by Sarah Moss
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 rather than about Makoto’s particular situation. Intellectual curiosity, not nosiness.
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 tak
en 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 hear him speak ill of his neighbours and then frisk off in different form to pass it on. Not that they can’t be useful, when the fancy takes them, but the problem is they’re not human and you can never predict or depend on their fancies. No consistency even in evil-doing. So some fox owners, kitsunemochi, find extraordinary fortune, might become quite rich for no obvious reason, and it might last several generations. But that kind of money’s like fairy gold, not to be relied on, liable to disappear into thin air, or sometimes turn to grass, just when you really need it.’
Tom nods, though he’s quite lost. Friedrich Anders is also leaning on the table and his blond hair falling over his forehead, deep in red-faced conversation with the Dutchman and the man across from him. The servants are beginning to bring pudding, big bowls of something placed centrally, one between four.
‘So they’re the village ne’er-do-wells, fox owners?’ Tom asks. ‘They’re the family that always borrows and never lends and their children are always ragged and snot-nosed?’ Not that he can see any way that this description fits Makoto’s family.
Professor Baxter drains his glass. ‘Can be. But then you see even when they do well, that’s because of the foxes too. Of course if they do well enough for long enough they can marry anyway, but people are pretty chary of them. You wouldn’t want your son to marry a fox owner and you’d only give them your daughter if she really couldn’t do better. And the land’s not worth much, however good it is. No one wants to risk owning foxes because it goes on for generations.’
It reminds him of something. For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. He remembers hearing the verse at school, and all the others about fathers, and wondering what he might unknowingly carry. Foxes, iniquity, red hair, the way the corners of his eyes fold when he laughs. Still, there are worse things, than to have an empty space where a parent should be. Tom leans aside to let the waiter put down the crystal bowl. Something creamy, a fool or syllabub, and a plate of biscuits to go with it. There are dairies now in Tokyo, and a public campaign to persuade the Japanese to drink milk and grow taller.
‘Can they ever get rid of the foxes?’ he asks. ‘Does it ever end?’
‘Oh, sometimes they just go away. Not often. And of course you never know when they might come back. Have some of this? You never know, it might be good. They’ve quite taken to ice cream.’
‘There goes the candle,’ Tom says. ‘Look.’
They watch, the spoon raised in the professor’s hand, as the meniscus on the water bowl rises, swells, breaks and the candle takes on water, fills, and sinks. The talking filling the room is too loud for Tom to hear the hiss as the flame goes out.
THE GAP IN THE HEDGE
Papa came home last night, so at least she is not to be alone with Mamma today. Standing in the kitchen, she does not know what to do. She cannot recall that breakfast on Christmas Day used to be any different from usual, but ‘usual’ used to mean porridge, tea and toast, the lighting of the range and the warming of the pot. Will Mamma want the present usual today, only rusks? Or will she say that Ally seeks to deny her parents even the most sparing recognition of Our Lord’s birth. Ally fills the water jug and begins to slice bread. Under the bandage she stole from May’s Welfare Centre the broken skin of her forearm throbs and burns, and under her breastbone shame simmers. Behaving like a hysterical young girl at your age. Betraying your training, betraying the title in which you take such unwarranted pride.
The dining room is always dark, now the laurel bushes are starting to grow up into the windows. She begins to set the table, the silver cold in her cold hands. In other houses, she thinks, children are waking to bulging stockings by a crackling fire, and already the smell of roasting meat and plum pudding seeps from the kitchen. Because in those houses the servants have been working since before Ally awoke, and in other houses—more houses—there is scant heat and no pudding or meat in the children’s hope or memory. Ally remembers being called to the fall of one of the children of Aunt Mary’s neighbours on Boxing Day and finding the bruises of a beating across the girl’s legs and up her back; yes, said the governess, I am afraid she is often a naughty girl. It is not as if ribboned parcels and a tree with candles on it are any guarantee of happiness.
Her stomach skids at the sound of Mamma’s key in the door. She should not be so weak, so nervous. I am thirty years old, she thinks, I am a doctor. I did not rise early to attend church because I do not believe a god can be omnipotent and benevolent, because I do not believe in a man born of a virgin, because the whole thing is a collection of stories used for centuries to keep poor, uneducated people poor and uneducated. She goes into the hall to greet Mamma, to begin the day as if this were an ordinarily happy family.
‘Good morning, Mamma. Happy Christmas.’
Mamma takes off her hat. ‘Good morning. I trust you are refreshed by your long rest?’
Ally feels her fingers tighten on the fork she is still holding. ‘I rose at the usual hour, Mamma. I have prepared breakfast.’
‘So I would expect. There is no need for that tone, Alethea, I said only that I hope you are well rested.’ Mamma goes into the kitchen. ‘But I see you have not troubled to light the range.’
I am a bird in a net, Ally thinks. I am a madwoman in a closed dress. I cannot do this. I must leave here. ‘I am sorry, Mamma. I will do it now.’
Mamma sighs. ‘I will do it. At least that way we know there will be no waste of matches.’
She takes a cup of tea and a plate of buttered toast up to Papa. He is sitting up in bed with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, reading what would appear to be a novel.
‘Thank you, Princess Al. And happy Christmas! She’s let you light a fire, has she? Maybe I’ll come down.’
She sets the tray on the bedside table, beside Papa’s water glass and spectacles. ‘Mamma was chilled when she came in from church. Will you join us, Papa? I have made a steak pudding for lunch. With oysters.’
She dared not buy a joint of beef, even with her own money. Tom’s own money. But she hoped Papa would enjoy the oysters.
‘In a while, Princess Al. You are getting as bad as your mother. Let me drink my tea in peace, on Christmas morning.’
Papa remaining in bed, Mamma takes to the drawing room with a pile of letters to answer. The morning services today will be overrun with ill-disciplined children, but she intends to attend Evensong at five and she expects Ally to accompany her. Meanwhile, since Ally appears to have nothing better to do, she might clean the pantry. Mamma has had more pressing matters to which to attend for some weeks. She closes the door behind her. Ally w
anders into the kitchen, cold even in her wool shawl with the range lit. She has been growing thinner here. She must clean the pantry. Hot soapy water and clean rags. While there is hot water, she will clean the lavatory properly and wash the floors. There will be plenty of time while the puddings steam. She does not know if Mamma has noticed the puddings. You take us for railway labourers, Alethea. Did you not think a lighter dish more fitting for those of such sedentary habits? I did not believe I had brought you up to be always thinking of your stomach in this way. Papa used to invite Aubrey for Christmas lunch, and Aubrey used to bring a plum pudding already steamed by his daily housekeeper and a box of candied fruits for Ally and May. Such sugary trash as only infantile or vitiated appetites could stomach, to rot the teeth and ruin the digestion for more wholesome fare. Mamma, May said in their bedroom later, would have the whole world live on bread and water if she could. Mamma cannot be content while another person is happy. I am afraid my sister is just such a difficult woman as our mother was, says Aunt Mary, and living with her must be a test of anyone’s health and strength. I do not wonder she considers you fragile. But May was not fragile, Ally thinks, May was strong. So strong she went away and drowned.
Ally is still standing in the kitchen.
Hot soapy water, she thinks. The pantry. The lavatory and the puddings.
I do not know how you can bear to stand about in that manner, Alethea, idling your time away when there is such work to be done!
The clock ticks. A coal falls in the range.
What, you will not exert yourself even now?
