This is an excerpt from my literary/mainstream contemporary novel Simon and Hiroko. Hiroko Yuasa is a 20-year-old traditional Japanese dancer visiting NYC at the urge of her boyfriend, Simon Fraser, an American photographer working in Japan. Even though she is far from him this time, as he has remained in Japan, they are able to communicate at times through their Sakura space, a secret, magical domain that is shared only by them. Yes, there is a dose of magical realism to it. Enjoy.
_______
Hiroko
wanted to go to the Metropolitan Museum on her third day in Manhattan. Simon had talked to her too much about it
back in Japan for her to ever consider passing through New York and not
visiting it. He was in love with their
Costume Institute but had mentioned to her the Asian Art department and that’s
where she wanted to go. She wanted to
see for herself how the Japanese art was shown — and what parts of it — on this
side of the Pacific. Well, in the world.
During
her second day, she had gone to the Museum of Modern Art and spent one full hour in
front of the water lilies by Monet, taking them in from all sides. In Tokyo, the National Museum of Western Art housed one of Monet’s Water Lilies, but the collection here was something mind-blowing
(Simon had taught her to love this adjective, and always accompanied it by
animated gesticulation). Walls upon
walls just for one painting, the Reflection
of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond. It
was worth dying to be able to paint something like this, even though, she
believed to remember, Monet had lived a long life. This had been such an absorbing immersion in
European painting, that she wanted for today something, so the idea with the
Japanese collection at the Met.
It
was there, that she met Richard Selznikow, the young curator. He was making some final arrangements on a
temporary exhibition to start the next day and she got to discuss with him the
finer design points of one of the kimono to be shown there.
“Very
beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked her.
“Indeed. I recognize style: something like seventy
years ago. Kyoto, I think.”
“Oh,
I fell upon an expert here!” he said, beaming.
“Yes, it was made for one of the o-maiko
there, between the two wars. “Too bad we
can’t show it in a dance, it would be much better for the live event of the
opening. We might get TV coverage, some
of the major networks seem to want to show something on the morning shows the
next day. Nothing too long, but it could
bring in sponsors, you know.” He
murmured, mostly for himself and the other colleagues around him, “Nothing to
be sneezed at, mind you.”
“Perhaps
I can help.” She smiled at him.
“What? Don’t tell me you’re a Japanese traditional
dancer!” He looked again, guardedly this
time, at her. “Sorry, but we would need
a professional. Otherwise, there are so
many Japanese dancing clubs in New York, but we haven’t been able to quite come
up with someone very good in dances on music of that specific period, or
thereabouts. For this is Interwar Japan, our show, you know.”
“I
can dance both traditional and modern Japanese styles. I’m professional dancer, not geisha or maiko, yet based in Tokyo.
But—” she hesitated, smiling “—I don’t have kimono with me in the
States. By the way, I am Yuasa
Hiroko.” She felt, listening to herself,
that for a moment all the English learned with Simon had gone down the
drain. How awkward I am.
“Look,
Miss Yuasa,” he said, and his face became very serious, “let’s have a short
test right now with one of our other, more modest kimono, and if we find a match” — he coughed with slight
embarrassment — “I think we can pull enough strings for you to get to dance
live with this very one, even though we would need to pair it with an
appropriate obi and organize the
small set of small accessories on them, the obi
jime, the obi cord, the obi makura, the obi pad, and so forth, in order for them to fit you well.”
It
took three ladies working in the Asian Art department two hours to dress up
Hiroko in some makeshift form: they lacked the appropriate pins, they lacked
strings positioned in critical places.
Also, she could see they were none too experienced at it, even though
two of them were Japanese Americans.
Being a dresser is quite a demanding job, she thought, in any geisha house back in the home
country. They even gave her an
appropriate pair of shoes from the collection, as well as tabi, and a Japanese parasol.
An audio system was rushed in in one of the halls that had been cordoned
off for the exhibition, cassettes with dance music for the period were found,
and everybody still around at that hour of the evening, something like ten
people, flopped themselves, tired, on plastic chairs or right on the floor, and
prepared to watch her dance.
She
didn’t know the first song, but she was very familiar with the themes, the
tempo and the required steps.
It
was the young maiko learning ikebana, the floral arrangement, while
her thoughts run to her family left behind when she entered the geisha house. The tune came out plangent and a bit
screechy, most likely the original recording having been an old LP.
She
walked three small steps down the center as though to get to her worktable,
which was located near where the stage was supposed to be, then stopped, head
tilted to a side, contemplating the tough work of cutting flowers to the
required size, shortening their lives, then their bodies, for the passing
beauty of a floral arrangement. Her
hands thereafter went slowly away, from being clasped together on her chest,
one to the right to pick the first imaginary flower for the sacrifice, the
other, just one moment later, to take the deadly implement, the knife, from the
left of the table.
She
held the flower and the knife together for a moment. Then, as though confronted with the enormity
of the crime she was to commit against nature, she went away from the table in
a quick succession of small steps along a half-circle, and came back following
with the same path, pain marking her face.
Through all this, her back was straight and tilted backwards for just a
tiny angle.
She
felt she had done very well the rapid, precise firing of the feet and the play
of the hands with the wide sleeves of the kimono, and she could hear already
small applause from several corners of the room.
Back
at the table, she proceeded to cut one by one the imaginary flowers and to set
them down in the base of the arrangement, after each taking a small respite to
admire the new shape, walking a short arc around the vase containing them, to
view them from another angle, and to readjust them. Her hands sniping, placing, re-doing it for a
better effect, her eyes assessing the results, her head swaying from a side to
another, the better to see the whole, nodding in ayes, dismissing in nays with
horror of a second.
She
knew the difficulty of it all was in timing it with the pace of the music, yet
she felt so confident, at times having her movement anticipate the turn in the
tune by a blink of an eye, instead of following it. She felt as though no surprises could lie in
store, and that at first hearing the piece.
Three
dances and twenty five minutes later, everybody stood to applaud and
congratulate her. Richard, the curator,
was flabbergasted.
“Great dancing. I can’t call this but
plain luck, to have found an artist like you at such an opportune moment. We’re very grateful.
“Now,
would you be available and willing to help us during the big show?” he
inquired, and Hiroko could sense the anxiety in his voice.
“Yes. My pleasure, of course,” she answered.
“Great! Could you then come by to be with us tomorrow
morning at eight o’clock, so as to enable us to prepare you in our best regalia
for the inauguration of the exhibition at eleven? Yes?
Fine. I know, short notice. Always like that, here. But I assume Tokyo is no less
demanding.” He shrugged and smiled at
her.
Her
head was buzzing. This is New York! I cannot
believe it, Simon. Please be tomorrow
with me again. Love you.
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