by Suzumo Sakurai
translated by Chikako Kobayashi
The first time I met Linda was in Shanghai.
The reason I was in Shanghai at all was because my youngest sister married a Chinese guy. She’d been a Sinophile since her college days. You know the type, those people who fall for the “mystique” and “grandeur” of another culture. That, or she’d become enchanted with the “simplicity” of the lives of the Chinese masses that’s been long lost from ours. I actually don’t know, to be honest, but anyway, she ended up marrying this nice guy from Sichuan. They were both living in Tokyo at the time but held the wedding in his hometown of Chengdu, and naturally, I went. And since I was out there already, I’d decided to make a little holiday of it on my way back, by myself, through Xi’an and Shanghai. It was shortly after my first book had come out, I was feeling pretty good, and had some money to spare from royalties and a literary award that I’d won. So that’s that. (This, by the way, was way before the big earthquake hit Sichuan.) According to my sister and brother-in-law who now live in Shanghai, the city’s become heavily populated with Starbuckses, although there was probably only one back then. The reason I bring this up is because that’s where I met Linda.
It was late in the afternoon, and I’d been taking it easy at Starbucks, thinking about how wiped out I was just being in China. I mean, the place was swarming with people, giving the city the look of an ant farm that had been dug up. Plus, people were rude, there was construction work going on all over the place, the air was filled with dust most likely because of all that construction, there were hardly any parks or plazas like you see in European cities where people can just hang out and relax, the streets were noisy with honking cars and motorcycles, and most bathrooms―even the ones in pretty decent hotels and restaurants―were dirty, et cetera, et cetera. At first I’d found the existential chaos and thriving materialism somewhat exhilarating, but after a few days, all it did was exhaust me. Before my trip to China I’d been the type to get somewhat depressed when my overseas travels neared their end, my “fuck Japan” attitude escalating. But right then, knowing that I’d be flying back the next day had been a relief. So that was the emotional state I was in as I sipped a cappuccino at Starbucks. I guess the Chinese had yet to pick up the practice of hanging out at cafes back then, because the place was pretty empty, an oasis amidst the chaos of a Chinese metropolis. And as I sat there, I suddenly noticed a middle-aged white woman sitting in the seat next to me. She had dark blond hair in a bob and a rather small build for a white blond lady, and was sporting an olive green sleeveless dress and sandals on her bare feet. Her upper arms were covered in freckles, and she was reading a copy of Lonely Planet China with a pair of red-rimmed reading glasses perched on her pointy nose. Yeah, she had a certain air about her, a certain sexiness and mysteriousness unique to middle-aged women. I detected a forsaken sort of beauty, or at the very least could tell that she had once been quite attractive. That’s probably why I’d been stealing glances at her though I hadn’t meant to. But it wasn’t like I was gawking at her. Our eyes (hers were hazel) eventually met, and we exchanged brief hellos. I’m pretty good at handling casual greetings like that. For a moment I thought I recognized her from somewhere, but decided she probably just faintly resembled some actress. I don’t have any close white female acquaintances, and you know how when you’re not used to seeing people of a certain race, it’s hard to tell individuals apart? Anyway, I had a paperback of Capote’s Music for Chameleons on the table in front of me, so she’d probably figured I understood at least some English. “Excuse me,” she said to me a while later. “Do you happen to know of any nice Chinese restaurants around here?” Her tone was friendly, as though she were speaking to a nephew or something, so I responded in kind. “What do you mean by ‘nice?’” “Someplace that’s not obviously a tourist trap. Someplace cozy and casual, but not anywhere that’s dirty . . . you get what I mean?” “In that case,” I said, “the place I went to last night was pretty good.” “Could you tell me where it is?” she asked. Using a ballpoint pen, I scribbled a star on her map. I only vaguely remembered the name of the place, and I assumed that writing it down in Chinese characters wouldn’t help her anyway, so I just told her the color of the sign out front. That was the extent of our interaction at Starbucks. Before long, she disappeared into the hustle and bustle of twilit Shanghai with a “Bye-bye, have a good night.” I watched as she strutted off with the distinct poise of a Westerner, thinking about how I might’ve asked her out to dinner had she been younger. To be completely honest, I’m open to a wide range of women when it comes to age and looks. Enough, in fact, that old friends of mine make fun of me for my non-discriminating taste. But a woman my mother’s age? I mean, really.
About an hour later, early in the evening, I saw her again on a street not far from the restaurant I’d recommended. She was turning her map this way and that, looking confused. The area was dotted with nice restaurants, and I was also searching around for a place to eat. I approached her and asked, “Hey, did you find it?” When her gaze landed on me, her face lit up softly like a glowing firefly, and right away crumpled into a frown. “No, I can’t find it anywhere,” she said. As if I’d wronged her or something. “Something’s not right with this map.” I guess it’s true the world over that women can’t read maps. “ Follow me,” I said, “I’ll show you where it is.” I mean, what else could I have done? From there on, it was: “Are you here alone?” “Yep. You?” “Yes.” “Huh.” “It’s carefree being on your own, but meals can be lonely, huh?” “Well, yeah.” “And they’re only half as delicious as they could be.” “Yeah, I know what you mean.” “Why don’t you join me?” “Why not?” And that’s how we decided to have dinner together. If I’d been trying to get this woman to go out with me, I would’ve been psyched about how easily things were progressing. But I didn’t have any ulterior motives―I mean, how could I?―and didn’t think much of it. It was just how things turned out. It was as natural as washing your hands after you go to the bathroom, or drawing a fortune when you visit a Shinto shrine. She said her name was Linda. “My name is Haruhiko. Call me Harry,” I told her.
As we ate stir-fried green pepper with strips of meat, boiled dumplings, shrimp in chili sauce, and stir-fried chicken with cashews, we spoke in hushed tones about innocuous topics that tourists who happen to share a meal in a foreign country would talk about. We exchanged information about where we’d been that day and which spots had been worth checking out. We asked and answered questions like why we were in China and where we were from, things like that. In a little under an hour, I’d found out the following about Linda: she was from California, she’d been widowed several years prior and had no kids, she ran a health food store, she traveled by herself once or twice a year, she’d never been to Japan, and . . . I guess that’s about it. She didn’t express much of an interest when I told her that I was a writer. Which makes sense, since not only had I published just one book, it was in Japanese. We could have gone out for drinks after dinner, but I was getting tired of speaking in English (which just goes to show that my English skills weren’t that great after all), so I didn’t suggest it. Plus, it was my last day in China and I wanted to go to a massage salon. For real. So Linda and I parted after we exchanged e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and pleasantries like “Contact me if you ever come to Japan,” and “You too, if you ever come to California.” Then it was “Have a nice trip.” “Good luck.” The end. She was a lot more charming than I’d thought at first, but after all, she was still a middle-aged woman. Ha ha. I then went to get a foot massage like I’d planned, where a plain-looking girl hailing from deep in the sticks of Anhui Province kneaded the soles of my feet and my calves. From there, I went to an English pub where I had Guinness and vodka and some other drinks, and like the previous night, tried to chat up a few girls who caught my eye. I was unsuccessful, though, unlike the previous day (the details of which I’m going to omit here, but man, did I have a great time), and eventually it all felt like too much trouble, so I went back to my hotel, quickly took care of myself as I fantasized about the girl from the night before, and fell asleep.
It was about three years later that I met Linda again.
In those three years, I’d gone downhill in a lot of ways. I guess you could say I’d gone to the dogs. My first book didn’t sell at all, and as if that hadn’t been enough, I’d been virtually ignored by the literary establishment. It was rough. I probably would’ve felt better if my work had at least been discussed, even if it was just to slam it. Nothing is worse for a human being than to be ignored. Eventually, even my editor’s attitude towards me had begun to cool. She responded with indifference when I finally finished the manuscript for my second book, even though my writing had obviously improved. It boiled down to the fact that quality is of secondary importance to editors. Or rather, that they’re too busy trying to keep up with trends in the establishment, or―in the end, this is probably the same thing, but―with keeping the bigwig authors happy. It’s ridiculous. And all the while, young writers popped onto the scene one after another, and were showered with attention even though their work lacked any praiseworthy qualities. So basically, I sulked. I was disillusioned. And to add insult to injury, my longtime girlfriend dumped me. She’d probably become fed up with the whining, cussing, and puking I engaged in when I started drinking during daylight hours. I mean, I’d had a sneaking suspicion that I was not one for a happy marriage, but I still loved her and depended on her, and was utterly crushed when she announced that she was leaving me. It was the first time since I could remember that I’d cried that hard. The break-up secured the deal, and I finally lost maybe not all but probably ninety percent of my faith in this world, which I’d somehow heroically managed to sustain since childhood.
And yet the earth turned and the seasons changed and life went on, with no regard for my rage, despair, or dampened spirit. Not that I was brave or crazy enough to shock the world by jumping off the roof of a department store or brandishing a kitchen knife at a crowd of people. I mean, there’s really no need for anyone to be that brave or crazy.
One of course needs money to live on, so I went back to working full time. I was once again a member of the working poor, if you will. This time, I became the night-shift caretaker of a massive condo. The job wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped, but thankfully there were few tasks that involved working with other people―something I’m not good at―and I was allowed to take a two-hour break each night, which I could spend reading, or if I felt up to it, writing on my computer. In fact, I worked on a new novel, albeit slowly. Actually, it was more like I couldn’t not write if I wanted to maintain my sanity.
One day―a little over two years after I started my full-time job―when I found myself unable to keep writing, I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Much to my horror, what was staring back at me was no longer the face of a young man burning with ambition and determination to make it as a writer. It was the face of a sad man with one foot already stuck in middle-age banality, battered by the daily grind, buried up to his ears in a muddy swamp of resignation, deeply acquainted with the ins and outs of self-gratification, and perfectly suited for the job of a night-shift condo caretaker. Man. This, I realized, was how living life turned into serving a life sentence.
This was the state I was in when I suddenly got a call from Linda.
It was early afternoon in late spring. I was asleep. Still groggy, I picked up the phone to find my ears filled with gibberish. I had no idea what was going on. Was I still dreaming, or was this some sort of prank? Soon I that there was a husky female voice on the other end of the line. “Hello? Is this Harry?” Huh? Who is this? Oh! “It’s Linda. We met in Shanghai. Do you remember me?” Sure I remember, but why are you calling me all of a sudden? What time is it in the States? “I’m in Tokyo right now.” Tokyo? You’re kidding me. “I’m flying home tomorrow.” Huh. Um, do you want to get something to eat, then? I have to go to work at ten, but I’m free until then.
And that’s how we decided to meet in Ginza that evening.
I wasn’t excited or anything. In fact, the thought of seeing her actually weighed down on me. I was painfully aware from our chat on the phone that my English skills had gotten worse, and I knew full well that the spring I’d had in my step when I met Linda in Shanghai was gone both literally and figuratively. It even occurred to me as I rode the subway to Ginza to stand her up. I mean, if you took a step back and really thought about it, wasn’t it all just a bit weird? Sure, we shared a meal in Shanghai and exchanged e-mail addresses, but it was the type of thing that happens only when you’re traveling. You could say it was practically an accident. Plus, we hadn’t been in touch once since we left Shanghai. Not only that, but Linda was a middle-aged American woman who was probably (though I didn’t know for sure) at least 20 years my senior. What kind of future could Linda and I have? What could possibly blossom between Linda, a middle-aged citizen of the United States, a nation that reigns over―or at least shows a deep commitment to―the goings-on of the rest of the world, enjoying what could practically be called her sunset years under the blue skies of California, and me, a dejected kid barely getting by on the bottom rungs of society in an overpopulated but ultimately inconsequential country?
Such depressing thoughts plagued my mind as I waited by Wako at the Ginza Yonchome intersection for the light to change. That’s when Linda appeared at the main entrance of Mitsukoshi across the street, where we’d arranged to meet. She was wearing a navy blue cardigan over a blue madras-checkered dress. When the light changed and I started walking, she noticed me, broke into a smile, and waved both her hands with an abandon that made her look like she was missing a few screws. Strangely enough, seeing Linda like that suddenly made me nervous, and right away I was like, what the hell is this about? I might not have been as bad as a high school virgin on his way to his first date . . . but I was about as nervous as someone going to a junior high school reunion and seeing a teacher he’d had a secret crush on back in the day. With butterflies in my stomach we shook hands, went through the standard salutations of long time no see’s and how’ve you been’s. “What do you want to eat?” I asked, and she said anything, someplace I’d normally go to, so we ambled over to Shinbashi and settled on a Japanese-style pub. It was a chain, the kind with menus that have shiny laminated pages with color photos, the kind of place that’s as tacky as they are cheap. We toasted to our reunion with medium draft beers, and only after I’d downed about half of mine in one gulp did I finally begin to chill out. That’s when I realized why I’d been so antsy. It was because I no longer saw Linda as “just a middle-aged woman,” the way I’d thought of her three years earlier. The fact that she was an older woman hadn’t changed, of course, but I was finding it hard not to see her as an attractive older woman. So, er, yeah, in short, she was now someone I’d consider hooking up with. Granted, she wasn’t exactly my type. No, she’d just barely made it onto my radar. Anyway, what I think had happened was not that Linda miraculously looked years younger, but that I’d aged far beyond my real age in the previous three years, and for better or for worse, entered the next stage of my life. This bitter realization was what had made me so anxious.
Linda must have noticed that I’d changed. “You seem different, Harry,” she said.
“I’ve aged,” I said with self-deprecation. “I’ve grown older than my years. The past three years were the worst of my life. Not that there’s any guarantee that things won’t get worse.”
I then summed up what I’d experienced in those three years, and the changes that had taken place both in my circumstances and state of mind.
“It’s all for the better,” Linda said when I finished, a faint glimmer in her hazel eyes. “It’s those tough experiences that will make you a real writer.”
Whoa, I thought to myself, here we go, it’s so typically American to make such a groundlessly optimistic statement, and I have no patience for it. I mean, how could anyone say something like that without really knowing what Japanese society is like? Disappointed, I quietly clucked my tongue. “I wish that were true,” I said cynically. “But things don’t seem to work that way.”
“My late husband spent a long time in obscurity, too,” Linda said. She looked away, her eyes falling out of focus as if she were gazing not into a different space but another time.
“Hmm.” What was I supposed to do with that information?
“He worked at a post office until he was fifty years old.”
What was she talking about? Don’t people normally work until they’re sixty or seventy?
“He was a writer.”
“Huh?” I suddenly sat up straight. “Really? You didn’t mention anything like that in Shanghai.”
“I usually try not to bring it up.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a huge hassle. As soon as I mention his name, most people stop thinking of me as a person in my own right.”
“Huh?” So, what you’re saying is . . . “Your husband was famous?”
“In certain circles, yes. Though I’m not sure you’d know him.”
“What’s his name?”
Linda said his full name, sounding both embarrassed and proud at the same time.
“Henry . . . Charles . . Bu . . .?” It was like my brain had suddenly turned into a pinball machine. “You’re kidding, right?”
“ . . . So you know him?”
“ Do I know him? I mean . . . Women is my favorite book!” My voice probably sounded like the squawking of a seagull.
“Oh, really? I’m glad to hear that,” Linda said, smiling. Though looking back on it, there was a hint of uneasiness to her grin.
“Linda?” Seriously, I felt like I was going to pass out. “That means, then, that you’re Linda Lee Bukowski?!”
“ . . . Uh- huh.”
Whoa.
Whiteout.
We’re talking Bukowski, man. Hank. Chinaski. The Charles Bukowski who―writing only about booze, women, horse betting, and meaningless labor―mastered both the art of poetry and of prose. The Henry Charles Bukowski who objected to a world run by assholes and unapologetically continued to be himself. And this charming woman in front of me was his widow? For real? Come on!
“In any case,” Mrs. Bukowski said, her gentle gaze enveloping me, “just keep writing. That’s your duty.”
The only thing I could do was nod, an idiotic expression plastered to my face. I couldn’t help it. What else could I have done in the face of such gracious words from Bukowski’s muse?
For the next two hours, I listened humbly to episodes from Bukowski’s life as though I were Saint Peter the Apostle hanging onto every word uttered by Jesus Christ, at the same time feeling like I was in a dream. With a faraway look in her eyes, Linda haltingly revealed that Bukowski had been faint of heart and had indulged in drinking to hide it, that he hadn’t slept with other women after Linda started living with him―though she did, and that in his final years, he had driven a BMW to the race tracks and written on a Macintosh computer.
That was my brief reunion with Linda in Tokyo. At work later that night, I was as high as if I’d snorted really good cocaine. In fact, my encounter with Linda had been the equivalent of top-quality cocaine to me, and while the intensity of the high did fade just slightly, it stuck with me for a month, then six months. The unexpected crossing of my path with Linda’s, which could only be described as a miracle, helped me reclaim the fire within that had nearly been reduced to mere embers. It gave that fire a raging force that could not be easily destroyed.
From that day onwards, I wrote like mad. I’d write and toss, write and toss, and still I kept writing. Sure, there were times when I was totally unmotivated or almost overcome with cynicism. But then I’d remind myself of Linda’s words of encouragement, pluck the negativity that was threatening to take hold, fling it down on the asphalt, and crush it with my feet as if it were a poisonous spider. Slowly, things started to look up. You know the old saying, “heaven helps those who help themselves”? It might be true. One day, I received a call from an editor at a small publishing house saying that he’d read my first novel after his girlfriend recommended it to him. Upon meeting him, I discovered that he was a nutcase in a way that made me wonder if he was also a drug dealer. But he said he wanted to publish my book, which I found admirable. I humbly asked him to please do so, and told him that I’d be finishing the manuscript soon.
In the end, what with all the revisions and various financial issues at the publishing company, it was nearly a year before my second book came out. Regardless, I was happy to bring another book into existence, to climb back onto a ring where I could face off with the world again, no matter how far in the corner of the world the ring was.
Unlike my first novel, my second one didn’t allow me to quit my non-writing job. But since I’d still received some royalties, I planned a trip to the States. My plan was to fly into Chicago to take in the breathtaking view of the city’s skyscrapers, and get on an Amtrak train at Union Station, where the famous scene in The Untouchables was filmed. I would go through Cleveland and Pittsburgh to New York, and after spending a week in Manhattan, fly out to L.A. to see Linda Lee Bukowski. When I e-mailed Linda about my plans, she wrote back saying that she’d moved out of her house in San Pedro to a place in Anaheim, but that I was more than welcome to stay with her. Anaheim? What the hell? The news didn’t sit well with me at first. But when I looked up Anaheim on a map and found that it was right next to L.A., I figured there could’ve been all kinds of reasons for Linda’s move that I didn’t understand. Fans from around the world could’ve been flocking to the house, preventing her from finding a peace of mind. Or maybe the house had become a constant reminder of her husband’s absence that sent her tumbling to the depths of sorrow time and time again. It made sense. Anyway, to pick up some of the English that I’d clearly lost, I, being the hardworking man that I am (ha!), began taking pay-per-month English classes.
And then . . .
And then, on a Saturday night two weeks before my trip, a movie theater started late-night screenings of the documentary, Bukowski: Born Into This. Linda was supposed to be in it, too, so I was excited to see it. My interest in Bukowski went without saying, but Linda Lee was now my muse, too.
But when Linda showed up on the screen, I was confused. I of course had seen black and white pictures of Linda when she was young―that is, in her thirties and forties―in Bukowski’s travel writing and biographies. You know, the pictures in Shakespeare Never Did This and stuff like that. I was aware that Linda looked older now than she did in those photos and that she’d changed a lot, too. I hadn’t thought much of it, though, because the pictures had been taken some twenty years ago. But the Linda today―the one I know―was in the movie, and . . . huh? Every time she appeared on the screen my heart beat faster and faster, and I eventually began to feel faint, as if my body were slowly being drained of blood. Soon, beads of cold sweat were running down my back. With a cool listlessness, I was forced to acknowledge the obvious, which was this: while there were some similarities between the Linda I knew and the Linda in the movie, they were, without a doubt, two different people. In other words, the Linda I knew was not Linda Lee Bukowski. No, she was a weird middle-aged lady masquerading as Linda Lee Bukowski.
Ha ha.
Pretty funny, huh? I mean, what could I do but laugh? Ha ha. It wasn’t a huge deal, but I’d been taken for a ride by Linda’s words borne of delirium or nonsense or recklessness or whatever, and as a result, frantically toiled away for over a year.
So what happened next?
Well, I went to Los Angeles as planned and met up with Linda. Not only did we meet up, she let me stay at her place for four nights. And to the very end, she pretended to be Linda Lee Bukowski with no hint of guilt―or rather, with an admirable fearlessness. In the living room and bedroom were photos of Bukowski and the real Linda Lee together, a happy-looking couple, which Linda said were taken when she was “young.” A room on the second floor had been made to look like Bukowski’s study, with an old Macintosh and a huge radio sitting on the desk. The bookshelf, too, looked like it could have belonged to Bukowski, lined with books by Louis-Ferdinand Celine and Fyodor Dostoyevsky and John Dos Passos, though I guess they could’ve been books Linda actually liked to read. Oh, and her name, Linda, seemed to be her real name, because the staff at a restaurant she frequents and her neighbors all called her that. Not that her real name mattered anymore at this point. It could’ve been Linda or Kate or Mary for all I cared. We even went to visit Bukowski’s grave. The one with the famous epitaph, “Don’t Try.” Linda stared at the tombstone with tears in her eyes.
Yep, I went along with Linda’s act. Why not? It was thanks to her that I was able to publish my second book and muster the resolve to keep writing for the rest of my life. That’s right, until I die. If anything, I should be grateful.
But what’s really weird is that when someone pulls such an imposing performance like that and you play along, what you’d initially dismissed as a cheap attempt at deception gradually disengages itself from that fact. Little by little, the show begins blending into reality, until eventually, it feels like the truth. In other words, I gradually began to see Linda as the real Linda Lee Bukowski. I even started to feel like a promising writer who’d been discovered by the widow of a literary master. Step by step, you begin to lose sight of what’s real and what’s not. I’m serious. And what I’ve concluded from all this is that maybe one of the most important things in life is to be able to convince yourself of certain ideas. If you can convince yourself of something, how different is that from being reality? I mean, isn’t it practically the same thing?
Finally, and I’m sure I’ve said this a few times already, but Linda is a charming woman. She’s got a hotter body than a lot of younger women, even. What I mean to say is that, um, well, Linda is the oldest woman I’ve slept with to date. She’s what, sixty-one? Sixty-two? Something like that. I say a man’s got to experience things in life. Because in time, I’m going to be up there with the great Bukowski.