“I like your room.”
“I sleep, write and read here.”
“You left a little quickly the last time,” she said, leaning on the window ledge.
“I don’t like to wait around.”
“Takashi’s been showing me how to take pictures. Can I take a few here?”
“No problem.”
She photographs the room from every angle. Afterwards, she is a little out of breath.
“Don’t you have any questions?”
“Why would I?”
“You don’t even want to know what I’m doing here?”
“You’re here — that’s all.” I know why she’s here, and I’m trying to avoid the subject.
“I had a phone call from Kara Juro. Don’t you know him?”
“Midori, I don’t know anyone in town.”
“He doesn’t live here.”
“Nor anywhere else.”
“If you like.”
“I like things to be clear so I don’t waste time in futile pursuits.” I can feel my nerves jangling.
“Juro wrote that fascinating book, Letters from Sagawa. You’ve never heard of it? It tells the story of a Japanese man who ate a Dutch student in Paris, a woman. A true story. The guy lives in Tokyo now. He was in prison in France. When he returned to Tokyo, he was given a hero’s welcome. That’s why I would never live in that country, it’s too disgusting.”
“The Japanese have always been daring when it comes to food. They’re not afraid to take chances. They must have appreciated the guy’s attempt to try something new.”
“I’ve always wanted to work with Kara. He called me a while ago. I was very excited. Then, nothing but silence for two months. Yesterday his agent called me and asked if I knew you. I said yes. He told me Kara wanted me to photograph you at your place. What kind of photos? He told me Kara never gives directions, but he needed the pictures right away. I don’t know what he wants.”
“He wants you.”
“Me?”
“Not necessarily in a sexual way. It’s bigger than that. The same thing is true in literature: the publisher doesn’t want anything in particular, he wants the writer.”
“I’d like to do a book with my photos. And I want you to write the text.”
“I don’t know your world well enough.”
“I think you know it very well. Takashi says you don’t even need a camera to take pictures. You have a lens in your head. Coming from Takashi, that’s the greatest compliment. I’ve watched you do it. I like the way you observe things. You were at the apartment, you saw the girls, you were at the parties, you know my little zoo.”
“I don’t write about other people’s lives.”
“Look at the photos and write what you like.”
“I don’t like looking at things that don’t move.”
“That’s exactly what interests me: the perspective of someone who hates to look. We’ll talk about it later, all right?”
METAMORPHOSES
MIDORI PACES the room, then locks herself in the bathroom. Cocaine. I know she’ll turn circles in here for hours like a caged beast, banging away on the shutter release. I saw her do the same thing at a party at her place. She comes out of the bathroom, her eyes glittering, her nostrils flaring, as if she’s been fucking.
“Can I take a few pictures while we talk?”
She photographs me as if I were an object, or some insect.
“The first thing I did was call a girlfriend who’s super plugged in to the Tokyo theater scene. She knows everything about me. There’s nothing crazy I do that she doesn’t know about. We met in Vancouver. Later we hooked up in New York, at Columbia, where I was taking an acting class and she was studying to be a critic, and that’s where we really got close. She told me Kara seemed really interested in some story about a black guy in Montreal who thought he was a Japanese writer, and that he was following the story in a magazine where they compared you, or so Kara said, I don’t want to get it wrong, to the character in that Kafka story who woke up one morning, completely metamorphosed. I hadn’t known anything about it. . I was knocked out. I told him the black guy had lived at my place and that I’d never suspected. . I looked totally clueless! Why didn’t you say anything to me?”
“Midori, there’s nothing to say. It’s all a misunderstanding. I just said I was going to write a book. They asked me what the title was and I told them. That’s all.”
“And what is the title?”
“‘I am a Japanese Writer.’ But that’s only the title.”
“Oh, man! You couldn’t have picked a better time. They’re into this really big identity debate over there, and all of a sudden you come up with a book like that.”
“There is no book — that’s what I’ve been explaining to everyone.”
“That doesn’t matter. They’re completely obsessed with identity, I’m telling you.”
“I don’t give a shit about identity.”
“So you say, but then you write a book with a title like that. What does that mean?”
“It means I did it to get away from the whole business, to show that borders have disappeared. I was tired of cultural nationalism. Who says I can’t be a Japanese writer? No one.”
“That’s exactly where the debate gets interesting. In Tokyo, a lawyer has claimed he can get an injunction against your book.”
“Midori, look at me. Look me in the eye: there is no book.”
“I’m telling you who’s saying what in Tokyo, and you keep coming back with Montreal stuff. I need work. Now I have a photo contract, and afterwards, who knows, maybe I’ll do something in film. I could sing. For an American girl or a French woman, it’s easy to make a name in Japan, but if you’re a Japanese girl living overseas, you’re screwed.”
“Sure. But you just told me you didn’t want to live in Japan.”
“That changes if Kara is calling, and it’s a short-term project. The latest news, my girlfriend told me, is that this lawyer got on tv and said that the word ‘Japanese’ belongs to the Japanese government, who should bestow it only on its legitimate citizens. Not anybody can become Japanese just because they want to. And another lawyer who wanted to be smart — it was a televised debate with a bunch of lawyers — asked whether a serial killer from some other country could publish a book called ‘I Am a Japanese Serial Killer.’ That would sully Japan’s reputation. That show was on a real popular channel, and it set off an uproar among the Japanese right.”
“‘The Japanese right’? Aren’t they all on the right?”
“If you go there, be careful, the issue is no laughing matter for them. Some nationalist publishers, the ones who publish mostly ‘novels of the soil,’ signed a manifesto not only to protest against your book coming out in Japan, but anywhere in the world.”
“They’re crazy!”
“The funniest thing is, a major critic from the biggest daily paper in the country said that the reputation of all Japanese writing would be in danger if your book turned out to be bad. With that title, it’s as if the writer had become — and I quote— ‘the Japanese writer par excellence.’ Foreigners might well avoid Japanese literature if they don’t like your book.”
“I didn’t say I am the Japanese writer. I said I am a Japanese writer. It could be good or it could be bad.”
“I can see you don’t understand Japanese nationalist sensitivities. And a black man on top of it… That’s what interested Kara. And here I am.”
“You know the book hasn’t been written yet.”
“But its impact is real. People might be disappointed if you wrote it.”