Читаем Fall and Rise полностью

We go into the kitchen. “Besides,” she says as she takes food platters out of the refrigerator and removes the plastic wrap and I empty a bag of ice into a bowl, “though I’ve kept it a stately secret from everyone we both know, I was vaguely interested in you myself. Why give away a relatively good thing, or till someone comparable but more attracted to me comes along? I was never that generous even as a girl. And that ungenerous spirit goes back to my months as a fetus, if you can believe me and I can believe my mother, when I more than most overgrown embryos wouldn’t let her eat, sleep and make love and as a result was more than any one thing instrumental in wrecking their marriage. And because I lived with her and hardly saw my father, I created my own abject dependence on male acceptance and affection and till recently loathed my mother, who I thought was the one responsible for driving my father away from me at such an early, impressionable age. Overfill the bowl with ice so I won’t if you’re not around have to send someone else to refill it so fast. But now that I see you’re not interested in me and probably never were except for perhaps the first few minutes after we met, nothing I can do about it. Besides, I’m inchoatively drunk, so don’t believe most of what I say other than overfilling the bowl and later if you see it empty or low, getting more ice. I mean a bit tipsy, not inchoatively, and liable to say ridiculous tipsy thinks like ‘inchoatively’ and ‘tipsy thinks’ and that I was interested in you once, all of wish would be a thundering lie. You’re okay and amusing to be around but to me not that attractive. I just never thought of Helene and you as a twosome. Not even as two people to talk together for any extensive length of time.”

“We didn’t.”

“There. So forget her. If you can’t talk from the beginning, you’re through from the start — that’s my motto or somewhat. I also know she prefers men a lot more established, stable and scholarly than you.”

“More stable and established? I almost never leave my apartment or for that matter my desk seat. And there must be a couple of people who’d consider me scholarly. Geez, I speak the Emperor’s Japanese without ever having been to the Ryukyu Islands or Japan. Who in this room even knows of the Ryukyus or at least its most recent cession and if they do then the exact date when, or can read, speak, write and translate almost flawless Japanese without in fact ever having seen the Pacific?”

“There’s a Japanese weaver here and his potter wife who are visiting the city for a year. They can do all those except say they’ve never seen the Pacific and translate Japanese into near perfect English and the reverse, though he does have a profitable sideline translating Japanese plays and verse into Korean and Chinese.”

“Oh yeah? Where? I should speak to him. What’s his name?”

“Don’t and let’s not mention his name or allude too loudly to him till they leave. He doesn’t like your translations and introductions. He specifically requested I not think it appropriate for you to meet. It’s his opinion, and one he says shared widely in the Japanese literary world, denoting a fame I never knew you had, that you’ve done more harm than anyone in any English-speaking country to stop English-speaking people from appreciating modern Japanese poetry.”

“Oh, I see him, unless you have other Japanese friends here. I should corner him and do what I can to change his mind. But nuts to him, not that I won’t defend my right to object to his beliefs. First tell me about Helene.”

“What’s to tell?”

“Is she married, and if so, living with her husband? And if not, how long’s it been since the trial separation or divorce? And if so, living with any male now in a faithful relationship? And if not, so serious with any male now that there’d be no chance of a nonmarital separation or divorce?”