TO
H. W. J.
FOREWORD
FROM THE ALHAMBRA TO KYOTO
It was spring and it was Spain. Sunset brought the white-haired custodian of the Court of the Lions to the balcony overhanging my fountain. His blue coat bespoke officialdom but his Andalusian lisp veiled this suggestion of compulsion. His wishes for my evening’s happiness, nevertheless, were to be interpreted as a request for my going. The Alhambra had to be locked up for the night.
I was lying outstretched on the stones of Lindaroxa’s Court with my head against a pillar. The last light of the April sun had scaled the walls and was losing itself among the top-most bobbing oranges of Lindaroxa’s tree. To dream there must be to have one’s dreams come true, some inheritance from Moorish alchemy.
Despite the setting, I was dreaming nothing of the Alhambra, not even of Lindaroxa. I was thinking of a friend of irresponsible imagination but of otherwise responsibility. I was wondering where he could be. On the previous summer we had walked the highroads of England and I had found him a most satisfying disputatious companion of enquiring mind. We had talked somewhat of a similar wandering in Japan, a vagabondage free from cicerones and away from the show places, but although we had treated this variety of imagining with due respect, we had never an idea of transmuting it into action.
The Alhambra had to be locked up for the night. The custodian bowed low, and I bowed low, in unhurried obligation to dignity, and I walked away to my inn. There I found a cablegram from America. It read:
“Can meet you Kyoto June two months’ walking.”