Haruki Murakami - Dance Dance Dance

We rented a Mitsubishi Lancer, turned the radio up loud, rolled down the windows, and were on our way. Everywhere we passed was filled with light and surf and the scent of flowers.

«Does your mother live alone?» I asked Yuki.

«Are you kidding?» Yuki curled her lip. «No way the old lady could get by in a foreign country on her own. She's the most impractical person you ever met. If she didn't have someone looking after her, she'd get lost. How much you want to bet she's got a boyfriend out there? Probably young and handsome. Just like Papa's.»

«Huh?»

«Remember, at Papa's place, that pretty gay boy who lives with him? He's so-o clean.»

«Gay?»

«Didn't you think so?»

«No, I didn't think anything.»

«You're dense, you know that! You could tell just by looking at him,» said Yuki. «I don't know if Papa's gay too,

but that boy sure is. Absolutely, two hundred percent gay.»

Roxy Music came on the radio and Yuki turned the vol­ume up full blast.

«Anyway, Mama's weakness is for poets. Young poets, failed poets, any kind of poets. She makes them recite to her while she's developing film. That's her idea of a good time. Kind of nerdy if you ask me. Papa should've been a poet, but he couldn't write a poem if he got showered with flowers out of the clear blue sky.»

What a family! Rough-and-tumble writer father with gay Boy Friday, genius photographer mother with poet boyfriends, and spiritual medium daughter with . . . Wait a minute. Was I supposed to be fitting into this psychedelic extended family? I remembered Boy Friday's friendly, attrac­tive smile. Maybe, just maybe, he was saying, Welcome to the dub . Hold it right there. This gig with the family is strictly temporary. Understand? A short R&R before I go back to shoveling. At which point I won't have time for the likes of this craziness. At which point I go my own way. I like things less involved.

Following Ame's instructions, I turned right off the high­way before Makaha and headed toward the hills. Houses with roofs half-ready to blow off in the next hurricane lined either side of the road, growing fewer and fewer until we reached the gate of a private resort community. The gate­keeper let us in at the mention of Ame's name.

Inside the grounds spread a vast, well-kept lawn. Garden­ers transported themselves in golf carts, as they diligently attended to turf and trees. Yellow-billed birds fluttered about. Yuki's mother's place was beyond a swimming pool, trees, a further expanse of hill and lawn.

The cottage was tropical modern, surrounded by a mix of trees in fruit. We rang the doorbell. The drowsy, dry ring of the wind chime mingled pleasantly with strains of Vivaldi coming from the wide-open windows. After a few seconds

the door opened, and we were met by a tall, well-tanned white man. He was solidly built, mustachioed, and wore a faded aloha shirt, jogging pants, and rubber thongs. He seemed to be about my age, decent-looking, if not exactly handsome, and a bit too tough to be a poet, though surely the world's got to have tough poets too. His most distin­guished feature was the entire lack of a left arm from the shoulder down.

He looked at me, he looked at Yuki, he looked back at me, he cocked his jaw ever so slightly and smiled. «Hello,» he greeted us quietly, then switched to Japanese, « Konnichiwa .» He shook our hands, and said come on in. His Japanese was flawless.

«Ame's developing pictures right now. She'll be another ten minutes,» he said. «Sorry for the wait. Let me introduce myself. I'm Dick. Dick North. I live here with Ame.»

Dick showed us into the spacious living room. The room had large windows and a ceiling fan, like something out of a Somerset Maugham novel. Polynesian folkcrafts decorated the walls. He sat us on the sizable sofa, then he brought out two Primos and a coke. Dick and I drank our beers, but Yuki didn't touch her drink.

She stared out the window and said nothing. Between the fruit trees you could see the shimmering sea. Out on the horizon floated one lone cloud, the shape of a pithecanthro­pus skull. Stubbornly unmoving, a permanent fixture of the seascape. Bleached perfectly white, outlined sharp against the sky. Birds warbled as they darted past. Vivaldi crescendoed to a finish, whereupon Dick got up to slip the record back in its jacket and onto a rack. He was amazingly dexter­ous with his one arm.

«Where did you pick up such excellent Japanese?» I asked him for lack of anything else to say.

Dick raised an eyebrow and smiled. «I lived in Japan for ten years,» he said, very slowly. «I first went there during the War—the Vietnam War. I liked it, and when I got out, I went to Sophia University. I studied Japanese poetry, haiku and

tanka, which I translate now. It's not easy, but since I'm a poet myself, it's all for a good cause.»

«I would imagine so,» I said politely. Not young, not especially handsome, but a poet. One out of three.

«Strange, you know,» he spoke as if resuming his train of thought, «you never hear of any one-armed poets. You hear of one-armed painters, one-armed pianists. Even one-armed pitchers. Why no one-armed poets?»

True enough.

«Let me know if you think of one,» said Dick.

I shook my head. I wasn't versed in poets in general, even the two-armed variety.

«There are a number of one-armed surfers,» he contin­ued. «They paddle with their feet. And they do all right too. I surf a little.»

Yuki stood up and knocked about the room. She pulled down records from the rack, but apparently finding nothing to her liking, she frowned. With no music, the surroundings were so quiet they could lull you into drowsiness. In the dis­tance there was the occasional rumble of a lawn mower, someone's voice, the ring of a wind chime, birds singing.

«Quiet here,» I remarked.

Dick North peered down thoughtfully into the palm of his one hand.

«Yes. Silence. That's the most important thing. Especially for people in Ame's line of work. In my work too, silence is essential. I can't handle hustle and bustle. Noise, didn't you find Honolulu noisy?»

I didn't especially, but I agreed so as to move the conver­sation along. Yuki was again looking out the window with her what-a-drag sneer in place.

«I'd rather live on Kauai. Really, a wonderful place. Qui­eter, fewer people. Oahu's not the kind of place I like to live in. Too touristy, too many cars, too much crime. But Ame has to stay here for her work. She goes into Honolulu two or three times a week for equipment and supplies. Also, of course, it's easier to do business and to meet people here.

She's been taking photos of fishermen and gardeners and farmers and cooks and road workers, you name it. She's a fantastic photographer.»

I'd never looked that carefully at Ame's photographic works, but again, for convenience sake, I agreed. Yuki made an indistinct toot through her nose.

He asked me what sort of work I did.

A free-lance writer, I told him. He seemed to show inter­est, thinking probably I was a kindred spirit. He asked me what sort of things I wrote.

Whatever, I write to order. Like shoveling snow, I said, trying the line now on him.

Shoveling snow, he repeated gravely. He didn't seem to understand. I was about to explain when Ame came into the room.

Ame was dressed in a denim shirt and white shorts. She wore no makeup and her hair was unkempt, as if she'd just woken up. Even so, she was exceedingly attractive, exuding the dignity and presence that impressed me about her at the Dolphin Hotel. The moment she walked into the room, she drew everyone's attention to her. Instantaneously, without explanation, without show.

And without a word of greeting, she walked over to Yuki, mussed her hair lovingly, then pressed the tip of her nose to the girl's temple. Yuki clearly didn't enjoy this, but she put up with it. She shook her head briskly, which got her hair more or less back into place, then cast a cool eye at a vase on a shelf. This was not the utter contempt she showed her father, however. Here, she was displaying her awkwardness, composing herself.