Tokio Whip by Arturo Silva Page A

or destruction”: Aleixandre’s beautiful beginning. “Brothers in mourning, sisters cradled in sisters’ arms”: Bergman’s beautiful memory. Roberta and Lang, together in Tokio – in our lifetime, Lord? And Gertrud . To be able to say at the end: I have loved . In the city, in the woman, in me, Lang, the man women love to – women love to what? Might I only know it in this city, this woman?
    â€œBanal” van Zandt called the people. Or what is the difference after all between fucking and talking? (“To fuck and be fucked. ‘Oh, by Jaysus, but I am be-fucked.’ A love by any other name.” – Oh, Lang, get a hold of yourself! ) Ok: to live one’s time, place, at most, no less than that; this: to describe a mood, to describe an arc – a style, a geometry. No more nor less. (Christ, why all this now?, where from, what gash, now of all places and with all that’s transpired ((“loose usage” – so regarded by whom? – that too, where from?)) with all that’s transpired between Roberta and me? From whence this gush?
    Years together in our fashions and it still was new. Roberta as the USA: red hair, blue eyes, her milky white skin –tight dresses and lipstick. Northern Roberta, black eyes and a blue dress; Spanish Roberta, black hair and a red dress. The angular Roberta, the reclining Roberta, Roberta at her desk – Roberta, your body changing according to your moods, your “circumstances.” Your small breasts became large those months and then small again. Looked Chinese once, and now once more so American. And now again changing – a sort-of Japanese look. Ah, but throw any bolt of cloth at you and any way it falls it looks made for you. And that voice still. (And speaking what variety of languages.) The monotone, the rush, the strung together phrases, the leaps across thought and grammar, the resistance, the edge, the profundo and the moderato. Within, between and above them all, the One and the Many, unique, you, alone, the multiple capital ARE.
    People are good. I have seen and known a few good people.
    (The mother’s skull in a dream of death for the newborn babe and I see you whole.)
    But that’s not what I wanted to say either. Or is it? You wanted to say something that speaks like children with as much control over their bodies as … that speaks of some however small tenuous or inappropriate connection with – with what?, where? – Beijing? … that speaks to a woman who’s asked you to leave and with whom you want to stay.
    (But what am I to do with this Tokio? Roberta’s not going to play guide and hostess. Better call van Zandt tonight … “Everybody’s tryin’ to be my ....” To be my what? Never met so many one-conversation bastards. Well, folks, you’ve come to monologue’s end, your telephone cards have run out. What happened to the ear that listens, the two-way street? What was that line about hangers-on, friends and virtue? And every artiste here seems to have a tale of despair and final triumph against the philistines – but they’re the system. Leave ’em all behind, Lang – I’ve got work to do. So, JG, write a novel when yer 25, and then leave, tend yer garden and seek wisdom. And if you do have children, remember Voltaire’s advice: kill ’em before they begin to think of heaven.)
    Whose were those young, innocent faces I passed today? Young couples holding hands. Skirts swinging, leather bags, comic books, laughter and silence. A remembrance, a view from a bus window, a young couple’s first kiss. To compassionate. “Running with instinct,” and what remains, eh? “Young Couple on the Run: An Essay in Aesthetics.” I wonder if I still have a copy of that somewhere. To recreate myself, or better – to cleanse myself of years of one-liners, of my own embellished tales told too many times,