Raw Silk (9781480463318)

by Burroway, Janet

  I remember, very clearly, a time when I did not know what an identity crisis was. When I was in New York at twenty, people were talking about identity crisis so earnestly that I had to suppose such a thing existed, only I did not know what it was. Of course I knew who I was. How could you not know who you were? I could no more imagine it than being blind. I saw what it meant now. Children in sandals. Trees. Spoons, tablecloths, roads, rocks, mushrooms, the moon and nightfall; it means having no relation to these things except by association that you repudiate.

  I was very tired and very stupid. It’s called despair, and there are drugs for it. Nevertheless—the local inhabitants were neither tired nor stupid and recognized a foreigner afoot with a suitcase—I was urged on with bows and pointings and reassuring repetitions of the word “Wakimoto” to the only inn. I could not remember how to ask for a room but I was given one. I could not understand the simplest gestures, which explained that I was to leave, not only my shoes downstairs at the desk, but the strangely harsh grass slippers at the threshold, and to walk barefoot on my tatami. When I finally understood I made peculiar epileptic scrapings of apology, and was left in a beautiful pale space of paper walls, thinly slatted and permeable by a shadow. The tatami was of grass; there was a cushion filled with rice husks and a low lacquer table, a low alcove with a vase of dried cattails, and that was all.

  I despaired because I did not have my shoes. I despaired because I needed an armchair, a place above-ground to sit. Because if I lived on the floor in an atmosphere of such fragility, then the only available position was Frances’s crouch. The only natural thing was to kneel and keen (but silently, because the paper walls passed everything outside), to bend over the pain in that alien position that, even when I first saw it, I understood to be the classic posture of abjection.

  The truth is that I can’t do you much more of this. Partly because I don’t want to remember it and partly because I don’t remember it. I remember Takayama in such a way as to suggest that it may be the most beautiful village in the world, but I do not really remember what I felt there. People have called labor pain amnesiac because the worst pain is the pain that is least remembered. I remember labor pain. I prefer it to root canal, wasp sting and the stunning of the inner ear. But I don’t remember what I felt in Takayama two weeks ago.

  Sixteen days ago. I spent not quite two weeks there, during which I saw no other Westerner, nor heard a word of any language but Japanese. Takayama was so exactly as Tyler Peer had promised that it offered no surprises except in my own despair that it should be so exactly as he had promised. There was one museum of red and gold splendor where they kept the high kitsch carriages of the annual festival, and around that a series of piney hills scattered with weather-beaten wood and metal shrines. In the town itself every first floor was a cottage industry that opened onto the boarded walk, and everyone lived upstairs over the shops. They made lacquer work, pottery, wood carvings, furniture and origami, all of which I suppose they shipped away, because they could not have consumed their own artifacts in such profusion; and among the things Tyler was right about was that it was not a tourist trap. I was there for a dozen days in high summer, and I saw no Western face but mine, pallid and gross in the Wakimoto mirror.

  In the time it took me to brush my teeth every morning, my pallet was whisked away and the lacquer table laid with a gargantuan, eclectic breakfast, as if an Occidental in the Orient must eat for two: fried eggs, rice cakes, ham, lettuce, coleslaw with soy sauce, tomatoes, toast, jam, mayonnaise, coffee, milk and tea. I could eat none of this and there was no place to hide or dispose of it, so that I sat drinking the tea and dreading the disappointed smile of the pretty girl who would come to take it away. Then I sat, for as long as I hoped would not be offensive, in a deep, tiled, lopsided-egg-shaped bathtub, in water as hot as I could bear; and in a sinking mixture of shame and gratitude let the pretty girl scrub my back with a pumice stone.

  After that I dressed and wandered, through the streets, into the hills, passing shrines where little children scrambled unchecked through the worshipers; past trees tied with prayer papers as if they were heads of hair in rag curlers; into little dells with wood pagodas where I sat until the disharmony between the general peace and my own lurching guts would drive me out again. Then I went back to the town and its jumble of playground swings, shrines, noisy old cars and silent calligraphers. And I would buy things, little bells and joss sticks and lacquered hair clasps, for no other reason than that I must make human contact. The people had all the style of Tokyo without its urgent harshness, and these transactions were performed with gentle gestures, eye smiles, murmurs of goodwill. After which I could cry, and would already have picked a spot secluded enough to do so, because the worst was not being able to cry, and to cry was the purpose of buying things, the purpose of making contact.

  Sometimes crying seemed to let it out and sometimes the crying only drained me, while it kept its total force. It. It. The pain was not part of me or subject to my will or even master of it; it simply came and went at its own bidding. Sometimes for an hour or so it lifted, and I could suddenly see colors, distances and composition. Then I would count back over my moves to see what had made it lift. But it did not care; there was no pattern; it played with me, it underscored the childishness of looking to human logic.

  I would walk into the museum and look at the festival floats, superbly carved panels supporting the crudest merry-go-round horse, garish phony flowers and gold filigree. The gaiety of their patterns was utterly unabashed, the elements went together because they were together. They measured my failure of coherence.

  Or I would pass the museum and stand on the bridge over a school equipped with futuristic climbing frames and toddlers in blue smocks and yellow hats, a phonograph blaring behind their shouts, a teacher amusing them by riding a bicycle slowly through the playground while they chased her. They made manifest my lack of Jill.

  Or I would cross the bridge back into town to watch the calligraphers’ rhythmic strokes, for the first few days with my notebook under my arm, but after that, giving up the illusion that I could make a mark in it, passing my handbag from one hand to the other. The artists acknowledged my spectatorship with pleasant but distant pride, robbing me of a sense of community with their skill.

  Or I would stop in cafés where I unwrapped lacquered chopsticks from their cellophane, bathed my hands and face in the steaming cloth, turned the pottery to see its subtle shadings, and sipped fragrant tea, but could not eat. I gagged on mushrooms and the mere sight of octopus. My gums began to bleed, my anus stung from diarrhea. Every failure to eat brought back the terror, and the terror attached itself to food, so that all the utensils of the cafés attracted me and the sight of soup sent me away again.

  And then I would go to the courtyard of the main temple, wash my face and hands once more with water from a well roofed in wooden fish scales, seat myself in an arbor beside a brass dragon spouting into a pool, and watch the carp. Two hundred of them or so wound around each other lazily, some as much as two feet long, in black, white, silver, gold, yellow, orange, red, and every spectacular speckled combination of these colors. Tyler had told me that some of them were worth several hundred dollars, and this material assessment added to my sense that they weren’t real. One fat old gold fellow I especially followed day after day looked too metallic to be made of any living substance, as if his dignified slithering were some sort of conjuror’s trick. A buddha among carp. I watched him with awe as he twisted through the reflections of the twisted trees, and I was sick for an English wild flower or for a bluetit like the ones that used to nest in the overhang of the tool shed; warm, easy, unspectacular things, nature muddling through.

  I realized that I was spending my time in waiting for time to pass—from one little lift of the depression to another, but also in general, waiting for something to save me. My ribs began to show and my cheeks to hollow. I resented the firm clear body bestowed on the person I used to be who did not make pr
oper use of it, and I wondered whether this waiting had not been going on for most of my life.

  It was the second of September and I had been in Takayama twelve days when I passed, at the entrance to one of the shrines, a vending machine that told the future for twenty yen. I stuck in my coin, the little geisha doll in the glass case bowed, turned, retreated into a temple and returned carrying a fortune scroll which she neatly tipped out into a metal cup. I broke the gold foil and unrolled it, trembling with the groundless fear. And of course it was in Japanese characters, as dumb to me as any other guess at destiny. I thought that I might, though, sometime, somewhere, ask for a translation, so I opened my bag to fold it into my passport case. And in doing so came across my airline ticket back to London, which was dated September sixth, four days away. I sat on a bench and stared at the date. There was no way to exchange an airline ticket in Takayama. I did not have enough money to go to Los Angeles without exchanging it. Neither did I have enough money to stay much longer in Japan. I would have to go back to Kyoto, whether I exchanged the ticket or not, whatever direction I went; and I would have to go some direction.

  I don’t remember if I felt relief or the terror, or how much of which. I don’t remember anything at all until I was on the railroad platform the next day, where the ticket seller laughed to hear me ask how much Kyoto cost, and sent three uniformed schoolgirls into imitative giggles. I turned and asked them if they spoke English. No! Giggles, giggles, they will die of giggles.

  I had half an hour to wait, and every time I looked up they were waiting to nod, wave, giggle. I thought they were waiting for the train, but I think they were waiting for the foreigner to go, because when the train came they stood at the barrier to wait and wave. Settled onto the hardbacked seat with better than five minutes to spare, I got down again and gave each of them my calling card, managing to say in Japanese, “This is my name. Come and see me in England.” Domo, domo, domo, domo, domo, giggle, wave.

  22

  STARING AT MY DUSTY FEET I pushed through the double doors of the Palace Side Hotel, and staring at the carpet crossed the lobby. I was down, and I wanted to be down, I did not want to get in the elevator to ascend to that pointless cubicle I had escaped from. When I finally, conquering this nonsense with immense effort, raised my eyes toward the reception desk I encountered a shocking Occidental face. That is, shocking because Occidental, a broad open male face with flesh of the color called flesh in English, intense blue eyes in it that the lids did not conceal, a mouth in repose, and a rage of hay-colored hair curling spikily out in the proportions of a mane. Moreover, the closer I got to the desk and this face beside it, the more I had to look up at it to look at it at all, which, oh God, I was doing, it must have been with an inane expression of amazement, because the man cocked a quizzical eyebrow as he scooped up a pile of mail and turned away toward the elevator, patched bell-bottom denims flapping at his stride.

  “May I help you, madam?”

  The desk clerk was more comfortable to look at altogether—look down at—dark and lidded and smiling, the way I had come to think of all humans but myself as looking.

  “I’m Mrs. Marbalestier. Room five-seventy-five.”

  “Mrs. Marbelestier, of course. You have had many calls.”

  He handed me my key and a fistful of pink while-you-were-out messages. I shoved them into my bag, restlessness erupting out of dullness.

  “Would you like help with your suitcase?”

  “No, no, thank you, it’s not heavy.”

  I took the elevator up and thrashed into the room, which I did not look at. I slipped off my shoes and dropped the suitcase on the bed, unzipped it and dumped the welter of incense, joss sticks, Noh masks and pottery. I wanted to move fast and flailingly to keep the room from closing in. I turned the shower on for the noise, I opened the window to the busy street. It was late, late enough for summer twilight, which meant that I would have to put a light on if I stayed there, but also late enough that I could go out again, to “eat.” I took off my travel-jaded clothes and stepped into the running shower, then looked for something to wear that I hadn’t worn since Tokyo. There wasn’t anything, or I couldn’t remember what I’d worn and what I hadn’t, so I settled for the black shift that had been my Utagawa uniform, and was alarmed at the way it hung on me, shapelessly huge around my altered shape. I grabbed a bright headscarf and tied it around the waist, not looking at myself. I took handbag, keys, put on my shoes and went out again.

  It helped a little to take the long way through the Palace Park to the Akuho, which I’d learned was the only restaurant within walking distance. So I did that, walking fast, trying to find calm although I knew that my calm was apathetic, which was worse. In the motel-gold Akuho I took a table near the window and ordered, extravagantly, a double Jack Daniels on the rocks.

  There were nine telephone messages, two from Mr. Tsuruoka, five from Tyler Peer and two from Oliver in England. This meant that Mr. Tsuruoka had told Tyler I had disappeared, and that Tyler had told Oliver. Perhaps they were worried, perhaps frantic, but none of the messages registered anything but the date, time, and bare fact of the call. They did not contain suggestions, directions or commands as to what I should do in response. Therefore it seemed fair that I should merely register them, their dates and times. Having reasoned this, with bourbon, I felt more nearly able to cope with dinner, and I had at least the soup, and a few mouthfuls of the rice.

  Sometimes it lifted in the evening, and I began to hope that it would do so now, so I took out the neglected Black Rain and read a paragraph or two, over tea. This was successful. I had a brandy and then walked back more slowly through the park. When I entered the lobby I saw that it was empty except for the desk clerk, a gangly Caucasian boy about sixteen or so, in hiking boots, and the big blond man I had seen earlier. Now that I got a second look at his face, it was nothing special. A simple sort of face, in fact, very open and broad-boned and quite good-looking. The two were seated in the square of sofas in the center of the lobby, both in jeans and T-shirts, both sitting sloppily, the man lounging back with an arm hung over the sofa and the boy hunched forward, elbows on his knees. Both had extravagant hair, though the man’s sprung energetically out and the boy’s hung dark and wispy to Jesus-length; he also had the relevant beard.

  Sometimes when it lifted I was inspired with petty boldnesses, I suppose out of the contrast. Now I stopped when I got to them, and offered to the man, “I’m sorry if I looked startled or stared at you a while ago. I haven’t seen a Western face for two weeks, and it really was a shock.”

  “Oh, that’s all right.” He laughed and stretched, to embarrassing armspan for so dignified a hotel as the Palace Side. “Will you join us? Sit down, sit down.”

  “To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t mind. I haven’t heard any English for two weeks, either, and it’s been driving me nuts.” I could scarcely believe the sangfroid with which I said this. Having said it, I wondered if it were true.

  “I’m Warren Montgolfier”—he said Mont-golf-yer—“and this is Herman Kurt. His friends call him Catman.” I wasn’t sure if he smiled or not.

  “Virginia Marbalestier.”

  “Nice to meet you. Catman has a problem.”

  The boy had said nothing, was pulling his forehead skin into furrows between thumb and fingers, staring at the floor.

  “My beads, man,” he said. “I can’t believe it I lost my beads.”

  Montgolfier leaned over elbows on knees now too. The boy wiped his hands on his jeans, which were dangerously threadbare, whereas Montgolfier’s were excessively patched with squares of various cotton prints that made him look like a harlequin. Just what I needed, a couple of krishna mystics or Jesus freaks.

  “Go over your steps, man,” Montgolfier commanded urgently.

  “I can’t believe it, how’m I gonna chant without my beads?”

  “Did you check your pack out?”

  “Yeah, yeah. How’m I gonna chant?”

  “You gotta c
oncentrate. Don’t do a thing on me, man, you gotta fucking split for Hiroshima tomorrow. Get it together.”

  Then he turned to me and said, without irony but in a voice more or less standard American middle class, “He lost his chanting beads somewhere between here and Nagoya, and he gets bad vibes without them. The trouble is, he might have dropped them on the train.”

  “Shitfire,” Catman groaned at this suggestion.

  “You could buy some more,” I reasoned.

  “Shit, man, no, those beads were given.”

  “Okay.” Montgolfier leaned farther forward still and put an energetic, stub-nailed hand on Herman’s knee. “Here’s what. You know me, man, the karma’s good, it’s brothers, right?”

  The boy nodded miserably.

  “So you can sleep tonight. I tell you so, I promise you can sleep one night. In the morning I’m going to find you a string you can relate to, you believe me? And those’ll be given, get me? From a brother.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. Okay, man.” The boy looked up at Montgolfier, his focus slightly out of kilter, and nodded several times, then shook his head doubtfully.

  “I tell you so. I give you sleeping permission. You don’t need to do a single number, you believe me?”

  “Yeah, okay, I guess.” The boy got up and wandered toward the elevator. Montgolfier followed him at a distance, his hands held tense and forward as if he were lifting Catman up the shaft himself. When the elevator came he stood in front of it making the peace sign until the doors had closed. Then he came back and sat down again, forward over his knees again, and said, “Shit. Christ.” He stared at the floor. “He’ll do some stuff or other, though.”

  He shifted and looked up in my general direction. “The trouble is, it works in seesaws. The minute you’re really sure that God is dead, you get all this mysticism erupting, and they can’t handle it.”