Yoko Tawada - Where Europe Begins

I wrote the letter Z ten times on a sheet of paper and then destroyed it. When I stared at the second white sheet, I suddenly felt as if I would now be able to write something I had never before written.

11

Martina sat, eyes closed, on the floor of her apartment.

Inhale deeply three times, Z’s voice said. Although Martina’s eyes were closed, you could tell by her expression that she was trying to meet his eyes. Whenever he looked at her, she smiled. I had never seen her face so radiant.

And exhale slowly seven times.

Z’s powerful voice pierced my ears as well. Martina inhaled and exhaled according to his instructions. Z took her arms and moved them slowly, first to the left, then to the right, and finally above her head. Rigid and yielding at the same time, like a doll, she assumed various positions. She seemed to be convinced of some idea I knew nothing about. After a while the room grew dark. Martina’s bare arms and chest gave off a faint glow. In the background one could see the shadow of the curtain.

I feel better, she said. I lay like a trough beside Z. Although he’d forbidden me to do so, I had opened my eyes just a crack and was watching Martina. Z explained something to her in a gentle voice. Martina began to move as though she were quickly taking off a shirt that was much too tight and clung to her skin. She threw the piece of clothing she’d removed in my direction. In reality she wasn’t wearing anything at all. My supine body received the invisible clothing. It didn’t hurt, it didn’t make me happy. I went on lying there as Z had instructed me and tried to breathe as little as possible. It wasn’t difficult to do, as I felt like a stone.

That wasn’t bad, Z said to me in a business-like tone after the first of his consultations. I hadn’t understood what I was doing with Martina, and couldn’t ask. Perhaps I didn’t want to know.

The next day a woman I had never seen before came for a consultation with Z. Although I couldn’t see the woman’s face because of the way my body was positioned, I realized at once that she felt Z’s gaze all over her body and was enjoying it like a sort of shower. Soon she, too, began to move in the same way I’d already observed with Martina, as if she were pulling off a piece of clothing and tossing it in my direction. It didn’t hurt, just felt strange, as if I’d been sent to some other place, even though I was still in the room with the woman and Z. In this other place, I wasn’t lonely, just alone. There were a number of voices there. Not only the voice of the novel, but many other voices as well surrounded my body. After the woman left the room, Z placed one hundred marks on my desk and without a word left the apartment.

The next day a third woman arrived. She had a hoarse voice that was not hers but belonged to a different, older woman. She was possessed by this stranger’s voice and suffered from it as if from an illness. It was as if she was unable to assemble the words she wished to speak, and therefore spoke quite poorly. No wonder: when there’s always another voice interrupting, you immediately forget how you wanted to end your sentence. When the woman sat down in front of Z and closed her eyes, Z looked at her until her expression melted. Everything was strangely still. Then she took off an invisible garment and threw it on my body. An hour later the woman had a high, clear voice that instantly aroused my pity.

What a lovely stone, she said to Z as she was leaving, meaning me. For years I had dreamt of becoming a stone.

One day Rosa came for a consultation. I didn’t know how Z advertised his services. Sometimes women I knew came, sometimes women I didn’t know. But no one recognized me because I had plastered my face with light-gray, concrete-like paint. My nose and mouth looked like two hillocks, and my eyes were holes. On my cheeks, Z wrote the numbers three and seven. When the women arrived, they generally gave my face a brief glance and acted as if they hadn’t seen anything.

That looks like a clock made of stone, Rosa said when she saw me.

When she met me at the bakery the next morning, she said hello in a friendly voice and told me that her sore throat had disappeared when she started going to meditation. I was so surprised to hear the word “meditation” that I was unable to answer.

I can also sleep well now that I’m in meditation. I used to hear a piercing voice in my dreams all night long. Now it’s gone, and I’ve found my way back to my true self.

The next day I brought this up with Z and asked him not to use these expressions.

Why do you use words like that?

What words do you mean?

“Meditation,” for example.

What’s wrong with it?

Don’t you get goose bumps on your lips when you say it? I don’t mean there’s anything wrong with meditation, but the word …

Z didn’t listen. He was convinced he could liberate these women from their sleepless nights and illnesses. He thought he knew what methods and words could best help him reach his goal.

12

More and more women came for consultations. Almost every day I had to lie down next to Z and remain motionless for two or three hours. I tried not to listen to Z’s voice. Nevertheless, individual sentences or groups of sentences sometimes sprang into my ears. Then it was impossible to keep my body still. My fingers tapped lightly on the floor, or my belly quivered. Z didn’t seem to notice his sentences displeased me. He gained immediate control over each of the women, who were overcome with a mixture of fear and respect whenever Z spoke or stared at them in silence. At first the women hid the fact that they were strangely shaken. They sat there with disapproving expressions on their faces until their fear took over. Once they told him something, trembling and sometimes even weeping, they calmed down. But the flesh of their faces remained stiff. I never heard anyone laugh in Z’s presence.

Once it became too much for me. I began to laugh, quietly but perceptibly, when I heard Z tell a woman he could liberate her by killing the voice of her mother. This voice, he said, lived in the woman’s body and was consuming all her strength. When the woman nodded obediently, I couldn’t help laughing. Fury and pleasure released my petrified stomach muscles. Then I had to speak to fight back the fear that suddenly filled me.

I wouldn’t kill the voice of the mother. I would sleep with it. That would be incest in its most beautiful form.

The woman looked at me, horrified, as though she’d seen a stone that could speak. Z immediately turned on the tape recorder. Meditative music erased the disharmony I had created in the atmosphere of the room.

After the woman had left, Z offered to start paying me two hundred marks per day instead of one. Apparently he saw my laughter as a kind of blackmail.

But what do you need me for? You can go on playing your game without me. I quit, I said, without even stopping to think about the money.

No, I can’t do it alone. I need a body to receive the leftover voices, otherwise the therapy won’t work, he replied.

I’m not a garbage can.

But for you, if I understand correctly, these voices are not garbage.

I said nothing.

You can earn money and help these women at the same time. That’s not such a bad thing, is it? he said gently, placing his hand on mine.

I had never before thought about wanting to help women. I couldn’t explain why the whole idea seemed so absurd to me. And I wasn’t convinced the women felt better after their consultations. It’s true most of them said they felt much better after the treatment, but to me they looked as if Z had broken one of their bones.

This bone might be a tiny, insignificant one, perhaps so tiny no one even knows it exists. Its location and function are possibly unknown, and no one has tried to find it. Nevertheless, one can clearly see when this bone has been broken.