As if by Magic

by Angus Wilson

  “Together we try to pass on some material decency of living. But into that legacy, even into the very smallest portion of that legacy—and the Lord knows when I think of the little that can still be done in some of the more backward regions, why, I frankly admit that I should be ashamed to name so small a sum as a legacy in my personal testament—three men are putting contributions so enormous in comparison with anything the beneficiary can comprehend that it sometimes appears to me that we’ve happened on a cock-eyed proportion that just can’t make sense. Our host here deals daily in millions—millions of yen, millions of dollars, millions of anything you like—they are a part of his daily life, like taking a shower or massage to any of us. Langhorn there sits down to a feast of complex concepts, formulæ and mental ideas as we would to a fine filet mignon and French fries. And I . . . well I, after so many years in the House of Representatives, tempered let me admit by a few years of more disciplined oratory in the Senate—though we can talk some in the Senate too, let me inform you good people—let me put it kindly, I make oral use of words beyond the average, as some of the smarter among you will have already noticed. Langhorn thinks what to do, Kobayashi’s millions make it possible, and I make it intelligible to those who must live it through. And this we do to make more decent the lives of millions of little guys in Milwaukee and Manchester and Kobé, guys who themselves are not likely to have half a new thought in their lifetime, guys who are pleased to bring home eight hundred dollars at the end of the month, guys whose most expressive words don’t go beyond four letters and may not be repeated here before these very charming young ladies.”

  Mr. Kobayashi nearly spoke but he was too overcome by a laughing yawn which he covered with his hand. And the Senator continued.

  “Now those are our countrymen. That is democracy. As we know it. As we believe in it. And as we shall continue to further with our money and our ideas and our language. But the nucleus of our philosophy and practice has gone way on from that point. We’re trying to bring a new and, as we see it, decent life to the little guy of Latin America and Africa and South-East Asia and the Indian peninsula, guys whose minds do not work in ideas as we know them, guys whose languages the world does not talk. It is to these little guys that Langhorn here has devoted all his fine mind to give a new and highly nutritious rice. Right?”

  Hamo bowed. He found it fitting that the Senator should be unsure of this point, as he himself had not attempted to absorb the purely administrative details of the Overseas Agricultural Development Corporation here in Tokyo. As to his failure to get his name right, the old and the busy . . . But Mr. Kobayashi clearly felt differently. He said with a curious hiss and an indecipherable grimace.

  “Mr. Langmuir famous lice Magic.”

  “I thank you. That’s a very precious word you’ve given me and despite all the visual techniques, all the McLuhanism among which we live today, I am old enough to treasure words. Now I don’t want you good people to think that I am talking politics. I am a politician. I sat as Democratic Representative for thirty years. I speak in the Senate as a Democrat. But the older I get—and this has nothing to do with any change of administration”—Mr. Endell chuckled—“the more I am concerned not with a man’s politics but with his philosophy. A person who is philosophically conservative is a person who thinks as I do. And some of us are beginning to ask the following. If the Asian little guy doesn’t want the benefits which we’re spending all our money and ideas and persuasion to send to him—and remember that if he doesn’t think very deeply like our friend Langham, he has patterns and shapes in his mind which we can call prejudice or superstition, if we so wish, but which many great thinkers even of the West believe to be a very ancient, albeit a very passive wisdom—if this be so, have we the right to force our benefits upon him? He has his own magic. With deep respect, does he need ours? And,” the Senator held up his hand against an imaginary storm of protest, “I am forced to ask as a legislator of a nation whose ethic has always been individualistic, acquisitive, aggressive and prudential, momentarily, whether we have any right to levy taxes or spend the corporation investor’s dollars on these projects, however lofty and humanitarian they may be in conception. And that’s pretty well the way that conservative philosophical thinking is running these days in many channels in Washington, and more importantly in the main arteries of the United States—the corn belt, the oil wells, the lumber yards. What’s your answer to it, my friends? For I am sure that it has an answer like all questions, and I should certainly like to hear that answer.”

  “I think it’s your play, Langmuir,” said Embassy, to Hamo’s annoyance. That this old man was asking vague or irrelevant questions, remote no doubt from the practical and scientific problems posed by Asian sub-culture, was a matter to be referred, if at all, to demographers and dieticians. Of all people, a diplomat should have known how diplomatically to by-pass on so unsuitable an occasion. To refer it to a plant geneticist!

  “I am not at all concerned with the political aspects of my work, I’m afraid. I am posed problems and I try to solve them.”

  “Now that’s an honest answer. But it’s an artist’s answer. Or a scientist’s. It’s the same thing. As was recognized in the days of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. I know it is the fashion for governments and corporations to purchase the brain-children of Picasso and other modern artists. But I am not too sure how far good conservative philosophy can go along with that fashion.”

  He leered triumphantly, first at Hamo, then at the Embassy man. But the latter was not so easily to be trounced.

  “With due respect, Sir, I doubt if the supposed conflict between Asian magic and Langmuir’s Magic has much to do with it. The problem surely is to assist the very poor nations to increase their productivity so that they can at least feed a very large number of starving people.”

  Hamo thought, oh dear, no doubt the man’s right to insist on these things, he’s paid to emphasize British policy which rightly always tends to be humane; perhaps he himself should say something in support, but really it wasn’t his affair. In scientific circles in the United States there had never been a murmur of all this political stuff, and now . . .

  But to his surprise the Senator looked appeased not inflamed.

  “That’s a very good answer indeed, if only because starving people are a source of ideological infection. The government of the United States has recognized this from way back. For example, we have legislated to prevent the expansion of that very rice industry which Mr. Longhorn so admired in California and in the South. In the interests of the poorer Asian producer, we have restricted the natural activities of our own native enterprise. And if that’s not un-American, I don’t know what is. I believe that deep instincts in our national life will run against such things. But temporarily, and in the hope that we may erase a shameful stain on the world’s surface, we have taken that very un-American action.”

  But now he suddenly turned his venom upon his host. “I am not aware that Japan has done many things of that kind. Oh, I know all about O.A.D.C.” He waved aside Japan’s contribution. “That’s peanuts! Now if a rich Asian nation who shares much of the wisdom of those poorer countries were to make a big-scale gesture of the kind this British gentleman has suggested . . .”

  It was hard to say who was the more embarrassed, the British or the Japanese. Mr. Kobayashi’s shame for his visitor led his giggling to a range of very high notes. His hand was big to cover, but his face was enormous to hide.

  “Japan not a rich nation. Poor nation. Little guys of Kobé not bringing home eight hundred dollar in one month. Much, much less.”

  Mr. Endell supported the American attack. “That I can believe.”

  “Oh, I see.” Mr. Kobayashi’s reply was invested with exceptional meaning and menace.

  It was all, Hamo saw, about to become intolerably contentious and tedious, but he was instantly deafened as the room was filled with a high musical note emitted by an unseen stringed instrument; this sound was at
once drowned by drums banging in what sounded like a competition between loudness and rapidity without concern for note; then many more stringed instruments set up a strange sexless wail into which equally sexless voices mingled, now following the strings’ castrated note, then beating it down with a chant that was nearer to shouting than music; once more the drums shook the room; then silence followed; then a single crisp, but distant and foolish high note was plucked on some string and died slowly away into silence again.

  Hamo, who had already heard ancient Japanese music, was not surprised, although previously there had always been a ceremonious introduction. A warning would have helped: he could have sought to move his legs—even a little—for what he guessed might be a long artistic session. The effect on the American guests was immediate, startled, then angry. Hamo could see both their mouths open in some attempt to continue the argument, but nothing, nothing, could be heard. And now even their mute protests ceased with the politeness necessary to a lady and their professional hostess. For to Hamo’s surprise, the drab, shapeless, grey-kimonoed, grey-haired proprietress of the restaurant had risen and was entertaining them with a dance.

  He felt attracted to the near motionless dignity of the performance—an elderly Western danseuse would no doubt have indulged in demeaning contortions; yet he had to suppress a sense that, without a key to its meaning, these long rigid postures followed by random tripping steps were a trifle ludicrous and, as such, a little unbecoming. The Embassy’s face was, beneath the shaggy eyebrows, an explorer’s paying due courtesy to the rites of a newly discovered tribe. Mr. Endell had fallen into a near-sleeping posture, in which Mitsu and Setsu were propping him up with cushions—while the Senator’s face was set in rigid skeleton lines from which his eyes stared wildly as though he had suffered a saké-induced stroke. After what seemed to Hamo quite a quarter of an hour of this, he suddenly had a vision of someone of different age and of different sex dancing with an altogether frenzied abandon. It was while he was feasting on this vision that he was suddenly aware that the music and the lady had gone. The performance was over.

  Looking to thank his host, he saw that he too had gone.

  Embassy said, “Takahashi Isamu san, please convey to our host . . . I’m sure I speak for all of us in saying that this was quite one of the most impressive . . .”

  Mr. Takahashi said, “Mrs. Sato was famous dancer once. Dance is Western Calendar—fifteenth century. The lady stands with umbrella and chrysanthemum blossom.”

  “Ah, yes. She holds the umbrella against the rain. One could see that.”

  “No. Is not raining.”

  “Oh. It’s what we call a parasol then. Against the sun.”

  “No. No sun. It is beautiful day. No rain, no sun. She holds the flower to warm the air. The umbrella to the ground.”

  “Fifteenth-century weather conditions seem to have been pretty durable timewise,” Mr. Endell remarked, rising with difficulty to his feet. “I guess we had around a half hour of that particular meteorological sitting.”

  Mr. Takahashi said, “Oh. I see.”

  They began to move from the table.

  “I think there might be the off-chance of a pee, which I should certainly like,” said Embassy.

  And sure enough Hamo found himself peeing next to Mr. Endell. Since the evening was at an end, he felt quite genial, but only for a moment, for this odious man said casually: “Get any tail in the States?”

  Could it be that the creature was making direct and coarse reference to his tastes? It proved to be worse, for, making a moon face identifiably like Mitsu’s, he added: “Looks like you’re gonna get some tonight anyways.”

  Hamo sought immediate refuge with Embassy. However, Mr. Takahashi intervened.

  “Kobayashi Shigeru has sent motor-car for Mr. Langmuir. I shall go with him.”

  “Oh, that’s awfully good of you,” said Embassy, “I confess I do feel a bit fagged. You’ll sleep splendidly after our delicious evening, my dear fellow, I’m sure. And Mr. Watton knows all about the arrangements for the car to take you to the airport tomorrow morning. I’m only sorry no one will be there to see you off. I understand you prefer . . . Well, it has been the most enormous pleasure.”

  The drive with Mr. Takahashi, despite the extraordinary luxury of the motor-car, was rather less pleasant. Firstly the soupy comfort of the car seat made Hamo inclined to sleep, but this was entirely prevented by Mr. Kobayashi’s chauffeur who drove at a highly dangerous speed as they raced above the beautiful geometric pyrotechnics of Tokyo’s innumerable neon-lighted hiragana signs. Mr. Takahashi appeared more relaxed and yet, as Hamo sleepily and irritably registered, somehow increasingly nervous. He talked about the magnificence of Mrs. Sato’s dancing movements in minute detail, interspersing, perhaps as an excuse, again and again, “This lady great dancer when I was little child. But I heard of her. Everyone heard of her. The great Sato Yukiko.” Hamo interrupted once only to express his sadness that so famous an artist should now have to work in such a way for her living. Mr. Takahashi was surprised.

  “She is proprietor very expensive restaurant. I think she is rich.”

  “Well, yes, but at her age, standing about every evening, serving and so on.”

  “She is woman.”

  After this Hamo tried to focus on the illuminated signs, the sight of which had sent Erroll into such ecstasies and such busy camera-work—“Christ! Look at those shapes. Picasso on fire.”

  But even into Mr. Kobayashi’s Rolls the acrid, chemical-laden smog with its faint pear-drop scent had seeped. His eyes were beginning to smart so that when Mr. Takahashi said, “Do you like to stop for delicious cool beer, Japanese beer, Tokyo bar?” he didn’t say no.

  In the large dark bar-room that they entered Hamo saw at first only an old crone with a fierce masculine aquiline face and towering confection of black dyed wig. She bowed to them deeply. His own little bow, however (a recall of grace said at school meals), was arrested in motion, for he saw sitting on high stools at the semi-circular bar Three of the Most Beautiful Youths in the World. The one, perhaps a fraction above the ideal height, a fraction below the ideal weight, was a beautiful willow growing beside the black lake of the bar’s Formica top—a willow crowned by a high-cheek-boned lemon face of such elegance, a smile of such mystery, slanting eyes of such complicity in that mystery that he could have cried out . . . had it not been for the boy seated further round the bar, a fraction perhaps below the ideal height, a fraction perhaps above the ideal weight—his frame was of a stocky, sturdy peasant independence that suggested rice-fields (what Magic lies in those) in a charming Japanese bucolic idyll print, and above that firm neck and powerful yet youthful shoulders was an open honey-coloured moon that spoke of a week or even a fortnight’s sweet dalliance. It was sad to see that they were so drably dressed—T-shirts and, from what he could see of the delicious protrusions on the bar-stool tops, Levis, and shod, no doubt in sneakers, all those terrible words he knew so well from the adventures of Rod and Pete and the other ranchers where, of course, they were highly appropriate. But sadder still to see the Third Lovely Youth’s neat black clerk’s suit, a row of pens clipped to his breast pocket. For in that dim suit was near perfection—as neat and cool and sleepily comfortable as a cat by the hearth, as his little pink tongue crept out for a moment to lick contentedly his pale coral lips—the perfect boy-wife with the slippers warmed and the fingers supply ready for conjugal massage. Like a Japanese character he was so exact and clear-cut in his black outline. A Japanese calligraphic masterpiece.

  All the same he could have wished something more gracefully native for all of them, one of those charming happi coats for example. But nothing exotic, nothing to resemble the alarmingly colourful girl (could she be one of the rare real geishas?) who with high-built lacquered hair, and bustle, her long slit eyes lengthened out with silver paint, sat between him and the lovely youths; a charming enough absurdity, indeed very charming Hamo had to admit, as he realized suddenly that this fa
ntastic figure was also a Very Beautiful Youth Indeed—perhaps the most beautiful, for this was a youth of so lovely a face that one must believe that beneath all that exotic feminine absurdity all proportions of height, weight, girth and bone structure would be bound to be perfection. He sat transfixed, his heart beating faster, when this ravishing creature served him with a cold beer, aware only that behind him Mr. Takahashi was in animated Japanese conversation with the proprietress (no doubt another famous diva of the past).

  Then he was aware, out of the blackness of the bar-room, in the direction of the Lovely Willow Tree, of a sound of sobbing. At once his knight-errant instincts were aroused. But peering ahead, he saw that the crying came from a very ancient, unshaven, toothless, dirty, white-faced old man in a turtle-necked sweater that fell away from his scrawny throat. In his trembling orange-stained fingers he precariously held a burning cigarette with which he feebly stabbed the air as he spoke. Glutinous yellow tears were dribbling down his hollowed cheeks. His voice was both cracked and flutey. Hamo found it hard to understand what he was saying, for he was not only a very ancient American, but with an accent or of a region totally unfamiliar to him.

  “That’s how it was, son. She was givin’ it out to every guy that walked by the house. She who had been so God-damned beautiful.” His words were lost in sobbing. Willow (or was he Bamboo?) took the dirty cigarette-end out of the trembling old hand and stubbed it. Putting one slender arm round the old man’s shoulder, with his other hand he poured some of the whisky from the old man’s glass into the blubbery toothless mouth. The old man’s hand found the youth’s knee. “And then I’d look at our kid sleepin’ and it’d tear me up sometimes. Tear my guts.” In his emotion he buried his hand deep. “I’d gotten times so I might have beat the shit out of her. So then I quit. That was the day I signed with the Mary Lou, and Cap’n Masterson. A good ship and a good cap’n.”