L.P. Ring's Blog, page 2

Alan and Felix

When Alan lost his first tooth, Felix followed suit within the hour, wedging it out with the aid of a pair of pliers from the toolbox under the sink. He bled all down his white t-shirt, leaving a dribble along the kitchen floor that damn near gave their mom a heart attack when she returned from the store. When Felix got picked for little league baseball first, Alan practised his swing every evening after homework until the sun went down so he got picked too. When Alan experienced his first kiss, had his first break-up, lost his virginity, Felix wasn’t far behind in any of those three formative experiences. When Felix took extra credits, upped his GPA, and got into State, Alan made sure he did those too.

Twin brothers in damn near unison. Where one succeeded, the other couldn’t be far behind. Big brother Felix was good enough not to labour the point that he’d been born eight minutes earlier too often, just as he’d promised their mom when cancer took her just shy of their nineteenth birthdays. But he did like to keep score. It kept things competitive.

So, when it came to killing, one brother shouldn’t be left behind.

Felix met his searching out a Michael Ondaatje book about some jazz musician between the library stacks. She had long, lank black hair that usually hung around her face, glasses thick enough to stand a coke on and the heavy physique of a girl following mommy and daddy’s tradition of unhealthy eating. She stood there while Felix talked about ‘The English Patient’ – he’d seen the movie – barely cognisant of the line this god among men was spinning her. Few freshmen had bothered to pay attention to Amy Lou Harris, let alone a junior from the university baseball team whose upper arms stretched the fabric of his tee almost to tearing. She stuttered an acceptance when he asked her to meet him in the car park after the library shut. He had a weakness for cheeseburgers, he whispered, and knew this place across town which he swore was the state’s best kept secret.

Alan sat across from his choice at lunch a few days later. It was a lot more of a public forum than Felix had sought, but Amy Lou was already being consigned to the category of whispered cautionary tale, a missing poster around campus using a high school graduation photo that she’d have just died if anybody ever saw. Alan’s choice was tall, willowy, with freckles across her nose and fair hair that flowed below her shoulders to half-way down her back. ‘You’re not picking a date,’ Felix had warned him. ‘Choose a girl who nobody will remember.’ The choice was unsuitable enough, but when Alan carried the blonde’s books for her to her next class, Felix damn near chased him down the corridor and throttled him. ‘I’ll choose another one,’ Alan yelled from the passenger seat of their mom’s Oldsmobile Cutlass saloon. ‘No blondes,’ Felix responded as they weaved through traffic, the twilight settling in. ‘You need someone darker. Plain.’ He paused for a few seconds before adding a slur that made Alan blanch.       

 ‘Mom would slap you across the mouth if she heard you say that word.’

‘Well Mom’s been dead two years now and I don’t believe in ghosts. Meaning you can forget about what she’d say or want me to say.’

When asked later, Alan said it was then that he began to feel like Felix was shifting away from him. Their mom, he insisted, had taught them better than that.

Not long after, a freshman disappeared from outside one of the women’s dorms. And, perhaps initially as a middle finger to Felix, Alan kept seeing the blonde. Six months later and Amy Lou Harris was already a tattered page on a lamp post. The other girl never even warranted a proper mention in the college newsletter. The police, seeing education but also seeing color, didn’t even consider putting the two together.

Both brothers graduated with honors. Felix got offered a position in upstate New York. Alan talked up the growth of their home city, quibbled over the salary a similar concern was offering only 50 kilometers away from Felix, and thought about the blonde who was two years from finishing her degree. One night she coaxed him into her bed and he told her he loved her. Felix smashed a glass off the kitchen wall when Alan outlined his marriage plans after her graduation. ‘I told you to choose a kill, not a goddamn wife. What the hell do you think she’d say if she knew half of what I do about you? You think she’d marry you if she knew how close she was to being the top story on the evening news?!’

Alan reckoned she never would unless Felix wanted company on death row. Felix went north alone. Alan stayed, did the books for a local sporting goods chain, and eyed a four-bedroom unit on an estate under construction on the outskirts of town. Every so often he’d get a letter from his brother, sprinkled with women’s names that were rarely repeated. He tore up the letters so Stacy never read them. On their wedding day, Felix sent a bouquet and a card citing a prior engagement. ‘He must be serious about her,’ Stacey remarked, seeing how Felix’s dismissal of their special day stung. ‘He’s taking her away for the week.’

Alan gave it a few days before taking a trip to the local library. The microfiche made a whizzing noise as he scanned the pages of the New York dailies for missing person’s reports. Sure enough, the names from Felix’s letters that were burnished in his memory showed up. Probably to be joined soon enough by the name from the wedding card. They were no longer doing everything in unison, but Felix wanted to remind his brother that he was still keeping score.   

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Thumbsuckers

‘Did you suck your thumb as a child?’

Alex takes a few moments, focusing on the blank screen that he’s been staring at for over thirty minutes. She’s waiting for an answer, another chance to mine one of his childhood foibles. He can answer and hope his response passes without too much analysis or comment. Ignore it and hope the question floats away, dissipating through an air vent or bobbing out the window and skyward like a helium balloon at one of those end-of-year graduation parties. Or perhaps the balloon could be punctured and tossed into the garbage, a statement of illustrated disdain. He can hear the bang, imagine a child’s blubbering shock. He even allows himself a little smile.

‘Well?’ Alex turns from his computer and considers his wife’s expectant expression. She’s at the door, twirling a ringlet in her hair around one forefinger, a sharpie poised in the other. She brainstorms long hand. Computer screens, she says, are often too tyrannical.

Brainstorming. She doesn’t like THAT word. Says it has too many negative connotations. He should remember to try and drop it into conversation soon.

‘I don’t remember. Should I?’                                                      

‘You might remember if your mom put something on your thumb nails to stop you sucking them. My mom did that to my younger brother. I remember being curious once and tasting it. God, it was disgusting.’

‘I don’t remember anything like that around the house. Probably didn’t happen then.’ Alex turns back to the computer. These reports aren’t going to write themselves.

‘But you might’ve done and been stopped. Most parents get really paranoid if their kids are still doing it by the age of three. They think it will lead to problems with the palate, the teeth, jaw alignment…’ She trails off, waiting expectantly.

Guess that balloon isn’t floating away, he thinks. ‘Why do you need to know? I’m not going to end up being on a slide at one of your conferences again, am I?’

‘That was only to prove that I was part of a loving relationship. Customers eat stuff like that up.’

‘You could’ve expressed that without the photo. Anyway, I need to get this done for the morning.’

‘Sure. But the thumb-sucking thing. What makes you think you didn’t? Lots of babies stop before any real long-term memories can develop. You might just not remember.’

‘Why would you want to know?’

‘It’s cute.’

‘It’s hedonistic. A baby sucks its thumb when its mother isn’t close by to feed or comfort it. It’s basically saying I don’t need you or anyone else to have a good time. Why don’t you ask my mom? I’m sure she’ll remember.’ Alex counts off ten cursor blinks, waiting to see if Miriam has another response. It’s not quite the nuclear option, but he can almost hear a balloon deflating somewhere. Another ten blinks and he hears her receding footsteps. Parents-in-law. The ultimate red-button deterrent.

Except now he’s actually thinking about whether he did suck his thumb. Whether he was one of those brats who didn’t need mommy to have a good time. DAMN IT! He shoots the mouse up to the top right of the screen and presses close. No, he doesn’t want to save a blank page. ‘I’m going to take out the recycling,’ he calls out. ‘Be back in a few minutes.’

‘Just let the houseboy do it!’

‘I need a break. Maybe some fresh air.’ He shrugs into his coat, his right hand checking for the bulge in the inside left pocket. Grabs the plastic bags from the bins and treads to the front door. He needs a few minutes outside. Then he’ll come in and do those student reports. He lets the door swing closed behind him, thinks about locking it, but then figures he won’t be out long anyway. Five minutes at the most.

Downstairs he hefts the bags into the appropriate incinerator pods. Fishes the e-cigarette from that left-hand pocket and places it in his mouth. Tries to ignore that his hand is shaking. His first drag since this morning. Still tastes as good as usual, regardless of what that blowhard Mike Dawson said about the taste of cigarettes being repulsive. How you like blueberry flavour smoke, Mike?! The night’s crisp and clear. Quiet. Not a soul out. Now, how to finish those damned reports?

But his thoughts persist with Miriam’s question. The palate thing. He runs his tongue over his gumline, inside and out. Along the roof of his mouth from soft to hard palate. No lasting damage. No misshapen clefts or misalignments. Though our evolution spans hundreds of thousands of years, not a few decades in a damn jam-jar. He takes another inhale and nods as a security personnel passes by. ‘Best get back inside,’ the officer says, his voice muffled through his Perspex helmet. ‘Sure thing, officer. Just finishing up.’ One more drag and he twists his neck to gaze beyond the incinerators. Rows and rows of apartment buildings. Onward until the edge of the compound from where light becomes dark and known becomes unknown. Can’t tell what’s beyond the perimeter anymore. It could be safe. It could also be a Hieronymus Bosch painting if the news reports are to be trusted. 

He can hear voices when he gets back inside. He takes his time removing his coat, creeps to her office door. She’s having an animated video conference, doesn’t even notice him or care. She’s excited, has that extra pace in her speech when she’s sharing something. It would seem that a misshapen palate’s worth the risk.

‘They’ll be cuter. We can program it so that the habit tails off by the time they age to 18 months. And it won’t be for all of them, naturally. Just enough to offer the clients that extra bit of variety. Plus, it’ll show how much the little darlings can be nuanced.’

‘You don’t think it will cause damage to the mouth or jawline.’ The voice is layered in excitement, the rivulets of doubt begging to dry up.

‘The pulp we use isn’t as strong as it could be, but we carry out regular dental checks. It’s simple deprogramming if needed and we can fix any physical flaws in the scheduled two-year tune-up.’ Miriam’s voice rises a few decibels. Alex still hears the doubt on the other side of the line but knows that Miriam’s enthusiasm will win out. She has a talent for these things, he’s been told. The right design configurations at the right time. It’s as if she has her finger on the pulse of the collective buying public.

He moves onto his own office, flops into his office chair. She might spend hours discussing this. Citing surveys, discussing palate strength and gum measurement. Alex thanks his lucky stars that he probably didn’t suck his thumb. Having his baby photos on illustrative slides at her upcoming sales presentations is something he definitely doesn’t need. ‘It’s all about the personal touch,’ he remembers her saying once. That’s why a picture of the two of them ended up on her presentation slides, on her employee page, even mentioned in that damn interview she did on 60 Minutes. That’s why everyone at school knows he’s married to Dr. Invitrostein.

Class reports. How many of these might he write for ‘menu babies’ in the future? Miriam says the term’s insulting but he hears it all the time. He remembers the hurried shush and the following awkward silence when his sister’s new boyfriend dropped it at a dinner once. His pained expression while Miriam quietly explained her job. Don’t criticise what puts the food on the table or the roof over our heads, she always says. But did she need to get quite so invested in it.

Down the hall he can imagine her clicking between windows, explaining each segment in detail. He’s sure that soon enough any querying on the other end of the line will be reduced to accepting nods and murmured agreements. Miriam in full work mode is a force few people can resist. Alex rests his elbows on the table, hands clasped in front of the screen, and leans in, scraping his lower front teeth up and down his thumb nail. Squeezes his eyes shut, trying to summon images from his childhood. He ticks off the typical baby features he can remember – blue eyes, blonde hair, puppy fat. Smiles sure, often gap-toothed, but no thumbs in incriminating positions.  

He can still hear her in the other room, laughing now. He takes a quick peek behind him before he opens a programme Miriam would not appreciate his having access to. Better make sure the system’s on mute, he thinks.  

He starts snapping screen shots. She’s further into this project than he thought, and the torrent of criticism he’ll receive from the others for ‘sleeping on his watch’ sets him on edge. Why don’t one of you try spying on your wife? Some of the pictures, especially of half-rotted gum tissue and misshapen palates, make him wince. A few more clicks and he’s done what he has the stomach for. It’s the images, he tells himself, not the fear of getting caught. He shuts down the programme, opens his email. Taps in an address he’s had to learn by heart, attaches the images and presses send. It’ll get the information out there. Might even give Miriam’s company pause before taking things any further.

He slouches into the front room, stares out into the dark, still listening to the call. Things are actually winding down. ‘They’ll continue this tomorrow,’ she says, ‘at the office.’ And maybe not long after a news story will appear decrying the next effort to make synthetic beings “more human than human”. He turns his attention from the night view to the row of photographs underneath, a family of three in different poses. Technology can do so much these days. But it couldn’t conserve that.

He hears her enter the room, feels arms close around his waist. ‘What are you thinking?’ she asks. When he doesn’t respond she squeezes a little tighter. ‘We could get another,’ she whispers. ‘We could try again.’

He stands there, feeling her against him, not answering, his mind locked in fear at what ‘trying again’ might mean. Dylan hadn’t sucked his thumb. He hadn’t needed that to look cute.

He wonders now if he’s making a mistake. Wonders what will happen if she finds out what he’s been doing. He looks away from the photos, back to the dark. Back to what is blessedly unknown.       

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Only God Forgives is Jim Thompson for the 21st Century

This blog entry contains spoilers for the entire film

Nicolas Winding Refn’s ‘Only God Forgives’ (2013) is basically a Jim Thompson (1906-77) novel transferred to Bangkok. Its director is a man unwilling to kneel to audience expectations with a strong cast led in a near monosyllabic anti-performance by a star not afraid to act ugly and indeed appear even more so. It’s beautiful shot, methodically paced, and offers a stark illustration of power dynamics both within a destructive family unit and within the greater scope of a criminal community stewing in its own arrogance. Don’t listen to the detractors. It’s ace.

Julian Thompson (Gosling) and his brother Billy (Tom Burke) run a Thai boxing gym that serves as a cover for their drug business. On what one hopes is a less than typical night on the town, Billy trawls local brothels, assaulting a pimp, attacking workers and eventually killing a teenage prostitute. When the police are called, sword-wielding Lieutenant Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm) decides that Billy’s punishment should take a more old testament form and summons the girl’s father. Punishment meted out, Bangkok is set for a battle between Julian, his business associates and the police. But it’s once Julian and Billy’s ‘grieving’ mother arrives that things will really degenerate.

Alongside his lauded adaption of crime writer James Sallis’ ‘Drive’ (2011), OGF represent Refn’s progression into a noirish, crime-ridden Americana that he still inhabits (see 2019’s Too Old to Die Young). Refn had been set to make the film earlier – until Gosling persuaded him to direct ‘Drive’ – and had cast Luke Evans in the title role. Fortuitously (imo), Evans and his agent showed a – what Refn described as understandable – preference for working on Peter Jackson’s ‘The Hobbit’ instead, leaving the director with a leading man-sized absence that Gosling was more than capable of filling.

Gosling has had a more multi-faceted career that has eschewed typical leading man tradition, probably thanks to the steady climb he took to attain his place near the top of the Hollywood pyramid. Capable of charm and humor, performances in films like ‘Drive’, ‘Bladerunner 2049’ and Damien Chazelle’s Lalaland follow-up ‘First Man’ show an actor capable of reaching far deeper than dialogue to do the heavy lifting. His OGF character Julian utters a mere seventeen lines in the entire film and rarely stretches his vocal cords. No monologues. No back and forth. Indeed no real presence at all.

Neon-soaked, minimalistic, with characters often stripped to their leanest motivations and traits, OGF’s world is violent, misogynistic, and, aside from glimpses through the character of Lieutenant Chang and family matriarch Crystal, blunt in its emphasis on the importance of product over person. Most of its characters are waiting for something – acceptance, escape, punishment – but lack the fortitude or sense of self-worth (thinking of Tommy Burwell in Thompson’s ‘South of Heaven’ here) to seek it on their own terms. It also features a son-mother relationship at its core (Gosling ‘s Julian alongside a scenery-chewing Kristen Scott-Thomas as matriarch Crystal) that is fairly unambiguous in its oedipal representations (for the last of these think especially Thompson’s ‘The Grifters’).

Julian is a bullied cipher and a near constant source of disappointment to those around him. Not as strong as his equally damaged brother, he’s a mummy’s boy who seems intent on seeking punishment for a past crime which might or might not be patricide. Where brother Billy stoops to murder in order to satisfy some ephemeral craving for punishment, Julian awaits his, his few moments of anger directed impotently against his pretend girlfriend or whiskey drinking karaoke singers. Lieutenant Chang’s appearance in the story, and their eventual showdown, will act as a realisation of this need. A moment when a son will receive just punishment for his sins from an authority figure who, as the title suggests, will offer no forgiveness.

A lot has been made of a scene near the film’s end when Julian returns to his mother’s hotel room to find her dead (at Chang’s blade) and inserts his hand into a wound in her stomach. It was probably the final straw for some audiences, but given the undertones clear in their relationship from the moment of Crystal’s arrival, coupled with Lieutenant Chang responsibility for the wound, the act represents a logical consummation that to this point had been (probably) unrealised. Julian’s status as the younger sibling would put him physically/chronologically closer than Billy to his mother in that… ahem… respect, and in entering the wound Chang has made, it could be argued that Julian is attempting to regain ownership of his mother’s body from this new, surrogate, father.

Such themes, again alluding to works by Jim Thompson like ‘Texas by the Tail’ and the aforementioned ‘The Grifters’, represent the efforts and failures of protagonists to make up for parental loss/to indulge their incestual urges. Kristen Scott-Thomas’ Crystal’s provocative dress sense and overt sexuality are reminiscent of Angelica Huston’s portrayal of mother Lily Dillon in Stephen Frear’s adaptation of ‘The Grifters’ (1990), a film which also features an ultimately ineffectual male protagonist. As with Roy Dillon in that novel, Julian Thompson is out of his depth in the big city, dependent on family for support and relying on a woman he is ill-suited to be with for an emotional connection until mother comes calling.

‘Only God Forgives’ is one of those films which divides audiences and is a member of a not so select club of films that have been booed at the Cannes Film Festival (David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) was also booed and also contains hyper-realised, exaggerated, graphic scenes featuring questionable family relationships). However, on general release the contrarian nature of the project gained almost as many admirers as it did detractors, suggesting that the old maxim of not being able to please all the people all the time rings true. As with most Winding-Refn projects, there are stylistic as well as plot choices here that won’t suit everyone’s taste, and Gosling’s non-performance might leave some viewers bemused. However, familiar to Jim Thompson readers from works like ‘The Killer Inside Me’ will be how the supposed protagonist can elicit so little sympathy. Crime stories are often populated by anti-heroes, yet these tend to be people who we hope will achieve some redemption. OGF, like much of Jim Thompson’s work) doesn’t offer that audience release, instead delivering a central character who says little, does little and deserves little sympathy (liking him because he’s Ryan Gosling shouldn’t count). If you find yourself rooting for the Thai police lieutenant by the film’s end, you probably aren’t alone. This is not for the squeamish or the easily shocked, and probably isn’t a film to watch with your parents. But I think ‘Only God Forgives’ is bloody brilliant. And I think Jim Thompson would agree.

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The Dog Walker

Izumi Satou stares at the advertisement for some minutes, her brow wrinkling and eyebrows furrowing as she tries to unlock some deeper truth within the words. The notice, on a rectangular piece of yellow unlined paper, is fastened to the supermarket noticeboard using small pins at each corner – red, yellow, green and blue. Not, she notices as she scans the rest of the board, the brass-tipped ones available for free from the store. Why the need for four different pins when surely one pin or at most two would do?

These pins aren’t sold individually. She has never seen them in less than boxes of twenty? Thirty? Fifty? The person would have needed to buy the pins himself. But the usage of four pins then meant that he’s placed the sign in not so many stores. The more stores he’d go to, she imagines, the more he’d need to ration the pins.

The message is typed in very simple Japanese, with similarly short sentences in English underneath it. She notices the usage of watashi where it isn’t needed. The particle mistake the writer has made in using de instead of ni for one of the sentences. But, she accepts, it isn’t like the walker’s offering services in Japanese, is it? That wouldn’t be needed.

Any man, woman or child could teach rudimentary language to their pet themselves. Walk. Sit. Stay. Food. Lots of verbs. A few nouns. Probably no adjectives. Pets don’t really live in a world with adjectives, do they? She heard someone on NHK say once that dogs were color-blind. If that’s true, they wouldn’t even need basic colors. No reds, yellows, greens or blues. No way for them to tell one pin from the other.

She shakes her head slightly and mutters a self-rebuke. That her mind wanders and she starts thinking about inconsequential things is one of the sources of arguments at home. ‘Stay on the topic,’ Kenta chides her. ‘I’ve spent all day working and when I come home I am too tired to follow this haphazard train of thought.’

The walker promises to help any dog to understand basic English in three months. 100 words. A teacher in search of a pupil who’s not a child, not a bored housewife seeking something to fill up her days between the supermarket, the laundry and the vacuuming. A dog.

Why would a dog need English? The idea puzzles her. A mental image appears of a foreigner sitting in front of a dog with a textbook open. ‘I am fine. And you?’ She lets out a snort of a laugh and quickly covers her mouth. Memories of her own English lessons came back to her. Those classes after school at the academy as well. She shudders at the memories of sentence diagramming and practice drills. Then looks at the advertisement again. This guy might speak a little Japanese, unless he uses one of those translation applications.

An English teacher for dogs. Her dog, maybe.

She speaks to her husband that evening. Kenta sits across from her, mouth open, noodles dangling from his chopsticks. She can’t quite work out if the look in his eyes is surprise or mockery.  Instead of immediately answering, he turns his attention back to his noodles, slurping the mouthful and crunching disagreeably. He swallows and swirls the broth with his chopsticks. ‘Foreigners are weird people. I had an English teacher once who spent ten minutes every day talking about what cheeses he liked. About the flavors, the colors, the textures. About what he’d eat with them – crackers, toasted bread, sometimes even melted like a fondue. I hated that class. I hated English.’ He chuckles. Scoops another clutch of noodles into his mouth and chews. She bows slightly and focuses on her own bowl. Plenty of noodles. Eight pieces of chicken. Just as she likes it.

‘Of course, maybe some women might find it useful. So many couples have dogs these days as training for having children. And children need to learn English at school. Maybe the foreigner thinks that some women might want lessons for their dog the way they’ll want lessons for their children.’ Kenta lets out another chuckle. ‘It all sounds crazy. And yet, strangely he might be onto something. It’s certainly out-of-the-box thinking.’ He chuckles again at the usage of the English phrase they are always haranguing him with at his company. Izumi nods slowly as she considers her husband’s words, the dogs she has seen in miniature outfits, the custom-made bonnets, the prams.

Kenta is soon settled into the small alcove he’s set up as a temporary office, crouching over his MacBook Air and frowning at rows of sales figures while tapping messages into his phone. She washes up before settling onto the sofa, its cushions still fluffed, that new furniture smell still present. She scrolls down a magazine article about resorts in Hawaii and examines each entry carefully, picking at the hackneyed advertising lingo and imagining how she’d have done a better, more earnest job if she’d been the one to write it. Eight resorts. Eighty-four sentences. One thousand and seventy-seven words. In the corner, Momo growls softly as she burrows further into her bed. What’s up with her now? Even the dog isn’t in a good mood.

The next day she returns to the noticeboard and surreptitiously snaps a photo of the advertisement into her phone. Later, she adds the mobile number to her contacts list, typing ‘dog walker’ in katakana into the contact’s field. The katakana symbols among all the other kanji feels strange to her. But writing his name in romaji would feel even stranger.

 Her query quickly receives a cheerful answer. Yes, he can meet her. He’d happily come to her apartment building or meet her at a nearby café. She chooses the latter option. After all, she doesn’t want some foreign guy skulking around her apartment building and riling up her new neighbors. She doesn’t tell Kenta about contacting the dog walker yet. She feels silly enough answering the advertisement without having him laughing at her or chiding her for wasting her time and his money.

They meet at the café next to Hoshino park the next morning. She’s there five minutes – 300 seconds – before the meeting time, Momo snuggling against her feet, her fleece keeping her warm against the creeping cold of a December morning. She buys a coffee – 380 yen, seven coins – to avoid any awkwardness over needing to buy the man a drink and feeds Momo some doggie treats as she waits. Close by, a Pekingese gives a low growl from its pushchair before being shushed by its owner. The women exchange the automatic smiles of carefully judged tolerance. Izumi offers Momo another treat and reconsiders Kenta’s words about the owning of a dog being a precursor to having a child. But surely a pushchair is taking things too far. And if this is for the day-time, wherever must the dog sleep in at night?

‘Excuse me, are you Mrs Satou?’

 She jolts at the sudden interruption to her thoughts. The middle-aged man in front of her doesn’t seem harmful after all. A little chubby, perhaps 170 to 175 pounds but it would be rude and probably a little strange to ask, although the thickness of the coat might be adding a few pounds. Light stubble, off-white teeth and a hairline that had just entered the receding stage. She rises to her feet and gives a quick bow, murmuring in the affirmative before motioning to the seat opposite her. His appearance is a help. No way Kenta can be jealous of someone who looks like this.

‘It’s nice to meet you. And this is Momo?’

‘Hai.’ Izumi gives a slight smile. His Japanese is halting, but the pronunciation seems okay. Another marker for Kenta that this relationship could never be beyond the professional. John fusses over Momo and receives a wagging tail and a lick to the hand in response. There won’t be any problems there either.

They discuss days and times, Izumi showing a preference for mornings that John readily agrees to. The money is only a little extra than a regular dog-walking service, and though Izumi might miss the exercise, she figures that the 30 minutes Momo will spend with John can be an opportunity for her to do something for herself. Some browsing at the nearby shotengai perhaps. Maybe you are thinking like a mother already, she thinks.

Kenta isn’t so amused.

‘You’re kidding me. You really are turning into one of those lazy mothers who just drop their kid off at ECC or NOVA. And we haven’t even had the child yet?’

‘The price isn’t much more than a regular dog-walker really. It’ll allow me to get some shopping done without Momo tripping me up.’

‘The dog could just stay at home. We had to pay all that money out for house and behavior-training, didn’t we?’ Kenta’s reaction down-turns from incredulity to mild annoyance in less time than it takes to serve up his second bowl of stew.

‘It isn’t even the money that bothers me,’ he continues. ‘You get an allowance and it’s your choice how you spend it. I just don’t understand the idea of paying a guy to speak English to your dog for half an hour twice a week.’ Kenta settles his spoon across his bowl and let out a laugh that shakes his body in the chair. In her corner, Momo raises her head and looked at him blankly. ‘Did you hear that, Momo? You’re going to English class. It’ll be good preparation for your degree in international studies!’

The dog stares at him for a few more moments before dropping her head back into her basket.  

‘What’s the guy like?’

‘Maybe 175 or 177 centimetres tall.’ She pauses then, recalibrating her answer to suit the silence across the table from her. ‘A little fat. He’s losing his hair too. And his Japanese is so funny sometimes.’

‘Well, I guess he’s teaching English so his Japanese shouldn’t really matter. I can’t wait to tell the guys at the company how my cra… how my wife’s wittering away my salary. They’ll never want their wives to meet you now in case you pass on any funny ideas. You’ll have me looking for English lessons next.’ He chuckles as he picks up his spoon and begins slurping the salty broth. Izumi gives a slight smile, attends to her own food and considers whether Momo should have a little spruce up before tomorrow. It’ll be her first English lesson and she should probably look her best.  

‘Oh, I think she’s done very well today. She’s quite a clever little girl, isn’t she?’ Izumi notices how he struggles slightly over pronunciation of the second syllable. Ka-shi-ko-i. As if his mind’s aware of the need to return to that same initial consonant after the ‘shi’. Not so used to Japanese, even though the basic pronunciation’s so much easier than English. She smiles and thanks him for the compliment. Slides the money across the table with one hand as she struggles to keep Momo from wriggling from her grasp with the other. Her dog has certainly taken a shine to the slightly slovenly, ill-smelling stranger.

‘Eigo dekimasuka?’

Izumi smiles and shakes her head slightly. Leans her face into Momo’s neck instead of verbalizing. John smiles, offers an awkward bow, and pockets the money. Mentions something about how the schools in Japan seemed to struggle with teaching the language to which she gives him the blank expression she uses for Mormons and NHK license inspectors.

He’ll see them again in two days. She finds it funny how he includes the second person plural – anata-tachi – in his goodbyes. Yet isn’t there something bittersweet in it too, including Momo as if she’s Izumi’s friend instead of being the only companion – and four-legged at that – which she has in this new city.

Sabishii. Loneliness.     

She didn’t like learning English either. But unlike Kenta, her diligence had actually impressed her teachers and she scored well in her exams. She let her mind drift, memories of her advertising job and the trips overseas she’d taken before … before what? Before marriage? Before Kenta? Before… Then to her conversation with the dog-walker and the omission about her language ability that secretly thrills her. Not for John to know. Not for Kenta either, although once he’d overcome his initial surprise, he’d just use her skills to read and answer emails for him. This is hers and hers alone.

She scratches Momo under the collar, leans in to whisper her name in English, and scans the room around her. 17 people. Seven tables occupied. All speaking the same language but not a soul to talk to. But now, today, she finds that this is something she doesn’t really mind at all.

The month passes with Momo’s lessons kept to twice a week. One evening Izumi pops out to the store for some tofu and beer while Kenta keeps half an eye on the stove. When she returns, he’s standing in the middle of the room, consternation writ across his face, one of Momo’s treats pinched between forefinger and thumb.

‘That dog isn’t coming to me.’

Izumi murmurs some consolations as she places the tofu and two Kirin on the counter. The message light on her phone’s blinking. Mother checking that she’s okay again. ‘Maybe Momo’s tired after her lesson today. John took her for an extra fifteen minutes free of charge.’

‘She’s just ignoring me. I called her. Even offered her a biscuit.’

‘Momo, come here.’ Izumi stresses each foreign syllable equally, patting Kenta on the arm as she passes. Momo pricks up her ears and immediately trots from her dog bed. She can hear Kenta grumbling behind her. ‘See Kenta, … she’s fine.’

‘Do I have to learn English now for the dog to understand me? Sit. Stay. Die.’ Kenta makes no attempt to keep the irritation out of his voice, especially over the closing three verbs which are delivered in a mimicked falsetto he’d heard on a J-pop record he’d complained about a few days before. ‘It’s bad enough that you talk to the dog in English. Now the dog won’t even answer to Japanese.’ Izumi hears the top of the beer pop open, hears Kenta gulp down a mouthful. She rubs the spot behind Momo’s ears, listening to the little hums of pleasure that the dog makes.

‘Well, I guess then the dog truly is yours. If it won’t even understand me, I don’t see why I should take it for its morning walks.’

‘It’s just a bit of tiredness. And you’re taking out the recycling anyway.’ Kenta slings back another mouthful of beer by way of a response. She gives Momo one final scratch behind the ear before kissing her on the forehead. Dinners don’t finish making themselves.

Kenta drags himself out of bed, grimacing against the cold. The days are shorter now, and the arrival of the long-threatened snow has made these early morning wake-ups a chore. He shoves the prone form beside him. Izumi mumbles something indecipherable from underneath the futon covers. The rice is ready, he thinks. He can soak in the bath while Izumi fixes the miso and the coffee. But first he needs to walk the damn dog.

He grapples with his coat and scarf. Grabs the leash from the cupboard and whistles as he pads down the hall. A low growl comes from the dog bed. He wiggles the leash in his hand, frowning as the dog remains beneath the covers. It has grown lazier over the past few weeks but this is really all too much. It isn’t as if it can’t go back to bed once its done its business.

‘Dumb bitch of an animal.’ He’s never really considered gender before. I wonder if you were fixed before we got you, he thinks. Maybe that’s why she’s acting out. He resolves to get Izumi to double-check with the breeder. He doesn’t worry about puppies – the mutt never leaves the house unescorted – but he doesn’t need more moods in the morning either. ‘Come on you dumb animal,’ he grumbles, reaching for the dog’s collar.

Some primordial reflex withdraws his hand before much more than a tooth can graze against his skin. ‘Bitch,’ he splutters, rubbing the mark. From the bed, the dog stares at him unblinkingly, the offending canine which, he’s sure it was that one, made the mark just visible. He tosses the leash beside the bed and points at the dog. ‘You do something like that again and you’ll feel the toe of my shoe against your butt.’

The dog responds with a low growl. Budding English expert or not, Kenta decides, the dog has understood THAT Japanese. Only time will tell if the warning’s heeded. He snatches that day’s recycling bag from beside the sink and stalks towards the front door. The dog can piss or shit indoors all it wants. It’s Izumi’s dog and she’ll walk it and clean after it from now on. And he’ll check himself whether the mutt was fixed before being bought.

Izumi hears the door slam shut before sliding out from underneath the covers. Her mother has already messaged her, sending brief news of her sister accompanied by another query as to Izumi’s well-being. ‘You need to take care, Izumi.’ 42 kanji accompanied by 14 hiragana. She pads out into the corridor and shivers down the hall. Momo offers a slight wag of the tail as she approaches, leaning forward and lifting the offered treat before chomping it down. ‘Good girl,’ Izumo whispers. ‘Don’t you worry about the bad man.’ A quick rub of the head and Izumi turns her attention to the coffee maker. Kenta will be back soon, full of chattered complaints and furied affrontment. By then, the bath water will need to be warming and the coffee and miso bubbling.

She can hear Momo snuggling into her bed further, lucky in her lack of morning duties. ‘I’ll take you for a walk later,’ she whispers. She’ll throw on a pair of sweatpants and a coat. Not regulation wife wear but who passes judgement when all she’s doing is walking the dog. It isn’t as if it’s necessarily a man’s job anyway. She hears the front door opening, Kenta’s pointed gasps at the cold as he re-enters the apartment. She might hear about the weather first. But it’ll be close between that and the bite. Don’t worry little one, she thinks. Mommy will take good care of you.

Breakfast is suffered in near silence, Kenta occasionally directing withering glances towards the dog bed, but otherwise doesn’t offer further comment. ‘I’m working late tonight,’ is the last thing he calls from the genkan as he wrestles with his shoes. ‘Don’t bother cooking. I’ll get something out.’

Izumi takes her time getting ready. The day stretches ahead, Momo’s lesson buttressed by a series of questions to ask and answer. What? Which? Where? When? How much? Would you like a bag for that? By the time John picks up Momo for her final lesson, Izumi can’t even keep her thoughts in check. Thirty minutes and her mind does its worst as she stares at her cooling coffee. All too soon he’s passing Momo back to her and thanking her.

‘If you’ve been happy with my work,’ John says, ‘I hope you’ll consider recommending me to your friends.’

‘Mochiron. Of course.’ I’ll recommend you to all the people I meet every day. The butcher, the baker and Aeon supermarket cashier. Those three people for sure.    

His look wavers for a second, and in that moment she thinks the dog walker really sees Izumi Satou. Her lonely walks up and down the shopping street – 5,484 steps, 347 premises, three laps. Her inspection of the different lines of fat on the meat she’ll buy for dinners. Her dithering over one-dollar purchases in Daiso, now extra tiresome with the increased consumption tax throwing off her math. Her thirties – ten years, 120 months, 5,259,492 minutes – spent with only a dog named Peaches for company. Her middle-aged years probably spent coaxing a child to eat his rice and do his math homework while Kenta parps over excel spread sheets, work emails and missed promotions.

Away. Away. Away! Isn’t the present bad enough without the future weighing in? She feels for her coin purse and kneads the flat of her thumb into the edges. 17 coins. One thousand, seven hundred…. One thousand seven hundred and sixty-eight yen. Yes, that’s it. She’s sure of it. And so what if she’s wrong? Who’s to know and chastise her for this latest inaccuracy anyway?

She opens her mouth to speak, hoping that what has made him look at her that way isn’t too obvious to the others. 14 people. That’s 28 eyes to see but also 28 ears to listen. Her next stuttered words, if they are heard and understood in either language, will be desperate enough.

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Blue Moon: Why (finally) I’ve probably had enough of Jack Reacher

The Lee Child penned Jack Reacher novels have been a publishing juggernaut for over two decades, a set of novels that the genre crowd eat up and the literary crowd express a grudging admiration for. Started at a time when the England born Child (James Grant to his former Granada TV colleagues) was approaching a loose-end in his media career, the novels took a deceptively simple trope beloved of the Western genre since time and the move westward began – a stranger arrives in town and becomes implicated – often despite his best efforts – in local wrong-doings. Reacher is an army brat, ex-marine, honorable and free. Built like a brick shithouse and with a particular set of skills that would make Liam Neeson wince. A man not to be messed with who will arrive in town, similar to the 1980s series Highway to Heaven, but instead of an angel with a perm, you have an unstoppable justice machine that doesn’t mind using his talents to exact suitable revenge against anyone who he feels isn’t giving others a fair shake.

A Reacher novel, much like the works of the less talented but more prolific James Patterson, is generally as predictable as a Big Mac. There will be villains, there will be violence, there will be blood. This violence will often be described in minute detail, following the Child dictum of doing ‘the slow things fast and the fast things slow’. There will even be a little bit of detective work (though not that much). Things will be set to rights. The villains shall be vanquished and the meek may – probably briefly because this is America – inherit the earth. Then Reacher will return to his travels. Just a man wandering the great American highway.

In many respects he is a man to admire, someone to look up to and even – best attempted in daydreams – to seek to emulate. He fights the bad guys, gets the girl, and gets to leave at the end, justice meted out effectively, townsfolk thankful, and somewhere in it all a woman who is well-laid and has been left with a happy memory of a brief and enjoyable ship in the night. Reacher’s relationships are short, have no strings attached, and rarely possess any proper emotional heft.

It’s a well-trod formula. So well-trod that I once read seventy pages of one in the local library before I realised I’d read that novel before. They are generally tautly written, possess a strong turn of phrase and are stocked with plenty of strong description (most are well over 400 pages). In many respects they are the perfect airport read. And their presence in stacks at the front of bookstores bear testament to that.

There are even a few films and a projected TV series. The first film featured five foot five Scientologist Tom Cruise as the six foot five, blond Reacher, Jai Courtney as the lead henchman, and a deliciously boo-hiss performance by Werner Herzog as the villain orchestrating everything in the (literal) shadows. It also possesses a solid cast of your typical Lee Child extras – cute woman Reacher might sleep with, corrupt locals in denim, shady authority figures, (ultimately) well-meaning older gents who help Reacher attain his goal. It’s an enjoyable romp and will tell you all you need to know about a Reacher novel without opening a page.

I’ve read about ten of them. They are quick reads, have some nice stylistic flourishes and have some inventive plots. But fuck it am I done after reading ‘Blue Moon’.

Reacher is on a bus entering a town like any other when he sees a young hoodlum checking out an old man. Clearly robbery is on the youngsters mind, and after alighting from the bus, Reacher keeps an eye on things until the kid makes his move, dusts up the potential mugger and dusts down the potential mugging victim. Old-timer shaken but only moderately stirred, Reacher accompanies him home where he hears that the man and his wife are in deep to some local loan sharks (Albanian). See there are two gangs in this town – Albanian and Ukrainian – and with the police either corrupt or incapable, there is no-one to stand up for the little guy. So far, so Reacher (and so Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars, Last Man Standing, A John-Claude Van Damme movie I can’t be bothered to google, Lucky Number Slevin dot dot dot). Reacher will step into the fray. He’ll meet a cute girl (who will hint at a relationship but accept that Reacher is a lone wolf not for settling down), corral some of the honest locals (ex-marine, ex-tank commander among them), and take out the bad guys.

And boy will he take out the bad guys. With fists, with guns, with fire, with a guitar. While yawning too probably. The tone of this book sets Reacher’s levels of boredom and the overall sense of ennui at eleven and barely lets up. There is a nihilism here, a sense of a job done once too many times. He’s even taking polls on if people should be killed now (Yes, Yes/No, no). Jack Reacher needs a new bag. He’s bored of doing this and his boredom – reaching Die Hard 5 levels of disinterest – can’t even be sated by a body count reaching Die Hard 2 levels of mayhem. Jack Reacher is turning into Bruce Willis – snarky, bored, probably voting for Trump. He drives around town with a badly injured local mobster locked in the trunk, shrugging off concerns over whether the guy might die in there. He’ll promise someone he’ll let him go if the guy talks, and then kills him anyway. Any semblance of morality is as dispensable as one of the outfits he bins whenever he needs a change of clothing. He’s become the hero for the demographic that watches Fox News and listens to Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine albums while still not understanding the lyrics.

This off-white knight has really just turned into a wrecking ball who acts as the judge, jury and executioner many of his readers want him to be. It may be reflection in keeping with the development of America. The Killing Floor (1997) was written pre-9/11, pre-Iraq mark II, pre-Trump. There are now battles on the streets and racist sympathisers on the news and in government. People treat basic medical advice as an impingement on their liberty as daily death tolls from Covid pass those of Pearl Harbour or 9/11. Tolerance of others is in short supply. People want action and they want news that suits their own world view with no time for other viewpoints. They want cathartic violence and cipher-like villains.

Jack Reacher was a stripped-down American James Bond when he stepped off that first bus, with only the clothes on his back and a desire for travel after years in a uniform spent following orders. But he – like Child who has followed writers like James Patterson in roping in others to do their writing – has been doing this too long. This is a cash cow that will continue to produce wealth for writer and publisher. It’s also a guilty pleasure that is carrying way too much questionable baggage for me to still find it pleasurable.      

You’re a big man, but you’re in bad shape.

Ted Lewis’ Get Carter (originally titled Jack’s Return Home) was first published in 1970. The swinging sixties were over, John and Yoko were having issues with Paul, George and Ringo and gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray had just received life sentences. Economic depression, three-day working weeks and electric power cuts were still a few years away. It was optioned for a film almost immediately as part of the race to cash in on public interest in gangsters following the imprisonment of the Krays. A taut slice of British noir, the book attracted the attention of Michael Caine, who, when asked why he wanted to play protagonist and all-round questionable egg Jack Carter, stated that he’d been around gangsters like Carter and wanted people to know that such figures weren’t to be admired and definitely weren’t funny. Because Jack Carter may be many things – vengeful, dishonest, borderline sociopathic – but he definitely isn’t funny.

The original title is a nod to the eponymous prodigal son’s return after years spent working in London – ‘the Smoke’ for his brother’s funeral. Frank Carter has apparently downed a bottle of scotch – we learn early on that he didn’t drink spirits – before driving his car off a cliff edge, leaving a fifteen year old daughter and a lot of people shaking their heads and muttering condolences. There are a lot of people not so happy to see Jack either, and once he’s refused the offer of a train ticket back to London, there’s little chance that any of this will end well. There is new money, old grudges, and villainy up north. And Jack Carter has the right level of bloody-mindedness to get at the right people.

The book could as easily be written by an American noir writer like Jim Thompson if not for the references to pints of mild, slang – such as calling the police ‘buttons’, and the local football team. Jack is as dubious and amoral as they come, wracked with guilt over lost relationships and present betrayals, determined to find out what happened to his brother whatever the collateral damage. This is not a town for nice people to get ahead in. It wouldn’t even be a nice place to visit – Jack’s early reference to being on a vacation there an example of the type of bleak humor there is.

There’s also, in the trope of a person coming to town bent on dealing with trouble as he finds it, quite pointed inspiration for Lee Child’s Jack Reacher character. Though while Reacher more often seems to find himself in fixes without meaning to, Jack is the kind of person who would find trouble even if it wasn’t looking for him. It’s the shaking up of the status quo, the opposition to Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey as the decidedly anti-hero Jack returns home.

The novel, like the film despite its initial box office success, fell into relative obscurity for a number of years until the admiration of film-makers like Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino brought a reappraisal of both works. It even managed to survive a horrendous American-set remake starring Sylvester Stallone at the start of the century that featured a Michael Caine cameo; he plays the very character who was threatened by Caine in 1971 with the words that title this blog. Ted Lewis got to see none of this resurrection, passing away in the early 1980s. But at least one of his literary creations remains, even if the words that the character is arguably most famous for are often mis-quoted and don’t actually feature in the novel’s text. A bitter-sweet ending then. Much like his most long-lasting creation.

Leaving Kiwi

The cheerful young man handed me the vial and gestured towards a row of meticulously constructed cardboard booths. Not long out of working on the New Zealand election, I could even imagine how these would have been made. No box ticking for Jacinda, Winston, Crusher Collins or even cannabis here though. I followed my wife across to what I’d mentally monikered the ‘spitting station’, entered my own booth and settled my carry-on against the wall. Removed my face mask and smiled at the illustrated instructions taped to the wall. Five millilitres of saliva had rarely come with such difficulty. But at least nobody was shoving a cotton bud up my nose.

Flashback to the previous Tuesday and that stinging sensation at a medical centre had signalled the beginning of our Wellington stay’s end. The results had come within 24 hours. We were at the airport within 48, having a last Fortune Favours but eschewing any food as we could ‘always get something in Auckland’. No dice for Ugly Bagel and Gorilla Burgers then – though I remembered there was one of the former in Auckland. Soon enough it would be hello to pork cutlet on rice and bento boxes. As quarantine turned out, lots of bento boxes.

The domestic terminal had shown that travel in country was returning to a relative norm for New Zealand. But what this out-of-practice traveler hadn’t figured out yet was what the international terminal would be like. Happy enough to have got our bags checked through to Narita, the walk from domestic to international terminals – with not a sinner on the road – was the first indication that our tactics regarding food were foolhardy at best. My wife reminded me that her friend – who hadn’t been in New Zealand since February – had said there’d be new restaurants open now. I suppose that had at least in part got me thinking that things were somewhat normal. I strolled into the cavernous, near empty terminal building. Eyed the row upon row of empty check-in desks. Wondered again at the decision to leave a country with virtually no COVID cases. Kiwis weren’t travelling. But then I wasn’t a Kiwi. And any country without work can be an unforgiving place. I saw a few lines of travelers in the middle-distance. Strolled on a little further and examined the uncluttered departure board.

Ten or so flights in the next 24 hours. A flight and two weeks in quarantine at the end of it was probably not too palatable for even the most intrepid traveller unless it was needed. Only a few hundred people meant the economics of having any food options pretty unlikely. So no Ugly Bagel or much else then. We considered the empty concourse, the one place now closing which was thumping out Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall. Sat down across from an empty KFC and considered what an empty airport said about the state of travel. Too late now, we strolled through departures, had our baggage scanned and passports checked. There was one bar where you could get a heated sandwich (or the crisps which we still had in my bag) and a few Steinlagers on tap and watch Champions League highlights. A few shops where staff hustled for any sales. We’d eat properly on the plane. Our three years in New Zealand were done. So long and thanks for all the clean air, cheerfulness and beetroot.

The plane seemed about a half-full. Students, teachers, business people, a gaggle of Rising Sun returnees and about fifty men facing the eye-watering itinerary of the Philippines via Narita. The food was fine – Air New Zealand fare usually is – and the service was halting but solid. The entertainment flickered as a monument to how little has been released cinematically this year. I watched the old version of Westworld, read a few pages of Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind and caught fifteen to forty-minute cat naps between bouts of Solitaire. My wife took advantage of the empty seat beside her to stretch out for some proper shut-eye. Her being the one with responsibility for the paperwork, I figured that was a fair cop. We’d be landing soon enough even if the plane on the screen ahead of me did seem loathe to shift towards the equator and beyond. Around 2am Wellington time I saw a near full moon out the window to my left. The sun glinted through the windows to my right about three hours later. I spun my wristwatch back four hours and thought about what lay ahead on landing. There would be documents. Another COVID test and lots of sitting and waiting.

Inside Narita airspace we were informed that those terminating in Tokyo would be last off the flight. We landed with the mildest of bumps and watched as the Filipinos collected their carry-ons – including one HDTV television – and trudged off the plane, another flight ahead. My wife, freshly rested, murmured something about not fancying further transit. I remembered friends from Colombia that had recently completed a forty-plus hour trip to get home. In comparison, this slingshot from Auckland to just outside Tokyo was child’s play. Finally we were summoned and shepherded to two rows of plastic chairs just outside the exit gate. From there we were funnelled in groups of ten to the documentation desk.

Our documents were muttered about, puzzled over, at one point raised to the light to check for authenticity. We waited, I inwardly bobbing up and down on the balls of my feet as my mind conjured worst case scenarios involving regretful tuttings and a repatriation flight to Heathrow and BoJo’s madcap COVID party. Finally the documents were deemed adequate/appropriate and we were waved onwards. I could see a young woman bow in the distance, her left hand pointing outward to the turn in the concourse as we approached. Then that cheerful young man handing out funnelled vials. Then the spitting booth.

What followed was another hour of questioned prompts and concept checking which would have made an ESL teacher on their mid-contract lesson observation proud. Distance appropriate queueing and answering. Distance appropriate sitting. More queues. More answers. A kid named Charlie who desperately wanted to play outside – one sympathised – while his long-suffering mother adopted the 1,000 yard stare common to an angst-addled liberal avoiding a discussion with an elderly relative about a racist Facebook link. We heard running feet at one point as a desperately serious young man chased us down to retrieve two plastic files that had the quarantine mascot’s sticker attached. Often in our Narita journey we saw no-one in sight either ahead of us or behind. When we finally exited the sliding doors to our new reality, it was to a concourse similarly populated to the Auckland one. We sat and waited for the quarantine bus to bring us to our hotel, sharing a tuna sandwich which said plenty about how little that aspect of food preparation had developed since we’d left in 2007. Our final Kiwi experience, for now at least, was the cheerful bloke in shorts and a puffer jacket who left his suitcases on the pavement and wandered off looking for food. My London training meant I kept an eye on them until he returned. I didn’t need to. There were few enough people around to worry about theft anyway. And anyway, this is Japan. Stealing is impolite.

Sartre wrote that hell is other people but I wonder if he considered carefully enough the accompanying paperwork. Yet by the end of the Narita airport experience, I still didn’t have a respiratory infection and I did now have my foreigner residence card for the next three years. For now, I can leave the hotel room to buy groceries or drop into a local restaurant to collect takeout. I can eat in the hotel restaurant along with my COVID peeps or sit in the lobby and listen to a violinist recite passable renditions of classics I am not musically literate enough to name. The mask itches enough to make me strongly consider shaving, but in a country where everyone is wearing one I can handle a little discomfort. Nobody has crossed the street to avoid us or screamed at us to get the hell out of their store yet. There’s thirteen more days for that, but sitting at my hotel window I am on the other side now and thinking the right decision has been made. I will miss the walks along the wharf, the craft beers and chat in Hashigo Zake, the near serenity of life in a city where everything was fine until pandemics, lockdowns and a stuttering economy meant things weren’t. It was this move or berry picking. And twenty years in teaching has left me with hands accustomed to picking books from shelves.

Guilt’s witness – Sarah Perry’s Melmoth

We have all done things we regret. Moments when we did or said something – hopefully something that was just stupid – something to look back on and feel annoyed or kick ourselves over. The comedian Bill Burr talks about walking down the street and suddenly slapping his hand against his head as some aggravating memory is dragged up by his subconscious. ‘Ah, what was I thinking’. I relate to that a lot.

Some refer to hindsight being 20:20. But that’s just a way of trying to shove those nagging images and thoughts under the carpet. It doesn’t help. And anyway, who wants to think about anything twenty-twenty right now.

But like myself, most of us are lucky enough to just have done things/said things that will leave us the butt of jokes. Just someone else’s anecdote somewhere down the line where someone can say ‘I knew this guy/girl who once…’ for a guffaw. Most of us are lucky enough to have never done something that was really damaging. Few of us have ever been responsible for an actual tragedy – a time when our cowardice, our jealousy, or our ignorance has led to something truly catastrophic. A time like the characters of Sarah Perry’s 2018 work Melmoth have experienced.

If the name is familiar to fans of Gothic literature, then good. It means that one character’s reference to Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) as a long-forgotten and little-read novel isn’t as accurate as is suggested. Maturin’s title character is attempting to avoid his half of a deal with the devil, leading him to search out people in desperate situations who might be willing to shoulder his burden. Perry’s Melmoth is somewhat different, a woman condemned since the time of Christ to bear witness to tragedies, seeking out someone willing to join her in her vigil. She focuses on the guilty, those whose actions have done irreparable damage to others and are now chased by memories that summon up their own back dog of depression. Perhaps even those who are perhaps desperate enough to join her in search of some relief from their own miseries.

Perry’s work focuses on one of these guilty people, Helen Franklin, a woman living a penitent half-existence as a translator in Prague. Given a set of papers by a friend seeking to unburden himself, she reads of a woman – Melmoth, Melmotka, Melmat – who, clothed in black and feet bloodied by her lonely pilgrimage through history, has watched tragedies great and small unfold, all the time seeking others to join her in her penance. Potentially relevant to the Angel of History motif, of a figure watching a cycle of never-ending despair, it’s a concept previously considered by philosophical thinkers such as Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), but has also found its way into popular culture in films like the best-forgotten The Gathering – with its condemned rubberneckers, the Ray Bradbury short story The Crowd or more recently in Stephen King’s The Outsider. These are witnesses to history as tragedy, whether as a seeker for consistency in humanity’s shambling process, as a penance, or even – most grotesquely – as a form of feeding. And like many in such tales, they are seeking someone to join them, either by taking advantage of a moment of weakness or through indulging in a tricksy act of sleight of hand.

We all have moments we regret. Hopefully, those moments are far removed from betrayal, from letting another take the fall for us, from doing something which – knowingly or unknowingly – precipitates another’s suffering. We should be relieved at having only memories where we can wince or slap ourselves on the forehead. Not moments where the Angel of History might have cause for lament. Not where we might be desperate enough to trade a moment’s peace for something infinitely worse. The original Melmoth was created 200 years ago by a protestant minister cast adrift in a sea of superstitious Catholicism. Walter Benjamin wrote at a time when the world, and himself personally, was under threat from the Nazi regime. Even modern, less literary iterations of this theme have been written for a world that, thanks to twitter and 24-hour news, we can ourselves witness as being sodden in humanity’s cruelty. As if we are a more temporal Melmoth, bearing witness until the din becomes too loud or the tweets become too insane.

Perry’s Melmoth, perhaps in line with the Tralfamadorian idea of history as a process, appears aware of Helen long before her tumultuous act, as if history is an unbreakable line in which things were, are and will forever be, regardless of our own actions. If so, one can hope that our timelines hold nothing too tragic in our futures, and that our own Melmoth isn’t standing close by us, waiting for that moment of weakness when we might blindly follow her.

Reading for a Pandemic: Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers

While much of the world’s economy is struggling to deal with our ‘new normal’, some novelists are all likely spending their days in splendid isolation while producing the latest magnum opus in pandemic literature. There’ll be the science and history books of course (bonus points if featuring a reference to the Spanish Flu), the thrillers, the zombie horrors, the lockdown romances and lockdown erotica, even children’s books to help explain what is happening for youngsters separated from their friends, class mates, and school work. Some of these will have been around for years, some will have been dashed off once it became clear this wasn’t just another bird flu episode like we get every couple of years – SARS, MERS etc. Being topical is profitable. But it’s tough to be in the right place at the right time.

The pandemic sub-genre isn’t new of course. Boccaccio’s The Decameron – written over six centuries ago – had already locked up a group of story-tellers from the Black Death where they whiled away their time telling daily yarns a la The Canterbury Tales. Daniel Defoe’s Journal of a Plague Year (1722) recounts life in London in 1655, eleven years before the Great Fire offered the Boris Johnsons of their day a blank canvas on which to rebuild the city. Edgar Allan Poe’s Prince Prospero locked himself away from plague in The Mask of the Red Death. Look to more modern titles and a list of writers as varied as literary heroes like Albert Camus (The Plague), Jose Saramago (Blindness), Cormac McCarthy (The Road) have rubbed shoulders (not literally – keep your distance) with genre heroes like Stephen King and errr… Dean Koontz (okay, it’s not all good reading) who have all tackled the topic. These stories often end up focusing more on what comes in the aftermath such as in McCarthy’s The Road or Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven as what came before. Plenty to read during the lockdown then. No need to fret too much over the real-life numbers, flat-earthers or conniving politicians. There isn’t much, after all, that you or I can do without it anyway.

While some genre writers got to the party way early – Koontz’s reference to a virus originating in Wuhan got some on Reddit rather excited, it was King’s Captain Trips virus which sets off The Stand which had more longevity (the mini-series that completed production this March won’t have harmed the topicality either). There was even a tongue in cheek apology from the great man himself for the state of 2020 in between tweets lambasting President Donald Trump and Maine Senator and serial cause of disappointment Susan Collins. So King has you sorted. But if you prefer your apocalyptic fiction with less on the nose descriptions of the battle between good and evil (than King), then perhaps Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers might suit you.

It all starts with a mix of the celestial (a comet) and the mundane (a teenager’s empty bed). Before too long there’s a collection of sleepwalkers traversing through the American heartland for places unknown – accompanied by family, friends, the CDC and Homeland Security. Such a narrative isn’t going to sustain itself with one point of view over 800 pages though, and Wendig has populated his collapsing America with a doubting preacher, an Irish rock star who definitely isn’t anything like Bono, and a right wing hate-group fresh from their latest cross burning. Not to forget the flu-like illness that is sweeping the country and may or may not have some relationship to the walkers. Other parts of the patchwork include a Trump-style presidential candidate (natch), a theme part entrepreneur and a shadowy corporation which may or may not have let something out of Pandora’s box. Wendig’s America is hopefully more a rhyme of America in 2020 than an out and out portrayal of Trumpworld, but there is plenty here to read into. Certainly an evening spent reading Wanderers will make you feel like this is a man who worries about where his country is going.

800 pages is quite the undertaking to read, let alone actually write, and Wendig’s novel is as dramatic in scope as it is in detail. Some scenes will leave you riveted and angry, some characters will be well-enough drawn to make you feel as if you are next to them. The amount of research that has gone into this work is incredible, this is a man who may know nearly has much about pandemics as (at least the students of) Anthony Fauci. Yet there are occasions where balance seems an issue – as if he is too in love with his research. Some scenes take an age to reach their point, some information seems unnecessary and even a torture. For a writer who has made his name within the Star Wars and Marvel universes, he seems almost coy about some action scenes, meaning there will probably be a significant minority of readers who will add this to their DNF pile. Things aren’t quite as bad as King, but maybe a more fastidious editor might have tempered some of his chapters. That said, more of this world would be welcome, and Wendig has left enough strands open for there to be more of it to come. Whether or not it will b enough for a Marvel or even a King-style universe is tough to say. But Wendig has created a world which is potentially intriguing here. And there will be readers for it.

Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich, Poirot.

My Agatha Christie love affair started before I was even out of primary school. I’d graduated from Enid Blyton’s Famous Five novels that either my mother had bought me or I’d raided from the local library. Noting that I’d finished both Blyton’s books and the follow-up series by French author Claude Voilier, I decided that I needed something new – preferable mysterious and thrilling – to pour over. The move to Christie made sense – similar cultural backgrounds, thrilling stories that were regularly on television, just now with a body count. I remember watching Peter Ustinov’s Hercule Poirot offering pained looks and asking awkward questions on a boat cruising somewhere tropical – Death on the Nile it turned out, and remember devouring Lord Edgware Dies curled up on the sofa as I tried to figure out the murderer – I didn’t. I was hooked, and not being allowed out of the children’s section of the library just yet, inveigled on my mother to get me Christies as often as she could.

I ran through them fast. Went on my first overseas trip to London at 13 where I saw a waxwork of the great lady at Madame Tussauds. But even with her canon of over seventy mysteries I was done by then, returning to Ireland with my nose stuck in a Colin Forbes novel – that didn’t take as even someone in their early teens could work out that all his books were basically the same one – something Christie could be guilty of.

Over the years, I’ve dipped back in to for the occasional re-read, especially thanks to easy downloads from Amazon Kindle. I’ve enjoyed the television and film adaptations – I still believe Murder on the Orient Express with David Suchet is the best adaptation of that mystery even if it lacks the star-power (there is an early career performance from Jessica Chastain) of the versions with Albert Finney and Kenneth Branagh. Christie is never in vogue but will be always popular with the ‘Sunday evening in front of the TV’ crowd. Comfort reading can also be comfort viewing: a sage sleuth (Poirot preferably, but Marple will do in a pinch), a perplexed policeman, a crime that’s not too grisly, and a hermetically sealed list of suspects.

Which brings me to one of my favorite Poirot’s – The ABC Murders – and regular Christie-adaptor Sara Phelps’ 2018 rendering for the BBC alongside director Alex Gabassi. Donning Poirot’s fussy apparel, John Malkovich might have offered one of the weightiest representations I’ve seen of the detective. This Poirot has had his day, is now out of sync with a new world order at Scotland Yard and finds himself diminished to guest turns at rich people’s parties. A series of taunting letters warn of a string of crimes approaching, but ignored by the police – especially Inspector Crome (Rupert Grint) – he sets off on his own chase. Poirot, puffed up and almost preening, as if Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond found fame as a private investigator rather than the silver screen, is still convinced of his own worth, still believes he can recover his waning reputation with a major headline. While the inspector sees Poirot for the washed-up has-been that circumstance has made him, the murderer – the eponymous ABC – isn’t having Poirot excluded. Soon the police will have no choice but to include the Belgian, and murky past or not, Poirot will have a chance to redeem himself.

Considering that the first Agatha Christie novel was published exactly 100 years ago, it’s probably not so surprising that in some ways the stories have aged quite poorly. Aside from the appalling original title of And Then There Were None, her novels have regularly been criticised for their suspicion of foreigners and non-Anglo Saxons in general (although this was often one of her red herrings to distract readers from the true villain), and for containing language which nowadays is archaic enough to inspire more than just a giggle (Blyton’s work has been similarly and far more accurately criticised). Thematically, sadly enough, many of her stories are relevent enough to be as applicable today as they were when first written. The ABC Murders was published in 1936, at a time when Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) were encouraging closer ties with Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy in addition to the usual right wing hobby-horse of blaming outsiders for crises at home. In addressing that historical element, Phelps has brought several trappings of the era such as fascist posters, sneers about Poirot’s distinctive otherness, and people wearing lapel-pins featuring the BUF lightning bolt. People swear at him as he leaves church when one newspaper slanders him, a neighbour of Poirot defends her wearing of a BUF badge by saying that she isn’t against foreigners like him. Almost eighty-five years since publication, Phelps seems to be saying, and the more things change, the more things stay the same. There is a griminess here, a fetid stench far away from art deco buildings and comfortable post tea-time viewing. And unsurprisingly, the adaptation was not for everyone.

Reviews were generally positive with papers such as The Guardian commending the series and Malkovich’s performance, although the 1.5 million drop in viewership from first to third episodes suggest that many didn’t fancy this kind of Agatha Christie over the Christmas festive period. As with other adaptations, Phelps has made subtle alterations to the plot such as dispensing with Poirot’s usual acolytes Inspector Japp and Arthur Hastings while also adding more backstory to Poirot’s character. More isolated and much less loved, the final explanation of the detective’s origins will strike some watchers like a gut-punch, a fitting denouement considering the many nods to intolerance and lazy blame-culture that have come before. The sight of this Poirot in flashback, tall, commanding, and yet about to have everything he has ever believed torn from him, brings the tale full circle. Intolerance may not repeat itself, but it certainly does rhyme. And Phelps, in adapting one of the mainstays of British popular culture, may also be re-fitting Christie for an era that needs more social realism in its story-telling, an era where a less varnished view of the world might act as a mirror for some who would rather their truths be a little more palatable.