Bridge for Passing (21 page)

What he did have was a brilliant intuitive mind, and what was more rare, the ability to appreciate what he could not comprehend. He stimulated by skillful questions, he seemed never to lead although he did not follow, he uncovered without shaping. He provided an atmosphere in which I could think more clearly, create more spontaneously than I might otherwise have been able to do. He could listen to me think aloud around and above and under a subject that interested me, allowing me to range freely as though I were alone, his questions never guideposts but invitations to pathways I might not have noticed for myself.

I realize that now, alas, I have no one with whom to talk. Be still, my soul!

The schedule called for outdoor work, a picnic scene with little Setsu and a harvest scene, then field and plowing but it was raining again. We proceeded nevertheless to within walking distance of the site, a charming place on a terraced hillside, and in the background a gray old Japanese cemetery. It was upon one of these stone graves that Setsu was to wait with food for Father and Yukio, with what disastrous and naughty results I must not here tell. The contrast of the mossy old tombstones and our pretty little girl was the contrast of life against death and I had looked forward to the scene. We waited in the cars while the rain poured down. A kind farm family invited us to shelter in their comfortable house, and we went in, gratefully. The farm wife prepared tea for us, and we discussed what to do. Mountains and sea here combined to make weather a mystery even more uncertain than in most parts of the world. The sky looked as though it would continue to empty itself for forty days. We decided to go to the farmhouse and shoot a rain scene, appropriately, and a kitchen interior. The assistant director was to go to Kitsu, our fishing village, and get boats ready for the scene when the boats put out for the shark beach in the rain.

The morning was a disappointment, nevertheless. The rain continued into deluge. The farmyard became a lake of mud and the thatched eaves dripped dismally. Inside the farmhouse the crew worked without enthusiasm. The cameraman put off evil moments of beginning work, the director grew impatient and I grew bored. Again and again the first scene was set and again and again the camera made some monstrous mistake. It was twelve o’clock by the time we were ready to shoot the rain scene, and then the sun came out, weakly but enough to make it necessary to fake rain. So on a rainy day the men climbed on the farmhouse roof and rigged up the best rainmaking machine in the world, namely, a hollow bamboo pierced with holes, with a rubber hose attached to one end and the other end stopped. A beautiful flow of fake rain dripped over the eaves and down into the lake of mud made by the real rain. Finally we got a take, and lunch hour arrived. The day was so dismal it was not even a good lunch.

The kitchen scene and the rainy beach scene were among our best. The kitchen scene was the earthquake. Our farm mother, in a daze, hurried about, trying to save her dishes. She was so distraught that she forgot to put down a basket of eggs and they broke and increased the confusion. There is, in fact, nothing more confusing than a basket of broken eggs, especially when a woman forgets to put them down before she rushes around her kitchen trying to save her dishes during an earthquake, and sees in addition that the oil lamp is burning and may set the house on fire. It was quite a scene and in her reality of acting our mother cut her foot twice on broken glass and the trained nurse, whom we were required to have with us at all times, at last had a chance to save someone’s life. She came forward with an air of importance and put some adhesive tape on Mother’s foot. We were impressed by this efficiency and felt somewhat cheered.

Sheer stubbornness prevented me from giving up and wending my muddy way back to the hotel, and I was glad. With that inexplicable upturn which seems inevitable when the worst arrives, the afternoon work suddenly became exciting. The farmhouse actors were dismissed for the day and the fisherman’s family summoned for the beach scenes. The rainy scene finished, the sun had withdrawn and again rain fell in deluge. It became apparent now that the American director had every intention of dismissing me, too, on the grounds of the storm, rain, lashing waves and so forth. When I declined to be dismissed he put forth vague suggestions that I might break a leg or something on the steep and narrow path down to Kitsu, and he had had enough of falls. I refused this ridiculous reasoning, for my two favorite houses are in the countryside of Pennsylvania and the mountains of Vermont, and I walk prodigiously everywhere and climb like a goat—female—and never have slipped or fallen, unless someone dropped me as a baby, which I do not remember. I invited this director to pay no attention to me except to check before going back to the hotel in the evening in order to see that I was in some car or other, and so I went to Kitsu.

I shall never cease to be grateful that I did, for the experience gave me—well, here it is:

I walked down the narrow winding cliff path without mishap, and descended to the beach, ostentatiously and unobtrusively pretending that I was not there. It was raining gloriously, a rough downpour, which I love. I was protected thoroughly by my raincoat and hat, and also by various umbrellas held over my head by kind villagers. My only complaint in Japan is that people are so kind that I always find an umbrella over my head, a fan in my hand, and a stool where I sit. While the director shaped up his scene and peered into the camera, I stood with my back to the high wall in front of Toru’s house and gazed out over the gray sea and gray sky. Our actor, Toru’s father, was a fisherman, and at the signal he began to blow the great conch shell for the boats.

“Cut!” the director yelled.

We cut. All the village was out under huge umbrellas to watch what was going on and some unwary boy had dashed across the scene to a better place on the other side. The village headman, who was our paid ally, had forbidden noise or movement, and at this he went into a fine paroxysm of fury. I speak and understand no Japanese, but I could see that he was calling his fellow villagers a lot of damned blockheads and did they want to show the world what idiots they were, not knowing that when you cross a camera you ruin the picture being made by Americans here in the village of Kitsu for the first time in history, a place unknown to the world until now as the home of children and fools? They all grinned sheepishly and fell back six inches or so. Suddenly another boy who had not been listening dashed between the frightfully bowed and hairy legs of the headman himself, not remembering to fold his umbrella first. The results were disastrous, the umbrella was ruined.

Here I pause for a moment to remember fondly that headman in the village of Kitsu. He had a round, shaven head, a rugged, beaming face, legs as crooked as a crab’s, an iron will, and a heart fit for a king. He was a dictator, of course, and he ruled his people absolutely. Every night he told them what they could do the next day and what they must not do. Thus after the reprehensible behavior of the boys, the villagers were forbidden to stare at us or hang about. They were to continue their usual duties as though we were not there, except, as a special favor, for one hour between five and six in late afternoon and then they must stand no nearer than fifty feet away to watch us, and in total silence. His enthusiasm for the picture was touching for he was convinced that the story is about him. Like Toru, his entire family was swept away by a tidal wave when he was only a little boy.

Standing there, my back against the wet sea wall, I watched the cameraman get a lovely shot of fishermen carrying their nets and running down to the sea and putting off in their fishing boats through the waves and rain. Camera then raced to the big breakwater, which made an ideal platform from which to film the boats driving into the open sea. The villagers rushed after the camera and I was swallowed among the crowd. I was all but pushed off the breakwater into the sea, which would have made the director so eternally right that I daresay I would have had to take the next plane home in order to escape the wrath of God. But I was fortunately saved by a strong villager who breathed warmly into my face—he had halitosis, alas, and of the fiercest sort, a pity, for he was such a nice man. He told me, breathing hard, that he saw me on the Tokyo television and may he hold his umbrella over my head, and why isn’t someone looking after such an important person as I am? I said that no one ever looked after me when pictures were being made, and thanks, I don’t need the umbrella because I have a rain hat and so I escaped him to go and sit upon a stone pier and watch the matchless beauty of Japanese fishing boats putting out to open sea.

I slap all the dull routine of their being told to come back and do it over again because of the cameraman’s locking the camera so that he could not pan and then his thinking something was wrong with the camera and the American saying bitterly that the only thing wrong was the cameraman, and all such small talk. Let me tell only of sitting there in the rain, that slanting rain which Hokusai loved so well to portray in his prints. Surrounded by the green and terraced hills and the higher mountains swathed in clouds, and gazing out over the endless sea, I watched for the boats to return and saw them as they rounded the end of the breakwater. How beautiful they were, how superb in shape and speed and grace! Three men sat in each boat, all rowing, not the choppy rowing of western boats, but smoothly as a fish swims, these rowers never lifted their oars from the water. I studied the rhythm of those oars. It was in contrapuntal thirds, no oar moving at exactly the same instant as the other, and yet all movement flowing. Suddenly I recognized the rhythm—it was that of the fins of a fish. The boats moved through the sea as a fish moves by its fins. I felt the deep satisfaction of right conclusion. That is exactly what it was and I was slow not to know it until this late date in my life, although I have been watching such boats since I was a child, spending my summers in Japan.

The boats put out to sea again in a long row. They turned to the left as the bay turns until they were hidden by a rocky point, upon which stood by accident the figure of a man, solitary and unknown, looking toward the horizon. What beauty! It is enough for this day. I thank God, and may I see beauty all my life as clear as this!

I went back in grateful silence, I remember, and had my bath and dinner. The bathroom was big and two small windows, opaquely glazed, opened to the pool outside. I could hear the swimmers shouting and laughing while I bathed. Floor and walls of white tile, and the tub was a square of tiled cement four feet square and as deep, one end raised to make a seat and so keep my head above water. It was always full of hot mineral water, soothing to the skin. But why do I talk of the tub? I knew better than to step into it without the proper preparation, which was to fill a small wooden tub with water, sit upon a small bamboo stool in the middle of the tiled floor with the little tub before me, soap myself thoroughly, and pour water over myself. Only then was I fit for the big tub. When I stepped out of it every ache and touch of fatigue was gone. I was mended, and I was renewed.

That evening I sat by my window, I remember, dressed in a cool yukata, and heard the swimmers in the pool outside plunge and shout and laugh. I had that day been steeped in beauty, and now it was unbearable because I could not tell him about it. Perhaps he knew—but if he could not communicate his awareness to me, how was I to be comforted? I had, I thought, been doing so well and suddenly I knew I had not.

“It does not get better,” a widowed friend had warned me. “It gets worse.”

What does
worse
mean? How could it be worse than this? I wanted suddenly to wipe away all remembrance of beauty, and yet I am one who cannot live without beauty—and I do not allow myself to weep. I thought I had been doing well. I felt he must be proud of me, if he were watching somewhere, afar off. Now I needed help again and badly. Where to find it? Beauty had undone me, had made me weak with longing. Strangers must again be my refuge. I took off the yukata, slipped into my own dress and went to wandering on the streets again, alone.

Not far from the back door of the hotel, down a narrow cobbled street, I discovered the motion picture theater. It was the only one in town, and a very good one, the stage spacious, the seats comfortable. As a courtesy, the owner had sent word that we were to enter without tickets so long as we were in Obama, and as the days passed I grew into the habit of slipping across the street in the cool of the night, and choosing a seat beside a red-lacquered pillar. Around me were the Japanese crowd, mostly men, since there were no bars in Obama and this was perhaps their only relief from crying children and over-burdened wives. True, there were three old geisha in the city but they were more or less honorary and had become respectable members of the community now that they had retired from active business. Certainly they could not be considered sources of relaxation for tired business men.

The pictures were revelatory. The mildest and most artistic films in Japan, I fear, are those sent abroad for foreign consumption. The real stuff is kept at home and especially for the remoter areas, of which we in Obama were certainly one. Emotions on the screen were violent, primitive, repetitive and for me highly amusing. Everything was over-colored, literally as well as symbolically. The reds were the color of blood, the greens poisonous, the blues sulphurous. Equally extreme was the action. One rape was never enough for a single film. I sat through evenings when the same girl was raped two and three times by one man or by various men. Gun shooting, obviously copied from our wild-western shows, was far more wild. Everybody shot everybody until only one man remained and then he shot himself. A good evening’s entertainment seemed to be when all the women were raped and all the men killed. The audience then gave a sigh of happiness and rose in a state of dream to return to their wives and children. Yet these same men were always delicately courteous to a stranger and gently polite to one another. The Japanese nature is not so much complex as simply contradictory.