Tokio Whip

by Arturo Silva

  –Is that a Japanese phrase? It ought to be.

  –I’m not sure, my Japanese isn’t that good.

  –I know that.

  –But good enough to know who my superiors are.

  –Then it must be very good.

  –Not really. Set phrases.

  –Like many foreigners.

  –Now don’t start generalizing again. I’m certainly not about you.

  –No?

  –No. I have no idea who the hell you are, but as I say, we do keep running into one another, and so maybe I ought to have a better idea of you.

  –Yes, have a better idea of me alright. Instead of a bad idea, is that what you have?

  –No, I mean that I have no idea, good or bad. All I know is that you’re a salary-man, and that you lived in Gunma until you had to come here. And that we have a couple of mutual friends.

  –Oh yes.

  –Yes, and they are good friends of mine. Lang and Roberta, Hiroko and Hiromi, your friend Hiro. How do you know him?

  –Hiro? Oh, he’s a nice kid. Lives with his parents in Setagaya-ku. Works for a PR company. His company did something for my company once. That’s how we met. When the work was finished there was a party at the Imperial Hotel. Hiroko and Hiromi were there, working, you know, like waitresses, pouring drinks, lighting cigarettes, that kind of thing. Afterwards, we all went out together, seems he knew them outside of their work. We kept in touch, Hiro and I. Some time later he invited me to a party and the girls were there, and so were your foreign friends.

  –My friends who happen to be foreigners.

  –Whatever. One thing lead to another, and now occasionally I am invited to parties where all these people are. It is an interesting experience.

  –What is? The parties?

  –No, being among this group of foreigners whom I do not really know. They’re always talking.

  –Well, that’s what people do at parties.

  –Yes, yes, of course. But they are always talking so well. The foreigners talk about their life in Japan, and the girls respond in their silly way that is not always so silly, they seem genuinely interested in the foreigners, and they all talk together, if you know what I mean.

  –Uhm, I think I do. But is that all so strange?

  –Strange? Perhaps not, just not part of my experience, you see.

  –Not really. I don’t know you, after all. I don’t know your experience.

  –Well, there has been very little with foreigners, until now, and I have to confess, I do not always know what to say.

  –Such as?

  –I am used to making what you call small talk. These people want to make what you might call big talk. I cannot do that with a foreigner. I always think he or she wants something more from me than I can offer.

  –Kaoru, we too are experts at small talk. Big talk is just talk, like you and me now, making conversation, talking about whatever interests us. No big deal.

  –But sometimes it seems to me that you, they, want to know secrets, how we feel.

  –What’s wrong with that if it’s sincere? It’s just a way of getting to know a person, getting closer.

  –That’s what I mean. Why would anyone want that?

  –To know another person.

  –Again, why would anyone want that?

  –You’re married, right?

  –Yes.

  –Then presumably you know your wife.

  –More or less, sufficiently. What’s your point?

  –You know her feelings.

  –What does that have to do with anything?

  –You do, don’t you? Or don’t you?

  –She is my wife, we have a family, I have a job and responsibility. We respond to one another, our feelings are not a part of it.

  –Then are you saying that you do not know her?

  –No, of course I know her.

  –Does she know your feelings?

  –What feelings?

  –Look, I do not want to sound too much like an American, but don’t you think that a husband and a wife have to share certain feelings together?

  –You mean our intimate relations?

  –No, or not necessarily. But to understand one another day by day, the things you do –

  –What I do is my feelings. What she does is hers.

  –I see.

  –Do you?

  –Not exactly, but that’s good.

  –Good that you do not see?

  –Good that I can see somewhat.

  –Maybe. I don’t understand.

  –I maybe don’t either. But that’s ok. So, Hiro introduced you to the bunch, eh?

  –You mean Lang and the others?

  –Yes.

  –Yes, he did.

  –And what do you think of us all?

  –Oh, like I said, you’re a curious group. That Roberta’s ok, she speaks Japanese alright too, I have to admit. But that husband of hers, that Lang. Let me ask you – are they really husband and wife?

  –Well, yes and no. You see, they once were, really were. That was in Europe, some time in America too. Then she got it into her head to come to Japan. He never really wanted to, come here, that is. So they took a break, their marriage took a break. But then it lasted too long. He always thought she’d come for a few months, have her “Japan experience,” and be back in his arms again. But she liked it more than ever, and he couldn’t handle that. Thought he’d have to come here and get her back, back to Europe, that is. Or at least I think back to Europe. He’d had a passing interest in Japan, everyone does – no offense here – but he could only imagine a full life in Europe, and with her, as wayward as he may have been in the past – I think that’s over now – and so, anyway, he came here some months back thinking to retrieve her. Trouble is, she held out, and he had to make his way here, hold on till she saw the light, and was ready to leave. So he lingered and in time, he got to like the place too. In his own way, of course.

  –Yes, I’ve heard parts of this story here and there. But how do you fit in?

  –Me? Oh, Roberta and I have been great friends from long before she married Lang. I was able to get here on a grant, I had an idea for a film. Well, to make a long story short, she helped me out when I first arrived, then I got to work, liked the place well enough to extend my grant, and really work on a very serious film. I got to the point where I thought it was pretty well finished and decided to show it at Image Forum one night. Well, to make a short story even shorter, Roberta hated it and said so. And that was that.

  –What do you mean?

  –Uhm, well, just that Roberta and I have not really been the best of friends ever since.

  –All because of a movie?

  –Because of my movie. My movie about my Japan.

  –But you’re still friends or not?

  –We speak to one another. Can we change the subject?

  –And Roberta and Lang?

  –Well, she was living in Yoyogi at first, that’s where she was when Lang first arrived, and then she moved to shitamachi, and did not want to live with him. It wasn’t so much a rejection of Lang as simply a move for herself.

  –I cannot understand this at all, but please continue.

  –So he found a place for himself in Kichijoji.

  –They were on opposite sides of the city.

  –Yes, where the famous twain never meet.

  –They never met?

  –Oh no, they met. They proffered compromises to one another. They’d meet once or twice a week, she chose the places, a classical café in Nakano, tempura at the Hilltop Hotel – you know, the writer’s hotel – another restaurant in Nakano-Shimbashi, the Vietnamese restaurant in Okubo – they carefully avoided the West and … and eventually they extended their borders, began to explore Nishi-Ogikubo, Hakusan, Kunitachi, the Pond, that street where the calligraphy shop is – and eventually he began to explore the city more, came to be intrigued as she’d known he would and hoped he would, the Lang she knew, the Lang she suspected �
� Lang, liking Tokyo! – all of it, or almost all, hers was becoming his, theirs.

  –I cannot understand at all, but please continue.

  – So this is where they are at now. From east and west they met in the middle, then they extended their borders. Lang is quickly becoming an expert on the low city, and Roberta is slowly taking a liking to points west. In a word, Kaoru, as I see it, the couple uncoupled is becoming one, a union of all points, center and circumference, or better, no points but where you are and that is everywhere and that is Tokyo, man and woman, the two and the one, the many and the single.

  –Single?

  –Singly.

  –Divorce?

  –Union.

  –Separated?

  –Let no man declare asunder.

  –Then they are together again?

  –Not quite.

  –Why not?

  –They are a difficult couple. Quite separate.

  –But not separated.

  –Geographically, yes. Marriageably, I hope not.

  –But?

  –But yes. But no.

  –What will happen?

  –Happen with what?

  –To them!

  –Them, who?

  –Roberta and Lang!

  –Oh, them! Oh yes, what was I saying?

  –Van Zandt! You were saying that they might or might not get together again!

  –Was I? Oh yes, yes, they might or might not, as you say.

  –No, as you said. What will happen?

  –I have no idea. What do you think?

  –Me? I have no idea. How could I?

  –Well, I haven’t either. Maybe it’s up to you.

  –Up to me?

  –Sure, why not?

  –I hardly know them!

  –Precisely, all the better.

  –What?! But what can I do?

  –Drink up, Kaoru.

  –I don’t want to drink – I want to know what will happen to your friends.

  –My friends and I will be alright. You’re a friend, aren’t you? You’ll be alright, won’t you?

  –I don’t know. I mean, I hope you and I are friends. I think I’m alright. Are you alright?

  –I believe so.

  –Then we’re alright.

  –Yes, you and I are.

  –But Roberta and Lang?

  –Well, we’re friends, aren’t we?

  –Yes.

  –Then we are alright – and they are alright.

  –Are they?

  –Why shouldn’t they be? Do you know something I don’t?

  –No, van Zandt, of course not.

  –Then we either know everything or nothing. Either way, we’re alright.

  –And does that mean that Roberta and Lang are alright too?

  –How should I know? Don’t you know?

  –No, I don’t.

  –Then how are you going to find out? What are you going to do about it? It’d be a shame if they were not together all because of a good friend such as yourself.

  –But I hardly know them, what can I do about it?

  –Be a good friend.

  –But that won’t bring them together again.

  –Who says it won’t?

  –Van Zandt, you are drunk.

  –Kaoru, you are drunk.

  –Yes, but you’re not being a good friend now.

  –You’re right. Waitress!

  –Ok, van Zandt, what can we do about Roberta and Lang?

  –Oh, that depends.

  –Depends on what?

  –On them. After all, it’s up to them, what do we have to do with it all?

  –But you just said –

  –Yes I did, Kaoru, and I meant it, but there are limits, you know.

  –Limits? Limits to what? To friendship? No, I won’t accept that.

  –Then what will you accept?

  –That we must do something about the situation.

  –What can we do?

  –I don’t know. I don’t know at all. It’s all rather confusing to me. But we must be able to do something.

  –True. Or maybe not. Where are they at, after all? Galivanting about the city and meeting nowhere. Where are we? Started out in Marunouchi, then to Akasaka, now in Kyobashi. (I had my first beer here. My first in Japan, that is.) We wheel about the city, going in circles, one city all cities. No, that’s not true, one Tokyo, one Roberta and Lang. Maybe that’s it.

  –What’s what – what “it”?

  –Well, they’ve started their mating dance, don’t you see? Wheeling about the city. Like some esoteric Buddhism.

  –I’m sorry, but once again, I do not see at all.

  –Ok, I mean that we wheel about, we go round and round, well, not exactly, not even round and round, but zigzag and round and twist and shout and turn about and … no, not meet at any center, too many of them, but, well …

  –Well?

  –Well, they’ve got a map, I’m sure they can make sense of it all, whatever sense is available, make their own map – that’s maybe it. You see, don’t you, like I described, they came together – when he arrived, say, he had nowhere to go, but to stay at her place for the first couple of weeks, and then it was clear she wanted to be alone and so he had to find his own place, and he did out west, and slowly they began to come together again by meeting in what they thought were neutral locations, anywhere in between the end-points, and then from that seeming center they branched out till they got to the point where they were in one another’s original territories, she sharing shitamachi with him, he showing her the splendors and miseries of the high city of the new west. So that’s where they are now, but they have to go even further yet. They’ve only begun to encompass the city. They really ought to take a vacation far west, and one to the tropics too. That’s Tokyo too, don’t you know. You see what I’m driving at?

  –Uhm, not exactly.

  –It’s simple, really! They use Tokyo, they see it and explore it as a way to get together again! As a way of finding out who each other really is. Old Lang, new Lang, east Roberta, west Roberta, high Lang, low Roberta and vice-versa. Center and circumference, everything exploded, everything coupled. Union, Kaoru, union!

  –Union.

  –Now you’ve said it, old friend.

  –New friend.

  –Now you‘ve said it.

  –Have I?

  –Certainly.

  –I have?

  –We both have.

  –Ok.

  –Ok? Ok yes, or ok maybe?

  –Ok, ok.

  –Ok double – you have said it.

  –I guess.

  –So.

  ***

  Ah, this city, Lang writes in a private notebook, got to you in time, Man! Just when you needed me and me you, eh? So be it. We wrestle, make love, conquer one another, and transcend, transcend, as Patti says, lots of work to do together yet, lanes and lines to discover, exploration, meditation (sounds like Van) – and then we become one!

  ***

  The earth reels. Tokyo suffers. Too sudden a change in the weather, and people lose the ability to converse, they stumble to work, shift subjects in mid-sentence, and become generally unfriendly. It is not a pretty sight to see, and children should not be exposed to this uncanny phenomenon. Science has no explanation, nor psychology. Come to Tokyo only if you are fully prepared to discover this within yourself, this known only to Tokyoites.

  ***

  –Last time I ate sushi in Tsukiji at 5AM was in my university days. But then I could take it, staying up all night, drinking with my pals, but now I feel it all day. Don’t even seem to recover till late afternoon, and then for only a few hours till I start again. I also knew the way home. Don’t even know where I am right now, what’s around the corner. What do they say, a glass of alcohol takes an hour to get out of your system? At that rate I won’t sober up for a year and a half. If I stop drinking entirely right now. That doesn’t even rate an if. What about tobacco? Do the lungs clear up at a
similar sort of rate? If I have cancer now, will my lungs clear up by the time I die of it?

  –So why stop, Kaoru, if you’re having fun?

  ***

  –So now do you understand?

  –All too well.

  –Well said.

  –As well.

  ***

  I have watched

  the city from a distance at night

  and wondered why I wrote no poem.

  Come! yes,

  the city is ablaze for you

  and you stand and look at it.

  – William Carlos Williams

  Compare:

  Chiamavi il cielo e intorno vi si gira,

  Mostrandovi le sue belleze eterne,

  E l’occhio vostro pur a terra mira.

  – Purgatorio XIV, 148-150

  ***

  SCENE NINE: OFFICE

  It was a strange building in Shimbashi that revealed to her that Japanese architecture, or rather, the city of Tokyo itself taken as a single piece of architecture, is all parts of an enormous jigsaw puzzle (one of those that want to get into the record books) that have scattered all over the place (for whatever reason, earthquake, a child suddenly rushing in, the scurrying of the players to prevent a drink from falling on the already assembled parts) all over the place. Many still remain on the table, but quite a few thousand are under the table or the piano, on chair seats or stuck between the cushion and the backrest, against the walls or on the lower bookshelves, one or two inside a pant’s cuff, even one is later discovered in the hostess’s hair. It will be a full three weeks before all the pieces are finally found. Or almost all, a few simply disappear: one is found three days later in a nearby gutter; another winds up behind a neighbor’s fishtank; and a third in a child’s toybox.

  The specific difficulty with this particular puzzle is that once it is about half assembled, it suddenly becomes apparent to the players (for that in the end is what they are) that it seems to be a trompe l’oeil picture, and not at all the flat representation of a helicopter shot over Shinjuku that was depicted on the box. Instead, it seems to be an interior, it looks like an office – when viewed from a particular angle. When viewed from another however, it is also an interior, but this time a home. From yet another, the interior is an office building lobby, and this is the most difficult perspective from which to assemble the puzzle as it is the most boringly minimalist (to adapt the art term to what is essentially and usually one of those dead blank spots of architecture the world over); and finally, from a fourth point of view, the interior is a floor of a department store, women’s clothing.