As if by Magic

by Angus Wilson

  Dear Alexandra,

  I’ve lain awake a good deal of the night thinking over all our conversations of yesterday. I think you will not be altogether surprised when I write you I have made the decision of not going ahead with our little schemes. What you saw between Leslie and I in yesterday’s little “Scene” was not representative of our life together. We are very much in love. But marriage has its “dangerous corners” as you will already have seen with your parents and yesterday gave a red light which as a good driver I cannot afford to ignore to my peril and what is more important, for he has nothing of his own, Leslie’s. So good-bye and good luck and bless you for standing up for yourself in a world where too many lean on others. I enclose a small cheque which may come in handy when there are two mouths to provide for and I sign myself, seeing your encouragement and affection yesterday,

  Uncle Martin.

  Alexandra was very surprised. Of course, it saved her the misery of surprising him. But where to go next? And this bloody cheque for £100. Always bloody cheques! And there was no one, no one to go to, no one to talk to about all her plans for the baby and how she would care for it and how it would grow up (as she had hoped to do with Leslie). She took the cheque. She tore it into pieces. She lifted a big majolica pot and, out on the sun-baked terrace, she threw it onto the porcelain tiles and smashed it. It did those handmade tiles no good either. The woman came out at the noise.

  “Whoever done that?” she asked.

  “Who the hell do you think?” and Alexandra ran indoors and up the stairs to pack her bag. All the same, for some reason—panic no doubt—she persisted in feeling that if her elders couldn’t help her, who could?

  *

  “I’m afraid this is a terrible bore for you,” the nice Embassy man said, as they were removing their shoes in the entrance way.

  Hamo made a small gesture to convey that, after three weeks’ experience, the custom gave him little annoyance.

  “Oh, no, I don’t mean that. Although you would be better off with slipper shoes.” And indeed Hamo’s lengthy unlacing did mean that they were five minutes or so behind their hosts and the other foreign guests. It seemed to make them the target of a whole bevy of the smiling, bowing young women who were Hamo’s chief cause of distress in a Japan he otherwise found so decorous and agreeable. “I meant this business dinner. Professor Hakadura’s tremendously excited about your conversations of the last three days.”

  “He’s a remarkably interesting man. Although I don’t understand all his English easily . . .”

  “Oh, one always guesses a good deal.”

  “His findings on protein-lysine synthesis are first-rate work. In particular . . .”

  “Oh, indeed, yes. He strikes one as very able. And a complete charmer, too.”

  The Embassy man was very nice but perhaps a trifle smooth.

  “But the trouble is that you simply won’t have a chance of talking with him at this dinner, I’m afraid. It’s absurd, I know, because after all what you’ve come here to do is to talk shop. But our host Kobayashi Shigeru—Mr. Kobayashi—well you know all that name business now—is one of the principal financial backers of rice research in this country. It’s only a fraction of his interests, of course. He’s a tremendous tycoon. And as you’re the guest of honour . . . But you’ll find him a splendid host. Immensely shrewd, of course. Also a great deal more generally cultivated than his silences suggest. But my fear is that the other big gun—this American senator—will blaze away the whole evening and that could be a most colossal bore. Our Japanese hosts will know it at once, of course. But seniority’s so deeply revered in this country that they’ll listen as if to . . . I just deaden my senses as I suspect they do. Look grave and smile at alternate moments, preferably the right ones. Ready? Then we’ll go in. The other American, the younger one, looks so Brooks Brothers as not to be true, doesn’t he? All the same I very much doubt his being the genuine Ivy League article. Toothpaste advertisement really, I suspect. Some representative of commerce, I dare say. Name Endell. Willard Endell. Too perfect, isn’t it? I was so glad, by the way, to hear you say you’d liked America. It’s a never-ending fascination to me, in small doses. Don’t feel that you’re bound by this Japanese thing about seniority. If you get too bored, just shout the senator down. After all, you’re the bigger gun.”

  Hamo said, “As a matter of fact, it’s a sentiment that I totally share. Social respect for age and authority surely must always take precedence before any personal gratification. That’s been one of the most pleasant aspects of Japan.”

  The Embassy man looked up from under his shaggy eyebrows with surprise. Then, adept, Hamo could see, at sweeping snubs under the table, he said loudly, “Aren’t these little gardens enchanting? It seems impossible to think we’re in the heart of Tokyo.”

  Hamo looked at the minute dusty courtyard in which some sad bamboo too evenly balanced some small cobwebbed and apparently artificial lava rocks from which a little water sadly trickled. He had praised Japan enough for the moment, he thought. He said nothing.

  “You can tell we’re in a four-star place by the tatami alone. A superb finish.” The Embassy man’s compliments grew louder as they approached their host. Hamo felt it vulgar; also he didn’t wish to be told all the names for Japanese household objects for the fifth or sixth time.

  He said with a sarcastically sharp edge, “And the niche as I recall hearing is called the tokonoma.”

  A young Japanese man said, “So Mr. Langmuir knows all about Japan already. Takahashi Isamu,” he bowed, “Mr. Kobayashi’s private secretary.”

  “Ah!” said the Embassy man, as the Secretary led Hamo away. “As I thought. The place of honour opposite the senator. Well, remember what I said, my dear fellow.” And he gave Hamo a look intended to tease him out of his dignity.

  Half an hour later, Hamo was retaining his dignity with difficulty. His head was a tank of swilling saké fit for an aquarium. The little meaningless, glittering questions of the moon-faced hostess darted in and out of his brain, little fish among the curious shaped monsters of syntax of what Mr. Willard Endell called obligated courtesy, while overall loomed the vast whale of Senator Tarbett’s continuous rhetorical boom, well-informed, sage, educative, highly ethical yet dryly humorous. Looking at his host’s heavy impressive Imperial Roman mask, at Professor Hakadura’s gravely distant smile, even at young Mr. Takahashi’s spectacle-disguised smooth equanimity, Hamo envied them the gift of totally courteous abstraction. That his crossed calves were an agonizing knot of cramped muscles at least prevented the dizzying swim of these contesting fishes from lulling him into sleep. But to fight sleep, endure cramp, and give attention, with due courtesy to everyone yet with proper regard for the Senator’s precedence, all at the same time, was a balancing feat which was made possible only by the shock of the surprising variety of tastes which touched his palate rapidly one after another as more and more little dishes were served—some utterly delicious, some so remote as to need chasing for definition, some to him quite repellent.

  He gave the most distant attention to the claimant most close to him. He had endured enough friendly girlish giggling about his clumsiness with chopsticks at previous banquets, so that, instead of all that pantomime, he had asked straight away for the fork to which he would inevitably come anyway. This had not prevented the moon-faced young lady, whose plump thighs against his he could, thank goodness, no longer feel because pins and needles had now given way to total insensibility, from constantly placing delicacies in his mouth with his discarded chopsticks and even, when on one occasion he had failed to take in a sheath of bean sprouts with one gulp, poking the extruding ends between his lips with a sharply painful dig. It was she, too, who made him conscious that his expression of close attention to the Senator’s flow must betray some admixture of his dismay, for she said, “I think you are missing your wife. Where is her photograph?” “I’m a bachelor.” “How many children?” Ashamed to have perplexed with a difficult word a young wo
man who was, after all, only doing her paid job—oh Lord, what could that job eventually entail, what might it not demand of him?—he said, with what he intended to be a smile, “I’m not married.” “Oh, I see.” Then she added, “So you are missing them all. Wife and little ones. It is nice when the little children are running into the room, laughing and shouting: ‘I want this’, ‘I want that’, and we must give it to them.” Hamo had already experienced something of this aspect of Japanese children at Professor Hakadura’s home, so he said, “I don’t believe in spoiling children.” “Oh, I see. You love children very much.”

  Hamo wondered, were he to put his arm round the young woman’s waist as Willard Endell had done with his hostess, or stroke her leg as the fine old patrician hand of Senator Tarbett was doing with his hostess, whether he might reduce her to the same giggle-punctuated silence. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  And, through her continuing remarks, came Willard Endell’s obligated courtesy. “I sure wish Mrs. Endell and I had had the chance to invite you to our country club. There is a gentleman there I’d like to have you meet. I’m of the opinion that no person has moved faster or further up the agro-business ladder than Holmes Shipley.”

  “I’m afraid I have never met him.”

  “Well, he’s not a man too many people visit socially. If I can use your British understatement, he’s an individual who is somewhat competitive in his philosophy. A person in business has to be aggressive, but Shipley’s psychological stance has put him in the position of competing with most everyone he meets.”

  “Yes, I think I see what you mean. We should call it rather pushing. But I suppose in the business world . . . My great-uncle . . .”

  “I don’t know what you’d call it. Let me say I don’t think you can easily categorize Holmes Shipley. He’s the kind of individual that’s very hard to evaluate. Let me illustrate anecdotally. Shipley plays a very good game of golf. But it can be a mean game. Oh boy! Can it be mean! Well . . .” But since Mr. Endell seemed quite unwilling to let him contribute, Hamo did not see why he should listen; in any case, the Senator was now demanding his direct attention.

  “Now, Mr. Langmuir, do you think we could remove ourselves for a moment from the elegant austerity of these traditional surroundings and the sumptuous variety of this traditional banquet to a noisier, more brash, more aggressive milieu?”

  Hamo thought for a moment that he was suggesting some expedition into the streets of Tokyo. Perhaps it was an invitation to what Leslie called “cruising”. He would hardly choose such venerable silky-white hair, so patrician a skull-like head for a guide and companion, but still if this were a break-through in the total sexual impasse of his world tour up to now . . .

  “It sounds delightful,” he murmured. But the Senator was sweeping on.

  “The gentleman from your Embassy informs me that you didn’t wholly disapprove of the United States.”

  “It was in many ways the most stimulating experience of my working life. The degree of expertise and the sheer weight of research work . . . of course, it makes me inevitably very jealous like any other scientist from abroad. The equipment alone seems to make all one’s own efforts and hopes . . . I only wish that my faithful technical assistant were here to express some of his envy of what his counterparts in America have to play with.”

  “Well, as a guardian of the taxpayers’ money, I naturally have two views of the expenditure on scientific equipment in our country. Especially if it’s being played with. But I doubt if our scientists are so frivolous as to . . .”

  “It’s a phrase.”

  “Oh, I recognize British understatement. And it’s praise indeed from a man who has made so fine a contribution to his branch of science. As I get older the delight of words remains one of my increasing pleasures. And I use ‘fine’ here in the æsthetic sense to tributize the beauty, the elegance as you scientists call it, of the details of your work, as well as the great human contribution you have made to the wider problems of our society. But an American-loving Britisher is a rare find, and I should like to have this opportunity to ask how you found our general hospitality—a degree overwhelming for your British reserve?”

  “Well, of course, I was only in a few places. Those that concerned my work. But the direct and simple friendliness of all my colleagues and their wives was . . . In New York, which after all . . .”

  “So you liked Noo York?” Mr. Endell’s voice had taken on a new warmth.

  “Oh, indeed. And Louisiana. And California. In their different ways. I only regret that I was unable to get to Arkansas.”

  “You regret that you couldn’t get to Arkansas. Oh boy! wait till they hear that in Little Rock.” Mr. Endell’s tone was this time remarkably less warm. “So you liked Noo York, the deep South, and California. Well, I’d heard the British didn’t have very discriminating palates. You’ve certainly gotta believe it.”

  The Senator reprehended this mildly. “In this land of goormay feeding and at this rare goormay banquet, it may seem a little perverse to praise British cuisine. And they certainly do have an article of faith that when you boil a vegetable you make sure that it’s boiled to a very wet death. But perhaps that derives from some of the old mediæval traditional punishments.” He twinkled wryly at Hamo and the Embassy man, “Nevertheless my good friends at Brown’s Hotel or your Savoy Grill have occasionally urged upon me traditional English dishes that proved most agreeable. Simple, calorie-loaded, but agreeable. I believe there are regional specialities in your Northern country. And I don’t mean the renowned but inedible haggis.”

  The Embassy man answered vaguely, “Oh, yes, in Yorkshire and in the North generally there are still many dishes. The famous tripe and onions. And blood puddings. And faggots . . .”

  “Well,” said Mr. Endell quietly, “so the British can talk dirty.”

  “How do you feel about all our nursery dishes, Langmuir?” the Embassy man asked.

  “I confess to a certain weakness for boiled puddings. Cooked by people who know, of course. I’ve never ceased since my schooldays to enjoy my spotted dick.”

  “Can the British talk dirty!” said Mr. Endell.

  This time Hamo could hear. Looking at the flushed, sweating faces of the American guests, their increasingly straying hands, he decided that if he was to avoid open conflict with them, he must diminish the level of saké in his head. When, then, Mitsu (for so, with Shizu and Setsu, these three little maids were called. Who could think that a song, favourite he had been told of his grandfather’s, could prove so unattractive in reality?) sought for the ninth or tenth time to turn the sort of double egg-cup thing upside-down (could there be an upside-down in this strange looking-glass country?), he firmly said, “Thank you, no more saké for me. Can I have some more of that refreshing green tea?”

  He said it, however, directly to the elderly grey-kimonoed proprietress of the restaurant who hovered in the background, partly to avoid addressing Mitsu, partly to reprehend what he felt to be an impolite Japanese oversight of consideration due to a lady of maternal age and housekeeperly appearance. “The tea blends so particularly well with these little . . .” But what to call the various batter-disguised fishy objects he did not know. There was no need for concern. His words won him instant approval. Mr. Kobayashi bowed his brutal Neronic head and spoke to the hostess who then bowed repeatedly. Mitsu, anxious to assert her claims, said, giggling behind her hand, “I think Mr. Langmuir’s wife is a very good cook.” While Mr. Takahashi wiped his spectacles with delight. “Mr. Langmuir is a gourmet, I think. He knows already Japanese food. To drink green tea not saké with tempura is Japanese way.” And Hamo then saw that the Japanese diners had indeed ceased to drink saké and were drinking tea.

  His unintended triumph had also involved unintended snubbing of the American guests—but really they were very tiresome. How travelling always proved true, as he had known it would, dreary clichés such as that Americans were wonderful hosts and terrible tourists. He venture
d further. “This is a particularly succulent creature.”

  The host’s brutal jaw fell into a delighted smile, revealing gold teeth here and there. “I think you are epicure, Mr. Langmuir. This is kuruma-ebi. Great delicacy. From the Ise peninsula. It is the best tempura dish.”

  The Embassy man was beaming. The hostess, apprised, bowed again, very often. The three little maids set up a twittering dawn chorus. Young Mr. Takahashi followed up his employer’s approval.

  “I think you will visit Ise peninsula, Mr. Langmuir. It is most beautiful sea coast of Japan.”

  “I’m afraid my travelling in Japan is at an end. I have to go on to the Philippines. Los Baños is the real centre . . .”

  “Oh, I see. I think you will like Ise peninsula.”

  Mitsu said, “Sea coast in Japan means we are happy and we are sad, because we think about our absent family. We are happy to think of them and sad that they are absent.”

  But the Senator had had enough of all this.

  “I want to ask all you good people to give me your opinion of something that has troubled my mind while I have been sitting here listening to your informative and civilized talk. I opine that right here at this end of the table we have by a curious chance three men—our distinguished host, a universally respected scientist and a humble senator—may the Lord forgive me for that phoney adjective, my mother, a very proud Virginian lady, would not—three men who together embody the deep concern that every thinking person . . .”

  Hamo, looking at Mr. Takahashi’s skin, thought how intolerable it was never to be sure: it could be a very young man’s skin, even not more than nineteen or twenty, but then to be secretary to this tycoon person so young; and there were shadows around the horn-rims that could just be shadows or yet could cover lines of age . . . If Asia were only to prove a fruitless speculation of this kind, a constant tension of uncertain youth . . . But this was simply because everything had been so fruitless up to now—the night club near New Orleans airport, for example, with its great broad-shouldered guardsmen of creatures, with padded-out busts, looking nine-foot high in their high heels. And in San Francisco, what could have been real youths, slim, graceful, perhaps the Fairest Youth in the World among them, in vile women’s long evening dresses, high wigs and heels, twelve-foot high not nine, mincing into buses for their Ball, like suburban housewives in West End coach parties. No trace of Rod or Pete. All that side of his plans had proved a mistake, a tease he would be better without. Frustrating digressions from the rewarding exchange of ideas he could enjoy with colleagues, as this endless Senator’s talk kept him from asking Hakadura that vital question.