“Hello!”
“It’s your publisher.”
“I was thinking about you.”
“I’m in Stockholm for a colloquium about Andersen.”
“But he’s Danish.”
“The Danes hate Andersen because he made them look like monsters who would let a poor little girl die of cold. I don’t know how I got caught in this mess. Even when I was a kid I hated Andersen. The worst nightmares in my life came from reading “The Little Match Girl.” I ended up in this business because of that fairy tale. It ruined my life. I’m willing to bet it wasn’t written by someone who was moved by the poor little girl’s fate — oh, no, it was written by a sadist, a pervert, a bastard, a sick man.”
“Okay,” I said to slow him down, “don’t get carried away, it’s only a colloquium. Stop stewing in your room and go out and get a drink somewhere.”
“There’s not even a bar in this hotel. I got back an hour ago, completely exhausted by some wordy bitch who kept beating me over the head with her damned Andersen.”
“You won’t escape him where you are. There must be a whole tribe of Andersen specialists where you’re staying.”
“I’m afraid so… I called the front desk and asked what floor the bar was on. No bar, sir. Why not? You can drink in your room if you want to. You can drink in your room, but not in a bar. The guy probably thought I was an alcoholic. We argued back and forth for a while, then I lay down on the bed with my clothes on.”
I’d rarely heard him so wound up. Andersen, plus the fact that he couldn’t have a nightcap in a quiet corner of a bar, in the shadows, must have disturbed him deeply. People have their habits. But why go if you hate Andersen so much? Probably for the free booze, and a little convention fling.
“There must be a bar somewhere, I’m sure. Those northerners really know how to drink.”
“The nightcap is drunk at the hotel,” he said categorically.
“I’m in full agreement.”
“So I fell asleep and slept a half hour. Then I woke up and went to smoke a cigarette by the window and look at the town — otherwise I wouldn’t have seen any of it. I went back to bed with a pile of manuscripts. I put two pillows behind my back and my head, and I got ready for a sleepless night. That’s what I like to do most of alclass="underline" read manuscripts in a hotel room. That’s why I say yes to these trips. Those books were written just for me — or at least it seems that way. If I don’t like them, they won’t exist.”
He was sparing me no details. His life was a regular novel.
“The television was on, and all of a sudden there was your face, a close-up, looking right at me.”
“What was I doing on tv in Stockholm? I don’t even know that town.”
“That’s modern life, old man. We’re known in places we don’t even know ourselves. . It was a piece from Japanese tv. You were walking in a park in Montreal. I thought I was hallucinating when I heard them talk about your novel I Am a Japanese Writer. I’d only been half paying attention, but now I jumped right out of the bed. It was completely crazy. . A thousand possibilities went through my head. Like that some prankster had tinkered with the hotel TV system to play a trick on me. Maybe there really is a bar in the hotel— they’re just toying with my nerves. I don’t mind telling you, my problem isn’t alcohol, but the lack of it. . I don’t know if you understand the position this puts me in. People will have seen the report on tv. Tomorrow they’re going to torture me with questions. Other publishers are going to want to buy the rights. What do I tell them?”
“If you want to sell my book to a Swedish publisher, go ahead, but on one condition: I don’t want a title like ‘I Am a Swedish Writer.’”
“Why not? That’s an excellent idea! We’ll do the same thing for every country that wants to publish it. It’ll be perfect for translation.”
“I’ll end up looking like a chameleon.”
“But what the hell is going on? I haven’t even got the book and already it’s been translated, and in Japanese. Am I the publisher or not?”
“Don’t worry, I haven’t written it yet. The Japanese wanted to do a piece on a book that isn’t written. That’s their way of getting a step up on us. We’re old-fashioned, with our books that have to be written, published, critiqued and read — maybe. Too many steps.”
“I want the manuscript in two weeks. I want to catch up with the Japanese.”
“Two weeks!”
“Look, I’m going out to get a drink at the corner bar. When I get back, I expect to have it on my bed. If you can do that, I’ll get you the Nobel.”
“A drink would be good enough for me.”
THE CANNIBAL IN HIS HOMETOWN
SOMEONE IS KNOCKING at the door. I won’t leave this bed. It’s my place in the sun, and I’m sticking to it. I lie on my back and contemplate the stains on the ceiling. The guy upstairs must piss right on the floor. I am preparing for a long journey that might last hours, even days. There are times like that. My eyes are open, I hear everything, but I’m not really there. I travel that way at astonishing speed. I step across centuries as if they were minutes. I can do it without any chemical assistance. I knew a guy who could make the moon drop into a white saucer. He taught me how to travel across time. It’s more technique than magic. I am both the vessel and the traveler. I travel, not in space, but time. Time is vaster than space. That knock on the door again. I hear everything clearly, but my arms and legs have stopped obeying me. My face must be all twisted. There — stay still. Retrieve your human form. The traveler has returned. I crawl to the bathroom on all fours. Water restores life to me, extinguishing the last flames. I hadn’t realized how speed had sucked all the moisture from my body. The knocking continues. This time I’ll answer. I open the door. Midori is standing there. She backs off. I wonder what I must look like.
“Sorry for being so insistent. . but I heard voices and I didn’t understand what was going on. I heard a conversation but I didn’t recognize the language. I thought you were with someone, but the voices were so hushed.”
I didn’t know I was speaking, or that I wasn’t alone. I thought I was a solitary traveler. “Well, come in.”
Normally I don’t let anyone inside. Midori glances around quickly, then smiles.
“This is exactly how I imagined your lair.”
I allow only what is essential in this room. A bed, a window, a little table on which my old Remington 22 sits, a pile of books on the floor. I turn to Midori. Still Midori. As sober as my room. She stands there with her camera, but I know she’s really somewhere else. Not that she isn’t present — she’s burning with intensity. But I know that she’s just as present, with the same strength, in the lives of so many other people. At this very minute she could be talking with a girlfriend in Manhattan, or running through a park in Berlin with a dog. Midori has the gift of ubiquity, and that’s not just a figure of speech.
“It’s hot in here. Can you open the window?”
I haven’t opened it since Noriko’s suicide. I open it for Midori. A wave of light enters the room. Midori is radiant in her tiny black dress — her version of mourning. Photographers have an intimate relationship with light. And so with shadow, too.