Bridge for Passing (20 page)

Arriving at the farmhouse, an appreciative audience awaiting us, we entered the gate every morning and found everything ready for us. The family had got up, put away their beds, made breakfast and departed for the day. From time to time some of them would come and see what we were doing, but courtesy forbade comment, whatever they thought. The surrounding villagers, however, frankly came to stare and they came in relays.

The first crowd, the early one, was always school children. Obviously they had risen early and were stopping on their way to school. They were mannerly and silent, their eyes unblinking. Precisely at a quarter past eight they left us in a body to begin school at half past. The next contingent were mothers, who by this time had put their houses in order and planned lunch. They arrived with babies strapped to their backs, and were not quite so mannerly. They could not refrain from whispered exclamations and laughter smothered behind their hands. They left, also promptly, at half past eleven in order to see that their working husbands were fed. About three o’clock grandparents and village elders arrived, after food and naps, to spend the rest of the afternoon with us. They were joined at five by the working fathers, whose day was done. These stayed with us faithfully until we left about seven.

On our part, we began filming as soon as the cameras were set up, moving from room to room as the story required. The make-up man and his assistant kept a zealous watch on the actors, lest the heat cause cream and rouge to run in rivulets down their faces and spot their costumes—a true artist and a charming man, our make-up man, with his secret formulas and brushes made by his own hands. I found one of those fine brushes on the beach after the work was over, and he had gone back to Tokyo, and I kept it for memory’s sake. It is made of bamboo, splinter fine, and set with a narrow line of the best bristles.

Sound effects, throughout the day, were our bane. The ox lowed at the wrong time, the goat baa-ed too often, though merely to be friendly. As for the chickens, we gave up on them. Nothing could restrain them and consequently they will cackle happily throughout the farmhouse scenes wherever the film is shown.

The day’s work went on until luncheon arrived from the hotel and we broke for an hour. The heat was frightening in August and we sat under the big persimmon tree in the front yard, a small space between the massive gate and the house, but there we all sat, some on the rise of the house, some on stones and stumps and sides of the cart. Each lunch was served separately and self-contained in a handsome lacquered box, the top layer containing fish and bits of browned meat, vegetable and pickle, and the bottom layer steamed white rice. Great pots of tea, with handles wrapped against the heat in thin strips of bamboo, completed our more than adequate meal. We ate with Japanese chopsticks, bamboo, sealed in waxed paper and thrown away after each use, surely the most sanitary eating utensils in the world.

In twenty minutes the meal was over and for the rest of the noon hour the farmhouse was quiet. Crew and actors were stretched out on the tatami, like sardines, asleep. I found a quiet ledge behind a little table, close by the back room, and lay looking out at the mountains lifted against the sky. White clouds floated against the blue and cast their floating shadows. It seemed a dream that I was here, that I was seeing my little book come to life in the country where it was conceived, my people now living Japanese people playing out my story.

That August heat! How restless the wild creatures were! Across the human voices the loud and ardent screech of a cicada shocked our sound man again and again. For me, it was a cry that summoned nostalgic memory of the hot summers of my childhood on the banks of the Yangtze River. Whenever the cicadas gave their screeching, seesawing cries, one knew that the summer was at its height. From then on we could only hope some day for a cool wind, even for a typhoon. The sound man, however, was furious with the cicada in the farmhouse yard. He shouted and half a dozen of the crew leaped at the big persimmon tree and knocked its branches with bamboo poles. For five minutes the lusty insect was quiet and then we heard its screech begin to saw the air. This time the men climbed the persimmon tree and shook it until leaves began to fall and the green fruit trembled. For at least half an hour the cicada was prudent and then it began all over again its endless song. But we were beset with other creatures. A proud cock announced the birth of every egg his harem laid. Chicks quarreled and squawked. Among the ever-watching crowd, a baby cried and had to be removed.

One day we had a bit of luck. As our little Setsu came flying out of the farmhouse gate, her kimono sleeves her wings, the oldest woman in the world chanced to come by, bent under a load of sticks of firewood. She had a beautiful old face, wrinkled and brown, but her eyes were as young as life itself. We invited her to be in our picture, she accepted graciously and posed, straightening herself for the occasion and clinging to her tall staff while her gay old face assumed nobility. Our assistant make-up man in mistaken zeal rushed to arrange the folds of her kimono, which had fallen open to show a glimpse of ancient breasts, but we shouted at him to put it as it was before, and so we have her picture. She is walking along the road, bent under her load while the child Setsu runs past. We wanted to pay her, but were assured that it would hurt her feelings. The most that could be done with dignity was to give her some packages of cigarettes, which we did, and she went her way.

Rain and sun alternated through the days. Our actors worked well and they became a working group. We began to express the characters and we lived in the story. I remember one day that ended with the bringing home of Toru, after the tidal wave, when the young lad waked from his stupor, and inquired where his father was and where his mother. A sudden comprehending emotion swept the actors together. They knew, they understood all too well. Tears fell from the actress mother’s eyes, and I felt a catch in my own throat for suddenly they had portrayed a moment of utter reality.

The last scene of that burning day was outside in the barnyard. It was nearly twilight, the crowd was now several hundred people of all ages. They ringed us around, always quiet and respectful, while the actors prepared the set, complete with cart, ox, produce and farm family. This time our family included Setsu’s pet duck and her dog. The duck, which in the script is a little duck, in reality turned out to be a huge duck, the great-grandfather of all living ducks, and when our Setsu struggled to hold him under her arms I was reminded of
Alice in Wonderland
and the flamingo in the croquet game with the Duchess. The dog, a gay fox terrier type—although the tail was wrong, so I did not know quite what it was—would not gambol about harmlessly as it was supposed to do, but insisted upon chasing chickens madly, thereby upsetting a mother hen with a large family of chicks, not to mention an unknown number of white pullets, who apparently had never seen a dog before. The duck was carried off stage by Setsu, and the dog controlled and chastened and the scene proceeded.

At this moment I heard human cackles behind me as Father unloaded the cart. The cackles were hoots of laughter from two dirt farmers in the crowd who were overcome with amusement at Father’s unrealistic handling of the pole and two baskets. They obviously did not believe in him as a fanner. As for Mother, when she appeared it was the women’s turn to laugh. Not one of them was pretty, and Mother was pretty. So how could she be a farmer’s wife? It was a question. Perhaps Mother was too pretty. But can a woman be too pretty in a movie?

The scene was over at last and we were getting ready for the next one, rushing against the darkness falling so fast in this hot climate, when suddenly I heard loud barks, as though from an immense and aged dog. I could not imagine what it was. There was no dog indigenous to the farm. I advanced to the stable to investigate and I smelled pig. It could not be pig, because it barked like dog. But it was pig, an enormous tough-looking old pig, male gender, barking like a cross old dog. I inquired through an interpreter why the pig barked like a dog when he was not a dog. The answer was simple. “We do not know why pig barks like dog.” That was all. The pig continued to bark, the darkness fell, the assistant cameraman announced that we could not finish the next scene because the light on the mountain had faded. We gathered ourselves together and left. The pig stopped barking, the crowd ebbed away into the night, and we ebbed, too. Another day had passed. Tomorrow was a Sunday and we were to rest, although we had been warned that we were not to expect more Sundays off. From now on it was seven days a week, twelve hours a day. Sufficient unto the day—I thought only of bath and bed. Japanese bath and Japanese bed.

Such a wind arose in the night that I dreamed we were having a typhoon. The dream was a remnant of childhood, I suppose, or of former life upon the island, or perhaps only of
The Big Wave
itself, created by my own mind. Perhaps it was no more than a conversation the night before with the innkeeper’s wife. This inn, she told me, had often been struck by typhoons, the last only last year, when the sea rushed into this very room, where I lived. At any rate, I woke, listening to the wind, and I remembered an August afternoon, long ago. I had stood upon a mountainside facing the sea, south of Japan. A typhoon was brewing somewhere over the horizon. We had been given warning and in all common sense I should have been safe inside a house with the windows battened down and the doors barred. No one knows what a typhoon will do. It is uncontrolled and therefore unpredictable. It is a release of senseless force and its only accomplishment is destruction.

I had seen many typhoons, however, in my Asian childhood and I had the wish, that day, to see one more. A typhoon is very much like a hurricane but the hurricanes I had seen in New England and Pennsylvania were not typhoons. The tropics or near tropics provide a volcanic power for wind and rain. We lived in a sub-tropical climate two hundred miles from the Pacific Ocean, and yet to this day I can remember my father’s stern command and my mother’s anxious face.

“There’s a typhoon coming! Get the shutters barred and the doors locked!”

While the sky darkened and the first low growl of the winds rose into a sullen roar, we sat waiting and listening. Trees would break and walls would crumble and the house itself would quiver when the attack came, but we could do nothing except wait and listen. When it was over and silence fell at last, we opened the doors and windows. What we saw was always the same—destruction everywhere.

“Stupid,” my mother would say. “So stupid!”

It was the memory of her invariable comment that had given me the idea of the typhoon for a story, and had sent me to the mountainside that morning long ago on a previous visit to Japan. The radio had announced a typhoon.

It had come just after one o’clock, preceded by a strange distant sound over the lifting horizon. I had taken shelter under the rock of what was a sort of cave, having made sure that this rock was part of the spine of the mountain and not some treacherous boulder to crash down upon me in the storm. I had made sure, too, that I was high enough on the mountain so that the sea could not reach me. And I had to take heed that there were no trees near by to fall upon me. All in all, I was as safe as a person could be who had decided upon risk.

There I sat, then waiting but this time alone and without family or house to shelter me. It was a profound experience, terrifying and rewarding, and it provided the scene I wanted for the beginning of the story. Let me describe it as best I can. The typhoon came out of the sea first as a deep hollow roar. Then it appeared as a monstrous black cloud. The cloud seemed a thing alive, shaping itself this way and that, torn by contending winds. However it might stretch to right or left, it continued to spread upward and reach toward east and west. The day darkened to twilight and the dreaded roar of sound came rushing toward me from out of the depths. I crouched behind my rock and waited.

At first, I remember, there was no rain, only the wild winds and the tossing sea. An hour earlier the sea had been calm and blue. Now it was black and streaked with crests of white foam. When the rain came it was all of a sudden, as though the clouds had opened and spilled. A curtain of rain fell between mountain and sea, a solid sheet of water three feet away from me. The grass and brush on the mountainside flattened under the wind and the rain. I was surrounded by the madness, the unreason, of uncontrolled, undisciplined energy. None of this made any sense. It was worse than useless—it was nature destroying its own creation—its own self. To create by the long process of growth and then to destroy by a fit of wild emotion—was this not madness, was this not unreason? I had the beginning of my story.

The storm spent itself at last. The winds dispersed, the rain slackened to a drizzle and a mist, the cloud fell apart and the sun shone through. I came out from my shelter and surveyed the ruin left behind. Trees had fallen on the lower levels, gullies were dug into the earth between the rocks, the very grass and underbrush lay flat and exhausted. I could only guess what havoc had been wreaked upon the villages along the coast, the fishing boats broken and tossed out to sea, houses smashed, breakwaters wrenched apart, sea walls crumbled. It was, as my mother had said, all very stupid. It was useless.

I have seen this same waste take place in human life, in human beings, in terms of human emotions.

I lay there in my Japanese bed, years later, and mused on the similarity of typhoon energy and energy of human emotion. Uncontrolled, it destroys. But must emotion be destructive? And if not, when is it valuable and why? How can we use emotion as helpful energy, necessary energy for living? What are the uses of emotion and what are the disciplines necessary for its helpful use? These were the questions I longed to answer, first for myself and then for others. I put myself first for I am the lens through which I view others.

And as always, when I cannot answer my own questions, I send my mind, my heart, in search of him. He could not answer, not always, but he had a talent for directing the search by questions of his own, skillful and enlarging. His was not a profound mind. I cannot pretend that he could always follow me in the search to the conclusions that come one by one, through which one proceeds not as absolutes but as steps toward truth. Truth itself is, of course, no absolute. Perhaps, indeed, it pervades the process, existing in everything and everywhere as eternally as time itself, a wholeness of which at any stage we see only part. He did not possess the conceptual mind nor had he the scholar’s disciplines, in which I have been trained. It was understood that there was much that we could not share. Our natures were essentially different. Our enjoyments even in music and literature were unlike. We both loved music, for example, but I am happiest when I am working on a Beethoven sonata or with Chopin. He enjoyed lighter music, which I also enjoy, but only as caviar. On the other hand I am deeply interested in jazz, not so much musically as psychologically, and he had no interest in jazz on any terms. He had no interest, either, in science, although he did have an academic interest in technology. Since he was a determined atheist, he could accept but not share my unending involvement with theoretician physicists, and the tremendous significance of their recent discoveries.