Free An Exquisite Sense of What Is Beautiful by J. David Simons Page A

and everything. But you’re being a bit too Zen. You always had a very romantic notion of life here. Very
haiku
, shmaiku, you were. Yeah, you can still find what you’re talking about. You’ve just got to look much harder these days, that’s all. Scrape the surface with a bulldozer. Lob in a few grenades. Get underneath all this crap, as you say.’ Jerome leaned forward, tapped the driver’s shoulder, said something in Japanese . The driver just shrugged.
    ‘If we don’t get a move on, we’ll be late,’ Jerome said, turning back to him. ‘Don’t want to keep the dean waiting.’
    Edward closed his eyes, breathed in deep, tried just for a few moments to shut out the noise and the lights, still himself against the anger that seemed to rise so quickly these days. And this sudden tiredness bearing down on him. So heavy and irresistible.
    ‘Are you OK, Eddie?’
    ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine,’ he mumbled, shaking himself back into consciousness . ‘Must be the jet lag. Look, Jerome. I wanted to ask you a favour.’
    ‘Shoot, your lordship.’
    Edward smiled. ‘Remember how you used to take all those photographs? With that little Brownie of yours?’
    ‘Still got it. Collectors’ item.’
    ‘What about the prints? Or the negatives? Do you have them too?’
    ‘Sure do. All filed away in my office on campus. They’re collectors ’ items too. Sell a few every now and then.’
    ‘What about that day we went to Kamakura?’
    ‘Hey, Eddie. You were here a million lifetimes ago. How am I supposed to remember that?’
    ‘But if there were photographs, would you still have them?
    ‘Should be there somewhere.’
    The taxi lurched forward, almost knocking down a bent-over crone who passed close to the window. It was the first elderly person Edward had seen since they set out from the station.

    The campus actually boasted some trees. Even tall ones, which was so unusual for Tokyo. The fallen leaves forming a damp mat under Edward’s feet as he struggled out of the taxi in front of the Old Library, which according to Jerome had survived not only the fire-bombing but also the Great Kanto earthquake. Not surprising given the sturdiness of the red-brick building with its turrets and eaves that would not have been out of place on an English university campus. The air smelt sweet with decomposing foliage, resounded with the conversation of students as they moved purposefully towards their lecture halls. Universities always produced the same effect on him. A sense of hope gleaned from these young faces – the hope that maybe this was the generation that could really make a difference. He suddenly no longer resented Jerome bringing him here. This was where he needed to be. In the presence of fertile minds with fresh ideas. To suck at the marrow of their potential.
    ‘Eddie. This is our dean. Professor Watanabe.’
    Where Edward expected to find some doddering relic of Japanese academia, he was confronted instead by an urbane gentleman, perhaps in his mid-fifties, immaculately fitted out in a blue mohair suit. The dean’s round face glowed with a healthy tan and bore a neatly trimmed goatee. His eyes glinted with bright intelligence, with humour. He looked like an affluent businessman at the helm of some company that would never go bankrupt. And no polite bows either. Watanabe’s hand was immediately offered in handshake.
    ‘Delighted to meet you, Sir Edward. We are so glad to have you attend our campus. Professor Fisk here said he might be able to persuade you to come, to accept our patronage, but I never dreamed it would be possible.’
    Edward made the usual humble responses and, detecting the dean’s accent, inquired politely about it.
    ‘Stanford. I did my postgraduate work there. Education and linguistics.’
    ‘We couldn’t attract you to our shores then?’
    Watanabe chuckled as he gently led him forward into the library building. Jerome had fallen a step or two behind.
    ‘Actually, Sir Edward, this university