Tokio Whip (19 page)

–
Just look at them. He's over in Kichijoji, and she's in Yanaka. Is that what you call a happy couple?

–
Well, they're not there because they don't love each other.

–
Oh? They're there because they do? Because they're together?

–
Yes! Am I the only one who thinks they are together, sort of.

–
Perhaps you are.

–
They've made their choices.
There's Lang in Kichijoji, and enjoying it; it may not be Roberta's Tokyo, and maybe it's a kind of truce. You know, she has no interest in the west, and so maybe it makes Lang feel like a sort of pioneer, like he's made his own discovery of Tokyo.

–
And that sounds like a good couple to you?

–
Well, yes. Yes, I admit it looks bad. They're on opposite sides of the world – or at least you might think so. But it's one world, isn't it? She's happy, he's happy, they're both in Tokyo. She has her quiet life, and he has his excitement. Don't the two have to meet in the middle?

–
Shibuya?

–
That's no middle!

–
Where then?

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In their hearts.

–
Hiroko!

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Uhm, I mean, they will meet, together. I don't mean a compromise, really, a sharing, a compromise. Isn't that what all couples have to do?

–
I suppose so.

–
No, really. Sometimes being apart is the best way of staying together.

–
Too abstract-weird for me. But could you stand it?

–
What?

–
Living apart from your husband?

–
No, I'd hate it. The thing is, they've been together for a long time, and then she moves here, and then he comes after her, and then he finds out he also likes Tokyo.

–
And then he lives apart from her.

–
But at least they're both here!

–
In a manner of speaking. They're here, but not together. So much for his “rescue mission.” Jeez, one minute he's a pioneer – can't figure that one out – and the next he's a rescue artist.

–
It wasn't a rescue mission! At least I don't think it was. And as for pioneer, well, you know, the west isn't the area most westerners think of as traditional Tokyo. But maybe it was that he felt he could discover something new there, see the old in that new or however the jumble goes.

–
Well, he never really wanted to come here. Didn't he think he'd just sweep her off her feet – ah ha!, now he's a swashbuckler – and take her back to, where?, Vienna?, Amsterdam?

–
Vienna, I think. The important thing is that he did come here, for her sake. I think she liked that.

–
Didn't think he was intruding?

–
Maybe. But she also had to appreciate it. And then he began to see a Tokyo …

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A Tokyo that was not hers.

–
He began to see a Tokyo that wasn't hers – meanwhile she has her own – and someday they will meet and see that their two Tokyos are a single city.

–
Dream on, Little Wing.

–
?

–
Hiroko,
shitamachi's
out. Get it? Roberta'll go to her public baths, buy
miso
from the local
miso
lady, slurp her noodles, do her work, whatever it is, and write perfect
kanji
, and in no time go so native that Lang won't recognize her.

–
You really are more pessimistic than I thought.

–
As you like. I just don't see them getting back together again, ever.

–
Well, I do. You can't just take your “high road” without looking back at your “low road.” And anyone on the low road will naturally wonder what lies up. I believe they'll appreciate the best of both worlds. And so should we all, dammit!

–
Alright already.

–
Don't you see? Roberta
made her move. It was never against Lang so much as it was for herself, she'd found a place she could finally call “home” – she moved to the low city, the old city, you know.

–
Yes …

–
And nothing could have surprised Lang more.
Isn't that the beauty of it?

–
Uhm?

–
The surprise! That she'd made her own move!

–
Yes, but ….

–
But no. She could show him a place or a sort of place that she could call home, for herself, but never against him.

–
And Lang, in love with the west?

–
Oh sure he's macho enough to oppose her, but he's also curious enough to want to know what it is that attracts her to that part of the city that he wasn't initially attracted to. He loves her too much, wants to know what she likes.

–
Macho?

–
Oh, he feels he has to know what she knows, and now she has something he doesn't. It's all natural enough. But it's also love, whether he'd acknowledge it or not. It is love – one wants to share, one's joys.

–
I suppose.

–
Of course, silly. And of course,
Roberta was happy really, happy
– not that she's the type to say so, but we could all see it
, she loved her new-old Tokio
, had settled in, she did it all so smoothly – oh I just wish I could act with such grace, such lithe …!

–
And you call me silly?

–
But she
was happy, really happy, is happy, so happy really
and you have no right to say otherwise.

–
I said nothing.

–
No, you needn't. Ah, what a skeptic. So sad, really sad. Really.

–
Leave me out of your little dancing circle.

–
Gladly – really. But anyway, the point, and the point for Lang is that
Roberta'd made her last move.
She wasn't going to move again. Oh, was he surprised! I mean, he is a man who has something to say about everything and here he was in a neighborhood
saké
shop all smoke and plaster peeling since the early 60s, and he had nothing to say, couldn't say anything, nothing! An unnatural Lang. And what a relief, I might add. She was unbridgeable, she –

–
I think it's unbudgeable,.

–
Not unbridgeable?

–
In other circumstances, perhaps.

–
Such as?

–
Your big river flooded over.

–
Oh. Anyway, she was …?

–
Unbudgeable.

–
Yes, unbudgeable. But she wasn't resisting him or anything like that. She'd just … settled. Soft, firm, her own.

–
And he had to face it.

–
Right, he wasn't just about to, unbudge her; he had to face that.

–
?

–
But she was unbridgeable too. He couldn't get across to her.

–
So why didn't he leave?

–
No! Don't you still not get it? If he left it'd mean either that he didn't care or he was so egocentric as to think that she'd follow. But he did – and does! – care, and so stayed; and his ego knew that she wouldn't follow, she was going to remain.

–
Lang injured, awaiting her to relent.

–
No! Don't you still not get it? Perhaps he's injured in a normal sort of way, but his is a healing wound – now wait, bear with me – healing because he does have his Tokyo, his west to complement her east – and they shall meet! Get it, stupid?

–
In a vague sort of way, maybe.

–
So now he will begin to feel the enthusiasm for the city that she has, she'll feel his, he'll feel hers –

–
And they'll feel each other – in a manner of speaking.

–
You do get it!

–
Sort of. But I don't buy it. Aren't they two different Tokyos they're feeling, after all? What's to say that they shall “meet” as you put it? Why can't it really mean that they'll only split further apart? Like you and I. He going his way, she going hers. Never to meet, forever separate. I don't mean to sound pessimistic –

–
I know, it's nature, not you.

–
It's not. I just don't see why they have to get together again.

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Love, idiot! Ever heard of it, Hi – ?

–
Vaguely. I don't put much into it.

–
So I've heard.

–
But – can't …?

–
No.

–
But –

–
No.

***

The boy looks in, around and under phonebooths and vending machines – tobacco, softdrinks, condoms – and finds still-good telephone cards – his favorite a Ferrari – occasional coins, and once, ¥10,000, which, surprisingly, he saved.

***

Languishing. Tea and melons, and some Kurosawa battlesite. Daitocho. Now that was a place where I thought I wanted to be and once I got there felt my visit shouldn't be too overextended. But I'd promised our friends to look after the garden in my own inept manner and so was duty-bound to stay. Nothing died. Roberta and I needed the break. “Gotta rethink things through,” we said. Or being kicked out of the house by any other name. The house, the old farmhouse, sounds like the castle in Italy Roberta stayed in. Those huge beams. Years younger perhaps, but no less not citified. But I do like a toilet that flushes. A kitchen with a proper stove and where you don't have to examine each chopstick for insect signs. A view all around you and soon enough you really do forget inside and out. A bamboo grove, and the raccoons roaming freely, stealing the cats' dinner. Never did spear one; never did scare 'em either. But the seclusion, no conversation in a rice-growing village. No video shops or Parco Book Centers. But why three hairdressers? Akashi-san came by once a week to bring me over for a hot meal, and to show me his camera collection. Nice family. Homegrown vegetables. And his bonsai! – hundreds. A bicycle ride to look at the sea; and why all those Brazilians, and why them jumping into that cold wild ocean? A ride to the “mall” for some noodles and water. Crushed ice with syrup, love that stuff in the summer. And a hell of a summer it was, too.

***

R'n'L!!!!!!!

Yes, yes, a way to connect it all. Glenn, Aretha, Fritz, Buster,
Weird Tales
and the Continental Op, all of ‘em, and all of us. We're on our way, kids!

Ya' know how most decent thinking people in the world want to have a home in town and another in the country? Well, I jes wanna have one on the west side of Tokyo and one on the east. Is that too much to ask? (“No, No, We like the idea, kid, We like it.”)

They may've stopped making them years ago, but I still dream of laser disc shops. (I mean of course ...)

So, whadda'ya think? Are there porno films of Clarke and Carole getting it on? They must be available! Look into it, eh? I'll pay top yen.

I gotta get a copy of that book,
The Face of Buster Keaton
. What does our man Cavell say about it? – the face, I mean, not the book.

Do you know that story about Tallulah (sp?) Bankhead and Hitch when they were filming
Lifeboat
? How she'd show up on the set without any underwear, and there it was for all to see as she climbed up into the lifeboat set each day, and one day the technicians “complained” to Mr. Hitchcock, and he said something like, “So whom shall I speak with, the Costume or the Make-up Department?”

Did Warhol ever do more Elvis's than that stuff from
Flaming Star
? Was that the only one? And if so, why so? And did he ever do a Cary or a Carole? And if not, why not, dammit?

Remember Susanne, the German actress from Hamburg who was at the castle? A beautiful woman (what
did
go on in her head?), red hair (real), beautiful face (that sharp nose, the smooth, angley cheeks), a face that you could imagine in some pre-Renaissance painting, half-androgynous (which already says much); something heroic, spiritual. To draw upon a cliché, a perfect face for a Joan of Arc. But oh so much more! (The irony in the eyes, something knowing, critical, but saying nothing of what she saw. Apparently she did some Zen, too. She was a koan herself – a koan whose answer apparently I will not know the answer to in this lifetime.) At least she knew I liked her.

Also gotta find that o.p. issue of
du
on Glenn that Fritz mentioned.

No, no, I don't want to get into a “whatever happened to” mode, but, what did ever happen to the lead singer of the Shangri-Las? Did she become a porno star or a big executive or something?

I always remember – or, actually, I don't remember, I only recall that line from Wilde from the first edition of his letters on the inside covers, something about, “my handwriting once so Greek and gracious,” or to that effect ... anyway, I mention it because I know how my own handwriting and letter-writing style has changed so over the years; a great part came first from reading Byron's letters, and then writing LC, and all that freedom I found, a “sweet new style to accommodate chaos” indeed, to mix it all up, me and Tokyo. As for the handwriting, I do think there's been a natural “progression” (whether, yes, people can read it or not), and maybe a lesson from calligraphy, and in the end, excuse me, as Blake says, “it is spiritually discerned.” You think I'm kidding?