Anthony The Absolute

At Sea – March 28th

THIS evening I told Sir Robert What’s-His-Name he was a fool.

I was quite right in this. He is.

Every evening since the ship left Vancouver he has presided over the round table in the middle of the smoking-room. There he sips his coffee and liqueur, and holds forth on every subject known to the mind of man. Each subject is his subject. He is an elderly person, with a bad face and a drooping left eyelid. He wears a monocle; and carries his handkerchief in his left sleeve.

They tell me that he is in the British Service – a judge somewhere down in Malaysia, where they drink more than is good for them. I believe it. He tosses about his obiter dicta as if he were pope of the human intellect. A garrulous pope. Surely the mind of a judge, when exposed, is a dreadful thing!

Go where I will, of an evening, there is no peace for me. In the “social hall” some ungoverned young thing is eternally at the piano – “On the Mississippi” and “The Robert E. Lee” and the other musical literature of the turkey trot. I could not possibly sit five minutes there without shrieking. Outside, on deck, it has been raw and chill for a week, with rain penetrating my clothing and misting the lenses of my spectacles and rousing my slumbering rheumatism. And you can not sit long in a stuffy cabin, with the port screwed fast; it is unpleasant enough sleeping there… So I have huddled myself each night in a corner of the smoking-room. I have played at dominoes. I have played at solitaire with cards. And I loathe games! But anything is a relief that will divert my mind, even for an instant now and then, from thoughts of that loose, throaty voice, and of the truly awful mind that animates it.

Few of the passengers ever give me more than a nod; for I am not what is called a “mixer.” Except the Port Watch. He has looked confidingly at me twice over his siphon. But I have not encouraged him, for he has an over-intense eye and the flush of drink is on his cheek. Every day, hours on end, he paces the deck; hence his nickname. He is, like myself, a lonely man; and a little wild – distinctly a little wild.

Sir Robert outdid himself this evening. No man could possibly know so much. I have made a list (not complete, of course) of the subjects on which he speaks with dogmatic authority – very positive, very technical, with a glib use of catch phrases, with emphasis always on the peculiarly significant point in the matter. The list runs:

Aëronautics; the American temperament as affected by immigration; archery; art; ballistics; dog-breeding; engineering (civil and military); ethnology; folk-lore of all nations; geology; horticulture; inferiority of Latin peoples (particularly the French); laces and embroideries; modern accounting; navigation (which he explained last night in detail to the Chief Officer, a silent person); psychology (all branches); Roman law; rugs (and textiles generally); Weltpolitik; wireless telegraphy; and, at all times and places, the glory of England and the superiority of English blood.

This evening he was dismissing, with a torrent of apparently precise ethnological and historical data, the recent Japanese pretension to Aryan origin – doubtless for the benefit of that little Japanese commercial agent with bad teeth who sat in the corner opposite me working out problems on a go-board. The usual group of weak-minded persons were sitting about Sir Robert’s table, listening with the usual awe.

Now, I rather like that Japanese. Only this morning he was so kind as to sing several examples of the folk-song of his country into my phonograph. Five records he gave me, so that my work is begun even before we land. Excellent specimens, two of them, of the Oriental tone sense, with observably different intervals for the ascending and descending scales.

He exhibited no sign that Sir Robert’s talk annoyed him; quietly went on placing the little black and white shells on the board. (It is interesting to note, at this point, that the Japanese handle small objects with the first three fingers only, without employing the thumb as we do.) But I felt myself becoming angry. My forehead grew hot and flushed, as it always does when I am stirred. I tried to calm myself by constructing a house of dominoes; but the pitching of the ship overturned it.

Still that throaty voice. “Thank God,” I thought, “in another day we shall be at Yokohama!”

I tried to read a four-weeks-old copy of the Illustrated London News. No use; the voice held me.

It occurred to me, as an exercise in self-control, to interest myself in speculating on the emotions and the characteristics back of the faces here in the smoking-room. I achieved some success at this exercise. Why, when you come to think of it, should each particular unit in this haphazard assemblage of men and women be journeying away off here to the other side of the earth? There are surely dramas in our little company. The two middle-aged ladies with the firm chins, for instance, who dress so quietly and speak so discreetly – it is whispered among the men that they are high and prosperous in a sad business on Soo-chow Road, Shanghai. And the young German adventurer with the scars across his nose, who borrowed fifteen dollars from me, to be repaid when we land at Yokohama – if he approaches me again I shall refuse him firmly. And the fat vaudeville manager from Cincinnati, who plays fan-tan every night with a heap of Chinese brass cash and a bowl borrowed from the ship’s dining-room!

As I mused, I felt the Port Watch gazing at me again over his siphon. I believe he would pour out his story, were I to permit it. But I do not choose to hear. After all, I am not a romancer, but a scientific man. My concern is not with the curious and personal tangle of human affairs, but with impersonal fact and sober deductions therefrom.

Sir Robert was now defining culture as the touchstone of civilization – from the British point of view, of course. God, that voice! And then, without a thought in my head as to where the talk was leading – suddenly – he plumped squarely down on my subject. It was the first time in the twelve days of our voyage. Until this moment, the tribal god referred to in his national anthem had spared him. My subject! The one thing I know more about than any other human being. I had him.

“The surest test of the culture of a people,” said he, ex cathedra, “is the music of that people. Primitive races invariably express their emotions in primitive music. They try to tell me that the Chinese are a civilized people. ‘Very well,’ I say then; ‘let me hear their music.’ No nation has progressed far along the great highroad of civilization without coming into an understanding of the diatonic system. The Chinese civilized? When their finest musical instrument is the little sheng, a crude collection of twelve pipes that are not even in tune? When they have failed to arrive at even a rudimentary perception of tonality and scale relationships? No; I tell you, the Chinese civilization is to the European as the little sheng is to the grand piano. The piano, on which all scales are related, all harmomes possible, is the supreme artistic achievement of the highest civilization.”

This was enough. I got right up and went over to the round table. My forehead was burning; I must have been red as fire.

“You do not know what you are talking about,” I cried out. I had to lean over the shoulder of one of the weak-minded in order to catch Sir Robert’s eye. “It is the piano that has killed music in Europe! The piano is a lie from end to end of the keyboard. Bach confirmed that lie with his miserable triumph of the well-tempered clavichord. And in finally fastening his false scale upon us he destroyed in us the fine ear for true intervals that is to-day found only in your primitive peoples. The Chinese have it. The Javanese have it. The Siamese, most wonderful of all, have a true isotonic scale. But we of the cultured West (I put a wonderful sneering emphasis on that word) can not even hear true fluid music to-day, because our tone perception goes no farther than the barbarous mechanical compromise of the piano keyboard. You do not know what you are talking about. You are a fool!”

When I am excited my voice rises and becomes shrill. I talked rapidly, so that no one could interrupt. And the weak-minded ones sank back in their chairs. They were actually afraid, I think now. In fact, when I paused the whole smoking-room was still as death.

I swept my eye about – commandingly, I think. The fat vaudeville man – he sat behind Sir Robert – was grinning at me with delight in his eyes, and was softly clapping his hands behind the fan-tan bowl. The Port Watch with red face and suddenly twinkling eyes, had clapped his hand over his mouth as if to smother an outright laugh. Sir Robert was looking up at me, his left eyelid drooping, a sort of perplexed uncertainty on his face – his old face that was all lines and wrinkles.

Now that I had the floor, it seemed worth while to make a thorough job of it, so I swept on:

“You make the piano the test of civilization. Greece had a civilization – where were the pianos of Greece? Oh, I am tired of your talk. I have listened to you for twelve long days and nights. I have suspected your accuracy, but I could not be sure, for you luckily avoided my subject. But now I have you! And I know you for a fraud on all subjects! I see confusion in your face. You are groping for something to say about the music of Greece. Very well; I will say it for you. The Greeks had no piano, because they had no harmony. They did not know that harmony was possible. And if they had heard it, they would not have liked it.”

“Ah,” cried Sir Robert, flushing under the parchment of his skin, and (I must say) taking up the gage of battle, “but Greece gave us our diatonic system. The root of our scale, the tetrachord, came to us from the Greeks.”

I laughed him down. The intervals of that Greek tetrachord were not the same as ours. They used intervals that actually can not be written in our notation – three quarter tones, one and a quarter tones. Pythagoras states, ‘The intervals in music are rather to be judged intellectually through numbers than sensibly through the ear.’ For they followed the acoustic laws, like the Chinese! The fragments we have of the worship of Apollo are more nearly like the ancient Confucian hymn than like anything known in modern music. “Tell me, sir, did you know that? And tell me this – does not the quality you call ‘culture’ imply that we should seek sympathetically for the standpoint of other minds? Has it never occurred to you that when Oriental music sounds absurd and out of key to you, it is your own ear that is at fault – that the intervals are too fine and true for your false, piano-trained sense? For such is the fact.”

I was shaking my finger under his nose, so closely that he had to lean back.

“And I will tell you,” I added, standing right over him, “that the Chinese sheng has seventeen pipes, not twelve.”

“Ah,” he broke in, “but the other pipes are mute.”

“Two are mute,” I replied triumphantly. “And two are duplicates of others. The correct number of speaking pipes is fifteen.”

His eyes were kindling now. “See here!” he cried. “Who and what are you?”

“I am a banker!” I shouted – the first thing that came to my tongue. Then I turned and walked straight out on deck. It was precisely the moment for leaving; even the weak-minded could see that their oracle was tripped. Besides, I had to be alone. For I was breaking into a profuse sweat. The drops were running down my forehead into my eyes and clouding my spectacles; I had to take them off and carry them in my hand.

My under lip was quivering so that my teeth chattered. And my heart was palpitating, and skipping beats.

It was wet and wild and dark out there on deck; but in my intense moods I like the rough, elemental thing.

I stood right up to the storm, clinging to the weather-rail. The ship rolled away down, then away up, until I could see only the dim, scurrying clouds. The rain beat into my face. I felt happy, in a way.

A hand came down on my shoulder. I sprang away, and turned. I dislike exceedingly to have any one lay hands on me.

It was the Port Watch. He had put on a long raincoat, and a cap that was pulled low on his forehead. Under it I could see his eyes shining in a nervous, excited way. He certainly is a wild man, if there ever was one. But then I saw that he was grinning at me, and felt relieved.

“You sure did hand it to the old cock,” he said, shouting against the storm. “It was great. I don’t know a dam’ thing about music. But I know when a bluff is called. He’s gone below.”

“Well,” said I, for there was no need of being uncivil to the man, “I got sick of his voice. And then, he was wrong.”

“Any one could see that,” chuckled the Port Watch.

We walked around together to the lee side of the ship, so that he could light a cigar. And while I did not like his taking my arm, still he seems to be a decent fellow enough, after all. We exchanged cards. He is connected with a Stock Exchange house in New York. He is a big, vigorous man, surely not past his middle thirties. I rather envy him his strength, I am so thin and frail myself. He is one of those who know nothing of what we weaker ones go through who have to husband our energies. A rather primitive person, I should say. He occupies one of the high-priced cabins on the promenade-deck, with a private bath. It must be pleasant to travel that way.

When we parted at the after stairway, I said: “I did n’t think I should like you. Shall I tell you why?”

“Yes,” said he.

“Because you drink too much.”

At this he stood still, his hands plunged into the pockets of his raincoat, chewing his under lip. Finally he said, with a break in his voice:

“You’re right there. I am drinking too much. But – God, if you knew!”

Then, without so much as a good night, he plunged off down the passage toward that comfortable room of his, with bath. And I went below to my stuffy cabin, where the port has been screwed fast for a week.

His name is Crocker, Archibald Crocker, Jr., son of the well-known and, truth to tell, rather infamous millionaire and manipulator of stocks. Our worlds lie wide apart, his and mine. I realized that much when he looked at my card. The name of Anthony Ives Eckhart conveyed nothing to him – the name that is known and respected by Boag and the great von Stumbostel of Berlin, by de Musseau, Ramel, and Fourmont at Taris, by Sir Frederick Rhodes of Cambridge; the name that spells anathema to that snarling charlatan, von Westfall, of Bonn.

Crocker has offered to guide me through the Yoshiwara district at Yokohama to-morrow evening. He says that the music will interest me.

I think I shall go with him. He says that every traveled white man in the world has been to “Number Nine” – that it is a legitimate, even necessary part of a man’s experience. Certainly I do not wish to appear unmanly.

My room proved intolerable, and I was still too excited to rest; so I came back to the deserted smoking-room to write up my journal.

It is very late. The steward is hovering anxiously about, yawning now and then. I may as well let the poor fellow get to his berth. God knows, he sees little enough of it.

But first I will have him fetch me a mug of their wonderful English stout. I find that this is even better than ale for inducing sleep. At least, in my own case.

Yokohama, Grand Hotel, March 20th

IT was past three o’clock to-day when the ship came to anchor and the steam tender brought us ashore. It interested me to see the rickshaws with their bare-legged coolies. By the time we had ridden along the Bund to the hotel and secured our rooms it was four o’clock. We went down to the “lounge,” Crocker and I, and had tea brought in. Or I did. He drank a whisky and Tan San. Then pretty soon he drank another.

Several couples from the ship were about, but not many of the men who were traveling alone.

“Where are they all?” I asked.

“Who?” said he.

“The men from the ship. Have they gone to other hotels?”

“Some of them – perhaps,” he replied. Then he looked away and smiled.

Sometimes, when I talk with a hard, practical man of the world, I find myself feeling vaguely out of it all. My life, devoted as it is to the discovery and classification of facts, is certainly a practical life; yet I seem to dwell aside from the main current. I do not quite catch the point of view of a rough-handed rich man like Crocker. And when I speak my mind, as I always endeavor to do, men do not resent it. I do not understand this. Come to think of it, I was decidedly outspoken last night with Sir Robert. He should have struck me; at least, he should have exhibited some anger. He would have struck Crocker, I think, in such a case – or jailed him for contempt.

We lingered nearly an hour over our tea and whisky. The experience was wholly new to me – comfortably seated in a large European hotel, with English folk and Americans all about, and yet with Japanese servants, and yellow, shrewd little Oriental faces behind the desk, and a Chinese cashier in a blue rote, and Chinese tailors pressing in on one, samples on arm, offering to make suits of clothes overnight. And out the window, floating about the glittering harbor, sampans and a great Chinese junk or two, and the fleet of fishing-boats with ribbed sails just skimming in between the breakwaters. We were the West, we and our absurdly Anglo-Saxon hotel; but all about us were hints and flavors of the eternal East.

Suddenly I realized that Crocker had been for quite a little time twisting restlessly in his armchair. I looked at him now. He was tapping the carpet softly but very rapidly with his right foot, and rubbing his chin with his hand. Crocker’s chin is of good size and shape, the sort we usually speak of as “strong.” He is a dark man, inclined to fullness in the face and figure, but still athletic in appearance. His eyes are brown. He is not at all a bad-looking fellow, when you study him out. I rather like the blend in him of vigor, and perhaps stubbornness, with frankness. I should say that apart from the abnormal experiences, whatever they may be, that have driven or drawn him to this part of the world, he is a man of will and spirit. He would fight, I think, in a pinch. When fully himself, in his own home and business environment, he must be a man’s man. He is nearly a head taller than I.

He caught me looking at him, and smiled.

“Well,” said he, “shall we go along?”

“Where?”

“On that little expedition we spoke of last night.”

“Oh!” I remembered now. “But – is n’t it – do we want to go to such a place now – in the day-time?”

He raised his eyebrows. “You old sybarite!” he chuckled, and hummed, “Et la nuit, tous les chats sont gris!” Then he added, more seriously:

“But really, Eckhart, three ships are in to-day – the Pacific Mail and the French finer besides ours – and if we wait until evening we shall have no choice at all.”

“Very well,” said I then, briskly, for I do not like to be ridiculed. “Just wait until I can get my phonograph.”

“Your what?” said he.

“My phonograph,” I repeated, with dignity. And I went upstairs for ft.

When I came down, with the heavy instrument in its case under one arm and a box of new record cylinders under the other, he was not in the lounge. I passed on out to the porch, and found him there with two rickshaws waiting. When he saw me with my heavy burdens, he began laughing in that nervous, jumpy way he has. But I ignored him, and placed the boxes carefully in my rickshaw. We were about to start when I realized that I had forgotten my record-taking horn, so I went back for it.

“Look here, old man,” said Crocker, from his rickshaw, when I reappeared, “it’s all right, of course, – I don’t mind, – but what on earth are you bringing all that junk for?”

“You were so good as to explain that I would find the music interesting,” I replied. “You surely don’t suppose that I trust my ear in this delicate research work. Why, my dear fellow, in my studies of our American Indian songs I have succeeded in recording intervals as close as the sixteenth part of a tone.”

He was still grinning. “All right,” he said; “don’t get stuffy. I’ll be good. Hop into your rickshaw.”

I did so. The coolies turned for directions. Crocker was about to give them when two of our fellow passengers, accompanied by their wives, stepped out of the hotel. Crocker waited, and we sat there, looking rather foolish, until they had passed on out of ear-shot; then he leaned forward and said in a low voice:

“Number Nine.”

“Heh!” cried the two coolies instantly, as one man, and wheeling about they ran the little vehicles out of the court and into the street.

I must admit that my first impression of the Yokohama streets was rather disappointing – that is, until we turned a corner unexpectedly and entered the Yoshiwara district. The streets were much more like England than the Japan of my fancy. Crocker tells me that Yokohama was built up as a foreign concession for purposes of trade, and therefore is really not Japanese at all. But once in the Yoshiwara quarter my nerves began to tingle; for this was a bit of Japan.

Crocker insists that it is small and tawdry compared to the Tokio Yoshiwara. Never having explored that portion of the capital, I can not say. To me it was quite enchanting. The houses were higher than is customary in Japanese cities. In color all were of the unpainted but pleasantly weathered shade of light brown that is so agreeable to the eye – very possibly they stain the wood, as we do in the case of our modern bungalows. There were little hanging balconies on the upper stories, with decorative festoons of colored paper lanterns. Through the windows and the open doorways one caught glimpses of the spring flowers and blossoms that play so great and fine a part in the esthetic life of this extraordinary people. And here and there, at a window or over a balcony railing, could be seen a face – a quaint and girlish face with glossy black hair done up fantastically high over wide shell combs and with glimpses of flowered silks about slim shoulders. The fragrance of the early cherry and plum blossoms was in the air.

The famous “Number Nine” proved to be a large house at the end of the street. The door stood invitingly open. A well-trained servant took my two boxes and the horn and carried them in. Another servant guided us upstairs.

The interior was cool and spacious. It differed in so many respects from photographs of typical Japanese house interiors that I decided it is really a foreign resort. Later inquiries this evening have confirmed this conclusion. In the actual Japanese house, the floor is elevated a foot or more and is also the seat; and in entering one passes first into a tiny hall on the street level, removes his shoes, then steps up to the floor proper. Here there was no such arrangement. We mounted steps, then walked through a broad hall that led into a central court full of flowers. The woodwork of floor and walls was of that characteristic and agreeable tan or natural shade. The rugs were simple and quiet in design and color.

Our guide led us to a stairway. The boy with my apparatus looked to me for instructions, and I motioned him to follow. Then we mounted the stairs, and passed along a broad corridor overlooking the court to an office-like room in the corner that was furnished with European tables and chairs. On the way we passed an open doorway, and I caught a passing glimpse of a dim, large room, in which the only furniture appeared to be a low platform covered with a rug of light red.

“That’s where the geisha girls dance,” Crocker whispered.

I nodded. I was looking forward with a good deal of interest to hearing the music that accompanies this performance.

In the corner room we were welcomed very civilly by a little old woman, and tea was brought us. Then she said something to Crocker in a sort of pidgin-English which I did not quite catch. He nodded eagerly.

It occurred to me, with some bitterness I am afraid, that the little old woman would never have thought of turning to me as the leading spirit – never in the world. She hardly looked at me. So I went on sipping my tea.