The air was cold but mild; the snowflakes were heavy and thick. We dressed ourselves in woollies and raincoats because the snow was so wet. I took the opportunity to put on my construction boots, like Ueno.
He told me, “I’m going to smoke a cigar.”
“This early in the morning?”
“It strikes me as the right time—time to think naturally.”
“What does that mean?”
“To think without having any thoughts.”
114
We walked across his property, along the edge of the lake and up again through the forest of aspens and conifers. I saw sapsuckers and flickers, and even a great pileated woodpecker he pointed out.
It was still early in the morning. I heard what I didn’t think usually occurred in the daytime, a beautiful, weird hooting.
“That’s a great grey owl,” said Ueno, “the biggest of the North American species. It’s the symbol of Minerva and, as it happens, a very good sign.”
He talked about it at length, while blowing smoke rings that looked like owls.
What I remember most of all were the blue tits we saw, especially the one with a call that sounded like it was asking a question: Kee-ay-tu-tutu. Qui est tu? Who are you?
Maybe he was just going on about Minerva or his cigar smoking; in any case, it was as if Ueno could read my mind when he said, “Just do nothing and let your true nature show itself.”
115
I don’t know why today all these events seem to merge so quickly in my mind.
“Go straight to the core. Or fix on the details,” he once told me. “Everything has its own rhythm. You are going into architecture. It’s a matter of balance, and not technical but spiritual balance, you hear? The assembly of mass has nothing to do with geometry, but with a perfect, natural indulgence. Everything begins, everything comes to an end.”
116
At one point during that walk in the spring snow I heard him cough and saw him spit up blood. Red spots, carmine, appeared on the white ground.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him, shocked.
“I’m going to die.” He was mysterious, but also direct.
“That’s not true!”
“Yes, it is.”
At the time I thought he was talking Zen. And in the course of the months that followed, because of his dynamism and vitality, I took it for granted that his life would go on for many more years.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked again.
“It’s a family illness. A lot of Takamis come into the world, but we all die at about the same age.”
He was 64 years old.
117
Immediately afterwards I talked to him about his poetry collection. “You chose the title The Night Pond because you believe it will be your last book. And that’s why I get a sense of bitterness or sadness from it.”
“It’s your nature that makes you feel that way,” he replied. Then he added, “Sadness is the ineffable condition of the universe. And yet we are drawn to happiness. We are creatures of joy. Therein lies the contradiction of appearances.”
118
I lovingly saved his poems through the years so that I could one day complete my work on them. I was revisiting them in a state of happy melancholy when I came across a line by Baudelaire that turned out to be a big help to me in teasing apart the riddles: “But sadness rises in me like the sea.”
Before I set to work again I asked myself, “Is the sea sad? And is the pond sombre?”
119
Although the cabin was equipped with running water and electricity, he preferred to carry on as much as possible as if these conveniences of modern life didn’t exist.
It wasn’t until later that I noticed another building on his property, camouflaged by the trees and reached by a narrow path. Following the path you came to an almost circular clearing, with the cabin in its centre. That’s where the entry for electricity was hooked up, and the telephone. It also had a generator and a satellite dish.
Inside were a bathroom equipped with a shower, a laundry room, and a third room containing a computer, a telephone and a television set. A real telecommunications centre.
“It allows me to keep in touch and take care of my interests in the East,” he said.
120
He continued, “It’s like Grey Owl and his two cabins. You’ve heard of him, haven’t you? He was the Englishman who passed himself off as an Indian.”
“A little. He wrote books and raised beaver.”
“That’s right. He did it for the national parks service in Northern Saskatchewan. Well, the beavers lived with him in a log cabin he built on the shore of Lake Ajawaan. You can still see the beaver lodge projecting from the side of the building, forming one of its walls. The beaver would enter the cabin by swimming underwater when they weren’t walking right in the front door.”
He seemed to get a big kick out of the story. His face had completely changed and he looked like an eight-year-old kid.
“When his wife Anahero—who was a real Indian—became pregnant, he didn’t think it such a good idea to raise a child and study beaver in the same house. So he built a second cabin for his wife and daughter, higher up on a rise. And today the three of them are buried close by.”
“So you thought...”
“So I thought when I came here that if I wanted to live the way I intended, I would have to separate the space I lived in from the space where I had to maintain contact with the outside world.”
121
At dusk on our second evening we watched and listened to the loons on the lake. I had never before seen or heard them in the wild.
He also gave me my first taste of shakuhachi.
“You may have liked Rampal’s version, but now you’re going to hear the real sound of Japan. The piece I’m going to play for you is titled ‘Koku-Reibo.’ It’s one of the oldest pieces in the repertory, which explains why it will always sound so young.”
He let me quietly listen to the recording of the bamboo flute while I watched the night settle on the lake. It seems strange to say, but because of the solitary sound of the flute I had the impression that the oncoming darkness was not as dense as it appeared; it was, in fact, quite light, and night was a huge black horizontal skyscraper stretching towards me.
122
In this darkness I found a huge relief. The fragments of my life seemed to be little bubbles of memory floating about, while I remained at peace in the centre of the past and maybe even of the future that appeared before me.
The expanse of lake water had become a vast stretch of night in which I was suspended. I felt calm and safe, I felt good about myself, I was at ease in that indeterminate space, as in a primordial soup.
“You’re meditating,” he remarked, even as I turned to find him standing a couple of paces behind me.
“How long have you been there?”
“About fifteen minutes.”
I was stunned. I’d thought that no more than a minute or two had gone by.
“You’re standing there like a big heron keeping watch.”
123
We went to sit in front of the fireplace and he took out a bamboo instrument that he started to play. That was when I noticed that he played with his left hand, because the tip of the little finger on his right was missing.
He must have hit some false notes that I couldn’t detect, because he started to laugh.
He handed me the flute so that I could run my fingers over it and take a closer look.
“It’s quite heavy.”
“It’s basically a masculine instrument,” he told me.
124
During all the time I knew Ueno he never seemed more Japanese than when he started to tell me about the shakuhachi. About how, traditionally, it was played exclusively by monks and samurais and could even be used as a weapon in self-defence. About how the flute should look as natural as possible and that despite its ordinary appearance, it was held to be an object of great
beauty. “Wabi-sabi.”
He explained, “The shakuhachi is the most important wind instrument in Japan. It has been in existence for more than a thousand years. It’s a very simple instrument that requires a very complex technique. They cut it from the base of a hollow bamboo stem, then drill the holes.
“This kind of flute can produce a wide range of tones. The smallest make a brilliant sound, like crystal—like you; the biggest ones can be played so softly they’re almost inaudible.”
“Like you!”
“Most important, they say it can imitate all the sounds of the human voice. The ancients considered the shakuhachi to be the breath of life and enlightenment. Myself, I believe that it’s the voice of the original unconscious.”
I was wilting. I had slept so well by the fire I wanted to fall asleep there again.
He could see how I was fading, and yet he was determined to tell me a bedtime story, as he said with a smile. It was the story of a samurai who was surprised by a gang of bandits while he was bathing in the river.
125
“He had left his sword and his robe quite a distance away on the riverbank. The only thing he could reach was his shakuhachi. But instead of doing what the bandits expected and attacking them, the redoubtable warrior sat down on the shore, naked, in the lotus pose, and started to play the flute. It’s said that the sound he brought forth so charmed and astonished the little band of thieves that they held a celebration for him right there on the spot. They shared their supply of food with him and let him go on his way.”
“Then they weren’t so tough.”
“You’re right. Inspiration and expiration: it’s one and the same movement. Whoever takes part never aspires to anything else.”
After having made sure that I had all the blankets I needed, he wished me a good night.
I fell asleep with my arms wrapped around the flute.
126
During the night I had this dream.
I can’t say that I was running away, but I was leaving something behind, I’m not sure exactly what. I was wading into a small body of water. Behind and around me drifted swamp smells, summer smells. They weren’t sickening or even unpleasant, just the opposite—as I gradually moved further into the pond, the air became more and more fragrant. I finally felt that I was stretched out among rushes and reeds, weighed down by the scent but feeling quite weightless. The reeds seemed to be growing out of my body; I could see the daylight between their stems. Then a whitish, transparent wind seemed to rise and sweep over me. Although I couldn’t move, I felt light. I rippled one way and the other at the behest of the wind and I heard a deep, long sigh, as if the marrow of my bones were being altered.
127
Sunday night Ueno dropped me off in front of my apartment building. As he was leaving, he said, “Don’t forget about the poems.”
“See you later, Ueno. I had a great time.”
“I really enjoyed your visit, too.You’ve made me want to take up the flute again.” A big laugh, like the cawing of a crow. “See you later, Angèle. Till next time.”
I went up to my apartment and made myself a nice hot cup of coffee. I lit a candle, which I set before the goldfish bowl. I sat down to listen to the recording he’d lent me, Mukaiji-Reibo, “fog, sea, flute.”
128
The next morning when I awoke in my room I couldn’t remember having gone to bed. But I do clearly remember making a first attempt that night to translate one of the poems from The Night Pond.
On the little rug before the fishbowl and the puddle of candle wax lay a piece of paper covered with scribbles and crossed-out words, with the original next to it.
I thought the handwritten page looked very beautiful. I didn’t know whether I’d come up with a final version of the poem, but the ink-stained attempt looked to me like a small black-and-white butterfly.
129
When I finally noticed the time, I realized I was going to be late for work. I phoned Mrs. Lydia, who said, “At least you had a good weekend, my dear child.”
I liked it when she added that British expression to the end of her sentences, which she did often.
130
Late as I was, I couldn’t resist the urge to phone my sister and tell her about my weekend with Ueno.
“Just like my dream!” she exclaimed, excited.
What a remarkable woman. She seemed to get as much joy from the good things that happened to me as I did, if not more. I don’t think she had an ounce of jealousy in her character.
I could see her face, a smiling round face like a full moon lying low in the sky.
I believe I depended on her a lot, and on that enthusiasm of hers. I could see myself in her, although that part of me often felt like a far-off echo seeking itself.
I’m exaggerating a little. I’ve changed a lot since then. At that time I tended to undervalue my strong points, my tastes and desires, and my achievements.
131
To say that translating his poems was a battle may be putting it too strongly. It’s true that when I first started I had a lot of trouble, mostly because I had never done anything like that before and I didn’t believe I could. But over the months I spent working on those pieces, and over the years of keeping them and saving them, it turned into more of a pleasure than a chore.
That’s because in the end I realized what was going on: from that first night among the ruins of my flawed constructions, I took pleasure in the attempt to translate those poems and draw out what I hadn’t believed was in me.
132
I didn’t believe I had it in me because, despite my attraction to the arts, I didn’t think I had any special talent. All I had was an interest in architecture and what was perhaps a blind determination.
133
But could I do it?
As I said, the poems appeared to be very simple. I kept thinking that Ueno Takami must be concealing some deep meaning that escaped me. So following my initial battles with his words, I entered a phase of great concentration, a kind of mindful play.
I knew I couldn’t do it any old way, although one day when I was explaining some of the translation problems I was running into, and how I would hesitate, grow anxious, become uncertain, Ueno told me, “Do what you want. It’s your experience, no one else’s.”
134
I had also become aware of something interesting. Like the very first time, I would translate mostly at night, totally absorbed in the work.
I can’t explain why, but sometimes I would go at it when I had come home in a state of exhaustion, or when I couldn’t get to sleep, or when I woke up in the middle of the night.
The pages of poems drew me. I felt a great lightness as I worked and I can’t say whether it possessed me or I possessed it. Even during the time when it seemed so hard, I would still enter into a sort of perfect state. I don’t know how else to put it.
135
There’s no question that my approach was a little sentimental. I had moved my table under the window and placed the fishbowl on it. Before setting to work I would light a candle. The open window gave on to the street below, which was usually quiet. That summer it was a portal into a refreshing coolness. Even on nights when the heat was crushing, the framed square of night before my table would bring me a breath of fresh, blue-tinged air.
My downtown apartment seemed to be suspended opposite a cliff-face of high-rises, abandoned factories and warehouses that lined the street.
Facing me was that deep blue-black space and on the table the haloed reflections of the candle flame in the goldfish bowl. It was as if I were a fine membrane between the night and the stars, the thinnest of tissues dividing the opaque from the transparent.
I don’t mean to say that I was that vibrant sheet before me, but an entire little world came together there: the night, the candle flame, and the page on which I let seismographic tracings appear.
I had bought myself some beautiful Chinese ink with which to write; I believed it matched Rinella
’s printed version.
136
In the small collection that made up Ueno Takami’s book I’d noticed one poem in particular which repeated itself in an almost perfect inversion. I thought about it a lot and spent a long time struggling with the translation, although it looked quite simple. Like a koan.
It was only many years later—while I was pouring myself a cup of tea—that I understood that a koan’s question was simply an aphorism’s assertion reversed.
I talked to Ueno about it later on. We were sitting in his truck, parked in front of Artspace, waiting for Aron to come and let us in. His show had ended and he was taking down his installations.
I’d wanted to introduce Aron to Ueno and I’d hoped that Ueno, who had expressed an interest in his work, would have the opportunity to see it. This was our last chance. Ueno was just back from a short trip to Japan. We’d arranged that he would come by my place on his way in from the airport. He wanted to return to Setting Lake the next day.
137
“Yes, I wrote those two versions,” he explained, “because I wanted it to be absolutely clear. The last two lines, which are almost a mirror-image, explain the first two, you might say. I can see that you did a very good job of expressing it in French. You went straight to the heart of the matter with a play of language that is totally different from the original but which captures the spirit to the letter, body and soul. They say that the soul is always invisible. You’ve given it another body it has accepted.”
“I couldn’t have done it any other way.”
“You see, it’s completely natural.”
138
When Aron arrived I introduced him to Ueno.
“I hope you won’t be too disappointed,” Aron said. “I’ve already started to take down the show.”
“Angèle has spoken very highly of your work,” Ueno replied, “and her enthusiasm is catching. Besides, what can be more important in life than appreciation?”
The Setting Lake Sun Page 5