100 Years of Vicissitude Read online

  This drew me to my own, and I realized I wasn’t wearing footwear. For the life of me—or lack of it—I could not remember removing my slippers.

  The woman scooped up vegetation and laid it out on a round white table, a couple of metres from me. I noted sweet briars, yellow carnations and asphodels amid other flowers I didn’t recognize, and leaned forward to get a better ringside seat.

  ‘Do you know hanakotoba?’

  ‘I don’t know. In what context? Is that the name of some Russian gymnast?’

  The woman looked amused. ‘Sorry, sometimes my “b” sounds like a “v”. Hanakotoba is the language of flowers.’

  By return, I opted for facetious—‘They have their own language?’—since I felt the topic deserved it.

  ‘Funny. No, we have one for them. Special meanings, symbolism. A Japanese thing, but I believe it was also popular in Victorian England.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that. I thought we were talking up saké.’

  ‘Oh, I haven’t forgotten. It’s just that you seemed interested in my work here. Gomene—sorry. My mistake.’

  She bunched some flowers together, looked at them, and then shook her head, pulled them apart, and laid each kind in a separate pile.

  ‘That’s not really right. The colours don’t work. Now, where precisely were we with the saké?’

  ‘Dodgy distilleries.’

  ‘Ahh, well, by serving the drink steaming, those people could veil any sharp or unbalanced flavours caused by the illicit practice.’ She segued on while her hands moved at a rapid pace. ‘But that was years ago. Neither your friend Denslow, nor Mr Dahl, was wrong. Ninety-eight point four degrees Fahrenheit isn’t a “correct” temperature for all saké, but it’s perfect for cheap brews like Ozeki One Cup, as well as some premium blends.’ Her gaze flicked over. ‘I prefer not to serve up dregs to my house guests.’

  ‘Never the intimation, my dear.’ I indulged in the rest of my drink, downing the cup’s contents in seconds. After that I licked my lips and I’m fairly certain I beamed. I felt warm and relaxed inside, a new experience in this great beyond. ‘As a matter of fact, the temperature and taste suit me to a tee.’

  ‘Good for you. This is “Kimono Sleeve”, an onnazake from Fushimi, down near Kyoto.’

  ‘I’m sorry—it’s a what?’

  ‘The name, or the style?’

  ‘The style, I believe. Onna…?’

  ‘Onnazake. Feminine saké.’ There was a curl at the corner of the lady’s mouth—faint to be sure, but clear enough to observe with my mediocre sight, and worry some. ‘This kind of saké takes longer to produce and has a sweeter, softer, more delicate flavour. Most sakés are harefooted, harder, less sophisticated—the male variant.’

  ‘It figures I’d favour a woman’s drink.’ I sighed.

  ‘Don’t fret. It’s even worse when your supply runs dry. There’s a haiku poem I love, written by Kobayashi Issa, about the experience: “Saké nomanu waga mi hitotsu no yozamu kana” which translates as “Out of saké. Such is my life—a cold night.” Touché.’

  I wasn’t sure if this touché was a shiv meant for my cheek, or a prop for the abbreviated Japanese metaphor, so decided blindness was the best path to take.

  ‘You appear to be very well set up here. How do you do that? The deities supposed to run the place have absconded, leaving me empty pockets and a predisposition for road trips in a pair of Royal Resort Collection slippers.’

  ‘Would you care for a top-up? Or are these theological musings a more pressing concern right now?’

  I was annoyed the question needed asking, but deduced this was her intention: to rattle frayed nerves.

  ‘Pour me another one, there’s a good girl,’ I said, holding up the cup like a golden chalice pilfered from church service. In seconds, a handcrafted tokkuri flask was working its special magic, doing the refill.

  Like half the house and the drink, my hostess was surely Japanese, and more teenager than adult. I would have right then surmised her age to be fifteen or sixteen. She later said she’d pipped one hundred the day she died, making her old enough to be my mother, yet she looked fifty-six years younger than me.

  This didn’t seem fair.

  But I do cherish my tea, and her voice drifted across to me in the form of a warm, beguiling collusion of well-steeped Lady Grey, with a dollop of Sidr honey. Likely, such fancies boiled down to the simple fact I was desperate for someone to talk to. There was barely a trace of an accent in her English—not foreign, not bona fide native, or something of the sort.

  It would appear that human frailties like a language barrier have no point here, making it more of a shame the effects of age were not so liberal.

  ‘Mr Deaps, have you read Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur?’ she asked as she carefully arranged flowers and branches in a vase.

  ‘That’s a peculiar question to throw at someone you have just met.’

  ‘True, but I don’t live up to the idealized perception of Japanese womanhood—what they call yamato-nadeshiko, and otherwise referred to in English as a wallflower. I pride myself on a more… um… atypical nature.’

  ‘Good for you.’ I shrugged. ‘Now, let me see—oh yes, I do believe I touched upon Malory a lifetime ago.’

  While this woman prized nonconformity, I on the other hand had obviously embraced tomfoolery, and found myself chuckling at the half-witted word play. ‘A lifetime ago’. Get it? Good Lord, no wonder she was unmoved, plausibly even bored. I had to gather together severed wits.

  ‘At university, among other needless texts. None of which made any impact.’

  ‘Clearly.’ This was a tart comeback, completely deserved.

  ‘I’m not one for intellectual snobbery,’ I fudged.

  ‘I thought you’d be the type to appreciate it.’

  ‘Why, because I’m old?’

  ‘No, more because of the airs you put on.’

  ‘Well—I think it’s safe to say I’ve shelved most of those. They’re difficult to circulate when one has an unruly beard and very few people to entertain. You could say I have a passing knowledge of the subject you mentioned, however, since King Arthur is scarcely an unknown.’

  ‘I should hope not. Le Morte d’Arthur was first published on Caxton’s presses in 1485, meaning you’ve had well over five hundred years to catch up.’

  ‘That long, you say?’

  ‘Donkey’s years. And it may be a bridge too far, but there’s the ring-in story of Tristram and Iseult.’

  ‘Ahh. A flask of love-dram gone astray, unrequited amour, and much associated histrionics. Why yes, it seems I can cross that one.’

  If the lady took offence to my flip, she wasn’t disclosing a flicker.

  ‘That was my favourite bedtime story when I was a girl,’ her voice steamrolled on, with bulldog bravura. ‘The star-cross’d Cornish knight and his Irish paramour.’

  A yawn escaped my beard—I’m fairly certain I suppressed it before she noticed, but I decided to duck for verbal cover. ‘Begging your pardon, but aren’t you still a mere child?’

  She rolled her eyes and breathed out loudly. ‘As if. What an idea.’ Then, it appeared, she did give the matter some thought and giggled. ‘What an idea! Wow! Anyway—where was I?’

  ‘I believe we were on the topic of cloying melodrama.’

  ‘Oh yes, that. Melodrama. In this case, the doomed nature of their relationship, undercutting old-fashioned elements of honour, love, and chivalry.’

  ‘“Old-fashioned” being the key word here.’

  She acted deaf and dumb to my barbs—in all likelihood a natural skill that set me on edge.

  ‘There was a selfishness about them, about the way in which they carelessly destroyed other people’s lives for the sake of their own lust. Compelling stuff.’

  The girl’s hands worked a kind of magic on the flora that I hadn’t before witnessed, and felt I never would again. Leaves and flowers intertwined to embrace one another.

>   ‘Of course I grew up on a sanitized version that was poorly translated into Japanese. I only realized this once I was able to read the original French and English. For years, I called the lovers “Tristan and Isolde”, since those names were easier to pronounce with a katakana inflection: tu-re-tsu-ta-n and i-su-o-rede. Purists tend to call them Tristan and Iseult, or Isoud, but these days I like the sound of “Tristram and Iseult” much better. I’m not sure why.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Meaning, not at all?’

  ‘I said no such thing.’

  ‘I heard the implication in your tone. You’re not very good at hiding contempt, are you?’

  ‘Never my intention.’

  The woman cut a long bare twig, and then started to trim another branch. She did so with a patience and calm that relaxed me into the spectacle. The conversation may have been a mite mundane, but perhaps this she now understood as she no longer spoke.

  That gave me the opportunity to stickybeak about.

  The interior of her lair was spacious, much larger than one assumed outside, with tapestries on two walls that depicted Richard I era rampant lions. Suspended on a stand before another wall was a superb rectangular banner, predominately a golden orange in colour mixed into washes of cream and yellow, with a couple of small triangular bites taken out. The material—was it silk?—had pearly and aquamarine storks in flight woven across the surface. It shimmered.

  ‘Not storks,’ the girl cut into my inspection. ‘They’re toki—otherwise known as the Japanese crested ibis.’

  ‘Right you are.’

  The material’s bookend at the other side of the room was a suit of polished armour that had a woodcutter’s axe leaned up against the right leg—incongruously crossing swords with a battle-scarred cricket bat. Behind the tin man were four closed shōji paper lattice screens that intimated more space beyond, and there was a steep, well-worn wooden staircase leading to an upper level.

  I understood the living area doubled as a kitchen.

  Cupboards, over-stuffed bookcases and a secretaire lurked at orderly attention in the shadows. I made out a cedar coat rack mostly obscured by a hat, black and wide-brimmed, beneath which dangled a long, dark cloak. Praise the Lord, it wasn’t red.

  The floor was covered with worn, tidy straw tatami mats, except the area around the fire pit, which was paved with colourful pietra dura tiles of entwined birds, monkeys, tigers, and bears.

  There was other knick-knackery scattered about in minimal fashion, including an authentic inflated blowfish that dangled from the ceiling, and a thirty-centimetre statuette of Godzilla on a shelf.

  On a small round table next to the sofa was a pile of books, at the top of which sat a hardback titled Dead Yellow Women. Peeking out beneath that was a cartoonish goat with a cigarette, on a dirty brown cover.

  A framed black-and-white photograph stood next to a small shrine portraying what looked like a World War Two military man, beside a geisha with a parasol. From that distance and with my second-rate vision, I couldn’t make out their faces.

  The place looked lived in. Not my taste in décor, but not terribly shabby either.

  My hostess stopped what she was doing, briefly inspected her handiwork, and wiped her hands on a tea towel that was covered in Scottish highland tartans. Then she looked at it. ‘Why on earth this is here, I’ll never understand.’

  ‘Part of the charm of the place,’ I mused.

  The girl pulled up a classic pillar-box red Arne Jacobsen Egg chair and as she reclined into it she curled up her legs. She produced a French enamel cigarette case and slipped out a long brown cigarette with a mesmerizing gold tip.

  ‘Do you mind if I smoke, Mr Deaps?’

  ‘Not at all, though I’ll have to press you for the name of your supplier—I was stranded here with nothing elegant whatsoever.’

  ‘Help yourself.’

  She leaned over with the case and I prised one free. I tried my very best to be blasé about the manoeuvre, but I saw my hand shake and I can’t blame age or the liver spots for that. Eventually, I held up what I suspected was a South American number, and she lit it with a dull chrome Zippo that had the word ‘MONTEVIDEO’ inscribed in capitals across its surface.

  Settling back to enjoy the moment, I could feel those jangly nerves of mine wind themselves down. I hadn’t realized how much I missed this simple custom.

  ‘You seem to have me at a disadvantage, my dear,’ I said. ‘You know my name, but I’m not certain how I should address you.’

  Her mouth made a casual ‘O’ shape and four smoke rings spiralled up with finesse toward the high, gabled ceiling. That settled, she piped up again.

  ‘In my time, I’ve answered to a few different names.’

  ‘So what shall it be, or should I get creative and ascribe you another nom de plume to add to your collection?’

  She smiled, a gesture so thoroughly overwhelming that her eyes disappeared into diagonal lines on either side of her face. The girl had large teeth, straight as a whisker and beautifully arranged, aside from a tiny gap between the two top front ones.

  I realize that, all up, this likely sounds anatomically fractured. To the contrary, it was a beautiful, disarming sight, bordering on perfection—and I’m hardly one to gush.

  When the beam subsided, she looked over my way.

  ‘There’s no need to be so generous. You can call me Kohana. In English, it translates as Little Flower.’

  Fair enough.

  ‘I wonder, Mr Deaps—do you think time doesn’t exist in this place? You’ll notice I have here neither clock nor watch, and I’m presuming you’re without one as well.’

  ‘Ah. That.’ In answer, I held up my arms. The worn crimson sleeves of my smoking jacket slid down to reveal two bony, blotchy old wrists. ‘No timepiece, and I find it liberating. No deadlines to abide by. Half the time I looked at the watch, I wasn’t reading the thing. Force of habit, and all.’

  ‘So we seem to have an abundance of time on our hands,’ Kohana decided. ‘May I tell you a story?’

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘It does?’

  ‘It most certainly does. If the story involves Grail Knights, flagons with dragons, or much ado about jousting—well, Kohana, I’d much prefer you continue with the humdrum commentary on saké. So long as you keep pouring the stuff for dramatic effect.’

  The woman gave out a laugh, and then started to examine my face. This scrutinizing made me bloody uncomfortable.

  ‘Please stop that. I’m becoming self-conscious. What are you doing?’

  ‘What, it’s all right for you to stare at me, but not vice versa?’

  ‘Why on earth would I bother staring at you?’

  ‘That’s what you were doing a little while back. No harm in admitting it.’

  ‘Nonsense—you’re imagining things.’

  ‘I see. Fascinating. You do look like him, only you’re not very nice, are you?’

  ‘I beg your pardon? Look like whom?’

  ‘Chiefly, I think, it’s the high, straight forehead, which is unusual. I can picture when you were a young man, you had similar eyes, though I’m sorry to say the green in yours has washed out with age. His were the intense darker shades of Fei Tsui jade—but they’re alike all the same.’

  ‘Alike? What the Devil are you babbling about?’

  ‘Oh, your grandfather.’

  I stared back at her.

  The eyes she’d just character assassinated felt like they bulged in their sockets and I swear my heart, if I had one and antiquated as it would be, skipped a couple of beats. I knew straight away which male ancestor Kohana meant, don’t ask me how. It took a ridiculous effort to put into three simple words the furore buffeting my senses. ‘You met Pop?’

  ‘Cute. I knew him as Les—but in answer to your question, yes. We were somewhat acquainted.’

  ‘How on earth…?’

  ‘Part of the story. Of course, we could always settle for something else, sinc
e it doesn’t rate as a pot-boiler.’ She smirked in a mischievous manner. ‘Shall I tell it to you, or would you prefer that one thousand, three hundred year history of saké?’

  ‘I think it’s safe to say you’ve sufficiently whet my appetite. Has this story any decent food in it?

  ‘Are you kidding? Sushi, blowfish, senbei, soba—you might be relieved to note that a tart or two are tucked away in there as well.’

  ‘Then it doesn’t sound too bad. I’ll endeavour to stay awake.’

  3 | 三

  What transpired next was like the opening reel of the old film version of Henry V, starring Laurence Olivier, although we can dispense with cast and crew lists here.

  Instead, picture an artificial, very grounded stage play that has a velvet curtain pulled back to reveal the real world, within the story. The set vanishes and becomes 1415, with Prince Hal rallying his English troops for the Battle of Agincourt against the pesky French.

  Dorothy Gale secured a similar location reboot when she traded Kansas for Oz, and so it was with Kohana’s tale—minus lions, tigers, and bears. Plush drapes were amiss, a wild tornado failed to threaten, and sadly there was no trusted steed to lord it up on.

  The switch also scared the willies out of me.

  One moment we were comfortably seated in her hovel, sipping saké, and the next we’d lost the drinks and were forced to stand on pebbles in a shadowy archway. My kingdom for that horse. Fortunately, I was once again wearing my slippers, even if they weren’t made for this kind of outdoors adventurism.

  I looked around us, getting a better feel for the Devil’s details.

  The structure looming above us, an aqueduct of some kind, was so tall you could steer a double-decker bus through it. This stretched from one set of trees on the left to a forest the other way. I couldn’t see where it ended, but that’s not saying much.

  Black moss spattered sections of the uneven, pale pink brickwork, in contrast with other splashes bleached white. There were odd bits of green vegetation clinging to an upper parapet and the bricks looked handmade.

  I’m not sure how it would compare in scale with famous European aqueducts like the Pont du Gard, which I’d studied in art class during the final year of high school, since that was a four-by-five-inch photo neatly tucked away in a textbook. This one was more imposing if only because it dwarfed the snapshot.