In a Bar in Tokyo

The Japanese journalist asks the usual question: 'What are your favourite writers?'
And I give my usual answer: 'Jorge Amado, Jorge Luis Borges, William Blake and Henry Miller.'
The interpreter looks at me in amazement:
'Henry Miller?'
At the end of the interview, I ask her why she was so surprised by response.
'No, I'm not criticizing Henry Miller. I'm a fan of his too. Did you know that he was married to a Japanese woman?'
I had plans to go see Henry Miller, but he died before I had saved enough money for the trip.
'The Japanese woman is called Hoki,' I said proudly.
She asks, 'Would you like to meet her tonight?'
Of course I would like to meet someone who once lived with one of my idols. I imagine she must receive visitors and requests for interviews from all over the world; after all, she lived with Miller for nearly ten years. Surely she won't want to waste her time on a mere fan? But if the translator says it's possible, I had better take her word for it.

I spend the rest of the day anxiously waiting. We get in a taxi, and everything starts to seem very strange. We stop in a street where the sun probably never shines, because a railway viaduct passes right over it. The translator points to a second-rate bar on the second floor of a crumbling building.
We go up some stairs, enter a deserted bar, and there is Hoki Miller.
To conceal my surprise, I exaggerate my enthusiasm for her ex-husband. She takes to a room in the back, where she has created a little museum - a few photos, two or three signed watercolours, a book with a dedication written in it and nothing more. She tells me that she met him when she was studying for an MA in Los Angeles and that, in order to make ends meet, she used to play piano in a restaurant and sing French songs (in Japanese). Miller had supper there once and he loved the songs; they went out a few times, and he asked her to marry him.
I see that there is piano in the bar - as if she were returning to the past, to the day when they first met. She tells me some wonderful stories about the life together, about problems that arose from differences (Miller was over fifty, and Hoki not yet twenty), about the time they spent together. She explains that the heirs from his other marriages inherited everything, including rights to the books, but that this didn't matter because the experience of being with him outweighed any monetary compensation.

I ask her to play the same song that first caught Miller's attention all those years ago. She does this with tears in her eyes, and sings 'Autumn Leaves' ('Feuilles mortes')
The translator and I are moved too. The bar, the piano, the voice of that Japanese woman echoing through the empty room, not caring about the success of the other ex-wives, or the rivers of money that must flow from Miller's books, or the international fame she could be enjoying right now.
'There was no point in squabbling over the inheritance: love was enough,' she said at last, sensing what we feeling.
Yes, in the light of that complete absence of bitterness or rancour, I think love really was enough.