"Olaf Stapledon - Collected Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stapledon Olaf)

landing I encountered our Japanese guests. He was a slim middle-aged figure in brocade of decent grey.
She, much younger, was slight, trousered in deep blue shantung, and vested in crimson. The light was
behind her, and I saw almost nothing of her face.

I bowed deeply and began to speak in Japanese. It was rather terrifying to watch the appropriate
thoughts emerge in my mind and embody themselves fluently in a language of which I supposed myself to
be completely ignorant. "I hope, sir, that you had a successful morning, and that you will not have to leave
us again today. We should like to take you to call on some friends who long to meet you." The couple
returned my salute, I thought, rather sadly. I was soon to discover that they had reason for gloom.

"Alas," he said, "our experience this morning suggests that we had better not appear in public more than
we can help. Since the crisis, your countrymen do not like the Yellows. If you still permit, we will stay
with you till my business is done and our ship sails; but for your sakes and our own, it is better that we
should not risk further trouble." I was about to protest, but he raised his hand, smiled, and ushered his
wife downstairs.

After washing in the tiled and chromium-plated bathroom (the taps screwed the wrong way), I hurried
into our bedroom to brush my hair. It was a relief to find that the mirror still showed my familiar face; but
whether through the refreshment of the bathe or owing to more enduring causes, I appeared rather
healthier and more prosperous than was customary in my other world.

On the dressing table was a newspaper. The bulk of it was written in English, but a few columns and a
few advertisements were in Japanese. I vaguely remembered reading it in bed over an early cup of tea. It
was called, I think, The Sunday Watchman. I opened it, and discovered on the main page, in huge
headlines, "Ultimatum to the Yellow Peoples. Hands off Europe. Britain will defend her allies."

Betty's clear voice bade me hurry, and not be so "special" over my toilet.

When I arrived downstairs, she was explaining to the guests, in her serviceable but rather inaccurate
Japanese, that she had again taken them at their word, and ordered a typical English meal for them.
"Although," she said, with the faintest emphasis, "we ourselves are now more used to Eastern diet."

It fell to me to carve the roast beef of old England and at the same time to make conversation in
Japanese. To judge by the ease with which I combined these actions, both must have been familiar.

Yet every moment of my experience was completely novel and fantastic. With curiosity and yet familiarity
my eyes roamed about the room. The dinner service was of China, in both senses. To be in keeping with
the affectedly native meal it should have been of pewter or wood. With some amusement I noted our
elegant little thin-stemmed, flat-bowled sake cups, of silver, gold-inlaid. These I had bought in Nagasaki
on my last visit to the East. Evidently my wife had been unable to resist the temptation of displaying them,
though they were quite incongruous in a sample English meal. The furniture was vaguely Tudor, so to
speak. On the walls hung painted silks which I knew to be Chinese and Japanese, though some of them
were confusingly reminiscent of modernist European art in my other world. I regarded with special pride
and affection a tall silken panel on which was very delicately and abstractly suggested a slender waterfall
surrounded by autumnal trees. Wreaths of mist or spray veiled the further foliage. Above, and more
remote, domes of forest, receding, one behind the other, loomed ghostly through clouds. "Forest on
forest hung about his head," I murmured to myself, and wondered whether in my new, strange world
Keats had any footing. This much prized panel, this silken forest of copper and gold and pearl grey, I had
bought from an artist in Tokyo.