Anatomy of a Novel, Part Two, Episode 11

Chin up, Cornelius

“Come on, Cornelius, it’s not the end of the world.   I wrote that I loved you and got over it, didn’t I?  Chin up.  Let’s go see a movie or something.”

This time I didn’t have to guess what Emi said because Fritz translated for me.  A week had passed, it was Saturday again and, as far as I could tell, everyone knew what happened at Ichikawa Yuki’s dormitory.  Fritz and the Sugiyamas knew, as did Junichiro and Bill.  Most of my students probably knew about it, too, but they had the decency to pretend things were normal.  Ichikawa Yuki didn’t return to class, nor did Mr. Nomura, and Miss Arai made sure she was the last to arrive and the first to leave each evening, so she wouldn’t have to talk to me.  For a few days I felt humiliated, but then I got drunk with Bill and now I was feeling better, and determined to keep whatever I had learned at the dormitory and the Zero park from falling back into the murky shallows of my mind.  But what had I learned?  Did I even know?

“I don’t have time to see a movie, I’ve got an art show to go to,” I said.  “Fritz can go with you.  Why don’t you see Roman Holiday?  I saw it’s playing downtown.”

Roman Holiday… where Gregory Peck got his hand bitten off by sticking it where it didn’t belong.  I glared at Fritz, but he didn’t glare back.  Actually, Fritz had been considerate of me since the Zero incident, and doubly so after he heard about the dormitory.  He’d even given me another novel by the author of the one I read twice, in which a geriatric old man desperately lusts after his daughter-in-law.

“You mean that doll thing’s today?  Okay, I’m going with you,” Emi said.  “How about it, Fritz, you too?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Fritz.

“We’ll be back later, then,” said Emi.  “Don’t leave without us, Cornelius.  If you do I’ll never speak to you again.”

They had come to see me early and Kaori’s exhibition wasn’t until four, so after they left I spent an hour studying Japanese - I was getting better at it - and another finishing my proofreading of Mr. Sugiyama’s new textbooks, their storylines a tragedy of cultural mistakes.  After that I wrote two letters: one to Ichikawa Yuki, begging her pardon, and the other to Natasha, with the simple hope of wishing her a happy life.   If I held no grudges, why not say as much to those I had loved?

I went out to mail my letters at three, came back to shine my shoes, and then at a little after four I put on my suit and went downstairs to find Emi and Fritz waiting outside with Bill, who also wanted to go to the exhibition.  Fritz and Bill had suits on, too, while Emi wore a gorgeous kimono.  Etsuko was there taking photos of them.

“Cornelius thinks it’s fashionable to be late,” Emi said.   “When we get married I bet he’ll even be late to our wedding.”

“You should marry me then,” said Bill.  “I’ve never been late for anything in my life.”

“Harrumph,” said Etsuko, but she included me in the next few photos.

Kaori’s exhibition was in a rented hall on Sanjo-dori, in the heart of Kyoto.  We caught a cab and were halfway there before I remembered Kaori’s stipulation that I bring the doll she gave me.  I asked the driver to stop and told the others I would catch up with them.  I gave Emi the invitation, then bolted before she could say that she’d go back with me.  When she turned to stare out of the taxi’s rear window she looked like the doll I forgot, leaving for the exhibition without me.

I couldn’t find another taxi, so I crossed the street and had just begun a fast walk home when Junichiro pulled up on his motorcycle.  He was going to the exhibition, too - to bartend - but he said he’d take me home and wait for me.  Since I wanted to be careful with the doll, and extra careful with Junichiro after he turned into his father and tried to kill me, I told him just to take me home.  I’d seen him twice since the Zero park incident, and the surface of things had been calm.  But there was a shift below the surface, which neither of us knew what to do about it.  We had recognized the war beneath the peace, but not yet the peace beneath the war.       

At Sunny Hive I ran upstairs, hurrying into my room without taking my shoes off.  The doll waited on the stand that Fritz lent me.  Just as I was about to grab her and head back out, I heard the faint strains of music coming from my window and looked down into the Sugiyamas backyard to see Etsuko dancing across the tops of the exercise mats that we had used that morning.  Though she’d just come inside after taking our photos, she’d managed to change into a sheer and clingy garment, the kimono of a ghost - the kimono of Kikuya’s backup singer - and now she had her arms stretched above her in solitary entreaty, her hands around an ancient photo in a frame. 

The music she danced to was Eric Satie’s Gymnopédies - I knew it from living with Natasha - her dance a heartbroken restatement of the phrase she had used in Ichikawa Yuki’s room the week before - It means what it always means, that love is hopeless.   She believed she was alone, of course, her daughter gone to a doll exhibition, her husband probably handing out flyers in front of their school.  I got just a short glimpse of the figures in the photo she held, but they appeared to be children of about Emi’s age, the sense of her dance that of waves washing ashore and rolling back out, washing ashore and rolling back out, the pose of the children immemorial… 

I stepped away from the window and when I looked into the doll’s face again, saw an acknowledgment of the expression my own face surely wore: that I should not have seen what I saw.   

-

I got to the exhibition hall at five, thinking there would be a spot reserved for my doll on a shelf like those I’d seen at Kaori’s studio.  But the room was filled with individual… pillars,  I guess you’d call them, the tallest at eye level with me, the shortest at eye level with Emi.  They were spaced unevenly about the room, as if Kaori had found a stash of them in some Greek ruin.  For a moment I thought I’d opened the wrong door, stumbling onto a stage set for a modern production of Antigone or Oedipus Rex.   When Kaori saw me she took my doll and placed it on the tallest pillar, so she appeared to be standing guard, ready to draw her sword at the first sign of trouble.

Emi and Fritz and Bill were huddled over by a window, while Junichiro sat behind a makeshift bar, bottles of beer and whiskey arrayed in front of him.  Kaori’s near life-sized dolls sat facing him, each with a glass of whiskey in front of her.  Kaori skirted the room, welcoming her guests in a dress identical to those the life-sized dolls wore.

The moment Emi saw me, she hurried over with word that half of the smaller dolls looked like her.  She pulled me around from pillar to pillar.  “See!” she said.  “And I mean eggs-actly!”

Since she raised her voice into a scornful half-shout, Kaori came to see what was up.

“I am not a doll.  I am a girl named Emi!” Emi said.  “If most of these dolls are me, then I want part of your profits!”

“Ah, but far from most of them, none of them are you,” said Kaori.  “Just as with people, you need to look closely at my dolls in order to see what is hidden beneath the surface.  Once you do you will start to see a thousand differences, and you might also recognize the one that is closest to you.”

That sent Emi off to stare at each doll, while it reminded me of my mistake with Ichikawa Yuki’s drawing - you need to look closely for what’s hidden beneath the surface…

“The room’s arranged beautifully,” I said.  “The lighting, the various pillar heights…” but Kaori only said, “Let’s go get a drink.”

Junichiro had placed empty chairs between each of the life-sized dolls, so that guests might sit down and appear to be drinking with them.  When Kaori and I sat in two of those chairs he poured us each a glass of beer.  The doll that looked like a sexy librarian sat between us, undoing me a little with the steadiness of her gaze.   

“I don’t mind Emi, and Fritz is harmless,” Kaori said.  “But why did you bring Bill, Cornelius?  You didn’t tell me you were doing such a thing, and I do not appreciate it.”

She leaned across the librarian doll to speak in my ear.  “Don’t you know how badly he hurt me?  I wouldn’t bring your English girlfriend to an exhibition of yours.”

I had no memory of telling her about my English girlfriend, but maybe I had.  Lost memories of speaking about Natasha had come back to haunt me before.

“No, I don’t know how badly he hurt you.  I heard you were together before Melinda got here, but nothing more.  And I didn’t bring him.  Once he saw my invitation he invited himself.”

Kaori sat up straight again, collecting herself.  It was her exhibition, after all, and she had to be together for her guests.  “I guess it doesn’t matter, but you really didn’t hear what happened when I was his student?” she asked. 

Before she could tell me, however, more people arrived and she got up to greet them.

I had just started watching Bill, to see if I could garner any hints regarding what he’d done to her, when Fritz sat down in Kaori’s chair.  “Bill wants to know how long we’re staying,” he said.  “He says he wants to go home now.”

“Fuck what Bill wants,” I said.  “And there isn’t any ‘we’, Fritz, he can leave by himself. All I have to worry about is taking Emi home before it gets too late.”

I hadn’t meant to swear, but Fritz wasn’t listening to me anyway.    

“She sees herself everywhere,” he said.  “She falls in love and out of it… I think we should all try to live by her example.  What is the expression of your Mr. Henry David Thoreau? — ‘Let a woman step to the music that she hears...’ "

There was no question that he was talking about Kaori, for he followed her with his eyes.  Since our time together at the Zero park I’d softened more toward Fritz than I had toward Junichiro.  Fritz had an off-putting manner, maybe, but he, too, marched to music that no one else could hear.   Like our Mr. Henry David Thoreau.

“Really, Fritz, why did Bill come if he wants to leave so soon?” I asked.  “Can you tell me plainly what happened between Kaori and him?”

Junichiro had been pouring whiskey for some men who just came in, but he wandered back in time to hear my question.  “That’s easy,” he said, “He came because he wants to compare what he currently has to what he had before.  And now that he’s done it he wants to go off and lick his wounds.”

He didn’t seem to care how deeply that insulted Melinda, whom I felt some compulsion to defend.   Still, it was the first time he’d expressed an opinion on anything since the Zero park, so I kept my compulsion to myself.

“Okay, here’s the verdict,” Emi said, bouncing back to us.  “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.  All the dolls look like me, but they look like me in different moods, like me being in a funk or thinking about how tired I am of being a kid, even like me watching television or getting ready for bed.  Yet the only time I ever met that doll maker in my whole long life was when I went to Mountain Cabin to get Grandpa one time.  So how come she has a thing about me, that’s what I want to know.”

“Maybe she likes your haircut,” said Fritz.

“Which is why, starting tomorrow, I’m growing it out!”

Junichiro got her a lemonade, while Bill moved across the room and started talking to Kaori.  Kaori’s back was to me but I saw it stiffen, while Bill’s mouth bunched together like he was about to spit something out.

Junichiro had brought a tripod and a camera with him, his promise to Kaori not only to bartend but to photograph her dolls, develop the film quickly, and exhibit the photos at Mountain Cabin.  But by eight o’clock, when Emi began blowing bubbles in her lemonade, he still hadn’t taken any pictures, so when Fritz said that he would take Emi home, I offered to bartend while Junichiro got busy unpacking his equipment.  I thought Bill would go with Fritz, but he saw that the beer was dwindling and offered to go buy more.

Kaori had no price list for her dolls, but not long after that red dots and green dots began appearing at the tops of the pillars, just below the dolls themselves, red for “sold” and green for “still for sale.”  At first there were more green dots than red, then more red than green.  Most of the Emi lookalike dolls had red dots, but I was relieved to see that my doll, standing above the others with her sword ready, had no dot at all.  It appeared that she really would be Kaori’s gift to me.

While I poured drinks I kept my eyes on the life-sized dolls.  The one whose fingers touched her glass seemed perplexed, while the other two leaned back, one with her shoulders squared, still accenting her breasts, the other more primly, forever a Kaori librarian at the checkout desk.  Those two weren’t revealing much, so my attention stayed on the perplexed one, who appeared to be about to be more forthcoming.  I kept topping off her glass and sipping from it myself.

When Bill returned with a dozen big bottles of icy beer, he opened one, sat down next to the big-breasted doll, and turned to watch Kaori cross the room.

“When’s Melinda coming back?” I asked.

Bill would have been handsome if not for the fact that his teeth were too big, giving the impression that there were too many of them in his mouth.  But big teeth or not, he was nobody’s fool.  “Come on, man,” he said.  “You’re as bad as Fritz.  I came to see her exhibition, just like you did.”

I topped off the perplexed doll’s glass and tried again.  “What happened between you?  Just how badly did you act with her, Bill?”

This time I thought he might take real offense, but he answered me seriously.

“It wasn’t fake, if that’s what you think.  I wasn’t faking it, man, not for a minute.”

“Got it,” I said, “but not faking what?”

“We had one month together, one month, and all of a sudden she sends me, out of absolutely nowhere, an itinerary she got at a travel agent with both of our names on it, and tickets to…  get this… tickets to Australia!”

Junichiro had started shooting pictures of Kaori and her dolls on the other side of the room, but Kaori was looking past him at us.   I shrugged and said, “She knew what she wanted and told you without words.  I call that a breath of fresh air.”

Natasha hadn’t used words, either, to tell me she didn’t want me anymore.  She’d simply jangled the keys to my flat.  Jangled them and set them down.  It hadn’t been a breath of fresh air then, but a gut punch.

“I understand that now, but Melinda’d just arrived so I chose something knowable over something strange,” said Bill.  “Is that such a horrible crime?”

“No crime at all,” I said.  “Melinda’s great.”

Bill noticed where my eyes were and turned to look at Kaori, who had just left Junichiro to speak to a newly-arrived patron.  Two other new patrons came over to us, one of them asking the other if he thought the life-sized dolls were for sale.  When he leaned down to pat the leg of the perplexed doll I nearly slapped his hand away.  Bill saw my impulse and took courage from it.

“You might think she’s a free spirit, and that if you follow her you’ll be free as well, Cornelius, but look at these three versions of her sitting here.  One waits in a bar all night long; one says, ‘The way to my heart is through my mind’; and the third says, ‘Take me home and fuck me…’  You can call that ‘free’ if you want to but let me tell you, when it’s all wrapped up in the same person it’s confusing.  So yes, the Australia thing surprised me…  But what if I wanted another chance?”

“Then tell her,” I said.  “Only tell Melinda first.  If you don’t it just turns you into a bigger schmuck than you were before.”

The man who’d patted the librarian’s leg held up a glass.  So I opened another of Bill’s beers and filled it for him.

Endnotes…

1. During the nearly half decade that I lived in Japan, whether in Ibaraki Prefecture or in Tokyo, “Roman Holiday”, introducing the unforgettable ingenue of cuteness, Audrey Hepburn, was ALWAYS playing somewhere…. often in cheap 100 yen theaters, since the movie had been out by then for nearly two decades.   So I thought I’d better give it a nod in this novel.

2. It occurred to me that perhaps the scene of Etsuko dancing erotically to the Eric Satie piece isn’t necessary.  I wrote it in order to insinuate the great love of Etsuko’s life more thoroughly into the story, but it may be that I simply don’t trust my readers… that they don’t need more ‘insinuation’ than what was presented earlier in the story.  What do you think?

3. The bold move of doing such a thing as buying tickets to Australia as a way of expressing one’s serious romantic interest in someone, and then presenting it to the person in a sort of “done-deal” itinerary is, I think, very Japanese, for it avoids far more emotionally fraught ways of doing it such as speaking frankly to the person face to face…  Bold moves are fine in Japanese culture, but they must be done, as it were, offstage.