The moment we emerged from the train he came striding up the platform, barking out commands to the apprentices in his wake, his face easing into his open natural emollient smile, the smile that had beguiled a legion of reluctant clients round the world and every woman he’d ever met. My first impression? That he looked old, reduced, the hair gone white against the great riven monument of his head. But he was old, in his eighties now, as best I could calculate. “Tadashi,” he called out when he was still ten feet from me, his voice as effervescent and youthful as ever, “you’ve gone gray!”
And then he was there and we were bowing, Setsuko and I, and he bowed first to me and then to her, a dip of his head only, and repeated the greeting I’d given him the first time we met all those years ago beside the still-hissing frame of my Bearcat: “Hajimemashite.”
“And you, Wrieto-San,” I said, feeling as light as if I were filled with helium—“you’ve gone white.” (I meant no disrespect, of course, but was simply playing off his mood, injecting a bit of the banter he was so fond of, though I could imagine his terrorizing the household staff all morning over the arrangements at Taliesin.) Despite the tidal wash of emotion I was experiencing — or perhaps because of it — I found that I was grinning.
“Ah, so you’ve noticed? Well, this is the color of venerability, Sato-San.” His eyes were coruscating, flecks of glass incinerated under the sun. “No matter how soft your pencils nor how often you add tired to tired, that gray I see at your temples will fade on you so that you’ll wake up one morning, look into the mirror and see an Oriental sage staring back at you.” He seized a lock of his hair in one hand and laughed aloud.
On the way out to Taliesin, he hardly had a word for me — it was my wife to whom he devoted himself, Wrieto-San at his most impish and charming. She was young and pretty and she was an angel on the violin, a combination that must have proved irresistible to him. Though my wife’s English was limited, Wrieto-San was very gentle with her, bathing her in the full glow of his charm, as I imagine he must have done with Nobu Tsuchiura and Takako Hayashi before her.
I stared out the window of the car, filled with such longing and nostalgia I thought my heart would break, a hundred questions for Wrieto-San on my lips — How was Wes? Had he heard from Yen? And Herbert was married, could that be true? — and then Taliesin separated itself from the hillside before us, as golden and sustaining as the picture I’d held of it in my mind’s eye through the gray accumulation of weeks, months and years in the camps. Or no, deeper, richer even. The effect it had on me is hard to explain. It was, I suppose, like the feeling of wonder and revelation most people experienced when they first saw the images of the earth from the terra incognita of the moon’s surface — only this wasn’t terra incognita. Not for me. This was my home, my ideal home, if the world were a holier place and aesthetics ruled rather than necessity. And cruelty.
Wrieto-San was going on about the violin and music in general, how Iovanna had mastered that most subtle of instruments, the harp, and wondering if Setsuko would be so kind — so exquisitely thoughtful and indulgent — as to give him and Olgivanna a sample of her skills later on that evening, when we pulled into the courtyard and my wife turned to me, looking utterly bewildered, for a translation. I’m afraid I failed her there, at least for the moment, because suddenly a mélange of all-but-forgotten odors washed over me and triggered my olfactory memory — the cold ashes of the fire, the farthest corner of the hogpen, cabbage soup, sweet Wisconsin air and a trace of the poison bait the cook sprinkled round for the rats — and I was overcome all over again.
There followed a long and loving tour of the house, the late-afternoon sun awakening all its sacral nooks and corners, its dramatic dialogue of light and texture, the magical confluence of the horizontal and vertical, Wrieto-San reminding us of Lao-Tse’s observation that architecture exists not for the sake of the structure but for the space it encloses, among other echoes of the past, and pausing to lecture most charmingly over each of his new acquisitions of Asian art. Then there was tea with Mrs. Wright, who perched formally on the edge of a chair and regarded me out of her Gurdjieffian eyes as if she couldn’t quite place me, her face as drawn and mournful as these eight or nine accumulated years could make it. She was in the midst of grilling Setsuko over her musical tastes — were there Japanese composers she was interested in or was she strictly attuned to the Western canon? — when Wrieto-San set down his cup and clapped his hands like an impresario hovering over his audience. “Well, what do you think about taking in a little of the outdoors, Tadashi?” he said, rising to his feet. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” And he paused to give me a wink. “Just about perfect for a picnic, wouldn’t you say?”
“A picnic?” I echoed, rising in concert with the Master, as if it were a tic.
“Yes, like in the old days.”
I bowed by way of hiding my emotions. I was deeply moved. Not only had Wrieto-San come to the station for me and taken the time to show off the house and its treasures for my bride, but here he’d arranged a picnic in our honor as well. And of course Wrieto-San was a great champion of the outdoors, as sensitive to nature and its changes as the hermetic monks of my country who sit for days in contemplation of the cherry blossoms or the winged seeds of the maples, which made the gesture even more special and exquisite. In my years at Taliesin we’d picnicked up and down the fields and hillsides on dozens of occasions and in far-flung locations too, a group of apprentices going on ahead to make arrangements and the rest of us piling into the Taliesin cars and heading off to some locale Wrieto-San had chosen in advance for its beauty and serenity, a joy to us all — and now he was offering to rekindle the spirit. For me.
We were all on our feet now, apprentices darting about, the cars standing in the courtyard and Setsuko looking to me for assurance. I went to her, took her by the arm. Embraced the warmth of her.
“Oh, Tadashi,” Wrieto-San said, as if the thought had just occurred to him, “you do remember Stuffy’s Tavern”—and here a hint of slyness invaded his voice—“don’t you?”
“Yes, Wrieto-San,” I said, bowing again. “How could I forget it?”
“You might not know that Stuffy Vale is no longer involved in that particular establishment. It seems I’m the proprietor there now.” He gave me a knowing look. “I seem to recall a certain adventure you had there in your first year — or was it the second? Excessive consumption of alcohol, eh? You’ve conquered that tendency, I can see.” He glanced at Setsuko. “Well, bully for you. And for all my apprentices who’ve been tempted by the Demon Rum. But today’s a special day. And this is to be a very special picnic indeed, as you’ll see.”
And so it was. In the intervening years, Wrieto-San had resolutely gone about buying up all the surrounding property, as I’ve indicated, and he was in the habit of removing any structures that impeded the view from his windows or preyed on his mind in any way, however insignificant, rather like the warlords of the Shōgunate or the hermit heiress in the American poem who “buys up all / the eyesores facing her shore, / and lets them fall.” Many have criticized him for this, as if wanting to live in purity were some sort of sin, but I’ve always defended him. Still, even I was taken aback by what ensued.
It was a fine summer evening, the air soft on our faces as we rode in a caravan over the short distance to where the tavern stood in its lot of weed and gently nodding trees. The apprentices had set out blankets and pillows for us and there was a table laden with salads and sliced meats, beans and bread and corn on the cob and great green bellies of watermelon, even as smoke rose from the fire of the barbecue pit. Wes was there — he’d suffered his own tragedy three years earlier when Svetlana and their young son were killed in an auto accident not five miles from Taliesin — and we embraced like brothers, no bows, no handshakes, but a kind of American bear hug that spoke volumes for what we’d meant to each other. I introduced Setsuko all round in a flurry of smiles and bows. When the spareribs, hot dogs and hamburgers were cooked through and piled high as a sacrificial offering on the table, we were led to a seat on the dais, in the place of honor beside Wrieto-San and Mrs. Wright. The sun made a painting of the clouds and settled in the treetops. We ate. I was as happy as I’d ever been in my life.