“We haven’t seen you much lately, sir.”
“I’m around,” replies the former host with a thin, cathoderay smile.
“I liked watching you. . Are you coming back with a new show?”
Since he never left the screen, the question comes as something of a surprise. He wonders for a brief moment whether it’s worth telling a total stranger the sad story of his fallingout with his bosses, the resulting years in court.
“Please excuse me, but I have some errands to run.”
“Of course, I understand. . There’s no one like you on tv anymore, it’s really too bad.”
“Thank you.”
He disappears into the milky landscape of a screen without pictures. The stranger grabs him by the sleeve, as if they’re in some vaudeville comedy.
“Just a minute, sir… Tell me your name again, would you? It’s for my wife, you know, otherwise she won’t believe me when I say I met you.”
The years spent making a name. Forgotten already. TV death. Everything depends on the audience. The critics, the prizes, the congratulations, none of that matters anymore. Only one thing counts: that they pronounce your name right. Even a name as easy as Leo can take years for people to get into their heads. First they have to wipe all the other Leos from their memory — and that can include close relations. He’s the only Leo now, the one and only.
The number of channels is out of control. One channel is dedicated to nothing but the Second World War, and Hitler is on it so often I call it the Nazi Channel. Another gives the weather, twenty-four hours a day. What’s the weather like today? I don’t care. I watch everything, undiscerning. You don’t judge TV; you watch it. The way you watch a wall. Some refuse to leave, and that causes a traffic jam of failures. It’s impossible to disappear completely now, like in the old days when there were only two channels. Nowadays, before you hit absolute bottom, there are several stages of impact-softeners. A gentler fall. From A to Z. You start your real descent at F. The slope is steeper after L. You land on your S. From then on you hit the channels where you have to pay with your flesh and blood; you accept the surgeon’s scalpel for an extreme makeover. Some starlets will go under the knife live for three miserable points of market share. Channel U, Channel V, Channel W. Z is for zombies: people dressed in black whose voices are barely audible. Forget about ever making it back to the surface. If you want to prolong your descent, there’s always the third world. In any case, Midori looks great in her colorful kimono with sticks in her hair. It’s a disguise; normally she wears jeans and a T-shirt. By dressing up as Japanese, she is less herself. Midori as a Japanese woman is not really Midori. Anyway, Midori doesn’t interest them: all they want is a geisha. Midori, I suppose, needed the money. Or maybe her agent sent her there for the experience, to get used to the camera. She gives us the weather until next Thursday — I’d like to hear it for the rest of the year. What if her prognostications are wrong (it’s like being at the racetrack) and it’s sunny next Thursday? Tomorrow, she’ll predict the weather until Friday. Every day erases the memory of the day before. The weather report can’t be associated with journalism. You can’t fact-check the weather, you can only observe it. Notions of truth and falsehood are not at issue here. It all depends on magic, superstition and inflated hopes. Strangely, the weather report is more respectable than the horoscope. Lonely drinkers use both in bars downtown, on Thursday nights, to try and pick up girls. It’s fuel for conversation. Now Midori is smiling at the camera for the first time. That’s her weak point: she never smiles. It won’t take long before the viewers start to complain. That’s why they watch the weather on tv. Otherwise, the radio would be good enough. On TV, we want someone who will smile at us no matter how lousy the weather will be the next day. The future must be bright. I should write a letter to the station to balance out the hateful hordes who will surely point out Midori’s exotic appearance: the first unsmiling Weather Girl. You don’t mess with the weather — not in this country of intense and endless cold. Giving the temperature is like being a doctor providing a diagnosis. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Midori or someone just dressed as a Japanese woman (the problem with being a foreigner is that you’re not allowed to play anything but folklore). I’ll mention Midori’s absent but elegant smile. Now I’m writing letters to the tv. I’d better go to bed.
I get up to lower the volume. He’s still there with his frozen smile and his collapsed hat.
“It’s Leo.”
“What?”
“You asked me my name.”
THE SORROWS OF MR. TANIZAKI
EVER SINCE OUR aborted meeting, I’ve been running into Mr. Tanizaki every time I step outside. At the fish market, of course, but also at the bakery and the wine store. It’s as if he’s making sure to be in my path while pretending to avoid me — as if I were the one following him. Sometimes he waves to me discreetly. Always a smile pinned to his face. I feel like I’m in a Polanski film, Rosemary’s Baby. I come back from my errands and discover my mailbox full of Japanese underground magazines. In the evening I watch tv (the Japanese cable channels) or eat dinner — sometimes both at once, sometimes neither. I stare at the ceiling. Sometimes I read, and it’s always the same book. I open it and find myself in a Basho haiku. That’s where I’d like to live: in a line of Basho poetry. The telephone makes me jump. It always rings at the same time; it’s taken me a while to figure that out. When I pick it up, I hear Japanese voices, very young voices, often against a background of strident music. Rock, sometimes heavy metal. Judging from the kind of music and the uproar, the calls are coming from the latest hip discotheque. As soon as I say something, the voice on the other end of the line apologizes in English and immediately hangs up. Sometimes I wait more than a minute before saying anything. I listen to the music, I overhear the conversations — always in Japanese. No one ever speaks to me directly.
At noon the other day, a meal showed up that I hadn’t even ordered. When I tried to pay the bill, the young Japanese delivery boy told me it was taken care of. I ended up with dishes I’d never tried before. No challenge there — I know next to nothing about Japanese cuisine. I only know that they consume an incredible quantity of fish. Actually, I’m just repeating what I’ve heard about Japan, since I haven’t bothered to do any research. I’m a flawless mimic. My ear picks up everything. My eye sees all. And my mouth swallows it whole. For the last few weeks, they’ve been careful to deliver meals containing no fish.
Finally it got to be too much. I dressed and went to the shopping center where I immediately spotted Mr. Tanizaki, choosing a bottle of wine.
“What do you want? What’s going on? What do you want from me?”
He began stammering in a strange cocktaiclass="underline" half English, one quarter French and one quarter Japanese, all on ice with a twist of lemon.
“But. . but. . I don’t understand what you are talking about,” he finally said.
“This is harassment.”
He changed color three times: yellow, green, then red. A parrot — I just knew it.
“I… I… I don’t understand.”
“What you’re doing is illegal, you know.”
The word nearly made him faint dead away. “I’m being harassed,” I went on, unaffected by his embarrassment. “I feel like someone’s always spying on me. And the person I seem to see every time I go out is you.” “Me?” he asked, pretending to be surprised. “Yes, you, Mr. Tanizaki.” He was sweating abundantly. “Can we get a coffee?” he stammered, and pointed to a little restaurant a few doors away.