With My Little Eye (4 page)

On that last visit of mine to Japan, a little more than three weeks ago, Miss Morita at once offered herself spontaneously as my unpaid guide. She also did the same thing, forty and more years ago, on my first visit. On that first visit I insisted on paying her. On the second I decided that we had been so close for such a long time that, despite her straightened means, it would have been insulting to have done so.

After almost half a century she is still unmarried; she still covers her mouth with a hand whenever she laughs or, on some occasions, even speaks – a habit that now maddens me since, with increasing deafness, I unconsciously lip-read a lot; she still lives in the same flat, half of a small, tottery Japanese-style house, in which she devoted so much of her time and attention to her ailing mother, now dead for many, many years. There is still a muted yearning in her relationship with me and a quiet ferocity in her dealings with the outside world. Even more now than before, she gets what she wants – on that last visit of mine the opening of a temple usually closed on Tuesdays, the loan of a book that, because of its rarity, must be read in the university library in which it is kept, the immediate repair of my faltering watch. But the will that achieves these successes is always a sword sheathed in a scabbard of apparent modesty and gentleness.

It was she who was with me in that new and strange museum in Osaka when I suffered my stroke. Some premonition must, I am convinced, have made me, pleading exhaustion, at first resist her proposal to go there that morning. But a wave of that steely blade of her will then overcame me – as it had so often done in the past and as the stroke was so soon to do.

We had travelled there – yes, though I have forgotten so much, I do remember that – in the car of the university of which I was an ‘honoured guest’ (as they repeatedly referred to me as though to convince not merely other people but also themselves that I was someone of importance). Its Japanese
driver constantly surprised me with his un-Japanese volubility and vivacity. Clearly he was one of the ‘new’ Japanese of whom one today hears so much. The squawky middle-aged woman who was, she announced to me, the university’s ‘International Officer’ had efficiently supervised the planning of my
programme
of lectures, seminars and visits to people expert in my subject; but, ‘terribly busy’ as she more than once told me, she was happy that, unpaid and efficient, Miss Morita should act as my companion and guide. If the official car were not available, then we would, she kept telling us, be entitled to taxis ‘on the house’. ‘It’s all part of the service,’ she added brightly on more than one occasion.

On my arrival at Tokyo airport, Miss Morita, now an elderly woman, and I, now an ancient man, had both felt delight at once again being together. But neither of us showed it. She stood, hands clasped before her and head lowered, behind the ‘International Officer’ of the university and the director of the department for which I was to give three of my lectures. She did not look at me as I came through the barrier and the other two then stepped forward to greet me. I did not look at her. Eventually, our eyes met. When they did so, I approached her slowly, extended a hand, bowed my head, and, as she took my hand in hers, said, ‘How nice to see you again, Miss Morita.’ She bobbed in what was almost a curtsey. Her hand was limp and ungiving.

To anyone not Japanese it may seem strange that I should have addressed my assistant, guide and friend of half a century as ‘Miss Morita’, and that she should have still observed the same formality when addressing me. But that has always been the nature of our relationship – paradoxical to anyone English but of a kind that even today can often exist between close friends and even spouses and lovers in Japan. It has been a relationship that is durable and yet has always kept each of us at a distance from the other. We are closest not on my visits to Japan or hers to England, both increasingly rare, but in our letters. When separated for long periods from each other we have kept up an assiduous correspondence, with my constantly asking her to carry out this or that piece of research for me and her constantly asking me for my critical estimate of this or that
English classic that, slowly turning page after page, she has been reading with her usual scrupulous attention.

What first brought us together, all those years ago, was that, when not tending to the exacting demands of her mother, she was acting as part-time secretary to Mrs Kawasaki. ‘Poor girl, she needs the money‚’ Mrs Kawasaki explained to Laura and me. ‘Often I really have little for her to do, but I let her come to me each day in spite of that. I like her. She’s a good girl. I feel sorry for her with that mother.’ Miss Morita’s father, Mrs Kawasaki went on to tell us, had been a junior lecturer in biology at Kyoto University. In his late twenties he had
succumbed
to the tuberculosis that had already claimed the lives of his mother and a brother – ‘hereditary’, Mrs Kawasaki explained. The mother came from a once-rich family but now lived largely off her daughter’s meagre earnings and a small allowance from a Tokyo cousin with whom she had little
contact
. She had never fully recovered from a back injury sustained when, attempting to prune some branches of a tree that had begun to overshadow the tiny flat in which she had lived for most of her life, she had toppled off a ladder.

Miss Morita, notepad in hand, accompanied Mrs Kawasaki when we made an inventory of the house. Dressed in a plain brown frock with a white lace collar, brown, low-heeled brogue shoes and a brown straw hat, she was so unremarkable and so self-effacing that I hardly noticed her. ‘Six teacups and saucers and six small plates, Imari ware, one saucer cracked,’ Mrs Kawasaki dictated, holding up the cracked saucer for me and Laura to confirm. Head bent, peering through her gold-rimmed spectacles, Miss Morita would then scribble frenziedly on the notepad. Later she produced for us a perfectly typed copy of the document.

From time to time, when I met Miss Morita pushing her mother in her cumbrously old-fashioned wheelchair down our long, leafy lane, or hastening to her morning tasks for Mrs Kawasaki, I would give her a bow, murmur a good morning and often add something trite about the beauty either of the weather or of the blossom then all around and above us. She would halt, nod her head and smile. She rarely spoke a word in response. Her mother, a rug over her knees however warm and sunny the weather, would stare at me with an unnerving
puzzlement, as though she had never seen me before and had no notion who I was.

It was, ironically, Laura who was instrumental in first
establishing
a lasting relationship between Miss Morita and myself. During those first weeks of ours in Japan, we had shared an indefatigable eagerness to visit the temples and gardens, all too often empty of all but half-a-dozen or so other people. The farther off that they were situated and the fewer the people who knew of their existence, the more we wanted to see them. We used constantly to telephone Katinka to ask if one or other of her girl lodgers could come over to babysit. On one such
occasion
, no girl lodger being available, the Shotts turned up – ‘No, no, we don’t want any payment, we’re happy to look after the dear little girl,’ Mrs Shott assured us, having forgotten that we had already twice corrected her by telling her that our baby was a boy called Mark.

It was the Shotts who were instrumental in our acquiring a car: an ancient Cadillac with an alternately gasping and
clattering
air conditioning system, cracked real leather seats and
automatic
transmission, a rarity in those days, that needed repeated and alarmingly expensive attention. It belonged to an Army friend of theirs, who, not surprisingly, had no intention of
taking
it back to the States with him. We congratulated ourselves on having got it for six hundred dollars, but its consumption of petrol was insatiable. Laura usually drove. She was astonishingly adroit at edging the huge, clumsy vehicle through what to me appeared to be impassable lanes – ‘threading the eye of a needle,’ we called it.

Because I spent so much time on our expeditions and so was neglecting the research for which I had been awarded my
scholarship
, Laura repeatedly urged me to get myself an assistant. ‘I’ll pay her,’ she promised. Since in Japan such posts were far more often filled by men than by women, I wondered why she always used the pronoun ‘she’. As so often in my life, I
dithered
. Then one day, having gone over to Mrs Kawasaki to tell her that a damp patch had appeared on our bedroom ceiling after some heavy rain, Laura burst into my tower study: ‘I’ve had a wonderful idea. Why don’t you ask Miss Morita to be your assistant?’

I straightened some papers. ‘Oh, I don’t really think …’ The
idea had no appeal for me. ‘She’s so … so
negative
. Drab.’ I laughed. ‘And, oh, so plain!’

‘Never mind about her looks. Mrs K. says she’s highly
educated
. And she knows a lot about Japanese art. At Doshisha she got a good degree in history and was even offered a university job – which she couldn’t take because of that invalid mother. But art is now her great passion in life. According to Mrs K. she’s quite an expert on
kashoga
– whatever that is.’

‘Genre scenes. Illustrating trades and professions. Well, that’s interesting.’ I had myself recently become fascinated by the few works that survive of Yoshinobu, a painter who specialised in
kashoga
.

‘Well, why not have a word with her?’

For some reason I delayed. Perhaps what I really hankered after was some assistant both beautiful and brilliant. Miss Morita was certainly not the first of those things and I doubted if she would prove to be the second of them.

The next morning, when I was typing out some notes, as always with two fingers, Laura once again burst in, this time with Miss Morita behind her. ‘I thought that you really must have a word with Miss Morita about our idea for her. I caught her finishing some typing next door. Do sit down, Miss Morita.’ Laura pointed at a chair. Miss Morita edged towards it, stared at its seat as though to make sure that it wouldn’t collapse beneath her weight, and then lowered herself slowly on to it. Head slightly tilted to one side, hands clasped in lap and feet crossed at ankles, she then waited for one of us to speak. It was, as so often, Laura who did so.

From Miss Morita’s response I at once got the impression that she really did not want either the job or any payment for doing it but was reluctant to say so for fear of hurting my
feelings
and making me lose face. It was only many weeks later that she confessed to me, over cups of coffee in a cafe, a favourite of hers, in which one tried to be heard against a constant
background
of classical music, that my making of the offer of work was ‘as if someone had – how may I say? – opened the only window of a room after it is shut for many, many years.’ She picked up her cup of coffee, sipped daintily and then sipped again. She looked across at me with an unnerving intensity. She
licked her lower lip. ‘So you understand, sensei, you have saved me,’ she eventually brought out.

I was aghast. What had I let myself in for?

In fact, what I had let myself in for was the strongest, most rewarding and most enduring friendship of my life.

This morning it was the young Italian whom, at breakneck speed, the boisterous, constantly laughing black porter
propelled
out of the ward and into the outside world. The Italian’s tall, angular, pale brother had arrived, accompanied by a grave and oddly silent boy – the brother’s son, another brother? – who must have been ten or eleven, and by the plump,
round-faced
English girlfriend, constantly sneezing and blowing her nose, who would also be making the journey. I had expected the young Italian to be overjoyed at the prospect of a return to his home. But, strangely, there was a limp, grudging sadness about him. As the others ransacked his locker and then began to pack, the tone of everything that he said to them, whether to give instructions or to answer their questions, was impatient and tetchy.

‘
Ciao
!’ He raised his good arm to me as he was wheeled past my bed. It was no longer trembling.

‘
Ciao
!’ I repeated. ‘Good luck.’

‘Please say goodbye to the signora. And thank her for her kindness.’

The others smiled briefly at me. The brother mumbled, ‘Thank you.’

As they moved down the ward, the tunnel through which I watched seemed even narrower and even more choked than usual with snail-smears and trails of dead or dying vegetation. On their disappearance at the far end, I suffered a strange sense of desertion. I had to remind myself that the Italian had been my neighbour for – what? – only four days and during that whole period we had spoken little to each other. I felt that I had known him for a long time. I felt that I knew him well.

Now Dr Szymanovski is walking down the ward towards me. Today he is not in a hurry, as on every other day, and there are two women accompanying him instead of that one Scotsman. I have not seen the Scotsman since that time when Dr Szymanovski humiliated him by asking him to explain Bonnet’s
Syndrome to me. Perhaps it is the presence of those two vivid, attractive women, with their bright eyes and ready smiles, that has made the change in him. Now he has clearly cracked a joke, putting a hand on one of the women’s arm, since both of them are laughing and he is laughing too.

He asks the usual question. ‘Well, how are we today?’ He does not wait for my answer. ‘Any more of those hallucinations?’

‘Not since last I saw you.’

‘Super. Let’s hope that that’s the end of them.’ He turns to the two women. ‘He was seeing things. Not all that uncommon after a stroke.’ He does not ask either of them if she has heard of Bonnet’s Syndrome. He would not want to humiliate them, as he humiliated the Scottish intern. As they move off, he is explaining, ‘There was this Swiss doctor way back in …’ Looking around at the patients, neither of the two women is listening to him.

I stare at the empty bed on which the Italian was so recently stretched out. One of the Filipino cleaners who move about silent and unsmiling has already removed all the bedding. Oddly, even the mattress has gone.

I blink, blink again.

I feel a spasm of terror. I feel a surge of relief.

She is there. Smoky. The pale-blue eyes are looking at me. The extravagant tail fans back and forth, like a gust of smoke from a bonfire. We stare at each other.

I extend my hand. ‘
Come
!’ I say it audibly, not caring if any of my fellow patient-prisoners hear it or not. ‘
Come
!’

Again I put out my hand. I will her to move towards me.

But suddenly she has vanished.