Rituals (18 page)

Someone had to break the spell. Gently he touched Philip Taads's arm.

"Come on, let's go inside," he said.

Taads did not look up, but allowed himself to be escorted in.

"Well, Mr Taads," said Riezenkamp. "I did not exaggerate, did I?"

"I should like to hold it."

The art dealer's large body bent over towards the display case, and with an infinitely careful movement he lifted the bowl out.

"Here we are. I'll put it down on this table. The light is best here."

When the bowl stood on the table, Taads came a step closer. Inni waited for him to take it into his hands, but that moment was still a long way off. He stared, muttered something, and walked around the table so that the others had to move aside. He looked, Inni thought, at the same time like a hunter and a hunted animal. At last his hand reached out. One finger moved very lightly over the surface and then, again slowly, as though it were sacrilege, slid inside the bowl. No one spoke. Then Philip Taads suddenly picked up the bowl with both hands and raised it high as if in consecration. He brought the base close to his eyes and opened his mouth as if to say something, but remained silent. Gently he put the bowl down again.

"Well?" asked Riezenkamp.

"Raku IX, I think."

"Why?"

"Because it is fairly light," said Taads. "But of course I am not telling you anything new. It is not one of his masterpieces, for as far as I know those are all black. And the stamp is round, so maybe it is one of the two hundred chawan he made on the death of the first Raku, Chojiro."

He looked at Riezenkamp, who nodded imperceptibly.

"Chojiro," Taads continued, but now addressing himself more to Inni, "learnt his art from Rikyu, the greatest tea master of all times. Look, here, the colour of a bowl was intended to bring out that strange green of Japanese tea. And there are also rules about the shape, all of which were drawn up by Rikyu, how the bowl should feel when you hold it, its balance, the way it feels to the lips" — he lifted it briefly to his mouth like someone trying on a pair of shoes — "and of course the temperature. The tea must not feel too hot or too cold to your hand when you hold it, but exactly as you would like to drink it. Have I passed the exam?" he suddenly added.

"Everything you say about its origins I have here," said Riezenkamp, waving an envelope. "You ought to set up as an art dealer. You are better qualified than I."

Taads did not answer. He closed his slender hands around the bowl.

"I want it," he said.

Inni realized that money would now have to be discussed, and he turned away. Taads and Riezenkamp disappeared into the little office. It did not take long. When they reemerged, Taads's face wore an empty, lost expression. He has got what he wants, thought Inni, who knew from experience that this is not always pleasant. Taads started wrapping the bowl in very thin paper he had brought out of the office. He did not speak.

"I've chilled a bottle of champagne for this memorable occasion, Mr Taads," said Riezenkamp.

"That is most kind of you, Mr Riezenkamp, but I am afraid it would be wasted on me. It would give me great pleasure, though, if you two drank it together. I will send you an invitation soon to come and drink from this bowl. I hope you will both come." He solemnly shook hands with them, even making something of a bow, and left.

From the window they watched him go, an Indonesian walking down the street with a box.

"There he goes with his baby," said Riezenkamp. "Do you know, it doesn't make me feel at all happy. For years he has been coming here, and now that it has happened, so quickly, so dryly really, I don't like it. I suppose it is my upbringing, but I feel just like Judas."

"Judas?"

"Forget it, it's stupid nonsense. But I shall miss him."

"I expect he'll drop in from time to time."

"No, I don't think he will. There was just one thing he wanted all these years, and now he has got it. Now he has nothing more to want. Not from me at any rate."

"Talking of Judas . .. what did that bowl cost?"

"A figure with four noughts. He must have saved up for it all his life, as a manner of speaking. And he actually had it in cash!"

"The exact amount? But he hadn't seen the bowl yet, had he?"

"I don't know if he had any more on him, but he paid what I asked for."

Four noughts, reflected Inni. That could be anything from ten thousand to ninety thousand. But if Riezenkamp did not want to tell him, he was not going to ask. There was sure to be someone who knew what that bowl had fetched at Drouot's, and the rest was easy to calculate. That then was the Judas element.

"I wouldn't say no to a glass of champagne," he said.

"I wonder", said Riezenkamp once he had poured out the first glass, "when he will invite us to a tea ceremony. Have you ever been to one?"

Inni shook his head.

"It is not very difficult," said the art dealer, "as long as you remember what it means to the Japanese. Of course, it is highly ritualized."

"And very tiring. You have to sit on your knees the whole time, don't you?"

"There comes a moment when you don't feel that any more. But of course it is ridiculous for a Westerner to do it. For that reason I hope this cup, or rather this bowl, will pass us by. Because you can be sure he has got it all worked out exactly, our solitary friend."

Inni was thinking of Taads, who had now retreated to his mountain with his bowl, and he tried to think something connected with this, but he did not know what.

*       *

The invitation came a few weeks later. A brief note informed Inni and Riezenkamp that they were invited and that, unless he heard to the contrary, Taads would expect them one Saturday in November, a dreadful day of storm and hail, as it turned out. But even Nature herself seemed to have no power over Philip Taads's domain, for the silence in his attic more than compensated for the tugging of the wind at the windows. A change had taken place in the room. Subtle shifts had occurred which, if you looked carefully, had made the space asymmetrical. The kakemono with the flowers had gone, but instead of the painted ones there were now real flowers, one dark purple and one gold-coloured chrysanthemum, the colours of Advent and autumn. The book with the portrait of Kawabata had gone, too. The area where the ceremony was to take place was not in the centre of the room but somewhere to the right, in a corner where a bronze kettle of water was steaming over a small spirit stove. Where the kakemono had been, there now hung a smaller scroll with calligraphic characters. They reminded Inni of a fast skier, drawn in mid-movement as he came down a snow-clad slope at full speed.

Taads, who had left the door ajar, was still behind his screens. Riezenkamp took a close look at the calligraphy and then knelt down on the mat in front of a primus stove, on one of two minuscule cushions that had been put ready there. He beckoned to Inni to do likewise.

"This is not going to be funny," said Inni. "How long are we supposed to sit like this?"

But the art dealer gave no reply. He had closed his eyes. Oh, if anyone could have seen them now! Riezenkamp was wearing a suit of anthracite-coloured flannel. His large hands lay spread out flat on his thighs, causing his cuffs to stick out. These were fastened with two fairly large gold art nouveau cuff links in which the deep blue glow of lapis lazuli was caught. The same colour recurred in his silk tie and contrasted almost savagely with the pale pink of his shirt. Jermyn Street, Inni estimated. And shoes from Agee's. There were lots of auctions in London, that was a fact. He himself had taken the precaution of wearing fairly loose corduroy trousers with a beige cashmere turtle-neck pullover from the Burlington Arcade. Two Englishmen in Japan, waiting for things to come. Kneeling! How often had he done that before? On hard benches, on cold freestone altar steps, on marble, on gold cushions, in front of his bed in his school dormitory, in the dark hole of a confessional, for punishment in a corner of the refectory while all the others were eating, before the Holy Virgin, before the Sacred Heart, before the Most Sacred Sacrament, by baptismal fonts, and by coffins, always in that same doubled-up posture, that unnatural fold in the body which was supposed to express humility and respect. He looked around the room. Where else could this be seen, two middle-aged men kneeling together by a burning flame in an Amsterdam attic beleaguered by the winter wind?

Taads entered, or rather, he emerged from behind one of his shadowy screens. He was wearing a short kimono today — a bit like the one the Nobel Prize winner had worn in the vanished book — over a long rust-coloured robe, chasuble over alb. He was carrying a jug that turned out to contain water. He made a small bow, and they bowed back. He disappeared and reappeared, this time carrying a tall, round, black-lacquered box. Fine gold threads shimmered through the glossy black. Then there came, in succession, a tray of small biscuits; the autumn-fiery raku bowl; a long, narrow wooden object, very soberly cut out of bamboo with a small curvature as though of a very long finger, only the tip was bent; a kind of shaving brush made of open-worked, exceedingly fine reed or bamboo; and finally a broad, somewhat rustic bowl and a wooden cup with a long handle. Taads placed all these things around him, doubtlessly in predetermined positions. All his movements were like those of a slow dancer, and very precise. The silence remained near total — a rustling of cloth, the hiss of boiling water, the blowing of the wind. Yet the silence was so all-powerful that it seemed as though these objects, of whose function Inni was ignorant, took an active part in it and were themselves deliberately silent while at the same time expressing, by means of their perfect forms, that it was an intentional silence. Inni looked at Riezenkamp, but he made no response. He sat perfectly motionless, his eyes fixed on Taads's lean, slow-moving figure opposite.

With a silk napkin Philip Taads lightly wiped first the bamboo stick, which was hollow at its curved end, and then the long-handled cup. He shifted the lid slightly from the heavy bronze kettle, and scooped out some water which he put into the raku bowl in which he then washed the bamboo brush, or whisk, or whatever it was. Then he slowly poured the water into the wide, rougher bowl and wiped the raku bowl with a simple cotton cloth. Inni noticed that he picked up, turned, and put back each object in a special way, but how and why he was unable to say, because despite the slowness of the movements, it all seemed to be done very quickly, as if it were one, long flowing action, a long, curving course of ritual obstacles whereby the hands sometimes assumed positions like those in a Balinese dance, or at any rate like different, non-European hands. Twice the long, thin stick was dipped inside the lacquered box. Inni saw a shadow of green tea powder rain down into the ginger fire of the raku bowl. Then Taads poured boiling water from the deep wooden spoon into the bowl, once, and stirred the mixture with rapid, brusque whisks of the brush. Perhaps you should not call it stirring, since it was more of a soft and yet vehement beating. In the bottom of the bowl, which now seemed to be verging towards red, a frothy pale green lake appeared. For a moment all movement stopped. More silent than it was now, it could not become. And yet it seemed as though the silence grew more dense and they were being immersed in an element of a more dangerous, more solid intensity.

Then, with a strange flick of his right hand, Taads rotated the bowl slightly while it rested in his left hand, pushed it towards Riezenkamp, and bowed. Riezenkamp bowed also. Inni held his breath. Riezenkamp then rotated the bowl twice (Twice? More times? He would never know, any more than he would be able to disentangle the threads of this whole knot of pregnant actions), lifted it to his mouth, drank twice, then a third time, while making a slight slurping sound. He then examined the bowl attentively from all sides, without holding it too high, turned it while it rested in his left hand, again with that strange circular flick, back to an existing or imaginary position, and pushed it across the mat to the host.

How often, thought Inni, had he poured the cruet of water into a golden chalice, whereupon the priest, with a quick twist of the hand, would let the blood, diluted with water, swirl around for a moment and would then drain the chalice in one flowing, sucking draught? It was the same here at this last supper. Fresh water from the kettle, the bowl was rinsed, the same actions, the same bow, and now it was Inni who held the flaming, fragile shape in his hands. He drank with closed eyes, and again, until at the third sip he opened his eyes and sucked the last green drops out of that dusky red, closed abyss.
Do this in remembrance of Me.
Like Riezenkamp, he examined the bowl from all sides as if trying to burn its shape forever into the soul. He rotated it in what he thought was the right direction and pushed it back to Taads, almost hurriedly, as if that would avert the danger. As he did so, he saw that Taads's eyes were fixed on him, but whether they saw him he could not tell. The whole face shone with an unapproachable rapture, as if this Taads was in an even remoter and stranger place than that in which his guests were kneeling.

They bowed. Taads stood up, as usual in one long drawn-out movement, and took away the spoon, the lid of the kettle, and the rinsing bowl. He returned to fetch the lacquered box and the bowl, and finally the water. Riezenkamp also rose, and Inni followed suit, with some difficulty because of pins and needles in his feet. He suddenly felt dizzy. Taads came towards them and, as it were, forced them in the direction of the door.

"Thank you, Mr Taads, that was most remarkable," said Riezenkamp. Taads bowed but did not reply. A smile had appeared on his face, strange and distant, seeming to accentuate the oriental in his face. He can no longer speak Dutch, thought Inni. Or he doesn't want to. No one spoke another word. Taads bowed once more, a farewell. They bowed back. The door closed behind them, softly and decisively.

*       *

In silence, like two thieves after a major burglary, the two men descended the endless stairs. Outside, the wind was waiting for them with a blow of hail on the jaw. Mouths closed, they walked through the storm to Riezenkamp's shop. The art dealer left the
CLOSED
sign hanging in the door, drew the curtains, and poured out two large malt whiskys — smoke and hazelnut.