Читать книгу Amorous Woman - Donna George Storey - Страница 21

A mere two hours later, I was falling head over heels in love with a Japanese dentist.

I know my passion is a hard sell to someone who’s never been to Japan. I might be allowed my dalliances with pretty college boys, but in the world’s eyes, middle-aged Japanese men are by definition the opposite of sexy. They dress in bad suits, their feet are small, and they’re constantly clicking away with expensive cameras as they follow the tour guides with flags around Westminster Abbey or swarm the red light districts of Manila and Bangkok.

Only when you come to the country do you learn the secret—they keep the best ones hidden safely away in Japan as living national treasures.

I was sitting with my friend and benefactor, Dr. Matsumoto, on the spacious terrace of an exclusive restaurant overlooking the Kamo River. Dr. Matsumoto and his wife treated me as a daughter, a spoiled one, and all I had to do in return was help the cheerful dentist keep up his very good English over dinner at some of Kyoto’s best restaurants. On this particular night, Mrs. Matsumoto was meeting high school friends for their annual reunion at a French restaurant a few blocks away, leaving me to enjoy the local cuisine with her husband and his colleague visiting from Himeji.

The sun had set and the sky stretched over us like a bolt of blue-gray silk. Yet the heat of day lingered—it was hard to tell where the summer air ended and my body began. Seated on a cushion with my legs tucked under me in the formal position, I felt a sense of deep contentment, in spite of the inevitable tingling in my feet. I was closer to the secret heart of Japan than ever before, soon to experience culinary delights many Japanese themselves would never know. Not to mention I had a gorgeous bishônen of a boyfriend and my sex life was fabulous. What more could I want from life?

A few moments later, the kimonoed waitress ushered an older man to our table.

Dr. Matsumoto rose and bowed and the two men exchanged the greeting of longtime friends. ‘Hisashi­ buri ya ne.’

‘This is Lydia-san. My wife’s English teacher,’ Dr. Matsumoto said in English. ‘My old schoolmate from dental college, Dr. Shinohara.’

‘Very pleased to meet you,’ Dr. Shinohara replied. His amber eyes took me in, but the fading light masked any glint of pleasure or disappointment. Sit­ ting down across from us, he let out a volley of Japanese, from which I picked out some good-natured complaints about a meeting going on too long.

I took the opportunity to study Dr. Shinohara’s hands. His fingers were thin, graceful, the color of old parchment. His face, too, was lean, with high cheekbones and a slightly weathered look around the eyes.

I realized I did want something more from life now. I wanted this man to find me interesting. And not as a daughter.

The problem was that I didn’t know how to proceed. I was pretty good at picking up American guys with flirtatious banter and Japanese boys with a simple invitation for an English lesson back at my apartment, but how could I charm an older man, a sensei no less, oozing otherworldly wisdom and refinement?

Three waiters appeared, setting large black lacquer trays before each of us at precisely the same moment. Each tray held five small dishes with bite-sized seasonal delicacies, a diamond of pressed sushi, a square of fish paste, fresh vegetables sculpted into the shape of flowers. A miniature glass goblet occupied the right corner of each tray and at the left glowed a small lantern, painted with a scene of a mountain rising above a tiny city. On the side of the mountain burned a red-ink ‘dai,’ the Chinese character for ‘big.’

Dr. Matsumoto explained the theme was chosen especially to suggest Kyoto’s upcoming Daimonji festival, when bonfires were lit on five mountains surrounding the city to welcome dead souls back to earth. I’d heard of the festival, one of the highlights of summer in Kyoto. Dr. Shinohara added that it was an impressive sight, but the downtown could get very crowded.

‘Some of the hotels have special Daimonji dinners where you can watch from the roof terrace,’ Dr. Matsumoto said. ‘Perhaps you would like to join my wife and me this year, Lydia-san?’

I nodded, blushing at my benefactor’s never-ending bounty. I was grateful, but the invitation would remind Dr. Shinohara I was his friend’s surrogate daughter, something I was hoping to make him forget.

I took a sip from the goblet. It was some kind of chilled cordial, faintly sweet with a tang of fruit, cherry or plum perhaps. Like all sweet liquor, it went to my head immediately. After a few sips, I decided that Dr. Shinohara was actually one of the most handsome men I’d seen in quite some time, in spite of his austere, monkish air. Or maybe because of it.

It was then I hit on my strategy. I’d impress him with my aesthetic sensibility and my knowledge of old Japan—something that didn’t play well with the younger crowd. All that reading I’d done to score an ‘A’ in my Introduction to Japanese Culture class in college might actually help me score in a different way.

‘I saw the preparations for the bonfire on Daimonji

Mountain from my dance teacher’s house today. The clearing is so wide, you can’t even see the shape of the calligraphy,’ I said in my best Japanese. I gestured to the flickering miniature version. ‘I think Japanese artists are skilled at making grand things into something very small and beautiful.’

Dr. Shinohara raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. ‘I agree, but I wonder which you will prefer? The real bonfire or the one the artist painted?’ He answered in Japanese—real Japanese, not the condescending foreigner’s version—a compliment rare enough that my attraction turned to adoration right then and there.

‘Yes, which is better, the real or the imaginary? I think each will have its own kind of beauty. I wonder if I could choose both?’ I gave him the mischievous smile of a child angling for two servings of dessert.

Dr. Shinohara smiled back. This time I did see a flicker of interest in his eyes. My ploy worked. I’d become more than just Dr. Matsumoto’s adopted gaijin girl. One point for the culturally sensitive foreigner.

The waiters brought the next course: a small boat of sculpted ice upon which was arranged slices of sea bream and snow-white conger eel, fluffy as curls of fresh butter.

‘What brings you to Japan, Lydia-san?’ Dr. Shinohara asked. I’d heard that question so often it usually made me yawn, but the way he asked it made me feel warm and tingly, seen.

The honest answer was that I came because I craved adventure, a life of surprises, a non-stop feast of exotic sensual pleasure, anything but a job in investment banking like most of my college friends. But at this point it was probably better to give the doctor my safe, standard line.

‘I came to Kyoto to learn traditional Japanese dance.’

‘I see. Do you enjoy wearing kimono?’

Should I tell him the truth now—that it feels unspeakably sexy to wear one, and I loved being bound by the column of cloth hobbling my legs and the obi’s snug embrace at my breasts? It probably meant I was a sexual masochist, but I didn’t really want to admit it. More exciting was the promise of transformation through that bondage, the chance to shed my foreign awkwardness for the Japanese dancer’s gliding grace.

‘Yes, I do like wearing kimono, but it’s a challenge, too. I have to move my body in a different way, so maybe I can understand, just a little, what it’s like to be Japanese. I think it is the Japanese way, in dance and in life, to transform . . .’ I pulled my English-Japanese dictionary from my book bag and quickly leafed through it for the right word.

‘Constriction,’ Dr. Matsumoto read out for me.

‘To transform constriction into art.’

‘Lydia-san understands Japan very well,’ Dr. Shinohara said to his friend, who nodded, as proud as any real papa.

‘No, I just study too much. You see, I’m a Kyoto-style foreigner. We come here to study a traditional art so we can try to understand the heart of Japan. Foreigners who live in Tokyo only care about money. Isn’t it the same for Japanese? In Tokyo, money is the most important thing. In Kyoto, it’s heart.’

Both men laughed loudly. I definitely racked up a few points with that one.

‘I do believe you must have been Japanese in a past life,’ Dr. Shinohara said with his Buddha’s smile.

I bowed my head, my cheeks burning with pleasure. I’d not only been seen, but embraced. How could he have known that was my secret fantasy—the fantasy of all true Kyoto gaijin—that our wandering spirits had reconnected us with our lost home?