And deaf to music.
Edward could hardly believe in his own existence when he found himself approaching China.
Japan had been nothing. A country packed with color and little hills but empty of importance, being empty of Emily. All in vain the veil of Fujiyama floated over Yokohama; all in vain little pearl-like clouds were strung round the shoulders of Fujiyama in the indefinite sun. Edward only thought it was very like its pictures.
When he rode in a little light ricksha through the centreless streets of Yokohama, he thought, “This is Edward Williams doing the things that Sunday school children at home see on lantern slides. But Our Hero remains detached, as in a dream.” He was glad to feel detached, to feel that, unlike the other passengers on the ship, he was not “doing the Orient.” He was looking for Emily.
Afterwards he remembered more of Japan than he had realised at the time. He had been inconsistent enough to imitate the majority of the passengers and go by train to Kobe. He had even been chosen as escort by a stout, lonely lady passenger. “Women were more and more interested in Our Hero as he grew older and sadder. Women adore an atmosphere of tragedy.” It was true that Edward had scarcely been able to hear anything that the lonely lady said. It must therefore have been his “mystic air of remoteness” that had interested her. Or perhaps it was just that he was a man. Together they had spoiled for themselves the enchantment of the Kamikura Buddha by climbing coarsely up the steps inside him. Together, in a hired Ford car, they roared through the faery streets of Kyoto in broad daylight without pausing to hear the clicking pattens in the crowded quiet streets. They did not wait to see the crouching lion outlines of the temples against the multiplying stars of an evening sky. All the flowers of Japan passed Edward by. “I am no botanist,” he said proudly.
Japan haunted him afterwards like a ghost. Afterwards he knew that he had shut his eyes. Afterwards he knew that he had nothing to remember, nothing but little sharp negligible details that had pricked his idle mind—the white crests printed on the backs of the blue-clad coolies—the paint on the women’s faces—the way the women’s toes turned in—the greasiness of the women’s hair—the deformed look of the women’s backs in the evening when they put on outer kimonos over their broad thick obi sashes—the angry officious voices of the policemen—the similarity of the Tokyo railway to the London Underground....
After rejoining the ship at Kobe he had defiantly read cheap books all through the Inland Sea. At Nagasaki he did not land. “I’m not a tourist—I’m here on business,” he told a little fat bald American business man, who had not asked him whether he were a tourist or not.
Manila Edward ignored. He only saw one thing belonging to Manila, a small Filipino woman with gauze sleeves and ruffles starched as though she were an Elizabethan, who came on board with her husband, a little man, the upper part of whose body was sensibly clothed in a garment of such transparency that no single crease or roll of brown fat over his ribs and stomach was hidden.
And here was Hongkong.
Edward woke up. He was alive to the bland blue outlines of the Peak against the sky. Every scarlet and gold flutter of the paper prayers on the importunate sampans that raced for the liner was a message from Emily to Edward.