And we went in.
It’s true that the gallery looked a little like a site under construction or demolition. Some of the totemic stems were lying on the floor while others leaned against the wall; a toolbox and its contents were scattered around. There were electrical wires, an armchair, the remains of a hurried meal, an ashtray full of butts. In the middle of the room sat a ghetto blaster; when Aron was working on his show he often played Australian Aboriginal music featuring a strange and beautiful instrument called the digeridoo.
“I have to get everything out of here by tomorrow,” Aron told us. He went back to work and left us to wander around the room at our leisure.
“We’ll give you a hand,” said Ueno. “I have my truck here.”
Then there was a pause. I remember it clearly. And, going over to Aron, Ueno told him, “There is beauty in impermanence.” Then he said, “I think I’ve come to see the show at just the right time.”
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I asked Aron to put on some Aboriginal music.
Although Ueno hadn’t commented on the quality of the work itself, I could see that whatever he said made Aron’s face light up.
Then a drawn-out moan from the other side of the world came writhing out of the player. The disconnected pieces in the room seemed to have regained the power of speech. “Angèle had the right idea,” Ueno observed.
I was about to leave to get us all coffee when he stopped me.
“No, not coffee. Here.” He handed me a couple of twenty-dollar bills. “Take the keys to the truck and find us a good bottle of champagne. I want to sit still for a few minutes. Then I’ll help Aron dismantle this magical forest that has survived the seas of mortality.”
I can still see Aron’s face. It was radiant.
140
What a difference! I remembered how it had been just a few weeks earlier when Aron had called me late at night. He was drunk; the way he was talking gave him away.
“The reviews were all bad. What I’m doing doesn’t make any sense.” And in the same breath he mumbled, “They don’t understand a thing.”
I thought he was too thin-skinned. The critics weren’t that hard on him; it was more that they couldn’t see what he was doing. Still, being misunderstood can be as discouraging as being rejected outright.
He went from feeling sorry for himself to being angry. “No one has ever understood me. Just you, at times. And my sister.”
While I felt sympathetic I found his whimpering totally ridiculous. Still, I could hear the hurt behind the stock complaints.
He wanted to come over, to see someone, to sleep... I hesitated, then said, “Okay, come. But take a taxi, don’t drive.”
141
He knocked on my door and when I opened it, the first thing he said was, “I’ve been drinking.”
I nodded. “I know. Come in. Come in and sit down.”
He staggered over and leaned on me.
“You’d better lie down.”
The way he was stammering out his hopes and disappointments, it was almost impossible to understand what he was saying.
As he was making his way past my work table he stopped to steady himself. “What’s this?” he asked, leaning over to see better.
“They’re Ueno Takami’s poems.” In the hope of lifting his spirits I added, “He wants to see your show.” It was true. “He’s away on a trip but he’ll be back soon.”
“He’ll be too late,” he mumbled.
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But he wasn’t too late, not at all. Especially since he told Aron that he had a good friend in Japan, Tadao Ando, an architect—as he said this he was turning to me—who was designing a classical garden using a modern idiom, and he would certainly be interested in Aron’s work.
Then he talked a bit about Noguchi, whom he’d known in New York. “He was also a designer of gardens. The garden is a sculpture, a sculpture in motion.”
“Like Calder’s mobiles,” said Aron.
“Not quite. The garden is a sculpture in a mobile state,” he explained, as enigmatic as ever.
143
That evening I invited Ueno to spend the night at my place, with the fishbowl, the candles and the table covered with manuscript pages.
It was the first time he’d set foot in my apartment.
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When I awoke in the middle of the night he was no longer lying beside me.
I could see a glimmer of light coming from the living room. I got out of bed and stealthily approached the doorway. He had lit a candle and was leaning, completely naked, over the pages I’d been working on.
“Lovely handwriting,” he said without turning his head. “Little footprints at the edge of the Void... It’s coming, it’s coming,” he concluded with a satisfied air.
Then he turned to face me. “Tomorrow morning we’ll go dancing.”
Since I remained puzzled he continued, “Tai-chi. In Central Park.”
“Will the water be flowing?”
“I’m sure of it.”
145
I have to confess that at that moment he was as randy as a buck.
For the longest time I couldn’t reconcile the two: how could he be so spiritual and so sensual at once?
I imagine that it was as natural to him as breathing.
146
His erect penis was not especially long, but thick, almost knotty to the touch. “Like an old oak tree,” he said. “That’s a classic poem of the new Japanese literature.
That’s the entire piece, a single verse: Like an old oak tree.”
“Comparing it to what? To nothing?”
“Therein lies the beauty. Of course there are myriad possible references to tradition, but the verse itself remains mysterious, powerful, rooted in what cannot be said. And despite all the possible references to the past and the interpretations they might engender, it’s the presence of the oak in the here and now that takes precedence. The old oak is always there. Finally, despite the obvious symbolism, it’s an opening.”
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He liked it when I touched it. He taught me that in stroking it with the teeth you must turn it around in the mind and imagine that it’s the penis that is like a finger caressing the ivory keys of a piano.
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When we made love he wanted me to sit astride him. He liked to see me in that position. “Come on, my little frog,” he would say.
149
Ueno could sometimes seem impenetrable, but it may be that he was an eccentric, more than anything. For instance, there was a side to his character that I would have to call romantic.
I clearly recall that first night I joined him in the room where he slept. It had the look and feel of an attic. There were wood beams, also some mirrors that reflected the flames of candles and lanterns he had lit. The window was open and a cool breeze blew in; it disturbed the lace curtains and caused melted wax to course down the sides of the candles. I almost expected to hear an organ begin to play.
The glow of the candles charmed me and the cool air sharpened my senses.
There was even a small painting that at first seemed bawdy but that I came to know well over the months that followed. It was a reproduction of The Origin of the World by Courbet.
“That’s where I pray,” he told me.
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And he recited in Japanese a wonderful poem titled “The Woman’s Sex.” It was written by Ikkyu who, he was careful to explain, was an old monk.
“It’s the original mouth but it does not speak
It is surrounded by a magnificent mound of fur;
One can get completely lost in it.
But it is also the birthplace of all the Buddhas in the ten thousand worlds.”
We then spent the night in orations, ablutions and offices of all descriptions.
“What wonderful hips,” he kept saying.
It made me laugh.
151
I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of wax sputtering on the metal plates where he’
d put the candles to prevent a fire. I felt a great tenderness as I watched those almost geomorphic shapes sink and go out. I got out of bed to get a breath of air at the window. The night was pitch-black and I couldn’t see the sky. I heard the wind soughing. Although the room had grown cold, I was fine just as I was. I felt blessed. And I climbed back into bed.
Making love with Ueno never made me melancholy, not before, not during, not after. Never. And I never returned to sleep in front of the fire on the many visits I made from the spring through to the winter of that year. Except once—the last night. I didn’t know it would be the last. That night there was an incredible snowstorm, both threatening and awe-inspiring.
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The next morning Ueno was cooking crepes right on top of the wood stove.
“Predestination is what happens to those who are following their own course.”
This was his answer when I told him about how I felt: Didn’t he have the impression, even that first evening at the gallery, that we were bound to meet each other?
Many people associate destiny with the night, a kind of dark fate. I now believe that what we take to be destiny is actually the coming to consciousness of something we had refused to acknowledge.
153
That summer and fall I often took the bus to Thompson. Ueno would drive me down again on Sunday night. He would spend a day or two in Winnipeg taking care of business or giving his classes. We developed the habit of going out together on Monday evening and spending the night together at my apartment.
My trips to Thompson were not exactly a pilgrimage or an odyssey. I guess you could say they were a journey without a destination.
154
I clearly remember the time I told him. It was very simple. I had left for Thompson early Friday morning, as I had often done over the previous months.
My Friday afternoons with Sara had become less and less frequent, but she didn’t mind, she understood.
Frank teased me a little. He said, “Now you want a taste of something else. You found a better fountain to drink from? So, go, in vino veritas.” And he kissed me on both cheeks.
155
So there I was on the bus to Thompson. For the first time I’d brought the copy of The Night Pond that Ueno had given me. He had dedicated it “To my little frog” and made a quick sketch of a crouching frog next to his signature.
There was no launch for his book; nearly the entire run was held for collectors.
Here’s what I remember about that trip. I was once again reading the poems. I can’t say whether I was actually reading or whether I saw each of them whole, at a single glance, because they were so solidly stamped into my memory. But above all, the illustrations, the rubbings. It felt as if the unbroken wall of pines, already packed with snow, created a similar effect to his woodcuts as it streamed past the window. There was the shimmering of the tree trunks and the white spacing created by the snow between.
I know Ueno enjoyed making that trip and I believe that he would have been open to the images it inspired. The etchings on the page’s white expanse added a little extra, an imprint, a visual rustling. A rare glimpse of the indefinable. It made me very happy.
156
That summer I decided I wanted to give Ueno something as a sign of my affection and to thank him for many things. I made a collage out of wildflowers I had pressed in a book and a piece of bark I picked up during one of our walks. I had written on it in Chinese ink, using a brush. It was a clumsy first effort, but sincere and heartfelt. I’d copied the words of a song I’d heard as a child:
“The water is still
the fog is lifting
sometimes
I appear.”
I could tell Ueno was ecstatic, although his composure was undisturbed. He wanted to know more about the verse.
I told him I thought it was a Chippeweyan song and that my father would sing it, I can no longer remember why or when.
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I had a wonderful time creating my little piece. Everything seemed to come together effortlessly.
Every so often I had seen Ueno working on a drawing. He worked quickly, but without rushing. There was no frenzied speed or wasted energy; it was as if by not hurrying one could achieve the ideal tempo. Each gesture was impeccable, as though he were moving to music.
He had explained that when you reach the perfect speed, time ceases to exist. You start to move through infinity.
To help me understand that it’s not a matter of being fast or slow, or any kind of rational control, he told me about Wang Mo, a Chinese painter who, so he said, had the heart of Jackson Pollock.
It seems that Wang Mo was renowned for his drinking and he rarely started a piece without first getting drunk. Then painting turned into a party—he sang, he danced, he laughed, he waved his arms around, all while he was working. He was known for the technique they call “ink-spattering.” With his brushes, or just as often with his long braids dipped in ink, he would summon magical landscapes as if they were emanating directly from the Tao. They say that the finished work was so perfectly composed you would forget the brush-strokes and think you were looking straight into the Void.
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Ueno had come to pick me up on the highway where the bus to Thompson dropped me off and we had arrived at his place. He stopped his old spaceship, which was as gloriously messy as ever, on the small rise. From there we could see his cabin and beyond it, encircled by trees, the white expanse of Setting Lake. Its surface was slightly ruddy from the light of the sun disappearing over the bridge of clouds.
That was when I told him, “Ueno, I’m pregnant.”
159
In order to explain that, I have to backtrack a little. When we made love the first time—and afterwards—he didn’t want to use a safe.
He said, “You know, the way I lead my life, I don’t sow my seed on stony ground, nor does the Spirit send me thorns.”
That’s exactly the feeling that comes over me when I talk about a journey without a destination, or what I might call an immaculate quest.
But at the time I was uneasy, for another reason.
“I’m not on the pill.” I had stopped taking it when I split up with Aron and had relied, when I needed to, on condoms.
“Well, you know, at my age, given my physical condition, I don’t think there are enough fireflies to make it across Buddha’s barrier. It wouldn’t be a miracle, but it would be an unanticipated covenant with the universe, irreproachable and irrefutable.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“But if you’re afraid...”
I don’t know why, but I said, “No, it’s all right.”
The last date on his modest list was already almost two years old.
Today I can’t stop myself from smiling when I think how scant that list was, considering his vigorous performance.
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Since he had so much confidence in the universe, I once asked him how a spiritual being could have desires, illnesses, or whatever.
“That’s life,” he answered with great simplicity. “Where do you want a so-called enlightened being to live, if it’s not in life? Enlightenment is not detachment; it’s stripping away illusions and embracing life.”
“Oh, yes,” I recalled, “taking your monkey out for a walk.”
He gave me a wink. “You should read the life story of Ikkyu. His relationship with Lady Mori is legendary, like that of Abelard and Eloise. He went by the name Crazy Cloud, and that’s how it was: He was a wise man who could make it rain or make it shine.”
161
I loved my trips to see Ueno. I loved talking to him. I don’t know whether he said these things exactly as I’m retelling it today, but that’s how I remember it. Of all the things I could say about Ueno Takami, these are the ones I enjoy talking about, the ones that come back to me just like that, spontaneously, circling around like little pockets of energy in our communal life, like the atoms of a molecule.
“Memories,” he s
aid, “are like a small hiccup in the declension of the Void, quavers in the music of the spheres.”
162
So I told him I was pregnant. His black eyes—and that’s when I understood the expression “burning coals”—seemed to shine brighter even as they grew darker; the more empty they became, the more light they contained. On his bony, sunburned face appeared a marvellous smile. At once unbelieving and accepting, it seemed to me.
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“So,” he said, “you’ve managed to transcend the absolute and start individual life.”
“But that’s natural.”
“I’m not talking about the child, I’m talking about you.”
I was nonplussed.
“Let me tell you a story, that of Kakua, the first Japanese to study Zen in China. He had completed his instruction and was living apart from the world on a mountainside, spending all his time in meditation. When ordinary folk came to find him to ask about the meaning of life, he would just say a few words and fall silent. Then he would draw even further away, to a more distant part of the mountain. The Emperor of Japan heard tell of Kakua and ordered him to come and preach for his own edification and that of his subjects. When he arrived at Court, Kakua stood before the Emperor in silence. Finally he drew a flute from his robe; he sounded a single note. And then, bowing politely, he left and was never seen again.”
164
I then felt a void opening up in me, a huge clear void.
“What shall we call the child?” I asked.
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“I feel like it’s a boy.”
“Then let’s call him Isaake, Isaake Takami.”
He set to laughing as never before. His laugh still resounds in my heart like the cawing of the crow at the end of time.
The Setting Lake Sun Page 6