Then she exhaled deeply, as if she'd said all there was to say. She stretched and was quiet. The afternoon silence deepened, particles of light flickered like dust, drifting freely in all directions. The white pithecanthropus skull cloud still
floated above the horizon. Obstinate as ever. Ame's Salem lay burning in the ashtray, hardly touched.
How did Dick manage to make sandwiches with just one arm? I found myself wondering. How did he slice the bread? How did he keep the bread in place? Was it a matter of meter and rhyme?
When the poet emerged bearing a tray of beautiful ham sandwiches, well-made, well-cut, there was no end to my admiration. Then he opened a beer and poured it for Ame.
«Thanks, Dick,» she said, then turned to me. «Dick's a great cook.»
«If there were a cooking competition for one-armed poets, I'd win hands down,» he said with a wink. And then he was back in the kitchen, making coffee. Despite his lack of an arm, Dick was far from helpless.
Ame offered me a sandwich. It was delicious, and somehow lyrical in composition. Dick's coffee was good too.
«It's no problem, you with Yuki, just the two of you?» Ame picked up the conversation again.
«Excuse me?»
«I'm talking about the music, of course. That rock stuff. It doesn't give you a headache?»
«No, not especially,» I said.
«I can't listen to that stuff for more than thirty seconds before I get a splitting headache. Being with Yuki is fine, but the music is intolerable,» she said, screwing her index finger into her temple. «The kinds of music I can put up with are very limited. Some baroque, certain kinds of jazz. Ethnic music. Sounds that put you at ease. That's what I like. I also like poetry. Harmony and peace.»
She lit up another cigarette, took one puff, then set it down in the ashtray. I was sure she would forget about it too, and she did. Amazing that she hadn't set the house on fire. I was beginning to understand what Hiraku Makimura meant about Ame's wearing him down. Ame didn't give anything. She only took. She consumed those around her to sustain herself. And those around her always gave. Her talent was manifested in a powerful gravitational pull. She believed it was her privilege, her right.
Not that it made any difference to me, I wanted to shout. I was here on vacation. I had my own life, even if it was doing you-know-what. Let all this weirdness reach its natural level. But maybe it didn't matter what I thought? I was a member of the supporting cast.
Ame finished her sandwich and walked over to Yuki, slowly running her fingers through the girl's hair again. Yuki stared at the coffee cups on the table, expressionless. «Beautiful hair,» said Ame. «The hair I always wanted. So shiny and silky straight. My hair's so unmanageable. Isn't that right, Princess?» Again she touched the tip of her nose to Yuki's temple.
Dick cleared away the dishes. Then he put on some Mozart chamber music. He asked me if I wanted another beer, but I told him I'd already had enough.
«Dick, I'd like to discuss some family matters with Yuki,» Ame spoke with a snap in her voice. «Mother and daughter talk. Why don't you show this gentleman the beach? We should be about an hour.»
«Sure,» the poet answered, rising to his feet. He gave Ame a loving peck on the forehead, donned a white canvas hat and green Ray-Bans. «See you in an hour. Have a nice chat.» Then he took me by the arm and led me out. «We've got a great beach here,» he said.
Yuki shrugged and gave me a blank look. Ame was about to light up another Salem. Leaving the women on their own, we stepped out into the afternoon sun.
As I drove the Lancer down to the beach, Dick mentioned that with a prosthetic arm, driving would be no problem.
Still, he preferred not to wear one. «It's unnatural,» he explained. «I wouldn't feel at ease. It might be more convenient having one, but I'd be so self-conscious with it. It wouldn't be me. I'm trying to train myself to live one-armed. I'm limited in what I can do, but I do okay.»
«How do you slice bread?»
«Bread?» He thought it over a second, as if he didn't know what I was talking about. Then it dawned on him. «Oh, slicing bread? Why sure, that's a reasonable question. It's not so hard. I use one hand, of course, but I don't hold the knife the usual way. I'd be useless if I did that. The trick is to keep the bread in place with your fingers while you move the blade. Like this.»
Dick demonstrated with his hand, but for the life of me I couldn't imagine how it would actually work. Yet I'd seen his handiwork. His slices were cleaner than most people with two hands could cut.
«Works perfectly well,» he declared with a smile. «Most things I can manage with one hand. I can't clap, but I can do push-ups. Chin-ups too. It takes practice, but it's not impossible. How did you think I sliced bread?»
«I don't know, maybe with your feet?»
That drew a laugh from him. «Clever,» he said. «I'll have to write a poem about that. The one-armed poet making sandwiches with his feet. Very clever.»
I didn't know whether to agree or not.
A little ways down the coast highway, we pulled over and bought a six-pack, then walked to a deserted area of the beach. We lay down and drank beer after beer, but it was so hot the beer didn't seem to go to my head.
The beach was very un-Hawaiian. Unsightly scrub bushes, uneven sands, somehow rocky, but at least it was off the tourist track. A few pickup trucks were parked nearby, local families hanging out, veteran surfers doing their stuff. The pithecanthropus cloud was still pinned in place, sea
gulls going around like washing-machine suds.
We talked in spurts. Dick had nothing but awe and respect for Ame. She was a true artist, he repeated several times. When he spoke about her, his Japanese trailed off into English. He said he couldn't express his feelings in Japanese.
«Since meeting her, my own thinking about poetry has changed. Her photographs—how can I put it?—strip poetry bare. I mean, here we are, choosing our words, braiding strands to cut a figure. But with her photos it's immediate, the embodiment. Out of thin air, out of light, in the gap between moments, she grabs things just like that. She gives physical presence to the depths of the human psyche. Do you know what I mean?»
Kind of, I allowed.
«Sometimes it frightens me, looking at her photos. My whole being is thrown into question. It's that overwhelming. She's a genius. Not like me and not like you . . . Forgive me, that's awfully presumptuous of me. I don't even know a thing about you.»
I shook my head. «That's okay, I understand what you're saying.»
«Genius is rare. I'm not talking about talent, or even first-rate talent. With genius, you're lucky just to encounter it, to see it right there before your eyes. And yet—,» he paused, opening his hand up in a gesture of helplessness. «And yet, in some sense, the experience can be pretty upsetting. Sometimes it's like a needle piercing straight through my ego.»
I gazed out at the ocean as I listened. The surf was rough, the waves breaking hard. I buried my fingers in the hot sand, scooped some up and let it drizzle down. Over and over again. Meanwhile, the surfers caught the waves they'd been waiting for and paddled back out.
«But you know,» Dick went on, «even with my ego sacrificed, her talent attracts me. It makes me love her even more. Sometimes I think I've been drawn into a whirlpool. I already have a wife—she's Japanese too—and we have a child. I love them, I love them very much. Even now I love
them. But from the first time I met Ame, I was drawn right in to her. I couldn't resist her. And I knew it was happening. I knew it wasn't going to come my way again, not in this life. That's when I decided—if I go with her, there'll come a time that I'll regret it. But if I don't go with her, I'll be losing the key to my existence. Have you ever felt that way about something?»
Never, I told him.
«Odd,» Dick continued. «I'd struggled so hard to have a quiet, stable life. A wife and kid, a small house, my own work. I didn't make a lot of money, but the work was worth doing. I was writing and translating, and it was a good life, I thought. I'd lost my arm in the war, and that was pretty traumatic, but I worked hard at getting my head together and I found some peace and I was doing all right. Life was all right. And then—» He lifted his palm in a broad flat sweep. «In an instant it was lost. Just like that. I have no place to go. I have no home in Japan anymore,
