“It’s too much of a coincidence to be a mistake. Anyway, your name and address are written here. This is no mistake.” I took a stool over to sit beside him, like a little boy wanting his father’s advice and protection. I needed both. I was wounded, lost, a dog abandoned by the roadside. Titus must have noticed something, because he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I’m going to make a pot ofkabusecha, and then we can have a good talk.”
I stayed where I was, staring at Titus’s trains. Crouched under the table where they were rattling around their tracks, Mishima—who’d followed me upstairs—watched us with expectant eyes.
Titus returned with a cast-iron teapot and two irregularly shaped cups. “They’re Japanese, like your friend.” He winked at me. “We’ll drink to his health. This iskabusecha, which is halfway betweensenchaandgyokuro. It’s all a question ofumami.”
“I can’t make head or tail of what you just said, Titus.”
He sat down at his table, swiveling his chair round to face me, and filled the two small cups with the greenish liquid. The room now had a faint smell of fresh herbs.
“I recently started getting interested in tea,” he explained. “My body’s giving out, so I’m taking all the antioxidants I can to put off the evil hour.”
I remembered the heart attack he’d had some years earlier and how I’d been obliged to take over his work as a writer. I hadn’t shown the slightest talent.
“The three varieties I just mentioned represent three ways of growing the same plant.” He was proud to show off his knowledge about his latest passion. “Sencha is the natural kind of green tea. It grows all by itself in the sun, from planting to harvest. At the other end of the spectrum is gyokuro, which is like the champagne of the green teas. It’s kept in the shade during its final growth period. Between these two varieties is what we’re drinking now. Have a sip . . .”
I lifted the cup to my lips and tried the tea. It was mild and a little astringent.
“The kabusecha has just a touch of umami because its leaves are slightly exposed to sunlight as they grow.”
“What’s umami?”
“It’s a rich, savory taste. When used to describe tea, it can mean that the tea has a special, slightly bitter flavor.” Titus’s sunken eyes roamed over my face. “And, now that I think about it, there’s a strong symbolic link between umamiand human affairs.”
He lifted his cup to inhale the fragrance of the kabusecha before taking a sip. I waited for him to continue.
“The less light the plant receives as it grows, the more umamiit will have. The same thing happens with human emotions. If you don’t air your worries, they ferment inside you and end up making you bitter.”
“Have you read something like this in my face?”
“Yes. Out with it, Samuel. What’s the matter?”
The Universe Keeps Moving
Titus kept his trains running round and round their tracks as I gave him a blow-by-blow account of the phone call the previous night. Every time they went over Mishima’s head, he thumped the parquet floor with his tail. When I finished talking, Titus was still concentrating deeply on their circular progress. Then he slowly turned toward me and pronounced: “There’s nothing you can do right now except for accepting the wabi-sabi of all things, including love.”
“That word was on the first postcard . . .” I said, thinking aloud. “So, you’ve worked out what wabi- sabi means, then?”
“I certainly have! So much so that I have decided—or rather Gottfried Kerstin has decided—to write a whole wabi-sabi guide. I have a publisher who’s interested, and I wrote the prologue today.”
I was immediately on guard. I hadn’t forgotten the time when Titus was ill and had roped me into writing one of his books.
“Read this and you’ll see what I’m talking about.”
He clicked on a document he had on his desktop. Indeed, Gottfried Kerstin was presenting a concept that is deeply rooted in Japanese culture.
The expressionwabi-sabiopens into a whole aesthetic concept and at once a philosophy of life.
Wabi-sabirefers to the beauty of what is imperfect, temporary and incomplete. This idea, like so many other aspects of Japanese culture, is inspired by observation of nature. Nothing in nature is perfect—or at least not in the geometric, Euclidean sense of perfection as conceived in the West—because it is full of asymmetries. Nothing is permanent in nature, for every living thing is born and dies and is undergoing constant change; nothing in nature is finished or complete because the idea of completion is just an abstraction created by the human mind.
The wabi-sabi philosophy appeared in response to sixteenth-century Chinese perfectionism, and is present in the tea ceremony, in ikebana flower arrangement, haiku and Noh theater.
“Nothing is permanent,” I repeated. “Is that what you meant when you were talking about love?”
“If we think of love as just another human art then, according to the Japanese, it would have to be in accordance with wabi-sabi principles. It’s imperfect because every couple is the sum and friction of two imperfections. Love is unfinished because, for better or worse, relationships never stop evolving. And, yes, it is temporary or impermanent. You have to make the most of it while it lasts.”
“Then . . . you don’t think that love can be eternal, like it is in stories or romantic movies made in Hollywood?”
Titus stopped his trains, as if he had very clear ideas on the matter. Hunched in his chair and looking jadedly up at me, he declared, “No, it can never be that. Even the relationship of two people who get on marvelously well finishes one day, because one dies before the other.” He sat quietly for a moment, pondering his words. “Unless they do something stupid together, of course.”
