LITMIR.BIZ

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two men showed her out and, as they resumed their seats, Waverhouse exclaimed, “What on earth is that?” At the very same moment my master also ejaculated, “Whatever’s that?” I suppose my master’s wife could not restrain her laughter any longer, for we heard her gurgling in the inner-room.

      Waverhouse thereupon addressed her in a loud voice through the sliding door. “That, Mrs. Sneaze, was a remarkable specimen of all that is conventional, of all that is ‘common or garden.’ But when such characteristics become developed to that incredible degree the result is positively staggering. Such quintessence of the common approximates to the unique. Don’t seek to restrain yourself. Laugh to your heart’s content.”

      With evident disgust my master speaks in tones of the deepest revulsion. “To begin with,” he says, “her face is unattractive.”

      Waverhouse immediately takes the cue. “And that nose, squatting, as it were, in the middle of that phiz, seems affectedly unreal.”

      “Not only that, it’s crooked.”

      “Hunchbacked, one might say. A hunchbacked nose! Quite extraordinary.” And Waverhouse laughs in genuine delight.

      “It is the face of a woman who keeps her husband under her bottom.”

      My master still looks resentful.

      “It is a sort of physiognomy that, left unsold in the nineteenth century, becomes in the twentieth shop-soiled.”Waverhouse produces another of his invariably bizarre remarks. At which juncture my master’s wife emerges from the inner-room and, being a woman and thus aware of the ways of women, quietly warns them, “If you talk such scandal, the rickshaw-owner’s wife will snitch on you again.”

      “But, Mrs. Sneaze, to hear such tattle will do that Goldfield woman no end of good.”

      “But it’s self-demeaning to calumniate a person’s face. No one sports that sort of nose as a matter of choice. Besides, she is a woman. You’re going a little too far.” Her defense of the nose of Madam Conk is simultaneously an indirect defense of her own indifferent looks.

      “We’re not unkind at all. That creature isn’t a woman. She’s just an oaf. Waverhouse, am I not right?”

      “Maybe an oaf, but a formidable character nonetheless. She gave you quite a tousling, didn’t she just?”

      “What does she take a teacher for, anyway?”

      “She ranks a teacher on roughly the same level as a rickshaw-owner. To earn the respect of such viragoes one needs to have at least a doctor’s degree. You were ill-advised not to have taken your doctorate. Don’t you agree, Mrs. Sneaze?”Waverhouse looks at her with a smile.

      “A doctorate? Quite impossible.” Even his wife despairs of my master.

      “You never know. I might become one, one of these days. You mustn’t always doubt my worth. You may well be ignorant of the fact, but in ancient times a certain Greek, lsocrates, produced major literary works at the age of ninety-four. Similarly, Sophocles was almost a centenarian when he shook the world with his masterpiece. Simonides was writing wonderful poetry in his eighties. I, too. . .”

      “Don’t be silly. How can you possibly expect, you with your stomach troubles, to live that long.” Mrs. Sneaze has already determined my master’s span of life.

      “How dare you! Just go and talk to Dr. Amaki. Anyway, it’s all your fault. It’s because you make me wear this crumpled black cotton surcoat and this patched-up kimono that I am despised by women like Mrs. Goldfield. Very well then. From tomorrow I shall rig myself out in such fineries as Waverhouse is wearing. So get them ready.”

      “You may well say ‘get them ready,’ but we don’t possess any such elegant clothes. Anyway, Mrs. Goldfield only grew civil to Waverhouse after he’d mentioned his uncle’s name. Her attitude was in no way conditioned by the ill-condition of your kimono.” Mrs. Sneaze has neatly dodged the charge against her.

      The mention of that uncle appears to trigger my master’s memory, for he turns to Waverhouse and says, “That was the first I ever heard of your uncle. You never spoke of him before. Does he, in fact, exist?”

      Waverhouse has obviously been expecting this question, and he jumps to answer it. “Yes, that uncle of mine, a remarkably stubborn man. He, too, is a survival from the nineteenth century.” He looks at husband and wife.

      “You do say the quaintest things. Where does this uncle live?” asks Mr. Sneaze with a titter.

      “In Shizuoka. But he doesn’t just live. He lives with a top-knot still on his head. Can you beat it? When we suggest he should wear a hat, he proudly answers that he has never found the weather cold enough to don such gear. And when we hint that he might be wise to stay abed when the weather’s freezing, he replies that four hour’s sleep is sufficient for any man. He is convinced that to sleep more than four hours is sheer extravagance, so he gets up while it’s still pitch-dark. It is his boast that it took many long years of training so to minimize his sleeping hours. ‘When I was young,’ he says,‘it was indeed hard because I felt sleepy, but recently I have at last achieved that wonderful condition where I can sleep or wake, anywhere, anytime, just as I happen to wish.’ It is of course natural that a man of sixty-seven should need less sleep. It has nothing to do with early training, but my uncle is happy in the belief that he has succeeded in attaining his present condition entirely as a result of rigorous self-discipline. And when he goes out, he always carries an iron fan.”

      “Whatever for?” asks my master.

      “l haven’t the faintest idea. He just carries it. Perhaps he prefers a fan to a walking stick. As a matter of fact an odd thing happened only the other day.”Waverhouse speaks to Mrs. Sneaze.

      “Ah yes?” she noncommittally responds.

      “In the spring this year he wrote to me out of the blue with a request that I should send him a bowler hat and a frock-coat. I was somewhat surprised and wrote back asking for further clarification. I received an answer stating that the old man himself intended to wear both items on the occasion of the Shizuoka celebration of the war victory, and that I should therefore send them quickly. It was an order. But the quaintness of his letter was that it enjoined me ‘to choose a hat of suitable size and, as for the suit, to go and order one from Daimaru of whatever size you think appropriate.’”

      “Can one get suits made at Daimaru?”

      “No. I think he’d got confused and meant to say at Shirokiya’s.”

      “Isn’t it a little unhelpful to say ‘of whatever size you think appropriate’?”

      “That’s just my uncle all over.”

      “What did you do?”

      “What could I do? I ordered a suit which I thought appropriate and sent it to him.”

      “How very irresponsible! And did it fit?”

      “More or less, I think. For I later noticed in my home-town newspaper that the venerable Mr. Makiyama had created something of a sensation by appearing at the said celebration in a frock coat carrying, as usual, his famous iron fan.”

      “It seems difficult to part him from that object.”

      “When he’s buried, I shall ensure that the fan is placed within the coffin.”

      “Still it was fortunate that the coat and bowler fitted him.”

      “But they didn’t. Just when I was congratulating myself that everything had gone off smoothly, a parcel came from Shizuoka. I opened it expecting some token of his gratitude, but it proved only to contain the bowler. An accompanying letter stated, ‘Though you have taken the trouble of making this purchase for me, I find the hat too large. Please be so kind as to take it back to the hatter’s and have it shrunk. I will of course defray your consequent expenses by postal order.’”

      “Peculiar, one must admit.” My master seems

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