The Broken Bridge

FRANK TUOHY

“Hi, there.” A young American hailed me outside the building of the Faculty of Literature.

Although we were in the middle of Tokyo, he was wearing clothes that seemed more suitable for mountain-climbing. He looked, in fact, as though Nature had created him for austere and difficult tasks: she had been conspicuously unkind to him, giving him one shoulder higher than the other, a raw beak of nose to hang his spectacles on, and a scalp already losing most of its reddish hair.

He held out his hand and said: “Larry Breitmeyer.”

I had seen him around before, and had thought him be a student following the short course on Japanese Civilization which the University provided. But now he said: “Professor Nakamura told me your name. I teach at this place too.”

I was prepared to be friendly. To have been hailed in this way, even for a specific purpose, had something exceptional about it. In Japan I had found that the members of that strange tribe known as Caucasians ignored each other warily. (In this, we are quite different from Negroes, who, even if complete strangers, nearly always exchange greetings in the alien streets of European cities.) Perhaps the other Caucasians were up to no good at all, and expected you to be in the same situation. More probably they believed themselves to be in possession of some incommunicable truth about a mystery of Japanese life. This might involve Aikido or Zen Buddhism or merely flower arrangement. Whatever it was, they knew all about it already, and your ignorance would only cause them pain.

“Your students just asked me to help with this British play you chose them.”

“I didn’t choose it. And, as a matter of fact, none of them are my students.”

Later, it was to become clear that Breitmeyer was one of those foreigners who are obsessed by the Japanese theater. But the play he spoke of was to be performed in English as the local contribution to this year’s inter-university drama competition. It was a dim little farce, of the school of A. A. Milne and Ian Hay. The choice had been imposed on the students by Professor Nakamura himself, whom they much respected. The professor had seen the play performed during his visit to London in the 1920s, and it had left an indelible impression on him.

While I was telling him this, Breitmeyer appeared distracted. He stared intently at the crowd of young men who jostled past us into the building. He could hardly have been looking for a previous acquaintance; in a university with thirty thousand students, it was exceptional to meet by chance anybody one knew already.

When I had stopped talking, he said: “It’s a lousy play.”

“They insisted on doing it.”

“I told them it was a lousy play. I’ve been giving them a few of the basic technical things. Their movement is awful. I’m not too thrilled with the casting, either. Those two girls ought to change parts.” He aimed a look at me, as if to show that this was my responsibility. But this was not the case.

By now the students had been rehearsing the play for about two months. A few days after my arrival at the University I had received the committee involved in the production.

There were seven or eight of them, and they came into my office in a closely packed phalanx. The way they stood, quiet and tense, seemed to indicate both shyness and aggression. They muttered in a consultation for a bit, and then their spokesman stepped forward from the group.

He was equipped with the kind of Tom Sawyer vocabulary that the Protestant missionaries still teach, though presumably they do not use it themselves. “Gee, sir, I guess we’re in some kind of fix. You see, our instructor chose this British play and, gosh, we’re stumped to know just how to speak it, on account of we mostly learn American English in high school.”

By the time he had spoken, the young man’s primrose skin was flushed with mauve. He bowed and was absorbed again into the group, from whom there came a sort of susurration—whether of disquiet or acclaim, I could not tell.

I made a little speech. When two or three Japanese are gathered together, discussion is difficult: you have an audience. I confessed that I knew next to nothing about the theater and that any help I gavethem might jeopardize their chances of success. I begged them to seek advice elsewhere and offered to ask around among the numberless English-speaking foreigners who devoted their spare time to amateur theatricals.

All this, however, was taken to be conventional modesty. In the end the students got their own way. I was to make tape-recordings of the whole play, reading all the parts.

Later on, as I had promised, I attended some of their rehearsals. From the very beginning the whole cast was word-perfect. They spoke in faint parodies of my own voice. Even now, two months later, they were running through the entire play two or three times a day. They undertook the whole project with the extraordinary concentration and discipline which they brought to every task in which honor was involved.

It was obvious, too, that they had recently followed my suggestion and sought advice wherever they could get it. I was surprised to find the Earl and Countess, the Young Heir and the Burglar all speaking with refined Sydney-side accents.

Soon after Larry Breitmeyer had been conscripted to help, I attended another run-through. As I approached, a thunderous noise was issuing through the closed doors of the lecture hall. The room itself was foggy with clouds of dust that had risen from the floor. In the midst of this the team of actors was jumping into the air with outstretched arms, then crouching down and rolling over and over. Among them stood Larry Breitmeyer, in a sweatshirt, levis, and sneakers, with one hand on his hip and biting the nails of the other.

From time to time he bawled out instructions. Once he organized a mock battle, boys against girls. This was an awesome sight. From the quick gasps, the tight-drawn facial muscles of the participants, you could see that he had called into being that intense fury of the will which hides behind all the decorum and docility.

There was a good deal of this insistent will in Larry himself. His appearance and manner were enough to risk distrust or even ridicule. Yet he was closer to these young people than I would ever be. He thrust himself at them, and they had no resources to repel him. Perhaps they did not want to. There have been few foreigners in Japan, however fraudulent their pretensions or scandalous their behavior, who have not gained at least a handful of admirers to speak fondly of them in years afterward.

Watching Larry Breitmeyer one was impressed with the idea that the Japanese and Americans often find exactly what they want in each other. Theirs is a marriage, born under clouds of disaster, that has proved to be of great convenience.

At the Kabuki Theater the great Utaemon had just performed a solo dance which involved a parasol, much fan-fluttering in imitation of butterflies, and finally a fall of snow on the stage. In the interval I made my way out to the foyer, between rows of elderly ladies in kimonos, who were picking away with chopsticks at the wooden lunch-boxes they had brought with them. For this audience feminine perfection could only be transmitted through the medium of an onnagata, a female impersonator. Utaemon himself enjoyed at this time a reputation equal to that of all our great theatrical ladies put together.

It was the first time I had been to the Kabuki Theater. I had been given a ticket as a reward for the minor task of correcting a translation.

Larry Breitmeyer was standing in a corner of the foyer. He wore his usual jeans and sneakers, a pea-jacket over his shirt. He was accompanied by a young man elegantly dressed in a dark suit and a wide silk tie.

“This is Yoshi,” Larry said.

Now that I had gone up to him, I found myself disinclined to hear Larry’s opinions. I imagined, quite wrongly as it turned out, that they would be conventional and insensitive.

Instead, I questioned his friend, who was unhelpful. “I think that Kabuki Theater is not so interesting for us, these days.”

“Isn’t that just typical,” Larry broke in. “What have they got, if they haven’t got this?” He hunched his shoulders, twisted and stared away from us.

“I am enjoying it so far,” I said to Yoshi.

“I think it is more interesting to the foreigners.”

I felt the usual irritation at being lumped together with an undifferentiated group of outsiders. “Everybody sitting near me is Japanese.”

“I think they are only the old persons.”

Larry was ignoring Yoshi. Perhaps they were having some form of domestic row. But suddenly he turned to me: “You liked that?”

“Yes, I did.”

“It was superb, but really that’s only run-of-the-mill stuff. Just wait for Kanjincho. Utaemon plays Yoshitsune, the young prince. It’s always an onnagata role, because of the high voice. Crazy, of course, because he doesn’t speak at all. But just watch his hand on the staff he holds. He doesn’t move, his face is hidden by his hat. Only his hand is there, acting. It’s fantastic.”

Larry Breitmeyer had fallen for the intricacies of Japanese culture, for the “fascination of what’s difficult” (Yeats’s line keeps coming back to one in Japan). I could imagine him going on to learn more and more about it, whereas to myself in my ignorance the Japanese tradition seemed like an elaborate and gorgeous impasse. Nothing you learned here, it seemed to me, could be genuinely related to anything similar outside, and perhaps this was why Yoshi and his generation rejected it.

I never heard Yoshi’s opinion of the play for the inter-university competition, in which he took the minor part of a footman. Until now I had thought it would be impossible to bring the antiquated little farce back to life. Yet on the night of the performance it was suddenly revealed as something charming and even amusing. I wondered how this had come about. Perhaps, after all those countless rehearsals, some kind of Zen illumination had descended on the cast. Perhaps Larry Breitmeyer was a director of genuine talent.

The play didn’t win the competition, but the actors won the best acting awards. They were greatly elated. As the Japanese do at moments of triumph, they wept.

Larry Breitmeyer himself was modest about all this. A part of his attention was elsewhere, because he had invited two American ladies.

Meeting them, I could not help being reminded of the severe shock a Westerner’s appearance must have given to a Japanese seeing one for the first time. There was, in fact, an inordinacy in the aspect of these women that seared the gaze. It was not merely their height—neither was much under six foot—but the bouffant wigs, orange in one case, blue in the other, the eagle noses and the costume jewelry. The owner of the blond wig was Harriet Brine, who did the gossip column for the Japan Mail, an English-language newspaper. Blue-topped Mrs. Kirshenbaum was the wife of the managing director of the Tokyo branch of ABM.

About the play, Mrs. Kirshenbaum was conventionally ecstatic, whereas Mrs. Brine was bored; she rarely mentioned the Japanese in her column. Larry fussed between them, in a cockled misshapen brown suit that had come from a PX store some years previously; he barely reached up to their shoulders.

The University was so large that the paths of the foreign teachers rarely intersected. It was some time before I saw Larry Breitmeyer again. A new academic year began, and our classes were on different days and in different buildings. By now he was producing another play, A View from the Bridge.

This well-known populist tragedy had got into trouble with the British censorship a few years before. There is a scene in which one man kisses another on the lips. It is a test of virility which in the event both characters pass with honor.

The present director however rejected this interpretation. “All right, that’s what you’re meant to think, on the surface. But there’s this strong ambiguity running all the way through the play.”

Larry was sitting in the staff room with a small group of our colleagues. Old Professor Nakamura was present but unspeaking, like some sacred object of the Shinto cosmography, a rock or an ancient tree. On the other hand young Mr. Kawai, the assistant lecturer and specialist in George Gissing, appeared to be in a continual state of subterranean disturbance, like his native land: private earthquakes and typhoons kept twitching him and ruffling his hair, hot springs steamed up his spectacles. Pretty, tiny Miss Ikeda sat folded together between them; she never spoke in Professor Nakamura’s presence. The unwavering attention of the three of them formed a sort of enclosure, an arena in which Larry was at present holding forth.

“There’s this character Eddie. He is jealous of his niece, right? Well, that statement has two interpretations. First”—Larry numbered it on his finger, as though we might lose count—“Eddie is in love with his niece and Rickie, this illegal immigrant, has got her. Right? Second”—here he employed another finger—“Eddie is in love with Rickie and Catherine has got him. His niece is his rival, right? Eddie destroys Rickie for the same reason that Iago destroys Othello, because he is in love with him. There is this wonderful masculine flame burning through the play. That’s what I want to identify and bring out.”

There were wordless exclamations from his Japanese witnesses. Neither Professor Nakamura nor Miss Ikeda moved, but Mr. Kawai trembled and thrummed like a kettle on the boil. I tried to feel like an outsider in this purely American-Japanese situation. Nevertheless I was embarrassed for Larry and for the whole race of Caucasians. Some minutes later I left him there, caught in the triangle of their polite concern.

After the next class Larry Breitmeyer was still in the staff room, alone now, hunched in his chair. He seemed pleased to see me. However rewarding one’s friendships with Japanese people may be, there are times when both sides want to cry halt.

“Old Nakamura looked rather shaken by your account of the play.”

“Shaking is what he needs. He can’t pretend to be that innocent, can he?”

“Perhaps it’s difficult on the stage. There are only a few themes in the Japanese theater.”

“Look, if I can get pleasure and fulfillment out of Kabuki, out of the Noh plays, even out of Bunraku, though to my mind those puppets are a dead bore, why can’t they understand the conventions of the modern American theater? After all, it leads the world.”

He glanced to see how I took this, then continued, allegretto: “I’ve got this great cast together, none of that draggy lot from last time. You should just see my Eddie—he’s a living doll.”

Perhaps Larry was right to go ahead. Since the American play was alien ground, they would accept whatever he told them about it. And in the casual comedy of American-Japanese relations, I reflected, mutual incomprehension has a cushioning effect and nothing is ever as disastrous as it seems at first sight.

Taizo Hitomi’s composition was written in pencil, with frequent rubbings out. It filled up one side of a page.

I don’t know how to write an essay like this because we are not taught in Japanese school. I wish to write, dear teacher, about some things great problems for me. Almost all of the time I am thinking these problems.

By the way, this semester I am taking part in our university’s play for the competition. I am chosen to play Eddie, which is man in a great play by Mr. Arthur Miller.

It is difficult to me understand this great play called A View from the Bridge. For example, there is one time where a man is kissing the other man. I think this is not known in Japan. This man is Eddie, which is my part. It is very difficult to me to make this scene.

We read how Mr. Miller used to marry Miss Marilyn Monroe who killed herself. Also this is great problem for Japanese people.

If I keep very calm and have a relaxed mind I may be successful. I think so.

With a red pencil I underlined the last use of “think.” There is no verb in the Japanese language for “hope.”

Rather gingerly I replaced Taizo Hitomi’s paper in the folder with the others and went downstairs to the lecture room.

The new third-year students were waiting for me, all forty of them. This was only the second time I had seen them. I went into the room and they stopped talking and stared at me. I noticed once again the extraordinary variation the Japanese face achieves within its limited range of components. Which of these alert, benign faces belonged to Taizo Hitomi?

At least half of the compositions had been confessional. The difficulties of the English language had induced shy young people to be more candid than they had meant to be. A note of gloomy resolution was present in several of them. If Mr. Hitomi seemed more desperate than the others, it may only be because I had an accidental insight into his situation.

I began to call out their names and, as these were acknowledged, I handed back the compositions. In this way I hoped names would attach to faces and individuals begin to emerge from the anonymous group.

I walked down the aisle between the students, letting my eyes wander over the sleek shining heads of the girls, the boot-brush or hippy-thatched skulls of the young men, and watching for each limpid face as it was raised in response to the spoken name. It was an odd feeling, like creating a new world from an indifferent chaos. Everyone began to get more and more cheerful. Given personal attention, they tended to flourish.

Then I called out Taizo Hitomi’s name. There was a sound of breath drawn in between closed teeth, followed by a small hard silence. Two or three others failed to answer. I replaced the papers in the folder and the ordinary work of class began.

The following week two hot-faced girls claimed their essays. Previously they had been too shy to announce their identity in public, but in the intervening week they had plucked up courage. They scuttled back to their seats, chattering and laughing.

Hitomi’s was the only composition that remained. When the hour ended, I read out the register of names. After calling out his name, I paused a little. A rough loud voice from the end of the room shouted out, “Absent!”

After a time one gets oversensitive to possible oddities of behavior. I was suddenly convinced that it was Hitomi himself who had spoken. Embarrassed by what he had written, he was sheltering among the still anonymous ranks at the back of the lecture room.

I spoke in the direction of the voice. “Could you tell him I’ve still got his essay? It’s useless to correct it if he doesn’t see his mistakes.”

At this point a terrifying silence settled over the room. It was as though the barometric pressure had plunged several degrees. Nobody looked at me. I read the remaining names as quickly as possible, slammed my books together and left the room. I blamed myself for what had happened. I had spoken in entirely the wrong way. I had held Mr. Hitomi up to ridicule in front of his fellows. If he had felt unsure of himself before, his situation now was much worse.

Mr. Kawai, the assistant lecturer, had his office next door to mine.

When he saw me, he blushed fearfully, but this was his habit. Otherwise he was quite obdurate.

“We do not worry about what a student does. If you like, you may fail him in the exam. It is up to you. If he is absent, it is his fault.”

“I thought there might be something wrong. I wondered if I could do something to help.”

Mr. Kawai’s features stiffened. I had made another mistake. For the foreigner in Japan, there is no blame: there are only mistakes. In the strange, impersonal language they inhabit the air between people. There is nothing to be done.

Of course I should have sought out Larry Breitmeyer himself. But I did not know his address, and neither did the University authorities. He called for his letters twice a week at the department that dealt with foreigners. I left a note for him there, but it remained unanswered.

One’s life in a foreign city consists in following several threads, narrative lines which one may either pursue or neglect. People appear whom one imagines will become friends, and then disappear forever. Others retain a sort of marginal existence, present but never close. Larry Breitmeyer stayed on the edge of my thoughts, like a bad tooth which one is determined to have seen to sooner or later. Meeting him so rarely, I might have forgotten about him, if I had not read his name one morning in the Japan Mail. It was in “Tokyo’s Brite Nites,” the column written by Harriet Brine:

ABM’s Tex Kirshenbaum and gorgeous Gaye (she of the thousand bangles!!) hosted a stand-up send-off last eve for Larry Breitmeyer. Larry, swinging theater buff, Noh-man and Kabuki expert, hies him westward this day on a wing-ding tour of Europe’s capitals. Bon voyage, Larry, and Sayonara!

This was very puzzling. Had the performance of A View from the Bridge already taken place? Little Miss Ikeda, who was reputed to be interested in the drama (she was writing a thesis on The Theater Audience in Restoration England), knew that Larry had left the country. But about the play itself she was unhelpful. Perhaps some other American director had taken it over.

Meanwhile a national holiday had interrupted classes for two weeks. When the third-year students reassembled, it seemed easy for me to read out Taizo Hitomi’s name from the register. It remained unanswered, and I read through the rest of the names.

When I closed the book, nobody moved. They were all watching me.

“Professor.”

The same thundery atmosphere returned, and for a second I felt conscious unmixed dread. I suppose this is the origin of racism: I am alone and all these faces are without good will. We cannot tell if our reactions to the same events will be similar. We are lost.

But it was not like this at all. Three young men stood up at the back of the room. They walked down the aisle between the desks. One of them had assumed the Samurai swagger, which indicates unsureness. They were a posse, but not a frightening one.

“Professor, please do not read Mr. Hitomi’s name again. He is not here anymore.”

“Has he left the class?”

“He killed himself.”

Where so much went unspoken, a statement had been made. Suppositions withered out, possibilities were deleted. We were silent in the presence of this fact.

I told them how very sorry I was and at the same time (for at such moments of distress one’s mind is unremittingly meddlesome) I determined to destroy Taizo Hitomi’s essay. Had it been an appeal for help?

From now on everything would be easier. A mistake had been made and we shared the knowledge of it. Perhaps, even, we felt about it in the same way. The girls in the front row were giggling, a wild unhappy noise. I blinked. A grief was burning my eyes, for someone whom I may have seen but could not, in any case, have recognized.

[1978]