Tokio Whip

by Arturo Silva

  ***

  No, perhaps it was really just in the nature and not necessarily the materials of the work, I convolutedly decided to myself: the city, my way of loving – I had tried to look with not at the lover – the language I have been fumbling with so as to speak with – well …

  Lang had suddenly found himself in this cruel city – that is, it can sometimes appear to be cruel to one who is not prepared to see it on its own terms, terms that can also be very playful when not sticking to a schedule – so here he was, estranged more or less from Roberta and tossed between two or three choices that he wasn’t really wholly aware of, and suddenly a man of few words, and most of those the same, repeated, unlike the even more self-convoluting VZ, or the delirious Marianne, or the more athletic dash dash dash of Roberta, or the ever-sober Arlene, or the careful, insightful Cafferty, and so he was, in a word, at a loss for them, but not yet happily so. He, I, could not yet feel as light as we felt bereft. So for that time then it was enough – enough! it was overwhelmingly consoling – to have these friends with and around us. But Kazuko, Hiroko and Kazuo, even Hiromi, Hiro and Kaoru, and their styles of talking? I wanted to consider them friends too, they were Tokyoites, after all, more or less, as were the others, or were becoming so, certainly … But could I ever become more than the material of the thing, more than the one who simply wrote the city?

  ***

  His bulb in my mouth, my petals in his.

  ***

  URBI ET ORBI

  Amsterdam, a song

  Brussels, a bar

  Cahors, some photographs

  Dublin, a bar

  Easter Island, an ad

  Frankfurt, a newspaper

  Ghent, Lang’s shirt

  Hollywood, a hair salon

  Istanbul, a menu

  Jena, a bookstore

  Kamakura, Ozu’s train

  Lima, DR’s home

  Mariannas, her islands

  Napoli, an ice cream

  Oberlin, a school

  Paris, a boutique

  Quebec, a sculptress

  Shanghai, a visit

  Ùstica, the sun-god

  Vienna, a woman

  Warsaw, a record shop

  Xian, a source

  Yorkshire, a friend

  Zürich, Marianne’s photo of me at Joyce’s grave

  ***

  –And so what’s new?

  –We haven’t spoken in so very long.

  –Only so many?

  –Ah, your Italian accent!

  –On whose account?

  –Who’s counting, indeed?

  –Indeed, Lang?

  –Inaction, indeed.

  ***

  Buddha’s balls, Buddha’s cunt.

  ***

  –How long do you think it would take us to walk all the way there from here, Otemachi to Shibuya?

  –Why would you even want to? That’s what the subways are for, and the busses, and taxis.

  –I know, I know, let Lang walk all over the place if he likes. But how long would it take, do you think? Let’s say I aim for Ginza first, twenty-five minutes at most; then Kasumigaseki, twenty; then Roppongi, maybe forty, that’s an hour and twenty-five minutes; then Shibuya, forty, that makes two hours and fifteen minutes. Could that be right? I’d have thought about three hours. Hey!, we missed my station. Oh well, we may as well walk to the next, eh?

  And he does, and does, and does; on to the next, and to the next, and to the next. Hiro’s instincts were right, and a surprise to us all – and then he tried it again, Aoyama to Shinjuku; and yet again, Shinjuko to Ikebukuro. He began to discover another Tokyo, and reported it all back to us. Some months later he started a club of “Tokyo Walkers” – he may even have met a girl.

  ***

  As reading becomes writing. Some years ago reading heavily in a subject and projecting a two or three years’ reading schedule ahead. A curious allusion lead him on to what he thought would be a short detour and while on that track he was lead further again astray on one more digression of reading (to which of course his whole interest was given) which, it goes without saying, lead him ... and lead ... and ... Needless to say, that initial reading is years behind him now; as much perhaps as he has tried to keep the whole and origin in mind, and even managed on occasion short trips back to various crossroads, which naturally entailed their own new detours until these many directions swept him into the whirlwind of an unimagined reading where all these echoes (with their own multi-directioned ways) of books read, unread, to-be-read – the whole a part the parts a whole: all of the innumerable books, the read and the unread now bound in him as he walks the library of Tokyo.

  ***

  Her small breasts surmounted by nerve ends – meridians of the compass rose – his hand under her blouse, the moon silvered under the stars.

  ***

  Tragic, trivial Tokio, Cafferty says.

  ***

  –Where is it, Kaoru?

  –Takasaki? It’s in Gumma, one of the prefectures bordering Tokyo. Perhaps we are becoming a suburb, but we have our own culture, our history, our uniqueness. I know Lang and Van Zandt say they hated the place, but they only spent one weekend there, how could they appreciate Takasaki?

  –What did they say?, they said it was either an overgrown village with a department store or a stunted city that was pockmarked with rice paddies. VZ said there was no talking to be had with farmers’ daughters whose teeth were either gold, missing or black, not blackened. And as for the men, well, the leisure suit has a permanent home in Takasaki. Lang said that the only local traditions were to be found inside a whisky bottle in an ersatz 1946 Ginza nightclub, or siting on mildewy tatami so as to give the all-weather insects easier access to one’s already weak blood. And that the children had all just emerged from the forest, their parents not having had the wisdom and compassion to strangle them at birth. And that as for –

  –Enough. They cannot appreciate Takasaki. They are so, so wrong.

  –Really, Kaoru?

  ***

  Coming up for air, wiping the hair from her tongue.

  ***

  SCENE ELEVEN: SOBU LINE

  The train is a piece of mobile architecture, yellow, cutting east-west across the city – whoosh! under the bridge at Ochanomizu – they say there is an Aleph there – and as it moves east to west she walks backwards in time; she walks through the train to the end; when it reverses directions, she does likewise. But within each train car she needs to inspect every face of every passenger, and so accordingly as she walks one way in reverse to the train’s direction, she also describes a squiggle as she weaves in and out of the standing passengers. And of course, these various motions and directions and feints as the train lurches or comes to a halt or as passengers jostle against one another and against her, are all again repeated when the train itself reverses direction on its way, well, no, not “home” – what is a train’s home but the track?, or the “yard,” cold, dark, and anonymous (see Human Desire for this). But then too it is a part of a train’s function to allow ingress and egress at each stop along the way (she would have gotten a local!), and thus we find her also moving in a direction perpendicular to her movement in time (double: the train and she on it moving forward, she walking towards the past, ground already covered), perpendicular too to the circles and weaves she describes, like a bloated crucifix – or in fact, like a … well, a train track, ties and all.

  But with all this movement, starting and stopping, getting on and getting off, transferring, jostling of bodies, overhead announcements, television screens in the trains – with all of this, is it any surprise that she does not, once again, find her man, and instead only comes home late, exhausted, grimy, ready for a whisky, a foot soak, a turn with O-Dildo-san, and a sleep on the tatami with the gray buzz of the television providing the background soundtrack to her dream … of a train ride.

  ***

  I won’t insult him by taking him seriously – unless this declara
tion of his great love for the city is to be read as a suicide note – he’s had crazier notions – to connect the world is one – no, no, to think through the consequences of his actions has never been one of his stronger suits – just look at his finances – to take on the whole you must be grounded first – any adventurer knows the value and necessity of a, oh, what’s it called?, I hate being stumped for a word – of a, well, “safe-house” for the moment – “safety net”?, no, that’s not quite it, either – but, no, he just lurches forward – and where will we discover the body? Not that I can claim to be so sensible – the wrecks of my youth are there for all to see – but I do have a few survival techniques up my panties – and much else too, another survival tool – but in a city this size and this wonderfully superficial, and … well, not so much confusing as excessively hectic, why would anyone ever want to go after the whole thing?, why this need for comprehensiveness?, these encyclopedic novels? – No no, not me, thanks, gimme the short stuff – I likes my neighborhood and I stays in it. The city, all of it, can come here if it wants, if not, fine, I’ll never know what I missed, and so not miss it, what I’ll have had will be all that I had, and so that too must qualify as its own totality. The whole city then in a few blocks. The whole thing? – well, I wish him well – as I know too well, the great loves are mad.

  ***

  There are ten billboards, three posters. The first is a close-up of a face, smiling, bored, all joy, contemplative, it doesn’t matter the look or to whom it belongs; it is a close-up of a male face (and it is momentarily difficult to determine just what product is being advertised); it is repeated three times; the second is a medium shot of a thing, a machine, an instrument, electronic, certainly, gleaming, open, offering the open viewer all the world; it is repeated three times; the third is a very wide view of a landscape, and again, whether desert, tundra, forest, mountain range, or even a great city, it does not matter which; it is a landscape, and it too is repeated three times. All of it then thus: face, face, face, machine, machine, machine, landscape, landscape, landscape. And then again, in a perfectly elegant and unexpectedly emotional reprise, capping this lovely sequence, the end of the sentence of the poem, and all of it viewed within a matter of seconds between Sendagaya and Shinanomachi stations – her face.

  Chapter 12

  UENO–AKIHABARA

  Roberta returned to Tokyo; Lang finished his work – there it is – here they are!

  ***

  Tokyo Nous Appartient

  – Jacques Rivette-Silva

  ***

  –Marriage then.

  –À la mode?

  –No – in a manner of speaking.

  –What’s Ophuls say, most married couples come to hate each other after just a few years together, but most of them don’t come to realize it.

  –Max on the mark once more. Max and Garbo, what that might have been!

  –Are they extending one of the subway lines, by the way?

  –I don’t know. I hope so. As far as Akita, down to my islands.

  –Right, live in Kyushu somewhere and commute to Tokyo.

  –Why not? I’m sure they’d make the trains comfortable, and fast.

  –Super-bullets?

  –With bed capsules.

  –And bars.

  –Karaoke.

  –Soap cars!

  –Tunnels of love. Looking at it like this, it sounds a definite possibility.

  –I give ’em twenty years at the outside.

  –The millennial mobile. No, that’s too short a time. How about the centenary of Taisho?

  –The mad king, “democracy.”

  –How about more monorails?

  –Like Metropolis, yes.

  –I say bring back the pneu, you know, those tubes that wind around inside buildings so that you can send messages through.

  –My old library had that kind of system.

  –Do you think Paris actually had one, I mean, going all over the city? That was how they delivered their mail, wasn’t it? Or at least that’s the impression I get from their books.

  – But what would this do in Tokyo? I like my mail at the door in the morning; I can’t imagine all those magazines zooming through little underground tubes; and what if a rat got caught inside? He zooms through, gets pissed off, you reach in for your mail, and there go two or three fingers!

  –No no, I agree with you. I was thinking more of a larger, thicker pneu in which people could zoom through.

  –Oh, so now you reach for your mail and some guy who’s just been ignitioned from across the Tama river only twenty seconds ago, now it’s his turn to take a chunk out of you because he’s stir crazy?

  –I guess you’re right, but maybe there is something there. Or maybe not. Maybe we’d just better stick to our dear train and subway system as it is. Anyway, I do think they’re adding on to it, and it can only get better. That’s one thing the city has not screwed up.

  –Help me, Jaysus!

  –But if only they didn’t stop the trains running so early. Or at least had a late night system, you know, trains every half-hour or so.

  –Sure, but then all those capsule hotels and bars and all night cafés would go out of business, you’d have less vomit on the platforms, the air would not be so redolent of eau de puke.

  –Oh comeon, you know what I mean.

  –I was kidding, of course. But the office workers have to get home and a good night’s sleep so they can be back at their desks in the morning.

  –Do you think that’s it?

  –And get those teenagers off the streets and in the love hotels where they belong! Of course that’s it. Social control – you’ve heard of it haven’t you? They’re masters here. They’ve created a society of sleepwalkers. History really is a nightmare they’re desperately trying not to awaken from.

  –Do you really think that?

  –Oh in my off days, yes. In my better moments, I believe in Our Lady of Lunacy. And high-school baseball.

  –And girls in sailor uniforms?

  –With the roundest eyes! But no, you know how I feel about being here.

  –Yes, but that’s different from how you feel about here. But I think I know how you feel. Much the same as I.

  –Do you think? Can you imagine?

  –No, perhaps I spoke too soon. I always seem to speak with the random search button on, I have a sort of jog and shuttle verbal apparatus.

  –Oh, comeon, you’re not that bad.

  –Oh but you know that I have been known to cause a few “Did-she-just-say-what-I-think-she-said?” looks.

  –True, but …

  –I know, cute mistakes, all the more endearing. Anyway, I won’t let me off the hook, so you needn’t either. But, how do you feel about here?

  –Where here?

  –Japan, of course.

  –But I’m not in Japan!

  –Well, you’re not on the Moon either.

  –No, all I mean is that I’m in Tokyo, and there’s a great difference.

  –Do you really think that too?

  –Simple: people outside of Tokyo follow everything that goes on here, right? Fashion, speech, trends, manias, whatever. All the social changes originate here, all the dirty politics, all the international stuff. Do you know many Tokyoites wanting to put on mompe and sit on the verandahs sighing all day long about the weather and eating sembei?

  –A bit simplistic to me.

  –I suppose.

  –And anyway, the dirty politics begins in the countryside hometowns – where was Tanaka during all those shadow shogun years, or all those other guys, where do they come from? And fashion and manias, do they really amount to much? The fashion system is tied to something larger and of which Tokyo is only one sub-center.

  –Great! Tokyo the city of sub-centers itself a sub-center!

  –Hmm, that’s not bad, is it? But then it’s only the fashion world. And the trends by definition are not lasting. I mean, a summer’s desire for a gilled lizard doesn’t re
ally make much of a cultural mark on a country? Speech, well sure, but you get that all over the world, don’t you? The Midwestern model in the States – you don’t hear too many Southerners on CNN – and Standard Brit on the BBC, and whatever they call it in Paris or Madrid or wherever.

  –Do you think Parisians wax melancholic for the pneu?

  –Oh, I’ m sure, but don’t change the subject.

  –So what are you getting at – that Tokyoites really do want to take themselves back to the country, and nibble on sembei?

  –Well, they do wax sentimental for the country home, you’ve seen the O-bon dancing. Those city girls and boys have practiced their steps quite well. They do have that country feel. Look at the way they exult – it’s not just the rhythm of the drums doing that to their bones.

  –Then it’s not a sexual throb?

  –Of course it is that too – but not the sex of the city. And a country music analogy is not too far off. What’s enka after all but their form of it?

  –Arlene, you’re on a roll – and no feet in orifices either.

  –You’re one to speak! We ought to have a talk show – the incomprehensibles. Ha, we could set back English education here by decades.

  –What a great idea. We really might be a hit, and besides, English education here is such a shambles anyway, that probably no one would notice the subversion. We’d probably be an improvement on things.

  –We could have a chain of schools.

  –Sleep with the cuter staff too. Boys for me, girls for you. No jealousy.

  –Marianne! I’m afraid I’d be more the den mother type.

  –Lion’s den. Lionness’s.

  –No, a simple Arlene den.

  –Simple?! But tell me more about your countrified Tokyo.

  –Well, I’m just talking off the top of my head here –

  –From where else would you?

  –Oh, somewhere else is possible too, I’m sure, but not now. All I mean is that I haven’t …