Fracture

by Andres Neuman

  Another remarkable thing about Yoshie was his sense of smell. He would sniff people and then classify them according to some random criteria. Sometimes, for example, he would insist that someone smelled of birthdays. Or that some other person reeked of anger. According to him, I gave off a strong aroma of origami paper. I thought he was pulling my leg.

  We were so young it makes me want to cry. Because we didn’t know what we were. Because we believed all that energy belonged to us. We felt so perfect that we needed to caress each other constantly to make sure that it was true. That our tireless bodies were still there.

  It wasn’t all sheer delight. That fervor had its drawbacks. The constant state of anxiety, even at moments that called for a pause, restraint. The tendency toward possession. The inability to truly listen to the other before touching them, or sometimes when not touching them. The growing jealousy.

  In hindsight, we had a lot of sex that probably wasn’t very good. Young men tend to suffer from too much romanticism out of bed and too much athleticism in it. It isn’t that I miss either of those things. I’m sure I felt more pleasure in the decades that followed, especially at the start of my marriage. Those were the best years. My husband and I had stability and novelty. The perfect combination. The only thing I miss occasionally is losing control. It isn’t so much what I do (or no longer do) with my husband, but with what urgency. We aren’t desperate to go to bed together, we simply decide to. We do it both better and worse.

  * * *

  We ended up transforming Yoshie’s attic apartment into a kind of miniature cultural center. A secret club with two members. There we discussed every movie we saw and we read the same books—bought, borrowed, or stolen. We drank liter after liter of a cheap brew, which I’ll call coffee just to give it a name.

  Yoshie tried to wade through his economics textbooks as quickly as possible so that he could share the books I was reading. He devoured the pages at an incredible rate, or maybe he only skimmed through half of them, and was smart enough to predict the other half. I read a lot of Simone de Beauvoir (we all wanted to be like her, but none of us dared). And Françoise Sagan (we also wanted to be like her, but were too poor). Or Nathalie Sarraute (with a respectful yawn). Sometimes, when I grew tired of a book, I would ask him to recite one of the hundreds of Zen poems that, I wonder how, he knew by heart. Most amusing was when he tried, not always successfully, to translate them for me.

  But mainly we would shut ourselves away and listen to records. I’m referring to a time when actual records still existed. The ones you could clasp to your chest, blow on, and they’d crackle. The ones that spun around measuring time to the sound of rain. My husband tells me I’m retro chic, and that our grandchildren will recall with the same kind of fetishistic nostalgia their current gadgets, which seem so cold to me.

  I can see us lying on our backs, eyes closed, a cigarette smoldering between our fingers, listening to the meanderings of Parker playing Cole Porter. Jazz was his thing. My hero was Brassens. “La mauvaise réputation,” “Les amoureux des bancs publics.” My anthems. Not that Brassens sang about our lives, but we did our best to live the way he sang. I think Yoshie preferred Brel, even though he didn’t understand all the lyrics. Finally, as a result of me playing him my Brassens records all the time, he ended up taking his shower every morning to the jungle roar of Gare au gori-i-i-ille!

  My parents occasionally invited us to the theater. Since neither he nor I could afford it, we went only if they paid for our tickets. I can still remember the evening we saw Simone Signoret. She was splendid. The play was some awful melodrama. Honestly, this habit of remembering my teenage years more clearly than what happened yesterday worries me.

  For some reason that I never figured out, my parents adored Yoshie, especially Mom. She treated him more like her son than my boyfriend. The only thing she disapproved of was the noise he made when he drank soup. Papa’s appreciation was more technical. As soon as my father tried to browbeat him with one of his typical monologues about economics, Yoshie dazzled him with a meditation on the differences between Western and Asian capitalism. From then on, Dad was convinced my boyfriend would go far. What he couldn’t have imagined was from whom.

  Eventually I had my own set of keys to the loft. I spent most weekends there. When I opened the door, I’d find him sitting in the weirdest positions. I always wondered about his bones, his knee and ankle joints. Yoshie did some extreme stretching exercises. They worried me because they looked painful. I can’t think properly without flexibility, he would explain.

  Despite the lack of space, whenever we had tea we would unfurl a kind of mat that was shorter than a tatami. I began to get used to living without chairs. For Yoshie, they were a nuisance, an obstacle between his body and reality. He had a different relationship to the floor than I did. I realized that I tended to avoid it. As though gravity were ultimately an inconvenience. In contrast, he used it to obtain a sort of peace. The rest of the loft might be desperately in need of a clean, but the floor was always spotless.

  Something that made our lives easier was his obsessive hoarding of food. Unlike at the houses of my other male friends, I can’t remember a single day when there wasn’t plenty to eat at Yoshie’s, even if it was expired, or a bit difficult to chew. He would keep all his leftovers and knew how to make a meal out of them. His techniques for storing things seemed like precise feats of engineering. He made frugality a science.

  Another of his habits was to rescue and look after old banjos, as if they were abandoned pets. A friend who made instruments gave him a few battered banjos in exchange for a token sum. When there was no space left to hang the banjos on the walls, Yoshie started storing them underneath the bed, in wool-lined cardboard boxes. He would spend hours tuning them. If you don’t tune them, they suffer, he told me. Of course, he was the one who suffered. Each time he silently contemplated them, he would imagine a concert of discordant instruments. And he found the idea so unbearable that he felt compelled to start retuning them, peg by peg.

  I remember one particular morning, in our bed that dipped in the middle. The creak of the shutters. The sudden light on my face. The sound of old strings. His neck on the pillow next to me. Yoshie singing bon anniversaire in a hushed voice in my ear as he penetrated me.

  * * *

  At the end of every month, if we had any money left, we would treat ourselves and go dancing at a boîte. When we felt like going out but didn’t have enough money, which was almost always, we amused ourselves another way. We entered a brasserie. We ordered only coffee, and we made a game of imagining the lives of the couples around us.

  Rather than spy on them while they were eating, we concentrated on the clues they left behind. The way bottles and glasses were positioned on the table (the center tended to denote stability, the edges risk-taking, and the corners crisis). The arrangement of bread, salt, and condiments. Predominant side, if both people used the same hand when helping themselves. Final position of cutlery. Amount and type of mess left. Distance between the check and the woman’s chair. And, last but not least, state of the napkin (tense, folded, carefully smoothed out, casually abandoned, and so on).

  We felt that observing other lovers elevated us. It gave us the advantage of loving each other and understanding the way others loved one another. We never suspected they might also be observing us. Sadly, I have lost that gift of impunity. Nowadays, I often get the feeling that young couples are giving me sidelong glances, at best with a hint of pity.

  We would also go out to read together. Leaving the house without a book seemed to us unthinkable. We would seek out tables by the window, or if the weather was good, we would sit in a park somewhere. We were capable of spending the entire afternoon without saying a word, we liked not talking and knowing we could do that. But sooner or later, we’d end up watching someone. What we read was people.

  After paying his university fees and the rent on his chambre de bonne, the fact is Yoshie didn’t have much left over. To avoid
asking his aunt and uncle in Tokyo for money, some months he would ask me to lend him a few francs. Or rather, he’d ask me to make up a good excuse to borrow some from my father. I was surprised to find he’d often use the money to buy flowers for Mom. The same large bouquets with which he would make a gallant entrance, thus becoming indisputably my family’s favorite boyfriend. He had a talent for avoiding conflict, and, after a few such visits, he started to bring my sister flowers as well. She would show her thanks by keeping the occasional secret for us.

  As our relationship evolved, I started to divide my time between my parents’ house and Yoshie’s loft. Every now and then we would fantasize about getting married. We made plans and calculations. We played at the future. He even formally introduced me to his aunt and uncle that year when they came to visit. I’m trying to think of their names. I can’t remember them, even though he mentioned them all the time! Too bad. Those two took politeness to a whole new level. They barely spoke, smiled a lot, and always seemed slightly uncomfortable. I don’t know why, I’m remembering now that they stayed at the Hôtel Delavigne.

  What would my life, our life, have been if we’d made real those dreams of marriage? We weren’t in any hurry, and I doubt whether either of us was ready for a serious commitment. After all, we were both still supported by our respective families. I’m referring more to what weddings signify. Do rituals change you somehow? Or is the ritual the result of a change in you? Nowadays, I believe more in the evolution of love than in the staging.

  Sometimes, he would treat you with an exquisite, exclusive attention. He made you feel like you were the best thing to have happened to him. Until, all of a sudden, he seemed to grow weary, and distanced himself in subtle ways. Then you longed to be the best once more.

  We were mutually infatuated in the beginning, but it occurs to me that later on we felt a growing sense of disappointment, which we never admitted. Maybe that’s why in my next relationship I decided to get married so quickly? For fear of failing to live up to what the two of us believed we saw in each other?

  I could look back and regret the way I gave myself to the men I loved. My one-sided devotion, the sacrifice of my own ambitions. Or my generosity, to take an obvious example, with a new arrival who chose to take off without me at the first opportunity. And yet, after so many years of married life, how can I not be a little self-critical? I was talking about this the other day with my eldest daughter, Adélaïde. She believes part of the reason I’m so keen to throw myself into other people’s projects is to avoid dealing with my own frustrations. She didn’t put it quite so tactlessly, of course. Instead she made me sense what she was thinking. Naturally Adélaïde needs to argue this to justify her own situation. After all, she is childless.

  * * *

  No sooner had he obtained his university degree than Yoshie started looking for a job. I had another year to go before I graduated. He had two basic objectives: to stop depending on his aunt and uncle, and to leave the loft, which was as uncomfortable as it was wonderful. I daresay it was with his legitimate wish to move on that the decline of our relationship began to secretly take shape.

  I don’t remember how or through whom Yoshie ended up offering his services to Me—the internationally renowned Japanese manufacturer of television sets, audiovisual technology, and other things of that sort. This was during Japan’s economic rebirth, which so astonished everyone. I mean everyone who could afford to buy stuff. France was beginning to emerge from the postwar years. That’s to say, transforming depression into productive euphoria.

  Me was looking for people to work in the office it planned to open in Paris. Preferably of Japanese origin, who spoke French fluently, and who understood economics. Obviously, Yoshie was an ideal candidate. Even so, I was a little surprised at how quickly he found work, and with no previous experience. I soon discovered that, unlike their European counterparts, Japanese companies hired people with a clean slate. People who could be molded exactly as their mentors wanted. I’m not sure whether this means they believed more in young people, or simply that the rat race began earlier in Japan.

  In any case, Yoshie rose rapidly within the company. He was reliable, disciplined, and worked unbelievably long hours. This affected our relationship, in both good and bad ways. At last we had money, and yet we scarcely had time to spend it. I learned a few more Japanese words, relating to the alienating effects his work had on our relationship. Zangyōsuru. Overtime. Okureru. Arriving late. And so on.

  In just two years, Yoshie went from being a lowly employee in the management department (little more than an intern, in fact) to a member of the manager’s inner circle. The manager became fond of him, and made him his personal assistant. According to Yoshie, something like that could never have happened in Japan. His promotion went against some kind of military-style tradition regarding employee hierarchy and advancement. Of all the terms that were constantly on Yoshie’s lips, another word I remember is kakarichō, because it sounded so funny, although I’ve forgotten what it means.

  The manager. What was that guy’s name? I’m sure if I saw a photograph I’d recognize him. A man whose hair was too neat. Who was full of the tiniest gestures that he seemed to repress. We had to dine with him on many occasions. He would make a great fuss when greeting me: Oh, mademoiselle Créton, ah, mademoiselle! And then proceed to completely ignore me. To begin with, he would give a start whenever I opened my mouth. He would look at me in astonishment, as if it weren’t my turn to speak. And in general he avoided responding to anything I said. Yoshie smiled at his boss while casting sidelong, almost imploring glances at me.

  I was so outraged by this situation that on our third or fourth evening with him, I made a point of constantly addressing the manager. I asked him a series of ludicrous questions, until at last I was able to make him respond with a degree of normality. My audaciousness ended up endearing me to him. The manager said as much to Yoshie, by way of congratulating him: Ah, très intelligente! Fille intelligente! Which made me think: Why the hell is he so surprised?

  Invariably when we dined with him, after the second bottle, the manager would tell us the same cautionary tale, with slight variations. How after the war, the company Me had been founded by a certain Monsieur Matsuoka. That name I have no trouble remembering! And how Mr. Matsuoka had started off in a tiny workshop on the third (or was it the fourth?) floor of a shopping center damaged by the bombs. How proud the company was to look back at those humble beginnings, when it was still mending transistor radios and electrical gadgets, now that it had become a multinational with branches in more than thirty different countries, and so on. And how every great business should be capable of steadily expanding in concentric circles, blah, blah, blah.

  Truth be told, I never really understood what the intended moral of that story was. That if someone works hard they become a millionaire? That ultimately the Japanese, like the Germans, are invincible? Or that after a war ends, the sensible thing to do is to not look back and to start investing?

  Yoshie begged me to be as nice as I could to his boss. He asked me to be patient for our own good. He talked a lot about how much our life would improve, about all the things we could do together once we had saved up enough money. Somehow this made me feel as if the future of our relationship was part of his contract with the company. The manager insisted that at Me all the employees were like one big family. He talked to us about bonding, commitment, the sense of belonging.

  I found his discourse an excuse to get employees to work more hours in the name of the family. Yoshie started to take offense at my criticisms. He accused me of not understanding the work ethic of his country. For example, in the unlikely event of a recession, the company would stick to the principle of maintaining its workforce, and would do everything to protect it even under threat of bankruptcy. Rather than dismiss a good employee, he said to me completely in earnest, the manager, or even the CEO, would sooner take his own life.

  Other people in his department often joined
these work dinners. The manager was the center around which they orbited. Only a few brought their spouses, who were without exception Japanese. In my presence, they all went out of their way to speak French as a mark of courtesy, which at the time I was unable to appreciate. Every so often, I would say a word in their own language, and they would applaud as if this were a great achievement.

  Sometimes I felt like the protagonist in Bonjour tristesse, attempting to sound grown-up while surrounded by these businessmen whose conversations bored me to tears. I secretly fantasized about behaving like the author of that novel. Wearing any old clothes. Acting crazy. Causing a scandal. Needless to say, I always ended up behaving like a proper young lady. Over time, the people at Me started to grow on me, or at least I came to respect them. It was around that time I realized Yoshie had changed.

  He was smoking more and more. Some evenings, he would finish his pack first and then borrow from me. We had picked up each other’s bad habits. I don’t think this was simply because we had more money, something else was triggered in him, in us. A kind of ambition, I wouldn’t necessarily call it materialistic. Is ambition inherently materialistic? Or is materialism merely a concrete expression of a different longing? Our feelings for each other didn’t change, but they became filled with little clauses. Now we negotiated, we made decisions that were mutually convenient.

  On a couple of occasions, I even got the impression that Yoshie was flirting with my sister, who was paying him more attention than before. I’m not saying she was attracted to his new status. Neither my sister nor Yoshie was that shallow. It had more to do with, how can I explain it? His attitude. Now he was more voracious, wanting everything, and maybe that made him more attractive to a certain type of woman. With all due respect to my sister, this was precisely what worried me. I didn’t like the women who appeared to like my boyfriend.