The Screen Man

ELIZABETH BALESTRIERI

It’s that kind of day. Frozen clouds, dead center of winter, weak hint of spring from the jaded sun. A retrospective day, all that photographable snow on the roped pines, the red-blooming sazanka. Flowers in the snow? Karen is still not used to them.

A bird is caroling outside her office window.

The mountains beyond the tile roofs shiver with blue light.

Her fingers dangle over the keyboard as she stares at the black screen, trying to get into the life of Lafcadio Hearn. What brilliant ideas can she work up today when she’d really like to crawl back under the futon?

As she has grown older, writing has become a more dubious, less scandalous act, now that there’s nothing to rebel against and all the unmentionable subjects have been mentioned.

She’s sitting in the relative dark while her Japanese colleagues squander electricity to make up for past deprivations. Everything old, shabby and out-of-fashion reminds them of the starvation and frugalities of the War and/or Occupation. Few want to live in “historic” houses or collect antique furniture the way Westerners do. Every day walking home she sees bulldozers leveling beautiful old wooden homes, beautiful to her eyes. New houses and apartments springing up everywhere with solar collectors on roofs—in a country of rain? Architectural absurdities in sometimes eye-stabbing colors identify Japan’s growing pains.

Her friends’ latest food fad is sushi wrapped in thin gold leaf, washed down with gold-flaked sake. Or even more desirable, “longevity noodles” and gold flakes in Korean ginseng soup—eating gold is supposed to be good for your health. Karen is reminded of the ’60s when people used to entertain with jumbo shrimp, Maine lobster, and imported French cognac V.S.O.P., before taxes escalated in America and so—

Such lavishness seems criminal to Karen, when in downtown L.A. more and more people are taking up residence in cardboard boxes. In Japan, though, the poor are well hidden (if they exist at all?), making all this nouveau-riche craving a forgivable sin, a chasing after tinsel dreams, for who is deprived?

So what does she want to write about Lafcadio Hearn, a man who remained money-poor, but never gave up dreaming the impossible spiritual dream? Why did he come to Japan, and when—

She steals another look at the mountains, otherworldly and stunning in their snow-covered immensity. Why was she always longing for something else, more—

Her husband Sam told her she needs to live three lives to end her restlessness.

She thinks she needs seven.

She turns on the power, calls up the file “Hearn”:

“Picture books so beautiful as to exercise a magical effect on the beholder,” Hishigawa Moronobu writes in the latter part of the seventeenth century, a founder of the Ukiyoe school of illustration, Hearn says.

Is Hearn intrigued with art history or the magic of art? Why does he always go after the unfamiliar and mystical, at the same time denying it exists? Exasperating! Trying to catch the translator of Flaubert’s The Temptation of St. Anthony and fix him in a biographical sketch is like trying to cage a cricket.

Exiting that file, she pulls up an old Japanese folktale, one of Hearn’s favorites. It’s soothing to read, stops the Ache—

A young scholar of Kyoto was walking home after visiting friends when he happened to pass a second-hand shop. In the window was a single-panel screen covered with paper. The woman painted on the screen was incomparably beautiful. Tokkei went in and bought it for almost nothing.

Looking at the screen in his lonely room, he found the woman as lovely as a lotus blossom. “I’d give my life to embrace her!” he said, feeling something he’d never felt before. Was she a portrait of a living person, or one who died long ago?

His hopeless passion grew until he began to neglect his studies, sitting for hours gazing at her.

Soon he fell sick from desire and thought he would die.

An old, wise scholar heard of Tokkei, wasting away over the screen maiden. He came to see if he could be of some help.

“That picture was painted by Hishigawa. That woman is no longer with us, but her spirit lives in the screen.”

Tokkei stirred in his bed.

“You must give her a name, then call her gently every day until she answers you.”

“Are you serious?”

“Prepare a cup of sake made from one hundred drops of one hundred different sakes. Then she will come out of the screen.”

The old scholar left. Desperate, Tokkei decided to try the old man’s remedy. He called the woman “Yoshiko” (meaning “good”), his voice quavering like music from a reed flute in the hands of an unskilled player.

For days, nothing; yet he kept faith in the old scholar’s advice and continued to sit in front of the screen, breathing the name, “Yoshiko, Yoshiko.”

From the Kyoto wine shops he gradually collected one hundred different sakes.

One evening he took an eyedropper and extracted one drop from each of the bottles, thinking his behavior was ridiculous. At once, he decided to abandon his pursuit. Yet he’d come this far, why not continue? And what was life for but to perform one great act of love?

He knelt on the straw matting with the cup of precious sake in his hand, and again called out in a love-choked voice, “Yoshiko, Yoshiko.”

“Hai,” the woman answered, stepping out of the screen. Her feet were like pearls, hips all silver motion, breasts golden goblets, and lips formed for kissing.

Quickly he reached for the cup of sake and offered it to her.

She knelt before him to take it from his trembling hands. “How could you love me so much?” she asked. “Won’t you get tired of me?”

“Never,” he said. “I pledge myself to you for seven existences,” he said, squeezing her soft hand.

“If you’re ever unkind to me, I’ll go back in the screen,” she said.

Karen imagined Hearn’s longing to be like the screen maiden. To be able to reincarnate at will, according to the presence of selfless love, and to fade into non-life when scorned or abused, what a double dream of happiness!

She’s seduced by this story as well. Only in this strange alpine region where she now lives, with its ghostly mountains, its wild beauty, its never-stable atmosphere, could she think, could she give into an irrational wrinkling of her mind.

Outside the window beyond the university grounds, the lowest slopes are masked with mist and high peaks drift foundationless. A curtain of gray silk falls over her eyes, obliterating her usual empirical way of seeing finally—

She no longer wants to write the essay on Hearn. Her mood changes with the dimpling of the sun, a smear of rose-pink light on the mountains, a vision so breathstopping she feels the atoms of her heart collide—

She wants to write about her own desires which give her no peace.

She wants to explore them to kill them off.

She switches to a blank screen and types the letter “I.” Then, her fingers freeze. Her peculiar reticence, a fear of revealing the murkiness of her deepest thoughts, even to herself, has paralyzed her. Like the rabbi who lost his faith and couldn’t speak beyond the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, she has no confidence to continue—

Slipping out the word-processing disk and inserting “Hanako Graphics” delays real work time. The colors in the program are rich, illuminative, giving her a playful freedom beyond words. She draws a man’s face, trying to make him look racially unidentifiable. Hazel eyes with violet centers, pale walnut skin, black hair streaked with red and gray. Neither Asian nor Western. The screen man appears as though dozing in the depth of wakefulness.

Karen puts her mouth against his and kisses plastic.

A sudden knock on the door shocks her back to reality. “Hai, dozo,” she says, exercising her feeble Japanese and—

Her friend Chao Wong enters. Karen’s heart sinks, a stone in a pond. Chao, lonely and expatriated, can’t deal with her present crisis. And Karen, who prides herself on helping others help themselves, can’t either.

Chao’s face looks like it’s been stretched on a clothesline, ready to rip in the wind. Karen imagines it’s the Chinese ambassador, his handing down of “new rules,” giving Chao grief again and if—

Chao’s student visa and her husband’s are about to expire. They’ve finished their master’s degrees in literature and physics, but Pu wants to stay on in Japan and get a doctor’s. He’s afraid if he goes back to China, he’ll never be permitted out again.

Chao is tangled in the tormentous need to be with their four-year-old son who lives with her mother in China, and her longing to stay with her husband in Japan against government orders. If Pu starts a Ph.D., she will work to support him, sacrificing her own goals. But this doesn’t bother her as much as facing a prolonged separation from her child. That makes her feel mutilated.

Chao accepts a cup of green tea and talks about Pu’s latest scheme to foil government regulations.

“He thinks he should go back to China so he’ll be recorded as returned, but stay only one week. He can’t see our son. Too risky. He’ll slip back into Japan by ship before the visa expires.”

“Why ship?” Karen asks, adding more hot water to the bitter tea.

“If he gets into trouble, he has a better chance to bribe the officials.”

Karen remembers the humiliating body check she had to endure via Korean Air after the Christmas break. No one under four was frisked though. She imagines an unscrupulous mother could sneak in baby sticks of dynamite under the ruffled skirts of a sweet-faced child. Which leads her to further thoughts of intrigue.

“Why don’t I go to China, bring your son out as an orphan I’m adopting?” Karen realizes how naive she sounds. Chao’s desperation has left its mark. “But, I suppose your mother would be in danger when they find out.”

“Of course not. That isn’t done anymore.” But Chao’s face reveals she isn’t sure what’s being done these days. “It’s obvious they wouldn’t let me bring my son to Japan so they could hold power over my husband. He’s valuable to China because we have so few advanced scientists.” Chao shakily puts down her cup. “I’m going to buy you some oolong tea. This green stuff is dreadful!”

Karen likes green tea. It’s good for the complexion and fights off colds. Chao is in that mood of hating Japan for being too comfortable for Pu and pounding China for being too repressive.

“I love my country, but I hate its government” is her line.

Karen can relate only obliquely. Her own children, tucked away in various colleges, have it so good they can “stop out” for a semester of skiing. It’s these terrible global inequities that bring nausea, the Ache back. She feels a small typhoon of anxiety rising in her chest, as if—

She scolds herself for being unhappy with the least discomfort in her life, the squat toilets, the chilly rooms.

“We could use a savior here,” she says, looking at the computer to make sure it’s not self-exiting. “I think Pu should stay in Japan, start the Ph.D., lay low. Maybe the rules will change again.”

“If we’re caught, we’ll be ordered back and they’ll take his passport. If we stay, and he can finish the degree before he’s caught, he’ll have more power in China.” Chao weighs these positives and negatives the way she cooks, virtually tasting the words as she goes. “But if he loses his freedom, it’ll be like death. I think he doesn’t even care about our son. Only his bloody research!” Chao dabs at her cheek. A tear is slipping down her face. Another one. She cries so quietly you would never know it, if you weren’t looking at her.

“I’ve got an idea. You have a valid working visa. Let’s get you hooked up with an international trading firm that sends you to the U.S. on a buying trip. But before you go, Pu gets you pregnant. You make sure the baby’s born in America. Pu could get permission to visit you. They can’t say no to that, can they? Once he’s in America, something can be worked out. He’s a genius, after all. . . .”

“You have the craziest ideas, Karen!” The tears have stopped. “First, my government doesn’t allow me to have second child. Second, that doesn’t get my son out of China. There I’ll be, marooned in Dizzyland with another baby—maybe no husband, and . . . you’re so unreal!”

“Dizzyland, I like that!”

“Don’t be offended. You understand Shakespeare, but you don’t . . . skip it. Your zaniness makes me feel better, at least.”

“It’s not like we can weigh all the factors and come up with a compromise. We need help.” Her microcomputer chooses to go. “Bleep, bleep.” Its memory is warning her like—

She gets up to turn off the machine. Just as she’s about to push the button, the man in the screen moves his lips. “Shush, shush,” he says.

“Did you hear that?” Karen startled, turns to Chao.

“What?” Chao absently bites into a tea cake, then puts it down with distaste.

“Oh, nothing.” Why reveal her tendency to “hear voices”?

The sun, lower in the sky, is leaking lavender through the mountain peaks.

“I’ve got some library work to do. I’ll come by next week and let you know if there’s any new development.”

Karen hugs her. “Why don’t you and Pu come for supper on Saturday. Sam might have some ideas.”

“Pu loves talking to Sam. Why not? Thanks,” Chao responds, listlessly as ever.

After Chao leaves, Karen feels drained of everything she wanted to accomplish. She goes to the computer again to shut it down, staring at the screen man.

His lips part. “Don’t despair, she’ll find the way. Those who suffer the most, find the way. . . .”

“Under a strain,” she whispers, punching out the power.

Oddly, an afterimage of the screen man remains in her head, his words echo in her ears and not—

She decides to go home and watch the birds in the pond—that never freezes—in front of the house. That always calms her after a day of teaching. Perhaps Sam could be induced to fix dinner, often his way of relaxing after a day of painting in his studio.

As she walks home, the purple-falling night hides the mountains. The sugi trees turn black and feathery in the wintry wind. “Those who suffer . . . ,” the screen man keeps sending stray words between her ears. She shivers in the damp February air.

A brown hawk rides the pale night sky, searching—

Of course, she doesn’t mention the screen man to Sam. First, because he thinks computer graphics are ruining the fine art of oil painting. “We’re going to go the way of the epic poets. No one will appreciate, let alone buy us.”

Karen has nothing to say when he turns so pessimistic, partially because she suspects he’s right. And she doesn’t want to confess her growing imbalance from too-close an identification with Chao. She has always had an unreasonable empathy for people in trouble, but never before did this feeling cause her to burn out her own switches.

Sam has a smudge of vermilion paint on his chin. She smells his special spaghetti sauce. “What a good guy. How did you know I’d be too tired to cook tonight?” Karen rubs the paint, holds him close.

“Because Chao phoned asking when you’d be in your office, that she wanted to see you.”

“Well, she did. I’m exhausted from it. What are we going to do?”

“It’s not our responsibility to help them, Karen.”

“But it’s too horrible. I think she’s going to off herself.”

“Well, I haven’t been idle. Today I wrote to Gucci at Berkeley. He has a lot of pull in international physics. Maybe he can do something for Pu.”

She envies Sam’s ability to take an action, then put trouble out of mind. But she has no faith that Gucci or any other big-gun physicist can alter the deeply-rooted cruelty of the Wongs’ split existence.

After dinner, Karen sits on the floor with her legs stretched out under the kotatsu. The little heater under the table keeps her lower body warm, but above the waist she’s so cold even her heart shivers. She tries to read a biography of Lafcadio Hearn, but behind the cover of the book she weaves a fantasy of bringing the screen man to life.

We think we know so much. Now it’s hadrons, tachyons, quarks, and gluons, yet we still love so imperfectly. Why can’t this Superforce, this World-Consciousness that the new physicists have been writing about incarnate itself in us? Why are we always at war with ourselves, or each other? Karen makes a mental note to get Wong’s opinion on this. Is conflict encoded at the sub-atomic, atomic, or molecular level?

She can’t wait to get to the computer, spills morning coffee on her dress, yells at Sam not to forget the clothes in the dryer in between brush strokes, grabs her briefcase and umbrella, throws a kiss in his general direction.

“Slow down before you fall down,” he says, just like her mother.

The snow is falling in huge flakes, sopping-wet flower petals. When she gets to her office, she is soaked clear through her coat. She locks her office door from the inside, takes off her dress and turns on the supplementary heat source, a smelly kerosene stove, to dry off.

Sitting in front of the computer screen in her white lace-trimmed slip, little flecks of burnt fuel flying around her head and landing on her shoulders, she calls up the screen man, deciding to re-form his mouth. As she moves the mouse, he starts speaking something that sounds like old Anglo-Norman:

“oure soule bi vertewe of this reforming grace, is mad sufficient at the fulle to comprehende al him by loue, the which is incomprehensible to all create knowable might, as is aungel & mans soule. . . .”

Not fond of this sexist blurb, Karen lays on the delete key. It jams. An error message flashes on the screen. His face disappears but his voice goes on speaking out of crackling blackness:

“of the workes of God self-may a man thorou grace have fulheed of knowing, & wel to kon think on hem; bot of God him-self can no man think. & therfore I wole leue al that thing that I can think. . . .”

Words, the power of mountains. She feels like the throbbing of a giant pulse. She has a sudden desire to see his face, slips her dress on again, straightening her shoulders, pushes a couple of buttons.

His face appears.

She wants to hold him in her arms.

A knock on the door registers as a blow to her body.

“Dozo, dozo,” she says. A young Japanese woman steps inside.

“Sorry to interrupt, but do you have time? Your chair suggested I ask for help, but I’ll come back, if not free now. . . .”

It’s best to cut the long string of Japanese apologies short, or you can use up an hour finding out what they really want. To Karen’s trained teacherly eye, this woman appeared mildly desperate.

“Of course I have time. What may I do for you?” Karen turns reluctantly away from the computer, which oddly has silenced itself at the woman’s entrance.

“My name is Keiko Makihashi. I’ve won a Rotary scholarship to study in the U.S., for M.A. in linguistics. I’m the first woman in this prefecture to be allowed a leave-of-absence from my teaching job for study.” Keiko is wearing a Scottish plaid skirt, a cameo at her buttoned-up throat, standard dress code for young woman professionals in Japan, but her boastfulness separates her from her sister-pros. A refreshing lack of humility she’ll need to survive in America.

“Well, congratulations.”

“Yes, if you would please look my statement of purpose? Make sure it’s right for graduate school in U.S.”

“Where do you plan to go?”

“I want University of Michigan, but they returned my application. They’re stopping Department of Linguistics.”

“Disbanding.”

“What?”

“Disbanding, not stopping. I’m surprised to hear that.”

Keiko chuckles, holding her hand to her face. “It’s ironic. It seems car industry is suffering so much in Detroit due to Japanese imports, money has to go to welfare and not to university. So they cut. And I, Japanese woman, cannot go there because of my country’s success.”

“Yes, it’s ironic,” Karen says without laughing.

The entire world has become a contracting village.

A new economic melting pot, but most of us are getting screwed.

“I have a class now, but if you leave your paper, I’ll go over it this evening. You can pick it up tomorrow, okay?”

“Oh, yes, yes, thank you, thank you. I’m so happy. If there’s anything I can do you, please let me know. I have a car, if you need to go somewhere.”

Karen holds back. Once she admired a very expensive Kutani vase in a Japanese home, and the host made a present of it, despite her protests. If she wasn’t careful, Keiko would give her the car when she went to the States.

“Yes, I will. See you tomorrow, Makihashi-san. Dewa matta.”

She swivels back to the computer. The screen man is imploring her with his eyes.

“What do you want from me?”

“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” he quips.

“You’re out-of-date. This is the age of internationalization. We can’t think in terms of ‘country’ anymore, that old nationalism. We’ve all got to pull together.”

He seems to be mulling this over, then answers with romantic intonation: “. . . his very soul Listened intensely; and his countenance soon Brightened with joy; for from within were heard Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea.”

“What?” She recognizes this line. Not Shakespeare, but—

“Come into the monitor,” he continues, in prosaic English this time. “I’m cold. Keep me warm.”

“What? You’re kidding!” she says, taking him seriously.

“All you have to do is press the ‘HOME CLR’ button three times, and you’ll be inside, with me.”

Karen’s mouth hangs open, catching air.

Time passes without her noticing.

She stares into the eyes of the screen man.

“Uchi e kimasen ka?” he asks softly, trying another language.

“You’re not serious, not serious.”

Suddenly, he is speaking in many tongues, his eyes growing larger, a deeper violet. “Una esperanza—aiiiii—kokoro—ee—so desu ne—donde va—te amor—corazon—l’amour que vous me portez—una poema fidelidad—shinko—aisuru—inamorado—anshin—”

Her fingers hover over the home-clear button. She is tempted beyond belief. Tempted? “You’re really a new kind of devil, trying to seduce me with the highest of human desires. Not greed, not ambition, wealth, power, no. The promise of lasting love and world peace. A kind of devil.”

“I’m not in the least a devil. Come inside and you’ll see.”

Wasn’t there a price for everything? Shouldn’t she exact a price from him? “If I do, will you fix it so Chao’s son can leave China?”

The screen man is absolutely silent.

“Okay, okay. I understand, wakarimasu, everything. I come inside the monitor without any demands, without any knowledge of whether I can get out again. Completely on faith.”

“On love.”

“Yeah, love. Give me a minute, will you? This isn’t easy.”

Karen turns away from the screen, not wanting to be influenced by his alarming sensuality. Letting her make the decision, he remains silent.

She looks out the window, the mountains at twilight. So beautiful. She sits watching the moon float over the crest of the highest peak. Strange, as the sun has not yet set.

In another minute, she will have to choose.

[1994]