I could imagine him printing the postcards and then using Photoshop to add the meaningless address. He’d even printed and cut out the two stamps with their postmarks.
Humiliated, I now understood why not even the taxi driver wanted to have anything to do with me once I’d shown him the back of the postcard.
Mizuki dragged me out of my peevish musings by asking for chilled sake for the three of us. While she filled my ceramic cup, I gave Okamura a short account of how I’d been the victim of a hoax that had dragged me more than six thousand miles from my home.
He was very interested to know more about this man called Titus who wrote books using pseudonyms like Francis Amalfi or Gottfried Kerstin. Watched attentively by his niece, I told him about Titus’s work, how he’d started writing a book about wabi-sabi and how I was supposed to be helping him with it.
“It’s a very poetic way of getting you to make the journey,” Mizuki offered. “It must have meant a lot of work for him, printing those postcards so they looked as if they’d come from Japan.”
“He wants to write a commercial book about wabi-sabi, and that’s all there is to it. Since he’s old and frail and in no condition to travel, he fooled me into coming here instead.”
No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I regretted them. Titus had tried to help me when I most needed him. Maybe, in the wake of my heartbreak, he’d sent me off on this journey to help me snap out of it. Gabriela would almost certainly know about his plan. Otherwise she wouldn’t have written “This person will find you if he wants to”—if her words meant what I thought they did.
Damn you, Titus, I’ve found you out. You’re going to pay dearly for this. The postcards which I’d believed were sent from the other side of the world had only needed to go down the fourteen steps between Titus’s apartment and my apartment to find me.
“I’m starving,” Mizuki said. “Shall we go and have a barbecue, Uncle?”
Her English was perfect, which reminded me that Okamura had told me that she gave him lessons. As if they were practicing conversation, he took care with his pronunciation when answering: “I am not of the mood, my dear. I want to go home now. But the gaijin will go with you. OK, Samuel?”
It was impossible to refuse without looking like a complete oaf and, to tell the truth, I wanted to go. Apart from Mizuki’s particular brand of hybrid beauty, I was keen to know more about this Japanese woman who moved between two worlds.
“I didn’t know you had barbecues in Japan,” was my idiotic response, “but I’d be delighted to come with you.”
A Circle of Ashes
It was now after eleven and I was following Mizuki through ever-darker alleyways. I say “following” because she was striding along a couple of steps ahead of me, apparently not caring whether I was close behind her or dropping back. As if concentrating hard on finding the way, she hadn’t said a word to me since we’d left the bar.
Lagging behind, I could watch her movements in the dim light. Her clothes may have been simple but with every step her hips swayed with a hint of sensuality. Even the way her ponytail swung back and forth across her straight back had something of a hypnotic, ancestral dance.
We left the neighborhood of old houses to walk through a more modern, chaotic part of the city, although the buildings were still low. My guide stopped before a wooden door with a grille through which a soft orange light shone. A few seconds after she rang the bell, the door slid open sideways, leaving just enough space for one person to squeeze through. On the other side of the door, I could see the silhouette of a very thin man, who was speaking to Mizuki in Japanese.
He finally moved away from the slit in the doorway so that we could go in. It was a tavern-like space, furnished with four barrels with stools around them and lit by a couple of wall lamps. At that time of night, we were the only people there.
The owner pointed with both hands at one of the barrels and disappeared behind a red curtain which, I imagine, was there to separate the kitchen from the customers.
“I think he was about to close and now we’ve gone and ruined his plans to get some rest,” I said.
“Fuck him.”
“You sound like a rude little brat from Los Angeles,” I chided.
“Almost—except I’m from San Francisco and I’m not little. I’ll be thirty in a week.”
“Happy birthday in advance. Your uncle told me you’re going mountain-climbing.”
“Sort of. Does throwing yourself into a precipice off a very high mountain come under the heading of mountain-climbing?”
“I think so.” I wasn’t going to let her wind me up. “At least, people who throw themselves off mountains have to be good climbers.”
“Well, that’s how I’m going to celebrate the big three-oh. Nobody wants to turn thirty, however much people pretend they do.”
The owner-cook-waiter came out with two bowls of miso soup, thus putting an end to this cynical, rather dark conversation. Mizuki asked for two beers and rested her chin on her interlaced fingers. “Tell me about you. Why have you come to Kyoto all by yourself?” Before I could reply, she added, “And don’t tell me you’re here just because someone put a postcard under your door. You’d have to be a complete idiot!”
I took a mouthful of my Asahi, trying to resist the urge to slap her. Looking at her in the emptiness of the tavern, I suddenly saw her as a poor soul, lost between East and West. Since, in all likelihood, this would be the only time we’d meet, I didn’t mind opening up.
“Well, I’m helping my old friend Titus by looking for material on wabi-sabi. I’m reading about it now and hope to talk to some artists or philosophers who can tell me more.”
At that moment, the restaurant owner came over with a pot of broth and a pair of tongs. He set them down on an empty stool before lifting the lid of the barrel that served as our table. Inside was a layer of sand, on which he placed a ring of glowing charcoal pieces that he took from another container. Once the circle of embers was ready, he set a grill on top, and placed the pot on the grill.
