we got into the theatre. Professor, Professor! we yelled, reaching out to hold him back, but it was too late, he was gone. Rémi and I, clenching our bags full of Christmas presents, ventured into the dark labyrinth of corridors before going into the filthy bathrooms reeking equally of piss and miso, of shit and soup, the walls tacked with not particularly well-built Asian pin-ups astride huge Japanese motorbikes. Having stoically taken a piss, our noses pressed up against the exhaust pipes of these humongous bikes and doing our best not to breathe (nice place, by the looks of it), we too finally made our way into the striptease hall where, bathed in a shadowy reddish light, a stripper was just finishing her number on a stage surrounded by mirrors and curtains and lit up indirectly by the phallic beam of a dim red spot. We crossed the hall noiselessly and went over to join Professor H., who tilted his head over to us without taking his eyes off the stage and whispered to us to sit down on two seats that had remained free beside him. We set our bags of Christmas presents down beside us in the darkness, arranging them neatly on both sides of our chairs before looking up at the stage where a stark-naked stripper was spreading her legs on the floor and stuffing a little red ping-pong ball into her vagina before making it pop like a champagne cork, pop, which then fell softly back onto her stomach, whereupon she immediately stuffed it back inside her and started this intimate cup and ball game all over again. After these gymnastics, which only did credit to the suppleness of her anatomy (no matter how you looked at it, she was good at what she did, and we gave her a short round of mental applause), she came over to the edge of the stage and spread her legs wide right under the noses of the spectators in the front row, offering them little transparent plastic towels so they could wipe their fingers in case they were overcome by the urge to thrust them into her pussy and rummage around at their leisure for a while. That afternoon in the theatre it was an exceedingly eclectic group who took her up on this offer and started mucking around inside of her — there were young men and old, two well-dressed, elegant businessmen, three or four mean-looking yakuza with faces like syphilitic thugs who gave her a concentrated, attentive feel, and a pale and sickly fellow in a baseball cap and one of those white gauze masks meant to protect you from germs. Then as the stripper continued to look out benevolently at the audience with her legs spread at the edge of the stage, never losing her perpetual friendly smile like that of an Asian-American television hostess nor seeming to be at all aware that three guys were kneading her breasts and fingering her pussy with all the diligence of indiscriminate, narrow-minded, monotonous adolescents, she absently wiped the tips of their fingers again and moved slightly to one side to give the next spectators a glimpse of the depths of her soul, taking with her as she went the little pile of used transparent towels which seemed to me the most repugnant thing about this well-oiled ritual. Well, merry Christmas.
vietnam
Francophonie is on the decline in Vietnam, as I ascertained on a ten-day study trip to Hanoi. Just off the plane on the evening of my arrival, my flexible black travel bag in my hand and a bead of sweat on my forehead — stoic, immobile, looking around for my hosts in the jostling nocturnal bustle of the arrival gate, I was accosted by an eager and amiable Vietnamese man. Möchten Sie ein Taxi? he asked me. Nein, danke, I said to him in my German, which was getting worse with every passing day. Um nach Hanoi zu fahren, he added, inviting me to follow him. Nein, ich danke Ihnen, I said. I didn’t need a taxi (in principle I was being picked up by someone from the French embassy). I got up on tiptoes and looked around once more for my host. Nothing. Es ist nicht teuer, the taxi driver insisted, fünfundzwanzig Dollar. Aber ich brauche kein Taxi, I said. Woher sind Sie in Deutschland? he asked. Und Sie? I answered. He looked at me. (It seemed he wasn’t German either.)
People in Hanoi tend to get around by motorcycle. The very first time I myself got on one was also in Hanoi, behind Solange. Solange, who’d come to pick me up at the hotel to take me on a tour of the city, had proposed I get on the back of her little Honda, and I’d swung one leg in the air and over the seat with my accustomed ease, a bit like the way I’d heard you straddle a pony (although I’m not much of a horseman either), and once in the seat, not terrifically reassured, I’d propped my two feet on the footrests. Then, as she abruptly pulled away and veered resolutely into the traffic, I completely lost my balance and, not knowing what to do with my hands, after a quick look around, my goodness, I put them on Solange’s hips. Actually, I found that very pleasant, driving around Hanoi holding Solange by the waist and talking in her ear in a low voice, feeling the very light fabric of her dress under my fingers. I later found out, however, that it was not exactly done to hold your driver by the waist like that when you were not at all on familiar terms, nor was it proper to close your eyes and rest your head in a melancholy way on her shoulder (mentally humming some Italian serenade), and that in fact there was a handle to grab onto on the back of the bike. Behind Professor Bich, moreover — a professor of comparative literature who was kind enough to take me to visit a historic village just outside Hanoi the following weekend — already better-acquainted with motorcycle etiquette, I didn’t have the slightest urge, not even the hint of a temptation, to hold him by the waist. Nguyet, for her part (what an urbane life I lived in Hanoi: Solange, Nguyet, Professor Bich; and that’s only to name the ones who shared the favor of their motorcycles with me for a few moments), who was no taller than four foot eleven and weighed eighty-eight pounds at the maximum, had no end of difficulty transporting me — at twice her weight — on her own motorcycle. At first she suggested I drive (don’t even think about it! I said, looking at the contraption), then, as she could tell that I was hardly about to give in on this point, we finally set out, she kicked the motorcycle off its stand and pushed it onto the street. Our departure was hesitant, laborious even, we both ran along beside the motorcycle to get it
up to speed like a bobsled before jumping onto the seat and zigzagging for fifty or sixty feet down Tran Nhan Tong Street. Finally we got stabilized, Nguyet in front, very serious, sitting perfectly straight on the seat and gripping the handlebars with both hands. Then, as we slowed down to approach an intersection, leaning dangerously to one side or the other as we lost speed, Nguyet tried to keep the motorcycle straight while I, immobile behind her, said to myself, “We’re going to fall, we’re going to fall” (what a mistake, what a mistake to have accepted this invitation to Vietnam). I was preparing to jump clear when I heard the terrifying honk of a truck just a few feet away, however after a final sinuous, ellipsoid loop we elegantly avoided the impending danger, picked up speed and weaved our way once more into traffic.
In Hanoi, the traffic punctuates each hour of the day and almost every hour of the night. The noise of car horns never stops in the streets, it forms a permanent background noise like an uninterrupted murmur that you could almost forget if it didn’t keep coming back at you, it being precisely the function of horns to attract attention, to signal and warn, to drown each other out, out-honk one another. Thousands of horns blow without a moment’s silence on the streets, shrill and loud, sharp and repetitive, insistent, some quick and piercing, fired off nearby in short impatient salvoes, others remote, lost, muted by their distance, mainly from mopeds and motorcycles, but also from cars and taxis, tarpaulined trucks and three-wheeled vehicles, buses and vans and sometimes even — lost in the middle of an intersection, hardly audible in the surrounding turmoil — the delicate and isolated tinkle of a bicycle bell.
Self-Portrait Abroad Page 3