FRENCH KISS
AS I SIT down to my souvlaki, the only Greek invention since democracy (I’m saying that just to bug my landlord), I wonder why Japanese modernity has been in such demand since the end of Mao’s reign. Of course, there’s the boom in Asian images, not to mention Japan’s ability to turn everything it touches into a cliché, a cliché about which we know almost nothing — to the point that we sometimes wonder if cliché is not a contemporary version of Greek myth. Did the Greeks call their ancient clichés Greek myths? The French kiss exists everywhere but France. When the French kiss, do they make sure their tongues never touch? In North America, when tongues touch, that’s a French kiss. I always thought it was a spontaneous act among all human beings. I remember the terror I felt before my first kiss. What if she devoured my tongue? It was my choicest cut of meat, and here I was, blindly trusting her with it. “Give me your tongue” doesn’t have the same meaning in the North as it does in the South. My mind wanders down every path. I’m not going to start putting up barriers, especially when I’m reflecting on the crumbs that fall from Pascal’s table. The cliché stands far above morals. It is there, round, mysterious, eternal. It smiles upon us. No personal use of a cliché is possible, except to return it to its sender. Everyone knows that Negroes are lazy. Now there’s a cliché. When a white man works too much, we say he’s working like a nigger. Everything stops. The cliché travels through time and space as fast as lightning. When it stops, it creates a silence. I look out the window and see three young women in a hurry. One of them looks like Fumi. It is Fumi. I recognize her dark smile. Fumi told me she was doing her work-study in a restaurant not far from here. She turns around at the last minute. No, it’s not her. On the sidewalk, a Japanese tourist is shooting away at our Greek cook. I always wonder: what does he see? To find out, you’d have to become Japanese.
A PING — PONG GAME
WHAT DO YOU know, it’s blinking. Two messages from the Japanese consulate. Already — those Japanese are fast! I called back immediately. A certain Mr. Tanizaki would like to speak with me. However, this Mr. Tanizaki has gone out to lunch with his superior, Mr. Mishima (they don’t mess with the hierarchy here). Actually, all I got was a machine that gently reminded me that the staff was not in during lunch hour, and would not be returning before two o’clock in the afternoon. I was to call back later, after mealtime. I did call back. They asked me to wait a minute. I heard my name spoken. It was the first time I’d been able to pick out my name in a Japanese conversation; it was like a salad to which someone had added a new ingredient. The next thing I knew, a rather nasal voice was speaking to me.
“Are you the writer?”
“Sometimes.”
“I am Mr. Mishima, but I’m not the writer. I am the viceconsul of Japan, and I would like to meet you.”
“For any particular reason?”
“I cannot discuss it on the telephone.”
“Next Wednesday, at the café Les Gâteries, at noon. . Is that all right with you?”
“Of course. But why there?”
“Why not?”
Silence answered me.
“Fine. . At the café Les Gâteries, Wednesday at noon. I’ll be there.”
I don’t know why, but I figured it was important to insist on that café. I set the time and the place for the meeting. You have to take the initiative in cases like this. I’d seen how it worked in The Godfather, the Coppola film. You set the place, you get there well ahead of time, you hide the gun in the bathroom, behind the toilet. But why the silence? It’s true, there are always periods of silence during this kind of telephone conversation. Sudden stops sometimes destabilize me. Absence of noise is not necessarily silence. And what is silence for the Japanese? Emptiness in a conversation does not have the same meaning in all cultures. Of course it’s not emptiness at all, but a subterranean conversation (we speak to ourselves as we talk to the other person). We hear the silence when both conversations stop at the same time. It’s like a Ping-Pong game: you have to wait until your adversary returns the ball. And if he doesn’t do it with a smooth rhythm, brief spaces where nothing is spoken occur. Sometimes it isn’t an accident. These days, you still meet professionals who can play silences on three levels: the short, the long, and the embarrassing silence. Since I couldn’t analyze his, I suddenly fell silent. Perhaps he wasn’t expecting me to stop so suddenly. In any case, he seemed to freeze (which happens when the body falls silent at the same time as the mind), and then I heard him murmur, “I will come with my assistant, Mr. Tanizaki. I hope you will not mind.”
I had made immoderate use of silence. That weapon can blow up in your face. “Not at all.”
“If anything concerns you in any way, for one reason or another, you will please tell me, sir.”
I had forgotten that style of politeness. One fact is always hidden behind another. Behind silence is politeness. Behind politeness — often cruelty.
“There’s no problem.”
Another lengthy silence (it was his turn now), though the onus was on him to thank me and hang up. Didn’t he know it was up to the person who called to put an end to the conversation? Was he, a diplomat, somehow unaware of this code? I decided to end things myself.
“Thank you for your call. I look forward to meeting you.”
Dead air, as if he were busy signing documents.
“Yes, I will see you soon.”
I heard a brief click, the kind that might betray that someone else was listening in on the conversation. Not being in the same room as Mr. Mishima, he couldn’t execute a fully synchronized sign-off. A tenth of a second too soon. It could have been his assistant, Mr. Tanizaki.
DO YOU LIKE SUSHI?
I OFTEN CHANGE hiding places in order not to be identified with one particular spot. I cover my tracks. A moving target in a dazzling city. That should tell you just how disappointed I was when Mr. Mishima changed our meeting to a Japanese restaurant, rejecting my small, intimate café on Rue St-Denis where you can see without being seen. I hadn’t created all these identity displacements just to end up in a Japanese restaurant with Japanese people. In any case, that tells you a lot about the capacity of people to imagine the world, even those who are paid to be more curious than the rest of us. For them, the universe is narrowed down to their mental space and their petty diplomatic chicanery. They intend to die in the spot where they had their first shit. As you can see, I’m in a foul mood this morning. God! All that for nothing. I’m pissing and moaning but it’s far from over. And here I’d pictured our meeting in a restaurant other than Japanese. Chinese, for example. A Japanese guy in a Chinese restaurant is more interesting. And in a Korean restaurant — that’s practically subversive. There are so many sushi bars these days, they must sprout up overnight. How would I recognize two Japanese businessmen in a room full of Japanese businessmen? Two moon-shaped faces were shooting wide smiles in my direction from the back of the room. The same black suits, the same haircuts, the same smiles. Which was Mr. Mishima? Where was Mr. Tanizaki? I decided not to try telling them apart.
They both rose at the same time.
“I am Mr. Mishima, Japanese vice-consul. Officially, I am the cultural attaché, but I have no well-defined responsibilities. At the consulate, everyone does what he can. I am embarrassed to receive you so modestly.”
Nervous laughter.
“And I am his assistant, Mr. Tanizaki.”