The Hunting Gun

MIDORI’S LETTER

Mr Misugi Jōsuke,

Writing the characters of your name in this proper manner, I find, despite my age — not that thirty-three is all that old — that my heart begins to flutter, as if this were a love letter. Looking back over the past decade, I am puzzled to realize that, while I have written dozens of love letters, some in secret but others quite openly, not one was ever addressed to you. One finds it difficult to comprehend. I do not mean this as a joke; I have been mulling earnestly over this, and it has left me feeling an odd, rankling sort of incomprehension. Does it amuse you, perhaps, that I should feel this way?

Some time ago, Mr Takagi’s wife — you remember her, I am sure… the woman whose face makes her look like a fox when she gets all dressed up — offered her appraisal of various notable personages of the Hanshin region, and when she arrived at you she made several very impolite pronouncements: that you were not a man to make a woman happy; that you hadn’t a clue about the delicate workings of the feminine heart; that you might fall for a woman, but no woman could possibly fall for you. It goes without saying that Mrs Takagi uttered these unfortunate words under the influence of some degree of inebriation, and you need not take her evaluation so very seriously; still, you know as well as I do that there is that side to your character. You live, I think it is fair to say, a life entirely free of loneliness. You are not one to yearn for companionship the moment you are on your own. You may sometimes look bored, but never lonesome. And you have a tendency to see things in an oddly clear-cut fashion, and to be absolutely convinced of the superiority of your own views. You may say this is merely a sign of confidence, but watching you one is possessed somehow by an urge to seize you and give you a shake. In a word, I suppose one might describe you as a man utterly intolerable to women, completely devoid of an endearingly human side, who in no way makes it worth the trouble of doing you the favour of falling for you.

Perhaps, then, I am demanding too much of you in my fretful attempts to communicate some sense of my befuddlement at the absence, among the dozens of love letters I have penned, of even one bearing your name. Nevertheless the feeling remains. Surely I could have written you one or two, at least? To be sure, from a certain perspective one might argue that, while the epistles were not addressed to you, the emotions I felt during their writing were—they simply ended up in the wrong hands, and thus, as far as my sentiments were concerned, I might as well have been addressing you. My retiring nature inhibited me, a grown woman, from plying my husband with cloyingly intimate letters of the sort one might expect of a young and inexperienced girl, that was the difficulty — and so I dashed off letters to other men, men towards whom I felt no such diffidence. I suppose in the end the stars simply were not aligned in my favour, so to speak — I was born to this misfortune. And it was yours, as well.

What are you doing now

I wonder, knowing full well

that if I were to approach

your lofty repose might

crumble

This is a poem I composed last autumn as an outlet for my mood on a day when you were holed up in your study and my thoughts kept turning to you. You were staring at a Yi-dynasty porcelain or some such thing, waiting to see which of you would blink first, and I was unwilling to disturb your peace — or rather, I knew of no means by which I could possibly disturb it, much as I may have liked to… Oh, my dear husband, how maddeningly well you hold your fortress, impenetrable on every front!.. and this work brims with your poor wife’s sorrow at that moment. You will say I am a liar, no doubt. But even if I do stay up all night playing mahjong, there is still time enough for me to turn my feelings, like surreptitious glances, towards the annexe and your study. Needless to say, even this poem did not find its way to you: in the end, I left it in Dr Taue’s apartment, laying it softly on his desk — Dr Taue, the young philosophy buff who, I suppose, is no longer simply a young philosophy buff, having been happily promoted this spring from his post as a lecturer to become a fully fledged assistant professor — with the result, as you are aware, that the young scholar’s lofty, spiritual repose does indeed seem to have been pointlessly ruined. My name turned up in tabloid gossip columns, causing you some degree of inconvenience. Earlier I noted the urge that comes upon me as I look at you to give you a vigorous shake; this little incident may, perhaps, have succeeded slightly in that direction; or it may not.

*

Carping on about such things will, however, only heighten your displeasure. Better to move on to the main argument.

I wonder what you think of all this. Looking back, it occurs to me that quite a long time has passed since we became husband and wife in name only. Does it not strike you that it would be a profound relief to put an end to our relationship? True, it is sad that it has come to this, but in the absence of any substantial objections on your part, I cannot help feeling that it would be best to devise some means of setting both of us, you as well as me, at liberty. How does this sound?

Now that you will be resigning from active participation in all your business activities — it came as a deep shock, I might add, to learn that your name was on the list of purged businessmen — it seems like the ideal moment, from your perspective, as well, to end this unnatural relationship. Here, briefly, is what I desire: our homes in Takarazuka and Yase. Those two will be sufficient. Lately I have been mulling, presumptuously enough, over the various possibilities open to me, and I have arrived at the conclusion that I would like to live in Yase, as the house there is of a fitting size and the environment is congenial to me, and to support myself for the remainder of my life with funds raised by selling the house in Takarazuka, for which I would ask two million yen or thereabouts. Think of this as one final illustration of my selfishness, and simultaneously as the first and only time I have ever allowed myself, or ever will allow myself, to lean upon you, asking for evidence of your affection.

The fact that I am making this unexpected proposal should not be taken to indicate that I have at present anything as stylish as a lover, let alone more than one. There is, therefore, no need for you to fret over the possibility that someone might relieve me of the money. Indeed, I regret to say that I have never yet found a potential lover who would not shame me. Seldom does one encounter a man who satisfies even my two most basic requirements: that he tend properly to the hairline on the nape of his neck, keeping it fresh as the cut edge of a lemon; and that the line of his waist be as clean and strong as a serow’s. Sadly, the joy your bride took in her beloved husband a decade ago, when you first made her heart yours, remains to this day sufficiently overpowering. And speaking of serow: I remember a story I once read in a newspaper about a young man found living naked with a flock of those wild goats out in the middle of the Syrian desert. How ravishing he was in that photograph! His cold profile, capped by a tangle of unkempt hair; the powerful allure of his lanky legs, capable, as the paper observed, of running at fifty miles an hour. To this day, the memory of that youth inspires a peculiar surging in my blood, unlike anything I have ever known with another man. It strikes me that the word “intellectual” was invented to describe that face; the word “wild” to describe that form.

In the eyes of one who has glimpsed such a youth, all other men seem equally common, drearily dull. If at any point your wife ever felt even a few brief sparks of unchaste longing, that was the day — when she was drawn to the goat boy. Thinking of him now, picturing his taut skin moist with desert dew… but no, more than that it is the cool purity of his extraordinary fate that stirs up crazed waves in my heart even after all this time.

The year before last, I believe it was, there was a period when I became infatuated with a painter in the New Life School, a man by the name of Matsuyo. I would find it rather galling if you were to take as straight fact the rumours that circulated then. I recall that in those days there was a strangely sad gleam in your eyes, verging on pity, when you regarded me. Although I had done nothing to deserve your pity! Even so I was attracted to your eyes then, just a little. You were wonderful, even if you did not quite reach the goat boy’s level. Why, when you had such a marvellous look in your eyes, did you not let them rove a little? Stoicism is not everything, you know. Your gaze remained fixed so steadily on my face that you might as well have been examining a piece of pottery. And so I myself became as crisp and cool as old Kutani ware; I was seized with the desire to go and rest somewhere, absolutely still, and so I went and sat for Matsuyo in his chilly studio. That said, I still greatly admire his architectural vision. He is perhaps somewhat too like Utrillo for his own good, it is true, but one would be hard pressed to find another painter currently active in Japan who is capable of suffusing into paintings of utterly hopeless buildings such a thoroughly modern aura of melancholy, and of doing so, moreover, with such understatement. As a person, though, he was no good. A total failure, in fact. If you stood as the marker for a hundred points, he would have been, at best, a sixty-five. He may have had talent, but there was something nasty about him; his features were well proportioned, but he was sadly lacking in grace. He looked comical rather than thoughtful with his pipe between his lips; he had the face of a second-rate artist whose works had absorbed everything good in him, and only what was good.

Then last year, in early summer, I believe it was, I showed some affection to Tsumura, the jockey who rode Blue Glory to victory in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Cup. This time your eyes shone less with pity than with cold, contemptuous malice. At first I thought it was the leaves outside the windows that made them look so green when we passed in the hall, for example; later on I realized how ridiculously mistaken I had been. It was very sloppy of me, I admit. Had I recognized the true cause, I could have prepared myself mentally to cast back some answering gaze of my own, whether cool or warm! But in those days I was in the throes of a fascination with the beauty of speed that made my whole body go numb; your medieval approach to the demonstration of your feelings could not have been more alien to my sensibilities. I would have liked, at least once, to let you see the pure hunger to win that claimed Tsumura as he clung to the back of that peerless mare, Blue Glory, galloping in a beeline past more than a dozen other horses, one after the next. I know you, too, would have felt your blood rise on catching a momentary glimpse of his earnest, lovable form — I am talking, of course, about Tsumura, not about Blue Glory — through your binoculars.

When he was only twenty-two, that somewhat unruly-looking youth drove himself against the greatest odds to set two new records, all because he knew I was watching him through my binoculars. Never before had I witnessed such passion. So intent was he on earning my praise that he forgot me altogether once he was astride that dark-brown mare, transfiguring himself into a demon of speed. Yes, I lived then, above all, for the joy of seeing the love I felt up in the stands — it was, indeed, a species of love — be transformed into a passion as limpid as water that he then proceeded to stir, circling around and around that great 2,270-metre oval. I feel not a trace of regret for having given him as a reward three of my diamonds that had survived the war. But that young jockey was lovable only as long as he was perched on Blue Glory’s back; the moment he descended to earth, he was just an imp incapable of appreciating even the flavour of a good cup of coffee. The dauntless, headlong drive to win that he had cultivated astride his horse made it somewhat more thrilling to take him around than that writer Senō or the one-time leftist Mitani, but he had nothing else to offer. This was why, in the end, I took the trouble to introduce him to a dancer I had taken under my wing — the eighteen-year-old with the slightly upturned lip — and even saw them through the wedding.

I fear my pleasure in chatting with you like this has led me from my topic. What I meant to say is that while I may withdraw to Yase, up there to the north of Kyoto, I am by no means prepared at this point to withdraw from the world. I have no intention whatsoever of going off and devoting myself to religious austerities. I will leave you to light your kilns and fire your tea bowls; I will grow flowers. I am told one can earn quite a lot sending flowers down to market at Shijō. With the old housekeeper and the maid and two young women I have my eye on we should be able to tend 100 or 200 carnations. For the time being, at least, men will be verboten; I have grown a trifle weary of your masculine rooms. I mean that. I am planning out my life in all earnestness, determined this time to make a fresh start, to find genuine happiness.

You may be surprised by my sudden request that we end our relationship — though, come to think of it, perhaps the opposite is true, and you have been perplexed all along by my failure to make such a request. I myself cannot help being profoundly touched, as I look back, by the fact that I managed to go on living with you for more than a decade. To some extent I have acquired a reputation as a wife of less than impeccable conduct, and I suspect you and I both have left others with the impression that we are an unusual couple; still, we have arrived at this juncture without suffering any social catastrophes, even serving pleasantly together, on occasion, as official go-betweens helping others towards marriage. In this respect, I hope you will agree that I fully merit your praise.

How extraordinarily difficult it is to write a goodbye letter. It is unpleasant to get all weepy, but it is also unpleasant to be overly brisk. I would like for us to make a clean break and to go our separate ways without hurting each other, but a peculiar sort of posturing seems to have found its way into my prose. Perhaps there is no helping it: a goodbye letter is what it is, and it will not be a thing of beauty, no matter who its author is. I suppose I might as well write in a cold and prickly style appropriate to the content. Forgive me, then, for returning your enduring coldness by writing the sort of unabashedly disagreeable letter that will make you turn still colder.

*

It was February 1934, the ninth year of the Shōwa era. I believe it must have been about nine o’clock in the morning when I saw you, dressed in grey Western clothing, walking along the cliff just below my second-floor room at the Atami Hotel. This happened so very, very long ago that it all seems lost in a dream-like haze. There is no need for you to agitate yourself; just listen. How my eyes smarted at the sight of the greyish-blue haori, an enormous thistle woven across its back, that the tall, beautiful woman who came stepping along behind you wore. I had not really expected my intuition to prove so utterly on the mark. In order to confirm it, I had subjected myself to the rocking of the night train, forgoing sleep entirely. To invoke an old conceit, I wished that I were dreaming, and that I would awake. I was twenty years old at the time — the same age as Shōko now. The shock, I must admit, was somewhat too rude for a newly-wed with no sense of what was what in life. I immediately summoned the bell-hop and, faced with his suspicions, invented some excuse and settled the bill; then, unable to remain a moment longer on that spot, I fled outdoors. I stood for a minute on the pavement outside the hotel, holding fast to the searing pain that smouldered in my breast as I briefly debated whether to descend to the shore or go to the station. I started along the road to the ocean, but before I had gone half a block I stopped. I stood staring out at a spot on the wintry ocean where the sunlight glittered against a Prussian blue so perfect it could have been squeezed from a paint tube and smeared across the water; then, changing my mind, I spun on my heel, turning my back on that scenery, and took the other road, the one to the station. Thinking back over the years, it seems that selfsame road has carried me all the way to this point where I stand today. Had I continued down the road to the ocean, towards the two of you, I do not doubt that I would be a different woman now. But for better or for worse, that was not the path I chose. It occurs to me that in all my life, that was the biggest fork.

Why didn’t I continue down the road to the shore? For a simple reason. Because I could not banish my acute awareness that in no area could I possibly rival that gorgeous woman five or six years my senior, Saiko, whom I had always called “elder sister”—not in terms of the depth of my experience of life, or my knowledge, or my talents, or my looks, or my gentleness, or the grace with which I held my coffee cup, or in discussions of literature, or in my sensitivity to music, or in the application of my make-up. Oh, what humility! The modesty of a new wife of twenty, so pristine only the curving lines of a work of pure art could express it. I am sure you have had the experience of going for a swim in the ocean in early autumn and discovering that each little movement you make causes you to feel the water’s chillness more intensely, and so you stand there without moving. That was precisely how I felt then: too frightened to move. Only much later did I arrive at the happy conclusion that it was only right that I deceive you the way you had deceived me.

Another time, you and Saiko were waiting in the second-class lounge at Sannomiya Station for an outward-bound express. This must have been a year or so after the Atami Hotel. I stood amidst a gaggle of girls on a field trip, bright as flowers, considering whether to enter the lounge. Yet another time, I stood outside Saiko’s house staring up at the soft light filtering through the gap in a curtain on the second floor, the gate before me shut tight as a clam, trying to decide whether or not to ring the doorbell — ah yes, I can still see myself that night, standing for ages awash in the insects’ shrill fiddling, as vividly as if the memory were imprinted on my eyelids. I have the sense that this was around the same time I spotted you at Sannomiya Station, but I cannot say whether it was spring or autumn. I have no feeling for the season when it comes to these memories. And there are many, many of them — things that would make you moan… Still, in the end, I did nothing. After all, had I not turned away from the road to the ocean that day at the Atami Hotel, even then? Yes, even then, even then… strangely, all it took was a vision of that achingly blue, glittering ocean, heaving itself up in my mind’s eye, and the agony that had burnt my heart — that a second before had been barely under my control, threatening at any moment to explode into madness — would subside, as if it were a thin sheet of paper that I had peeled away.

Although for a while I came close to losing my mind, time appeared to resolve our problems, and our relationship became as smooth as it could conceivably have been. As you cooled, with the speed of a red-hot piece of iron plunged into water, I matched your coolness; and as I grew cold, you drew circles around me in your plummeting frigidity, until at last we found ourselves living here within this magnificently frozen world, in a household so cold one feels ice on one’s eyelashes. I wrote household, but that isn’t right — it has none of the tepidity or the human stench of a household. One might more accurately call it a fortress, as I am sure you will agree. For a decade now, we have been holed up in this fortress, you deceiving me, me deceiving you — though you deceived me first. Such distressing transactions we humans make! Our whole life together was erected upon the foundation of secrets each of us kept from the other. You reacted to my countless unforgivable trespasses sometimes with scorn, sometimes with disgust, at other times with an expression that was sorrowful and yet indifferent. Often I would holler from the bath for the maid to bring me my cigarettes. I would extract a movie programme from my handbag when I returned home and wave it back and forth, fanning the opening at the front of my kimono. I left trails of Houbigant everywhere, in the rooms and the hallways. I danced a little waltz after hanging up the phone. I invited stars from the Takarazuka Revue to come dine with me and had photographs taken of us, me nestled in amongst them. I played mahjong in a padded kimono. On my birthday, I asked that even the maids wear ribbons and then threw a raucous party to which only university students were invited. Naturally I knew full well how deeply all of this displeased you. But you never once reprimanded me — you couldn’t. And so there was never any friction between us. Thus the fortress’s calm was preserved, nothing changing but the air, which grew progressively drier and colder and more unpleasant, like a desert wind. You went out with your hunting gun to shoot at pheasants and turtle-doves; why, then, were you incapable of firing a bullet into my heart? You were deceiving me anyway, so why didn’t you go all the way — trick me more cruelly, trick me until I didn’t even realize I was being tricked? A man’s lies can sometimes elevate a woman, you know, to the very level of the divine.

*

I see now, however, that at some point there must be an end to this life I have endured for a decade, and to our bargaining. I know it because somewhere deep in my heart I have harboured this expectation, subtle but persistent: the hope that something will arrive, that even now it is wending its way in our direction! Only two possibilities present themselves as to the form this ending might assume. Either there will come a day when I stand quietly huddled against your chest with eyes closed, or I will plunge that penknife you brought me as a souvenir from Egypt with all my strength into your chest, sending up a spray of blood from the wound.

Which of these two endings, I wonder, do you think I prefer? In truth, even I am unsure.

That reminds me. This happened, I suppose, about five years ago — I wonder if you will remember. As I recall, you had just returned from your travels in the south. Having absented myself for two days, I returned home somewhat intoxicated, my gait uncertain, though it was not yet even evening. I had understood that you were in Tokyo on business, but for some reason there you were, back at home, sitting polishing your gun in the living room. “I’m back!” I cried, and then without another word I stepped out onto the verandah and sat down on the sofa with my back to you, feeling the play of the chill wind on my skin. The canopy for the outdoor dining table was propped against the eaves, and by some trick of the light it transformed part of the line of sliding glass doors enclosing the verandah into a mirror that reflected a portion of the room, and I could see you there rubbing the barrel of your gun with a white cloth. Worn out from too much play, feeling irritable and yet simultaneously too languid to lift a finger, I let my gaze linger on your figure as you went about your business, but without really focusing my attention. After wiping down the barrel, you replaced the breech-block, which you had also burnished until it shone; you raised the gun twice or thrice, resting the butt against your shoulder; and then all of a sudden you froze with the shotgun lifted and shut one eye, as if you were taking aim. And I realized that the barrel was pointing straight at my back.

Did you want to shoot me? I must confess it was very interesting for me to try to discern whether, at that moment, setting aside the fact that the gun was not loaded, you possessed the desire to kill me. I pretended I hadn’t noticed a thing, closed my eyes. Were you aiming at my shoulder, at the back of my head, at my nape? I waited with bated breath, expecting to hear at any moment the icy click of the trigger breaking the stillness of the room. But the click never came. If it had, I was ready — as eager as if this were the first chance I had been granted in many years to make my life worth living! — to collapse in a dramatic, staged faint.

Unable to bear it any longer, I slowly opened my eyes. You remained in the same posture as before, your sights set on my back. I sat motionless for a while, until all at once, for whatever reason, I was struck by the absurdity of what we were doing, and I shifted slightly, turned to look at the real you, not the one in the mirror, upon which you swiftly swung the point of your gun away, took aim at the rhododendron in the yard — the one we had transplanted from Amagi, which had bloomed for the first time that year — and then, at last, I heard you pull the trigger. Why didn’t you shoot your faithless wife that day? I would venture to say that I had done enough then to deserve being shot. You wanted to kill me sufficiently badly, and yet in the end you would not pull the trigger! If you had fired, if you had refused to overlook my trespasses, if you had driven into my pulsing heart an unmistakable loathing for your person — then, perhaps, against all odds, I might have fallen meekly into your arms. Naturally, I might also have gone in the opposite direction, letting you have a taste of my own marksmanship. At any rate, you failed, and so, releasing my gaze from the rhododendron that had fallen in my stead, I tripped more shakily than necessary from the room, humming “Under the Roofs of Paris” or some such tune, and withdrew to my private sitting room.

*

Years passed after that without affording us any further opportunity to bring all this to its conclusion. This summer, the blossoms on the crape myrtle were more poisonously red than ever before. I felt a subtle quickening of anticipation, almost a hope, that something unusual might occur…

I visited Saiko for the last time the day before she died. I found myself confronted, then, quite out of the blue, after more than a decade, by what was unmistakably the same greyish-blue haori whose nightmarish image, in the glaring Atami sunlight that morning, had burnt itself onto my retina. The huge purple thistle hovering above the background, its outline sharp, seemed to weigh upon the frail shoulders of the woman, now somewhat emaciated, whom you loved. I commented, as I came into the room and knelt beside her, on how lovely she looked, struggling to calm myself; but then I began to wonder what she could possibly be thinking, wearing this haori in my presence, at this moment, and all at once my blood began to seethe, to course through my body, like boiling water. I felt powerless to restrain myself. Sooner or later, this woman’s transgressions, the fact that she had stolen another woman’s husband, and the humility of that twenty-year-old bride, would have to be dragged out into the courtyard before the magistrate. That moment, it seemed, had arrived. And so I reached down into my heart and brought out the secret I had kept so carefully hidden for more than a decade, and set it softly down before the thistle.

“It brings back memories, doesn’t it?”

She gave a quick, almost inaudible gasp, and turned to face me. I met her eyes with a steady gaze. And I persisted; I did not look away. Because naturally it was she who should avert hers.

“You wore that when you and Misugi went to Atami together, didn’t you? You’ll have to forgive me. I’m afraid I was watching you that day.”

As I had expected, the blood drained visibly from her face, the muscles around her lips twitched in the most ugly manner — I am not just saying this, I truly was struck by her ugliness — as she tried to find something to say, but in the end she could not pronounce a word; she simply lowered her face, and, yes, let her gaze fall, settling on her white hands where they lay crossed on her lap.

The thought bobbed into my consciousness, then, that this was the moment I had been living for all those years, and I relished an exhilaration of the sort one might feel standing in a downpour as the rain washed down across one’s skin. At the same time, in some other region of my heart, I sensed with an indescribable sadness that one of the two possible endings had at last settled into a shape, and was even now moving towards us. I lingered there, wallowing in that emotion, for quite a while. I was fine; I could have sat in that spot until I grew roots. How desperately she must have wanted to disappear, though, that woman! Eventually, for what reason I cannot say, she lifted her waxen face and stared fixedly at me, her eyes very still. I knew then that she would die. Death had sprung, just now, into her body. Otherwise she could never have looked upon me with a gaze so still. The garden clouded over for a moment, then was bright again. Someone had been playing the piano next door, but now, suddenly, the sound broke off.

“Don’t let it worry you, I don’t mind. You can have him!”

I got to my feet, went out to the verandah to retrieve the white roses I had left there when I came, put them in the vase on the bookshelf, adjusted the arrangement; and then, as I gazed down at Saiko where she sat slumped over again, at her wiry neck, it struck me — awful premonition! — that this would most likely be the last time I saw her.

“Please, there’s really no need to fret. I’ve deceived you all these years, too. We’re even.”

Without even meaning to, I chuckled. And all the while, how perfectly she maintained her silence! From start to finish she simply sat there, speaking not a word, so still and quiet it almost seemed she had stopped breathing. The judgement had been handed down. Now she was free to do as she liked, as far as I was concerned.

With that, I strode swiftly out of the room, flicking the hem of my kimono up with movements so crisp and clean even I could feel it.

Midori! For the first time that day, I heard her cry out behind me. But I continued down the hall, around the corner.

“Are you all right, Aunt Midori? You’re terribly pale.”

I realized that the blood had drained from my face only when Shōko, who was coming along the hall with cups of black tea on a tray, drew my attention to the fact.

By now, I am sure, you see why it is impossible for me to remain with you any longer; or rather, why it is impossible for you to remain any longer with me. I have written at great length and said much that is distasteful; now, at last, it seems the final curtain can descend on ten years of painful bargaining. I have said more or less all I wanted to say to you. If possible, I would be grateful if you could reply, giving your consent to our divorce, before your stay in Izu is complete.

*

Come to think of it, I will close with one bit of unusual news. Today, for the first time in years, I went and cleaned your study in the annexe myself, rather than leave it to the maid. I was impressed by how settled it is — a very nice study indeed. The sofa is singularly comfortable, and the Ninsei pot on the bookshelf does much to enhance the atmosphere, like a blaze of flowers in the otherwise muted room. I wrote this letter in your study. The Gauguin does not quite suit the space, and if possible I would like to take it with me and hang it in the house in Yase; I took the liberty of removing it from the wall, hanging the snowy landscape by Vlaminck in its place. I also rotated the clothes in the drawer, setting out three winter suits, each paired with one of my particular favourites among your neckties. Whether or not you will be pleased, I cannot say.