Yoko Tawada: Where Europe Begins

There was another flash. The camera was cutting time into thin slices, the way a knife slices ham. One can then pick up these slices one by one and look at them, or eat them. For pleasure, or as an alibi. But what did I need an alibi for? I didn’t yet know I was going to become entangled in a homicide case.

“Keep your eyes on the lens,” Xander said. The camera in front of me was an old-fashioned Leica. It kept trying to peer into my eyes, like a psychologist. If it wanted to learn my soul’s secrets, I had nothing to worry about, since there weren’t any. But this camera was trying to capture my skin.

“Relax,” Xander ordered. The camera was gauging its target’s position and distance.

“Smile,” Xander said severely. I attempted to tighten my facial muscles into a smile, but didn’t succeed. They say when you fall in love your face becomes distorted and you can no longer smile naturally.

“Why do you need to take so many?”

“It makes it more likely there’s a good shot among them.”

“Even with such a good camera, you can’t take a good picture in one shot?”

“Don’t talk. It’s no good if you talk.”

He might have been a dentist, unable to work while the patient is talking. The camera was part of the treatment. It was trying to preserve my body from death by burning it onto the paper. There was another flash.

“That should be enough,” Xander said, lowering his camera. When his face appeared where the camera had been, it looked very much like my own.

A few days later, Xander came over again with his camera.

“You didn’t come out in any of the photographs,” he said resentfully.

“Why? Was the camera broken?”

“The camera was fine. The background came out beautifully, but you aren’t in any of the pictures.”

For a little while, neither of us said anything.

“It’s all because you don’t have a strong enough sense of yourself as Japanese,” he said.

I looked at him in surprise. “Do you really think skin has a color?”

Xander laughed. “Of course. Or do you think it’s the flesh that’s colored?”

“How could flesh possibly have color? There’s color in the play of light on the surface of the skin. We don’t have colors inside.”

“Yes, but the light plays on your skin differently than on ours.

“Light is different on every skin, every person, every month, every day.”

“Each one of us, on the other hand, has a special voice inside. There is…”

“There aren’t any voices inside us. What you hear is air vibrating outside our bodies.”

Xander thought for a little while. Then he looked up and said, “Would you mind if I tried makeup?”

Xander covered my face with a powder base. He laid it on so thickly that it closed up all my pores and my skin could no longer breathe. Then with a fine brush he traced the outlines of my eyelids, working as carefully as an archaeologist brushing bits of dirt from an earthenware shard he’s excavating. Then he filled in the area where my mouth was with lipstick exactly the color of my lips.

“I’ll dye your hair black for you.”

“Why do you want to blacken hair that’s already black?”

“Unless it’s dyed, it’ll come out white as an old woman’s because of the flash.”

“What if you don’t use flash?”

“Then nothing will come out.”

When he finished dying my hair, Xander drew an x on my cheek.

“When I was a child, I marked everything precious to me with an x, so it would belong to me.” Then he kissed the mark.

After that Xander stood me in front of a wall and pressed the shutter release button as casually as if he were pulling a trigger. The x on my cheek dug into my flesh. It stopped the light from playing and crucified the image of a Japanese woman onto the paper.

3

I wasn’t really a model, I was only a simultaneous interpreter who was uncertified and thus got very few assignments. Every day after completing my toilette, I would go to the office and wait for work. If by the end of the day I hadn’t been called, I would go home without having done anything at all. But sometimes I did receive an assignment, and then I would have a sip of whiskey and go to work.

That morning, my office received a call from a Japanese firm that had arranged a luncheon for its German clients. The company exported machines that processed fish for canning, bones and all. I was to fill in for an interpreter who had fallen ill. The restaurant had a lakefront view and belonged to a famous hotel. On either side of the long table sat five members of each firm, like children playing a war game with two opposing teams. I was seated next to the president of the Japanese firm. He had slightly rounded shoulders and a habit of nodding emphatically. On the other side of the table sat the Germans, two women and three men. One of the women wore a blouse that exposed her shoulders. Another had on a tight skirt and sat with her long legs crossed. Both sat with their backs held straight and their chins thrust out, and when they blinked, they did so unhurriedly. When they looked down, lines appeared on either side of their mouths, and they looked bitter and exhausted from too much work, but this impression dissipated when they stuck out their chins a bit more.

On the Japanese side sat only middle-aged men in suits. Astonished, a long-faced man said in a low voice, “So the women here wear sexy clothing even to work.” Since the silence had been broken, all the Germans turned toward me in curiosity. “What did he say?” one of them asked, apparently too excited to wait for me to speak of my own accord.

“He is admiring that old china and says it is indeed very fine,” I said, translating a sentence no one had said.

When my work takes me to an exclusive restaurant, I always order sole. Sole, unlike flounder, never tastes bland, and it’s also not fatty like salmon. I don’t know anything more delicious in Western cuisine. But it’s not just because of the taste I insist on sole. It’s the word itself. Sole, soul, sol, solid, delicious sole of my soul; the sole reason I don’t lose my soul , and my soles stand on a solid footing still… When I eat sole, I’m never at a loss for words with which to translate.

On this day, however, one large fish was ordered for the whole party, so I wasn’t able to order sole.

When the waiter finished pouring the aperitifs, the president of the company gave a speech. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are very happy to welcome you here today.” Head down, I began to translate mechanically. At the end of the sentence I looked up, and met the penetrating gaze of a Japanese man in metal-rimmed glasses. Interpreters are like prostitutes that serve the occupying forces; their own countrymen hold them in contempt. It’s as if the German entering my ears were something like spermatic fluid. “There is an old saying that there is no such thing as an accidental meeting. It is nonetheless now our task to turn our meeting into something meaningful.” The German at the right end of the table was staring at the president of the Japanese firm, trying to look interested, but he kept fidgeting under the table, obviously bored. “I earnestly hope we will have further opportunities to continue our association.” Glasses clinked. The German at the left end of the table, a little younger than the others, raised his elbow and, like an actor in front of the mirror, slowly drained his glass. The long faced Japanese man smacked his lips loudly and said, “What an excellent aperitif.” The tight-skirted woman frowned and turned her head to look at him.

“Over here, you’re not supposed to make noises at dinner,” whispered the man in the metal-rimmed glasses.