Ohaka Mairi

Abstract

Ohaka Mairi Jonathan Levi (bio) Merton was looking through the restaurant window facing onto Icho Namiki-dori, when the woman in the backless blouse walked by. Everyone inside the Shake Shack, and of course those sitting outside at picnic tables under the heat lamps, was dressed in something that respected the sudden drop in temperature. Overnight, the giant ginkgo trees that drew the crowds to the avenue had lost the last of their leaves. The crowds who had photographed their babies during the month of November, or had propped their miniature schnauzers and dachshunds on the tops of park benches or overturned picnic baskets to capture the perfect golden filter of sun and falling leaves, had disappeared for other seasonal obsessions. It was odd to look out the window on the first day of December and see a woman with a backless blouse, a woman of another season. She was walking across a tennis court—one of the dozen that stretched from the restaurant along Icho Namiki-dori all the way to the baseball stadium. The courts were empty except for a worker riding a power roller, pressing down the clay or the grass or [End Page 491] whatever they used—Merton wasn't one of those tennis-obsessed violinists like Nathan Milstein or Isaac Stern who believed that hitting a ball strengthened his bow hand. He was a pessimist, born in a time of comfort, who believed that he only had a few good years of concerts left in him. The woman was walking slowly, in the opposite direction from the power roller. She was slim, dressed in woolen slacks, tweed maybe, more appropriate to the season than her blouse. She wore sensible heels. Her hair was short, in a straight bowl haircut, but lightened in a way that approximated the gold of the leaves, although maybe it was the reflection of the ginkgo that confused him. From the back, or more exactly three-quarter view that Merton had through the window of the Shake Shack, he couldn't be sure if she was Japanese or more European. He'd just come from The National Art Center. A German artist was exhibiting portraits made from the cremated ashes—the cremains—of her dead clients who had commissioned the work when mortality had only been an intimation. It was an unusual subject for a museum exhibition. But over a thirty-year career, playing concertos with orchestras, recitals with pianists, and odd performances with dancers, actors, poets, and visual artists, Merton had seen odder. He had learned that collaboration meant coexistence, not intersection, and not always understanding. Merton had been asked to perform at the opening of AshArt. German music, of course, two Bach violin sonatas. The venue was the twisted cavern of the museum, where the echoes were sufficiently baroque. And so he had stood from ten to twelve that morning in the center of the hall, crafting a screen of harmony, separating himself from the ashes, and playing to the light. The director of the museum had offered Merton a ride back to the apartment on Maisen-dori he always rented when he came to Tokyo, a concrete block that felt as [End Page 492] anonymous as the grave. But after two hours surrounded by dust, Merton wanted air. His violin case was well insulated. He decided to walk back through Aoyama Cemetery. Merton had never thought about his own endgame. Although his kids were grown and he was into the phase of his life where he was teaching as much as performing, his parents were both still above ground. Discussions of cremation versus burial involved the bodies of other people, not his own. His father was gung ho for burning and had instructed Merton to pour his ashes into the empty Swedish cannon cartridge he'd received on the occasion of one of his dozen honorary degrees. His mother had avoided the subject until she fell and broke her leg. Now, every other email included a link to a green cemetery up the Hudson, or the phone number of the forsaken corner of Brooklyn where her own mother had lain unvisited for the past fifty years. Walking through...