Vaseline Buddha (18 page)

Looking at the Eiffel Tower, I tried to savor the pleasure a breakup brings—in the same way I sought some pleasure in returning home from a trip, looking at the empty house with no one there, and feeling that I was back to my original self, or in other words, my lone self—but without success.

I had already had a chance to break up with her before that. Late one night when we were in the city where we lived, we were sitting in a cafe, and she was telling me that she was breaking up with me. I'd already felt earlier that something between us had come to an end, and I wondered why the feeling that something had come to an end always came to me before something actually came to an end, and I quietly listened to her, thinking that perhaps it was because I always had in me a sense of anticipation for the end of something. Anyway, while it was raining, and while she was talking, a man who had been passing by outside the window came to a stop and looked at the window, and it turned out that he was someone I knew. I waved lightly at him when she stopped talking for a moment and looked elsewhere, but he didn't seem to see us inside. He went off somewhere else after a little while, staggering as if drunk, but when I looked out the window a moment later, he was once again passing in front of it. For several minutes even after that, he kept going back and forth as if lost, or for some other reason, like an illusion, and I had a hard time focusing on what she was saying because of him, and accepting what was happening to me as something that was actually happening to me, and although it wasn't necessarily because of that, we couldn't break up that night.

I recalled some memories I had of her, for instance, how we picked acacia flowers together every spring and made liquor with them, and how she was always more daring than I was in every way, and how we talked about the fact that we didn't have a single picture of one of us sitting and the other lying with his or her head on the other's leg, against the backdrop of a landscape, and
how I thought that we may never end up having a picture like that, although one of us said that he or she wanted a picture like that, and I felt a little sad thinking about the process and the results involved in meeting and breaking up with someone, in which the person seems indispensable at times when you're seeing each other, but becomes irrelevant after you break up, and in the end, becomes almost completely removed from your mind, as if the person had never existed, but the sadness, too, like the joy that seems insufficient to be called joy even when I do feel joy, seemed insufficient to be called sadness, and I didn't feel anything more special than that. One of my biggest problems was that I couldn't feel any emotion fully. I must have come across something beautiful once, and felt that it was beautiful, if only in that moment, there must have been such a moment, but I didn't have a clear memory of such a moment.

Looking at the Eiffel Tower I'd tried so hard not to see, I felt a sort of confidence rise in me, confidence that I'd fail in all my future relationships as well, although I didn't know where the confidence came from, and thought that I could put a closure to our relationship by writing something about how I met and broke up with her, perhaps a novel about a relationship that turned into a failure, or never turned into a romantic relationship—thinking that sometimes, all you can do about something that's come to an end is talk about it—and felt somewhat tempted to write a love story, but writing such a thing seemed a very unseemly thing to do. Anyway, a little while after we broke up, I saw her, no, someone who looked very much like her, walking side by side on the street with a man, holding hands, looking affectionate, and realized that
I'd never walked with her like that, holding hands—I always felt awkward walking with a woman, holding hands, and offered my hand grudgingly as if I were about to shake off her hand—and thought that the fact could explain one aspect of my romantic relationships, and that perhaps I could write a story about that, but again I gave up.

I was deeply disappointed by the game the dog was playing, and in the end got up from the bench, went to a nearby park, and sat on an empty swing, picturing the playground near my house that I visited from time to time, and thought that I might be able to go home with a happy heart if I saw girls jumping ropes, or a dog being dragged away by someone against its will, past children running around columns of water spurting from the ground—once I went somewhere and saw someone climb an artificial rock wall in a park in the city and sincerely hoped that he would fall in the middle of climbing, and could end my journey and come home when, in the end, he fell to the ground—but there were no such sights to be seen. There were, however, children running around between columns of water spurting straight up in a nearby fountain, but the sight, which ordinarily may have drawn a different response from me, made me feel indifferent at that moment. But I was pleased to see instead a girl sitting on a bench eating ice cream. The ice cream in her hand was melting and trickling down her hand, and it was always pleasant to see a child licking melting ice cream. Was it because the ice cream was trickling down a child's hand? Or did ice cream trickling down any hand bring me pleasure? Or did the pleasure come from my idea of ice cream melting in hand? I can't be sure.

And by then I was feeling somewhat ridiculously good after passing a period of extreme bitterness resulting from the breakup, so I tried to make my somewhat ridiculously good mood ridiculously better, or keep it up, at least, but it wasn't easy, and there was nothing around me that responded to my effort.

A Caucasian man who looked somewhat slow was sitting on a bench next to me, and I saw that he was plucking his nose hair very subtly, in his own way, as if he weren't doing such a thing as plucking nose hair, as if he were concerned with what people around him thought, although he didn't seem concerned, and what he was doing looked so subtle yet naïve that it made those who were watching him feel extremely frustrated. He somehow managed to pluck a few strands of his nose hair, and although it was quite understandable that he was concerned about not having plucked the rest, it was very unseemly that he was plucking his nose hair like that, while pretending not to, in a public place. He could have gone someplace without people and plucked the rest of his nose hair as much as he wished, to his heart's content, but he didn't. Plucking your nose hair in a public place like that should be legally banned, just as it's legally banned to name or call a pig Napoleon in France. Seeing someone plucking his nose hair could make you aware of your own nose hair, even if it didn't make you pluck your nose hair, which could stop your train of thought.

Anyway, at that moment, a woman with long blond hair, who had brought with her a girl with long blond hair, looked with disapproval at this man from the East, who looked dazed and yet was glaring threateningly at everything in his sight for no apparent reason, taking up the swing that was for her blond girl—there was another swing next to me, but it was broken—and glared at me, waiting for me to get off the swing. Her gaze wasn't insufferable, but in the end, I got off the swing and went off to a side. I was used to quietly making way or sidestepping for people who wanted a certain spot in a place.

Glaring at the swing and the girl who now had her feet on the swing, soaring up into the sky with her long hair flying prettily in the air, I thought that it would be nice if the swing magically flew high up into the sky to a place of no return with the girl still on it, and thought that it was quite amusing to watch a girl who looked as if she would fly away, while hoping that she would fly away.

But I went somewhere else, thinking that the woman who was still glancing at me could report me to the police, and suddenly decided to go all the way to the Versailles Palace, for some reason, but it was so boring there that I became sullen and wanted to take revenge on the palace, which had done nothing wrong. A pleasant, overwhelming feeling, which comes at times from a structure taking up enormous space, did not come from the Versailles Palace. Nothing but arrogance could be seen in the Versailles Palace, which looked stiff on the whole and seemed as if it would never look otherwise, which was boring.

What I thought of while looking at the Versailles Palace, where everything was in perfect balance, were the people of the royal family and the aristocrats who had strolled there in the past in fancy but uncomfortable clothing, and although I had nothing against them, I felt a strong urge to do something outrageous, to pull off such a thing, to make some kind of an unreasonable demand, and it wasn't so much because I felt that a king of France,
who was holding a fan in the brochure on Versailles in my hand, was fanning the urge—I only imagined this, and there was no king of France holding a fan in the brochure, but still, I pictured Louis XVI suddenly opening up his beautiful fan with an exotic painting on it to startle his favorite cat (I wonder what the cat's name was), and playing around with the cat, for every king, and everyone, must, at times, want to think playful thoughts or play around, and actually think playful thoughts or play around—but because in watching people moving around in groups and flocks of pigeons walking on the ground or flying in the air, which made it seem as if everything were in motion—a baby near me was trying to catch an ant on the ground, with a hand that was suitably small for catching ants, but, being clumsy, he was doing so without success—I felt an urge to direct myself at something static, to make the scene come to a stop, at which moment I happened to see swans in the palace pond, and it suddenly occurred to me that I could make that happen by throwing a stone at one of them and hitting it. Or perhaps I felt an urge to create a small stir in the surface of the pond, which was quietly reflecting a brilliantly sunny and peaceful day, regardless of the swans.

But because of the people around me, I couldn't do to the swans what you shouldn't do to swans. Nevertheless, I ended up bearing somewhat playful, casual malice toward the swans, which wasn't because I wanted to commit a casual act of evil or atrocity, going along with the popular belief that travel sets you free.

I had nothing against swans, just as I had nothing against the royal family and the aristocrats of France. If I did have anything against them, I could have done something on that pretext. Still, as
I walked the paths through the impeccably manicured garden during my few hours of stay at Versailles, I couldn't help but be afflicted by the thought that I should do something to the swans. Perhaps the thought came from the ill feeling I'd been harboring toward the French for some time. It seemed to me that they were excessively proud of their culture, to the point of conceit. It was easy, of course, to have your pride of something turn into conceit, which was understandable, but it seemed that the pride of the French seemed to go to such a ridiculous degree as to support the idea that pride was suppose to be ridiculous.

Some ideas are difficult to shake off because the temptation to surpass them and make them materialize is too great, for they can't be confined in the mind because they're ridiculous, and the more ridiculous they are, the larger they become, which was the case for my idea of doing something to the swans.

And, as I considered the idea, it seemed that the swans that were peacefully swimming or sitting still, indifferent to all the problems and cares of the world, in the palace pond of an old French king, were a symbol of monarchy, and that doing something to the swans would be a useless act of defiance against monarchy. Monarchy has long disappeared, and so it seemed that I was too late in defying it, but it seemed that I was fighting something that didn't exist, this thing called monarchy, and that doing something to the swans, a symbol of monarchy, was my own lone and belated struggle against monarchy, and I'd be able to taste the joys and sorrows of the struggle by myself.

It seemed that it could be fun to be arrested by the French police, in the event that I hit a swan in the palace pond of an
old French king and made it swoon or die, and have a French newspaper print a small article on a foreigner from the East who incurred the anger of the sensible people of France by hurting or killing, with no reason at all or with a clear objective, one of the elegant swans long beloved by the royal family, the aristocrats, and the people of France. And it seemed that it wouldn't be so bad to be in the paper for something like that. Perhaps I could be arrested by the police and make false statements to my own disadvantage, or plead the Fifth and say nothing to the end, thinking to myself that what I did was express anger on behalf of all the immigrants and foreign residents who have been persecuted and are still being persecuted in the country of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and then go to a French jail or be deported. Once that occurred to me, I felt strongly tempted to carry it out into action. At that moment I was fully ready to pay the price for a misdeed I hadn't even yet committed and saw it as a necessary step that criminals must take. But it was something that required great courage, and entailed the very tiresome process of repeated failures until actually hitting a swan and making something happen to it, and it was for that reason that it was difficult for me to carry out in reality. Still, although I was tired and exhausted from the midday heat of summer, I kept on thinking that I should, not submitting to it, in a way, commit an atrocious act of some kind. But it helped to have had my fill of such undesirable thoughts about swans. By having various thoughts about swans, I could keep myself from actually doing something to them. Thinking a lot about something was a great way to keep yourself from carrying your thoughts out into action, although, of course, it depended on the way you thought.
By thinking a certain thought, you could think that you've carried the thought out into action, or done something more.

For a long time I watched, from a spot where the garden of Versailles could be seen at one glance, an autistic looking child flailing his arms in anger, and listened to him screaming his head off, thinking that he was expressing my own state of mind, but at the same time, I felt almost intimidated by the sharp noise and went somewhere else, and picked up a stone from the innermost part of the Versailles Palace, where there was almost no one, and threw it at some birds sitting on a nearby tree, and, having done that, I could finally leave the spot; throwing a ball absentmindedly, or aiming at something, was one of the things that made me feel strangely excited when I was a child, and is still one of my secret hobbies. How many stones had I thrown at rivers and trees as a child?