I felt tempted then to believe, as I always do, that the people inside were happy, that they knew things I did not know, but I thought no more about it, and went home to my own cold room, and I thought of the letter I had written to Jito Joo.
Int. Note: Letter to Jito Joo
Dear Jito Joo,
Please ignore everything I said yesterday. Allow me to explain it in a different way. I have not spoken of it really to anyone, and so it came out wrong. What I said was perhaps closer factually to the way it happened, but I can say it in a way that you may understand better, in a way of immediate understanding. Let me give you that now.
A man fell in love with a tree. It was as simple as that. He went into the forest to cut wood and he found a tree and he knew then that he loved it. He forgot about his axe. It fell from his hand and he knew it not. He forgot about the village that he had come from, forgot the path along which he had come, forgot even the brave ringing voices of his fellows, which sounded even then in the broad wood as they called his name, seeking after him. He sat down there before the tree and he made a place for himself and soon no one passing there could even see that he was lying between the roots.
It was for him as though a blade of grass had turned to reveal a map of broad longing and direction and over it he could pass — and did.
He and his love then sought what they would with nothing asked of anyone. Asking no permission, they devised all manner of delights and found in each other everything that the world had lacked. You are as bright as a coin. You are as tall as a grove. You are as swift as a thought. And so well did they hide themselves in their love that grass grew over their hearts and all their loud songs became indecipherable ribbons of air.
But then one day, the man awoke. He found himself again in front of a tree, but it was one he had never seen before. He had never seen the forest either — and the clothes he wore were worn almost to shreds. Where have I been, he asked himself, and stumbled out of the woods to where others waited at a string of houses. But, they could tell him no tidings of himself.
Where have I been, he wondered. With whom, in my loveliest dreams, have I so endlessly been speaking? But as he thought it fell away, and he was poorer then than anyone.
Raise yourself up, the others called to him. Raise yourself up, you fool.
Ah, he said, so this is how fools are made. For I did never know.
++
Int. Note: Two Weeks
For two weeks, then, I wandered about in a bit of a haze. Speaking about my life had set me at an angle to the world I was experiencing. I felt in some way that I had put myself before Joo to be judged. What a ridiculous thing! Especially considering that she had done nothing to earn it. In fact, her part in the entire business with Sotatsu would lead one to believe nothing good about her. Yet, somehow, Sotatsu had trusted her, and likewise, now, I was trusting her.
I wrote several letters to people I knew back home. I tried to read two different novels unsuccessfully. I ate at several different restaurants, all of which were good, and ordered either much too much food or far too little.
In searching for a way out of my own troubles, I had found my way into the troubles of others, some long gone, and now I was trying to find my way back out, through their troubles, as if we human beings can ever learn from one another. To simply find out what had happened to Oda Sotatsu, that was the main thing. That was always the main thing. But if in learning that, I could see somehow farther …
Finally, after two weeks, I went back to Joo’s apartment. Somehow, I expected that she would not be there, but she was. The first thing I noticed inside the building was that my letter was no longer in the box. So, she has read it, I thought. I went up the stairs. When she opened the door, she was holding the paper in her hand.
Come in, she said.
Her face was gentler than it had been. I don’t know if I had won her over, or what. Her face was gentler, but in a way its gentleness revealed still further the difficulties that her life had put on her. She had the severity of a person who has lived in the out of doors, beneath a constant sun — the look of a field laborer or an Appalachian musician. I have always been partial to such faces, have always thought it would be fine to have such a face for myself. It seems there is a great deal of suffering prior to obtaining one. I thought of none of this then. What I thought then was, she is holding my letter. I was desperate to hear what she would say, about my situation, about Oda Sotatsu, about Kakuzo. Here she was: suddenly I was much closer to writing the book I longed to write, to discovering the material that would make possible the telling of the proper story.
But, the first thing she did was to go to the window and sit down. She gestured that I should do the same.
Let’s not talk for a while, she said.
We sat there for a while. Through the floor, I could hear the sound of the apartment below. The sun set on some other part of the building. In Joo’s apartment it became steadily darker until she was finally forced to turn on the light or leave us sitting together in darkness.
I watched her face in the light and tried to see the girl who had visited Sotatsu, who had lived with Kakuzo. After a time, I felt I could see her. She looked at me and said:
I don’t think anyone has looked at me for that long in many years. This is a thing that regular people don’t understand. Because they live in families or groups, because they do not live alone, unmet, they do not know what it is like to be alone. Months can go by without anyone looking at you, years, without anyone so much as touching your hand or shoulder. One becomes almost like a deer, impatient to be touched, terrified of it. A momentary contact in a supermarket, or on a train, becomes bewildering. However often such contact comes it is always bewildering, because it isn’t meant. And then there comes the day when no one so much as looks at you, unless it is by accident.
She clasped her hands.
I work in the next street, at a machine company. I am a secretary. There are two other secretaries beneath me. Someone tells me what to do. I tell them what to do. It is all so simple that none of that is really necessary. I eat my lunch by myself and when work is done, I come home and sit and eat my supper alone. Sometimes I walk by the harbor and look at the ships. When you say these names to me, Oda Sotatsu, Sato Kakuzo, when you say to me this name, Jito Joo, I feel so far away. You tell me of your own life and I am sorry. You have been hurt. So have I. It isn’t done. It will keep going on. I know it. But, I have read your letter. I wrote you one of my own and now you can have it. I threw it out two days ago, but then I got it back. Here it is.
She held it out to me.
I think I would like for you to go now. I wish I knew what to say to you.