EIKO'S ENDLESS BACK
I GO BACK into the bathroom and discover Midori conversing with Takashi. His eyes are overly bright — the result of his last hit of heroin.
“I’d like to tell you something about Bjork…”
“Have you been drinking?”
“No. Why?”
“Are you sure? Because the girls like playing jokes.”
“What kind of jokes, Midori?”
“If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then I guess you don’t interest them.”
“I see…”
Midori glances past me, over my shoulder. I turn and see Eiko applying her makeup in the mirror. Eiko’s endless back reminds me of a stand of bamboo. All Midori’s energy is drawn into the nape of Eiko’s neck. Midori tries in vain to resist. In the mirror I catch Noriko watching Midori watching Eiko. You can read all of it in Midori’s face, drowning in one final wave of feeling. Midori, a master in the art of revealing other people’s secrets, is unmasked. Her face naked. Our very own Marquise de Merteuil, caught in her own game. In her armoire, each drawer is dedicated to a girl she has seduced. She keeps underwear, letters, miniature red daggers (she has an entire collection), inexpensive perfume (to make sure no one else wears it) and a black notebook in which everything is recorded, from the first gaze to the farewell kiss. Midori is always the first to leave. One night, Takashi slipped into Midori’s room and spent hours reading passionate letters written by girls who kept announcing their imminent suicide. The letters all shared the same morbid preoccupations. These girls adore toying with the idea of death. In Takashi’s opinion, they’re just bursting with so many useless tears, because suicide is a man’s business. As for death, a young virgin gives herself only to the bravest of samurai. Japanese identity has been built on trashy romanticism. Midori, face to face with Eiko. The light is so dazzling Midori has to close her eyes. She stands straight, motionless. I hold my breath. Captivated, Eiko watches Midori move towards her.
CRISSCROSS
I DELIVER MIDORI to Eiko to trap Fumi. Fumi, whose heart is black with bitter passion and revolt, who dreams only of ending Midori’s reign. Fumi is secretly in love with Noriko. Hideko discovered her secret by keeping a small notebook where she noted all of Fumi’s underhanded actions for an entire year. Noriko was the victim of a good number of them. Hideko began by noting the circumstances in which the barbs were launched. She also noted the positions of the characters at the time the action took place. The atmosphere that held sway before she turned to Noriko and jabbed a banderilla into her back. And, of course, who laughed first? All of it written down, day by day, for an entire year. Hideko spent the long winter nights committing all this to paper. The work necessitated a good grasp of mathematics, which Hideko does have, since she’s doing her master’s at McGill. One evening, Hideko finally discovered the equation that would allow her to conclude without a doubt that Fumi was in love with Noriko. There is one constant: Fumi shoots her poison arrows at Noriko every time Midori seems interested in her, every time she turns to speak to her, touch her or even smile her way. Fumi then quickly moves to ridicule Noriko, who lowers her head. Fumi knows that Midori holds losers in contempt. Then Fumi quickly takes up position between Midori and Noriko. For a long time, Hideko thought Fumi was in love with Midori and simply wanted to eliminate a rival. Hideko had the idea of noting down the movements that followed and discovered that Fumi always arranged it so that Haruki came and placed herself between her and Midori. It took a while before Hideko understood that Fumi didn’t want Midori, but Noriko. By giving herself to Midori, Eiko brought down the house of cards. The center was emptied of its substance. Why did Hideko act that way? Whom did she want to destroy, besides Fumi? End. The credits roll. Ending a film with a question mark is not recommended. Which means we won’t see this one anywhere but the Museum of Fine Arts — on a rainy day. There are too many characters for the producer’s liking. Better cut them down to three. Who will make the cut? Midori, Eiko, Noriko. Or Midori, Fumi, Hideko. Or Midori, Tomo, Haruki. I know three is a good number, but I had a group in mind. A complete cluster of girls — an adolescent fantasy. You know that in a group, the girls who don’t say anything are as important as the ones who are front and center. The space between the girls, the time granted to each — this is the director’s work. Haruki is no less important in his eyes than Midori. And if Midori is in the foreground, that’s only because there is a background. Overly dense, you say? True, I could have singled out each girl with a particular detail. A color, a sign, whatever. But I film the same way I look at a film, and I get bored if the descriptions go on too long. I like it when things start fast, even a little disorganized, and at the end, a certain flavor lingers. I like to dally over the more pleasant scenes, which can open up the short film. And since all Japanese girls look the same to Westerners, I figure no one will see the difference anyway. So don’t strain yourself.
THE HUMAN MACHINE
I GO INTO this crummy restaurant on Boulevard St-Laurent. I sit down at the back with my Basho book, which I’ve been reading non-stop. The waitress shows up immediately. She’s wearing an embroidered “Suzie” on her breast. Her eyes are empty. A fat green vein runs along her neck from her right ear to her shoulder blade. She must have done more than one job in the district. A lot of women in the neighborhood have been through the same thing. Most of them started as teenage girls, leaving their narrow-minded little villages for the highway leading over the bridge to Montreal. They end up unemployed in the city, then they find work waitressing, then unemployed again, then waitressing, then prostitution. They won’t go much further. Lower, yes. There’s always room for lower. They find a way to have at least one child, and send it back to their mothers in the country — the only real gift they can give them. Some money too, but that’s only at the beginning. The mother will hide the money at the back of the cupboard and never touch it. It will be there for her funeral or maybe her daughter’s. Her daughter who, in the end, will have only one choice: slit her wrists or take the last bus for Rimouski or Sept-Îles. There’s a third possibility — trying to swim in this shark tank. I turn briefly to Basho as he bends over a cherry tree.
Basho examined this small tree that had already started to flower. It is always astonishing to come upon life in certain places. Buffeted by winter’s glacial winds, it did not forget to flower in the spring. What courage! It seemed to be alone, neglected by all — except Gyoson, who wrote a stanza to honor the glory of solitary cherry trees.