This was not the case with our golden retriever. At home, with us, she was calm and serene, like an autumn sky after a typhoon, so much so that we sometimes forgot she was there. The discreet sound of her footsteps, the occasional sighs or plaintive little cries brought on by dreams and often accompanied by slight convulsive shudders of her legs reminded us of her pleasant and enlivening company. But as soon as someone rang at the door and was greeted as a faithful and trustworthy friend, she suddenly turned into a demonstrative ball of energy. Her master and his family came first in her show of affection, but her inexhaustible need to express the warmth of her feelings would, if need be, take her beyond the tight-knit family circle.
It was a summer day at the end of an afternoon that made you hope for the general cooling brought about by elderly neighbours who, wanting to carry on the tradition of old times, would copiously water the street. A midwife paid us a visit. We’d become close through a French woman who’d chosen to have a home birth, far from the heavily medicalised structures of the big hospital centres. Having agreed to run a midwives’ training course in Madagascar, she had come to talk over her concerns about communication barriers with the trainees. She was accompanied by her son, who was in the midst of swotting for his exams and who, she said, loved dogs.
We went and sat in the living room. On the glass table there was an old edition of I’m Expecting a Baby, which had been given to us many years ago by a woman friend of ours, a psychoanalyst, when we learnt that Michèle was pregnant. Another more austerely scientific book that I’d found in a corner of my library, Practical Manual of Sophrological Preparation for Motherhood, was also on the table. These were all that we could lend the midwife. Michèle told her that she’d found valuable information in some of the pages of these two books, which both had a wealth of illustrations and photographs. The midwife asked her if she had any other children apart from the girl she’d seen two or three times on one of our evening walks with the dog. The hostess replied that she’d had nothing but unhappy experiences after the birth of her daughter and confided in her that if she’d known her at the time of her second and third pregnancies her family life might perhaps have been different.
Through the windowpanes of the door that separates the hall from the living room we could see the dog sitting on her back legs. From time to time she tapped delicately on the door. We could hear the scratching sound made by the hesitant and halting contact of her claws with the glass. The midwife suggested to Michèle that she let her come in. As soon as the door opened she charged straight in and was all over the guest who’d liberated her.
‘OK, OK … Calm down … Calm down!’
The college student, who hadn’t said a word up until then, took the two paws from his mother’s lap, said to her that she was going about it the wrong way and explained how to pat the dog and avoid all that licking. Mélodie turned to the teenager—and began licking his face vigorously.
The unexpected meeting between the midwife and the exuberant dog who’d brought eight puppies into the world naturally led Michèle to recount the story of the stillborn puppy and the yellow crocodile that the mother adopted as a needed imaginary substitute.
‘That’s quite normal. The little puppy shouldn’t have been hidden from her. In fact someone should have shown it to her … It’s like a woman who’s had a miscarriage …’
I was only half listening to the female conversation. But a little shiver ran through me when the midwife uttered the word miscarriage. I looked at my wife, who wasn’t looking at her guest. It seemed to me that, for a moment, she was in another world.
It was raining that day. The huge door of the delivery room slid open slowly. A midwife in her fifties came towards me. She held something in her hands, wrapped in a pure white cloth.
‘It was a boy … You know, when it rains like it is today there are twice as many births … But your baby came out much too soon … unfortunately. I haven’t shown him to your wife. Do you want to see him?’
‘Yes.’
It was a human baby, almost completely formed, but tiny and extremely fragile, like a baby doll, about fifteen centimetres long. He seemed to be sleeping in the outstretched hand of the midwife, like a child who dreams while sleeping in the hand of a great Buddha, tenderly held open like a huge orchid. The white cloth covered the little naked body. Then he disappeared behind the big door.
Michèle stayed in hospital for several days, long enough to accompany the child back to the kingdom of souls and to return again.
Meanwhile I went to see my parents to tell them about what had happened. My father took out his calligraphy things. He began to rub the charcoal stick on the ink stone whose hollow was filled with water. When he’d prepared the Chinese ink, he wrote, with a little brush, four ideograms, which were arranged vertically:
Immaculate child of a dream star. It was the name (a little Buddhist in flavour) that, as an experienced monk, he had devised for the child who had been born prematurely and was no more. The name Jean-Emmanuel that we’d thought of one day, Michèle and I, in the beguiling vision of a rose-coloured future, has remained with us forever in our memory as a couple. My father, a little flushed from a quickly swallowed cup of sake, held out to me the calligraphied sheet of paper, which, on my return, I put away at the back of one of the drawers of my desk like a hidden treasure. Then life went on again with the return of the bereft mother. Some years later, when my father had left us, I finally had the courage to show Michèle the magical, stellar name that he’d given to our stillborn baby boy. I remember the absent and distant look she gave me at the time.
I wondered if the word miscarriage hadn’t reopened the old scar, if it didn’t make the mother dream about her immaculate child of a dream star, the child she hadn’t seen and who, all things considered, should have been shown to her lying in the compassionate hand that served as his bed …
The dog kept up her warm welcome to the midwife and her son. It seemed she made no distinction between her master and his guests in her show of affection. This rather extraordinary ability is far from being shared by all human beings, and it was demonstrated brilliantly during an evening party that was a little special, an occasion we’d wanted our daughter to enjoy at the time when she was coming of age.
19
AN EVENING PARTY
TO CELEBRATE TURNING fifty a Parisian friend had the idea of getting some friends together in the country house he’d inherited in Normandy and that, as a Sunday handyman, he’d been enjoying spending his time patiently renovating over many months. The renovations were still far from finished, but he sent out more than a hundred invitations to friends all over the world, and about eighty people replied that they were coming. Working at the other end of the planet, all we could do was write him a long letter to congratulate him on this happy undertaking. The party, where men and women of I don’t know how many different cultural backgrounds mixed together, was a wonderful occasion, my friend told me later.
His account of the party set me thinking. It didn’t occur to me to do the same for my fiftieth birthday, but if I’d wanted to, how many invitations could I have sent out to different parts of the world? Of course, in my culture of origin there’s definitely something false, affected or even pretentious, in the very idea of celebrating one’s birthday. But leaving that aside, how many friends would I have had around me at a party I didn’t for a second imagine myself having? How many people beyond the family circle could I have asked to come and share the pleasure of being together?
It is said that this country is inhabited by eight million gods. Eight million is the metaphor for the infinite or numberless, like Don Giovanni’s mille e tre (1003: the number of his Spanish conquests). I can imagine the mental universe of the archipelago’s inhabitants being turned upside down by the arrival, in the sixth century, of the universal principle that Buddhism embodied. At that time each clan, each tribe, each village, each local community had their own gods to protect them. Did they feel the need to
reach out to the Other in its difference amid this motley and divided array? No, I don’t think they did. You lived in keeping with the cult of your gods, and you could forget about all the rest. You were very close to your neighbours. You could almost touch them. But you didn’t see them or feel them. Does this ancient and millennial epoch live in me? Does it constitute one of the deepest layers of my being? Am I determined by the sediments of this collective past? Who am I?
For Christmas, in 2003 or 2004, I had planned a gathering at our home that would bring together a dozen or so people. Given the size of our apartment this was the maximum number we could think of inviting. I set myself a challenge: that of diversity. My intention was not to compete with my Parisian friend but to follow his example in surrounding myself with a diverse mix of people. I invited some of our friends and friends of my daughter’s—people of my age, young people and the not-so-young—men and women who for the most part didn’t know each other. There were French people, a cultural attaché from the embassy and an unemployed PhD in sociology who was looking for a teaching position; there was a Moroccan who wasn’t bound by the dietary prescriptions of his religion and his Cameroonian girlfriend, who, unlike him, was careful to adhere to them; there was a young African American, the friend of a friend, who’d come to present me with a colourful cowboy waistcoat; there was a Canadian woman of Haitian origin who wrote poems; there was a young Chinese woman, a Uighur, on a study trip to Tokyo, who did the tango and didn’t eat pork; there was a French-German atheist who was culturally Jewish, and a Palestinian woman who asked to leave the gathering and go and pray in a quiet corner of the apartment; there was a German of Turkish origin who, after brilliant studies in Tokyo, had found a job in a Japanese firm. And finally, amid this whole mixture of cultures, religions and dietary habits, there was us and a Japanese couple, a very old friend who’d worked in finance for a long time and who, with his wife, was now enjoying the peaceful life of a retiree … What made it possible to gather together so many different individuals to make up this engaging company for an evening was the fact that there was one language that they all shared. They all spoke French. They spoke it more or less well, but they spoke it and they forced themselves to speak it. Some while eating sushi arranged on a large, slightly rounded, rectangular tray, others while partaking of the homemade carrot salad that filled a cherry wood bowl. Still others communicated in French seated around a plate of cheeses and a big lacquer platter filled with bread, the two dishes placed next to each other on a little round table made of glass. As for me, leaning against the traditional-style chest of drawers of a deep maple colour that stood in the corner close to the glass door of the living room, I was having a discussion with my ex-banker friend as I poured him some of the Italian red he’d brought himself.
It was at that point that I heard distinctly plaintive little cries, a series of moans coming from my study. I could also recognise amid the voices and the softly playing back ground music the sharp little sounds that Mélodie made when scratching on the door. I’d taken the step of shutting her in my study before the guests arrived so that the evening wouldn’t be disturbed by the kind of canine exuberance that was not always universally appreciated. She could hear voices, other voices than those she was used to, laughing voices, voices that rose up at times like musical notes played fortissimo. The same little sounds were repeated; the same plaintive cries, closer and closer together, went on longer before stopping suddenly after a brief, stifled bark. She was clearly protesting about the treatment that had been inflicted on her, being forcibly separated from those who were happily adding their voices to mine and my wife’s and my daughter’s. Her voice howling and her paws knocking at the door, she expressed her desire to meet us beyond an invisible divide that separated her from the human community.
Her sorrowful moans pained me. I addressed the gathering.
‘Good evening, I bid you all welcome! I’m so happy that you’re here. But … there’s something I have to say if I’m to be perfectly frank with you. Even though this evening has got off to such a good start there’s something stopping me from really enjoying it. As we stand here there’s a being somewhere else in this house who is in distress … That soft moaning sound? Can you hear it?’
All at once the voices gave way to the background music that subtly filled the apartment. I lowered the volume. There was silence. Then we heard little moans like the delicate twittering of birds or, rather, the sad, lingering sound of a flute coming from the wings of a concert hall. In the end they elicited a scattering of broad smiles on the faces of the guests.
‘When she sees this happy throng she’ll be very excited at first, but she’ll calm down quite quickly and enjoy being part of it all. Can I let her come in and join you?’
No one was allergic to dog hair, no one was afraid of this other living creature not quite like us. I went to open the door of my study. She was sitting on her back legs. She looked at me for a long time; she was trembling with impatience.
‘Are you coming?’
Scarcely had she heard the first syllable of my signal than she leapt forward in one bound. Three seconds later she was scurrying about in the forest of legs and running madly from one person to another before lying on her back, her legs in the air in front of the Haitian poet, who knew exactly how to deal with this exuberant ball of energy ready to lavish you with affection. Mélodie’s tension relaxed. When she stood up again she gave the poet her front paws in turn as if to thank her for her pats. Then she went off, as naturally as could be, to lie on her dining room mattress. No doubt reassured by the presence of humans nearby, she soon began dozing.
The voices rose up again, intermingling. And the music, muted and lilting, was now playing again as well, just lightly perceptible to our ears. The party went on till late. No one wanted to take their leave of any of the others. In the end there was nothing left to eat or drink. On the table there was only a large carafe of water in the shape of a stork, like the magic fountain at an ancient festival where young lovers would come to quench their thirst. The guests, in little groups of two or three whose composition changed from time to time, gossiped animatedly and in every corner. As for me, with the concern appropriate to the inspirer of this motley gathering of a winter’s evening, I went from one group to another as if to form them into a joyfully woven whole.
It was at that moment, when no one was expecting it, that there appeared a most unusual sight. Mélodie, who up until then had been sleeping on her mattress, got up suddenly and came and stood right in the middle of the living room. Crouching down in front of her, I took her right front paw in the way I usually did and said to her,
‘What’s going on, my friend? Are you coming to take part in our gathering?’
The voices grew quiet. All eyes, in a kind of childlike wonder, converged on the one who’d just taken up a spot among us. The eyes of the dog, wide open, shining, with a disarming candour, looked all around her as if checking the presence of those she’d noted a few hours before. With that she rested her head on her two paws, giving a deep sigh.
Someone burst out laughing. A woman’s voice said,
‘It might be time to go off to bed …’
This remark, which was doubtless addressed to Mélodie, was enough to remind us that time had slipped by without our realising it, in the absence of a reason to think of it. It was true; we did have to go our separate ways.
There was getting up to go. Belongings were gathered up and visits were made to the little room next to the bathroom. Goodbyes were said in the hall. There was hugging. Shoes were put back on. There was more hugging. Finally the exit was made. But instead of dispersing, we gathered again in front of the house, quite naturally, without anyone prompting us to do so. A whispered conversation was struck up for a few seconds. Then we went our separate ways. The wind had swept away all the clouds. The city was plunged into the silence of the night. The moon, silvery, almost white, in the infinitely high and starry sky shone its light on the men a
nd women who were gradually moving further into the distance and coupled them with a faithful shadow. We went back into the house.
Mélodie was sleeping at the foot of our bed.
20
WAITING
SHE WAITS. Mélodie is one who waits, who does nothing but wait. Her life will have been made up of waiting. But waiting for what? Waiting for the return of the one to whom she feels attached.
That morning, as usual, I had taken her for a walk and, after a long stroll through the laneways of Nakano, we made a stop at Philosophy Park before getting back to the house. Once the passers-by thinned out in the vacant land adjoining the park, I was in the habit of taking off her leash so that she could freely explore the area in her own way, from end to end and in every nook and cranny. So that’s what I did. I knew that if, say, a child was frightened by her presence I only needed to call loudly to her, and she would come straight back to me. But that day things took a different turn.
Mr D, the vet, came along with his female golden retriever, Momo—he would regularly get her to chase the frisbee. I greeted him and thanked him for looking after Mélodie two weeks before when she’d had a split dewclaw. The greetings over with, I turned round to the ex-patient. But I could no longer see her … She had disappeared … She had fled—that’s what I guessed straight away—as soon as she’d seen the man who had hurt her so dreadfully—he’d cut away half of her broken dewclaw together with the nerve that ran underneath it. I cried out her name. Now there were only Mr D and his dog on the vacant land. I took my leave of the vet and ran into the different parts of the park, shouting, screaming her name louder and louder: I looked around by the baseball stadium; I checked the area around the tennis courts; I also searched the cherry-tree garden; finally I continued the search as far as the pagoda and its surrounds. But in vain. Not the shadow of a dog. I was beginning to panic …
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