Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss (top ten ebook reader TXT) 📕

the next person. Tom empties a final bucket over his head and follows him outdoors, almost pleased to be so violently recalled to here and now by the cold wind over his wet skin. His feet cringe from the stone steps. Lanterns hung around the bath show two dark heads in the steam, but Tom’s need for the water’s warmth is far greater than his self-consciousness. For a moment his shocked feet don’t recognise heat, and then they tingle and burn. Sitting on the stone edge, he lowers himself in, thighs, buttocks, belly and chest softening, melting into the water. His ribs open, pulling steam and mountain air deep into him, and his arms float in the warmth, fingers opening, breathing, like sea anemones.

He opens his eyes to find Makoto looking at him, at his ginger-furred white torso and his freckles. ‘It’s good for you? The baths?’

He looks back at Makoto, whose slender shoulders rise from the water, who is somehow clothed in self-possession. ‘Very pleasant, thank you.’

The two other faces turn towards them, and one of the men speaks to Makoto. Makoto makes a small bow as part of his response. Imagine bowing, Tom thinks, to a man with whom you’re sharing a bathtub. He imagines Makoto, naked, waving his hand, scraping his foot, making a Renaissance courtier’s obeisance. The story of the Emperor’s new clothes comes to mind; Japanese dignity is so profound that every aspect of business could probably be conducted in the state of nature without anyone betraying a flicker of dismay. He has not, he realises, heard any Japanese jokes. Or at least has not recognised any Japanese jokes. He himself has not laughed in many weeks.

‘He asks if you are Dutch,’ Makoto says through the steam. ‘And he says it is an honour to meet you.’

Tom raises his head, which he has been resting against the side of the bath. Teak, he thinks, but possibly dark bamboo. ‘Please tell him I am honoured to be here. Or whatever is appropriate.’

There is more talking and bowing and then the other men leave. They are made like boys, Tom thinks, and move as if their very bones were lighter than those of Europeans. He averts his gaze as they pass, genitals bobbing at eye-height, and then stretches out his legs into the middle of the bath. The water feels chalky, perhaps even oily, between his fingers and toes.

Makoto leans back, looking up to the stars. Their feet touch each other and glide away like fish. In the lamplight, Tom can see the steam curving around Makoto’s head and face, haunting the shape of his skull and the hair beginning to fall down over his ears and brow.

‘I am due some vacation,’ Makoto says. ‘Some holiday.’

‘You have worked many days without one.’ So, Tom supposes, has he, but the idea of being without occupation is not appealing. It would not be easy, to be here and not getting things done.

‘My parents live not so very far from here. On the way back to the city.’

Tom raises his head, pulls his arms back into his body, a more conventional pose. ‘You wish to visit them. Of course. I am sure I can return alone.’

Probably. If Makoto hands him over to someone reliable with clear instructions about when and where he is to be delivered.

‘I would make every arrangement. Or, if you wish, we would be most honoured to receive you as our guest. My parents are mere farmers and it is not a fine establishment, but if it would please or interest you to visit they would be very happy. They have a room that is sometimes used for travellers.’

It is almost impossible, Tom has read, for a foreigner to be invited into a Japanese house. To a restaurant, yes, or even a theatre, but it is not the Japanese way to entertain at home. He finds himself lumbering to his feet to bow properly, face down until his hair dips into the bath. Idiot, he thinks, hippopotamus. Makoto smiles, nods, satisfied if also amused.

‘Makoto, I thank you. I am greatly—’ the word honoured is exhausted—‘greatly privileged, greatly moved. Of course, I am delighted to accept.’

He is not sure that the books, proclaiming the impossibility of such an occasion, offer any guidance to its etiquette. He must take a gift, of course, surely an instinctive and universal response, and he knows more about the deployment of footgear and chopsticks than he did. All his speech must go through Makoto in any case, and Makoto is doubtless making translations of intent and convention as well as mere words. He will not be allowed to offend through utterance. But how long, he wonders. Makoto may be owed holiday but Tom is here to work, and the sooner he finishes, the sooner he can return to Ally. Once he has bought De Rivers’ paintings.

‘A few days only,’ says Makoto. ‘And it is barely a diversion from the road back.’

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Ally was woken in the night by an angry wind hurling rain against the window, and this morning the boats are toppling and jerking on their anchors, their masts scribbling at the air. There is no point in taking an umbrella because even if she could hold it in the wind, the rain is horizontal, blowing across the lawn into the limestone wall. As she stoops to lace her boots she sees that the damp patch under the window has metastasized along the skirting board and up the wall, stretching out to join the water seeping under the cornice. One day, she thinks, the whole house will dissolve around her, the granite blocks settling back into the earth from which they came as cement and plaster trickle milkily down the hill to the sea. She doesn’t go down to the kitchen, where this process is relatively advanced; Dr. Crosswyn will give her coffee and biscuits later and it is not worth the effort and fuel to light the range when she will