The Witches' Book of the Dead

by Christian Day

  For reasons unknown to him, however, he had never ventured inside, and so entering the reception hall, its temperature regulated by immense, invisible machines, proved an unexpected, welcome surprise—the aseptic cool dispelled the stifling stickiness of the natural climate just outside, the rain-damp suit and the dress shirt underneath suddenly became pleasantly clammy layers on his skin, causing him to shiver softly and envision quartz crystals, stacked up by the tens of thousands, bewildering and fathomless in their frigid mathematics.

  Farther inside the hotel then, Amakasu hit his head twice, how vexing this was; jagged corners protruded into the lobby unexpectedly, the walls were porous and pockmarked like solidified lava rock, and sconces encased in concrete gave off a matte yellow, pointing the way through the dimly lit corridors, until the group, now a dozen people, was led into the elegant private room of a dining hall where they were served cold Kiku-Masamune wine and vanishingly small crispy fish glazed in sea salt. They took their seats, and at once Amakasu was forced to think of freshly fallen snow, and one of the guests loaded a Goldberg hand camera and cheerily filmed those gathered.

  A young German woman had joined them at the shimoza, the least important seat at the table. Tasting the little fish, she grimaced, then absentmindedly sucked on a lemon wedge. Amakasu liked her freckles, he found them quaint, and her fashionable aviator uniform fetching, and he slid a pretty clay dish with pickled radish toward her. She smiled and lit a cigarette. Amakasu returned her smile with a graciousness of which he had not thought himself capable.

  Chaplin’s driver, Kono (Amakasu had already demoted him in his mind), meanwhile, clapped his hands, holding forth, wooden sake cup upraised, cigarette holder between his teeth. Japanese culture, he said, borrowed and perfected phenomena just as sugar was refined; everything here was essentially of Chinese provenance, but China was a country whose slovenliness was no longer acceptable, for the China we knew today was largely shaped by the vulgar bric-a-brac of the Manchus, these ridiculous, petty-minded trinkets of the Qing dynasty, while our Imperial Japan here had adopted and improved the clean lines and clear efficiency of the earlier Song dynasty.

  He, Kono, was a proponent of Hokushin-ron, the northern route of expansion; it was quite natural that Japan should annex large regions of northern China and eventually battle the Soviet Union for Siberia. Who knows, one might be able to occupy Alaska, too, and then push down to California.

  Chaplin began by saying that China could only be pacified by completely destroying the innumerable warlords, the Communists hadn’t the slightest chance (here Amakasu squirmed inwardly at the actor’s political dilettantism), Japan alone could still get a handle on the anarchic circumstances that had overrun large portions of Asia. And Chiang Kai-shek? Oh, the Kuomintang were weak and decadent, that was why Manchuria had been occupied after the Mukden Incident, to establish a new utopian interior, a resource-rich colony of dreams: Manchukuo, a counter-embodiment, so to speak, of the divine-imperial.

  My, Chaplin was quite the little Japanese nationalist, Amakasu thought, which was obviously due to indoctrination by this Kono, you had to hand it to him. Live squid was served to a round of appreciative ahs and ohs, and the Italian colonel excused himself to visit the lavatory.

  Having listened intently, Ida, the young German girl, wanted to remark that only the Nanshin-ron, the southern route of expansion, would lead Japan to success, when suddenly, as if something were blinding her, she jerked her hands to her face, too late! the sneeze had already worked its way loose from her face, blasting forward like a typhoon; a long, glistering drop dangled from her nose, reflecting not only the rice-paper walls of the private room and the warm yellow lamps on the ceiling, but also the appalled expressions of the Japanese in attendance.

  Amakasu bit his lower lip to keep from bursting into laughter and slid his silken-socked foot farther under the table, inch by inch, until it touched her ankle, resting there, stroking her now with the tips of his toes.

  Ida, in turn, did not recoil, let him continue his rubbing, my goodness, whatever was she doing? Chaplin and Kono had taken up a new topic, the other guests having already forgotten the sneeze so as not to have to keep feeling shame for the young German woman.

  If we really wanted to understand a mystery, Amakasu said, smiling, the solution would appear from the matter itself, for answer and problem couldn’t be separated from one another.

  Obsequious waiters brought clay bowls of clear spring soup, a single, fragrant, early summer mushroom floating therein. Outside, far off on the slopes of Fujiyama, it began to thunder.

  Ida replied without hesitation that there was a forgetting of all existence, a falling silent of our being where we would feel as if we’d found everything. She looked him directly in the eyes while saying this, and Amakasu, his foot wandering gradually higher under the little table, was certain he had experienced this very exchange once before, he simply could not remember anymore when and where.

  Their interest in the ascetic dance of dishes lost, the guests drifted over to the hotel ballroom little by little, dropping snatches of conversations behind them like wadded-up wastepaper. And then, beneath the modern chandelier, they moved somewhat bashfully to the jazz rhythms, the floor serving them as soundboard. Chaplin clapped his manicured hands while laughing with a trace of depravity.

  When an Argentine tango was struck up, Amakasu grabbed the young German woman’s hands and began to whirl her around—she was astonished at his virtuosity in dance, smiled; as they spun in circles, the light from the wall sconces streaked across her vision, and Amakasu dipped her elegantly to the floor. Whoops, could be that she had drunk too much rice wine.

  22.

  Tsuyoshi Inukai, Japan’s prime minister, sends a messenger to invite his son Takeru Inukai, Charles Chaplin, and Masahiko Amakasu to dine with him this evening in his residence, if they so please.

  For reasons that will never be adequately fathomed, this message does not reach Chaplin. So the prime minister sits at home humming quietly at the chabudai, that simple low table his grandfather bequeathed to him such a long time ago, and in gentle anticipation contemplates the garden, illuminated so softly by the room’s lightbulbs, listening to the fresh trickles of a fountain outside.

  When three quarters of an hour have passed, he flips open his pocket watch, sighs faintly, and, after instructing the servants to put away the two choice bottles of red wine and the crystal glasses, dismisses them, together with the security personnel, and they withdraw to the staff wing.

  What has happened instead is that Chaplin is attending a Noh performance this evening along with Inukai junior and Amakasu. And now young naval cadets flit into the residence on sock feet to kill the prime minister and the actor, whom they likewise suppose to be present, since they are certain the superior national character of Japan, the kokutai, is threatened.

  Chaplin is not there, oh, how maddening, so they set off a smoke grenade and put a revolver to the aged prime minister’s chest. He manages to shout If I were only free to speak the truth, but they reply coldly The time for talking has passed and pull the trigger, once, twice, many times, pop-pop-pop it goes, as though unleashed, reckless Champagne corks were flying about; the prime minister is dead instantly, black smudges of gunpowder dust his white shirtfront, his beard is sticky with blood of a blackberry hue, like the dark remnants of a pudding.

  Meanwhile, at the other end of the city, seated in the dimness of the Noh theater are: Takeru Inukai, Kono, Amakasu, Ida, and Chaplin, who has been informed in advance that the most artful stories in Noh lack both plot and representative characters and feature ghosts.

  They all suspect nothing of the young military officers’ coup attempt, outside the weeklong rain has stopped, and Ida, who has already attended several of these performances, suddenly feels herself reminded of her hours with Ezra Pound, of her long-lost book on Noh, and then the first actor is already onstage, masked in red, draped in silken fabric, an iron ring atop his head, his hands p
ainted red, accompanied by incisive, glittering flute melodies, and everything is forgotten in the spell of the events. It is now the hour that brings back longing …

  It was the hour the sailor’s tender heart,

  Beset by homesick urges, swims in yearning,

  That day in tears from loved ones e’er to part,

  That softly sets the novice pilgrim churning,

  When sounds of evening bells he hears afar

  Bewail a day to embers gently burning.

  Now Kono interrupts the freshness and purity of this melancholy moment (and notwithstanding the vastly higher-ranking prime minister’s son beside him), lecturing at a whisper: the essential aspect of Noh theater is the concept of jo-ha-kyū, which states that the tempo of events is to begin slowly and auspiciously in the first act, the jo, then accelerate in the next act, the ha, and finally, in the kyū, reach its climax abruptly and as expeditiously as possible. Kindly pay attention to the actors, Kono says, see here, they must move across the stage like delicate ghosts, shuffling and sliding their feet without lifting them from the floor.

  It is the tale of the kanawa being told there on the slightly elevated stage, the tale of the iron ring of jealousy. Look, the actor is holding the hannya to his face, the demon mask of a jealous woman.

  During the reign of Tennō Saga, there lived a princess who loved to no avail, and at this she grew so furious with jealousy and grief that she went to the shrine in Kibune and prayed for seven days to become a hannya, a demon. On the seventh day the deity took pity and appeared to her, saying, If you wish to become a hannya, you must go to the river Uji and lie there in the water for twenty-five days. She did as she was told and afterward returned to Kyoto, overjoyed, and wove her hair into five strands and painted her face and her body red and placed on her head an iron ring with three candles affixed to it. And she put between her teeth a torch that burned at both ends. And when she went out into the streets, the people saw she was a devil.

  And Amakasu, sensing something akin to an incorporeal and yet profound mental intimacy to Ida, clasps his hands together as if in prayer, ponders how he might later steer her to his futon, and after the show, which in fact, as prescribed by the kyū, ends surprisingly quickly, they escape into the street, where they hear that the prime minister has been killed and the famous American actor Charles Chaplin, too, although he is standing right there among them. Nodding bows to one another, they hail two taxis in faintly fluttering panic and ride home, anxious and taciturn; something altogether odd has happened.

  23.

  Nägeli, we recall, is traveling up to Germany in that rickety plane through the lard-gray murk over Lake Constance, in order to present himself at Universum Film AG in Berlin after having found absolutely no inspiration whatsoever in ossified Switzerland, Scandinavia, or France.

  Those baleful premonitions that the plane might explode in midair from the detonation of a suitcase bomb dissolve in the very moment the clouds disperse, and he can make out below the light-beige, rectangular building blocks of Berlin Central Airport.

  They circle in the air for a while, then fly a spiraling loop in a downward hurtle (Nägeli’s coffee slops out), touching down rudely—the wheels skip a few times before the aircraft safely taxis to a stop. He extends the cuff links of his dress shirt toward his nibbled fingernails as is his custom, grabs his little valise from the contraption, climbs down the stepladder, and hands his identification papers to the uniformed German waiting on the tarmac—who naturally does not return Nägeli’s friendly smile.

  They were going to entrust him here with a huge project, his secretary said in Zurich, a global project, Hugenberg, an obscene amount of money, German money, foreign money, maybe a hundred thousand dollars, God, he is vain enough. Marveling, he is chauffeured through the verdant streets; in the metropolis dated films like Der Kongreß tanzt haven’t been screened for some time now, unlike in sleepy-town Zurich, but instead there are a number of brand-new, remarkable, formally absolutely radical pictures, announced in broad daylight by hypnotizing neon advertisements of gigantic proportions whose fleet runs of glowing light bite themselves in the tail; the flashing banners at left have hardly gone out before those at right begin again.

  Precipitous, modern, jagged, the office building’s façade towers aloft; meanwhile he is kept waiting in the marbled atrium inside, draped in one of those German avant-garde, chrome-plated, black leather chairs, next to a withered potted palm. Over there: mirrored glass windows, statues in agate, a dull wisp of Kölnisch Wasser. Beside his seating area a red-liveried boy diligently operates the clicking buttons of a double-shafted elevator car; people hasten inside, harrumphing officiously, zooming upward.

  This, now, is the epicenter of world cinema; everyone who is anyone is in Berlin, old and young alike: Wiene, Lang, Pabst, Boese, Sternberg, Riefenstahl, Ucicky, Dudow.

  Nägeli suddenly feels the strong urge to comb his hair, arises, searches in vain for the washrooms, is confused and ill at ease, like someone who, in a bad dream, has become lost.

  Just then an exuberant little blond man hurries toward him (double-breasted suit, pinstripes, Aryan midget), pumps both his hands rhythmically, assuring him of his deeply felt esteem for and his eternal friendship with the Swiss, his Helvetic brethren; this is a singsong, a chipper, smirking tumbling-out-and-about of courtesies, a bright boyish joyfulness on full display before him such that never would one ever suppose something else lay underneath, something darkly golden, proletarian, scheming.

  Yes, yes, indeed, Nägeli’s German is utterly flawless and unaccented, impeccable, he speaks it even better than the Germans do (Haha! Guffaw!), Nägeli—oh, what nonsense—Heinz will simply call him Emil; then Heinz Rühmann’s forefinger curls, beckoning, producing now, Mephistopheles-like, a second German from behind a marble column, as though he had been hiding there in wait this whole time.

  He, however, is the contrasting part of this double bill, the midnight showing: dark skin, dark-black, oily hair parted down the middle and spilling over his forehead, thuggish hands, a well-fitting suit, padded shoulders, tall, a big fellow, a house of a man, elegant, powerful, a golden signet ring on his pinky finger. His friends call this oaken hulk here Putzi, Putzi Hanfstaengl, Heinz laughs, and then: Putzi flings open his coat, twirls forth a pocket watch, flips it open with a circular motion, peeps at the clockface theatrically, his one eyebrow drawn up like Emil Jannings, what, my oh my, already half past two in the afternoon and everyone still sober, the three of them will have to treat themselves to some entertainment in Berlin (duskily Lower Bavarian, gutturally trilled Rs in three, treat, and Berlin).

  Nägeli demurs, he is too tired; Rühmann again, this time: oh, what utter nonsense, come along, Swiss, there’s no getting out of this. But what about his appointment? Now listen here, double bow and scrape, they are his appointment, them, Heinz and Putzi, at your service!

  24.

  And so they ride together to a cabaret near Nollendorfplatz, in the cavernous spatial inscrutability of which scantily clad chorus girls are reflected on the walls. Champagne (a jeroboam): the glass table strains under its weight. Putzi’s giant fingers remove a cigar’s banderole with such nimble tenderness; the syllables ver-i-tas twinkle silver in a pin on his lapel, ostentatiously proclaiming his membership in the Harvard Club. The revue girls whisper, giggle, Rühmann takes mischievous pleasure in being recognized, and, surprised at himself, Nägeli realizes he can’t stand the two of them.

  Thrust through a gap in the dark-blue velvet curtain, a face peers out, painted white with a thick paste, the middle of its lower lip alone highlighted by a bloodred dot. The curtain now opens completely, and the face acquires arms and legs, a stiff tailcoat appears, it is a skeletal master of ceremonies, who skillfully attracts the undivided attention of the hall to himself with one gloved gesture, then a little orchestral flourish, silenzio, darkness, a single yellow spotlight sets the man’s patent leather shoes ablaze with light, stage smoke, at first scattered clickin
g, now a continually accelerating clacking, the man’s rhythmically gamboling feet are turning into a typewriter, into machine-gun fire, and thus no one in the audience notices the arrival of Reich Minister Hugenberg, who, flanked by two or three slick and sluggish goons, has been waiting for precisely this moment of the performance to plop himself down in the sofa corner reserved for him.

  Tanned an indecent nut brown from his Swiss ski vacation, owner and sole god of Universum Film AG, the most powerful man in German cinema, etcetera, etcetera—this is Hugenberg. Pistol grips can be seen peeking out from the unbuttoned suit coats of his escorts; one of them is even wearing the revolver stuck in his front waistband. Gangsters, mumbles drunk Nägeli.

  And now an agent from Danish Nordisk is also there, someone Nägeli has never seen before but who addresses him familiarly in English (he signaled to Hugenberg after the latter’s private screening of Die Windmühle that he could get that fellow Nägeli to show up in Berlin inside of a week; one just had to draw enough dollar signs in the air over the phone. Well, then get him up here, mewed a crapulous Hugenberg, who had drifted off during the film; tedious opening sequences had wandered through his mogulish synapses; colorless shadows, logs, coal ovens, disconsolate farm girls, Swiss ennui, a great deal of it), yet then yields to Hugenberg, who scoops his hefty hands toward Rühmann.

  This fellow here, thin Heinz, blond Heinz, little Heinz, like the red tomato sauce, this, my dear Swiss friend, is the greatest comedic talent of the twentieth century aside from Chaplin.