Authors: A. B. Yehoshua
Amused by her remarks, Dennis and Herman don't try to justify themselves, and Manfred hands his friend a glass of wine, vacating his seat so she can sit down and sample the luxuries of business class. She is excited to be included in such lofty company and sips a little wine, but is reluctant to try the food, and still standing in the aisle, she turns to the conductor to plead the case for her harp. Will it be possible to find another harpist, without whom Debussy cannot demonstrate his genius in Japan?
“Why, dear Venus, do you worry so? If we don't play the Debussy in Japan, we'll play it when we get back to Europe.”
“That's true, Maestro,” she says, her voice quavering. “I know we'll play it in Europe, but it's important to me to also play the piece in a distant land for a foreign people with an ancient culture. Remember too, Maestro, that for three months in Israel I didn't touch a string, and when I returned, you all made me so happy with a piece you chose not only for the Japanese but for me as well. Because as we all know,
La Mer
is not only âthe sea' but âthe mother,' and no doubt a Symbolist composer like Debussy was aware of this and also intended to make a connection between the two. So this piece will connect me with my mother, who chose to stay alone in Jerusalem, a complicated city that gets more so all the time . . .”
Unexpected tears flood her eyes, and the conductor's wife offers her a paper napkin, seizing the moment to speak for her husband.
“Don't worry, we'll find you a partner, but it will have to be an experienced player. There's only one rehearsal before the concert.”
And the maestro, with a loving smile, confirms his wife's words.
Now, in the presence of his colleagues, Manfred unabashedly throws an affectionate arm around his friend, and she knows that her tears arouse not only his compassion but his lust, and again he urges her to sit in his seat and eat his meal. But she declines, saying she has a seat of her own.
Meanwhile, the captain's voice is on the loudspeaker, announcing that at this very moment the plane is passing over the North Pole, and everyone is invited to take in the view and preserve it in their memory.
But to remember what, and how?
For in September the North Pole is no longer lit by full sunlight but by a hazy, weak sun stuck at the horizon, neither rising nor setting. The barren, frozen land at the top of the world is wrapped in a dark twilight that blurs the view. In strangely fearful silence the passengers are riveted at the windows, searching for a marker, a structure, a flag or just a pole, to engrave the sight in memory.
Manfred gives Noga his window seat so she too can get a good look at the crown of the world. Her eyes aren't focused on the earth but at the sun, which sits on the horizon like an overripe orange. Might the planet Noga be found nearby? Her father would tell her to look for it just before sunset or sunrise, but who knows what sunrise and sunset are here?
“Maybe the planet . . . Venus . . . is out there,” she whispers to the flutist.
“Where?” he asks. He turns to the flight attendant and requests permission to enter the cockpitâperhaps from there it will be possible to locate Venus. They gingerly step into the darkened cockpit, cradled in polar twilight, and amid greenish dials and glowing levers they are welcomed by little bows and the soothing smiles of angular eyes.
The two pilots ferrying a European orchestra to the Far East are accustomed to such requests, and they rotate the phosphorescent radar to locate the desired planet, and direct the attention of the two musicians to a solitary disk glimmering on the horizon, loyal to the sun that stubbornly stays put twenty-four hours a day.
“Venus,” say the two young pilots, pronouncing the sweet name of the ancient goddess. After the sun leaves the North Pole to allow a long night to spread its wings, this planet will vanish as well.
W
HILE THEY WERE
on the plane from Europe, Osaka was struck by a mild earthquake, the airport was closed, and they circled in the air for an extra hour before receiving permission to land.
The night that blackened the world after they passed the North Pole did not last long, and before landing in Osaka the sun had fully risen. After clearing passport control, the players of the large instruments were asked to retrieve them and check that they had weathered the flight safely. Escorted to a large hangar that reminded Noga of the faux hospital at the port of Ashdod, the musicians descended on their instruments, banging the drums and plucking the big strings. Noga at her harp happily executed long, liquid glissandi that delighted the baggage handlers, who gathered around her and thanked her with friendly bows.
The musicians were then transported in three buses to Kyoto, the city of temples, where rooms awaited them at the handsome guesthouse of Doshisha University. Two musicians would occupy each room, and since Noga did not wish to validate her relationship with Manfred, she quickly suggested to the sturdy grandmother Pirke Wisser, her neighbor on the plane, that they share a room. The contrabassist hesitantly agreed, warning the Israeli with Dutch candor that she was likely to snore. “That's all right,” replied Noga. “My parents, who slept their whole lives in a narrow double bed, taught me that snoring bothers only someone who doesn't like the snorer, and I like you a lot.”
The hosts decided to impress their guests right away with a visit to the Temple of the Golden Pavilion on the shore of Mirror Lake. Despite their fatigue from the long flight, and the pole that confused day and night, most of the musicians accepted the offer, and at a soft, radiant afternoon hour they embarked on the tour, accompanied by Dutch-speaking Japanese guides, who divided the orchestra members into five small groups, to enable each one to ask questions without trying the patience of their companions.
The orchestra was first taken for a view of the golden temple from afar, to marvel at its holy reflection in the waters of the lake. The sight is spectacular yet intimate. The solitude of the temple on the edge of the lake, the harmony of its three-tiered structure, the radiance of the gold leaf that covers its walls, the gentle shingled roofs shading the balconies that surround each story, convey the warm humanity of a private villa converted long ago to a Zen Buddhist temple. Although the pavilion is familiar from photographs, its living, organic presence, in a thick green grove with a botanical garden, arrests the visitor. Indeed, explains the guide of Noga's group, its official name is Rokuon-ji, or Deer Garden Temple. It was built in the fourteenth century, and survived a devastating civil war in the fifteenth, only to be burned down in the mid-twentieth century by a monk who lost his mind, and reconstructed thereafter.
Burned down and reconstructed? The musicians react with wonder at the fate of a temple that looks so calm and serene, as if nothing had befallen it since the day it was built.
The group's guide is petite and bespectacled, and speaks Dutch with an accent that Noga has difficulty understanding, but she is drawn to her nonetheless, for she seems to be well educated. Unlike the many tour guides who mechanically recite names and dates, she tries to widen the scope and compare Japan with other nations.
To better understand the Dutch, which is native to neither her ears nor the speaker's lips, Noga moves closer to the slender woman, who looks like a student who skipped several grades at once. At a quiet moment, as the group walks around the lake to the temple, Noga asks her a question that arose in her mind at the sight of the temple: What is the religion of the Japanese people?
“The religion?” The guide smiles and pauses to evaluate the questioner. “Here is a surprising answer for you. According to a recent poll, seventy-five percent of Japanese people do not define themselves as having a religion, and until the middle of the nineteenth century there was no word in Japanese for the concept of religion.”
“Seventy-five percent?” The Israeli is stunned. “That many?”
“Yes, because when a Japanese defines himself as religious, it means he is a member of a religious sect, and that can also be a Christian sect. So when seventy-five percent define themselves as not religious, it means first of all they are not members of any sect, yet eighty-five percent identify themselves as Buddhist.”
“Eighty-five percent Buddhist!”
“And ninety-five percent believe in Shinto.”
“How can that be?” Noga protests. “These are two different religions!”
“Of course they are different. The Shinto ceremonies connect the person to the ancient gods, the Kami spirits that must be appeased, especially when a child is born or at a wedding, whereas Buddhism, which is universal and not only Japanese, is also connected with death, and a person who dies is given a Buddhist name.”
“The dead have a Buddhist name?” asks the harpist uneasily.
“Yes, the death rituals are done in the Buddhist way.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that a Japanese can honor and perform, even in the same temple, ceremonies of two religions, and add a ritual from a third faith, without perceiving it as a fault or contradiction. We are polytheists,” stresses the tiny tour guide, “believers in many faiths, and therefore here in Japan a person is not asked what his religion is. It is entirely a personal matter. After the Second World War, the victors forced us to completely separate religion from the stateâthat way all the religious fanaticism is uprooted. The Japanese are loyal only to their emperor. That is enough for them.”
“Enough for you too?” asks Noga.
A mysterious smile crosses the lips of the guide. “For me too,” she says softly. “Why not.”
“That's good,” concludes Noga.
The rest of the musicians in the group have long since left the two behind. The air is sweet and the light soft, and the scene is one of silent dignity. Other tourists, not orchestra members, walk quietly beside them. The pair walk side by side, and Noga wonders about the age of this intelligent guide, who seems ageless.
“I'm not Dutch, but Israeli,” she discloses. “So what you told me about the religious chaos in Japan is very appealing.”
“It is not chaos,” the guide says, rejecting the definition with mild annoyance. “It is tolerance. It is freedom.”
“Of course, tolerance, freedom,” Noga hastens to correct herself, but adds with a sly smile, “if not with regard to your emperor.”
The guide shakes her head with suppressed anger, but does not respond.
“Because with us,” Noga persists, suddenly switching to English, “in other words in Israel, there is one religion, but everyone bends it his own way.”
The guide smiles politely, clearly eager to get free of Noga. But Noga for some reason feels the need to tell her about herself.
“I am a harpist,” she says, “but I didn't find work in Israel, so I play with this orchestra.”
They approach the pavilion, where the entire orchestra has gathered. They may not enter, for the inside of the temple is off limits to tourists and visitors, open only to a select few. On a low hill nearby stand the managers of the orchestra with their local escorts, and it occurs to Noga that they are waiting for her. Indeed, with a brusque wave of his hand the maestro signals her to come, his face beaming with the promise of good news.
Along with them, slightly hidden, stands a short old Japanese man, his white hair in a braid, wearing a long gray robe and wooden clogs. On his back is a blue pack that resembles the traditional pillow of Japanese women.
“And so,” says Dennis van Zwol, pointing to the old man, who bows deeply before the harpist, “we told you not to worry, and we were right. Tomorrow at the concert you will have a partner whose reputation precedes him. A harpist of the highest caliber, who served as a soldier in the world war, and since then, for many years, was a harpist with the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra and also a teacher at the conservatory in Tokyo. A few years ago he went back to live in the area where he was born, to be near his family. This is an area that was damaged in the last tsunami . . .”
The conductor turns to the cultural attaché for help with the name.
“Fukushima,” says the attaché.
And when the old man hears the name of his area, he bows to the conductor.
“Yes,” the conductor goes on, “Fukushima, which is where he was found. He speaks only Japanese, but neither you nor I will have any problem with him, since he has played
La Mer
by Debussy a number of times as first harpist, and he no doubt knows the part by heart.”
The little old man bows again at the sound of the French composer's name.
“So he'll be playing the first harp part?” Noga asks anxiously, her eyes fixed on the old man, who now and again bows his head.
“No, no, you are the first harpist, and he is the second,” the conductor says. “He has not come here seeking fame, only to help. He has come from far away, two days of travel, and he is a simple and modest man, as you see, and also adorable.”
Everyone smiles at the word “adorable,” and the cultural attaché translates the adjective for the old man, who erupts with laughter, his mouth nearly toothless. Again he presses his palms together and distributes bows in a semicircle to the entire group.
“And what is his name?” asks Noga. “I should at least know his name.”
“Ichiro Matsudaira,” says the attaché, and the old man who hears his name spoken bows once again.
He just might bow to us while playing, thinks Noga, wondering if she should extend her hand to him, but thinks better of it and instead bows deeply and recites her name: “Noga, which means Venus.”
And the old man whispers reverentially, “Venus,” and bows heartily in return.
At the conclusion of the bowing a monk emerges from the temple and admits only the maestro and the Japanese harpist, and the rest of the group heads into the garden.
A
S NOGA PREPARES
for the night in the room she is sharing with her seatmate from the plane, her mobile phone startles her. Her brother Honi, his voice as clear and sharp as if he were next door, wishes to know if the flight went well.