arrives. She goes down on all fours and mutters words of respect and welcome. I like her at once. She reminds me of my Cambridge landlady, not by her act of obeisance, Mrs. Webb would never have done that, but by her face-gray hair, ruddy complexion, and very obvious false teeth. Her name is Misa-san; she has three grown-up children and she is motherly and plump.
How shall I delight Kazumi’s palate this evening? Or is she one of those dull people who can’t be wooed by good cooking?
I spend a happy morning consulting Curnowsky, the Larousse Gastronomique, the Gourmet Cookbook (American), the Esocoffier Cookbook, and Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I consume many delicious dishes in my head. How about daube de boeuf? The book says it should be served with a simple red wine. I like “simple.” Good French wine in Japan is expensive, and Japanese wine is far too costly for what it is: very ordinaire; but French ordinaire is within one’s purse. The daube has to be marinated for three hours during which time it must be stirred frequently, and then it needs to simmer for four hours and still has to be stirred, frequently. Even for Kazumi (whom I desire) I won’t spend seven hours in the hot kitchen. I am tempted to try Filet of Bison (Gamekeeper Manner). At the head of the recipe it says, under a drawing of a bucking bison, “Buffalo are no longer vanishing. . . .” I don’t think I’d be able to purchase bison at a butcher’s shop in Kyoto. I decide on a Curnowsky menu d’été: Consommé froid en tasse (I can buy a tin of clear soup and put it in the refrigerator); Omelette au crabe (canned crab is available everywhere); Courgettes au beurre (I shall miss this course): Flamri à purée de framboise (I shall substitute iced watermelon for this. It is much the same color).
To be a good cook one does not need to do the cooking. One has to have the ability to direct, that is all. So when Kazumi returns from her sedentary day in the office, I shall tell her exactly how to make an omelette au crabe.
I sleep most of the afternoon and have only written two lines of an article I am trying to do on Li Ho, the Chinese T’ang poet, when Kazumi returns.
“Tadaima,” she cries. “I have come back.”
“Okaeri nasai,” I shout from my bedroom, where I am lying on my back under the fan.
I go below-the stairs force me to use a nautical term.
“Supper is ready except for a little cooking,” I tell Kazumi.
She looks a bit wan and very hot; a strand of hair is stuck to her forehead, and there is a rivulet of sweat running down her neck; she is out of breath-has she been running? “You look hot. Why not have a short sit-down by the air conditioner before going into the kitchen?”
“I want to take a shower, may I?”
“Of course,” I reply, badly concealing my irritation, for it is whiskey time and I want her to get some ice cubes out of the refrigerator. I hate freezing my fingers.
“Thank you.” She smiles and leaves the room.
I get myself a large whiskey and on my way back from the kitchen I put two plates and some knives and forks on the dining table as a token effort. Not until my third whiskey does she emerge with her hair fuzzed up and her face more faded than it was last evening-is she going to be complaisant tonight?
“Look,” I say, “I’m not sure where things are in the kitchen and it’s hellish hot in there, so what I suggest is that I sit at the dining table and explain, or do you want a drink before eating?”
“No, thank you.” Her dimpled smile is wistful. I think that this rather authoritative manner I’ve assumed may pay off.
“Right then. Let’s move, shall we?” With a cry of, “God, what these Lafcadio Hearns will put up with!” I sink to the floor and sit at the wretchedly low table. From this position I can spy into the kitchen as the fusuma is open. “Now, Kazumi-san, if you open the refrigerator you will find a tin of consommé at the top. Please open the tin and bring it. I will serve it.”
Kazumi does as I command. I should never dare to speak to my wife in this way; if I did, she’d simply say, “Do it yourself, duckie!” and I should. It’s a mistake to marry a woman richer than oneself; money gives women an independence that is quite unsuited to their nature. In Japan things are more sensibly arranged: the wife obeys, or, at any rate, that is or was the theory.
When we have eaten our soup, Kazumi goes into the kitchen and half follows my instructions on how how to make a crab omelette; she thinks she knows how to do it, but she has too low a flame, she does not heat the pan first, nor does she keep the fork moving in the “Boulestin” manner. Why doesn’t she know how to cook? With all these cookbooks in the house some occupant must have had some interest in the culinary art. The result of her ignorance is that I have to get up and give a demonstration in the middle of which the telephone rings.
“If it’s for me, say I’m out,” I tell Kazumi as she dashes to answer the intrusive call.
“It’s Professor Watkins.”
I wave my hand and shake my head. “No!” I say in a stage whisper.
Kazumi looks puzzled and then says, “Just a moment, please,” and rejoins me at the stove, whose heat has made me break out in a gush of sweat. My shirt is wet through.
“It’s Professor Watkins.”
“So I heard. Why didn’t you say I was out?”
“But you here!”
“Oh, all right!” I hand her the fork. “Keep it moving!” I squat by the telephone. “Peter Meadowes here . . . hello Bob! Marvelous to hear your voice! I arrived yesterday . . . did you? Maybe I didn’t hear the phone . . . Yes, that was Kazumi-san. She’s been showing me where things are and helping out. Bob, what about dinner the day after tomorrow? You and your wife, of course.” Bob Watkins jumps at the invitation but says his wife cannot come. I imagine that he has adopted Japanese customs and rarely goes out with his wife. Sensible. I don’t suppose she speaks much English and she would be a drag on the conversation.
The omelette au crabe turns out to be burnt scrambled egg mixed up with tough and stringy fiber-quite uneatable. We make do with bread and some cheese left over by my landlord; however, the watermelon is fairly filling; at least, after two large slices I don’t want any more.
When Kazumi has done the washing up, I prevail upon her to stay a few days. She agrees, but I have a feeling that she does so because of the color television set and the air conditioner, not my powers of persuasion, nor my irresistibility, for she mentions that her set is a black-and-white one and her air conditioner is not working properly.
We look at TV again, but when I rise to go to bed, she makes not a glimmer of a suggestion to come with me in spite of my lingering look. Perhaps I should have been more insistent last night.
5
The electric bell in the girls’ school on the other side of the main road, which my southern window faces, peals emphatically at eight a.m., like an alarm clock for the whole quarter, and awakens me from my second slumber-I wonder why it didn’t wake me yesterday morning; perhaps my second slumber was deeper. My first slumber ended this morning at five-thirty, but I dropped off again after reading forty-two pages of Justine by D.A.F. De Sade, as the edition (no publisher’s or printer’s name given) calls the notorious yet maligned Marquis. The bookshelf in my bedroom shows eclectic tastes. Next to Justine is The Conquest of Peru; Fanny Hill has on one side The Arts of Korea and on the other Edith Sitwell’s Collected Poems. If my reading lacks variety this summer, it will be my fault.
Kazumi has left before I get downstairs, therefore I am unable to ask her to do the shopping for tonight’s dinner party in honor of Professor Robert T. Watkins, and Misa-san’s duties are confined to cleaning and doing the laundry.
After I have read the Japan Times and the Mainichi, both of which contain almost identical news, I go upstairs, where Misa-san is passing the nozzle of the long trunk of the vacuum cleaner over the tatami. This doesn’t do much good; it is a sort of ritual, a going through the motions. I tell her that