I Am a Japanese Writer

AT THE FISH STORE

WHEN YOU’VE GOT the title, most of the job is done. Still, you do have to write the book. There’s no getting around it. I am still swimming between the title and the book. Floating. Taking the time to measure the distance to be traveled. I’m never in a hurry to get to the heart of the matter. In my head, I run through the images I’d like to see in the book. It’s important to get them to enter into your flesh, to mix with your blood, so that you can practically write with your feet — in other words, without thinking. It’s not easy to change an idea into emotion. You’re impatient, but these things take time. Time cares little for our impatience. The result is a kind of generalized anxiety that follows you everywhere, even to the fish store. The problem is, you’re not sure what that kind of monster feeds on. So you take your time. You sit on a park bench and watch the clouds go by. You watch with pleasure as a little girl plays with her dog. You examine the sky with its low belly, heavy with black storm clouds. Pretty soon you start wanting to open up that belly and see if it feeds off anxieties or images. You linger there, in a state of expectancy. Open. Anything can enter. A moment of perfect calm. You sniff the air in wonderment as a single dry leaf falls from a tree. The time that came before seems so carefree now. Nasty weather this morning. You look at people but don’t see them. You listen to them but don’t hear them. You give too much importance to small details. But what if everything begins with that detail? You take a number and join the line at the fish store. You’ve stopped listening to the people talking to you, but you’ve started paying close attention to the ones who aren’t speaking to you. You’re preparing to become everyone else.

The fishman, a Greek, touches my forearm as he hands me my salmon, skillfully wrapped in brown paper.

“Are you going to write a second book?”

I’ve written fourteen books, but he’s still stuck on the first. Twenty years have passed and he still asks me the same question. He’s not interested in my answer. On to the next customer.

On my way out, just to gauge his reaction, I tell him, “I am a Japanese writer.”

His eyes cut back to me.

“How’s that? You changed nationality?”

“No. That’s the title of my new book.”

A worried glance at his assistant, a young man busy wrapping fish. My fishman never looks at the person he’s speaking to.

“Do you have the right?”

“To write the book?”

“No. To say you’re Japanese.”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going to change your nationality?”

“No way… I already did that once, that’s enough.”

“You should find out about that.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know, at the Japanese embassy. . Can you imagine me waking up one morning and telling my customers I’m a Polish butcher?”

“I’d think you’d be a Polish fishman, since you’re in fish.”

“Anything but a Polish fishman,” he answers, turning back to the next customer.

A guy who gives you his opinion about everything always ends up planting a seed of disquiet in your brain. I decided to call my publisher and ask him. He shouldn’t have any objections.