Bridge for Passing (16 page)

He was proud of being a publisher and he felt it a noble profession. Making money was never his impetus. If a book was good enough to merit publishing, he accepted it with enthusiasm, and this whether or not he agreed with what it said. His own opinions were always firmly on the side of the intelligent liberal. In a strongly Republican family he voted for the Democrats, occasionally varying it for the Socialists as a protest vote. Yet he published authors who were conservative and sometimes in the narrowest sense. He believed that they too had a right to be heard and if they presented their opinions well, he gave their books the same editorial care he gave to all others. The range of the authors he developed was from Fritz Sternberg to James Burnham.

An editor, he believed, had the high privilege of discovering talent and the duty of helping it to develop to its best fruit and then of presenting it to the world. He was an impresario of writers and books, but a man of such tender understanding of the needs and delicacies and shynesses of talented persons, that he guided without seeming to do so, drawing forth their ideas by skillful questions and honest praise and appreciation. Of the numerous letters I received after his death many were from writers who said that until he helped them to understand themselves they had not been able to write.

And of myself what shall I say? It was he who saw something in my first small book, a tentative effort rejected by all other publishers until he perceived in it the possibility that its author might one day write a better book. His staff was equally divided against the book, and it fell to him as the president of the company to cast his vote. He voted for it, and on that narrow chance my life began.

Ah me, it does not do to dream too long. The lobby of the old Imperial Hotel in Tokyo was empty except for a sleepy clerk. The rain had stopped and a new moon was swinging above the clouds when I walked outside to breathe the cooled night air. The new moon? I had been in Tokyo for three weeks. For two months I had been alone.

Music has always been an important part of my life, background and medium for thought and feeling. For the picture I wanted Japanese music, not the synthetic nonsense that passes for Oriental in our American attempts, but original creation in Japan and by a Japanese. Moreover, it must be modern Japanese, for the change that has taken place in every aspect of Japanese life is nowhere more evident than in music. Music is the barometer—and thermometer, for that matter—of every culture, the art most revelatory of a people’s temperament, character and response to outer influence. I was pleased, then, when Toshiro Miyazumi said that he would like to write the music for
The Big Wave
. I knew his work, but I had never met him and it was a special pleasure to find him waiting for me one morning in my hotel sitting room. He rose and introduced himself and at the same time handed me a gift, a record of his symphony,
Nirvarta
.

“I am your composer,” he said modestly.

We sat down and I looked at his face frankly. It was a charming face, strong and gentle, quiet and poetic and without guile. An innocent face, I would have said, except that it was not the face of a child, although there was a child’s openness in the expression. I recognized this quality, for it is to be found only in highly gifted persons, wise as serpents and gentle as doves, as the old book puts it.

“I am fortunate,” I told him.

Toshiro Miyazumi is called the Leonard Bernstein of Japan and he does indeed resemble Bernstein in the brilliance of his talent. Unlike Bernstein, however, he devotes himself to composing music. True, he has conducted, but he prefers to compose.

“Please tell me about yourself,” I said.

There was nothing to tell, it seemed. He bit his lip, he tried to remember.

“You were born in 1929,” I reminded him.

A flash of gratitude lighted his charming calm face. “Ah yes, I was born but I began my life at six years of age, composing and playing the piano.”

“Then?”

He considered and finally spoke. “I went to the University of Tokyo.”

I was about to inquire, “Nothing between?” and decided not to speak. I would wait and let him present his life as he saw it. There was nothing, then, between six and the University of Tokyo.

He continued after reflection.

“When I was twenty-one I received a scholarship to Paris for one year, to the Conservatoire. There was a man, Tony Oben, teaching me. Very conservative, not interested in the new method of composing … So I was a bad pupil. Because the techniques there were formal, the rhythms old-fashioned somewhat and harmony traditional. … Creation is different. The energy is emotion. I cannot, because I use the twelve tone method. So I searched and went to Austrian composers—Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, who use new methods to express contemporary composition.”

“But you use classical themes, too,” I reminded him. “You are versatile—”

He accepted this with a smile. “It is very difficult to support my life on classical music alone, however I love it. I returned to Japan and for several years composed many kinds of music, orchestral, chamber, and so forth, as well as for musical films. I suppose television and radio music were my job, but I want always to be an artist. …”

There was a long pause, covering years. “So after five years I went back to Europe, and I went to music festivals in Sweden and Germany and other places where my music was played.”

“How does it feel to hear your music played across the world?” I asked.

He gave me an eloquent look and was too modest for words. “I came back to Japan and I made a group for contemporary music and some prizes were given to me. That is all.”

All is a good deal for a young man of thirty-one, but apparently his story was told. He was not in the least shy, and he sat relaxed and waiting.

“And this record?” I asked, indicating the gift.

“It was played in Tokyo, premiere in April, second day, 1958, after working about a year.”

“Are you interested in religion? The title suggests Buddhism.”

“The Japanese Buddhist temple bell,” he said. “It is a typical mixture of sounds. I am very fond of it, since I am interested in concrete music and electronic music, that is, creating musical structures out of sound energy, as Edward Varese suggests. In other words, the method of composition is by giving musical life to the energy inherent in the sound itself. So I bring new timbres into my compositions—for example, mixed tones. Combinations of several dozen pure tones have become dominant in my works.”

The calm face had suddenly become animated and beautiful.

“I am attracted by the voices of Buddhist priests chanting sutras—no melody, of course, but habitual intonation and rhythm, and when any priests take part together, the group produces a sort of musical noise through the mixing of the voices of varying pitches. I added to a full orchestra treble woodwind instruments and bass brass instruments, placed in different corners of the hall to achieve a directional sense by means of the crisscross of sounds over the heads of the audience—”

No silence now—the words poured from him in a flow of creating thought!

“Nirvana, the ideal state of being for the Buddhist, is symbolized by the toll of the bell. So perhaps I am religious. I composed this symphony with the idea of creating my own musical Nirvana. It is not religious music, I suppose, in the purest sense of the word. It is a sort of Buddhistic cantata. I hope you like it.” He smiled suddenly. “I talk too much.”

I broke the next silence. “What do you do next, after our picture?”

“I go to New York, to write music for the New York City Ballet. It will be played next season.”

“Quite different from a Buddhist cantata?”

“I like difference, but before I go to New York I will finish the music for
The Big Wave
. This picture is unusual, too, and altogether different. I have the music in my mind clearly, really romantic, not Wagnerian romantic, strong and delicate together, with contemporary Oriental philosophy. How is it you write like this? The emotion is Oriental.”

It was my turn not to know what to say. How can a writer say how she writes? But he had forgotten his question.

“I want a song in it,” he was saying. “I want a song that is like the sunrise, young and fresh and full of hope. Your young people, beginning their life again in their own time, at this moment, never before lived, I want that song.”

He leaned toward me, all demand and pleading. “If I write the music, will you write the words?”

“I cannot,” I told him.

There was nothing more to be said. We shook hands and he was gone. And the song was written by someone else.

He stopped at the office the next day at noon and looked in. Something was always going on there, and that moment was no exception. Hundreds of costumes were heaped on the floor, and several persons—men, boys and a girl or two—were pawing them over to a running accompaniment of Japanese at various tonal levels. They were looking for some garment demanded by the model for various parts in the picture. The model was a microscopic human being, male, of vague age but certainly not young. He stood something under five feet and if he weighed ninety pounds, it would surprise me. He was skin and bone, and if the skeleton was a child’s, the face was fascinating. Wrinkled, lively, full of fun and mischief, it was the face of an old faun. The top of the head was bald, but hair surrounded the large bald spot and stood straight out from the skull, as though the old faun were undergoing electric shock. He was certainly full of some sort of electricity for he was issuing orders without let, as he modeled a fisherman’s outfit made for a man four times his size. He was a good model, nevertheless. He clutched the trousers in at his waist, gave a twist to the belt, arranged the Japanese coat and became a fisherman. Everybody laughed and I sat down to watch.

He knew all the characters in
The Big Wave
, it appeared, and he modeled them all. When he modeled a man he faced us. When he modeled a woman, he turned his back. I recognized each character, even the young girl Setsu. How an old man could pose so that he suggested a gay young girl, even from the back, is something I cannot explain. I wished for the millionth time that I understood Japanese, for whatever the old faun was saying the audience was convulsed. Every now and again he was dissatisfied and threw off a costume, or rejected what was offered and pawed among the confusion of the piled garments with all the fierce intensity of a monkey looking for fleas.

At this moment someone had an inspiration. “He’s what we’ve been looking for—a wonderful attendant for Old Gentleman. Does he speak English?”

The old faun smiled with all his teeth, none of them in good repair, and shook his head to the English.

To the rest he replied that he would think it over and let us know tomorrow. The next day, the old faun, modeling more costumes, and dancing about on his spindly legs, brightened as I entered the room. A stream of Japanese flowed from him, which, interpreted, was that he would join the cast, but only if we promised not to cut his hair. He said he would not come with us if we cut his hair.

I regarded the circle of electrified black wire surrounding the bony bald skull. “Tell him,” I said, “that I would not think of cutting that hair. I promise it will not be cut.”

We all stared gravely at the valuable hair.

“Hai,” the cheerful faun said with a smile that reached across the room. Suddenly the smile disappeared. Japanese chatter poured from where the smile was.

The patient interpreter explained. “He says, does he have to speak English? If so, he can’t.”

“He has only two lines and we will teach him every day,” we promised.

More Japanese and the interpreter reported. “He says he must have a good teacher. He must speak English perfectly.”

“He will have a good teacher,” we promised.

Later we found that no amount of teaching could prevail over his invincible Japanese accent. We cut his lines to two essential words, “yes,” and “no.” These he says in the picture, impressively and with pride. He had, he said, waited his whole life to become an actor, but the nearest approach had been to work with costumes. I shall never forget his beatific face when he knew he was to have the part. So far as he was concerned, he was a star. He gave us a great smile and the faun became monkey again, pawing among the clothes, but now he was searching feverishly for his own costume.

That night for the first time since he left, I felt a release, slight though it was, from the dull oppression of—what shall I call it? Shock, desolation, loneliness, whatever its compound, it had laid a burden upon me from which I could not escape. I did not wander the streets that night. Instead I decided upon a Japanese massage, dinner alone in my room, a long letter to the children at home, and a book. This is a program ordinary enough, but I had not achieved it since being alone. Laughter had provided the possibility now. I laugh easily, since the world is full of funny people and incidents, but I had not laughed often in the past months and never without the self-forgetfulness that somehow the little faun had inspired that afternoon. It is the peculiar talent of the artist that he is able to enter the being of another person and this is particularly true of the novelist. We had discussed it often, he and I, and he had forgiven me always when, temporarily, I was absorbed in someone other than himself. It is a strange absorption this, and I do not know how to describe it except to liken it to the focus of total interest essential to the scientist theoretician. Such a scientist is by temperament an artist too and none of us can escape what we ourselves are.

I had not been able to absorb myself in anyone, however, since his death and until this afternoon when for an hour the old habit returned. I felt elated and almost hopeful. At least I was relieved, however briefly, of the miasma of sadness in which I had walked for so many weeks. I laughed with all my heart and for an hour was healed. I can report that I carried through my program for the evening and went to bed at a reasonable hour, also for the first time in all the weeks. The fact marked a beginning.