Tokio Whip (41 page)

But with all this movement, starting and stopping, getting on and getting off, transferring, jostling of bodies, overhead announcements, television screens in the trains – with all of this, is it any surprise that she does not, once again, find her man, and instead only comes home late, exhausted, grimy, ready for a whisky, a foot soak, a turn with O-Dildo-san, and a sleep on the tatami with the gray buzz of the television providing the background soundtrack to her dream … of a train ride.

***

I won't insult him by taking him seriously – unless this declaration of his great love for the city is to be read as a suicide note – he's had crazier notions – to connect the world is one – no, no, to think through the consequences of his actions has never been one of his stronger suits – just look at his finances – to take on the whole you must be grounded first – any adventurer knows the value and necessity of a, oh, what's it called?, I hate being stumped for a word – of a, well, “safe-house” for the moment – “safety net”?, no, that's not quite it, either – but, no, he just lurches forward – and where will we discover the body? Not that I can claim to be so sensible – the wrecks of my youth are there for all to see – but I do have a few survival techniques up my panties – and much else too, another survival tool – but in a city this size and this wonderfully superficial, and … well, not so much confusing as excessively hectic, why would anyone ever want to go after the whole thing?, why this need for comprehensiveness?, these encyclopedic novels? – No no, not me, thanks, gimme the short stuff – I likes my neighborhood and I stays in it. The city, all of it, can come here if it wants, if not, fine, I'll never know what I missed, and so not miss it, what I'll have had will be all that I had, and so that too must qualify as its own totality. The whole city then in a few blocks. The whole thing? – well, I wish him well – as I know too well, the great loves
are mad
.

***

There are ten billboards, three posters. The first is a close-up of a face, smiling, bored, all joy, contemplative, it doesn't matter the look or to whom it belongs; it is a close-up of a male face (and it is momentarily difficult to determine just what product is being advertised); it is repeated three times; the second is a medium shot of a thing, a machine, an instrument, electronic, certainly, gleaming, open, offering the open viewer all the world; it is repeated three times; the third is a very wide view of a landscape, and again, whether desert, tundra, forest, mountain range, or even a great city, it does not matter which; it is a landscape, and it too is repeated three times. All of it then thus: face, face, face, machine, machine, machine, landscape, landscape, landscape. And then again, in a perfectly elegant and unexpectedly emotional reprise, capping this lovely sequence, the end of the sentence of the poem, and all of it viewed within a matter of seconds between Sendagaya and Shinanomachi stations – her face.

Chapter 12

UENO–AKIHABARA

Roberta returned to Tokyo; Lang finished his work – there it is – here they are!

***

Tokyo Nous Appartient

– Jacques Rivette-Silva

***

–
Marriage then.

–
À la mode?

–
No – in a manner of speaking.

–
What's Ophuls say, most married couples come to hate each other after just a few years together, but most of them don't come to realize it.

–
Max on the mark once more. Max and Garbo, what that might have been!

–
Are they extending one of the subway lines, by the way?

–
I don't know. I hope so. As far as Akita, down to my islands.

–
Right, live in Kyushu somewhere and commute to Tokyo.

–
Why not? I'm sure they'd make the trains comfortable, and fast.

–
Super-bullets?

–
With bed capsules.

–
And bars.

–
Karaoke.

–
Soap cars!

–
Tunnels of love. Looking at it like this, it sounds a definite possibility.

–
I give 'em twenty years at the outside.

–
The millennial mobile. No, that's too short a time. How about the centenary of Taisho?

–
The mad king, “democracy.”

–
How about more monorails?

–
Like
Metropolis
, yes.

–
I say bring back the pneu, you know, those tubes that wind around inside buildings so that you can send messages through.

–
My old library had that kind of system.

–
Do you think Paris actually had one, I mean, going all over the city? That was how they delivered their mail, wasn't it? Or at least that's the impression I get from their books.

–
But what would this do in Tokyo? I like my mail at the door in the morning; I can't imagine all those magazines zooming through little underground tubes; and what if a rat got caught inside? He zooms through, gets pissed off, you reach in for your mail, and there go two or three fingers!

–
No no, I agree with you. I was thinking more of a larger, thicker pneu in which people could zoom through.

–
Oh, so now you reach for your mail and some guy who's just been ignitioned from across the Tama river only twenty seconds ago, now it's his turn to take a chunk out of you because he's stir crazy?

–
I guess you're right, but maybe there is something there. Or maybe not. Maybe we'd just better stick to our dear train and subway system as it is. Anyway, I do think they're adding on to it, and it can only get better. That's one thing the city has not screwed up.

–
Help me, Jaysus!

–
But if only they didn't stop the trains running so early. Or at least had a late night system, you know, trains every half-hour or so.

–
Sure, but then all those capsule hotels and bars and all night cafés would go out of business, you'd have less vomit on the platforms, the air would not be so redolent of eau de puke.

–
Oh comeon, you know what I mean.

–
I was kidding, of course. But the office workers have to get home and a good night's sleep so they can be back at their desks in the morning.

–
Do you think that's it?

–
And get those teenagers off the streets and in the love hotels where they belong! Of course that's it. Social control – you've heard of it haven't you? They're masters here. They've created a society of sleepwalkers. History really is a nightmare they're desperately trying not to awaken from.

–
Do you really think that?

–
Oh in my off days, yes. In my better moments, I believe in Our Lady of Lunacy. And high-school baseball.

–
And girls in sailor uniforms?

–
With the roundest eyes! But no, you know how I feel about being here.

–
Yes, but that's different from how you feel about here. But I think I know how you feel. Much the same as I.

–
Do you think? Can you imagine?

–
No, perhaps I spoke too soon. I always seem to speak with the random search button on, I have a sort of jog and shuttle verbal apparatus.

–
Oh, comeon, you're not that bad.

–
Oh but you know that I have been known to cause a few “Did-she-just-say-what-I-think-she-said?” looks.

–
True, but …

–
I know, cute mistakes, all the more endearing. Anyway, I won't let me off the hook, so you needn't either. But, how do you feel about here?

–
Where here?

–
Japan, of course.

–
But I'm not in Japan!

–
Well, you're not on the Moon either.

–
No, all I mean is that I'm in Tokyo, and there's a great difference.

–
Do you really think that too?

–
Simple: people outside of Tokyo follow everything that goes on here, right? Fashion, speech, trends, manias, whatever. All the social changes originate here, all the dirty politics, all the international stuff. Do you know many Tokyoites wanting to put on
mompe
and sit on the verandahs sighing all day long about the weather and eating
sembei
?

–
A bit simplistic to me.

–
I suppose.

–
And anyway, the dirty politics begins in the countryside hometowns – where was Tanaka during all those shadow shogun years, or all those other guys, where do they come from? And fashion and manias, do they really amount to much? The fashion system is tied to something larger and of which Tokyo is only one sub-center.

–
Great! Tokyo the city of sub-centers itself a sub-center!

–
Hmm, that's not bad, is it? But then it's only the fashion world. And the trends by definition are not lasting. I mean, a summer's desire for a gilled lizard doesn't really make much of a cultural mark on a country? Speech, well sure, but you get that all over the world, don't you? The Midwestern model in the States – you don't hear too many Southerners on CNN – and Standard Brit on the BBC, and whatever they call it in Paris or Madrid or wherever.

–
Do you think Parisians wax melancholic for the pneu?

–
Oh, I' m sure, but don't change the subject.

–
So what are you getting at – that Tokyoites really do want to take themselves back to the country, and nibble on
sembei
?

–
Well, they do wax sentimental for the country home, you've seen the O-bon dancing. Those city girls and boys have practiced their steps quite well. They do have that country feel. Look at the way they exult – it's not just the rhythm of the drums doing that to their bones.

–
Then it's not a sexual throb?

–
Of course it is that too – but not the sex of the city. And a country music analogy is not too far off. What's
enka
after all but their form of it?

–
Arlene, you're on a roll – and no feet in orifices either.

–
You're one to speak! We ought to have a talk show – the incomprehensibles. Ha, we could set back English education here by decades.

–
What a great idea. We really might be a hit, and besides, English education here is such a shambles anyway, that probably no one would notice the subversion. We'd probably be an improvement on things.

–
We could have a chain of schools.

–
Sleep with the cuter staff too. Boys for me, girls for you. No jealousy.

–
Marianne! I'm afraid I'd be more the den mother type.

–
Lion's den. Lionness's.

–
No, a simple Arlene den.

–
Simple?! But tell me more about your countrified Tokyo.

–
Well, I'm just talking off the top of my head here –

–
From where else would you?

–
Oh, somewhere else is possible too, I'm sure, but not now. All I mean is that I haven't …

–
I understand the phrase. Go on, please.

–
Ok, anyway … O-bon, yes, I mean, that dancing is something in their bones, it's deep, they dance so well because they feel the country so. It's almost primeval. A hankering.

–
Is this going to get anthropological? Psychological? You aren't going to start talking wombs and mothers and that sort of stuff on me in a minute, are you? ‘Cos if you are, bye-bye for me in a split second.

–
Don't worry. At least I think not. Ok, maybe primeval is a bit too too. But you know what I mean.

–
Let's say sort of. So are you saying the great capitol is a deception, that we're awash in a sea of hicks?

–
Not quite, but close. I mean, you know what happens when you go to any store here, how the clerks kowtow, grovel in that slimy way. Is it in
Chikamatsu Monogatari
where you have that clerk always groveling, on his knees whenever someone buys something, and that shrill
Arigato-gozaimasu! Arigato-gozaimasu!
– what is that but the deference of the country bumpkin to big city money?

–
I thought it was a class thing.

–
Oh that too, probably. But the behavior is straight out of Tokugawa country.

–
Is that a branch of music, too?

–
Probably. And what about all these drunk salary-men? Oh, they have to act the sophisticate in business – especially when dealing with foreigners – but wherever do they acquire any sophistication? – you know about those “how to” guides, how to order wine, how to dress properly, how to drop the right names – anyway, at heart, that is, when in their cups, all they really do is hanker for the simpler life of the country. The sophisticate has to prove his rustic side.

–
It's true; I've often wondered about that in the bars.

–
And the girls, the women. The bow-legs, the awful dirndl-like dresses, the country damsel demeanor, my god, and then when they become mothers; comeon, Arlene, you've been outside the city often enough to see country women dressed in layers of quilts, feet wrapped in I don't know what kind of tortuous material, those full fresh country cheeks. Same here.

–
True.

–
And then their fate as mothers and wives. Where is the citified woman there, tell me?

–
No, no, I don't disagree, Arlene.

–
No wonder they go home to the country when they give birth. No, the countryside dominates and determines not so much where the city is going, but what is allowed according to the most ancient traditions. Buruma's book sort of makes the same point too, I suppose, though he doesn't spell it out like I just have.

–
Have you written any of this down?

–
What for?

–
It's just –

–
I know, off the top of my head.

–
Well, maybe we can make it one of the topics of our talk show.

–
Ok.

–
Let's see, “You can take the city out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the city.”

–
“Super-models in
mompei
.”

–
“Primitive Modern.”

–
“Tokyo, the ancient capitol.”

–
“Arigato-gozaimasu! Arigato-gozaimasu!”

–
So, ok, I'm half-convinced, where do we take it from here?

–
Where? Nowhere. I mean, we gotta live here. I don't mean to burst any bubbles, yours or mine.

–
Seen Roberta lately? What goes on with her, her and Lang?

–
Haven't you heard? She's back.
Roberta returned to Tokyo; Lang finished his work – here they are!

–
What do you mean here they are?

–
They're here, both of them, back in Tokyo.

–
Back in this country backwater, both of them?

–
Yes, together again.

–
No, I hadn't heard a thing, I only got back a few days ago, you know.

–
Well, yes. Remember, Lang had to go back to Vienna some months back, right?

–
Yes, sure I remember, who could forget the peaceful but nervous sayonara party, the waiting for all hell to break loose and it not?

–
Oh don't be so –

–
So what?

–
So I don't know, but don't.

–
I wasn't, I was just kidding.

–
Ok, ok. So, he had to go back, had a previous commitment that he had to fulfill, and that apparently he wanted to. It gave him a break from here, to clear his head about here, about Roberta. Apparently too it gave him quite a bit of money.