Rituals (19 page)

"One day," he said, and his voice sounded as tired as Inni felt, "I will tell you all about the tea ceremony. All those things have a history and a meaning of their own. You can study them for years." He made a vague gesture to a cupboard behind him in which rows of books shimmered behind glass.

Inni shook his head. "Not just now, thank you. I have seen enough of it for a while."

They drank. Outside, the gale whined in the bare branches, and the hail beat holes in the tomb-black water of the canal.

"That was a Requiem Mass for three men," said Inni.

Riezenkamp looked up and said, "Perhaps I ought not to have sold him that bowl."

"Nonsense." Inni shrugged his shoulders. An immense sadness had come over him. Because of the two Taadses, because of fate, which goes its own way, because of the lost years, and because of the impossibility of the world. He looked at his watch. Half past two.

"I'll go and see what the market has been up to today," he said.

Riezenkamp laughed. "I can tell you that with my eyes shut," and his hand made a slow, downward-sliding movement.
"Sauve qui peut"
he said.

Sauve my hat, thought Inni, and said good-bye.

*       *

In the days that followed, Inni felt an inclination at times to go and visit Taads, but their leave-taking had been too final for that. Three weeks later he received a phone call, and rang Riezenkamp at once.

"I've just had a call from Taads's landlady. She said she had not seen him for several days, but that was not unusual because he always did creep in and out — those were her words."

"Well?"

"But now she has received a letter from him saying she should phone me."

"To tell you what?"

"It didn't say anything else. She was to phone me. She asked me if I would come."

"To do what?"

I'll give you three guesses, thought Inni, but he did not say it. He heard a deep sigh at the other end of the line.

"Are you going?" asked Riezenkamp.

"Yes, I am setting off now. Are you coming?"

"Of course." Clever, how someone could express the self-assurance of a whole class in two syllables.

They met outside Taads's door and rang the landlady's bell. She gave Riezenkamp the key.

"I'm not going up," she said, "I don't trust it a bit."

If Riezenkamp felt anything at all, he did not show it. He turned the key resolutely in the lock and opened the door. The room was empty, the screens had been rolled up, there was no one to be seen. But in the middle of the floor, broken into a hundred pieces, there lay what could only be the raku bowl, smashed with great force. On the gleaming, gold-coloured mat the fragments lay scattered like bits of congealed and withered blood.

"We shall find nothing more here," said Riezenkamp, and closed the door softly.

*       *

A few days after they had reported the disappearance of Philip Taads, they were called by the police in IJmuiden to identify a body that answered the description they had given. For a moment they gazed in silence at the blue monster on the white sheet. They said, yes, that is Philip Taads.

This time it was not a frozen but a drowned man who was cremated. Bernard Roozenboom had gone with Inni and Riezenkamp, although no one quite knew why.

"Let's say that I was responsible, in part at least, by sending you to Riezenkamp. If I understood it properly, our tea-ist would have done this anyway, but at least you wouldn't have had anything to do with it."

The cremation took place in a dismal neighbourhood on the outskirts of Amsterdam, where none of the three men had ever been before. Bernard's Rover drove through drab, empty suburbs full of hospitals and factories.

"Not exactly the road to paradise," Bernard said.

They were the only mourners. The coffin stood under a grey cloth on a platform with four bouquets of flowers, one of them from Taads's office — asters.

"There's no minyan," muttered Bernard, and suddenly Inni remembered the only time he had seen Bernard Roozenboom downcast. That had been in Florence, years ago. They had lunched copiously at Doney's and were walking around the city at random. Suddenly they found themselves standing in front of an imposing, not very large building. "Well I never," Bernard had said, "if it isn't the synagogue," and they had gone inside. After the brilliance of the Florentine churches, its interior was of a welcome sobriety. There was one man inside, gazing forward in total silence. At exactly five o'clock, when the clock of a nearby church struck the hour, a man in full pontificals entered and sat down. "Oh, God," Inni heard Bernard say, "it is Sabbath and there is no minyan." And when Inni looked at him questioningly, he continued, "If there aren't ten adult men present, the gazzan cannot begin." It remained silent. "How long will they sit here like that?" asked Inni. "One hour," came the answer. During that hour it was as if he could see Bernard growing smaller. Two tourists entered, but left again in fright. After an hour the gazzan rose and left, and they too went outside. Bernard had never mentioned the incident since, nor had Inni, but that was because he did not know what to say. A man in a black suit came up to Riezenkamp and asked him something. Riezenkamp shook his head, no, no one wished to speak. With a click, a tape recorder started the Air from the Third Suite by Bach. The coffin had slid out of sight even before it was finished. The whole ceremony, if you could call it that, lasted five minutes. Then the world had settled its accounts with Philip Taads. When they came out into the open air, the dead man descended in the form of grey, damp snow on the shoulders of their overcoats. The only thing missing was a dove.

*       *

That night Inni dreamed of the two Taadses. The first one frozen, the second drowned — that was how they appeared at his bedroom window in a mood of mad, barbaric mirth, arms flung around each other, shouting inaudibly. Inni got out of bed and went to the window, behind which there was nothing to be seen but the swaying of skeletal branches coated with a glaze of ice. So there clearly existed two worlds, one in which the Taadses were, another in which they were not, and Inni was glad to be still in the latter.

On the day destined for his self-immolation, Rikyu invites his chief disciples to a last tea ceremony. One by one they advance and take their places. In the tokonoma hangs a kakemono, a wonderful writing by an ancient monk dealing with the evanescence of all earthly things. The singing kettle, as it boils over the brazier, sounds like some cicada pouring forth his woes to departing summer. Soon the host enters the room. Each in turn is served with tea, and each in turn silently drains his cup. According to established etiquette, the chief guest now asks permission to examine the tea equipage. Rikyu places the various articles before them with the kakemono. After all have expressed admiration of their beauty, Rikyu presents each of them to the assembled company as a souvenir. The bowl alone he keeps. "Never again shall this cup, polluted by the lips of misfortune, be used by man." He speaks, and breaks the vessel into fragments.

OKAKURO KAKUZO

The Book of Tea