I Am a Japanese Writer

THE CANNIBAL IN HIS HOMETOWN

SOMEONE IS KNOCKING at the door. I won’t leave this bed. It’s my place in the sun, and I’m sticking to it. I lie on my back and contemplate the stains on the ceiling. The guy upstairs must piss right on the floor. I am preparing for a long journey that might last hours, even days. There are times like that. My eyes are open, I hear everything, but I’m not really there. I travel that way at astonishing speed. I step across centuries as if they were minutes. I can do it without any chemical assistance. I knew a guy who could make the moon drop into a white saucer. He taught me how to travel across time. It’s more technique than magic. I am both the vessel and the traveler. I travel, not in space, but time. Time is vaster than space. That knock on the door again. I hear everything clearly, but my arms and legs have stopped obeying me. My face must be all twisted. There — stay still. Retrieve your human form. The traveler has returned. I crawl to the bathroom on all fours. Water restores life to me, extinguishing the last flames. I hadn’t realized how speed had sucked all the moisture from my body. The knocking continues. This time I’ll answer. I open the door. Midori is standing there. She backs off. I wonder what I must look like.

“Sorry for being so insistent. . but I heard voices and I didn’t understand what was going on. I heard a conversation but I didn’t recognize the language. I thought you were with someone, but the voices were so hushed.”

I didn’t know I was speaking, or that I wasn’t alone. I thought I was a solitary traveler. “Well, come in.”

Normally I don’t let anyone inside. Midori glances around quickly, then smiles.

“This is exactly how I imagined your lair.”

I allow only what is essential in this room. A bed, a window, a little table on which my old Remington 22 sits, a pile of books on the floor. I turn to Midori. Still Midori. As sober as my room. She stands there with her camera, but I know she’s really somewhere else. Not that she isn’t present — she’s burning with intensity. But I know that she’s just as present, with the same strength, in the lives of so many other people. At this very minute she could be talking with a girlfriend in Manhattan, or running through a park in Berlin with a dog. Midori has the gift of ubiquity, and that’s not just a figure of speech.

“It’s hot in here. Can you open the window?”

I haven’t opened it since Noriko’s suicide. I open it for Midori. A wave of light enters the room. Midori is radiant in her tiny black dress — her version of mourning. Photographers have an intimate relationship with light. And so with shadow, too.

“I like your room.”

“I sleep, write and read here.”

“You left a little quickly the last time,” she said, leaning on the window ledge.

“I don’t like to wait around.”

“Takashi’s been showing me how to take pictures. Can I take a few here?”

“No problem.”

She photographs the room from every angle. Afterwards, she is a little out of breath.

“Don’t you have any questions?”

“Why would I?”

“You don’t even want to know what I’m doing here?”

“You’re here — that’s all.” I know why she’s here, and I’m trying to avoid the subject.

“I had a phone call from Kara Juro. Don’t you know him?”

“Midori, I don’t know anyone in town.”

“He doesn’t live here.”

“Nor anywhere else.”

“If you like.”

“I like things to be clear so I don’t waste time in futile pursuits.” I can feel my nerves jangling.

“Juro wrote that fascinating book, Letters from Sagawa. You’ve never heard of it? It tells the story of a Japanese man who ate a Dutch student in Paris, a woman. A true story. The guy lives in Tokyo now. He was in prison in France. When he returned to Tokyo, he was given a hero’s welcome. That’s why I would never live in that country, it’s too disgusting.”

“The Japanese have always been daring when it comes to food. They’re not afraid to take chances. They must have appreciated the guy’s attempt to try something new.”

“I’ve always wanted to work with Kara. He called me a while ago. I was very excited. Then, nothing but silence for two months. Yesterday his agent called me and asked if I knew you. I said yes. He told me Kara wanted me to photograph you at your place. What kind of photos? He told me Kara never gives directions, but he needed the pictures right away. I don’t know what he wants.”

“He wants you.”

“Me?”

“Not necessarily in a sexual way. It’s bigger than that. The same thing is true in literature: the publisher doesn’t want anything in particular, he wants the writer.”

“I’d like to do a book with my photos. And I want you to write the text.”

“I don’t know your world well enough.”

“I think you know it very well. Takashi says you don’t even need a camera to take pictures. You have a lens in your head. Coming from Takashi, that’s the greatest compliment. I’ve watched you do it. I like the way you observe things. You were at the apartment, you saw the girls, you were at the parties, you know my little zoo.”

“I don’t write about other people’s lives.”

“Look at the photos and write what you like.”

“I don’t like looking at things that don’t move.”

“That’s exactly what interests me: the perspective of someone who hates to look. We’ll talk about it later, all right?”