E. Doctorow - Loon Lake

They were his friends his introduction to the world of flappers I had to come seven thousand miles from home to meet a flapper he thought and all the things he had read in the papers at home about the new people their jazz their late nights their haircuts and merry step up from provincialism he found there in Japan how odd they were relentless and because he was American he was an authority they came to him for authenticity and all the protests he made were regarded with approval as ritual modesty the kind of social grace they thought only they had so he was an ideal teacher they thought he understood the Japanese way so humble he fit right in and he learned to make decisions simply because he was their authority. I’m from the working class he had announced when he first arrived with his introductions from his Seattle labor movement friends but something was misinterpreted here or there the upper class liberals the modern boys and girls rebels of the loins of the Meiji the mobo and the moga they took him up and he was forced to have cards printed in the Japanese way everywhere you went you presented your card or received someone’s card on a salver a lacquered salver Mr. Warren Penfield Teacher of Western Customs ordinarily this consisted in not much more than appearing somewhere and allowing yourself to be observed your dark suit and rolled umbrella, one man to his embarrassment asked him to disrobe in front of the whole family to his boxer shorts so the women could see the undergarments and sock garters and make them on their own for the father the brother. Mr. Warren Penfield slowly learning the contact language by which he could communicate The Handshake lesson one The Tip of the Hat lesson two The Stroll with the Umbrella lesson three Helping Ladies Across the Street very difficurr resson four the deference shown to women the most genuinely unpleasant of the customs but they did it he looked at the jazzu pianist and the jazzu pianist looked at him and smiled and shook his head here they were together in service the smile said the frank and somewhat contemptuous self-awareness mirrored in the other doing the same thing what are we doing here man I mean I got an excuse what’s yours that look of economically dependent expatriate we really down the ladder man to be stuck on this island making nigger faces for these little yellow men.

But one day Warren’s reputation was made when a low-level official of the American embassy called and asked him to come by for a chat and it was to see if he would consent to offer his services to certain Japanese diplomats preparing themselves to sail to Washington, D.C., for an international naval conference cutaway striped coats gray trousers top hats I don’t know anything Warren said my father mined coal I was a corporal in the Signal Corps what do I know but the embassy man said we have no choice you’re up on the latest fashions everybody else has been here too long our faces are turning yellow yours is still pink and white like a cherry blossom he laughed and so Warren gave a lecture in recent cultural history in America about which he thought he knew nothing but which from having observed the Japanese he knew by refraction. There is a great liberalizing trend he said because of the Great War and internationalization of taste a sense the old ways must be overthrown and the old beliefs and restrictions are absurd. Young men and women marry because they fall in love and sometimes when they fall in love they don’t even marry they live together in defiance of propriety half the point to the way they live is to insult propriety. People generally expect more, I think that is what you can say about us at this modern age of the 1920s, more love more money more freedom more dancing Chiara-stun jazzu men and women hold each other to dance in public and there is a music industry that produces their dance music for them and wickedness is a form of grace, transgression is seen as the liberation of the individual spirit but, he said, looking with alarm on the impassive frowns of his distinguished audience, you won’t find any of that in Washington, D.C. Washington under Mr. Harding is the soul of propriety, he spoke slowly so the translators could keep up one word was equivalent to three or four sentences before the word, the word, after the word, the three little words blossomed like a bowl of chrysanthemums Mr. Harding himself is devoted to Bach and Boccherini especially the andantes, and the distinguished audience leaned back in its chairs and the look of impassive disapproval was replaced by the look of impassive approval. Afterward there was a reception and he found himself bowing it was easy quite easy and the embassy man said you missed your calling you should have come into State and he bowed to him too. A junior Japanese diplomat said he had studied at Harvard University. A blond young woman glanced at him. A Japanese publisher asked him if he did any writing. The same young woman glanced at him. She had a ring on her finger eventually they spoke she spoke of the entire Japanese nation as if they were all servants, making remarks about their character and reliability, she was married to one of the embassy staff. They became friends, Warren had now established within himself those women he was prone to love and those with whom he was most intimate in conversation two separate classes and always he recognized them when they appeared, this young woman was of the second class. Her husband was always busy but they were totally married in spirit in purpose in confidence so that all possibly naughty emanations from her were totally muffled in marriagehood, that was more than all right with Warren they became devoted friends she was a Midwesterner not that smart but in some blind instinctive way constantly putting him in touch with just the experiences that provoked his deepest response which then expressed what she might have felt had she been that articulate or generally sensitive to the meanings of things. She knew he was a poet. She was a prim neat young woman with a slender figure and the most appalling provincial drawbacks she had even found herself a Methodist congregation for Sunday mornings but she methodically introduced him to Japanese civilization. She knew the secret restaurants where you could get the best raw sea bream or salted baby eggplant or bean paste flavored with thrush liver or chrysanthemum petals dipped in lemon vinegar, they went to the shrines he sat in rooms perfectly furnished with no furniture slowly very slowly the authority on Western manners customs and English speech began to see things with a Japanese eye to cherish small things a lovely comb a lacquered bowl a shallow pond with fat orange carp the way some trees looked in their foliage as if tormented by wind or a madwoman having just extended her hair with the pads of her fingers. The young Midwestern wife became the audience for the drama of his life if she had not been there watching and finding it important he might never have changed but found his period with the irreverent flappers or lapsed into the paternal delusions of the foreign diplomatic community enjoying with a smirk the Japanese discovery of besbol the humor of Adolph Menjou Lillian Gish speaking in ideograms. Instead he began his withdrawal first from the Americans then from the Japanese trying to be like the Americans then from the wide streets of the city in which he shuddered to see men in derbies and rolled umbrellas riding in bicycle cabs, he grew thin and ate no meat he turned sallow and began to look actively for a style of expiation he could manage without self-consciousness but he couldn’t have been that brave unless someone like the young wife from Minneapolis was there to pay attention.

The afternoon before he left on his pilgrimage she took him to the Bunraku puppet theater. Each large puppet was manipulated by three figures in black hoods one for the right arm and spine and face including the lifting of the eyebrows one for the left arm one for the feet, the puppets moved dipped bowed gesticulated raised arms to heaven walked ran, each movement was accompanied by the three black shadows behind to the side and underneath and to further disintegrate the human idea the voices of the puppets their growling thrilling anguish was delivered from the side of the stage by a reader whose chants were punctuated by the plunks of the samisen like drops of water falling on a rock and Warren Penfield after several hours of this thought yes it’s exactly true, when I speak I hear someone else saying the words when I decide to do something someone else is propelling me when I look up at the sky or down at the ground I feel the talons on my neck how true what genius to make a public theater out of this why don’t we all stand up and tear the place apart what brazen art to tell us this about ourselves knowing we’ll sit here and not do a thing.