Sensei sent word (through my nemesis) that he must be out of town for awhile, and that our meetings would need to be postponed, so the next few weeks crawled by—long, dreary conversation lessons littered with bad grammar and unread assignments. I did manage some time in the library, rooting around to discover what I could about Pound’s final years in Italy.
I killed some of my free time by taking walks, reading, and doing a bit of writing of my own. And one Friday night, I went out for drinks and dinner with my old buddies from the introductory Japanese class. We met downtown, at our old stomping grounds near glittery Sannomiya station in Kobe, and haunted the back alleyways in search of the best sake, gyoza, or yakisoba. I had become a connoisseur of gyoza, small fried pork dumplings, a staple of late-night pub grub throughout Japan, and was eager to share my expertise.
Predictably, we ended up in one of the gaudy karaoke parlors, drinking pitchers of beer and taking turns belting out old tunes by the Beatles, Motown, Elton John, Rod Stewart, or Frank Sinatra, howling slightly off-key into microphones that often screeched and popped with feedback. Of these old friends, my favorite was Richard, who announced that his three-year commitment was up, he would not be renewing, and that he was heading back to the UK. He missed his “Mummy’s shepherd’s pie,” he explained.
He had been downing beers for a couple of hours, and spoke passionately into the microphone that he was officially tired of living in Japan, disliked being a mere “Japan-hand,” and desperately required a return, as he put it, to the “real world” of British wheeling and dealing with the Royal Bank of Scotland. He was sloppy drunk, and was actually swinging a bottle of Irish whiskey around like a flashlight, pointing it at us one by one as he spoke, so it was hard to tell at the time whether there was any truth to his confession. I only vaguely recalled Richard’s announcement the next morning, severely dehydrated and with a blinding headache, and needed to confirm that it wasn’t something I’d dreamed. So as soon as my headache subsided, which took a few days, I called him to find out. Yes, it was true, he reported. He would be leaving by the end of the month, and was holding a “sayonara sale” to unload everything he wasn’t taking with him. Such sales were frequent occurrences in the gaijin-world of Japan business life and offered a last chance for those leaving to sell their stuff and for those left behind (like me) to find major bargains. For one thing, Japanese generally dislike used products, unlike their thrifty gaijin counterparts. As a result, it was usually Americans or other foreigners who swooped in to buy various household goods for pennies on the dollar.
So I went up to Richard’s place to check it out. I knew my position at the university would not be renewed after the end of my contract and doubted I would stay in Japan even though there were other opportunities for well-connected gaijin English teachers. As a result, I only scooped up a stack of books and an old reading lamp for my desk. I headed for the door as other scavengers appeared, but just as I was saying so long, Richard stopped me.
“How ’bout my car, Jack?”
“Your car?” His remark caught me off guard.
“Well, we had some nice times with it, hey? And anyway, it’s over four years old now, so nearly worthless to the Japanese. Anyhow, I only got a week to sell the damned thing. What of it, hey?”
I eyed him with some residual envy. Yes, I remembered sailing up long mountain passes into the Japan Alps, with “Dark Side of the Moon” blasting from the speakers. But I didn’t have that kind of money. “Richard, that would be great, but I couldn’t possibly pay you a fair price.”
He eyed me right back. “Well, old mate, how does this sound, hey? If I can’t sell it by next weekend, it’s yours for whatever price you can hand me as I bolt for the airport. Nobody’s even looked at it so far, and I’m so busy with everything else, well … Can you think about it?”
For a moment, I hung fire; then relented. “OK, Richard. If you can’t sell it. I’m sure someone will want it, though.”
But the following Saturday morning, the phone rang at 7:00 a.m. “Hey, mate, you up?” Richard. “Meet me down here at my place at eight. The car’s yours, hey? My flight’s at three.”
I got ready in a huff, hustled down to the train, stopping quickly at the bank to withdraw as much cash as I could afford (300,000 yen), and arrived at Richard’s just past eight. The money was in a fancy envelope, Japanese style, and he didn’t even look at it. He handed me the keys for the cash. “Thanks, mate, I owe you one. Enjoy the car. Papers are in the glove compartment. Decent deal, hey? Sorry to be so rushed, but I’m meeting someone in ten minutes. Can you give me a ride down the hill?” Which I did, depositing him at the arranged location, outside Sannomiya Station. He got out, then leaned into the window, and grasped my hand in farewell. “Thanks, old pal, we had some fine times, hey? Gotta run now. I have too much to do. Best wishes.” And with this, he palmed his hands together and performed a small Japanese bow to me, both honorifically and comically. Then he was gone.
And that’s how I ended up with such a fine ride in the Land of the Rising Sun. It was perfect for the American in me, and my spirits soared—temporarily, at least. After considerable searching, I finally secured a tiny parking spot a few blocks up the hill from my condo. I paid a hefty fee and the car spent most of its time squeezed into the small space, but on weekends, I would get up early on a Friday or Saturday morning, just as the sun peaked into my windows, make some strong coffee, and head out into parts unknown in my blazing Nissan, often with no map and no destination in mind. I’d throw in a change of clothes or a book I was reading, but a few times I just hit the road with a fresh steaming cup of coffee.
It was an inviting way to begin my days off—not knowing where I would be as the sun went down, and in fact not really caring very much. Typically, it was somewhere in the towering mountains of central Japan, which were always calling to me. Gasoline was expensive, but I had little else on which to spend my generous salary, and with nothing going on until my meetings with Sensei resumed, I had no particular reasons to be back till Sunday evenings, or even early Monday mornings.
Finally I received word (again through my nemesis, Miyamoto) that I had been invited to spend the following Sunday afternoon with Sensei. Eager to hear more about the intrigues of Hemingway’s manuscripts, what Pound had to do with any of it, and the tale of Sensei’s encounter with Pound in Venice, I showed up early. I admit I was also eager to see Mika once again. But it was Omori who answered the door, and Omori who directed me into the room to wait for Sensei. He bowed, pointed, and left. Not seeing Mika’s graceful movements, not watching the swinging curtain of her jet-black hair, not inhaling the aroma of her powdered skin—well, it was a major disappointment.
As I waited patiently in the sitting room, Sensei lingered for twenty minutes elsewhere. I fidgeted with my notebook, looked at the various books on the nearby tables, and thought sullenly about the absence of tea (and its server).
Finally he emerged, smiling and ready to talk. “So you wish to hear about Venice, yes?” He rubbed his hands together, and sat cross-legged, as alert as I ever recall seeing him. “Those were my glorious days, Yu-san, and so it is a pleasure to tell you about them. I was so young, and in good health. My job here at the university allowed me to do as I wished, and in 1966, I had arranged to be stationed in Freiburg, Germany for a year, as a visiting professor. I learned from a colleague there that an older professor in the French department had known Pound from the pre-war days, and still corresponded with him on rare occasions.
“I made it a point to get to know her, and we became rather friendly. She was an Alsatian French woman called Hélène LeComte, obviously of fine breeding and magnificent natural beauty, though she was by then quite aged.”
He remembered this unexpected good fortune now with a kind of bliss. “We became a bit of a pair as the year unfolded. Hélène was large, amiable, and liked to drink good whiskey. She also knew all the finest wineries in the region, especially in Alsace, just across the border in France. And a region in Germany called the Kaiserstuhl, near Breisach and the Rhein. She taught me how to taste wine, actually. Wonderful, white Burgundies, and crisp Rieslings and Pinot Gris. It was nothing romantic; she was already rather old. But she still had great charm and retained some of her youthful beauty. She showed me around town, and we took walks into the Schwarzwald. Many boat rides on the river. Yes, we were quite friendly.” He took a moment, relishing images of dinner with Hélène, perhaps enjoying schnitzel and wine together at some outdoor café in the Schwabian Alps. “Honestly, I never understood what she saw in me! Yes, Yu-san, she must have been quite a beauty in her youth, before the War!” I could see that Sensei was still intrigued by her, and that he may have entertained a small crush on her back in the day.
“Finally she told me one day about Pound. I never asked, rather she just instinctively brought it up. She described her correspondence with him, and I asked her for more details. Suddenly one day, she showed me a few of Pound’s letters. They were quirky, often incomprehensible, but also at times hilarious in that odd style of his. She offered to introduce me to him, and I managed to arrange, through her aid, a couple of interviews with him in Venice.”
“But Sensei, I did some reading this past week, and some biographers describe Pound in those last years as unwilling to speak or be interviewed. Some make it sound like he was even demented, near the end.”
He found this amusing. “Nonsense! Pound played his little games. These are all well documented. And he was wracked by guilt and shame for all his political mistakes. But his grasp of history and art was still monumental. He simply wished to choose when to speak and when not to. He was certainly clear and articulate whenever I spoke to him, I can assure you. After my visits, I heard he even welcomed Allen Ginsberg, who sang Hare Krishnas to him, smoked marijuana, and insisted that Pound listen to records by Bob Dylan and The Beatles. What a scene that must have been—it was at Pound’s 82nd birthday party! Yes, he was all there.”
I tried to picture Pound listening to Ginsberg’s loud cries of ecstasy. “So what was he like? What did he say?” I was nearly panting with anticipation. I wasn’t interested in any more stories of Hélène LeComte.
Sensei took his time, now recalling that first meeting over twenty-five years ago. He must have been himself a relatively young man—about forty-five, certainly no older—a rising literary scholar going to meet one of the most influential minds of the century.
“He wore an old black robe of some sort. Silk, probably. He spoke very little, but when he did, it was deliberate, often brilliant, with a kind of vocabulary that can only be described as wayward, weird, yet compelling. He could be extremely funny, then angry. Occasionally he made odd references to people like Cicero, or he would quote some obscure historical figure like Martin Van Buren, as if everyone should know all about him—it was all very off-putting. He made reference to obscure historical points, or esoteric poems I had never heard of. I believe he expected everyone else to be as brilliant as he was, and if not, then to hell with them.” He smiled. “Very American, I remember thinking. But I had gone for a purpose, and that was all I cared about. It was still rather early in my career and, like our old Captain Silsbee, I knew precisely what I wanted.”
“And what was that?”
He looked at me with some surprise. “Why, Hemingway’s valise, of course!”
Sensei got to his feet, walked over to the corner of the room, near the alcove, and there he lifted up for me to see a small briefcase, yellowish and slightly soiled. It was one of those old style cases, covered in dyed leather, metal at the corners, and it had evidently seen some duties over the years. He looked at the case as he held it in both hands, then brought it to me, and graciously handed it down toward me. “Look inside,” he told me. “Carefully!” And he handed me yet another pair of white gloves.
I opened the valise by snapping the locks holding down the top, and an earthy aroma, the smell of old books and library stacks, slightly damp and mildewy, rose to my nostrils. The first things I saw were two old, dog-eared manila folders, each holding a sheaf of paper, typewritten, and battered. And each folder had a penciled title: “Bread and Wine” on one. “Big Shoulders” on the other, thicker file. I gently pulled both folders out and opened the thicker one first. The top page, faded and dirty, was bundled together with forty or fifty pages. On the top page was typed:
“Big Shoulders”
by Ernest Hemingway
Barely breathing, I set that file down and opened the other one to reveal what appeared to be the first page of a story titled “Bread and Wine.” I set it down and looked back in the valise to pull out several more old manuscripts. My heart thudded against my breastbone as I sat there stunned, confusion muddling my thoughts. This valise supposedly did not exist. It was like the jarring moment in Poe’s tale, “The Purloined Letter.” I suddenly realized that the object I had been searching for had been there in front of me, right in the room with me, all along.
I looked up at Sensei. My mouth was agape, in awe I guess, and I just shook my head, almost as a complaint, not really knowing what to say. Then, finally, “But … how can this be?”
Sensei had been working on some rice crackers as he watched me open the case and examine its contents. His fingers fumbled with the plastic wrappings while studying me with his eagle-eyes. He was like an old grandfather, watching a child open a longed-for Christmas present, looking for the sheer joyfulness to take over the child’s face. He seemed to savor the silence as I sat there, absolutely dumbfounded, still looking through the contents of what appeared to be Hemingway’s valise, circa 1922, Paris, France.
“Yes, it is true, Yu-san. The valise does survive, along with its contents. You see it with your own eyes, yes? You hold its contents in your own hands. And the irony of all of this is that the biographers had the evidence available all along, but were simply not able to put the clues together because of the Hemingway myth. The myth tells us that all of his great early work was lost forever. And Hemingway played that myth for all it was worth.”
“So he knew all along that the valise survived?”
“Well, that is one possibility. But I do not suspect that to be the case. It is well established, however, that Hemingway knew that some of his acquaintances wanted very much for him to destroy those early manuscripts. They felt that his simple tales of America, Chicago, fishing in Michigan, and so forth, represented an old-fashioned art. One person in particular was insistent about this, and felt that Ernest’s youthful works were holding him back from becoming the true artist of the new style. This critic felt that such stories were not worthy of Ernest’s talents and efforts. I have personally received evidence from this person, and can prove it is true: two letters from this most famous friend, stating these things very clearly.”
“Which friend?”
He looked surprised. “Are you not able to guess, Yu-san? I am a bit disappointed, actually. It was Ezra Pound, of course!”
“Pound? Why would he care even the slightest about Hemingway’s stories? I don’t get it.”
He was ready for my questions, and patiently opened one of the thick biographies he had set on the table earlier. James Mellow’s Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences, complete with Post-it notes sticking out. Sensei turned it toward me and showed me a quote from Pound calling Hemingway’s loss an “act of GAWD.”
“But what does that prove?”
“In hindsight, everything. You see, Ezra thought of himself as God!”
I grimaced at his point. “That’s it? Your theory is based on that?”
He found this amusing. “It is no theory, Yu-san.”
I was getting irritable and called his bluff. “Sensei! Please finish the story!”
He chuckled, shaking his head at me slowly. “You Americans! So impatient, and impertinent.” He was pulling me along, playing with my short fuse, and enjoying every minute of it even though it was clear I wasn’t enjoying it at all.
“Very well,” he said finally, after eating yet another cracker. “It is quite simple, really. Pound thought Hemingway was stuck, his writing stale, and that he needed a fresh start. Hemingway obsessed over those old manuscripts. Pound had read it all, including the parts of the novel set in Chicago. He told Hem it was terrible; that he should put it aside. Pound emphasized that the true, the beautiful parts of the work would remain with him, that he would retain the valuable material in his mind and heart, that the essence and greatness was a part of him and would stay with him, but that he needed to look at it anew. But Hemingway was very obstinate, a stubborn young man. He wouldn’t listen. Finally, Pound decided there was only one thing to do: destroy all the stories and old manuscripts himself. Which is precisely what he did. Well, he didn’t destroy them, exactly, but he got them away from Hemingway, which was the whole point. With the help of a co-conspirator, Pound arranged for all of those materials to be gathered and placed in a small valise, ready for his select agent to take it all away at a moment’s notice. And that is how it happened. It was an inside job, Yu-san!”
“Inside job?” This was too much. The story was getting stranger with every detail. “How could there be another person involved? How could this happen without Hadley knowing something about it? Anyway she’s stated repeatedly that it was she who put all the materials into the valise. So your story falls apart, Sensei—” I stopped. “Wait. “Are you telling me…?”
He nodded, a wide smile spreading across his face. “Very good, Yu-san. You have just completed the circuit.”
“Hadley was the other person?”
“Of course. It all makes perfect sense. Ezra Pound was such an impressive and charismatic mind, along with being one of the Hemingway’s closest friends, that he was capable of convincing Hadley to do almost anything, so long as she felt that it might benefit Ernest. I finally saw the connection myself in the mid-1960s and the solution seemed obvious. It was Hadley and Pound all along, although it took several more years of investigating to lead me finally to the valise you now see on the table before you.”
“But how could they keep it a secret all those years?”
“It was in everyone’s best interests to keep the secret. Hemingway’s volatile temper was of legendary proportions. And anyway, there’s not much in there, as you can see for yourself. Hemingway invented the rest, all on his own, and there was little interference from the critics and the biographers. Like children, they just believed the stories that the great author told them.” He paused and looked off into the distance. “Yes, they all just played along. Until I put it all together and confronted the main actors in the drama. You know, Yu-san, there is a wonderful moment in an old movie by your great director, John Ford. The movie is called The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It’s about a man who becomes famous for shooting a dreaded criminal, although, in fact, he did not shoot him at all. At one point, a reporter says, ‘When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.’”
I nodded as I ran my fingers across the case’s worn leather. I knew the movie well and had watched it many times.
“Well, that is what happened with the story of Hemingway’s valise,” Sensei continued. “The legend became the fact, and forever after people quit searching for the lost valise. Except that when I began looking through these materials in the years just after the War, I was not completely satisfied with the legend. I felt that there was something wrong about it, something missing. And as I have told you, I had considerable financial backing for whatever curiosities I might be interested in uncovering— this was my major vice in life, or at least one of them. And so I went after the materials with the help of private detectives and some other snoops I have worked with over the years. I was determined to find out if the legends were true or not. And what I discovered, that no one else had ever taken the time to find out about, was that there were a couple of people still alive who had different versions of the story to tell. But nobody had ever asked them the right questions about it, or if they had, they had never asked with large amounts of cash in their hand.”
My eyebrows must have shot up. “You mean that you had somehow deduced that Pound still had Hemingway’s old manuscripts?”
“I assumed at that time that he must still have them, or that he knew who did, or else that the papers had been lost for good, or burned, or were a fabrication from the beginning. Those were the possibilities, as I saw it at the time. Though I did, in fact, have an opinion. And I turned out to be correct.”
I frowned. “What was your opinion?”
He took some time for dramatic effect. He brushed the crumbs off his robe and resettled himself on his cushion. “You see, Yu-san, my hunch was that there never was much of value in the valise. Or, rather, I believed that if there had been a valise, it probably contained a few minor items, but was never the great loss Hemingway made it out to be. And perhaps even Hemingway himself knew all along that he was playacting. Possibly he himself destroyed most of those early works, some night in a drunken rage. All in the service of enlarging his growing myth.”
This made no sense. “But Sensei, you have this valise, and the manuscripts,” I said, gesturing to them.
He smiled at this. “Forgive me for that slight prevarication, Yu-san. It was just a parlor trick. A trick, I should say, that I have long desired to play on someone just like yourself. Someone, that is, who could appreciate it for what it is.”
I sat there gazing at him in confused silence. He waited me out, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. So he continued. “It is indeed a valise of the style and color of the period, yes. It may even resemble the one that Hadley lost in the train station. I had one of my agents in Paris purchase several valises of the correct age and style as described to me by several eyewitnesses, including Hadley Hemingway. But no, the actual valise, I am afraid to say, has been lost or destroyed over the years. As for the contents. Yes, two of the documents you have just seen are in fact originals, and so far as I know, both unique and completely unknown to the world outside of these walls, at least since Pound died. And from everything I have been able to put together, they were both originally inside of the valise that night in 1922, when it was supposedly stolen in the Gare de Lyon in Paris. That much is true and not a trick at all.”
“Sensei, I don’t understand what you are telling me.”
He had my full attention; he smiled, shook his head, and began his explanation. “As I said, it was Pound all along. He was confident that he knew what was best for Hemingway. Don’t forget that he convinced T.S. Eliot to throw out huge sections of The Waste Land. Eliot’s epic poem was the monumental achievement of the era, and Eliot was no fool—Pound was simply brilliant, and in full control. So Eliot listened to him—and, in fact, Pound was right. He considered himself right about everything, and he truly believed that he knew what was best for other people, besides Tom Eliot and Ernest Hemingway. He persuaded Hilda Doolittle to write poetry a certain way, and to change her identity to the more mysterious “H.D.” He even dared lecture the great James Joyce on the art of writing fiction!
“Honestly, I was a bit embarrassed that the idea had never occurred to me before. Or to anyone else, evidently. Old Ezra was one of the great monomaniacs in American literary history, sort of a Rasputin figure, charismatic, even mesmerizing. That is why I compared him to Satan. His later, unfortunate history with Mussolini and the Fascists is a true indication of this rather sinister streak in his personality, I’m afraid.”
We sat motionless for a moment as I waited for him to continue. He pulled to him another green library box, laid out beforehand so that he could have it handy for just this moment in the story. “There is more evidence, but before I show you, I will tell you about Venice. Finally, yes, Yu-san?” He shot me a smile, and I nodded, helplessly caught in his web of stories, no longer sure what to believe, what truly had happened or what was simply an old man spinning a tall tale.
“I arrived in Venice in the summer of 1967. It was very warm, and I spent several days roaming the back alleyways and crossing the hundreds of tiny bridges that constitute the unique, odd, charm of the city. I had never been there before, and it had a hypnotic effect. This was the same city that had done its magic on Byron, and many of the great American writers—Hawthorne, Howells, James—and now, evidently, on old Ezra Pound. I had heard that he still went for his daily walks, even at his advanced age, and that often of an evening, he would dine with Olga at a nearby restaurant called Cici’s.
“And so, secretly I would go at night and sit in a far corner of Cici’s to wait for my target to arrive. On several occasions he did so, and I watched him struggle through the maze of tables, cane in one hand, and sit at the same place each night, inspecting the passersby, ordering the same meals, sipping at his wine. They rarely spoke, but I could see that there was a great affection there, and a kind of peacefulness. Pound was a formidable, almost a frightening presence. I was sizing him up, I told myself, preparing for our meeting, scheduled later in my second week in Venice.
“Finally the day arrived, and my audience was awaiting me. It was still quite light out—the sun stayed high in the skies until well past eight o’clock—and I made my way to Olga’s house a few minutes from my hotel. I was quite nervous.
“We made our introductions, and I will be brief in describing our conversations. He pounced upon me with relish. ‘So you are the friend of Hélène? And so how is old Horse-Blanket?’ I’ll never forget that first remark. The nickname, if it was one, was certainly new to me. The thought of calling the dignified Alsatian beauty ‘Horse-Blanket’ took a moment to digest. Possibly it was just an eccentricity, or an attempt to intimidate me, or throw me off. So I responded, ‘Hélène is well, and sends her best regards.’ And I must tell you I was intimidated, so I went immediately to the subject of interest. I asked him about the valise, and if he knew of any reasons that Hemingway might fake its loss.
“This shocked him, I now believe. He had gotten so used to the myth that he momentarily stuck with it. ‘Why yes, of course, it was a great tragedy, a great loss,’ he assured me.
“What if I were to tell you that there is some evidence of a conspiracy? That one of Hemingway’s friends worked to rid the world of those early manuscripts?’ I stopped for effect and looked into his fiery eyes. They blazed, like live coals. He looked right back at me, hard. I might have melted, then and there. I believe I was shaking and hid my hands so he wouldn’t see. ‘What sort of nonsense is this?’ he demanded. ‘What are you all about here?’ He drilled right through me with those eyes, and started to his feet. ‘How could a so-called friend do a thing like that? I’ll have you know that Hem was like a brother. He helped me get out of the nuthouse, dammit, and sent me a huge check in support when I did get out. Which I still have, by the way. I never cashed it!’
“I did my best to calm his ruffled feathers. ‘Yes, Mr. Pound, I know all about that,” I told him. ‘And I understand your affections.’ I slowed down and looked at him directly, gathering my courage. ‘But is it not true, that sometimes an older brother must step in, and do something that seems rather rash, so that the beloved younger brother can go forward in life?’
“He relaxed back into his chair, and sized me up a long moment. ‘I’ve seen you watching me, you know, down at Cici’s. Did you think I’m too senile to notice a skinny little Jap, night after night studying me?’ He paused for effect. ‘What do you want from me?’
“I thought for a moment. ‘Just a good story,’ I answered. ‘A story, shall we say, that can stay in this room.’ I hesitated to make the final move. Then I told him, ‘I can make it very much worth your while. I am a man of great means, Mr. Pound.’
“This information perked him up. I had been told in no uncertain terms from Hélène that Pound had always been obsessive in his fear about not having enough money. In reality, at this point in his life, he had more than enough money for anything he would ever need. Olga had taken care of all that. Nevertheless, Pound always insisted on being able to take care of himself financially, and to be assured that he would always have whatever he wished to have, was a great pearl to dangle in front of him. So my offer of money, put in this very casual way, called out to him.
“He said, ‘So, we’re negotiating now, for the story? Is that it?’
“If you wish to put it in those terms, yes.”
“‘But you have already done that, haven’t you? You’ve put it in those terms, I would say. Well …’ He stroked his old white beard. He had the wrinkled head of an ancient prophet, and his eyes were beaming, having just come down from the mountain of visitation. ‘Shall we say, then, that if you make me the right offer, I might satisfy your strange desires? For I do, as they say, have a story to tell. Yes, and you are not so far from the Kingdom as you might imagine, Professor.’
“’But do you expect me to name an amount without hearing your story, or without seeing the goods being purchased?’
“He thought this over. ‘Come back tomorrow night, then. Same time. I will show you … the goods, as you put it. Will that be convenient, Professor?’
“I agreed, and he rose to leave me without speaking further. Soon enough I was out on the street, strolling back to my hotel with a glorious smile on my face. I had the answers to questions I had been investigating for years, just within my grasp.
“The next evening, I arrived at the house prepared to pay whatever price might be necessary to secure the evidence I was seeking. I was quite curious about what form Pound’s evidence might take. He received me immediately, and had a strange and almost unearthly look on his old and weathered face. He seemed slightly agitated, and wished to transact our business with great alacrity, I thought.
“‘I believe this is what you are looking for, Professor.’ He handed me an autograph document, signed by his own hand, as I immediately recognized.”
And now, with a flourish, Sensei reached for one of his green library boxes, and pulled from it a single sheet of paper. “Here it is, Yu-san. The signed document that Pound handed me that evening, twenty-five years ago.”
I took the leaf from Sensei, and began perusing it. It was abrupt and to the point, as I imagined Pound to have been. The paper reads, in full, as follows:
Yessir, it’s true. I asked Hadley to bring all the stories to me—all of ’em. Commanded her, really. She was one that needed to be told what to do. Gotta see ’em, I bellowed. Bring ’em to me! Hadley was an easy tool, and she worshipped Hem. Anything to help the old man. And being Gawd, I easily convinced her. And in 1922 Paris, I was Gawd!
When I had Hem’s stories, I immediately saw that my strategy was correct. I studied those silly tales—almost all of it cheap, vulgar trash, written by an ignorant youth.Just children’s stories, fit for the flames. But my, did we invent a fine conspiracy. And nobody ever suspected! In some sense, my best poem ever. A myth for the ages!
Of course, I protected Hadley, and I swore to her that I would. We played our hand just right.
ps. Not everything was directed to the oblivion of flames. Two of those old stories survived. They were the best of the bunch: “Bread and Wine” and “Big Shoulders.”
Would ya like to see ’em?
Signed, and sealed,
E. Pound, 1967, Venice, Italy
I looked up at Sensei, flabbergasted. “This is from Pound?!”
“His own hand. It is just as he wrote it and gave it to me, the second time we met. He insisted that I write a document to him, saying I should not reveal any of it until all the principals had been dead for at least twenty years. And he did produce the two stories, or rather one complete story, “Bread and Wine,” and one large fragment of an aborted novel, “Big Shoulders.” Those are the manuscripts I have already shown you. I knew immediately that I would not leave his house that night without closing a deal, so the negotiations began in earnest. He certainly had a weakness for cash.
“So I said, ‘Name a figure, Mr. Pound, and we can begin our discussions of a proper payment.’ He did name a figure, and I did not even make a counteroffer. Instead, I produced an envelope with a large stack of both Deutsche marks and Italian lira, and patiently peeled from it an equivalent amount. I even added some to it. And I handed it directly to him. ‘Will that satisfy you?’
“He did not even take the cash. Instead, he looked me directly in the eye, in the haunting way that he had. The old evil eye, from a gothic tale. I actually shuddered. But I did not reveal any second thoughts, and held the money before him. He finally took the wad of cash, almost apologetically, saying as he did, ‘Remember, it is to remain a secret, till twenty years after I can’t be bothered by it anymore. Or the others, either.’ And he turned and hobbled out of the room, his cane in one hand and the cash in the other.
“I never saw him again. That was over twenty-five years ago, and I have kept my end of the bargain—until tonight!”
Holding Pound’s letter in my hands like a sacred text, I asked, “And when do you expect to make this discovery available to the scholars?”
He smiled, I assume at my American impatience. “It is not something we need to hurry, Yu-san. Every year that I withhold my secret, its value doubles, I should say!” He enjoyed his little treasure now, laughing as a child might with a new toy. “Of course, it is already unique, and thus almost impossible to appraise. What you hold in your hand may in fact be one of the most valuable single sheets of paper in American literary collecting. And you are only the fifth person to know of its existence—at least, to my knowledge. This should be a matter of some small enjoyment for you.”
“Five people? Me, you, Pound… ?”
“And Mika, of course. She knows the contents of all my collections.” He waited me out. Then, “Can’t you guess the fifth?”
I thought it over. “Hadley?”
“Of course. I needed corroboration. Otherwise, how could I know that it was not some hoax by the aging poet, desperate for some easy money? So I managed to set up an interview with Hadley, two years after visiting with old Ezra. She was living in a farmhouse, up in New Hampshire, where she had settled with her husband, the writer Paul Mowrer, after he retired from journalism. It was near the end of the 1960s, and reporters and biographers were still contacting her with various questions and so forth, digging around for more information about the great Hemingway. She graciously invited me to her home, and provided directions. The day I arrived, I parked my rental car, and as I strolled up the front walk, I could hear piano music coming from the house. I stood on the porch a moment, listening to what sounded like a piece by Schubert. Then I pressed the doorbell, the music faded away, and a pretty, rather simple woman answered the door. It was Hadley, wearing a brightly laundered white frock, alone in that big old house, answering the door herself. I found this to be quite charming, an image I still can conjure in my mind. Immediately I liked her even more than I had imagined I would.
“She brought me into the sitting room, then went out for cold drinks—iced tea, a very American refreshment. We sat and chatted briefly, then I circled in for the necessary information. ‘I’ve been to see Ezra Pound, and he told me a remarkable story about the Paris years.’
“She looked at me, her face blank. ‘Yes?’
“‘It has to do with the lost manuscripts.’
“‘Oh, that damned, painful subject again!’ She looked almost relieved, and spoke in a mocking, rather funny way. ‘How many times must I tell it?’
“‘It seemed a little rehearsed to me. And suddenly I went in for the coup de grace. ‘I wonder if you might comment about this letter that Pound gave to me?’ I handed her a copy of the document.
“She began reading, and very quickly her eyes became wider, and her head turned downward just slightly. Then she brightened and looked at me. ‘And so just what exactly is all this supposed to mean? That we are to take seriously the words of an old, broken down genius, who spent twelve years in an insane asylum?’
“I took a moment before responding. ‘I believe he is telling the truth, Mrs. Mowrer. There is other evidence to support his story, and so I cannot think that it is an invention. Unless you can tell me otherwise.’ She began to protest, but I kept going. ‘I should also assure you that I have promised Mr. Pound that I would never reveal any of these secrets until at least twenty years after the passing of any of the … major players in the drama, so to speak. I must tell you that I have long suspected some sort of conspiracy. It was only in recent years that I finally discovered what seemed to be a workable explanation. And so I visited Mr. Pound in order to test my explanation. He was altogether forthcoming in our conversations, and spoke as any sane, highly intelligent man of his stature should be expected to speak.’ I waited a moment. ‘And he also produced some very old manuscripts.’
“She sat motionless and rather fatigued-looking for several long moments. She consulted the copy of Pound’s letter once more, shaking her head as if she couldn’t trust her eyes to read the words on the page. I wanted to launch into another long statement, but felt it was correct to wait for her to respond.
“Finally she did. ‘He told me he would never reveal to ANYONE what we had done.’ She stamped her foot in a moment of petulance. I could see her mind working, trying to determine how to respond, what tack to take. I waited. Finally, she looked me in the eye. ‘It was all for Ernest. I wanted so much for him to be recognized as the great writer we all knew him to be. And now we can all see that greatness so plainly. Ezra was our wonderful friend, and his wise advice had already changed so many people’s lives. Tom Eliot called him the master craftsman.’ She looked at me for some kind of sympathy.
“‘Can you verify that Pound’s account is accurate?’
“She put her face into her hands, then looked up once more. ‘And is this to remain secret? Can you assure me of this? Because I simply cannot stand to be dragged once more, again and again, into the newspapers. When Ernest died, it was all just too much. Every reporter forced me to relive the tragedies over and over again. And this coming out … ’
“She covered her face with her hands, and I said, ‘Your story will be safe with me. Until at least another twenty years, or more. It is my solemn promise, Mrs. Mowrer.’ Again she peered into my eyes, I think searching for an assurance that my promise could be trusted. And I had every intention of keeping it. I believe at that moment, she understood that to be the case. So she said, ‘Yes, Professor. Ezra’s account is correct. We put together the story about the valise. I thought that he could do the same for Ernest that he had done for Tom Eliot … I believed that Ezra knew what was best … ’ And she quitted the tale. I had no need to prod her. She said little beyond what I have now told you.”
“That’s it, Sensei?” I wanted more.
“In terms of substance, yes. I already felt that I had the story, and was only there for corroboration. And I had received it, a confession of sorts. I felt pain for her at that moment, Yu-san. She was now just an amiable, slightly overweight older lady living in a farmhouse in New England, whose life had been fairly normal for a long time. And my brash inquiries served to resurrect those jarring memories of her youth, when she had found herself at the center of one of the most legendary bohemian cultures ever assembled. One day she was a pretty teenager growing up in Chicago, the next she was surrounded by the most brilliant and colorful set of intellectuals that we have perhaps ever seen in the western world. And now, in her dotage, she was alone in her farmhouse, playing an old, slightly out-of-tune piano, answering her own door, and serving iced tea to complete strangers.
“Presently our conversation ended, and I left her. But I now knew that Pound’s tale was real, and that I had in my possession a relic of mythic proportions: a unique document, composed in longhand by Ezra Pound, proving to the world that my theories were substantially correct.”
He paused, appearing triumphant. “You see, I had proven my thesis. It was the culminating achievement of my career. And yet,” he wavered a second, “until this very day, I had never told any other person about it, outside of Mika. You are the first American scholar to know these things, Yu-san. Hadley died in the early ’70s, and I have held the secret well beyond my promise. For all these years, I have been alone in my triumph, in the academic world— until now.”
He called for Omori, made a request for sake, and when it was brought, he poured two tiny porcelain cups to the brim. So we lifted glasses and toasted Sensei’s discoveries. He drained his cup of sake, then peered at me. “And what will you do with these secrets, Yu-san?”
Pause.
“I’ll just have to think about that one for a while, Sensei.” I looked down at my cup, at the exquisite craftsmanship, so delicate I could see my fingers through the fragile porcelain. “But don’t worry—the secret is safe with me.”
And I have been thinking about it—for over fifteen years. All that time, it has remained our little secret, like the details of a couple’s romantic honeymoon, high up in the mountains, surrounded by wind and trees. The story about Hemingway and Pound would also become the culmination of my intimacies with Sensei, though, of course, I could not have known it at the time. Over a year and a half of slow cultivation had climaxed with these revelations of Pound in Venice. I was certain that it couldn’t be topped, even by that great literary magician, Goto Haruki.
As it unfolded, ours was a short-lived honeymoon. Midwinter turned abruptly bone-chilling, and soon enough a moist chill began to dominate the early mornings. Cold, rainy winds came off the ocean, up the mountainside, and into my living room when I left the windows open—which I frequently did. One night, I awoke with the curtains blowing in almost horizontally, and although I had recently been let in on one of the greatest literary deceptions of modern times, my immediate concern was now a head cold from Hell. Meanwhile, Sensei left town for weeks on end, visiting the hot springs of Kyushu to escape the cold, and I stayed home on Sundays, sulking.
It should have been a momentous season for me. But the rain ushered in the dreariest and most discouraging times I had in Japan—at least, until the final days. Empty juice containers, piles of used Kleenexes, old copies of the Japan Times, and dirty dishes littered my now too tiny apartment. For almost a week I lay in my bed, reading when I felt like it, napping or just staring out at the city and ocean beyond. Occasionally, I turned on the television and dozed while listening to news on NHK, most of which I couldn’t understand.
Classes were done for the year, and my head cold gave me plenty of motivation to skip going to the office. The lines at the stores, and the crowded sidewalks of urban Japan, were no longer amusing; they were now simply annoying, as were my classroom and office duties. Worst of all, I was getting restless, and I knew it.
When my visits to Sensei resumed in March, they seemed less intriguing, less energizing. For one thing, I was seeing less and less of Mika. Each week my heart would flutter as I awaited the person who would answer the door. The difference between Mika and Omori was like the difference between the vast blue of the Pacific Ocean spreading out before me and a half-full glass of tap water down at the local bento shop. And Sensei too seemed to be changing—he seemed more despondent, and often would send word to me canceling our next visit. Meanwhile, the talk I had had with Mika that one afternoon so many months back, unattended by Sensei, seemed to have become a distant dream. Looking back, it certainly injured my friendship with Sensei as well, though at that moment, things were destined to get much worse. For most of winter and spring of 1994, we only met a few times. But somehow the buzz was fading, and we both sensed it. Maybe the climax of our relationship had been achieved, and it would be all downhill from then on.
There was still the highly anticipated trip to France on his behalf. One week in late January, Sensei detailed the mechanics of my upcoming journey. It was certainly exciting, and would evidently require very little on my part, but there still was an air of mystery surrounding the precise nature of my “assistance.” All I knew was that I was to assist in the evaluation of “certain documents.”
So, on a balmy day in March 1994, I boarded a Japan Airlines flight bound for Paris. Sensei had it all arranged for me, months in advance. He had purchased a business class upgrade, which I learned was the only way to fly. Once I arrived at Charles De Gaulle Airport and exited customs, I was greeted by a wordless and nameless person in a black suit and cap who held a cardboard sign saying “Professor Springs,” and who ushered me to a black metallic limo and whisked me into the center of old Paris. Sensei had also arranged for me to stay in a seventeenth-century building of cold limestone, with much glass and marble inside. It was situated a stone’s throw away from the Closerie de Lilas, the old nightclub in Montparnasse where Hemingway and his friends reigned like princes in the glory days of 1920s Paris.
My silent driver carried my things up to the second floor—or, rather, the third floor; this aspect of European thought eluded my American instincts. The landlady spoke to me busily in a sort of French that did not sound much like the courses I had taken years before. Her hands moved franticly, like frightened birds. I understood about twenty percent of what she said, though I got the impression that she was very happy to have me, and that Sensei was someone of very great importance in her world.
Her name was Madame Clairaux, and she wore thick glasses, a crocheted shawl of bright red, and extremely strong perfume of some sort. She insisted I sit with her in her dusty nineteenth-century-style parlor and have tea. My head was shaky from the long flight and all I wanted to do was sleep, but I smiled broadly and ate a tiny Parisian pastry of some sort as she chattered on in her incomprehensible French. My nods only encouraged her further. Finally, teacups drained, she escorted me up the stairs to my rooms, and showed me how to use the door keys—one for the front entrance on the boulevard, and another for my apartment. She patiently took me around the flat to show me how various things worked, and in ten minutes was on her way.
It was late in the afternoon, and I was alone in a fairly extravagant apartment in the City of Lights. My flight back was eight days later, so I had plenty of time to explore. I only had one duty to attend to—to meet with one of Sensei’s agents, as he called him, a Monsieur Gluckstein. Sensei had assured me that I could easily examine the documents in question in less than an hour, and then advise him about their authenticity. I did not know of their approximate value at that time, and on that first day in Paris I had not even known what they were or who had written them. What I did know was, that if it all worked out as he planned it, Sensei would green light the exchange, and would have funds wired into this agent’s bank account. Then, I would receive the documents and hand carry them back to Japan. I was on a need to know basis, like a scene out of a Robert Ludlum novel, so it seemed very intriguing and romantic.
There were also a few other dealers whose offices Sensei asked me to visit, but the main purpose of the trip was evidently the rendezvous with Gluckstein, which was to be later in the week. So I had five days to deal with the jet lag and to get accustomed to my temporary residence.
I spent most of my time aimlessly wandering up and down the hypnotic streets of central Paris. It was cold but dry, and with a heavy coat and a wool cap, the days were perfect for serious walking. The streets themselves were the loveliest I had ever encountered—endless cafes with finely-dressed patrons sipping coffee and reading newspapers, stunning vistas of old churches, villas, and perfectly symmetrical bridges, and the raging root beer foam of the river Seine, stampeding its way to the sea. Octagenarians of both sexes, dressed up like models in glossy fashion magazines, walked slowly through the alleyways or along the river, with tiny dogs on leashes. I visited museums, sat for long silences in countless churches, and took lengthy breaks in those same cafes, substituting wine for coffee as the afternoons lengthened into evening. It was one of the great weeks of my lifetime, and I swore I would come back again and again. But I never did.
In due course, I met with Gluckstein in another of those omnipresent cafes. The meeting had been set up at a rather grand venue on the Rue de Rivoli, near the Saint Paul metro stop. Sensei insisted upon this location, claiming it had some of the best pastries and croissants in the world, of all things. He delighted in such details, always insisting on “the best.”
I arrived first, about ten o’clock on a promising Parisian morning, and took a seat, one of only three other people at the cafe. The pastry and coffee were, as promised, splendid. As I waited, I read a Newsweek International that someone had left on a nearby table. Twenty minutes later Gluckstein bustled into the café and came directly to my table, as if from some sort of intuition.
“Ah, professeur, I am late once again!” He smiled as he said this, and I was immediately at ease with him. Gluckstein was short, squat, wearing thick black spectacles on the bridge of his prodigious nose, a heavy wool suit and a cape, of all things. He was overfed, and thus overweight in the least offensive way, and he made the most of his God-given natural appearance by smiling and winking a lot, as if he were in constant touch with the frailty and ridiculousness of human culture and society. He carried with him a polished leather satchel and a blue and red checked umbrella, though the sky was fair and there was no sign of rain. He also had in his front lapel a bright red rose. Gluckstein was a charmer, from first impressions, but Sensei had told me to be on guard for this aspect of his character—as a businessman, he was a killer.
We sat for some minutes, and he asked me my impressions of his “adopted” city. He informed me that he was originally from southern Italy (“Oui, my name does not sound Italian, n’est-ce pas?”), and that he had come from a long line of collectors and dealers of curiosities and art, including paintings, prints, sculpture, stained glass, jewelry, antique books, and other curiosities. For over thirty years, he said, he had maintained a reputation as one of Paris’s premiere dealers, out of a tiny shop he operated in the Rue des Rosiers in the Marais. His family business back in Ravello, on a mountaintop high above the Amalfi Coast, was now run by his brother and nephew, and continued to be one of his chief suppliers of his curiosities. “They are worth far more up here in Paris,” he winked.
He leaned in slightly. “Perhaps there is something I might be able to locate for you, Professor Springs?” He peered into my face, quizzically. “I have an extensive network, and also deal with civil authorities and private investigators, if your request might involve anything of a more confidential nature.” His eye widened slightly as he moved just a bit closer toward me.
“Well, no, I can’t think of anything for the moment. But thanks just the same.”
This seemed to disappoint him just slightly. He looked away, fanning himself with his handkerchief. “Yes, well then, alors …” Gluckstein rambled on a moment longer, then suddenly and decisively snatched the satchel up off of the chair next to him and unclasped it. He pulled from it a manila folder thick with what looked like old papers. And just like that, he handed the folder across the table to me.
“These are the documents that Professor Goto is interested in. I am sure he has explained it all to you already.”
I didn’t have the heart to correct him—I actually had no idea what was under consideration. All I really knew was that it must be something I had particular knowledge of, to be commissioned to come so far at such a great expense. Or at least that was my understanding on the morning of my meeting with Gluckstein. I eagerly opened the folder and began reading the document on top, an autograph letter:
Dear old Mark,
Now you must know that I love you for I have let you alone a whole month—and more. And that for a man hunted from pillar to post by all creation as you are, is worthy to be credited as an act of grace and mercy. You are yourself to blame for waking me up now. Your midnight report of the dinner with the “Red Robin of London” was a sheer delight. Her mistaken conception of “what Americans all believe” deserved all the abuse you could muster, and I cannot criticize your befuddlement a bit (nor your irritation). I earnestly hope sometime to appear in person in a gathering of that illustrious clan somewhere, and to listen in rapt attention as you indicate to this robin the weaknesses of her views, and the misery with which you are forced to hear them. It would be a most memorable occasion.
So you are to summer in England. After then, what? Will you be coming home to America, at long last?
We are booked for the short-term at Judy’s new cottage on Long Island, near Easthampton. Part of us are already there and the rest are going in a few days… .
I skipped ahead. The letter went on for several pages, and ended:
With love to Livy and the girls,
And yours affectionately, Joe
I turned the next page to see the following:
London
August 3, 1900
Dear Joe,
I am raging this afternoon, having just read more news about the nonsense being rained down upon the poor Filipinos, all in the name of God, progress, civilization, and so on. Why it is that the Americans consider it their right to pontificate to the world how clearly they perceive the will of an inscrutable God, I cannot say—but they do so as regularly as the sun sets, and generally do it without a shameful second thought, or even the tiniest trace of a grin on their faces. Airing their smug pieties is one thing, but to do so in the service of exploiting the poor Filipinos—well, Joe, it’s an act of the Christian imagination that must make a solid man of the cloth like yourself blush in shame.
Forgive my smoke and heat, Joe; it’s been a rather humdrum morning, with rain pouring down and the women off at a gallery showing. They left here with higher expectations than I was able to muster. And so here I sit, remembering the old days, when bloodshed and horror in the name of God were carried out, at least, against our own countrymen, and not upon these innocent and freedom-seeking outsiders whose very language and culture remain a mystery beyond our grasp. It can be a tiresome and even shameful thing, being an American abroad these days.
As for that “Red Robin” that I had mentioned, and her foolishness in such matters: Yes, it is a terrible thing to be lumped in with the rest of the crass Americans, who are all up in a lather about God and country and so forth. I did tell her a thing or two, and I suppose in the context of what the British think of as “high society,” well, yes, it was rather unexpected. But mark my words—it’s a dinner that none of them will very soon forget!
Affection all around, Mark
The letters appeared to be very much like the ones between Mark Twain and Joe Twichell that I had read in the past, both during my graduate years at Yale, where many of them are stored, and at Sensei’s, the day he had shown me some unknown others. However, I did not recognize any of these, either.
I thumbed through this sheaf of pages. Overall, it was made up of approximately a hundred pages of autograph letters, all of which were written during the years 1898-1902, back and forth, from these two close friends, probably almost forty individual letters and postcards total. Obviously the ones by Twain were far more valuable individually; but as a complete lot, this was a terrific cache for scholars, since they looked to be a sequential “run,” each letter responding to the previous one, roughly speaking.
Meanwhile, as I continued to examine the cache, Gluckstein calmly ordered an aperitif and croissant, watching the colorful Parisians tread by on the sidewalk. A few times he let his eyes rest happily upon me; he was the kind of dealer who took real joy in presenting to his eager clients a trinket that gave them pleasure.
Finally, he spoke. “Well, monsieur? What do you think of my merchandise?”
“Where did you find these?”
He grinned, wiping his mouth with a napkin. He sipped at his drink. “Monsieur, that is of course a matter of no concern to you. My clients, as you must know, wish to remain anonymous. And my business must rely on this aspect. Otherwise, my clients would go elsewhere, as you can imagine.” There was some real delight in his eyes as he told me this. “I am a man of some secrecies, you see.”
As I listened to Gluckstein from across the table, it was like a spotlight went on in my brain, and I suddenly realized that there might very well be something illegal going on in all of this. Now, looking back and retelling this adventure in hindsight, this sounds so naïve as to be almost laughable. But in all honesty, up to that very moment, it had not really occurred to me. Or else, perhaps I should say, whatever possibilities of impropriety might exist in all of this, I had suppressed somehow. But now, seated at a tiny table in a café in the Marais, it dawned on me. This might very well be hot merchandise, stolen from an archive, or perhaps a rival collector.
“Can you tell me how much Sensei is offering for these letters?”
He chewed on his croissant, slathered in jam. Then he wiped his mouth with his linen napkin, put it down, and winked audaciously. I almost laughed out loud. “Monsieur, this is of no real concern to you, as I told you. Professor Goto is a gentleman who insists upon all matters remaining confidential. I am of course also a businessman who works under such conditions.” His very Parisian English, according to which a word like “conditions” came out “con-DEE-She-ONS,” sounded rather like Inspector Clouseau. Any moment he might stand up and fall to the ground, his cape flying into the air, or else he might bowl over a waiter with a tray full of dishes.
“My understanding is that it is your task to inspect these documents, report back to your superior, and if he accepts your evaluation as definitive” [day-FEEN-it-TEEV], “for you to take possession of them and hand carry them back to Japan for delivery to Professeur Goto. That is all of the instructions I have been given, and to go beyond them is not in my interests. The Professeur has been one of my great and trusted clients for many years, even longer than you might imagine.”
And so I did it. I counted up the number of leaves, the number of letters, and the dates, and found a telephone to call my “superior.” I provided my report, barely able to hold back my enthusiasms, though I still suspected there was something fishy going on. Within minutes, Sensei made up his mind and spoke very briefly to me in the following manner:
“Yu-san, please tell Gluckstein to proceed with the arrangements as discussed before. Within twenty-four hours the transaction should be completed, through the agreed upon agents. Once he has received the payment, he is to deliver the goods to your apartment, at which time please verify that the entire package is the same. I would ask you to hand carry all of these documents back through customs. As old letters you can report that they have negligible value, and the customs people will not question you on this.”
Here again was another hint that something was slightly out of whack, similar to my feelings of confusion at the end of my trip to Manila. Once again, my ignorance of the value of the papers, from Sensei’s point of view, was strategically an advantage when reentering Japan. And, once more, Sensei was telling me to shut up and obey— which was, for the second time, exactly what I did. And once again, it ticked me off. Again I felt presumed upon. And again I felt betrayed.
It was another two weeks before Sensei and I met again. When I got back to Japan, he was away in the south again, and I was jet-lagging anyway. Since school was out, I had almost nothing to do regarding my teaching for another two weeks, so I spent much of my time worrying about the meeting. I didn’t want to compromise our relationship, but I needed to somehow convey how I felt about being manipulated during the recent trip to France and on my prior trip to Manila. The problem was I had no idea how to even broach the subject.
On the day of our meeting, I trudged up the hill as a light snow mixed with occasional sleet swirled down from the cold, gray March clouds above. When I finally arrived at his house to deliver the goods, Mika met me at the door. It had been awhile since I’d seen her, but I was prepared, just in case. I presented her with a gift-wrapped box of candy purchased at a famous boutique near the Arc de Triomphe. Like Sensei, I had learned she cherished nothing but the best.
“Ah, Jack-san, domo arigato!” She seemed genuinely pleased.
We bowed at one another, still quite formal in our approach. Like with some of the overly eager young students in the first row of my classes, I regularly imagined a sexual spark with Mika, but I could never tell if I might be able to turn it into a raging bonfire. I remained confused about the possibilities of our having a relationship, though, in fact, it had been many long weeks since I had even glimpsed her. Since meeting her for the first time, I had suppressed those types of thoughts. Or at least I tried to suppress them. I could still feel the daggers of Sensei’s glowering look, the day he discovered us sitting alone in the tearoom. I even pictured the limpid Miyamoto, slamming his forehead into a stack of bricks, and screeching at the top of his lungs. Thus did my fears curtail my lingering lust.
Anyway, I couldn’t quite figure out how to play it, I guess—and thought of it as a stalemate. But in my daydreams, Mika’s long swaying hair tumbling down onto her silk kimono, which was wrapped tightly around her lithe body as she leaned forward gracefully to refill my teacup—this had become my image of a sort of feminine beauty that was both exotic and down-to-earth. My Muse, so to speak. Ironically, it was on this cold afternoon of what would turn out to be my ugliest confrontation with Sensei that I was destined to comprehend the extremity of my desire to know Mika on some other level than mere waitress. But for now it would have to wait. So I asked, “Is Sensei ready for my visit?”
“My apologies, Jack-san, but he has been detained with other things and begs your forgiveness. Please come into the sitting room and he should return shortly. Can I offer you some tea?”
We went into the room that had grown so familiar to me. I thought of it as if it were a place frozen in time, like a reading room in one of the world’s great museums, a place where the past brushed up against the present, and the passage of time was irrelevant, if only for an hour or two. The table at which I had sat and studied Sensei’s wonderful collection awaited my leaning elbows, but today it was empty save for an old Japanese fan and a single, bright green and red volume.
As I sat and waited for Mika to return with a tiny porcelain teapot filled with steaming green tea, I thought about how much I had come to love these Sundays with Sensei. Leafing through his many portfolios, often filled with autograph letters or manuscripts by my favorite authors—a set of pages from a diary by Stephen Crane, some unpublished letters of Willa Cather, a few rejected early song lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin, the receipts from an Italian vacation of William Dean Howells—had become an addictive behavior pattern.
Mika entered the room, bringing her tray of tea and snacks. She poured and started to leave just as I opened my mouth to ask that she stay. The words died on my tongue when I heard the front door open and “Tadaima!” ring out. Then the sound of shoes brushing against a mat, then slipped off, the rustling of a coat, a cabinet banging shut, a sneeze, and finally someone walking down the creaky wooden hallway toward me.
Mika was still standing beside the table when Sensei entered the room. His eyes flickered between his niece and me before he spoke. “Yu-san, my apologies for being delayed. Have you been treated well by Mika?” There was a tiny inflection of jealousy and alarm in this question.
“Hello Sensei, yes, she has been most gracious, as always.”
He gave her a slight nod and then turned to me again. “I met an old friend whose husband was long ago a colleague of mine. I had not seen her for many years—her name is Toyoda-san, her husband was a great scholar of Keats. He died about three years ago, and by chance I saw her today, and we talked for some time.”
He seemed to be rambling and I remembered the awkwardness of the previous time, now months ago, when he had caught me sitting alone with Mika. I cleared my throat. “I’ve just been sitting here, reading this odd little book.” I showed it to him. It was another of his treasures: a first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It just happened to be out, lying on the table in plain sight.
Still standing over me, he shook the folds of his robe, brushing himself off. With what I thought was great deliberation, he lowered himself to the tatami across the table from me. “Mika! Ocha!” This command for tea was slightly more testy than usual, and I couldn’t stop myself from glancing up at Mika as she hurried from the room to get more tea. Sensei and I sat in an awkward silence a moment. “It is a curious book,” he agreed. “The poor wizard. A charlatan from the plains of Kansas. I often felt just as weak and empty as the wizard, in my work as a teacher. Worried that my own … ignorance, and imperfection might be revealed for all to see.”
“Why did you put this particular story out today?”
He stopped to think. “It was not me. Perhaps Mika was looking at it?”
That was all we said about Frank Baum’s children’s book. I waited for another opening. Silence.
“Friend?” He had forgotten his own story.
“Toyoda-san? Your colleague’s wife?”
He faintly recalled the episode, seemingly still worried that I had once again besmirched the honor of his precious niece, I supposed. Then he stroked his chin and paused. “Ah yes. She is not well. She looks rather haggard.” He sniffled, rubbed his nose. “I assume that there are financial difficulties for her and her daughter. They live near Kobe Station, in a shabby old apartment that is rather poorly constructed, she told me, and I believe she is not able to find other arrangements.”
I nodded. Time drifted for a moment, then I mentioned the papers. “Sensei, I wanted to ask about my assistance. In fact, I think we may have some problems.”
“Problems?”
I struggled to find the way to explain my regrets. Although I had rehearsed my complaints many times, now my mouth went dry, and the words I wanted were nowhere to be found.
“Well, I wondered about the customs on the documents. I had the same questions when I brought back the copy of Moby-Dick from Manila, of course. I had not quite realized—”
Mika reentered the room, bringing another tray of tea and snacks.
“I mean, I wondered if … well, doesn’t sneaking documents or valuable books through customs amount to illegal activities?” In Japanese conversation, that last sentence was pretty American, meaning blunt, and as soon as it was out of my mouth I realized it was not how I wanted to say it.
Sensei appeared to take it in stride, but I could tell he was upset. He tilted his head to one side, as if considering something of great import. He picked up a teacup and brought it to his lips, blowing on it. Then he put it back down without taking a sip.
“Are you referring to bringing the items through customs without notifying the authorities?” he said. “Or do you have other concerns?”
At that moment I wanted to ask about Gluckstein, and how he was able to find the documents, and whether working with such an “agent” was itself shady, but I hesitated. “Well, to tell the truth, yes. I wish you could explain to me why you failed to warn me about this whole smuggling operation. It put me in a rather uncomfortable position.”
“Smuggling?” he said with a laugh. “You make it sound like some sort of drug business!”
I did not smile, and he quickly realized I was not in a humorous mood. He looked me straight in the eyes. “Yu-san, this is just a minor act of rebellion against rules that are simply outdated and unnecessary. As you Americans like to say, we do not need the government poking into all corners of our personal lives. Anyway, there is no customs charge on works of art or rare books. What the Japanese government does not know about my personal collections is really none of its business. I do not think that there is anything wrong with what you did to assist me.”
This last statement sort of irked me. “You don’t think so? Well, isn’t that the sort of decision I should be involved in?”
“You seemed quite willing to go to France on my behalf, and through my arrangement, to undertake this work. I had assumed you would trust my judgment.”
Tempers were on the verge of flaring, and we both felt something new and sinister brewing between us. I waited a moment, just looking at him with a grim resolve not to lose my temper, but that last line about “trusting his judgment” also began to irritate me. So I said, “I’m old enough to know the facts and to make my own decisions!” It came out like something a petulant teenager would tell his domineering parent, but I went on anyway. “And who is this Gluckstein fellow? He comes across a bit slimy for my tastes. Is he some sort of underworld figure? Where does he discover these priceless documents? Tell me there isn’t something fishy about all that?”
Sensei was fluent in all sorts of idiomatic terms, like “fishy,” but that word did catch his attention. “Fishy? Do you mean illegal, or even immoral? Yu-san, I have known Mr. Gluckstein longer than you have been alive. His business caters to many of the finest residents of Paris and throughout Europe. I believe his credentials are impeccable. As for where he gets his merchandise, I am not privy to such things. Perhaps you would like to interrogate him about all of that. For nearly forty years, I have instructed him to contact me whenever he learns of literary or historical materials that might fit my collections. You are insinuating that it is stolen merchandise, or some such thing as that, but this is where I believe you are overstepping your boundaries into my own business. Your charges are against Gluckstein’s character as well as against my own. What you are saying implies a complete lack of trust in who I am.”
I was just as tense as he was, but I reached for some words that might cool off the situation. We were fast approaching a point of no return. “Sensei, you’ve been a friend and a sempai, and I’ve valued our times together. It’s been a great honor, looking at all of these items you’ve collected over the years. But surely you must realize how this last experience raised certain questions for me. And how it compromised my own sense of personal conscience. I felt violated by doing things with no understanding or context. I feel like you used me.”
Looking back, I now see that for Sensei, I had crossed a line. For him, it was my trust in his integrity that had been violated, and challenging him face-to-face was the final insult. Sensei evidently desired a Samurai-like loyalty of unquestioning obedience from one like me—a student much younger, much more naïve, and untested in the world in which he lived. He not only desired it; he required it. And so he turned on me.
“Are you really so high and mighty, Jack-san? Are you truly beyond such moral equivocations? I do not think so.” He waited a moment for effect, then revealed his trump card. “Did you enjoy owning, if even for a short time, those first editions by Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac? How did you live with yourself, after stealing those valuable books, and taking them back to your own apartment?”
This brought a smile to his face. No, it was a sneer. My jaw dropped open, literally. How could he have known about that? My mind whirled as I tried to work it out, and my only answer was that somehow there were devices within the library for surveillance. I fumbled for a response. “Sensei, I simply borrowed those to read. I did not feel any need to sign them out. And I returned them a week later.” All three sentences were lies; my intention at first, when I put them in my backpack, was to keep them, which I did for over two weeks, till my conscience forced the return. So now I was lying about my own actions. “Anyway, what gives you the right to snoop into what goes on in the library? And if you thought my intent was to steal those books, why did you wait until now to confront me?”
He broke a piece of sembei, putting it into his mouth and slowly chewing it. Then he wiped his lips with a napkin. “Jack-san, I do not snoop. You misunderstand me. I pay lackeys such as Miyamoto to snoop on my behalf. In fact, the university has put you under Miyamoto’s charge from the very beginning, as I recommended they do. I am certain you have noticed this.
“But what the university does not know is the extent of my abilities, and my very strong desire to safeguard the books in the departmental library, most of which were donated by me. These are not difficult things to arrange. As you know, the library owns many books of excellent historical value, though generally these are of rather minor monetary worth. Rather than hire a full-time librarian for a library that gets almost no use, I discovered how easily one can install a system that is activated by movement within the rooms of the collection. Miyamoto handles all of that. He was the one who reported to me that you had ‘borrowed’ those books without signing them out properly. Since you arrived, you have been almost alone in visiting this library anyway, as you must have noticed. So if anything went missing, it would be obvious who must have taken it.”
He thought this over for a moment and again almost laughed. “I might add, I also resent your interest in another of my possessions. I have noticed your growing fondness for Mika, and I am afraid that it is not something I can endorse, Yu-san.”
A pause, then a shy smile came to his lips. “Yes, I can read the signs quite well. But as you must know—now that you have been among us here for almost two years—such an arrangement is not possible. In fact, I can assure you that her father would never allow such a … liaison.” He paused with sinister effect. “And I can assure you, his activities can be much more ‘fishy’ than mine.”
I was dumbfounded, but he didn’t stop there. “You also might be surprised to learn how much our growing relationship has disturbed Miyamoto’s world,” he said, biting into another sembei, again rubbing his hands together. “Yes, I do not think it is going too far to say that you are his archrival, at least in his own petty imaginings, and that he might be persuaded to do almost anything to return to his privileged status here in my household. As you must know, he formerly was much more active as my assistant, but we have had … well, many disagreements over the years, and I grew weary of his selfish ambitions. He also said and did things to Mika that were disturbing to her, and quite beyond his … well, his means. He had, shall we say, disrespectful … intentions. Clearly he is nowhere near her breed. So since then, and with your arrival, his work for me has been almost entirely curtailed. But I have occasionally asked him to help me, mainly, to keep an eye on you.” He made this confession with obvious relish, and I could almost feel his knife twisting in my gut.
“I suppose he does not think very highly of you, Jack-san.” He smiled as if sharing an inside joke, and then took another bite of rice cracker. He rubbed his hands together once more, brushing off any residual crumbs. “In any case, if you feel unprepared to help me in the future, I can easily arrange a suitable replacement.”
All of these disclosures revealed an entirely different side of Sensei. I had hitherto misunderstood him, or else had turned a blind eye. He was menacing, angry that I had confronted him—challenged him—and obviously felt he needed to show how much more powerful he was than I had realized. I had indeed been naïve. Blind to the vast control— or the illusion of control—he exercised over our lives. Me, Mika, Miyamoto, and, presumably, everyone else in the English department: we were pawns on his chessboard. As far as my feelings toward Mika went, I now perceived the remnants of a deep-seated xenophobia, a prejudice I had assumed must be impossible for such a liberal, cosmopolitan scholar. And the idea that Miyamoto had been my predecessor as kohai, or maybe henchman, further diminished my image of Sensei as enlightened academic. Then, as with another twist of the knife, I realized the surveillance equipment in the library could also be installed elsewhere, such as in the condo building that Sensei owned. The idea that Miyamoto had scrutinized security tapes of my home life floored me—even though I had no evidence for it. I suppressed a shiver as anger washed over me.
In short, that afternoon was a turning point. Sensei suddenly struck me as ruthless, cold, and manipulative, and I must have looked like a mere underling challenging his motives. Worst of all, I’m sure we both felt powerless to repair the breach that was widening with every passing moment. Nearly two years of slow and patient relationship building had all washed away like a sandcastle in a typhoon.
That moment is seared in my mind, in fact. Without a hint of remorse, he had peered at me and stated, “I can easily arrange a suitable replacement.” I was speechless. Without thinking of the consequences, I got to my feet. The air in the room was absolutely still. Sensei looked up at me, surprise etched in his expression. I’m sure my fists were clenched in rage. But he remained seated, arms and legs both folded in defiance. Tree limbs swayed in the wind just outside the window. An NHK news broadcast emanated from some other chamber in the house, describing further economic downturns. I bowed slightly. “Sensei, I see that I have displeased you, and I’ve let you down. You have always been a most gracious host, and I owe my life in Japan to you alone. But for now I think I should leave.” Another pause, as I looked around at the familiar room. Sensei said nothing, made no gesture of reconciliation. “I regret our differences of opinion. And I am genuinely sorry you feel betrayed.” I needed to get out of there before I said something I would truly regret. So bowing again, I backed out of the room.
Sensei sat there in stubborn silence. I think he was seething with anger, too, although I also detected some confusion and sadness. We both sensed at that moment that something unnameable had been ruptured in our relationship. Perhaps we both wished to offer an appeasement of sorts, but neither of us could muster a word. Sensei’s rigid Japanese manner overcame whatever romantic sensibility was wrestling with it, and as I walked down the hallway, he remained silent. The old wood floors squeaked with each of my footfalls. I stepped onto the tiled entryway and found my shoes. Except for the faint radio broadcast, the house was still.
That silence, as I opened the front door and let myself out into the cold windy early evening, was the last thing I heard in Sensei’s home until nearly one year later.
It was shocking, to say the least, to realize Jack had been caught up in doing the legwork for a man whose substantial literary collection had been accumulated by, perhaps, questionable means. And the recognition that an old academic, not unlike myself, can be revealed suddenly to contain twisted and even menacing traits of monomania and conceit was more than a little disturbing. I was shocked, that is, but also entranced by a sort of self-revelation. For Goto’s journey was one on which, but for the grace of God, each of us might embark, if and when we become obsessed by the delights of this or that passing shadow. The delights of those sirens we pretend are of no temptation or consequence to those of us of superior character, may, in fact, lead toward ignoble acts. Perhaps it’s a good thing I am lashed to the mast, so to speak, by my lack of Goto’s deep pockets.
The chapter reveals not only the underhanded side of such businesses as collecting and secrecy, but how quickly a breach can occur among friends. And, in this case, perhaps, even more sinister, the shifty side of controlling others and bending them to one’s imperial will. It was here, for both myself and for Jack I believe, that portentous rumblings from deep within the crust of the earth began to shake us to our cores.