“Oh, please don’t stir. You can talk as you are, Sensei.”[(23)]
I thought her quite convincing and only changed my pose so far as to lie on my belly, with my chin on the ends of two arms, planted in on the tatami-mat.
“I have come to make tea for you, Sensei, thinking you must be tired of doing nothing.”
“Thank you.” I said it again. I saw, in the sea-green cake-bowl she brought, some isinglass paste “yokan.” I love yokan. Not that I am eager to eat it, but to me it appeals decidedly as an objet d’art, with its fine, smooth surface, that glistens semi-transparently as the light strikes it. Especially pleasant-looking is the one of light-green, with its lustre and its appearance of being wrought with marble and gyoku-stone. In a celadon bowl, it looks as if just born out of it. It makes me feel like putting out my hand and feeling it. No Western cake, that I know of, produces such delicious impression as the yokan. Cream is agreeably soft in colour, but there is something heavy and thick about it, while jelly with all its look of a precious stone, trembles so that it is devoid of the weightiness of the yokan. It is an insuperable abomination when it comes to a tower of flour, milk and sugar.
“Oh, very nice.”
“Gembey has just brought it back from the town. I hope it is good enough for your taste.”
Gembey must have stopped overnight in the town, I thought; but I made no answer. It made no difference to me where the thing was got or by whom. The thing being beautiful, I should be content with thinking that it is beautiful.
“This celadon bowl is exquisite in shape and superb in tint. It makes a worthy match to the yokan.”
The woman smiled a smile that betrayed a shadow of contempt playing about her mouth. It was probable that she thought I was jesting. If that is the case, my words, I must confess, fully deserved contumely. When a witless fellow tries to be jocular, he generally lands himself on a sorry exhibition of this kind.
“Is this Chinese?”