Tokio Whip (30 page)

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I cannot understand at all, but please continue.

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So this is where they are at now. From east and west they met in the middle, then they extended their borders. Lang is quickly becoming an expert on the low city, and Roberta is slowly taking a liking to points west. In a word, Kaoru, as I see it, the couple uncoupled is becoming one, a union of all points, center and circumference, or better, no points but where you are and that is everywhere and that is Tokyo, man and woman, the two and the one, the many and the single.

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Single?

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Singly.

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Divorce?

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Union.

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Separated?

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Let no man declare asunder.

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Then they are together again?

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Not quite.

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Why not?

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They are a difficult couple. Quite separate.

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But not separated.

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Geographically, yes. Marriageably, I hope not.

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But?

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But yes. But no.

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What will happen?

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Happen with what?

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To them!

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Them, who?

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Roberta and Lang!

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Oh, them! Oh yes, what was I saying?

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Van Zandt! You were saying that they might or might not get together again!

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Was I? Oh yes, yes, they might or might not, as you say.

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No, as you said. What will happen?

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I have no idea. What do you think?

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Me? I have no idea. How could I?

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Well, I haven't either. Maybe it's up to you.

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Up to me?

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Sure, why not?

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I hardly know them!

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Precisely, all the better.

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What?! But what can I do?

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Drink up, Kaoru.

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I don't want to drink – I want to know what will happen to your friends.

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My friends and I will be alright. You're a friend, aren't you? You'll be alright, won't you?

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I don't know. I mean, I hope you and I are friends. I think I'm alright. Are you alright?

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I believe so.

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Then we're alright.

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Yes, you and I are.

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But Roberta and Lang?

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Well, we're friends, aren't we?

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Yes.

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Then we are alright – and they are alright.

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Are they?

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Why shouldn't they be? Do you know something I don't?

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No, van Zandt, of course not.

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Then we either know everything or nothing. Either way, we're alright.

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And does that mean that Roberta and Lang are alright too?

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How should I know? Don't you know?

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No, I don't.

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Then how are you going to find out? What are you going to do about it? It'd be a shame if they were not together all because of a good friend such as yourself.

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But I hardly know them, what can I do about it?

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Be a good friend.

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But that won't bring them together again.

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Who says it won't?

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Van Zandt, you are drunk.

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Kaoru, you are drunk.

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Yes, but you're not being a good friend now.

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You're right. Waitress!

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Ok, van Zandt, what can we do about Roberta and Lang?

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Oh, that depends.

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Depends on what?

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On them. After all, it's up to them, what do we have to do with it all?

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But you just said –

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Yes I did, Kaoru, and I meant it, but there are limits, you know.

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Limits? Limits to what? To friendship? No, I won't accept that.

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Then what will you accept?

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That we must do something about the situation.

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What can we do?

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I don't know. I don't know at all. It's all rather confusing to me. But we must be able to do something.

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True. Or maybe not. Where are they at, after all? Galivanting about the city and meeting nowhere. Where are we? Started out in Marunouchi, then to Akasaka, now in Kyobashi. (I had my first beer here. My first in Japan, that is.) We wheel about the city, going in circles, one city all cities. No, that's not true, one Tokyo, one Roberta and Lang. Maybe that's it.

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What's what – what “it”?

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Well, they've started their mating dance, don't you see? Wheeling about the city. Like some esoteric Buddhism.

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I'm sorry, but once again, I do not see at all.

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Ok, I mean that we wheel about, we go round and round, well, not exactly, not even round and round, but zigzag and round and twist and shout and turn about and … no, not meet at any center, too many of them, but, well …

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Well?

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Well, they've got a map, I'm sure they can make sense of it all, whatever sense is available, make their own map – that's maybe it. You see, don't you, like I described, they came together – when he arrived, say, he had nowhere to go, but to stay at her place for the first couple of weeks, and then it was clear she wanted to be alone and so he had to find his own place, and he did out west, and slowly they began to come together again by meeting in what they thought were neutral locations, anywhere in between the end-points, and then from that seeming center they branched out till they got to the point where they were in one another's original territories, she sharing
shitamachi
with him, he showing her the splendors and miseries of the high city of the new west. So that's where they are now, but they have to go even further yet. They've only begun to encompass the city. They really ought to take a vacation far west, and one to the tropics too. That's Tokyo too, don't you know. You see what I'm driving at?

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Uhm, not exactly.

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It's simple, really! They use Tokyo, they see it and explore it as a way to get together again! As a way of finding out who each other really is. Old Lang, new Lang, east Roberta, west Roberta, high Lang, low Roberta and vice-versa. Center and circumference, everything exploded, everything coupled. Union, Kaoru, union!

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Union.

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Now you've said it, old friend.

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New friend.

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Now you‘ve said it.

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Have I?

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Certainly.

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I have?

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We both have.

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Ok.

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Ok? Ok yes, or ok maybe?

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Ok, ok.

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Ok double – you have said it.

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I guess.

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So.

***

Ah, this city, Lang writes in a private notebook, got to you in time, Man! Just when you needed me and me you, eh? So be it. We wrestle, make love, conquer one another, and transcend, transcend, as Patti says, lots of work to do together yet, lanes and lines to discover, exploration, meditation (sounds like Van) – and then we become one!

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The earth reels. Tokyo suffers. Too sudden a change in the weather, and people lose the ability to converse, they stumble to work, shift subjects in mid-sentence, and become generally unfriendly. It is not a pretty sight to see, and children should not be exposed to this uncanny phenomenon. Science has no explanation, nor psychology. Come to Tokyo only if you are fully prepared to discover this within yourself, this known only to Tokyoites.

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Last time I ate sushi in Tsukiji at 5AM was in my university days. But then I could take it, staying up all night, drinking with my pals, but now I feel it all day. Don't even seem to recover till late afternoon, and then for only a few hours till I start again. I also knew the way home. Don't even know where I am right now, what's around the corner. What do they say, a glass of alcohol takes an hour to get out of your system? At that rate I won't sober up for a year and a half. If I stop drinking entirely right now. That doesn't even rate an if. What about tobacco? Do the lungs clear up at a similar sort of rate? If I have cancer now, will my lungs clear up by the time I die of it?

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So why stop, Kaoru, if you're having fun?

***

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So now do you understand?

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All too well.

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Well said.

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As well.

***

I have watched

the city from a distance at night

and wondered why I wrote no poem.

Come! yes,

the city is ablaze for you

and you stand and look at it.

– William Carlos Williams

Compare:

Chiamavi il cielo e intorno vi si gira,

Mostrandovi le sue belleze eterne,

E l'occhio vostro pur a terra mira.

–
Purgatorio
XIV, 148-150

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SCENE NINE: OFFICE

It was a strange building in Shimbashi that revealed to her that Japanese architecture, or rather, the city of Tokyo itself taken as a single piece of architecture, is all parts of an enormous jigsaw puzzle (one of those that want to get into the record books) that have scattered all over the place (for whatever reason, earthquake, a child suddenly rushing in, the scurrying of the players to prevent a drink from falling on the already assembled parts) all over the place. Many still remain on the table, but quite a few thousand are under the table or the piano, on chair seats or stuck between the cushion and the backrest, against the walls or on the lower bookshelves, one or two inside a pant's cuff, even one is later discovered in the hostess's hair. It will be a full three weeks before all the pieces are finally found. Or almost all, a few simply disappear: one is found three days later in a nearby gutter; another winds up behind a neighbor's fishtank; and a third in a child's toybox.

The specific difficulty with this particular puzzle is that once it is about half assembled, it suddenly becomes apparent to the players (for that in the end is what they are) that it seems to be a trompe l'oeil picture, and not at all the flat representation of a helicopter shot over Shinjuku that was depicted on the box. Instead, it seems to be an interior, it looks like an office – when viewed from a particular angle. When viewed from another however, it is also an interior, but this time a home. From yet another, the interior is an office building lobby, and this is the most difficult perspective from which to assemble the puzzle as it is the most boringly minimalist (to adapt the art term to what is essentially and usually one of those dead blank spots of architecture the world over); and finally, from a fourth point of view, the interior is a floor of a department store, women's clothing.

The woman enters the office that perfectly matches the one in the puzzle. Rows of desks, papers piled high. More noise it seems than is on the street: conversations, some loud, some whispered; electronics; a radio coming from one corner; little laughter; the constant pouring of tea and lips smacking (management only); the steady clack clack clack of outdated but still useful office machinery; paper being shuffled, torn, dropped, rumpled. One man is shining his shoes; two women are distributing tea; three men are at a table in a reception nook discussing something important; lots of cigarette smoke; a few partitions, but nothing to separate personnel by degree of authority, experience or salary. The only sign of such is that at the head of every two facing rows of desks is one set at the perpendicular. Bad travel posters are on one wall; lots of calendars, one or two from last year still (purely oversight, not for the pictures certainly); there is one rack of current magazines and newspapers; a very long set of shelves overflowing with professional journals; another shelf of documents, records. For all the seeming basic order – rows of desks in a neat arrangement – the woman still has to wend her way about: this person to avoid, that pile of old papers not to knock over, this flower pot not to bump into, and those computers on the floor (to be thrown out). She surveys the scene, takes a deep breath, and begins to walk, to inspect every face in the place; she begins at the left side of the room (the east side of the city), and goes on her way, up one aisle and down the next, determined to inspect every face, but how can she be sure that by the end of her route she will have seen every man's face in the office as there is so much movement taking place? She is well aware of her predicament – but can't just shout out, “Will everyone just stop!” In fact, she suddenly wonders to herself, isn't it uncanny how she seems to have gone unnoticed? Wouldn't she have expected to be greeted by someone and asked her business here? But no, nothing of the sort has occurred. But she is too busy to figure this out right now. As she has no one's attention it will be that much easier for her to accomplish her task here. She has determined that if she walks the room two-and-one-half times, then the probability is that she will have encountered every face in the office.