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

his face when he walked out, along with an industrialist whose grandfather worked the land, not to mention the European nobility who are visiting Japan in increasing numbers and then itinerant Americans who may be the sons of eminent professors taking a kind of Grand Tour or ne’er do wells in permanent exile, or indeed in some cases both. There are always more men than women, partly because the enthusiasm for modernity of the best Japanese families stops short at asking their wives and daughters to dine in public, to dance and speak to foreign men, and partly because of professional men like Tom who travel alone. He must not mind, must not take it personally, if he finds himself seated beside another man. Dear Lady Alexandra has such a time with these things! He does not mind, for the card beside his own says, in Lady Alexandra’s own italic hand, Professor William Baxter. Professor of European History at the University of Tokyo, he thinks and the author, if he is not mistaken, of The Land of Cherry Blossom: Japan in Our Own Time.

He is among the first to sit down, glad to escape the wife of an American missionary who has a great deal to say on the subject of girls’ schools in Japan. At exact intervals down the tables are glass bowls half filled with water, in which float flat pink candles and the heads of miniature water lilies. He won’t reach over and stir up a tornado with his soup spoon, see if the candles set the lilies on fire before everything sinks. He watches as a lady further up the table is settled into her chair by a man in a clerical collar. The vicar pulls out a chair, supports the woman’s elbow as she approaches the table, eases the chair under her and stands back respectful as she arranges her skirt. He must ask Ally about the puffed up skirts, the way they seem to fold when the wearer sits and open out as she rises. Some kind of concertina arrangement. He counts the silver arrayed on the white damask cloth: soup, entrée, fish, meat and pudding, and a crystal glass for each course. In the Kiso valley, Makoto’s family will be sitting by firelight on the floor around a table holding one rice-bowl and one tea-bowl for each person.

A man of about his own age takes the seat on his left. Herr Friedrich Anders, the place card says, and he can see that she started to write ‘Freidrich’ and caught herself almost in time. Friedrich Anders has a wholly unconvincing blond beard.

‘Tom Cavendish,’ he says, offering his hand.

Friedrich Anders bows and they shake, awkwardly side-by-side.

‘I speak not good English. You have German?’

Tom shakes his head. ‘A little French. From school.’

‘Moi aussi. Pas beaucoup.’

‘Pas beaucoup,’ Tom repeats. ‘Un petit peu.’

They smile foolishly, each, Tom thinks, hoping that Lady Alexandra had the sense to put a German speaker on Friedrich’s other side. Tom builds a sentence in his head.

‘Qu’est-ce vous fais—I mean, faites—ici? Je suis—engineer. Je fais—what’s the word, sorry—je fais construire.’

Herr Anders nods. Communication received. ‘Je suis medecin. A l’hopital.’

Comme ma femme, Tom thinks, but he really doesn’t want to try to have that conversation in French. They both turn over their shoulders to smile a warm welcome at the man coming to sit opposite. Ja, ich spreche Deutsch. Komme aus Amsterdam. Und Sie, Herr Anders? Von Bremen? Ach so. Meine Schwester—

Smiling, Tom looks away. The centres of the candles are beginning to hollow around the wicks, making boats of molten wax. By the end of the evening, or eventually, a boat will melt a hole in its own bottom and sink, hissing. Perhaps Lady Alexandra has candles made to the length of a dinner party. When the shipwreck comes, it’s time to go home. He’s too hot, in his suit with the room so full and the candles and a fire in the stone hearths at each end.

This must be Professor Baxter now, a tall stooped man with an iron-grey beard overflowing his collar. Tom stands, shakes his damp hand. Professor Baxter, he says, The Land of Cherry Blossom? I read your book with great pleasure. The professor beams from behind his moustache and bows. We are all doing it now, Tom thinks, on the ship home we will all be bowing to each other. On the ship home. Open sea, and Japan left behind forever. And you, Mr. Cavendish, what brings you to these shores?

The menu says Soupe au Poisson, but the presence of soy sauce is obvious, and maybe a little ginger. Don’t you think they would do better, Professor Baxter murmurs, so close to his ear that he expects to feel the moustache, don’t you think they would do better on these occasions to pay a really first-rate Japanese chef to prepare a really first-rate Japanese banquet? I fear we may expect a Japanese rendition of white sauce on the vegetables next, and of course they have no idea and why should they? As soon ask an English cook to make sushi.

Tom turns to him. ‘You like Japanese food, then?’

‘My dear boy, I would hardly have stayed here so many years if I did not. Or perhaps, having stayed here so many years it is inevitable that I must. And you? You pine for cauliflower in cheese sauce, for dumplings and suet pudding?’

Tom gulps the end of his wine, which really is good. ‘Truth to tell, Professor, I dread them.’

‘Shake hands, dear boy, shake hands.’

He waits until the meat course—grey, unidentifiable, in brown sauce—to ask about fox owners. It feels dishonourable, as if, having been welcomed to Makoto’s home, he has stolen a letter that he now asks the professor to translate. But if Makoto wouldn’t tell me, he thinks. Anyway, his interest is general; he wants to know about the stone foxes at the entrances to so many shrines and houses and indeed about the idea of fox owning