Less(60)

From where I sit, the story of Arthur Less is not so bad. I admit it looks bad (misfortune is about to arrive). I recall our second meeting, when Less was just over forty. I was at a cocktail party in a new city, looking out at the view, when I felt the sensation of someone opening a window and turned. No one had opened a window; a new person had simply entered the room. He was tall, with thinning blond hair and the profile of an English lord. He gave a sad grin to the crowd and raised a hand the way some people do when (after being introduced with an anecdote) they say “Guilty!” Nowhere on earth could he be mistaken for anything but an American. Did I recognize him as the same man who taught me to draw in that cold white room when I was young? The one I thought was a boy but who betrayed me by being a man? Not at first. My initial thoughts were certainly not those of a child. But then, yes, on a second glance, I did recognize him. He had aged without growing old: a harder jaw, a thicker neck, a faded color to his hair and skin. No one would mistake him for a boy. And yet it was definitely him: I recognized the distinctly identifiable innocence he carried with him. Mine had vanished in the intervening years; his, strangely, had not. Here was someone who should have known better; who should have built an amusing armor around himself, like everyone else in that room, laughing; who should, by now, have grown a skin. Standing there like someone lost in Grand Central Station.

So it is that, almost a decade later, Arthur Less wears the same expression as he emerges from the plane in Osaka and, finding no one to greet him, experiences that quicksand sensation every traveler recognizes: Of course there is no one to greet me; why would anyone remember, and what am I supposed to do now? Above him, a fly orbits a ceiling lamp in a trapezoidal pattern, and in life’s constant imitation, Arthur Less begins a similar orbit around the Arrivals terminal. He passes a number of counters whose signs, while ostensibly in English, mean nothing to him (JASPER!, AERONET, GOLD-MAN), reminding him of that startling moment while reading a book when he finds it is all complete gibberish and realizes that he is, in fact, dreaming. At the final counter (CHROME), an elderly man calls out to him; Arthur Less, by now fluent in global sign language, understands this is a private bus company and the Kyoto city council has left him a ticket. The name on the ticket: DR. ESS. Less experiences a brief wonderful vertigo. Outside, the minibus is waiting; it is clearly meant only for Less. A driver exits; he is wearing the cap and white gloves of a cinema chauffeur; he nods to Arthur Less, who finds himself bowing before he enters the bus, chooses a seat, wipes his face with a handkerchief, and looks out the window at this, his final destination. Only an ocean left to cross now. He has lost so much along the way: his lover, his dignity, his beard, his suit, and his suitcase.

I have neglected to mention that his suitcase has not made it to Japan.

Less is here to review Japanese cuisine for a men’s magazine, in particular kaiseki cuisine; he volunteered for the gig at that poker game. He knows nothing at all about kaiseki cuisine, but he has dinner plans at four different establishments over two days, the last an ancient inn outside Kyoto, so he is expecting a wide variety. Two days, then he will be done. All he knows of Japan is a memory from when he was a little boy, when his mother drove him into Washington DC, for a special trip, and he was made to wear a button-up shirt and wool trousers, and was taken to a large stone building with columns, and stood in line for a long time in the snow before being allowed entrance to a small dark chamber in which various treasures appeared, scrolls and headdresses and suits of armor (which Less took for real people at first). “They’ve let them out of Japan for the first time and probably never will again,” his mother whispered, apparently referring to a mirror, a jewel, and a sword on display with two very real and disappointing guards, and when a gong sounded and they were told to leave, she leaned down to him and asked: “What did you like best?” He told her, and her face twisted in amusement: “Garden? What garden?” He had been drawn not to the sacred treasures but to a glass case containing a town in miniature, to which an eyepiece was attached so that he could peer in on one scene or the next like a god, each done in such exquisite detail that it seemed he was looking in on the past through a magic telescope. And of all the wonders in that case, the greatest was the garden, with its river that seemed to trickle, filled with orange-spotted carp, and bushy pines and maples and a little fountain made from a piece of bamboo (in reality as big as a pin!) that tipped and tipped, as if dropping its load of water into the stone pool at its base. The garden enchanted little Arthur Less for weeks; he walked among the brown leaves of his backyard, looking for its little golden key. He took it for granted he would find the door.

So all this is surprising and new. Arthur Less sits in the bus and watches the industrial landscape bloom along the highway. He expected something prettier, perhaps. But even Kawabata wrote about the changing landscape around Osaka, and that was sixty years ago. He is tired; his flights and connections have felt more dreamlike than even his drugged tour of the Frankfurt airport. He did not hear again from Carlos. A piece of nonsense buzzes in his brain: Is this because of Freddy? But that story had reached its end, as this one almost has.

The bus continues into Kyoto, which feels like a mere elaboration on the small townlets before it, and while Less is still trying to figure out if they are in the downtown—if perhaps this is a main street, if that is in fact the Kamo River—they have arrived. A low wooden wall off the main road. A young man in a black suit bows and stares curiously at the place where Less’s suitcase should be. A middle-aged woman in kimono approaches from the cobblestone courtyard. She is lightly made up, her hair pulled into a style Less associates with the early twentieth century. A Gibson girl. “Mr. Arthur,” she says with a bow. He bows in return. Behind her, at the front desk, there is a ruckus: an old woman, also in kimono, chattering on a cell phone and making marks on a wall calendar.