*Discovered in a storage unit in West Rockport, Maine
ANONYMOU[S] is a brief series of texts submitted, read, and published anonymously, with the agreement of the author not to reveal themself.
(Translator’s note: Herr Plums served as a minor Austrian official in Japan from 1988 – 1993, 2001 – 2012, and again, after a dismissal following a scandal involving a young female Kyudo practitioner at Gero Onsen, from 2018 – 2020. I came across his journals in an abandoned storage unit my friend purchased as part of his salvage business. Knowing my command of the German language and my enduring interest in the art of diplomacy and all things Japan, he graciously gifted them to me. Herr Plums, however, has proved impossible to track down. The search, the work, continues.)
1988. Spring. Taka and I discussed the possibility of a housing bubble over unadon at Nagoya Station. The eel was grilled to perfection. I thought this delicacy might lull Taka into taking my concerns seriously. Chancellor Vranitzky himself stressed the importance of our relations with Japan. He has a Sony tv hidden behind oak wainscotting in his office. He insists it has the finest picture in all of Vienna. But Taka remains stubborn, bullish, full of hubris. “Why, Herr Plums,” he said, overenunciating the “l” in Plums to prove how impeccable his pronunciation is, that prideful polyglot, “haven’t you read the papers? This century is ours and so will be the next.” Then he clinked my mug of beer with his own and said [translator’s note: the text here is nothing more than blotted ink for three paragraphs where, in a different ink, a darker blue, it ends with the following:] When we parted, I kissed him lightly on his left cheek. He seemed surprised by the intimacy but took it in stride, smiling, as he hurried with his briefcase to his train to Tokyo. I wondered, later, if he smelled the grilled eel on my breath?
1992. Berlin. One cannot escape the Walkman. He appears everywhere as if he’s stalking me. In Tokyo. In Vienna and New York, in Cork and Singapore. I’m in Berlin on a working vacation. The Chancellor had summoned me to Vienna for a dressing down but a scheduling conflict led to me sitting for hours in Ballhausplatz sipping espresso and reading Philip Roth’s the Ghostwriter in Japanese. I’ve read it in German before and should tackle the English version one of these days but even in Vienna my mind is full of Japan. Roth’s narrator is young, contemplating the Bildungsroman. I’m not so young but still feel like I’m being formed. Taka — my colleague? My friend? More? Less? Other? — tells me I’m still coming of age. That this is what he likes about me. My constant coming of age. He says it keeps me young despite my stodgy wool suits and my fedora.
I came to Berlin to feel young. Fled the paperwork and disappointment in Vienna for a city that had been cleaved in two and made whole again by history. East meets West. Like me: Vienna born and raised—with a teenage stint in Chicago—but I’ve lived in Japan these last four years. I bought a yellow Walkman and three cassettes: Keiko Matsui’s A Drop of Water; Rubinstein playing Chopin; and Closer by Joy Division. The last is already twelve years old but feels new to me. I walked through Kreuzberg listening to Chopin and feeling like a melancholic character in an American noir film, just another gumshoe trying to decipher some twisted caper. A woman’s dachshund gnawed on the ankle of my trousers. They’re a fierce breed, those little bratwursts. Taka is partial to cats. I like dogs but can’t handle the responsibility. Who knows where the Chancellor will send me next? Instability isn’t good for an animal. I wore my shoes out walking past artist collectives squatting in old warehouses and listening to Joy Division on repeat “Asylums with doors open wide / Where people had paid to see inside / For entertainment they watch his body twist / Behind his eyes he says, ‘I still exist.’” I wonder about Roth. About his imagined Anne Frank. About how satisfied his Jewish parents would be if he was dating this martyr reborn. I wonder about Taka and what he talks about with his wife. Whether they see fireworks festivals together. Whether he wears a yukata. Japan in the summer. Humidity. Wind chimes gently tinkling in a longed-for breeze.
A horde of youths forms around me like I’m an odd bit of grit inside an abalone. All these wrinkle-less, ragged, beautiful pearls! How did Berlin, this old, monstrous metropolis, become so young? I’m in a club. Electronic music is pumping around me, through my headphones, over the Matsui breathing the 1980s into my ears. The 80s are over. The wall is down. Reagan has dementia. Japan’s bubble has burst. Anne Frank was murdered. My father was a murderer. Taka’s too. This shared lineage binds us. What will this century hold?
I emerged from the club two hours later, my Walkman and fedora both gone. I also lost one of my loafers. But it’s early autumn in Berlin and Joy Division is still echoing in my ears. “All the dead wood from jungles and cities on fire / Can’t replace or relate, can’t release or repair.” The warm, quiet walk back to my hotel was its own sort of soundtrack and the breeze felt nice on my unusually exposed head. Tomorrow I’ll write Taka. Next week I’ll be back in Vienna and then, Tokyo. Now, though, sleep.
2020. I visited Taka’s widow Rei before I left Japan, perhaps for good. This virus, my age, these times, that unpleasantness regarding the girl at the onsen—my return is more unlikely than MacArthur’s. She received me with a warmth I didn’t earn or expect. We ate wagashi sitting on her engawa and looking at her back yard in Kyoto, our masks around our chins when we took a bite, then climbing upward again to cover our mouths as we spoke. She talked about visiting Vienna, finally, once this nasty pandemic was overcome. She talked about Taka reading Hölderlin at his sister’s grave. She talked about Taka as if she were talking over me, dissuading me from talking about Taka in turn, from muddying her version of Taka, his legacy, her memories, with my own. Not that I was sure of what I’d say. When we parted, Kyoto and Spring behind me, Taka’s widow before, she held my hand. It felt warm, kind. But I couldn’t shake the sense that behind her mask she wasn’t smiling.
2022. October in Chicago with my niece. She is studying poetry. On a lark, I asked her for a translation of Hölderlin. A contemporary take with the lingo of her generation. She read to me under the stench of gingko nuts smeared into the city pavement:
But we’re deadass stuck with it
To have no spot to chill,
As traumatized mortals
Get taken out and deleted
From one click
To the next view,
Like videos streaming
From site to site, slowly loading
Until the earth is well and fully cooked.
She asked me how I liked it. I said it was beautiful. That it reminded me of a dear old friend. As she read, I tried to remember the smell of that eel in Nagoya, Sapporo in a frosty mug, Taka’s cologne—Obsession for Men—cigarettes, sweat. But the gingko nuts were too potent and life is far too long.
minor literature[s] 