Tokio Whip

by Arturo Silva

  Ah, Tokyo my Tokyo, ten days in the country and how I’m gonna miss ’ya. Ten days, Christ, and I’ve already packed clothes for twelve. Besides probably three books too many. Hey, I figure you never know when you’re gonna be stranded – earthquake splits the world in two leaving you hanging – or invited to a glamorous party. And then I bring my Tokyo maps – some people set up family photos when they travel, I lay out my Tokyo books and maps – just in case anyone asks me very minute particulars.

  Tokyo of the future? – Tokyo Baroque.

  Oh so much to do, so much to read and write, and .... “I only want to be with you,” as Dusty said, and of whom Jenny gives a mean impersonation, and speaking of whom I had a high-schoolish dirty dream last night. Boy, was I surprised! (Boy, was she!!)

  I still haven’t fixed that door Hiromi cracked. Maybe I’m keeping it as a reminder.

  I’d love to have six months off just for rereading.

  The day I escaped from you-know-where, hightailed it to Tokyo and became a man of the crowd. I ain’t never looked back, never.

  So, are we connected?

  Oh, hey, before I forget, we still got so much stuff to talk about: the party for the kids; the plans for August; getting copies of those Screwballs, divvying up the photos, and etcetera!

  Elvisly yours,

  ***

  The costs of confusion notwithstanding, Marianne says to herself, confusion indeed. Christ!, how can Lang say it is a systemless system? Did he ever try to read a street sign – what street signs? Try to find an address? So why else do I always have to apologize for being late? It ain’t me who’s confused, dammit. But costs, why no, none whatsoever.

  ***

  Cafferty, his mind fast, eyes weak, knowing he has gradually been losing his sight these last few years, accepting this inevitable, had begun walking his beloved city with eyes closed (to the sun, to the moon, to the wind and rain), had finally arrived at the point where he could walk the city with eyes closed and know exactly where he was, know what building had replaced what building had replaced what … and describe them all to you but this last (as he has never seen it), or could get in a taxi, tell the cabbie a destination, a direction, and know what street he was on, what bridge he was crossing under or over, what building stood at the corner of the light they had stopped at (and tell you what building had replaced what building had …). Cafferty knew the city now as a lover knows the loved one’s body, the he and the she of it, the continuum, the contours, crevasses, the extra flesh here (the less there), the stray wisp, the nerve gone wrong, the endless wonder.

  And walk he could: straight (as the heavy wooded rulers he remembered from school), bandied (rubbery, clowns on TV), limp (Little Tramp), as a new bride (jitters), a Midwestern stroll (cornfields gently swaying), a Venetian (the rhythm of the waters), in the DeNiro manner (“Watch out, Buster!”), in the Sanda (woman in a man’s suit), and more … with a twitch, skimming the surface of the street, as a footballer, a great lady, as one who has lost everything: in a word, as a Tokyoite.

  It was felt, as he always said, in the testicles.

  Where had Cafferty come from? He’d once – decades ago – written about Tokyo (some few fugitive essays for airline magazines); he kept now largely to himself, occasionally seeing a few friends (though rarely mixing them); spoke little to newcomers to Tokyo: “You’ll see it yourself if you stay long enough.” He was said to work now and then for a large financial company, writing reports, but surely that was not enough to live on; there were rumors a-plenty: a lover (female, male?) of long ago now in Hong Kong, a stipend from an actress friend. He’d met Lang two or three times via Roberta (the last of his newcomers – she just seemed so at ease), but was in that mood when friendship, as much as it may be desired, would come no longer; he’d remarked to himself that night he and Lang were introduced, “Ah, too bad we hadn’t met thirty years earlier – how we would have explored the city together!” Friendship now was an impossibility, they might form a “relationship,” a correspondence filled with anecdotes and queries, but no, not what Lang needed. Cafferty knew that what he could give Lang Lang would have to find for himself on his own or within his own circle of friends; it was lonely, granted, but it was gratifying too to become a Tokyoite alone. Lang knew this too, and accepted it. After all, it was his city, too.

  ***

  She was standing there behind the wall, and the wall was transparent, like water.

  What was ineradicable was the knowledge of that sudden, momentary opening up of the walls surrounding him, which had then resumed their former position, swaying like curtains falling into place.

  – Doderer (both quotes)

  Arlene stepped into the café, sat, put down (for good) the bad translation of the novel about Vienna, and, thinking of a phrase Hiromi had once tossed aside, fixed her gaze on the wall beyond the window opposite.

  It was child-shit yellow, with twigs and various “industrial materials” visible, antiquey-looking and only two decades old; cheap curtains, a piano in the kitchen, and the bedding on the verandah. Not my idea of Tokyo, but Tokyo nonetheless. (Which deserves perhaps to be a fourth recurring phrase.) And then the wall opened up, divided, and there was the street, the falling apart bookshops, the dry cleaner (run by a once-lovely fat woman with teeth all askew), the large electronics shop, the favorite bar, some few large family houses, old and solid, the women’s college, and beyond that the arts university and that great sprawling park that was rained out the one time she had gone there to see the cherry blossoms. (Was she becoming sentimental in only her second year in the city?) The wall remained, front and center and on the edges no matter how far she gazed beyond it. It was thanks after all to the wall that she was able to gaze through it. But the wall came first; she had acknowledged its impenetrability the second she had fixed her gaze on it, and accordingly, it had allowed her to see all that it contained, possessed, solely as wall because she had (again) acknowledged that there was no “beyond.”

  “Ohh,” Arlene thought in a daze, “Now I’m really on my way.”

  And then she saw Lang and Roberta and their break; she saw Hiromi, the once thin face now bloated with resentment; she saw the city as a simultaneous film set and the contents of a hard disk; she saw Lang alone in Europe, struggling to overcome his resentments, to come to terms with this surprise of a Roberta; she saw a lustful Roberta, and an ascetic Marianne. And then the vision ended and all she saw was the shit-yellow wall. And seeing for her really was finally believing.

  What was that line van Zandt was singing these days – “You can’t fool me / I can see it in your eyes.”

  She would know this city, dammit, even if it meant losing her soul – but gaining her sight! – for it.

  It was in front of her eyes. Who was there to doubt it?

  ***

  A woman in a window, a woman emerging from a car, a girl on a bicycle, a girl behind a boy on a bicycle, a woman bound in ropes and smiling, Cafferty recounts, Tokyo in the late 40s, Tokyo in the 50s, in the 60s, in the 70 and 80s, and Tokyo in the 90s and in the 2000s. I have seen all this. Ah, this memory of mine, shades all round. Boys in uniforms on their first drunk, and their fathers in their uniforms on one long permanent drunk. And their mothers – women in windows.

  ***

  Kazuo feels that San Francisco is not too unlike his home Yokohama. The proximity of the sea .... and then he comes to a stop. Perhaps it resembles Kobe, the hills. And again he halts mid-thought. The houses, the hills, the views, the parks, the whole urbanity of the scene – it is unlike any place else on earth. Well, perhaps that is a bit extreme, but then his subject is the city in which he spent so little but so invaluable time. It may have its problems like any other city, but it is so liveable. Yes, it might be a bit small, a bit provincial, but who has ever hated the place? And then, this nicest of nice fellows, has so many – perhaps not many, but so preciously enough – friends there. Not like the relations he has formed in Tokyo, no, these are of a permanent, of
a deep and imaginative – of a San Franiscan nature. He loves the bookstores; an Italian restaurant near a church he knows from a movie; a few bars; a certain waitress; some cinemas; a young girl, and two or three young women; a bakery; a basement apartment he sometimes dreams of; and so many more emotions.

  ***

  THE WAY THEY LEFT

  The way he left her, he just called, spilled the facts, said he’d never felt a thing for her, or not at least what he suspected she would have wanted him to feel for her; he was sorry if he’d led her to have any illusions but certainly she should have known, sensed something was missing – why hadn’t she?; was she so swept into her own emotions that she could not feel his, or lack of them?; yes if she insisted he could give her reasons, something solid, but no he didn’t really want to; what was he to say – he didn’t like the way she stepped out of a car, the way she was always doing her nails, was so disappointed when she cut her hair, didn’t like the pillows on her bed – what kind of talk was this anyway? – look, all those may or may not be true, they don’t really matter, no of course they don’t amount to anything serious, yes, there is other stuff, but again, it’s just too uncomfortable to say, to lay out, no, no, you’re a wonderful person in many ways, really, maybe it’s just me, my peculiarities. He really was sorry, what could he say, she’d have to, he hoped, she would sooner or later understand certainly some way some how. No grief, ok?

  The way she got rid of him she just waited didn’t say a word to him for so long let him find out for himself let him ask the questions (and what little answers she gave him) come to his own conclusions that’s what hurt him so her sheer unwillingness to talk to say a thing no conversation whatsoever when most he needed it almost refused to meet but again when they did it was a one-way conversation his monologue his pleading his making up stories trying to understand justify it all and asking her to deny or to confirm to help him and she only looking away saying nothing, acting the role she was born for some princess or raven or raven-princess. Nothing.

  The cruel way he left hell abandoned her cruel they’d lived together five years had been childhood sweethearts had planned joint careers hell lives and had finally gotten married, few lives were so joined seamless few destinies so wrapped together; and then slowly the rot came in, the dissimulation, a small career change, missed appointments, and finally on an anniversary that meant so much to her during a party with most of their friends attending he makes the announcement tells her to pack and get out, offers no explanation no name of any other lover just says he’s fed up with it all (what all?) and wants her out love is d-e-a-d; and so she goes, first to their bedroom – with two friends, two alone who understood, compassionated, those two alone stood by her and cursed the others for going on with the party (can you believe it?); so she grabs a few things for a quick departure (how did she stand?, walk?, not break down the body the soul entirely? from where such faith?); and as she’s leaving she paid him no mind he had ceased to exist for her – and so to her friends’ place for an evening only one and a new life I hear she is doing better now. From where such faith?

  ***

  More than an illusion, she is an oasis:

  1.Last weekend she was dressed in two shades of pink, and three of turquoise.

  2.She has driven three years now and has had only one accident: she hit a parked police car!

  And yet: and yet ... there is a poetry in her and hence her presence here. An almost bestial and near inarticulate blindness that sees and suffers all and yet still can laugh. She is the juncture, the split, the blindspot that sees all. Her small hands occasionally eloquent.

  Hiromi: some kind of woman (some sort of love).

  ***

  THE TOKYO OF FORKING PATHS

  The Tokyo subway system, like the space in which its daily bustlings back and forth are described, is vast and rich in possibilities: ramifications, intersections, connecting points, one-way journeys, roundabout itineraries, parabolas, half circles, ellipses, dead ends. To examine the map of the subway system is to yield to memory, to escape to delirium; to accept utopia, fiction, fable: to visit the monuments, the abominations, the horrors of the city, one’s own monuments, abominations, and horrors, without ever having to leave home.

  – Juan Goytisolo-Silva

  ***

  So rich and and so wonderfully strange, Lang considers, me in this city that I hadn’t wanted to come to at all, had no wish nor interest in, and yet now I know I have arrived in a heaven-of-a-sort – my Tokio. And Roberta hers. Rich and strange indeed.

  ***

  –Soon, the sun.

  –Always, the sun.

  –And night?

  –The sun’s sister, lover, the consolations of the moon.

  –So you think it’s female, too?

  –No, I think it’s male too.

  –They’re both both.

  –So, they’re no different from you and me?

  –Well, one’s hotter.

  –But no more passionate!

  –The passions of the sun!

  –The lusts of the moon!

  –The planets, spinning, desiring!

  –The love that moves the sun!

  –So silent, Kazuko?

  –Look, the light –

  –Sun over Kokubunji –

  –Sun over us.

  –Guide, as we walk backwards –

  –Forwards –

  –Sun behind –

  –Forward –

  –Moon for –

  –Ever. Yours.

  –Kazuko?

  –Oh yes.

  ***

  FROM LANG’S NOTES

  The inapproachable heart of the city.

  Every house seems to keep the concept of the city (small gardens).

  Structure of the buildings depends on the plan of the garden.

  Tokio and the differences of tempo.

  The tower that would contain a whole city.

  Silence among the towers of Shinjuku where all you see is the reflected weather.

  Shinjuku, two cities: nightless (east) and silent (east).

  Tokio’s differing tensions: the body (stations) connections (only) to nowhere.

  In making ourselves a place to live in we first spread a parasol above our heads so as to cast a shadow on the earth. (Tanizaki?)

  The station – heart of the city’s constant reversal (as opposed to Europe where stations are an entry to the city).

  Shinohara’s House in Uehara – the more it remains autonomous, the more it fits into its environment.

  The Yamanote and the “sub-centers” (Shibuya, Shinjuku, Ikebukuro) are the delineators and distributors of the endless city.

  Tokio, horizontal and without depth, a linear city, fragments of an ideal image, of the mega-60s, ideal remnants of an historic city.

  Like the ritual path and place, at a festival, they delineate the growth form of the village – the procession itself expresses the community’s social organization.

  ***

  Hiroko is in Kabukicho, Shinjuku, which has been displaced to the UNESCO Village/Lake Tama area in Tokyo, due North. The scene is overwhelming – the neon, the hawkers and barkers, the clubs and bars and sex shops – and the people. Baby Face Leroy’s “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” is blaring insanely all over the city. Boldly, she walks into a bar that is frequented mostly by foreigners. She orders a Belgian white beer. Her English is fine. She is talking with a young American, and then she sees Hiromi with VZ. She continues talking with the young American. Hiroko feels great.

  Roberta is back at her childhood home. She is playing some Blues on her stereo, and reading Vogue magazine. She gets up to sneak a drink of vermouth, which she’s only recently taken a liking to. She sneaks upstairs where a cousin is staying; he sleeps naked and she wants a look. She looks through her parents’ things, especially the underwear, the dildo and the douche. She shrugs it all off. Each day her breasts are getting larger, and her mind going farther and farther.

 
When she awakes she will remember this time of her life as just the prelude to ever more exciting years. She will go to her stereo and put on those few precious tracks of Baby Face Leroy, and play his masterpiece – one of the Songs Common to Dreams – again and again and again.

  ***

  AUGUST

  –Isn’t it funny how –

  – – time fades away?

  –No, nothing fades away.

  –That’s funny?

  –Wait – isn’t it funny how some things –

  –– fade away? But they exist in time, so –

  –– no, wait. How some things make you think –

  –– yes, and others repel thought.

  –Stop.

  –Ok.

  –How some things make you think of other things? Isn’t it funny?

  –Such as?

  –Well, besides our just having performed an example – and, by the way, time slips, movies have fades – now what was it I was thinking of that made me think of this, what was it that I’d never thought of, uhn, before?

  –Can you repeat the sentence?

  –Probably not, but why should I want to?

  –Ok, so, some things make you think of other things?

  –Yeah, you get me.

  –So then, do some things not make you think of other things?

  –Yeah, I suppose so.

  –Such as?

  –I don’t know, I’d have to think of them first.

  –But that would lead nowhere.

  –By definition, I suppose. Or everywhere.

  –?

  –Well, now just hear me out – some things make you think of other things, all down the line, not fade away. While some other things do not make you think of other things, they make you think of that thing you’re thinking of, but as that certainly can not stand alone, while also not making you think of other things, then those singular things must in the end make you think of all things, of everything! And all of it, I suppose, at once!

  –Uhm, where do you get these ideas?

  –I don’t know. They just come to me. I guess I just start to think of something and that … makes me think of other things. Why? Are ideas supposed to come from somewhere?