A dozen or more in the gathering this afternoon
in the windy forecourt of the library. At the head of the table on the far side
the man in the chair gave a fine salutation, directed at the panama quite
likely. An active, engaged assembly again today, and that without the presence
of the usual leader of the group. Earlier in the afternoon he had been sighted
in his usual prominent seat; now his absence created space for some of the
others, if they could rise to the occasion. Without this man's steering,
without his lead and contribution, it was a question what the men might manage
on their own resources.
For a time the conversation proceeded in brief exchanges from various points around the joined tables. Small little ventures were offered that drew like answers and elaborations. None in this gathering seemed likely to hold court in the manner of the absent leader. Under his sway the group often seemed cowed or hesitant; through his harangues, as they seemed, most of the men sat quietly without meeting his eye. In the rhythm and mannerisms of the language, the domination of this speaker seemed less of an imposition. There was no lack of gesturing, of volume in the performance. The body posture, the way the man held upright in his seat—and at that age—clearly marked him as alpha male. Yet somehow even quite long speeches from this man did not seem over-bearing. Liberal smiles that hardly left his face possibly a large part of the impression.
This afternoon a daughter sat among the men. She sat beside the man who had greeted the panama at one end of the tables. Usually the men were unaccompanied. They came after lunch and sat on late into the afternoon. As in the present case, there were often more than a dozen gathered in the inner section nearer the library entry. Once or twice a lesser group has been found in the main seating at the smaller tables.
Neat, dapper men; shirts and slacks, more than half with pens clipped in the pockets. The elastic linked metal watchbands that pinched hairy wrists and were popular a couple of generations ago prominent. Most of the men were close to eighty; two or three of them clearly beyond the mark. It was difficult to judge their station in life. Age had leveled distinctions. The generic clothing and lack of ornament produced a uniformity. They all lived close to the city centre it seemed. Somehow they didn’t appear to be retired managers or businessmen; that was not the prevailing impression. All of the men fine, hale specimens; none needed any close particular attention. The daughter today sat listening for the most part. Contributions from her when they came were minor. More than anything it was apparent there was appreciation for what the woman was hearing.
With the drift of conversation and its small measures attention easily wandered. An initial impression suggested an uneventful meeting in the offing, a quiet little hiatus between lunch and dinner. Without the forceful, dominant leader there might have been a little more ease apparent. Good natured exchanges; regular smiles; the afternoon petering slowly. There was hardly an empty seat in the place, largely due to the size of this gathering of old men.
At some point in the lulled motions a voice at the far end, directly opposite the panama salute, the counterpart of that man almost ten metres distant, was into its stride. A particular rhythm in the voice was what drew attention. In fact all other sound and movement had been stilled by the chap. There was none of the little shuffling and turning of heads this way and that. The eyes were not necessarily focused on the far end of the table, but the grip of attention was unmistakable.
The figure of the speaker was not promising. There was nothing like the firmness and uprightness of the absent leader. This man bent over in his seat as he spoke, his jaw hanging loosely. Of the entire group, he was perhaps the least prepossessing. False teeth may have been a bad fit. Keeping his mouth closed when he listened seemed not possible for this man.
As he recited now from his chair the man beat out rhythm and line, not just with his hand before him, but with his whole person. The nodding head, rolling shoulders, the beaming eyes were carried by the motion within. Fully in the sway of his piece, he had seized the attention of the entire group. Clearly he was reciting some well-known, authoritative text. The lilt and movement made it clear it was verse and nothing else. There were perhaps a dozen long lines all together; perhaps more. All without fumbling or pause. Even with the less than impressive figure he cut, the performance was commanding. When he was done it seemed an unrepeatable feat that could only have come off in the most propitious of circumstances.
The girl who was asked later for translation guessed old Chinese opera. The dialect defeated her. Cantonese, she agreed it might be. On the other side a couple of lads a little older than the girl, engaged with an iphone game, had no interest in the old men.
Rather than completely stunning the gallery, hard on the heels of this performance it was the man at the other end, the acknowledger of the panama indeed, who rose to the challenge. Now he responded in kind with lines of his own. A shorter passage of verse this, but with the same unmistakable hallmarks of rhythm and momentum. After this reply came some rejoinders from the sidelines, commentary and interpretation it might have been, from more than one quarter. The two men at either end of the tables had taken up their positions as if pre-arranged; as if by prior consent from the others. To the second's rejoinder there now followed more from the first man, the slack-jawed, bent man, who had a good deal of store in his memory. Once more he gave a compelling recitation, somewhat shorter than the first, but numbers of lines again and lacking nothing of force and conviction.
In the theatre the silence and attention is rarely ever stretched as tight as it was here. Old men, four score and ten one of them on his walking stick. A stroke had perhaps resulted in his unusual, dragging stride. To think that men of this age could hear anything so captivating.
The duel was over. The major speaker seemed a little dissatisfied; what he had delivered seemed insufficiently acknowledged. The bright sunniness of the man at the other end beside his daughter avoided the issue that had been raised. Other voices entered the discourse. Conversation fragmented at a couple of points in the circle.
The man with the poets and sages at his finger-tips brooded on. His jaw hung, the teeth visible down to the gums. The picture he presented could not have been further from his performance moments before. A jaw could never be imagined to hang as low as that. These chaps could not be retired academics either.
Two of the men handed over books to others, one of which particularly made a slow round of the tables. One of the men leafed through the pages looking for a passage. It was he who must have produced this volume in the first place. Along the inner line of the passage-way, back turned, he sat in the middle of the throng. This man was at the upper limit of the age group. Unlike the others, this man carried some bulk. His jowls hung a little heavily; owlish eyes accentuated by high eyebrows.
The passage had been found. The open page showed sparse columns of characters, with headings for individual poems or stanzas. Seeming to know that a reading was in store, the other men waited.
When the owlish man had found his precise place, he gave voice. Short lines again, much shorter than the earlier recitations from memory. This was a very particular kind of reference, a little abstruse possibly; a little item out of the box. Shortly before this reading there had been a bolstering of numbers. One or two other men had joined the circle. Newcomers and the others alike had all listened respectfully.
Another book passed on after the brief reading. The paperback from which the quotation had been taken went back into the Owl’s pink supermarket shopping bag. In the book's place, from the same emerged a foolscap-sized exercise book. When the man leafed through the pages the paper showed discoloured. Where he stopped sparsely spaced penciled characters ran in columns down the page. It was an old notebook, long in use, long carted around. Mandarin characters could never be scrawled carelessly presumably. How might the poets have composed then? How else but in their heads.
For a time the conversation proceeded in brief exchanges from various points around the joined tables. Small little ventures were offered that drew like answers and elaborations. None in this gathering seemed likely to hold court in the manner of the absent leader. Under his sway the group often seemed cowed or hesitant; through his harangues, as they seemed, most of the men sat quietly without meeting his eye. In the rhythm and mannerisms of the language, the domination of this speaker seemed less of an imposition. There was no lack of gesturing, of volume in the performance. The body posture, the way the man held upright in his seat—and at that age—clearly marked him as alpha male. Yet somehow even quite long speeches from this man did not seem over-bearing. Liberal smiles that hardly left his face possibly a large part of the impression.
This afternoon a daughter sat among the men. She sat beside the man who had greeted the panama at one end of the tables. Usually the men were unaccompanied. They came after lunch and sat on late into the afternoon. As in the present case, there were often more than a dozen gathered in the inner section nearer the library entry. Once or twice a lesser group has been found in the main seating at the smaller tables.
Neat, dapper men; shirts and slacks, more than half with pens clipped in the pockets. The elastic linked metal watchbands that pinched hairy wrists and were popular a couple of generations ago prominent. Most of the men were close to eighty; two or three of them clearly beyond the mark. It was difficult to judge their station in life. Age had leveled distinctions. The generic clothing and lack of ornament produced a uniformity. They all lived close to the city centre it seemed. Somehow they didn’t appear to be retired managers or businessmen; that was not the prevailing impression. All of the men fine, hale specimens; none needed any close particular attention. The daughter today sat listening for the most part. Contributions from her when they came were minor. More than anything it was apparent there was appreciation for what the woman was hearing.
With the drift of conversation and its small measures attention easily wandered. An initial impression suggested an uneventful meeting in the offing, a quiet little hiatus between lunch and dinner. Without the forceful, dominant leader there might have been a little more ease apparent. Good natured exchanges; regular smiles; the afternoon petering slowly. There was hardly an empty seat in the place, largely due to the size of this gathering of old men.
At some point in the lulled motions a voice at the far end, directly opposite the panama salute, the counterpart of that man almost ten metres distant, was into its stride. A particular rhythm in the voice was what drew attention. In fact all other sound and movement had been stilled by the chap. There was none of the little shuffling and turning of heads this way and that. The eyes were not necessarily focused on the far end of the table, but the grip of attention was unmistakable.
The figure of the speaker was not promising. There was nothing like the firmness and uprightness of the absent leader. This man bent over in his seat as he spoke, his jaw hanging loosely. Of the entire group, he was perhaps the least prepossessing. False teeth may have been a bad fit. Keeping his mouth closed when he listened seemed not possible for this man.
As he recited now from his chair the man beat out rhythm and line, not just with his hand before him, but with his whole person. The nodding head, rolling shoulders, the beaming eyes were carried by the motion within. Fully in the sway of his piece, he had seized the attention of the entire group. Clearly he was reciting some well-known, authoritative text. The lilt and movement made it clear it was verse and nothing else. There were perhaps a dozen long lines all together; perhaps more. All without fumbling or pause. Even with the less than impressive figure he cut, the performance was commanding. When he was done it seemed an unrepeatable feat that could only have come off in the most propitious of circumstances.
The girl who was asked later for translation guessed old Chinese opera. The dialect defeated her. Cantonese, she agreed it might be. On the other side a couple of lads a little older than the girl, engaged with an iphone game, had no interest in the old men.
Rather than completely stunning the gallery, hard on the heels of this performance it was the man at the other end, the acknowledger of the panama indeed, who rose to the challenge. Now he responded in kind with lines of his own. A shorter passage of verse this, but with the same unmistakable hallmarks of rhythm and momentum. After this reply came some rejoinders from the sidelines, commentary and interpretation it might have been, from more than one quarter. The two men at either end of the tables had taken up their positions as if pre-arranged; as if by prior consent from the others. To the second's rejoinder there now followed more from the first man, the slack-jawed, bent man, who had a good deal of store in his memory. Once more he gave a compelling recitation, somewhat shorter than the first, but numbers of lines again and lacking nothing of force and conviction.
In the theatre the silence and attention is rarely ever stretched as tight as it was here. Old men, four score and ten one of them on his walking stick. A stroke had perhaps resulted in his unusual, dragging stride. To think that men of this age could hear anything so captivating.
The duel was over. The major speaker seemed a little dissatisfied; what he had delivered seemed insufficiently acknowledged. The bright sunniness of the man at the other end beside his daughter avoided the issue that had been raised. Other voices entered the discourse. Conversation fragmented at a couple of points in the circle.
The man with the poets and sages at his finger-tips brooded on. His jaw hung, the teeth visible down to the gums. The picture he presented could not have been further from his performance moments before. A jaw could never be imagined to hang as low as that. These chaps could not be retired academics either.
Two of the men handed over books to others, one of which particularly made a slow round of the tables. One of the men leafed through the pages looking for a passage. It was he who must have produced this volume in the first place. Along the inner line of the passage-way, back turned, he sat in the middle of the throng. This man was at the upper limit of the age group. Unlike the others, this man carried some bulk. His jowls hung a little heavily; owlish eyes accentuated by high eyebrows.
The passage had been found. The open page showed sparse columns of characters, with headings for individual poems or stanzas. Seeming to know that a reading was in store, the other men waited.
When the owlish man had found his precise place, he gave voice. Short lines again, much shorter than the earlier recitations from memory. This was a very particular kind of reference, a little abstruse possibly; a little item out of the box. Shortly before this reading there had been a bolstering of numbers. One or two other men had joined the circle. Newcomers and the others alike had all listened respectfully.
Another book passed on after the brief reading. The paperback from which the quotation had been taken went back into the Owl’s pink supermarket shopping bag. In the book's place, from the same emerged a foolscap-sized exercise book. When the man leafed through the pages the paper showed discoloured. Where he stopped sparsely spaced penciled characters ran in columns down the page. It was an old notebook, long in use, long carted around. Mandarin characters could never be scrawled carelessly presumably. How might the poets have composed then? How else but in their heads.
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