Disclaimer: "Detective Conan" belongs to Gosho Aoyama.
Becoming Conan
by FS
Chapter 3: Yellow
It's curious that hope is seldom associated with poisons and toxins or hard drugs although it often has the same effects. Enjoyed in small doses, it clouds your mind, warps your judgement, and corrupts your character. A massive dose of hope leads to fatal consequences. But instead of protecting their children from hope, adults teach them to believe in dreams and illusions and to wish for the impossible to happen.
c.
Young Conan Doyle's great consulting detective was originally named "Sherrinford Hope" after the Arctic whaler Hope, on which Doyle worked in 1880. Forty years later, Doyle misspelled (or misremembered?) the name as "Sherringford Hope" in his autobiography Memoirs and Adventures.
Back in those days it was common for medical students to serve on whaling vessels for an extended time to collect practical experiences. A classmate who had been assigned for Hope couldn't take part in the journey and offered his place to Doyle, who eagerly grasped the opportunity. Doyle kept an illustrated diary about his days onboard, which was later published under the title Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic Adventure.
Louisa thought that "Hope" would be a terrible name for a hero, however, and convinced her husband to change his mind. Hence "Sherrinford Hope" was changed into "Sherrinford Holmes", which was eventually changed into "Sherlock Holmes" when Doyle replaced the fussy "Sherrinford" with the snappier and edgier "Sherlock". The consulting detective's sidekick underwent similar name changes. And thus the pair Sherrinford Hope and Ormond Sacker are now known as Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson.
And yet Conan Doyle—a closet romantic and spiritualist—couldn't resist the allure of the name "Hope" and seemed to have craved to see it in print, for he recycled it and gave it to Jefferson Hope, the first of the Canon's tragic villain.
c.
Shiho's first impulse is to dismiss the revelation as a joke. These things often happen whenever children are involved: they mishear things, imagine things, blow things out of proportion with their overactive, paranoid fantasy.
Just think of The Children's Hour! One barefaced lie in which the children believed themselves. A naughty fantasy which turned out to be so close to the truth that it led to scandal and tragedy.
But like the lethal poison dart that killed Bartholomew in The Sign of Four, or the seven-percent solution of cocaine with which Sherlock Holmes injected himself, the seed of hope has hit a vulnerable target, and the poison or hard drug has begun to take effect. Why shouldn't it be true? Christie is an uncommonly observant child! Christie has no reason to invent this if it didn't happen, and Christie has never lied about these things before.
Like coloured patterns seen through a kaleidoscope, all the ambiguous things Kudo-kun—Shinichi!—has ever said and done (all the memories Shiho has preserved in her mind and in her diaries for over seven years) are now showing themselves from a multitude of different angles, shedding their muted hues rapidly as if they had been hit by a sudden burst of light suffusing them with brilliant colour. The impossible has become possible. The possible is now within her reach! She is dealing with a problem she has never expected now that her feelings are requited.
She can feel she is glowing with the unfamiliar intensity and radiance of the people who are deliriously happy, and it's easy for her to laugh in front of the two children who, at this age, are still easy to manipulate. Your obachan and your otousan are only testing you. Why else should they have been so loud that you would overhear their private talk? Your otousan has challenged you so often—this is just another challenge. Whisper what you've heard to a pebble at the beach or reveal it to your teddy at night, but keep your mouth shut so that no one else will know. Can you keep it a secret from other people (your playmates, your friends, your mother), or are you the weak type that always needs to blabber?…
Hollywood movies, comics, anime, and manga (well, popular culture in general) like to pretend that it's important to tell children the truth—as if children could handle the truth at this age when the truth is even for adults a bitter pill to swallow. Kids won't ever understand, and one can't expect them to. One can only talk to them in their own language, lie to them whenever one needs to, tell them parables and fairy tales in the hope that they will distill the message. But despite their naiveté, children are nimbler and more intelligent than adults—that is, before all their edges have been broken off and smoothed down at school.
Chandler is still playing with Shiho's diary, too distracted to pay attention to anything Christie and Shiho are saying; and Shiho misuses the happy coincidence that they're talking in both Japanese and English (he wants his children to grow up bilingual, and she has been supporting him) to explain the difference between the transitory state of "being in love" and the action of "loving".
When you're in love with someone or something, you're addicted. It's like your weakness for coca cola, or Conan Doyle's passion for pâté de foie gras. You obsess over it, long for it, and get sick over the thought that you aren't getting enough of it. But sometimes you will also fall ill when you finally get what you wanted. More often than not, it's better not to get too much of what you've longed for.
"I got sick when I drank two bottles of coca cola," Christie agrees, much to Shiho's relief. The drama has been averted. Mission accomplished.
If you love something, it's like the favourite dish you will always return to after a short break (and sometimes loving it takes a lot of work—your parents have quarrelled sometimes, haven't they?—but it's good for you). It's like the ice-cream you eat whenever we go out, or even more like the natural mineral water you drink every day. You don't always notice how good it is, and you often take it for granted, but you actually need it much more than you know…
She can tell that Christie is bored now—she is bored by herself as well. She has been at school for too long, Shiho realizes. All she can do is to hold a sermon and lie.
c.
During dinner, Shiho follows Shinichi's every gesture and word with fresh ears and eyes, dragging all of them into the sunlight to behold them like she has never beheld them before. No longer distracted by her own glum thoughts, she can feel his gaze resting fondly on her face although he is chivalrously keeping his distance, caring for his young wife with the matter-of-fact attention of a man who would take care of anyone.
It's not like Ran and he aren't affectionate towards each other—it's obvious that they still like each other very much. It's certainly not Ran's fault for not sharing her husband's love of mysteries either—Ran has a much finer taste of literature than Shinichi. They have had common interests before, when Ran could still assist Shinichi with his cases. She didn't do it very well back then and she often got nightmares from the sight of the corpses—but she often protected her impulsive husband in situations which would have cost him more than a scratched arm or blue leg if she hadn't been there.
Yet the gulf between them, however small in the beginning, must have grown during the years. How else could Shinichi have fallen in love with her? Ran is messaging Sera-san, who is going to arrive sooner than expected, while shaking her head at her husband's two-millionth retelling of The Sign of Four and A Study in Scarlet. Maybe Sherlock Holmes was the one who broke their rapport. Marriages fall apart for the strangest reasons.
"It's a terrible novel!" she bursts out at last. "I've tried to read it more than once. But I can't get over the first half of it! Sorry."
"It's not the best Sherlock Holmes story." Shiho supports her since she can see that Shinichi is about to defend his favourite books at the cost of his domestic life. "Maybe you should try the short stories instead. 'The Red-Headed League' has a very charismatic villain."
"Who Holmes sends to jail," Ran says, as a matter of fact. "John Clay was one of the few villains I liked. He was loyal to his friend. He should have escaped—but Doyle absolutely had to punish the 'bad guy'."
"John Clay is modelled on the same person who inspired Moriarty…" Shinichi begins in an attempt to change the topic.
"I know," Ran sighs. "You've told me this many, many times."
"What colour are you now?" asks Chandler, who has an uncanny sense of timing and knows when to intervene so that his parents won't fight over Sherlock Holmes. The amazing boy also possesses the unique gift for seeing and accepting the passing nature of all things—of taking nothing in life for granted and accepting everything that happens with the philosophical nonchalance of a zen master.
"I'm Yellow now," Shiho spontaneously decides. Yellow conjures up Van Gogh's many sunflowers and chrysanthemums—tokens of friendship and the symbol of neglected love. Yellow also brings to mind the gorgeous yellow roses Archer sent his beloved Olenska. "As yellow as sunlight," she adds with a smug grin. "As yellow as the beach."
"You aren't yellow-mellow, though, or yellow-bellied," Christie says, flaunting her English.
Yellow is the colour of honour, loyalty, intellect, joy, optimism, and courage, Hattori-kun muses. It's a good colour which aids the left side of the brain.
"As yellow as cream and mustard." Ran winks at Shiho. "Yellow is a good colour! I love cream."
"No, you don't love cream but you're in love with cream," Christie points out. And Shiho breaks out in a cold sweat when the girl proceeds to elaborate on the differences between loving and being in love, explaining that Shiho has told her that being in love is like craving coca cola while loving is like drinking mineral water.
Shinichi, who has deduced the context of the talk, is flushing; and Hattori-kun, who has caught the scent of mystery, is now watching Shiho and Shinichi with his glowing cat's eyes. Thankfully, Ran and Kazuha-san are too busy chatting with Sera-san to notice. For the first time in her life, however, Shiho doesn't suppress the thought that she would have been a much better match for Shinichi than Ran since she likes his quirks more than Ran does. She can assist him during his cases, discuss mystery novels with him since she shares his love for the genre, challenge him whenever he needs to be challenged… Life with her would have been more exciting and fulfilling for him and her, and Ran is the type who would have easily found someone else she could have been happy with. And the fact that it's not her but Ran who is wearing the gold ring matching his is a mere result of external circumstances—another cruel prank of either time or fate, which let him return her feelings only when it's already too late.
c.
She is glad to be alone in her bedroom again after dinner, after doing the dishes and feigning a migraine so that they'll let her sleep. And since she needs something to take her mind off this emotional rollercoaster and prevent herself from drowning in a (yellow) sea of jealousy and grief, she gets out the hardcover Kudo-kun has given her to see what he wanted her to read.
She doesn't get past the first pages since she can't bear to look at the photos of Louisa Doyle—gentle, sweet Mary Louise who was athletic and so extremely Ran-like that it hurts.
Would a marriage with Shiho have been better for Shinichi, or would it have taken the same downward spiral with the occasional high when both of them were in a great mood and everything went well in life? Shiho should have admitted that Ran was right about The Sign of Four since she can't stand the novel either. Shinichi has recommended it to her as well but she couldn't get through the first half. Would life have been the same if Shinichi and she had married? Would he be pining for Ran because "the very essence of romance is uncertainty", as Oscar Wilde put it?
c.
Most Sherlock Holmes fans know about the surgeon Joseph Bell, Doyle's mentor at Edinburgh University's medical school, whose singular observation and deduction skills had inspired young Conan Doyle to invent Sherlock Holmes—but few people know that Conan Doyle has modelled the great detective on Oscar Wilde as well.
Doyle and Wilde met in 1889 during a dinner at the Langham Hotel in London's Regent Street. Both writers had been invited by John Marshall Stoddart, the managing director of the flourishing American Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, who had come to London to launch the UK edition. The stodgy Conan Doyle and the flamboyant Oscar Wilde must have made a very contrasting pair at the dinner table, but Conan Doyle called the meeting "a golden evening" in his autobiography—the evening having been tinted "golden" by his fascination with Wilde.
Thus the science-loving, eccentric Sherlock Holmes of A Study in Scarlet suddenly reveals his bohemian, dramatic side in the new novella-length mystery Doyle wrote for the Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. This reinvented Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Wilde) indulges in both morphine and cocaine and cites Goethe—demonstrating a broad appreciation of world literature despite having zero knowledge of literature in A Study in Scarlet, according to Watson's observations.
Another veiled portrait of Oscar Wilde can be found in the same story (which was first published under the title The Sign of the Four and was later reserialized as The Sign of Four) in the figure of Thaddeus Sholto…
Her sleep-deprived mind begins to ask both Doyle and Wilde what they're thinking of her desire to steal a married man whose children and wife she likes or even loves. Doyle is appalled (he has grown up with noble knights and the idea of pure, chivalrous love) while Wilde tells her to go for it: We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars… To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all…
c.
Conan Doyle might not have been a mediocre writer—his Sherlock Holmes short stories are of astonishingly high artistic quality—but who but illiterates and fanatic Sherlock Holmes fans with little appreciation of prose would get the idea to put Doyle on the same literary and intellectual level as Wilde?
If one ignores the figure of Sherlock Holmes and the dynamic between Holmes and his "Boswell"—the two brilliant formulas on which the whole Sherlock Holmes canon was built—one has to admit that The Sign of Four was a forgettable run-of-the-mill mystery and romantic adventure with a dash of exoticism (and it's difficult to say whether A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes novel, which rightfully flopped, was better or worse). The Picture of Dorian Gray, the novel Wilde wrote for the Lippincott's Monthly Magazine after that "golden evening", on the other hand, is indisputably an all-time classic, one of the greatest books ever written.
Oscar Wilde claimed that "if one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all"—and Oscar Wilde was right. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a book one can enjoy reading over and over again. The Sign of Four is a book one rereads because one has forgotten what happened.
The Sherlock Holmes novels didn't offend the moral sensibilities of the British press, however, whereas The Picture of Dorian Gray was censored by the magazine before publication (they cut out about five hundred words without Wilde's knowledge). In view of the reaction of the British reviewers to the censored version of the novel, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Wilde merited prosecution for defending his work. While Doyle was well-paid and admired and respected, Wilde died after his prison term in disgrace and poverty and solitude, from meningitis and heartache.
There is nothing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
The books the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.
I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.
Observations which could only have been made by Oscar Wilde and certainly not by Conan Doyle—Doyle believed in imperialism and moral absolutes and had grown up with tales of noble knights who rescued fair maidens even if it meant to bring the maidens back to the dragons they had been trying to escape. But when Arthur Conan Doyle, still happily married to his invalid wife, encountered Jean Leckie on March 15th 1897, it was love at first sight. And for ten years, this forbidden love and his fight against it will be the main source of agony in Doyle's life.
c.
A/N: Long chapter today. But I've made it in time for the third prompt (Alcohol, Poison). Yay!