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

Ah, says Professor Baxter, fox owners. You have met such a family in your travels? Tom shrugs: maybe. He has heard of them. Without Japanese, it is difficult to interpret one’s experiences, especially in the countryside where everything seems so strange that one soon ceases to place much trust in one’s own judgement. The professor nods and puts down his fork. Tom should of course learn Japanese. He is right, there is no getting anywhere without it. Most of the people here in this room live only on the surface of Japan, depending on guides and translators for everything that they know and believe and then writing books about their experiences that merely rehearse what they have been told. If Tom would like to arrange a course of lessons? Ah, he is off to Kyoto. Well, that’s the place to go if you care about the old ways. A shame, really, to go there without at least the elements of Japanese, but there we go. He has business there? Inland? A commission, Tom says, able to imagine how Professor Baxter might regard collectors of art who have never crossed the English Channel and care nothing for the provenance of their purchases. He refills the professor’s glass.

‘You were going to tell me about fox owners?’

Professor Baxter nods but takes another mouthful and swallows it, grimacing a little, before he answers. ‘Ah yes. Fox owners. Fascinating peasant belief.’

He pushes the grey meat with his fork, making a pattern in the gravy on the plate.

‘It always was, by the way. Rather like the myths of European peasantry, werewolves and faery folk and such, tales told around village fires on winter evenings. Some people will tell you the Japanese believe this or that but don’t believe them, it’s like saying the Germans believe in vampires or the English in headless horses and then expecting professional men and landed gentry to walk in fear of such fantasies.’

Tom cuts a potato. Seeing real foxes dance and wondering about it is not the same thing as believing in headless horses. Any man would think twice, about dancing foxes in a fox temple.

‘Has to be said, though, some of the peasants really do believe. I know personally of several cases where people thought to be possessed by foxes were killed by attempts to exorcise them, stabbing and burning to get the devils out. It’s not the same, though, to be possessed by foxes and to own them. Important distinction, that one.’

He looks reproachful, as if Tom were a forgetful student. ‘People possessed by foxes run quite mad, poor blighters. Run around naked shouting at things that aren’t there, lie on the ground frothing at the mouth, that kind of thing. The women will sometimes hurt or threaten their own children in the throes of possession. Those kind of foxes are sent by Inari, by fox gods, but they’re not deities themselves. People often get that wrong.’

Tom nods. ‘What about the stone foxes? In the temples?’

‘Inari. But again, the significance varies. Depends partly if it’s a shrine to the fox gods or a house, whether we’re warding off goblin or spirit foxes or worshipping the gods, see?’

Tom pushes his wine away. Not particularly clearly, no. There are fox gods, and insanity is called fox possession, but the two facts are not straightforwardly related.

‘You mean that in Japan when people go mad they are said to be possessed by foxes?’

He thinks about English foxes, sneaking into henhouses, about rich men galloping around in red coats blowing trumpets. Sometimes he used to see the hunt, as a boy on the loose with his friends on Saturdays and in the summer. He thinks about the talking foxes in children’s stories, who know how to trick other animals, how to beguile the foolish into becoming dinner. He used to read to his landlady’s daughter in Aberdeen: and the fox said well, Chicken Licken, Henny Penny, Goosey Lucy and Ducky Daddles, come with me and I’ll show you the way to the King. English foxes are cunning and clever, not mad.

‘Not so simple, dear boy. Some of the behaviour we would call insanity, Japanese villagers attribute to fox possession. It’s a way of explaining conduct that doesn’t fit the rules. And it can be quite sane, really. Disobeying your mother-in-law, refusing to get up before dawn to cook rice. Young married women have a hell of a time.’

Tom frowns, doesn’t see the how a person can be sane and insane at the same time. Anyway, Makoto’s not possessed. ‘And the other kind? Owners rather than the possessed?’

The plates are taken away. The pink candles list drunkenly, won’t last the evening, and the edges of the lily petals are beginning to brown.

“Oh, they’re less alarming, though most inconvenient. Some families have foxes, kitsune. It’s not always clear if the foxes belong to the house or to the household but in most of the villages such a distinction would be immaterial anyway since families never change abode. Though the presence of foxes can make the land hard to sell. No, not real foxes, dear boy, or at least not visible foxes. Though they say the shadows or reflections are sometimes visible even though the animals themselves aren’t. They eat a lot, these goblin foxes. As soon as the rice is ready they rise up through the floor and tuck in, so however much is cooked there’s never a good plenty for the family. They can cause terrible trouble, too, stealing from the neighbours and then leaving the stolen goods lying around the house, sometimes taking the form of servants or children and telling tales of goings-on in their own houses and those of the neighbours.’

Professor Baxter settles his elbows on the table, runs his fingers through his beard. He’s going to keep talking for a long time.

‘The spirit foxes are frightful gossips and sometimes outright liars, and eavesdroppers too, will hang around on someone’s veranda until they