My Life With The Masters of World Cinema
She was Japanese and I didn’t speak Japanese. While we made love I whispered titles of Kurosawa films in her ear. When I ran out, I switched to authors, directors, whatever I could remember.
She was paranoid about germs. I thought she was joking when she pulled out alcohol pads. Her smile was so wide it looked like it should go all the way around her head. If I spoke English too fast she would begin babbling at me in a nonsense language, imitating what she heard. I’d reciprocate by counting to ten in Japanese: ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, kyuu, juu. Or I’d just say “Hai!” like a very stern businessman, or a samurai saluting his opponent.
“Yip yip yip!” she’d say, bouncing against the cold skin of my legs (the boiler was out of order).
“HAI!” I’d command and she’d go into gales of laughter until she’d snort.
She said, in her very limited English, that I have a perfect face; that I should be in movies. Giggling all the while and bouncing herself up and down on the bed. She scratched my beard with both hands.
I whispered, “Sanshiro Sugata. Yoidore tenshi, Rashômon, Ikiru, Schinin no samurai, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Nora inu, Ran, Shubun, Kagemusha, Dersu Uzala, Tengoku to jigoku, Akahige, Dodes’ka-den, Yume, Madadayo, Ichiban utsukushiko. Akira Kurosawa. Kazuo Ishiguro. Kenzaburô Oe, Kôbô Abe, Haruki Murakami, Yukio Mishima, Ishirô Honda, Takashi Miike, Takeshi Kitano, Isuzu Yamada, Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Kyôko Kagawa.”
She kept saying something in my ear. I couldn’t translate it. I think it meant, “I love you.”
Her parents were Swedish and during the Bergman films in our film class she would translate what they were really saying outside the inadequate subtitles.
“Ingenting,” she would say, “means ‘nothing’ in the same was the French ‘désolée’ means ‘alone.’ Yes, it means ‘nothing,’ but so much more.”
While she whispered Liv Ullman’s monologue from “The Passion” to me she began to bite at my ear. I was too far-gone in my reverie to notice; genuflecting on Anna and goodness, or the silent Elizabeth Vogler, the vicious and exciting Veronica Vogler, Karin and her spider god.
“Jag elskar dig,” she whispered to me.
“What does that mean?” I asked distractedly.
“Ingenting,” she said.
It was Ash Wednesday. I only know because I asked what the smudges on her forehead were; she looked like a refugee. She smiled her childish genuous smile at me, her faithful smile, my little Masina; assured that in my hands she would not break.
“Te voglio bene,” she said. “Te amo.”
Assa Nissi Massa. The magic of childlike faith.