I Am a Japanese Writer

THE WEATHER GIRL

I TURNED ON THE TV. Actually, I just bumped up the sound, because I never turn the set off. I remember an old Hungarian immigrant I met at the airport when I first got here. He insisted on giving me this piece of advice: “Here, in America, you never turn off the television.” I’ve been proving him right all these years. I want to see everything without really looking. I did some channel-surfing and came across Midori dressed as the Weather Girl. She was on a local cable channel I never watch. I don’t know anyone on it. People watch tv to see the people they’ve seen on other channels. Virtual socializing. They feel less alone. It’s a busy world out there. People arriving, people leaving. New faces that hope to be the latest on the scene. Others come on only at dinner, then disappear. Actually, they end up somewhere else, on shows I don’t watch. Sometimes you can spot them when you’re doing your TV window shopping, and you’re amazed to see them in some less desirable district. Some of them have frayed collars. Ah, times are tough. All it takes is one small intellectual breakdown, and they end up with the hoi polloi and those hayseed stars with their loud ties. That is, if they don’t fall all the way down to the circus acts, guys who laugh when some woman gets beat up or want to send all the immigrants back where they came from. The former star host who discovers that the fall, when it comes to TV, can be endless.

“We haven’t seen you much lately, sir.”

“I’m around,” replies the former host with a thin, cathoderay smile.

“I liked watching you. . Are you coming back with a new show?”

Since he never left the screen, the question comes as something of a surprise. He wonders for a brief moment whether it’s worth telling a total stranger the sad story of his fallingout with his bosses, the resulting years in court.

“Please excuse me, but I have some errands to run.”

“Of course, I understand. . There’s no one like you on tv anymore, it’s really too bad.”

“Thank you.”

He disappears into the milky landscape of a screen without pictures. The stranger grabs him by the sleeve, as if they’re in some vaudeville comedy.

“Just a minute, sir… Tell me your name again, would you? It’s for my wife, you know, otherwise she won’t believe me when I say I met you.”

The years spent making a name. Forgotten already. TV death. Everything depends on the audience. The critics, the prizes, the congratulations, none of that matters anymore. Only one thing counts: that they pronounce your name right. Even a name as easy as Leo can take years for people to get into their heads. First they have to wipe all the other Leos from their memory — and that can include close relations. He’s the only Leo now, the one and only.

The number of channels is out of control. One channel is dedicated to nothing but the Second World War, and Hitler is on it so often I call it the Nazi Channel. Another gives the weather, twenty-four hours a day. What’s the weather like today? I don’t care. I watch everything, undiscerning. You don’t judge TV; you watch it. The way you watch a wall. Some refuse to leave, and that causes a traffic jam of failures. It’s impossible to disappear completely now, like in the old days when there were only two channels. Nowadays, before you hit absolute bottom, there are several stages of impact-softeners. A gentler fall. From A to Z. You start your real descent at F. The slope is steeper after L. You land on your S. From then on you hit the channels where you have to pay with your flesh and blood; you accept the surgeon’s scalpel for an extreme makeover. Some starlets will go under the knife live for three miserable points of market share. Channel U, Channel V, Channel W. Z is for zombies: people dressed in black whose voices are barely audible. Forget about ever making it back to the surface. If you want to prolong your descent, there’s always the third world. In any case, Midori looks great in her colorful kimono with sticks in her hair. It’s a disguise; normally she wears jeans and a T-shirt. By dressing up as Japanese, she is less herself. Midori as a Japanese woman is not really Midori. Anyway, Midori doesn’t interest them: all they want is a geisha. Midori, I suppose, needed the money. Or maybe her agent sent her there for the experience, to get used to the camera. She gives us the weather until next Thursday — I’d like to hear it for the rest of the year. What if her prognostications are wrong (it’s like being at the racetrack) and it’s sunny next Thursday? Tomorrow, she’ll predict the weather until Friday. Every day erases the memory of the day before. The weather report can’t be associated with journalism. You can’t fact-check the weather, you can only observe it. Notions of truth and falsehood are not at issue here. It all depends on magic, superstition and inflated hopes. Strangely, the weather report is more respectable than the horoscope. Lonely drinkers use both in bars downtown, on Thursday nights, to try and pick up girls. It’s fuel for conversation. Now Midori is smiling at the camera for the first time. That’s her weak point: she never smiles. It won’t take long before the viewers start to complain. That’s why they watch the weather on tv. Otherwise, the radio would be good enough. On TV, we want someone who will smile at us no matter how lousy the weather will be the next day. The future must be bright. I should write a letter to the station to balance out the hateful hordes who will surely point out Midori’s exotic appearance: the first unsmiling Weather Girl. You don’t mess with the weather — not in this country of intense and endless cold. Giving the temperature is like being a doctor providing a diagnosis. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Midori or someone just dressed as a Japanese woman (the problem with being a foreigner is that you’re not allowed to play anything but folklore). I’ll mention Midori’s absent but elegant smile. Now I’m writing letters to the tv. I’d better go to bed.

I get up to lower the volume. He’s still there with his frozen smile and his collapsed hat.

“It’s Leo.”

“What?”

“You asked me my name.”