Why do Egyptian clouds catch my attention as I look at the train? These are the first clouds I remember seeing in weeks or maybe months. I just haven’t been paying attention. When did I stop?
The train is carrying the President of the United States Jimmy Carter and the President of Egypt Anwar Sadat. They are trying to find peace between Egypt and Israel. It’s somewhere out there in the desert. While they are doing this, I am watching clouds and trying to figure out what they mean to my life.
We all have our roles in history.
Mine is clouds.
Fantasy Ownership
This is a little study in power. It is something I have observed before in America, but especially here in Tokyo. The subject is waitresses.
I’ll go into a Japanese restaurant that serves nothing but eels cooked in a dozen different ways and all the waitresses will be short, squat and slightly plump with round moon-like Japanese faces.
I’ll go into another restaurant and all the waitresses will be tall, slender and with long Japanese faces. It will be a restaurant specializing in noodles.
A third restaurant will have Chinese food served by waitresses with large breasts and very small eyes and full mouths. They could almost be sisters but they aren’t. It must be interesting to own a restaurant in Tokyo, like owning a fantasy.
The Mill Creek Penguins
I have been fishing in the same neighborhood of Mill Creek for six years now. One particular stream corner has always been very good to me. If I had a newspaper stand there among the rocky blue and green of the creek flow, business would have been quite successful for a fisherman reader with headlines like:
WHY READ THE NEW YORK TIMES?
SIX GOOD TROUT CAUGHT RIGHT HERE
Last night was the middle of October and a warm autumn sun was going down and I was fishing my favorite spot. Most of the leaves had fallen from the brush close to the creek. I fished tor twenty minutes or so and had two rises and caught them both.
One trout was a very fat sixteen inches which I consider an excellent Fish for Mill Creek and he put up a good fight. When I first reached my spot, I caught a ten-inch fish immediately. Then there was a fifteen minute wait, like waiting for an Izaak Walton bus, before I caught the big one. During that period I kept up a steady typing on the stream with my fly rod while my mind drifted from place to place, past and present watching the fly as if it were my imagination and the creek and its bank products of that imagination.
Suddenly something moved in the fallen leafy confusion of the underbrush across the creek, and I thought it was a penguin. I didn’t actually see what moved. I only saw the movement, but for some reason or another I thought that it was a penguin.
Montana is known for moose, grizzly bears, elk, antelope, etc. You can practically name it but no penguins. Penguins are the butlers of the Antarctic as if a trillionaire lived there and employed them all. They have no business in Montana, not unless they are in zoos at Billings or Great Falls.
Why a penguin? And as I said earlier: I actually did not even see it. I saw only a movement that I thought was a penguin. Needless to say I was quite relieved when I caught the sixteen-inch trout that put up a good Fight before I let it go.
That trout made sense.
I wonder if when I fish that place on Mill Creek again, I will be indirectly, subconsciously keeping my eye open for a penguin. I will find out next year because I don’t plan on going back there this year.
A Reason for Living
I knew that the son-of-a-bitch had to be good for something, that there must be a reason for him to exist, and I finally found one today.
I think he works for a company here in Tokyo and I think he is from Australia. Whenever I go to a certain cafe to write in Harajuku, I’ll see him if I am still there after 5 p.m.
He is in his early thirties and very good looking, actually handsome, in a sort of obvious, predictable way that is skin deep. He possesses a style that is modeled after images of certain men he has seen in the movies and on television. I don’t think that the bastard can read.
He is probably a very important man for some business in Tokyo. Maybe he is the vice-president and has many people at his beckoning, but you don’t think I believe that, do you?
Anyway, he arrives after 5 and emits like a gas a sort of false charm that he very carefully holds in arrogant restraint as if he were doing the planet a favor.
Being cool: I believe is the word and I overhear him talking to other foreigners that inhabit the place, and of course he often meets women there or they arrive with him.
He makes it a special point for them to know what a cool guy he is by almost totally ignoring them. He arrives with or meets a girl there and then he spends his time talking to other foreigners.
There is always a mirror at the table where he sits and he never lets his own image get out of his sight: Everything he does like lighting a cigarette or taking a sip of beer or pausing a long time before saying something stupid, he watches in the mirror.
Once he was with a very pretty Japanese woman and when they left the place he walked off as if she wasn’t with him. She had stopped to look at something and he just continued walking away. When she looked up, he was almost gone. “Where are you going!” she yelled.
Good girl. When she said that I liked her immediately, and as you can see, this guy has gotten on my nerves, though we have never said a word or even recognized each other’s existence.
Today I was sitting there at the café when he arrived early. It was 4 o’clock. I almost wondered what was up, why his routine had been disturbed, almost, and then he sat down right beside me and of course there was no recognition.
He sat there.
I sat there.
I think he dislikes me, too, because I obviously don’t belong at the café. I look like a fading middle-aged hippie and never talk to anybody except the young Japanese men who work there.
I know the prick is also a snob.
Anyway, today I finally found out why he was put on this earth. I had to meet somebody later at 6 o’clock in another part of Tokyo and I don’t even own a watch and from where he was sitting I could see his watch, so from time to time, keeping track of my future appointment, I looked at his watch.
As I said earlier: I knew that the son-of-a-bitch must be of some earthly good, a reason for him to live.
1953 Chevrolet
No seats, no fenders, no rearview mirror, no headlights, no brakes, no bumpers, no tires, no trunk, no windshield wipers, no windshield
Inspired by a vision of poetic American romance, my friend was interested in buying an old car in Montana and driving it back to California. Every evening he would get a copy of the local newspaper and look in the want ads for an old car that could get to California.
CALIFORNIA OR BUST!
He was thinking in a price range of maybe two or three hundred dollars with a four-hundred-dollar tops.
That’s not much for a car in this year of 1978 but my friend had a dream of an old car going happily down the road to California with still a few months of driving left in it after getting there.
A good old Montana car like a good old boy.
One evening he saw an ad that really wetted his romance:
1953 CHEVROLET $50
He immediately called up the telephone number in the ad and got the voice of an old woman. “You have a 1953 Chevrolet for sale?” he said. “For fifty dollars?”
“That’s right,” she said. “It’s in perfect condition.”
“I’d like to look at it,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “You can’t buy it not unless you see it. I live on North L Street,” and she gave him the address.
“When can I look at it?” he said.
“You can come now,” she said.
“OK, I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he said.
“AII right,” she said. “I’ll be expecting you. What’s your name again?”
“Reynolds,” he said.
/> “All right, Mr. Reynolds. I’ll see you soon.”
My friend hung up, very excited: $50!
In his mind he saw himself driving to California in the most beautiful 1953 Chevrolet left in America:
A real sweetheart with only 15,000 miles on the speedometer because the old woman only drove the ear to the store three times a week and to church on Sunday.
A car with its original whitewall tires in perfect running condition.
He was madly in love with that car by the time he arrived at the address on North L Street. He felt like a teenager going out on his first date with the prettiest cheerleader in high school.
The old woman answered the door.
She was very old but could still get around, sprightly is the word.
“Hello,” he said. “I’m the man who called you about the 1953 Chevrolet. Mr. Reynolds is my name.”
“Hello, Mr. Reynolds,” she said. “I’ll show it to you.”
She put a coat on and stepped outside and led him around the house to the garage.
“How are the tires?” he said, trying to hide his excitement but failing.
“There are no tires,” she answered.
“No tires,” my friend said. “Oh.”
That knocked a little hole in his dream. He would have to buy some tires for the car but he knew that it would be such a wonderful bargain old car that buying some tires for it would be a small matter, hardly big enough to be considered. After all, it would be a car in perfect running condition. Tires were no big deal. He mentally subtracted the tires from the picture of the car in his mind.
“What about the brakes?” he said.
“There are no brakes.”
“What? No brakes?” he said.
“That’s right,” she said. “No brakes.”
“No brakes?” he repeated.
“No brakes.”
He mentally subtracted brakes from his dream car that already had no tires and moved on to another thing in his mind but then he doubled back and thought about it again: No tires? No brakes?
Then without thinking he said to the old lady, “What shape is the body in?”
“No body,” she said.
“No tires, no brakes, no body,” he chanted like a child.
“That’s right,” she said, acting as if it were a perfectly normal car to sell somebody.
He had met some pretty crafty used-car dealers in his time but this old lady took the cake. What in the hell kind of ear was she trying to sell him?
“Why doesn’t it have a body?” he said, automatically like a child.
“Because it’s not a car,” she said.
“What?” he said as she led him through the garage door into where an automobile engine greeted them. The engine was lying on the floor in the middle of the garage.
“That’s a 1953 Chevrolet?” he said.
“Engine,” she said.
“Engine?” he said.
“Yes, engine,” she said.
“I thought you were advertising a car for sale,” he said.
“Why would I do that?” she said. “I don’t have a car. I just have an engine. Fifty dollars. Do you want to buy it?”
“I’m interested in buying a car,” he said. “I want to drive it to California.”
“Well,” she said, motioning toward the engine. “You can’t drive this to California, not unless you get the rest of it.”
Thank you, ma’am.
My friend went home and got the newspaper and turned to the want ad section and looked up the ad for the 1953 Chevrolet. He read it half a dozen times. He examined every word in the ad very carefully as if he were reading a first edition of the Bible in Chinese and wanted to make sure that it was an accurate translation.
Then he called the old woman back up on the telephone. Her telephone kept ringing but she didn’t answer it. He let the telephone ring for a long time before he hung up.
She’s probably showing it to somebody else? he thought. He could see them walking around to the garage. He could hear somebody saying to her, “How’s the engine?”
And her replying, “It’s in perfect condition.”
My Fair Tokyo Lady
TEA TIME…
I saw a stage production of My Fair Lady in Tokyo in Japanese and performed by an all-Japanese cast. I fell in love with the Japanese actors and actresses singing and dancing in front of sets and backdrops of Victorian London.
At one point, a handsome Rex Harrison-type Japanese Professor Higgins was standing on the front porch of a London house in the 1890s beside a backdrop street of other London houses and he was singing a song in Japanese about, I think, his love for a Japanese Eliza Doolittle.
I wondered if the backdrop houses were filled with Victorian Japanese listening to him sing and hoping that it would all work out tor the best.
I looked into the windows of the backdrop houses but saw no one staring out and nobody came out onto any of the front porches and the street was empty. Maybe everyone was in the back gardens of the houses, having tea.
Other people have their lives, too. They just can’t stand around listening to people sing, especially if it isn’t any of their business.
NIGHTBORN…
My imagination is having a love affair with people moving swiftly and efficiently in the dark. Their every movement is calculated, like a saint to achieve the maximum amount of effect.
In other words: They know what they are doing like the nightborn tides of the sea. The character of their actions resembles the work of spies getting things done in the dark.
When their work is done and the stage lights come back on and the play continues, the actors are no longer in the drawing room of an elegant Victorian mansion but they are in a poor section of London.
I think if I had not become a writer, I would like to have been a stagehand moving around like a spy magician in the dark, taking furniture away: a couch, a desk, a piano in the dark, and replacing it with the streets of London when the lights return.
THE ACTOR ONE MILLION YEARS FROM NOW…
I am very carefully watching the actor who is playing a part older than his actual age. His hair has been frosted with some kind of white stuff and then he is suitable, proper for the age of the part.
In actuality what makes you older is when your bones, muscles and blood wear out, when the heart sinks into oblivion and all the houses you ever lived in are gone and people are not really certain that your civilization ever existed.
The Menu / 1965
California has a population explosion on its hands. There are close to 20,000,000 people in California and forty-eight men on Death Row at San Quentin. In 1952 there were twenty-two men on Death Row and the population of California was 11,000,000 people. If things continue at this rate, in the year 2411 there will be 500,000,000 people in California and 2,000 men on Death Row.
I was over at San Quentin a couple of days ago talking to Mr. Lawrence Wilson who is the warden of the prison. He was a little annoyed when he said, looking up and in the direction of Death Row, “There are forty-eight men on Death Row and the courts keep sending us more. If we execute the men we have there now, that will be more people than were executed last year in the entire country.”
Warden Wilson has a problem. California has not executed a man since January 23, l963, when a farm laborer named James Bentley exhausted all the possibilities of being a California citizen.
Of the forty-eight men now on Death Row, over half of them have been there for two years or more. A couple of men, Manuel Chavez and Clyde Bates, have been there since 1957. Years pass in California before the condemned get to the gas chamber. Caryl Chessman was on Death Row for so long that they were thinking about giving him a pension.
Death Row, California. What does it mean to me as a writer and as a citizen of this state? I decided to find out. I called up San Quentin and talked to Associate Warden James Park. I asked him if I could visit Death Row.
In a friendly, almost folksy voic
e, he said to me that it was frowned on. “They have a closed community,” he said. “They get upset when strangers come around looking at the critters in the zoo.” But Mr. Park did offer to show me the gas chamber. I guess that’s some consolation.
I went over to San Quentin a few days later. I wanted to see how far I could go toward achieving a perfect vision of Death Row.
James Park is a clinical psychologist who graduated from UCLA, and he offered me a cup of tea in his office. He is a relaxed and articulate man. He was wearing a very nice striped tie.
“What do the men eat on Death Row?” I asked. I was not interested in last meals, but in the food they were eating today. I figured the most important thing in a prison was the food.
“Well, let’s see,” Mr. Park said. He got up and went into the main office. He went to a filing cabinet and carried back with the week’s menu.
Seeing DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS on top of the menu and then “Weekly Menu for CONDEMNED ROW” underneath gave me a strange feeling. It was almost a functioning intimacy with death in one of its more complicated forms, and there was a dramatic quality to the April 16th dinner.
Beef Noodle Soup
Cole Slaw
Sour Cream Dressing
Grilled Halibut Steak
Cocktail Sauce
Chicken Fried Steak
Rissotto
Btrd. Cauliflower
“May I have this menu?” I asked.
“I guess so,” Mr. Park said.
I asked him what the calorie content of the food was on Death Row. He called somebody on the telephone. “What’s the caloric content of the food on Death Row? The mainline is 4200, huh. You’d guess about 4500 calories. OK. Thank you.”
4500 calories. How strange, I thought. That’s a lot of calories for somebody who’s going to live a sedentary existence, and it’s not true about the world loving a fat man. Or was Death Row different?
The Tokyo-Montana Express Page 10