Disclaimer: "Detective Conan" belongs to Gosho Aoyama.
Becoming Conan
by FS
Chapter 4: Green
Shinichi hates lies and disguises with all the passion the word "hate" connotes. Disguises and lies are only bearable when they serve the purpose of solving a mystery. The worst memories of his time as Conan are all recollections of the elaborate lies he had to invent. But his disguises back then were child's play compared to his disguises now.
c.
Green is the colour of camouflage, the Professor declares as he proudly demonstrates all the features of the walking wheelchair he has designed with the help of his inventor friend. Green is the colour of harmony and health, revitalization and rebirth. It's the perfect colour to convey safety and control, which is the main reason why he has chosen it.
Although it's supposed to be reminiscent of grass and branches and leaves, the walking wheelchair with the ominous name WW1 and its greyish specks of green resembles a military vehicle more. There is some irony in the fact that the colour that is most useful in war is also the colour of peace.
"It looks horrible," Shinichi states, succumbing to his old characteristic bluntness. "But what really matters is whether it works! Are you sure that it's safe enough to be tested?"
The Professor is absolutely sure, but Shinichi insists on testing the device himself. Since it comes with a sunshade and isn't made for his height, however, the one who ends up testing it is her.
It works like a charm (sitting in it feels like being carried by a personal robot servant), but she is still relieved when she can finally climb out. Being confined to a wheelchair for life is a terrible fate—especially for people who have once been professional athletes.
c.
It has taken Shiho a while to convince the Professor that he needs a shower in the morning; but now Shinichi and she are finally alone again, sipping hot chocolate and coffee together—their daily treat. Although they both love to sleep in, they've been up with the lark these days. Sometimes they wake up early enough to watch the diffused summer dawn light creep through the living room's Venetian blinds; and she wonders if he, too, has begun to regard these early breakfasts as miniature visions of a shared future.
He is quiet today, which is only a natural reaction if he has deduced that Christie has overheard his talk. Sera-san and he must have discussed the matter via video chat without noticing Christie, who can walk like a cat if she wants to.
"I've begun to read the paper you recommended," she begins. It's easier to talk about Doyle and approach the matter in metaphors and parallels than to address it directly.
"Have you finished it yet?" His eyes are gleaming in the same manner as they do whenever he tackles a new case.
"Not yet," she admits, to his visible disappointment. "I couldn't get past the first pages at first… but I've arrived at the part where Doyle met Jean Leckie."
"Bang bang!" They've been interrupted again, this time by a person who will be even less inclined to take a hint. The troublemaker is dressed in an army ranger costume complete with military boots, helmet, moulded bullet belt, jungle kombatter rifle, and binoculars. Accustomed to making a statement wherever he goes, he has also chosen to show off his gross musical insensitivity with his poor choice of entrance music: the melodramatic but rather shallow song "Bang Bang", which was written by Cher's then-husband Sonny Bono and would later feature in Kill Bill.
While Shiho couldn't care less about the original version of the song, she likes the Kill Bill version of it. The laboriously crawling rhythm, the mournful melody, Nancy Sinatra's husky, offbeat voice, and the slightly off-tuned tremolo guitar all indicate that charm is a lucky byproduct of tiny imperfections which are almost perfect—an outlandish concoction good enough to be great and bad enough not be sterile.
Music played and people sang
Just for me the church bells rang…
A self-indulgent ode to the sense of abandonment—the certainty of having been left in the dust by the fickleness of a loved one who didn't even care enough to explain.
In contrast to Chandler (who is too gentle) and Christie (who is too dramatic), Hattori-kun's brat (only called "Hammett" by everyone), lives up to all of his nickname's promises. At seven, he is already as hard-boiled and dry as any child detective can be—doing only what he wants whenever and wherever he wants to do it (and—so his long-suffering parents report—already leaving a string of broken hearts which dates back to the first kindergarten he visited).
"Bang bang! I shot you down, bang bang!…"
The jungle kombatter rifle is now pointing at her cup. Hammett's movements are like his father's quick and precise. He has the most attractive voice and the prettiest emerald eyes, but Shiho has known him long enough to become immune to his smile.
"Please!" She shoots him a warning glare. "If you don't leave my hot chocolate alone, I'll make sure your parents won't need the next birthday invitations!"
The jungle kombatter rifle is gone in an instant, and the proud army ranger tosses her the phone he has fished out of his pocket with a wicked grin. Shinichi barely manages to catch it before it lands in her lap. "Three missed calls from 'Rei'!" announces The Brat.
"Rei?" Shinichi's brow furrows. "Furuya Rei?" The temperature in the room seems to fluctuate for a moment when he considers all the implications of this new piece of information.
To demonstrate his abysmal timing, Rei chooses this moment to send Shiho a message.
Shinichi sighs, rolls his eyes, and hands her the phone without glancing at the screen.
"He sometimes asks me for help when he has to deal with an especially hard case." She inwardly winces. In situations like this, explaining only seems to make things worse.
"Interesting," Shinichi laconically comments.
"Interesting?" Now she is the one who furrows her brow.
"He usually doesn't want help from anyone," Shinichi elaborates before throwing a listless glance at his watch. It's time to wake up Ran, he says. "Otherwise we'll miss our ferry although I'm glad she can sleep so well."
She can tell that her chances of luring a confession out of him are gone—he has retreated into his shell of chivalry and correctness. Sipping her cold chocolate, which she no longer enjoys, Shiho wonders how well she knows him (obviously not as well as she thought). She also wonders how well Ran knows him (probably not very well either). Like a chameleon that can turn almost any colour and change from red to green within twenty seconds, he can't keep a hue for long—and just like a chameleon that has been caught and put into a glass terrarium, he will always feel trapped in a marriage.
She is angry at him for no apparent reason. Perhaps she is irked by the realization that he will brush her aside and return to Ran at the first perceived offence.
Is he only interested in her as a means of escape? Is she only interested in him because he has never been available? She has been pining for him for so long and has read so many (horrendously bad) articles with titles like "Why did I fall in love with an unavailable man" so often that she no longer knows what she feels. And for an agonizing moment, she questions and doubts his feelings for her and her feelings for him and their ability to live up to the challenge of maintaining a committed relationship. Disturbingly, she can sympathise with Ran more than with Shinichi because the mere attempt at talking with Shinichi about his feelings is like pulling teeth.
Hammett, the inveterate little charmer, rubs his dark head against her arm and, when she turns to look at him, showers her with kisses. Delighted by the unexpected and genuine expression of affection (maybe she has been starving for love), she lets him kiss her.
c.
John Clay's friend and partner in crime, who escaped the law in "The Red-Headed League", was called "Archie".
"Archie", so Shiho recalls, was also the name of Agatha Christie's first husband, the man who would later inspire the Queen of Crime to write Sad Cypress when he left her for a younger woman.
Misfortunes are gregarious monsters that seldom come alone. Agatha Christie knew this as well since she wrote in her autobiography: As so often in life, when one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong. Her mother, whom she loved dearly, had just died, and turning out Ashfield—the house of her happy childhood—reduced her "to such a nervous state that [she] hardly knew what [she] was doing". While she was working "like a demon", as she wrote in her autobiography, her husband stayed in London, waiting for her to be done so that they could go to an Italy trip. And when she was done and he joined her for the holiday, he was a perfect stranger who went through the motions of ordinary greetings.
It took Agatha a while until Archie explained to her what had happened. He had fallen in love with the young secretary of an acquaintance of theirs, and he needed a divorce so that he could be free to marry the girl. Having grown up with the idea that marriage was sacred and having also witnessed the extraordinarily happy marriage of her parents, which lasted until her father's death, Agatha asked Archie to get over it. Such things happened—and friends and relatives told her that it was absurd. They were all convinced that Archie would get over it since he loved her and their daughter, but he didn't.
Even years later Agatha would try to rationalize, to explain to herself what had gone wrong and why her husband had suddenly fallen in love with another woman. Was it just fate with him, falling in love with her quite suddenly? He had certainly not been in love with her on the few occasions we had met her previously. He had even objected to my asking her down to stay, he said it would spoil his golf. Yet when he did fall in love with her, he fell with the suddenness with which he had fallen in love with me. So perhaps it was bound to be. (from Agatha Christie: An Autobiography).
Since he was devoted to their daughter Rosalind, Archie returned after a fortnight to save the marriage. Despite his efforts, however, he simply couldn't endure it.
But his coming back was, I think, a mistake, because it brought home to him how keen his feeling was. Again and again he would say to me: 'I can't stand not having what I want, and I can't stand not being happy. Everybody can't be happy—somebody has got to be unhappy.'
I managed to forbear saying, 'But why should it be me and not you?' Those things don't help. […]
So, after illness, came sorrow, despair and heartbreak. There is no need to dwell on it. I stood out for a year, hoping he would change. But he did not. (from Agatha Christie: An Autobiography).
c.
Somebody has got to be unhappy, and as long as it was only her, Shiho knew she had to endure it. Now that she knows that Shinichi might be suffering as well, it's two people's happiness against one person's happiness if she doesn't count the children (couldn't they raise them together—couldn't everyone get along?); or it's three people's happiness against two people's happiness if she counted them (how are the children going to deal with the divorce of their parents?)…
It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to discover how silly this is!
Instead of clinging to him while he was overwhelmed by guilt, Agatha Christie should have let go of Archie the moment he told her he was in love with the girl.
The children loved the ferry; the adults were all unimpressed. Everyone liked the stroll through the city; but no one but Hammett (who bought a cup, to Shiho's surprise) has bought anything. There will be time for souvenirs in a few days, when Sonoko-obachan comes, Shinichi appeases the twins, who regret not buying the weather vanes they wanted. Hattori-kun, Kazuha-san, and Hammett are staying in the city for a night to visit a friend while the Professor, Shiho, Ran, Shinichi, and the twins are returning to the isle via steam train (a popular local attraction).
c.
In a world where most modes of transportation have lost their charm (planes conjure up horror movies that open at the check-in; cars bring to mind lurid sex scenes, accidents, and traffic jams), the train might be the last setting of romance. It summons up centuries of world literature (Anna Karenina, The House of Mirth, Strangers on a Train, Murder on the Orient Express…); and it's a symbolic departure or arrival, or an important journey in life. A train, especially a steam train, still offers real adventure with minimal bureaucracy and reasonable comfort. It's the place where people—strangers, relatives, friends, lovers, enemies—meet or part.
In a train, anything can happen.
Shinichi and Shiho are sitting close together but not too close together, with legs and elbows barely touching, each holding a child in their lap. In front of them, Ran is messaging Sera-san, who has arrived too early and is asking her hosts whether she can just break into their holiday chalet.
She can, obviously, which is why no one even attempts to stop her.
"Masumi-obachan has arrived," Ran tells the twins.
"Obachan has arrived," Christie echoes while Chandler thoughtfully chants, "Seri is here, Seri is here, Seri is here…"
"Yes, she is here," Ran smiles. "Aunty 'Seri' is here."
"Seri is here," Shinichi chuckles, whereupon Ran whispers like an echo, "Seri is here, Seri is here…"
It's just an in-joke of the family. But there it is—the familiar, sharp stab of jealousy. Against the tomboyish "Seri" out of all people!
Something about that harmless "Seri is here" stirs a curious memory, but Shiho doesn't know which memory it is. It must be something important she has read about once, something which continually repeats itself over and over again in her mind to the rhythm of the train. Seri is here, Seri is here, Seri is here, Seri is here…
Her eyes automatically fall shut as she tries to remember, and Seri is here conjures up images of a summer night and a famous secret literary kiss. She wonders in which famous book it was. But no matter how hard she tries, she can't see it.
Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn of flowers in it…
Which famous writer has written this?
c.
"Don't fall asleep!" Shinichi nudges her. "If you fall asleep now, you'll be in the deep sleep stage just when we have to get off the train."
Shiho would like to take a picture of his head in front of the window glass, but the dappled sunlight in the woods passing by the windows of the steam train is too perfect as the background—one can get sick of things that are so perfectly beautiful. Also, what's good in life isn't necessarily good in art (paintings with a lot of green vegetation aren't popular, for instance.)
Da Vinci's La Gioconda—the Mona Lisa—is an exception. But then again, da Vinci will always be an exception.
Shiho wonders if she could spend her whole life in the woods or in paradise if paradise was really a garden—most probably not. None of her friends (with the exception of Ran, but does she consider Ran a friend?) will end there.
c.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, published by the Penguin Sherlock Holmes Collection, is a small green paperback with a serpent on the title page. Shiho has been carrying it in her handbag, just in case the train came late and the kids wanted her to read aloud to them. Now Chandler is playing with it like he always plays with books, studying it in detail from the outside without opening it before he has filed away all the sensory inputs.
The serpent, which is given the colour green, is often associated with seduction or knowledge, Shinichi informs her. And yet the serpent was a symbol of undying love for the Ancient Romans. In Victorian times, the cult of serpent jewelleries symbolizing everlasting love was revived when Prince Albert proposed to Queen Victoria with a ring in the image of a snake set with emeralds—a cult Sherlock Holmes must have known about since Holmes was the sort of fan who would decorate his walls with bullets spelling "V. R." (for "Victoria Regina").
Arthur Conan Doyle never stated explicitly what the snake meant to Sherlock Holmes, but Doyle must have played with the reader's expectations when he inserted the serpent into "A Scandal in Bohemia", the short story featuring Irene Adler.
c.
The woman, whom Holmes was never in love with although she was the only one for him (so Watson hastened to explain while he was talking to the Victorian readership about a married woman), lived on the (fictitious) Serpentine Avenue, in the (fictitious) Briony Lodge. Irene Adler, like Jean Leckie, was a beautiful mezzo-soprano—not a contralto like most fans believe. A "contralto" in Doyle's times was a dramatic mezzo-soprano, who often sang and acted male roles like the actresses of the Japanese Takarazuke Revue.
Is life writing fiction, Shiho wonders, or is fiction writing life? Would Doyle have fallen in love with Jean Leckie if Holmes hadn't loved Irene Adler?
"When Sherlock Holmes refused to accept the serpent ring the king offered him as payment and asked for Irene Adler's photo instead, he did it to keep a reminder of a weakness," argues Shinichi. "It's been left to the reader's interpretation what a weakness it was—but of course a Victorian reader would have associated the two serpent images in the short story with greed and everlasting romance."
As much as she likes to ruffle his feathers, Shiho has to agree. Since Holmes refused the one serpent, it was natural to assume that Holmes embraced the other. The Victorian audience was familiar with the art of juxtaposition in art and literature.
c.
The literary figure of the Detective isn't the average human—the figure of the Detective is a powerful shaman—and Doyle must have realized that a comfortable marriage based on fondness and friendship like his marriage with Louisa wouldn't have satisfied his consulting detective. The ability to stay loyal to a secret unrequited love forever elevated Sherlock Holmes to a godlike status while the ordinary marriage life was more suitable to Dr Watson.
"What colour are you today?" Chandler asks.
"I'm Green," Shiho gloomily admits with a sidelong glance at Shinichi. "As green as I can be with envy and greed!"
But green is also the colour of the Mona Lisa (did da Vinci really paint it for the lady's former lover—after they both had been married off to people they didn't love?), and the colour of enduring love, Shiho mentally adds.
"It's all right to be green from time to time," Shinichi agrees. "If it's good enough for the Serpentine Avenue in 'A Scandal in Bohemia', it's good enough for me."
c.
A/N: Argh, this chapter was so long that I had to stay up all night to write it. *dead