Naturally, I was worried about his appointment with the police, but when I tried to wake him up for the second time, he said something rather unkind through a sleeve of the padded bed clothes. Really, he’s the limit.”
“I wonder why he’s always so sleepy. Perhaps,” said his niece in almost pleasured tones, “his nerves are shot to pieces.”
“I don’t know, I’m sure.”
“He does lose his temper far too easily. It surprises me that they keep him on as a teacher at that school.”
“Well, I’m told he’s awfully gentle at the school.”
“Which only makes things worse. A blow-hard in the house and all thistledown at school.”
“What d’you mean, dear?” asks my mistress.
“Well, don’t you think it’s bad that he should act around here like the King of Hell and then appear at school like some quaking jelly?”
“And of course it’s not just that he’s so terribly bad tempered. He’s also an ornery man. When one says right, he immediately says left; if one says left, then he says right. And he never, but never, does anything that he’s been asked to do. He’s as stubborn and crank-minded as a mule.”
“Cantankerous, I call it. Being plain contrary is his whole-time hobby.
For myself if I ever want him to do something, I just ask him to do the opposite. And it always works. For instance, the other day I wanted him to buy me an umbrella. So I purposely kept on telling him that I didn’t want one. ‘Of course you want an umbrella,’ he exploded and promptly went and bought me one.”
Mrs. Sneaze broke out in a womanly series of giggles and titters. “Oh, how clever you are,” she said, “I’ll do the same in future.”
“You certainly should. You’ll never get anything out of that old skin-flint if you don’t.”
“The other day an insurance man called around and he tried hard to persuade your uncle to take out an insurance policy. He pointed out this and that advantage and did his very best for about an hour to talk your uncle around. But your obstinate, old uncle was not to be persuaded, even though we have three children and no savings. If only he would take out even the most modest insurance, we’d naturally all feel very much more secure. But a fat lot he cares for things like that.”
“Quite so. If anything should happen, you could be very awkwardly placed.” This girl doesn’t sound like a teenager at all, but more, and most unbecomingly, like an experience-hardened housewife.
“It was really rather amusing to hear your uncle arguing with that wretched salesman. Your uncle said,‘All right, perhaps I can concede the necessity of insurance. Indeed, I deduce that it is by reason of that necessity that insurance companies exist.’Nevertheless he persisted in maintaining that ‘nobody needs to get insured unless he’s going to die.’”
“Did he actually say that?”
“He did indeed. Inevitably, the salesman answered, ‘Of course, if nobody ever died, there’d be no need for insurance companies. But human life, however durable it may sometimes seem, is in fact a fragile and precarious thing. No man can ever know what hidden dangers menace his tenuous existence.’ To which your uncle retorted, ‘I’ve decided not to die, so have no worry on my account.’ Can you imagine anyone actually saying such an idiotic thing?”
“How extremely silly! One dies even if one decides not to. Why, I myself was absolutely determined to pass my exams, but, in fact, I failed.”
“The insurance man said the same thing. ‘Life,’ he said, ‘can’t be controlled. If people could prolong their lives by strength of resolution, nobody anywhere would ever leave this earth.’”
“The insurance man makes sense to me.”
“I certainly agree. But your uncle cannot see it. He swears he’ll never die. ‘I’ve made a vow,’ he told that salesman with all the pride of a nincompoop, ‘never, never to die.’”
“How very odd.”
“Of course he’s odd, very odd indeed. He looks entirely unconcerned as he announces that, rather than paying premiums for insurance, he prefers to hold his savings in a bank.”
“Has he got any savings?”
“Of course not. He just doesn’t give a damn what happens after his death.”
“That’s very worrisome for you. I wonder what makes him so peculiar. There’s no one like him among his friends who come here, is there?”
“Of course there’s not. He’s unique.”
“You should ask someone like Suzuki to give him a talking-to. If only he were as mild and manageable as Suzuki, he would be so much easier to cope with.”
“I understand what you mean, but Mr. Suzuki is not well thought of in this house.”
“Everything here seems upside-down. Well, if that’s no good, what about that other person, that person of such singular self-possession?”
“Singleman Kidd?”
“Yes, him.”
“Your uncle recognizes Singleman’s superiority, but only yesterday we had Waverhouse around here with some dreadful tales to tell of Singleman’s behavior and past history. In the circumstances, I don’t think Singleman could be much help.”
“But surely he could do it. He’s so generously self-possessed, such a winning personality. The other day he gave a lecture at my school.”
“Singleman did?”
“Yes.”
“Does he teach at your school?”
“No, he’s not one of our teachers, but we invited him to give a lecture to our Women’s Society for the Protection of Female Virtue.”
“Was it interesting?”
“Well, not all that interesting. But he has such a long face and he sports such a spiritual goatee, so everyone who hears him is naturally much impressed.”
“What sort of things did he talk about?” Mrs. Sneaze had barely finished her sentence when the three children, presumably drawn by the sound of Yukie’s voice, came bursting noisily across the veranda and into the living room. I imagine they had been playing outside in the open space just beyond the bamboo fence.
“Hurray, it’s Yukie,” shouted the two elder girls with boisterous pleasure.
“Don’t get so excited, children,” said Mrs. Sneaze. “Come and sit down quietly. Yukie is going to tell us an interesting story.” So saying, she shoved her sewing things away into a corner of the room.
“A story from Yukie?” says the eldest. “Oh, I do love stories.”
“Will you be telling us again that tale of Click-Clack Mountain?” asks the second daughter.
“Baby-dear a story!” shouts the baby as she rams her knee forward between her squatting sisters. This does not mean that she wants to listen to a story. On the contrary, it means she wants to tell one.
“What! Baby-dear’s story yet again!” scream her laughing sisters.
“Baby-dear, you shall tell us your story afterward,” says Mrs. Sneaze cajolingly, “after Yukie has finished.”
But Baby-dear is in no mood for sops or compromises. “No,” she bellows, “now!” And to establish that she’s totally in earnest, she adds her gnomic warning of a tantrum. “Babu,” she thundered.
“All right, all right. Baby-dear shall start,” says Yukie placatingly.
“What’s your story called?”
“‘Bo-tan, Bo-tan, where you going?’”
“Very good, and what next?”
“I go rice field, I cut rice”
“Aren’t you a clever one!”
“If you tum there, rice go rotten”
“Hey, it’s not ‘tum there,’ it’s ‘if you come there.’” One of the girls butts in with a correction. The baby responds with her threatening roar of “Babu,” and her interrupting sister immediately subsides. But the interruption has broken the baby’s train of remembrance so that, stuck for words, she sits there in a glowering silence.