When You Are Engulfed in Flames (24 page)

February 14

I quit smoking only six weeks ago, but already my skin looks different. It used to be gray, but now it’s gray with a little pink in it. I also notice how much easier it is to move around, to climb stairs, to run for a bus. I’ve often heard cigarettes compared to friends. They can’t loan you money, but they are, in a sense, there for you, these mute little comfort merchants always ready to lift your spirits. It’s how I now feel about macadamia nuts, and these strange little crackers I’ve been buying lately. I can’t make out the list of ingredients, but they taste vaguely of penis.

February 15

It is now official: there is no place on earth where you will not find a Peruvian band. Leaving Tamachi Station last night, I heard the familiar sounds of Simon and Garfunkel’s “El Condor Pasa.” Up the escalator, and there they were: five men in ponchos, blowing the pipes of Pan into cordless microphones. “Didn’t I just see you in Dublin?” I wanted to ask. “Or, no, wait, maybe it was Hong Kong, Oxford, Milan, Budapest, Toronto, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.”

February 16

On my way home from the park yesterday, I decided to stop and get my hair cut. The barber was just sitting around watching TV when I entered, and he invited me to set my bags on one of his three empty chairs. He then gestured for me to sit. I did, and as he covered me with a cloth I came to realize that the man had shit on his hands, a swipe or whatever, most likely on the palm. The smell was unmistakable, and every time he raised the scissors I recoiled. Spotting it would have set my mind to rest, but because he was busy, and most often gripping something, it was hard to get a good look. Then too I was preoccupied by our conversation, which required a great deal of concentration.

Shit on his hands or no shit on his hands, you couldn’t deny that he was a remarkably friendly barber, and a talented one to boot. Early in his career he’d won some sort of a competition. I know this because he showed me a photo: him, fifty years younger, being presented with a medal. “Number one-o champ,” he said, and as he held up his index finger, I bent forward and squinted at it. “Not number two-o?”

He knew, by my count, eight words of English, and after he had used them, we spoke exclusively in Japanese.

“Last night for dinner I ate pork,” I told him. “What did you have?”

“Yakitori,”
he said, and I wondered how I might ask if some of that
yakitori,
the digested version, might not have come back to haunt him.

“Mimi,”
I said, and I pointed to my ear.

“Very good.” And he pointed to his own ear.
“Mimi!”

I then touched the tip of my nose
“Hana.”

“That’s right,
hana,
” the barber said, and he touched his own.

Next I raised my hand, fanned out the fingers, and slowly turned it this way and that, as if it were modeling jewelry on the shopping channel.
“Te.”

“Excellent,” the barber said, but rather than displaying his own hand, he simply raised it a little.

It went on like this for twenty minutes, and when he had finished cutting my hair, the barber covered my head with a damp towel. He then proceeded to punch me about the ears. I’ve gone back and forth on this, wondering if “punch” is too strong a word, but I really don’t think it is. He didn’t fracture my skull or break any of his knuckles, he never actually drew back his arm, but it really did hurt.

“Hey,” I said, but he just laughed and landed another blow above my right
mimi.
Luckily the towel was there, or in addition to the pain I’d have obsessed about the shit he was pounding into my new haircut. Of course I washed it anyway, twice as a matter of fact. Hugh had his hair cut a few weeks ago, and so I asked if his barber had punched him in the head as well.

“Sure did,” he said. So at least that part was normal.

February 19

According to Amy’s friend Helen Ann, it takes thirty days to break a habit and forty-five to break an addiction. On my forty-fifth day without a cigarette, I was in Kyoto and didn’t think about smoking until we left a temple and came across a group of men gathered around an outdoor ashtray. This was at about 4:00 in the afternoon, during a brief break in the rain.

Our weekend trip was a package deal — train fare and two nights in a slightly shabby hotel. I don’t know if it’s common or not, but all of the bellhops were women. Not one of them weighed over ninety pounds, so it felt very strange to hand over my suitcase. It also felt weird not to offer a tip, but, according to Reiko, that’s never done.

The hotel wasn’t very busy, and its relative emptiness made it all the more depressing. Our Western-style breakfast was served on the ground floor, in a plain, harshly lit banquet room. It was there that I saw a Japanese woman eat a croissant with chopsticks. The food was self-serve, and I wonder who they consulted before deciding on the menu. Eggs and sausage made sense, as did toast, cereal, and fruit. But who eats a green salad for breakfast? Who eats mushroom soup, corn chowder, or steamed broccoli? On our second morning we went to an equally sad room and had the Japanese breakfast, which was served by women in kimonos. This, too, was something of a nightmare, and while shuddering I imagined a mother scolding her son. “Oh, no you don’t,” she might say. “This is the most important meal of the day, and you’re not going anywhere until you finish your pickles. That’s right, and your seaweed too. Then I want you to eat your cold poached egg submerged in broth and at least half of that cross-eyed fish.”

February 22

Lying in bed this morning, I realized that since leaving Paris I have not seen a single person on Rollerblades. Neither have I seen anyone on one of those push-along scooters that were a five-minute fad for the rest of the world but remain inexplicably popular in France. The problem here is bikes, which people ride on the sidewalks rather than in the streets. Elsewhere this is done with a sense of entitlement — “Get out of my way, you” — but the cyclists of Tokyo seem content to slowly, silently creep along behind you, “Don’t mind me” being the general attitude. I also notice that of the hundreds of bikes parked outside the subway station, hardly any of them are locked. This makes me wonder if people lock their cars or the front doors to their apartments.

February 23

Every time I return from the basement supermarket, Hugh asks me what music was playing. I wondered why he wanted to know, and then I started paying attention and realized that it’s a really good question. A few days ago, I stood in line and listened to an English rendition of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” Since then I’ve heard “Rock-a-bye Baby,” “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” “The Bear Went Over the Mountain,” and what may well be the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing “Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s home from work we go.”

February 27

In the spotless restroom of the Tamachi station, I noticed that beside each urinal there’s a hook for your umbrella. It’s just another of those personal touches that keep you coming back.

March 3

In the lobby of our building, there are four leather sofas and two coffee tables. People occasionally sit down there, but not too often. “Maybe because of this,” Hugh said yesterday, and he pointed to a sheet of rules written in Japanese. “No smoking” was clear enough, just a cigarette with a slash through it. Then there was “no drinking milk from a carton” and what was either “no eating candy hearts” or “no falling in love.”

March 4

I’d always thought of myself as a careful smoker, but last night, while watching a burning building on the evening news, I remembered the afternoon I started a fire in a hotel room. What happened was that I’d emptied my ashtray too soon. One of the butts must have been smoldering, and it ignited the great wads of paper in my trash can. Flames licked the edge of my desk and would have claimed the curtains had I not acted quickly.

Then there was the time I was taking a walk in Normandy, and the tip of my lit cigarette brushed the cuff of my jacket. One moment my wrist felt hot, and the next thing I knew I was like the Scarecrow in
The Wizard of Oz.
Flames leapt from my sleeve and I jumped from foot to foot, batting at them and calling out for help.

In all the excitement, my half-smoked cigarette dropped from my hand and rolled to the edge of the road. Once the fire was out and I’d halfway regained my composure, I picked it up, brushed off the dirt, and stuck it back in my mouth, just happy to be alive.

March 6

I took the train to Yokohama yesterday and was at Shinagawa Station when a couple got on with their young son, who was maybe a year and a half old. For the first few minutes the boy sat on his mother’s lap. Then he started fussing and made it clear that he wanted to look out the window. The father said something that sounded, in tone, like, “You just looked out the window two days ago.” Then he sighed and bent forward to remove his son’s shoes. The mother, meanwhile, went through her bag and pulled out a small towel, which she then spread upon the seat. The boy stood upon it in his stocking feet, and as he considered the passing landscape he smacked his palms against the glass. “Ba,” he said, and I wondered if that was a word or just a sound. “Ba, ba.”

We all rode along for a pleasant ten minutes, and, shortly before the train reached their stop, the father put the boy’s shoes back on. His wife returned the towel to her purse, and then, using a special wipe, she cleaned her son’s fingerprints off the glass. Coming from France where people regularly put their feet on the train seats, and from America where they not only pound the windows, but carve their initials into them, the family’s display of consideration was almost freakish. Ba, I’ve since decided, is Japanese for “Watch carefully, and do what we do.”

March
7

Four hours into
Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees,
and I wondered how I had survived all these many years without Kabuki. It helped, I think, that we rented those little radio transmitters. Hugh’s and mine were in English, and Akira’s was in Japanese. The play was in Japanese as well, but the stylized manner in which people spoke made them very difficult to understand. The equivalent, in English, might be Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West calling out that she’s melting, only slower, and with frequent pauses.

If I hadn’t had the radio transmitter, I would have been perfectly happy watching the sets and the elaborately costumed actors. I would have noticed that most of the women were on the homely side, some of them strikingly so, but I wouldn’t have known that these roles were played by men, which is one of the rules, apparently: no girls allowed, just like in Shakespeare’s day.

The story of
Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees
was both simple and complicated. Simple in that things never change: people are consistently jealous or secretive or brave-hearted. As for the rest, it all came down to a series of misunderstandings, the type that could happen to anyone, really. You assume that the sushi bucket is full of gold coins, but instead it’s got Kokingo’s head in it. You think you know everything about your faithful follower, but it turns out that he’s actually an orphaned fox who can change his shape at will. It was he who spoke my favorite line of the evening, five words that perfectly conveyed just how enchanting and full of surprises this Kabuki business really is: “That drum is my parents.”

There was a lot of sobbing in last night’s presentation. Lots of teeth gnashing, lots of dying. Our transmitters explained that the playwrights wanted to end on a dramatic note, so at the close of act six, after Kakuhan reveals himself as Noritsune and vows to one day meet Yoshitsune on the field of battle, he climbs a two-step staircase, turns to the audience, and crosses his eyes. What with his fist clenching and a hairstyle that might be best described as a Beefeater shag, you had to laugh, but at the same time you couldn’t help being moved. And that, I think, is pretty much the essence of a good show.

March 9

Riding the high-speed train — the Shinkansen — to Hiroshima, I supposed that to the untrained eye, all French cities might look alike, as might all German and American ones. To a Japanese person, Kobe and Osaka might be as different as Santa Fe and Chicago, but I sure don’t see it. To me it’s just concrete, some gray and some bleached a headachy white. Occasionally you’ll pass a tree, but rarely a crowd of them. The Shinkansen moves so fast you can’t really concentrate on much. It’s all a whoosh, and before you know it one city is behind you and another is coming up.

If the world outside the train is fast and bleak, the world inside is just the opposite. I like the girl in uniform who pushes the snack cart down the aisle and the two girls in brighter, shorter uniforms who come by every so often and cheerfully collect your trash. Nobody talks on his cell phone, or allows music to bleed from an iPod. You don’t see any slobs either. On the first leg of our trip, we sat across from a man I guessed to be in his midfifties. His lower face was obscured by a mask, the type people wear when they have a cold. But his hair was oiled and carefully combed. The man wore a black suit, matching black shoes, and canary yellow socks that looked to be made of wool rather than cotton. It was such a small thing, these socks, but I couldn’t take my eyes off them. “Hugh,” I said. “Do you think I would look good in yellow socks?”

He thought for a moment before saying, “No,” this without a trace of doubt, as if I asked if I’d look good in a body stocking.

March 10

Having written that so many Japanese cities look alike, I couldn’t help noticing that Hiroshima was clearly different: greener, more open. We caught a cab at the station, and after telling the driver where we were going I explained that my friend and I were Europeans, visiting from our home in Paris.

“Oh,” the driver said. “That’s far.”

“Yes it is,” I agreed.

The trip to the hotel took maybe ten minutes, and Hugh and I spent most of it speaking French. We did this a lot during our time in Hiroshima, especially at the memorial museum, which was torturous. Just when you’d think that it couldn’t get any sadder, you’d come upon another display case, one in particular with a tag reading, “Nails and skin left by a twelve-year-old boy.” This boy, we learned, was burned in the blast, and subsequently grew so thirsty that he tried to drink the pus from his infected fingers. He died, and his mother kept his nails and the surrounding skin to show to her husband, who’d gone off to work the day the bomb was dropped but never came home.