The Character of Rain

  He was wrong, however, and the venerable old master turned out to be right. He had uncovered within the capacious chest of this blue-eyed foreigner a Noh-producing organ of the first order.

  "You are a remarkable singer,” he later told my father, who in the meantime had learned to speak Japanese. “I am therefore going to complete your education by teaching you to dance.”

  "To … dance! But, Venerable Master, look at me,’ stammered my father, displaying his expansive girth.

  "I do not see where the problem lies. We will start the dance lesson tomorrow morning at five.”

  The next day, at the end of the class, it was the teacher’s turn to be unnerved. In the course of three hours, despite his forbearance, he had not succeeded in making my father produce the slightest movement that approximated grace.

  Polite but also saddened by this most unfortunate outcome, the Living Treasure said to him,

  "We will make an exception in your case. You will be the singer of Noh who does not dance.”

  Later, between seizures of mirth, the venerable old master regaled his fellow chanters with descriptions of what a chubby Westerner looked like learning to dance with a fan.

  My poor father nonetheless became an artist if not of star quality then at least of some accomplishment. He became famous throughout Japan for the name by which he is called still: “The Singer of Noh with Blue Eyes.”

  Every day, during the five years he worked at the

  consulate in Osaka, he took his three-hour course with the venerable old master. Between them grew the powerful bond of friendship and respect that unites the disciple and his sensei.

  WHEN I WAS TWO, of course, I knew nothing of all this. I also had no idea what my father did during the day. He came home in the evening. From where I hadn’t the slightest clue.

  "What does Papa do?” I asked my mother.

  "He is the consul.”

  Here was another word that I didn’t know, but whose meaning I was determined to locate.

  Then came the afternoon for the performance. My mother took Hugo and the three of us to the temple. The ritual scenery of Noh had been set up outside, in the sanctuary’s garden.

  Like the other spectators, we were each given a hard cushion on which to kneel. It was a very beautiful spot, I thought, but I wondered what on earth was going to happen here.

  The performance began. My father entered at a deliberate pace. He was wearing a wonderful Japanese costume. I felt a surge of pride.

  Then he began to sing. I stifled a cry of horror. The most awful sounds came out of his stomach. His familiar voice been transformed into an unrecognizable howl. Had something happened to him? What was he trying to say? I wanted to cry, just as you would if you had just witnessed an accident.

  My mother had told me my father would be singing. When Nishio-san sang nursery rhymes, that was nice. The sounds emanating from my father’s mouth were not pleasing; they scared me out of my wits. I desperately wanted to be somewhere else.

  Years later I learned to like Noh, even to adore it, but for any Westerner, however well-intentioned, hearing it for the first time produces profound discomfort, the same sort of discomfort he feels when he first bites into a marinated bitter plum, the traditional Japanese breakfast staple.

  It was a long afternoon. After the initial fear came tedium. The performance dragged on for four hours, during which almost nothing happened. I wondered why we were there at all. I didn’t seem to be the only one to wonder this. Hugo and Andre were obviously bored out of their minds. Juliette had fallen fast asleep on her cushion. How I envied her for this. Even my mother struggled to stifle the occasional yawn.

  My father, kneeling so as not to have to dance, delivered his interminable drone. I wondered what was going on in his head. Around me, the Japanese public listened to him impassively, a sign (as I later learned) that he was singing well.

  The show finally ended at sunset. My blue-eyed father left the stage faster than tradition called for, and for good reason (as I also later learned): while the Japanese can remain kneeling for hours on end without any discomfort, the paternal limbs had apparently gone completely numb. He had sprinted to the wings before he collapsed. Luckily for him, a singer of Noh does not come back on stage to acknowledge applause, which is generally pretty sparing anyway. To applaud an artist who has just departed is considered the height of vulgarity.

  That evening my father asked me what I had thought of his performance. I replied with a question.

  “Is that what a consul does? Sing?"

  "Not quite.”

  "So what does being a consul mean?"

  "It’s hard to explain. I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

  He’s hiding something, I thought. He must have to do pretty awful things.

  NO ONE SUSPECTED that I was reading. When I sat on the floor, a book on my lap, they thought I was looking at the pictures in a Tintin book. Actually, I was reading the Bible. The Old Testament completely escaped me, but there were some things in the New Testament that appealed to me.

  For example, I liked the part where Jesus forgives Mary Magdalene. Of course I didn’t understand the nature of her sins, but what was wonderful was that she got down on her knees and rubbed his feet with her long hair. I would have loved someone to do that to me.

  THE TEMPERATURE ROSE SHARPLY. July Was the beginning of the rainy season. It poured nearly every day. The rain, soft and sweet, held me in its thrall.

  I spent the entire day on the terrace, under the roofed portion, watching the sky attack the earth. I pretended to be the referee in these cosmic matches. I kept score. The clouds were far more impressive than the earth, but the earth always ended up winning, because it was the grand champion of the forces of inertia. When the earth saw the magnificent water-filled clouds arrive, it taunted its assailants:

  Go ahead, douse me. Hit me with everything you’ve got. Plaster me. I won’t say a word and I won’t complain, for nothing can absorb like me, and when you’re drained and are no more I will still be there.

  Sometimes I left the shelter of the roof and lay on top of the victim to participate in the onslaught. I chose the most exciting moment, the final pounding downpour, the moment in the bout when the clouds delivered a punishing, relentless hail of blows, in a booming fracas of exploding bones.

  I tried to keep my eyes open while looking up. The beauty of the storm clouds was awesome, and it saddened me to think that sooner or later they would lose. Though I was a denizen of the earth, I was rooting for the clouds. They were far more interesting, I thought, and I would have betrayed the earth for them.

  Nishio-san tried to make me come out of the rain.

  "You’re crazy. You’ll get sick.”

  While she removed my soaking clothes and rubbed me with a linen towel I looked at the curtain of water that continued its doomed project: to flatten the earth. It was like being in a cosmic car wash.

  THE RAIN SOMETIMES WON, and when it did it was called a flood.

  The water level in the neighborhood rose. This kind of thing happened every summer in the Kansai Mountains, and was not considered a catastrophe; indeed it was a yearly ritual, and in anticipation the ô-miso (the honorable storm drains) in the streets were left wide open.

  When you went in a car you had to go slowly, to avoid open manholes. It was like being in a boat. There were so many reasons why the rainy season delighted me.

  Little Green Lake nearly doubled its size, overflowing the azalea bushes. Sometimes there was nowhere to swim, but how wonderfully strange it was to feel a flowering bush beneath your feet in the water.

  One day, taking advantage of a moment when the rains had paused, my father decided to take a walk in the neighborhood.

  “Do you want to come?” he asked me, holding out his hand.

  We left together to wander the flooded streets. I loved walking with my father. He would get lost in his thoughts and let me do whatever stupid things I wanted to do. My mother would never have
allowed me to jump with both feet into the torrent rushing along the curbs, soaking my dress and my father’s trousers in the process. He didn’t seem to notice.

  We lived in a true Japanese neighborhood—calm and beautiful, bordered by walls topped with tiles and overhung by ginkgoes growing in the gardens. In the distance, the street turned into a path, which wound along the mountain to little Green Lake. Here was my universe, given especially to me, and for the only time in my life I felt a profound sense of being home. I was holding my father’s hand. Everything seemed to be where it ought to be, beginning with me.

  Then my hand was empty. I looked beside me. No one there. Only the moment before my father had been next to me. I had turned my head and he was gone. I hadn’t even noticed when he let go of my hand.

  Could someone simply disappear? Were people so fragile that you could suddenly lose them for no reason? Could someone as substantial as my father vanish? It was terrifying.

  I heard his voice calling me—from beyond the tomb, I assumed, since I had looked carefully all around me and not located him. His voice seemed distant, traveling the length of the earth to reach me.

  "Papa, where are you?"

  "I’m here.”

  "Where?"

  "Don’t move. And don’t go where I was.”

  "Where was that?"

  "Three feet in front of you, on the right.”

  "What happened?"

  "I fell into a drain.”

  I looked, but couldn’t see any drain. Then I looked again and saw a whirlpool, which must signify water rushing downward.

  "Are you in the miso, Papa?” I asked, thinking this was hilariously funny.

  "Yes, sweetie,” he said as calmly as possible, so as not to alarm me.

  This was the wrong approach. He would have done better by alarming me. I wasn’t in the least frightened now. I found the whole situation great fun, and not in the least dangerous. I looked at the whirlpool that had swallowed him, marveling that he could talk to me through this liquid wall. I wanted to join him, to see what his aquatic home was like.

  "Do you like it down there, Papa?"

  "Oh, it’s not too bad. Go back to the house and tell Mama that I’m in the drain, okay?” He said this so matter-of-factly that I didn’t sense any urgency to my mission.

  "I’m going.”

  I turned around and headed home.

  Along the way, I stopped. Something occurred to me. This was what my father did for a living! Of course! “Consul” meant “drain-keeper.” He had not wanted to tell me this because he was ashamed of it. He was secretive.

  I was giddy with happiness. Finally, I had uncovered the deep mystery of my father’s profession. He left early in the morning and came back in the evening without my knowing where he went. Now I would know. He spent his days down in the sewers.

  I was delighted that my father had a job connected with water, because although the water down there was filthy it was still water, my kinship element, the element that most resembled me, the one in which I was most at home even if I had almost drowned in it. Besides, wasn’t it logical that I would have nearly died in the element that knew me best? I didn’t yet know that friends are the most treacherous traitors, but I did know that the most wonderful things in life were also the most dangerous—like leaning too far out the window or lying down in the middle of the street.

  These absorbing thoughts made me forget the mission my father had sent me on. I started to play on the curbs, splashing feetfirst in the cascading rivers of water and making up songs as I went. I saw a cat on a wall, afraid of getting itself wet, so I picked it up and carried it to the wall across the street, all the while informing it how fantastic swimming was and all the good things it did for you. The cat leapt away without thanking me.

  I had to say that my father had chosen a strange way of showing me what he did in life. Rather than simply explaining matters, he had taken me to his workplace and then jumped into it, so that he could preserve his secret. My papa! I thought that he must also have practiced his Noh lessons in the sewers, and that was why, until that memorable first performance, I had never heard him sing.

  I made a boat out of a ginkgo leaf and set it free on the current, trotting along beside it. How odd that the Japanese needed a Belgian to run their sewers! Belgians were probably the best drain-keepers in the world. It wasn’t all that important. Next month was my third birthday. I wanted a stuffed toy elephant. I had made frequent allusions to it, so that my parents would get the point, but it was sometimes hard to read their reaction.

  If there hadn’t been all this flooding I would have played my favorite game, which I called the “Challenge.” Challenge consisted of lying down in the middle of the street and singing a song and then not budging, no matter what. I always wondered whether I would have moved had a car come along. Maybe I wouldn’t have! My heart beat hard at the thought. Alas, on those few occasions when I had escaped surveillance to play Challenge, not a single car had come by. I therefore could not answer my own question.

  After plenty of adventures—mental, physical, subterranean, and naval—I reached our house. I sat on the terrace and started to spin my top as hard as I could. I don’t know how much time I spent at it.

  My mother finally saw me.

  "Oh, so you’re back.”

  "I came back by myself.”

  “Where is your father?"

  “He’s at work.”

  "He went to the consulate?"

  "He’s in the drains. He told me to tell you.”

  "What?"

  My mother grabbed me and rushed out to the car, ordering me to show her which storm drain exactly Papa had gone into.

  “Finally!” exclaimed my father the sewer man.

  My mother couldn’t drag him up by herself and asked some neighbors for help. One had the bright idea of bringing a rope, which he threw down into the miso. Strong arms lifted my father out. By this point a crowd of people had arrived and was watching the process with some interest. The sight was worth the detour. There are snowmen. Here was a mudman. And the smell wasn’t uninteresting, either.

  All the fuss made me understand that my father wasn’t a drain-keeper after all, and that this had all been an accident. I felt a certain disappointment, not only because I had liked the idea of a member of my family having something to do with water, but also because, once again, I would have to figure out what “consul” meant.

  I wasn’t allowed to cross the street until after the floods.

  WHEN IT RAINS INCESSANTLY, the ideal thing is do is swim. The antidote to water is lots of water.

  Every day I went to little Green Lake. Nishio-san took me, clutching tight to her umbrella—she was still on the side of the dry. As for me, of course, I had thrown myself into the opposite camp. I left the house in my swimsuit in order to get wet before swimming. The whole point was constant immersion.

  I dove into the lake and stayed in. The best moment, as always, was when it poured. I would float on the surface, basking in the sublime shower. I opened my mouth, accepting every drop offered. The universe was generous and I was thirsty enough to drink it all in.

  Water beneath me, water above me, water in me—I was water. How appropriate that one definition of the Japanese character for my name was “rain.” I, too, was precious and copious, inoffensive and deadly, silent and raucous, joyous and despicable, life-giving and corrosive, pure and grasping, patient and insidious, musical and off-key—but more than any of that, and beyond all those things, I was invulnerable.

  Some might try to shield themselves from me by taking refuge under a roof or umbrella. That didn’t bother me. I could permeate everything. Some might try and spit me out or channel me. I would find my way back in. I might even be found in the desert; at least I would come to mind there. Some might swear at me when I continued falling for the fourth straight day. I didn’t care.

  From the heights and depths of my diluvian life, I knew that I was rain and rain was rapture. Some r
ealized it would be best to accept me, let me overwhelm them, let me be who I was. There was no greater luxury than to fall to earth, in sprinkles or in buckets, lashing faces and drenching countryside, swelling sources and overflowing rivers, spoiling weddings and consecrating burials, the blessing and curse of the skies.

  My rainy childhood thrived in Japan like a fish in water.

  Tired of my unending passion for my element, Nishio-san would finally call to me, "Out of the lake! You’ll dissolve!"

  Too late. I had dissolved long before.

  AUGUST.

  "Mushiatsui,” complained Nishio-san. She was right: it was as hot as a furnace. Liquefaction and sublimation took on a rhythm beyond most people’s endurance. My amphibious body delighted in it all.

  My father found singing in this kind of heat hellish. He hoped that the rain would force the outdoor Noh performances to be canceled. I hoped so, too, not only because the hours of Noh were crushingly dull, but because of the joys inherent to the downpour. Thunder rumbling in the mountains was the most beautiful sound in the world.

  I USED TO LOVE LYING TO MY SISTER. The best things were always made up.

  "I have a donkey,” I declared to her one day.

  Why a donkey? I didn’t know. I sometimes had no idea what would come out of my mouth from one second to the next.

  "A donkey,” I went on, “who is very brave.”

  "You’re making this up.”

  "No, I have a real donkey. He lives on a prairie. I see him when I go to Little Green Lake.”

  "There isn’t any prairie.”

  "It’s a secret one.”

  "What’s your donkey like?"

  "He’s gray, with long ears. His name is Kaniku.”