Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [94]
He registered Joey’s growing consternation: ‘One is entering a maze. Easy to get lost!’
But a draughty hut in a tar-paper barracks in an unforgiving landscape was as good a place as any to take the first step.
‘We cannot hurry; you may find pu-ro-gress somewhat slow.’
But with time, Mr Murakami said reassuringly, they would advance. He added, less reassuringly, that progress involved kokoro which meant ‘the heart of things’ or ‘feeling’ and this too would need exploring, though one could never be confident of having indeed reached the heart of things.
‘I’m wondering,’ Joey said, ‘if a foreigner can ever understand Japan. It’s looking-glass country: the closer you get to it, the further off it is.’
Mr Murakami brought out a Japanese word – kaizen – which might be translated as ‘continuous improvement’, though he feared – a small smile – that there was no precise American equivalent. However, they would press on.
As they explore together that faraway country of Joey’s birth, its history, the reasons for one thing and another, the beginning of this or that, Joey feels himself slowly spinning. Between waking and dreaming he touches fugitive moments, fragments of long-forgotten experience. He has more than one past to remember.
Unwinding, he hangs suspended in a state of non-existence. He had thought he was examining a matter of identity, the old question: who am I? Travelling deeper into the maze he finds the question is more: what is an I?
‘There are many words for I and for You, each with its own meaning, its own restrictions. There are also echo-words, words that . . . simulate the sound or the feeling of a word. This is important . . .
‘Take the word: “flows”. A clear stream flows sara-sara, which gives the sense of the water. A fine lady walks saya-saya with the sound of the movement of her clothes . . .’
‘Yes!’
Joey’s exclamation was jubilant. Nancy read him a poem once, where a poet watches his lady walk towards him, and it taught the boy a new word, which now bore fruit in saya-saya.
‘There’s an English poem. “Whenas in silks my Julia goes, then, then methinks how sweetly flows that liquefaction of her clothes” . . .’
And Mr Murakami nodded. Liquefaction. ‘Ah, yes.’ He reflected aloud that after all, English had more in common with Japanese than he had thought, and they were making progress.
‘Next we might look at puns, pivot words – kakekotoba – wordplay, you would call it. This will be amusing.’
But kokoro lay far ahead.
Meanwhile, Mr Murakami suggested a cup of tea; on the wood-burning stove he had improvised a means of heating water.
On one wall of the hut, a scroll was suspended from a rusty nail; a scribble of lines, mostly grey or black, not an object Joey would expect to be hung on the wall like a Georgia O’Keeffe poppy or a Wyeth landscape.
Without giving any sign that he had noticed Joey’s observation of the scroll, Mr Murakami raised the subject of Joey’s drawings: he would consider it an honour to look at one or two, some time. Once again Joey became aware that he had been an object of interest. Mr Murakami handed him a small, porcelain cup of greenish liquid. Sipping it, Joey wondered what the Japanese for ‘vile flavour’ might be.
‘Do you consider yourself an artist?’
‘No. I consider myself at best a craftsman.’
‘Ah.’
Mr Murakami then remarked on the curious fact that until quite recently there had been no word for ‘art’ in Japanese.
‘The word that comes closest is geijutsu, which you could translate as “form and design”. You might say that for us, art is the same as living, both should include functional purpose, and spiritual simplicity.’
He took down a book of woodcuts from a shelf built of scavenged planks and began, slowly, to turn the pages.
‘The Japanese artist is a poet