Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

I found my way back to Kyoto Station and my hotel, and walked a bit. I missed the snow of Hokkaido, the dramatic weather—the snowstorms, the large wet snowflakes, the snowy streets. Bad weather seemed to give a point and a meaning to travel, gave a place a backdrop and made it memorable. Kyoto was placid, with mild spring weather.

I looked for an Internet café, to reassure my Penelope back home, knitting her heart out. I hadn't been in touch for quite a while; my BlackBerry did not work in Japan. And I had trouble finding a computer: my hotel didn't have one for guests' use. One of the paradoxes of Japan is that it is so well wired—everyone text-messaging, sending haiku-like exchanges on phones, everyone connected with some sort of computer—Internet cafés were rare. I'd found only one in Sapporo, and there were none in Wakkanai and Toyotomi.

But after a long walk, asking directions, I found a computer, in a cubicle at Top Café. An urgent message awaited me. An editor at a magazine in New York wondered whether I could supply two thousand words on the subject "Violence in Africa" for a special issue devoted to that continent.

My Tao of Travel stipulates that such requests should be refused. Concentrate on where you are; do no back-home business; take no assignments; remain incommunicado; be scarce. In travel, disconnection is a necessity. It is a good thing that people don't know where you are or how to find you. Keep your mind in the country you're in. That's the theory.

But I was idle, and the subject challenged me, because even in peaceful Kyoto I didn't think Africa was inherently more violent than anywhere else. So I said yes, and the experience was a disaster. But like most disasters, it contained a lesson.

With free time in Kyoto, I went back to Top Café and paid for a cubicle. The young man to my left was leafing through a manga porno comic, the woman on my right slurping instant noodles out of a cup. I began to reflect on violence in Africa. I wrote:

One of the rules of the road in Africa—unwritten but immutable—is that if you happen to bump someone off their bike, or knock them over or flatten their goat, you are to proceed to the nearest police station for safety's sake. Otherwise the crowd that will inevitably gather around the accident will hold you captive, intimidate you and demand all your money. If the worst happens and you kill a pedestrian you must leave the scene swiftly; linger and you will be killed by the crowd, who will then take all your belongings, and your car. I first heard this in 1964 in Nyasaland, and as recently as a few years ago in East Africa.

I stopped typing and thought: Bad government in Africa, beginning with colonial rule, has cheated the people and created a crack that has become a yawning gap. Stepping into that gap are gang-bangers, thieves, and meddlers from outside—mythomaniacs, rock stars, celebrities, ex-presidents, politicians, tycoons, people atoning for some personal weakness or debauchery, for their trivial lives or their pop songs. Of course Africa was violent, because it had been destabilized by opportunists of every sort, especially the rock star and the atoning billionaire buddying up to the dictator.

I wrote, giving voice to these thoughts off and on—I took noodle breaks—until the middle of the afternoon. I was so absorbed that I forgot I was in Japan, and was surprised to see a wall of manga comics and, up front, the female clerks at the cash register tossing their long hair. I was disoriented by having written so intensely about Africa, but when I scrolled through the piece I could see that it was subtle, felicitous, and, best of all, finished. I stood up and, feeling the euphoria bordering on rapture that comes with having completed an assignment, I signaled to a clerk.

"Can you print this for me, please?"

The clerk, a pretty girl, nodded yes. I stepped aside and she slipped past me into my cubicle. Instead of sitting in the chair, she bent over, glanced at the screen, and confidently tapped a few keys.

The screen went dark.

"What happened?" I asked.

Fear took hold of her and rendered her speechless. She tapped some more, and she stared. The screen stared blankly back at her.

Everyone who owns a computer has had this dismaying experience of accidental deletion. It is pointless for me to describe my sense of having been punched in the stomach, while blood drained from my face, anger and grief making me irrational. I felt physically ill.

My look of desolated lunacy alarmed the clerk, who lost her beauty and became wraith-like in panic.

"You deleted it!"

She could not say sorry. "Sorry" was what the Japanese said when they brushed against your sleeve in an elevator. She was smiling in fear. Blood had drained from her face too.

I struggled with my coat. Fury made me clumsy. I went to the cash register. She rang up zero. She handed me a receipt.

"No charge," she whispered.