Less(61)

“That is just my mother,” the proprietress says, sighing. “She thinks she is still the boss. We give her a fake calendar to make reservations. The phone also is fake. Can I make you a cup of tea?” He says that would be wonderful, and she smiles handsomely; then her face darkens in terrible sorrow. “And I am so sorry, Mr. Arthur,” she says, as if imparting the death of a loved one. “You are too early to see the cherry blossoms.”

After the tea (which she makes by hand, whisking it into a bitter green foam—“Please eat the sugar cookie before the tea”) he is shown to his room and told it was, in fact, the novelist Kawabata Yasunari’s favorite. A low lacquered table is set on the tatami floor, and the woman slides back paper walls to reveal a moonlit corner garden dripping from a recent rain; Kawabata wrote of this garden in the rain that it was the heart of Kyoto. “Not any garden,” she says pointedly, “but this very garden.” She informs him that the tub in the bathroom is already warm and that an attendant will keep it warm, always, for whenever he needs it. Always. There is a yukata in the closet for him to wear. Would he like dinner in the room? She will bring it personally for him: the first of the four kaiseki meals he will be writing about.

The kaiseki meal, he has learned, is an ancient formal meal drawn from both monasteries and the royal court. It is typically seven courses, each course composed of a particular type of food (grilled, simmered, raw) and seasonal ingredients. Tonight, it is butter bean, mugwort, and sea bream. Less is humbled both by the exquisite food and by the graciousness with which she presents it. “I most sincerely apologize I cannot be here tomorrow to see you; I must go to Tokyo.” She says this as if she were missing the most extraordinary of wonders: another day with Arthur Less. He sees, in the lines around her mouth, the shadow of the smile all widows wear in private. She bows and exits, returning with a sake sampler. He tries all three, and when asked which is his favorite, he says the Tonni, though he cannot tell the difference. He asks which is her favorite. She blinks and says: “The Tonni.” If only he could learn to lie so compassionately.



The next day is already his last, and it looks as if it will be a full one; he has arranged to visit three restaurants. It is eleven in the morning, and Arthur Less, still wearing his clothes from the day before, is already on his way to the first, recovering his shoes from the numbered cabinet where the hotel worker keeps them when he is waylaid by the elderly mother. She stands behind the reception desk, dwarfed and age speckled as a winter starling, perhaps ninety years old, and chattering, chattering away, as if the cure for his inability to speak Japanese were the application of more Japanese (a hair-of-the-dog sensibility). And yet somehow, from his months of travel and pantomime, his pathetic journey into the empathic and telepathic, he feels he does understand. She is talking about her youth. She is talking about when she was the proprietress. She pulls out a weathered black-and-white photograph of a seated Western couple—the man silver haired, the woman quite chic in a toque—and he recognizes the room where he had tea. She is saying the girl serving tea is her and the man, a famous American. There is a long expectant pause as recognition rises like a deep-sea diver, slowly, cautiously, until it surfaces, and he exclaims: “Charlie Chaplin!”

The old woman closes her eyes with joy.

A young woman in braids arrives and turns on the little television behind the counter, changing the channels until she lands on a scene of the emperor of Japan having tea with a few guests, one of whom he recognizes.

“Is that the proprietress?” he asks the young woman.

“Oh yes,” she says, “she is so sorry she could not say good-bye to you.”

“She didn’t tell me it was so she could have tea with the emperor!”

“It is with her great apologies, Mr. Less.” There are more apologies. “I am also so sorry your suitcase is not here for you. But early this morning we had a call: there is a message.” She hands him an envelope. Inside is a piece of paper with the message in all caps, which reads like an old-fashioned telegram:

ARTHUR DO NOT WORRY BUT ROBERT HAS HAD A STROKE BACK HOME NOW PLEASE CALL ME WHEN YOU CAN

—MARIAN



“Arthur, there you are!”

Marian’s voice—almost thirty years since they last spoke; he can only imagine the names she called him after the divorce. But he remembers Mexico City: She sends her love. In Sonoma it is seven at night the previous day.

“Marian, what’s happened?”

“Arthur, don’t worry, don’t worry, he’s okay.”

“What. Happened.”

That sigh from across the world, and he takes a moment from his worries to marvel: Marian! “He was just in his apartment, reading, and fell flat on the floor. Luckily, Joan was there.” The nurse. “He bruised himself a little. He’s having trouble talking, a little trouble with his right hand. It’s minor.” She says this sternly. “It’s a minor stroke.”

“What is a minor stroke? Does that mean it’s nothing, or does that mean thank God it wasn’t a major one?”

“The thank-God kind. And thank God he wasn’t on the stairs or something. Listen, Arthur, I don’t want you to worry. But I wanted to call you. You know you’re listed first on his emergency contacts. But they didn’t know where you were, so they called me. I’m second.” A little laugh. “Lucky them, I’ve been stuck at home for months!”