The Pine Islands

by Marion Poschmann

  Gilbert, his torso bare, was towel-drying his hair when Yosa arrived back with the socks. He had had an extremely hot shower. Water from Japanese showers came out practically boiling. For the sake of the ascetic practices on which they were about to embark, he had set the highest possible temperature he could endure, and the skin over his entire body had turned a crab red. It reminded him of those monkeys with the pink rumps, Japanese macaques who always look so appealing in the tourist brochures, the way they bathe in the hot springs in deep winter. Monkeys with red faces, surrounded in steam. Steam was rising off him too, a steam body, a boiled red monkey. He quickly threw on a T-shirt and reached out for the new socks. When Yosa wasn’t looking he pressed his hot face to them and wistfully sniffed them, because they were so new, so unused, so fresh. He would have quite liked to have seen some Japanese macaques, perhaps a surreptitious reason for his trip was so he would get to see animals, foreign creatures like the Japanese raccoon dog that resembled the American raccoon or the European badger, mythical white foxes that could metamorphose into gentlewomen and graceful young men, even brown bears in the impenetrable wilderness of Hokkaidō, a childish longing, a stubborn hope that he believed had been lost forever. He above all wanted to see the macaques in the snowy water baths, it would have been better if he had come in winter and not late summer, he wanted to see how these animals made their way through the landscape, what traces they left behind, he wanted to see what inquisitiveness motivated them. Crab-red monkeys with bushy brown fur that exist both without question and without explanation. Animals whose movements strengthened Gilbert’s own sense of existence.

  He put on his shoes and picked up his bag, pawed for the key to the room. We’ll begin, Gilbert said grandly, with the cherry blossoms of Ueno.

  The blossoms of Ueno can’t be seen at this time of year, Yosa objected as they left the hotel. Gilbert was riled. This Japanese man just didn’t get it. He was slipshod when it was a matter of careful planning, he was too particular when flexibility was required, another reason for his failure.

  We’re going to Ueno, Gilbert explained patiently, and we’ll visualise the blossom that Bashō would have seen. It’s not about the blossom per se, it’s about the energy of the place. Seeing as Bashō’s journey took place five hundred years ago, it cannot be a decisive factor whether we’re writing in spring or autumn. The time has passed, the place remains.

  You couldn’t tell from Yosa’s expression whether he had understood the argument. But his body tightened up, casting off the exhaustion, and he took on the dependable, attentive demeanour of a tour guide.

  In Ueno Park he steered Gilbert along the central avenue, which was indeed filled with a considerable number of cherry trees, and the light fell so dappled on their leaves that for a moment Gilbert could almost believe he was seeing a sea of white blossom. Or snow. Either would have been preferable to this insipid green; even when it was all about the place and not about the time, he couldn’t take the slightest pleasure in the cherry trees. When faced with the blossom, even Bashō himself could only recall one line of Saigyō on the day he set off on his journey: When will I see them again?

  Gilbert for his part vaguely recalled a different poem where it states that splitting open the cherry tree in order to find the blossom is the wrong approach. He turned around, stamped off back to the station without waiting for Yosa and took it upon himself to completely disregard the subject of cherry blossoms for the rest of the journey and, for reasons of efficiency, logistics and the season, to instead concentrate on the hardy evergreen pines.

  Kita-Senju Station. Suicide spot. Faceless high-rises. Wide streets, never-ending traffic. Not a trace of a historic post station. They waited for a long time at a crossing. Then the lights suddenly turned green. They couldn’t decide whether to cross or not. After the third green phase Yosa reluctantly jumped into action, crossing over to a row of houses of which only their rear exits and the ugly boxes of the air conditioning units were visible. They walked flanked by these boxes that rhythmically reoccurred as if there was only one of them, stuck in a time loop walking past the same one over and over again. Then there were the abandoned restaurants offering dusty plastic versions of their set menus in their front windows. A small supermarket, a shop selling sports trophies. As if sleepwalking, Yosa sought out a brand-new building, barely larger than a kiosk. They entered through the glass door into a crowded space. Two customers, a screen and a stool were all that could be accommodated in this post office. Unthinkable that the old post station had once stood in this exact place. But at least there was a post office here. They bought a single stamp with a floral motif and a picture postcard, and Gilbert wrote Mathilda only a single line: Hi from Tokyo.

  They continued down the main street, Yosa unswerving, Yosa automaton-like, Yosa mute. The dead-straight street rose into a bridge over the Sumida River. Yosa led them to the riverbank.

  Blackened surface of the water, shielded by the arc of the bridge, utterly smooth, like the granite floor of a bank.

  This is where Bashō and his travelling companion came to shore, Yosa explained tersely. They completed the first stage of their journey by boat. This is where they moored.

  This place – Gilbert recognised at first glance – was perfect for Yosa’s intentions. Motionless water that, no matter what one threw into it, would immediately find its way back to its motionless state and would cover up everything that had come to pass with its indifferent slickness. They leant on the rail and watched the water. It reflected the bridge’s frame, reflected its white and turquoise coating, strangely childish pastel colours like those one often finds in places of social crises, in clinics and care homes, in order to compensate for the nameless catastrophes with an inoffensive colour scheme. Pillars the shade of mint stuck out from the silkiness of the river, rosy buoys bobbed like lost heads, gaudy struts crossed one another to form a structure made from plastic toys and ice cream. Up top, the bridge’s steel girder arched like the track of a roller coaster.

  Gilbert turned around, wanting to leave. That’s when he saw Bashō. Life-sized Bashō, a graffito painted on the wall of the riverbank, Bashō as a brush painting in the style of the Edo period, Bashō with his travelling companion getting ready to scale the riverbank to seek out his lodgings for the night, bringing the first day of travelling to an end.

  Gilbert had imagined Bashō to be a little more impressive. He found this depiction sobering. A weedy, hunched figure, umbrellaed by a broad pilgrim’s hat, the straps of the pilgrim’s bag weighing down his neck, his frame held up by the crutch-like pilgrim’s staff. Bashō, followed by an even more weighed-down companion, indeed he was practically crawling along the floor. He had the back of his head to any onlookers. His face could not be seen.

  Yosa had nodded almost imperceptibly, he allowed Gilbert to go ahead of him, they climbed the steps one after the other up to the street.

  And now, Yosa asked. He hadn’t asked very loudly. He would never dare let such a question, one expressing a certain indecision, if not downright dissatisfaction, thereby openly placing Gilbert’s powers of decision-making into question, slip out of his mouth, but his upright posture had wilted a little, his body had slumped infinitesimally, he turned one way and then the other, as if he didn’t know what to do anymore, in short, he radiated impatience.

  And now, Gilbert proclaimed, we will both compose a short poem.

  Yosa nodded, flabbergasted. We need a table, he blurted out. For writing on.

  They went to a small tavern near the post kiosk and ate noodle soup. Yosa was acting sheepishly. He fished the bits of vegetables and meat out of his bowl, guzzled down the noodles, drained the broth, doing so in such a peculiar manner that it was as if he wasn’t really doing it at all. They eventually finished eating. Yosa lowered his chin and directed a few words at the tabletop. Gilbert only made out a faint mumble. He couldn’t stand it when his students muttered away to themselves, when they wanted to say something without actually saying it, as
if using this tactic would absolve them from the obligation of being right or wrong. He made an effort not to snap at Yosa, he made an effort just as he always did on campus, to ask him kindly and patiently to repeat what he had said, and loudly and clearly this time. Yosa slumped in his seat, shrunk himself to a microscopic tininess, and raised his voice an almost imperceptible shade louder. The Bashō locations in the Greater Tokyo Area, he said just audibly, are worthless now. There’s no point visiting them, the modern age has left them in its wake and spoiled their beauty.

  Gilbert was rendered speechless. Who did this Japanese youth think he was? Was he criticising him? Presumably he had no imagination whatsoever.

  Gilbert gave a speech on modern Tokyo, on Old Edo, he outlined how the city had transformed over the centuries, how the high-rises had sprouted up, how the whole region had been drowned in a twinkling sea of lights, how an entirely new kind of beauty had emerged, which Bashō had obviously not lived to see – but which he certainly would have had something to say about. Gilbert stabbed his chopsticks irritably into the empty bowl, spoke about Tokyo’s metamorphosis as if he had witnessed it himself. Yosa made himself very small, but Gilbert couldn’t tell how much he had understood of his speech. His English, he recalled, was atrocious. And an assertion such as this one – that Bashō’s locations were now worthless – must have taken him hours of silent preparation; he had managed to compose a sentence in his mind in English, learn it off by heart, and say it out of the blue, at an inappropriate moment, and not without stammering and stuttering. This is what made conversing with him so tedious, so demanding.

  When the bowls had been cleared away, Gilbert drew out his notebook.

  Hi from Tokyo – he began, considered this for a while, and then impatiently tore a page from his notebook, which he foisted upon Yosa. He respectfully accepted the slip of paper, twisted the cap off his disposable brush, and changed his posture to start writing. It was safe to assume that he had been doing this kind of thing since time immemorial.

  Hi from Tokyo –

  Cherry trees no longer bloom,

  only bare concrete.

  Gilbert read his poem through a few times and concluded that he had reached the heart of the matter. The rules of the haiku, which he had learnt from the appendix of the Bashō book, had been perfectly realised within these lines: five, then seven, then once more five syllables, an allusion to the season, a sensuous impression, universal and seemingly impersonal, in which a sensitive reader would have nevertheless been able to decipher profound emotion.

  Yosa wrote:

  Former post station –

  Farewell to white envelopes,

  blossoms of summer.

  Yosa’s poem, Gilbert had to admit, did show traditional methods. He had succeeded in alluding to the relevant line from Saigyō that Bashō had quoted in this very same place – a literary device that showed wide reading and intellectual sophistication. Nevertheless, the young man had clung to his own subject – the suicide note – inasmuch as the text revealed its full meaning only to those persons privy and was, strictly speaking, a fluke. At least Yosa had managed to put something down on paper. Bashō’s companion Sora had also been a poet, and during their journey to the north he had contributed one or two haikus to Bashō’s diary.

  With his spirits lifted, Gilbert ordered dessert. Scoops of ice cream flavoured with matcha tea. Yosa praised the ice cream, praised the quality of the tea powder used to make it, claimed that he could clearly taste that the tea had originated in the Uji region. Then he praised something or other else, praising himself into a kind of frenzy, his stuck-on beard came loose at one corner, and Yosa, without toning down his facial expressions, simply pressed it back down.

  On the way to Ueno Park, Yosa had seen a poster showing a famous kabuki actor. This actor was performing that day in Tokyo, not far from the hotel, in a few hours, very soon. A performance, Yosa said, that would be authentic, traditional, one that Bashō would have also appreciated.

  Gilbert considered this reference to Bashō’s taste crude, but Yosa was clearly missing the vocabulary he needed to be able to express the outstanding qualities of the actor another way. Gilbert was worn out – he would have preferred to have travelled back to the hotel and laid down for a while. Sending the young Japanese man off to the theatre alone, however, seemed too much of a risk.

  At twelve noon they were standing in the queue for the ticket office at the kabuki theatre in Ginza and shuffling past an advertising display. The posters depicted a young woman with her hair pinned up and adorned with flowers and her face painted white like a mask. Yosa was nodding his head ecstatically, bobbing it about like one of those clockwork ducks from Gilbert’s childhood, and it appeared that he was shaking his small backside underneath his trench coat. He was drawing attention to himself, and Gilbert, surrounded by stoic Japanese accustomed to restraining themselves in every aspect of their lives, felt ashamed of him. How could a potential suicide case let himself get worked up into a wild state of joyous expectation at the sight of the blossom-bedecked, gaudily outfitted lady on the poster? It was incomprehensible. Gilbert paid for the tickets, he paid for the incredibly expensive tickets with an unmoving face like he had an infinite supply of Japanese yen, and because there was still time before the performance was starting, Yosa led them into the theatre’s café and ordered tea.

  Gilbert, who had committed himself to not liking tea, drank it sceptically in tiny sips. He couldn’t identify an unpleasant flavour. In fact, the tea didn’t taste of anything at all.

  Yosa marvelled at the tea bowl, which had a stylised theatre mask painted on the bottom of the inside. A white face, distorted in divine indignation, with narrow eye slits and broad strokes of red on the cheekbones and temples. The positive Hero, Yosa explained, made up in auspicious, righteous red, while the Villain has thick blue veins running across his face, signifying his cold-blooded nature. Gilbert scrutinised his own bowl more closely, it too showed a kabuki mask, but the colour of the tea had mixed with the base colour of the mask, so that he couldn’t be sure whether it revealed a hero or an antihero. He drank up his tea – the colour of the mask remained a nondescript brownish. The role of the Demon, said Yosa. And then he set about explaining to Gilbert that they hadn’t in fact gone there for the male roles – the famous actor performing that evening was actually a master in the portrayal of young women. That was who they had seen on the poster at the entrance. He was the greatest onnagata in the country, a living national treasure, who had first appeared on stage as a girl at the age of four, who had devoted his life to playing young ladies and who, now at over sixty years of age, had surpassed every member of the female sex in gracefulness.

  They found their seats, typical theatre seats covered with red velvet. The curtain was still down, the hall was filling up, usherettes made their way down the aisles holding up signs showing a crossed-out camera, a crossed-out mobile phone, a crossed-out film camera. Then a man’s voice rung out from the loudspeakers, which, according to Yosa, explained the programme, walked them through the plot and alluded to the highlights of the show. An English-language programme wouldn’t have hurt in Gilbert’s opinion. He had to piece together a coherent plot from Yosa’s broken translation.

  A girl is betrayed by her beloved. She dies of grief and is born again as a crane, as a bird of grace. She dies of rage and indignation and is reborn as a crane, that is, degraded. The girl should have remained calm, entered a monastery, counterbalanced the guilt of the beloved with her prayers. A girl is impatient with her beloved and is transformed into a crane as punishment. The beloved marries another, and the crane dies of grief. It might not be a crane, perhaps a completely different creature, a crow or a heron, birdlike or in any case capable of flight, an angel or a ghost.

  When the curtain went up the actor was already standing in the middle of the stage. He wore a floor-length brocaded robe with a wide cloth sash passed around his waist, an enormous bow tied at his back. The years behind the
white make-up couldn’t be discerned from the back of the auditorium. Delicate features, red lips, a visage of consummate elegance. He held a fan in his hand, and when it began to stir Yosa gripped Gilbert’s arm and held on to it. Gilbert stiffened, looked past Yosa and attempted to watch the action on the stage. He made an extreme effort but was unable to determine that anything was happening at all. The actor moved at a snail’s pace, he turned around himself infinitely slowly, put his foot forwards once extremely cautiously, let the fan sink a tiny fraction. If it was supposed to be a dance it was the most tedious dance Gilbert had ever seen, no mean feat when dancing was overwhelmingly boring for the spectator in the first place. Mathilda had once coerced him into accompanying her to a ballet performance, and he swore to himself after the first ten minutes never to go again, in case of doubt he should undermine his good nature, be tough, say no, he tormented himself through the whole one and a half hours, fidgeted in his seat, sucked on boiled sweets and at least succeeded in making sure Mathilda never approached him with such a suggestion ever again. However, when he compared the European ballet with the Japanese kabuki dance, ballet was frankly thigh-slapping, popular, primitive entertainment. The kabuki dancer moved in millimetres, he required many minutes to open his fan even halfway, it was like watching an amoeba for entertainment, and Gilbert clawed his hand – the small, cool hand of the Japanese man clasped to it – into the armrest, and bored his fingernails into the velvet.