Disclaimer: "Detective Conan" belongs to Gosho Aoyama.
Becoming Conan
by FS
Chapter 5: Blue
He ought to despise secrets just as much as he despises lies since lies and secrets usually go hand in hand with each other. Secrets are to Shinichi what Pandora's Box was to Pandora, however—it's impossible for him to resist uncovering a secret even when he senses that he won't be able to deal with his discoveries.
c.
"So why is Furuya-san 'Rei'?" asks Shinichi as they're climbing the stairs together. Although the "lift" (which is actually a cable car) has been repaired, the Professor and Ran are determined to test the Professor's invention. Shinichi felt uneasy at first since the few steps leading to the porch where they tested the walking wheelchair this morning could hardly be compared to the long winding staircases connecting the beach and the woods on a slope, and he was sceptical about his ability to catch both Ran and the Professor if they should fall—but WW1 can handle the problem just fine. No sooner did it detect the first obstacles than it raises its wheels, lowers its legs, and extends its feet and claws. And now, after striding up the stairs taking four steps at once, it's waiting for them at the top of the last staircase with robotic smugness, its eye-shaped reflectors glittering a brilliant sapphire in the late afternoon sun.
"He is 'Rei' because it simply happened… and afterwards it seemed silly to revert to using family names, you know: 'Furuya-san!' 'Miyano-san!'"
His eyes darken. With hindsight, she shouldn't have told him—but it's too late now.
"I'd never have guessed!" he remarks after a moment's sullen silence. "I've always thought he was in love with your mother, to be honest."
That hit home—and of course the seemingly throwaway comment wasn't an innocent observation. A sidelong glance at him shows her that he even has the impertinence to smirk. "You weren't available," she was going to say, but the smirk made her reconsider.
"We still see each other sometimes," she tells him instead. She might as well admit it before he discovers it himself.
"Ah, to help him solve his cases?"
He is trying to sound as natural as possible, but she can still discern the mounting dread in his voice.
To tell, or not to tell… as if he hadn't guessed it already…
"Yes, cases most of the time—although sometimes we go out for dinner when he is in the vicinity." She knows she is being ruthlessly honest, but she doesn't want to lie to him at the moment, not even by omission. It must be the vast blue sky under which they've been walking—any statement uttered beneath such a sky sounds like an oath. Fluffy white cumuli are drifting along the azure sea of light. A sight which could almost induce her to believe in heaven.
"You're still seeing him?"
This time, he hasn't even tried to hide the disappointment in his voice. To lie, or not to lie, that is the question…
"No, not really."
His glare—a flash of steely blue from bright grey eyes—is a clear indication that he isn't satisfied by either the situation or the explanation he gets. But since the Professor has sidled up to them in the meantime, she isn't going to dwell on all the connotations of "not really".
c.
Instead, she rapidly changes the topic of their chat; and by the time they arrive at the top of the last staircase, they're immersed in a discussion about "The Red-Headed League", notably John Clay and his partner.
"Archie didn't escape the law," Shinichi hastens to dispel her misconception about the ending of "The Red-Headed League". "Holmes said three men were waiting for Archie at the door."
A quick rereading of the ending in her green paperback shows Shiho that Shinichi is right. John Clay and Archie are going to be reunited in jail and most probably at the gallows as well if she interprets Clay's "Jump, Archie, jump, and I'll swing for it" correctly.
"It's been too long since I read it… I must have misremembered it because I wanted it to end differently," she laments—and Ran, who is rolling next to them along the tree-lined road, chimes in: It's especially infuriating because Mr Windibank (the rat!) escaped the law in "A Case of Identity" directly afterwards. The only consolation is the possibility that Conan Doyle might have tried to direct the readers' attention to the law's injustices. This is unlikely, however, as Doyle wouldn't have had Holmes condone the injustices of his time.
"Holmes helped the police arrest Clay because he had a past grudge Doyle didn't elaborate on," Shiho points out. "It wasn't only about justice—it was about getting even with an old rival as well, which only makes it harder to digest."
"It's interesting that you're both on Clay's side," Shinichi testily returns. "He was described as 'a remarkable man', and he was also said to be someone who could 'crack a crib in Scotland one week, and be raising money to build an orphanage in Cornwall the next'. But he wasn't only a thief and a forger—he was a murderer as well. It's easy to be blinded by his talents, but should Holmes have overlooked his ruthlessness because he was loyal to his friend? Clay was Holmes' enemy, and Holmes caught him in the act just by observing trivial details everyone else would have overlooked. Clearly Holmes was the hero of the story, not Clay! But I suppose there is more than one female reader who has been ensnared by Clay's charm and panache."
"It's only natural, isn't it? We don't learn which murders Clay has committed—we like everything we see of him… And he accepts his defeat with so much grace that everyone but Holmes pales in comparison."
The "everyone but Holmes" appeases Shinichi a bit. Not enough, though, as they spend half of the sandstone road discussing the ending of the story. The allusion to capital punishment only makes the contemporary reader feel more empathy with Clay and his friend, Ran argues, and Shinichi must agree with her, albeit grudgingly. He doesn't agree that Holmes should have let Clay escape, however. Clay knew what he was risking and still ran the risk. Holmes was the better man who brought about Clay's downfall—that's all there is to it.
"Even Holmes said that, if he hadn't become a detective, he might have become a burglar," Ran insists. The gulf between Clay and Holmes isn't as huge as it seems: The living conditions in Victorian London were so severe that it was easy to end up as beggars or thieves, or prostitutes if you weren't lucky. There was no security and no chance of advancement for people born into a low social class. Considering the working conditions back then, it's difficult to condemn Clay.
"He claimed to be of noble birth but his name is John Clay," Shiho remarks. "'Clay' is an interesting speaking name, especially in combination with 'John', one of the most common British names. I think we can safely conclude that Clay's name alludes to the fact that everyone is just 'made of clay' regardless of their social standing and birth. Or Conan Doyle meant to say that Clay was a man of humble birth who strove too hard after the life of a noble man. Clay's name also brings to mind the phrase 'feet of clay' alluding to hidden faults and weaknesses which aren't visible at first glance. Most probably, Doyle meant to put all these ideas into the reader's mind—ambiguity in brevity is a powerful tool."
"I prefer the unambiguous things in life!" Ran darkly says. "And one of those things is my conviction that no human being should be allowed to extinguish—or allowed to aid in extinguishing—another human life. I can't stand seeing Sherlock Holmes arresting John Clay knowing that Clay would have been hanged. Some things should never be decided by humans! No human being should be allowed to exert the powers of heaven."
c.
To lighten the mood, Shiho jokes that if Clay was modelled on the same person who inspired Doyle to create Moriarty, Clay must have escaped from jail. To her delight, the mental image successfully lifts Ran's spirits.
Even though Shiho perceives a certain irony in the fact that she is shooting herself in the foot by settling Shinichi and Ran's argument, she feels strangely happy. It is difficult to be unhappy beneath a perfectly blue sky—the expansiveness of it seems to dwarf petty human concerns. For the first time in her life, Shiho can believe the statistical claim that blue is the world's most popular colour—there is no other colour which expresses such absolute tranquility and peace. Their group stop for a moment at a bench with a view facing the sea in the distance. Under them, beyond the wooden balustrade, the green slope seems to lead to an endless abyss. But under the blue sky reflected in the ever-changing blues and greens of the sea, the only problems which matter are the most profound of humanity's questions, or the most profound question, according to Blaise Pascal, the great mathematician, physicist, inventor, theologian, and writer.
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to…
(from Hamlet, by William Shakespeare)
c.
"Never waste energy on worries and negative thoughts. […] Sure my back screwed me up good for a year but with every adversity comes a blessing because a shock acts as a reminder to oneself that we must not get into a state of routine." (from Bruce Lee Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living, by Bruce Lee).
c.
The twins, who are eager to see "Seri" again, are now running along the sandstone road. The neck sunshades of their legionnaire's caps are fluttering in the breeze like conqueror's flags that retreat further and further with every second passing by. Shinichi automatically follows them but hesitates after the first steps. I'll watch over them—you can stay with your wife, Shiho offers when he turns round to look at her, but before she can turn her words into action, Ran has grabbed her wrist.
"Just go!" Ran tells Shinichi, in a voice which sounds harder and hoarser than Shiho remembers it.
Later, after Shinichi and the Professor have gone after the twins as Ran urged them to, Ran and Shiho remain at another bench for a minute to take some good shots of the woods. The photos are only Ran's excuse to stay behind; and Shiho, who is aware of this, waits patiently (albeit anxiously) for Ran to begin.
"Bruce Lee once damaged his sacral nerve due to overtraining," Ran says at last. "But despite his doctors' prognoses, he managed to return to martial arts and got even better than before."
"Doctors don't know everything," Shiho agrees. "Sometimes patients miraculously recover—"
"Bruce Lee didn't 'recover'!" Ran snaps. "He learned to live with the aftermath and to heal as well as he could and to make use of what remained… but that's not what I meant to say…" Her eyes roam the woods and the sky with grim despair. "His fans always praise his ability to 'recover'—but most fans don't acknowledge what really happened: Bruce Lee wanted to know whether he would ever be able to walk again, and the doctors said 'maybe'…"
"Ran!" interjects Shiho in horror. "Don't—"
"He was very candid about what he would have done if they hadn't said 'maybe'—if that little spark of hope had been denied him. He said he would have found a river to jump in." Ran activates the walking wheelchair by pressing the blue button to her left; and they return to the road in silence until she can bear to speak again.
"Sometimes I wanted to do it so badly! I only didn't do it out of guilt, or for fear—because Shinichi can't take care of them alone, because both of them need me!"
Shiho rummages in her mind for the right response, but she can barely forbear to say, "I wish this hadn't happened to you but to me." Ran would have misinterpreted the exclamation as Shiho being selflessly noble—missing the self-serving aspect in Shiho's thought. If the situation were reversed—so Shiho can't help thinking—Shinichi would leave his wife to take care of her. And all of a sudden, it strikes her with startling clarity that Shinichi would never abandon the woman who seems to need him, no matter how much he longs to do it. The impact of the realization drives tears into her eyes, but she manages to blink them away before Ran can see her cry.
c.
"What colour are you today?" asks Hammett (who returned to the chalet with his parents yesterday morning) as he settles in Shiho's lap. The twins are off to play with "Seri" again, having forgotten about Shiho the instant Sera-san appeared—like father, like children!
"Blue," Shiho sighs. "I'm definitely blue today."
"Sad?" Hammett asks, taking her chocolate ice-cream out of her hand since she doesn't appear to need it. The boy isn't a fan of redundant social customs, but Shiho is getting along with him better than with anyone else now that she is blue.
"Not sad, but blue. Extremely blue." "Sad" sounds so harmless—she was sad when she noted that the water was still too cool to swim in.
She would cry if she were alone, but she is never alone now unless she is in the bathroom, not even at night. Sera-san's overwhelming enthusiasm beats even her insomniac tendencies. In the morning, it's Hammett with his all-consuming infatuation who exhausts her.
"As blue as the sky," Hammett offers before he boldly kisses her lips. The cool touch feels so unexpectedly pleasant and sweet in the summer heat that she hurriedly pulls away.
"As blue as the sea," she says, indicating the water in front of them, which is a shimmering turquoise or cobalt or ultramarine depending on the amount of light reflecting off the waves. "As blue as the Blues."
"True blue!" he winks before leaning in. "Like me when it comes to you."
"Don't you dare to try it again, you cutest of all devils, you!"
c.
When you entrust one person with the task of protecting your secrets, you will lose the desire to open up to another—sharing secrets brings two people together and isolates them from the rest of the world. Shiho is suffering the consequences of this truth now that "Seri" has barged into Shinichi and Ran's refuge with her brilliant smile and her ringing laugh, turning the heads of almost all adults and kids and becoming an ever-present figure Shiho can't tolerate seeing and hearing. To a person like Shiho, it's easy to be intimidated by "Masumi-obachan"—brazen, happy, wild "Seri", who has the sort of reckless abandon which makes the phrase "the sky is the limit" sound wimpish. Even if Shiho weren't unnerved by Sera Masumi's never-ceasing energy, the very fact that Shinichi has withdrawn from her completely and is spending all his free time with his new guest would have devastated her.
"Devastated" may be the wrong word for what she is feeling—but she can't find the right word now that all words are obscured by a bank of fog and she has difficulty in recalling the simplest tasks (has she wiped the table, brought out the trash, applied sunscreen to her neck…?). Sera-san matches Shinichi much better than either Ran or Shiho does. And though "Seri" talks nonstop, is upsettingly nosy, needs to share everything with friends (from her favourite brand of chocolate to her current bra size), and runs about the holiday chalet (or rather the whole isle) in Energizer Bunny fashion doing outrageous things ("Seri" has joined Hammett in shooting sunscreen bottles from the wicker chairs and has also helped the twins bury Shinichi's new underwear), Shinichi doesn't mind at all.
Out of the blue, it occurs to Shiho that her friendship with Shinichi no longer exists. The most telling indication of this is his tendency to turn to Sera-san instead of her for advice and consolation. She, too, has been messaging Rei regularly for months. Between Shinichi and her, what remains is the remembrance of the old intimacy and a fleeting platonic romance which has passed faster than a summer breeze.
In this cool part of the world, the wind has already become colder.
She opens The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in the hope that Moriarty can take her mind off these obsessive ruminations, but even the beginning of Watson's "The Final Problem" only reminds her of her own problem.
It may be remembered that after my marriage, and my subsequent start in private practice, the very intimate relations which had existed between Holmes and myself became to some extent modified. He still came to me from time to time when he desired a companion in his investigations, but these occasions grew more and more seldom, until I find that in the year 1890 there were only three cases of which I retain any record… (from The Final Problem by Arthur Conan Doyle).
c.
When she messages one person, she can't talk with another—she can only focus on one thing at a time these days. Missing her sporadic tête-à-têtes with Shinichi, she is growing addicted to her habitual conversations with Rei. She even confides to Rei that she has begun to despise herself—for her antipathy towards Ran and Sera-san, both of whom are very kind to her; for obsessively stalking Shinichi whenever he is alone only to find him running in the opposite direction (to either Sera-san or his wife); for her gradual loss of self-respect and integrity (why does she obsess over a married detective out of all people?). It's easier to talk to Rei for the sole reason that Rei, too, is dark—forever tortured by the revenge he didn't get and the suicide of his best friend, which he can no longer blame on anyone…
"Tell me about Rei!" Hammett demands, and offers her his cheek to kiss. Since she doesn't allow him to kiss her spontaneously anymore (the cheeky brat would only misuse her kindness), he has begun to fetch his kisses like other children fetch ice-cream.
It's impossible for her to resist a kid who is so fully convinced of the beautiful elite's prerogative, so she humours him.
"Rei is my friend," she explains after a few pecks, condensing four months of courtship and one week of illusionary bliss into the simple term. She was intensely infatuated with the beautiful man before she realized that all the things she liked about him were things which reminded her of a certain detective. Discovering that he saw a shadow of her mother in her was the final death blow to a relationship which would have been fantastic if they both hadn't been too proud and too self-aware.
"A special friend," Sera-san meaningfully comments. "And a very good-looking one to boot!"
"Prettier than me?" Hammett asks Shiho with a pout.
"No, you're definitely prettier, but you're also worse!"
Pleased by the double compliment, the little rascal smirks.
Meanwhile, Sera-san has planted herself beside Shiho although she could have sat in Ran's XL-sized roofed wicker chair, which is much more spacious. Annoyed by the closeness she hasn't bargained for but hampered by Hammett, who has made himself comfortable in her lap, Shiho dithers between staying where she is and moving away.
"What colour are you?" asks Hammett "Masumi-obachan".
"Blue, of course," Sera-san beams as her long laugh lines deepen around thick-lashed eyes of the bluest blue. Blue is the colour of freedom, imagination, sensitivity, and expansiveness! How can anyone not be in love with blue?
So they're both blue today—but if Sera-san's blue is an electric blue or a navy blue, Shiho's has a dull greyish tint. Nevertheless, Shiho makes an effort to be pleasant. She isn't trying to cosset Sera-san (she couldn't care less whether Sera-san likes her or not), but she would like to convince herself that she has changed. She can mingle with normal people well now that she no longer needs to fear the Organization.
Surprisingly, chatting with Sera-san is more interesting than Shiho expected. Ultramarine blue—the colour made of pure lapis lazuli (this stone was more precious than gold and caused Vermeer to sink into debt)—leads to discussions about spirituality and divinity and immortality and rebirth; and thus—inevitably and predictably—to Doyle's immortal consulting detective.
c.
Sherlock Holmes is a man who never lived—as the title of a Sherlock Holmes convention points out—but Sherlock Holmes is also a man who will never die. His privileged status is rooted in the myth of The Detective, which he personifies. Unlike Poirot and Marple and other great sleuths of the Golden Age of detective fiction, which followed his reign, Sherlock Holmes didn't give a damn about fairness. Around 1928, SS Van Dine and other writers tried to establish the Rules of detective fiction, the foundation on which future tomes and pyramids of whodunnits would be built. One of the most elementary rules is the demand that "the reader must have equal opportunity with the detective to solve the story". Well, Holmes (or is it Watson, Holmes' amanuensis?) has never, ever, cared enough to give the reader equal opportunity.
Sherlock Holmes will never be on the same level as the reader or as Watson, who addresses his readership as he would address his peers—in the true Victorian way, with the right amount of formality, hypocrisy, and starchiness. In a Sherlock Holmes story, Sherlock Holmes is God. A Sherlock Holmes story isn't a fair challenge to the reader—the reader is only allowed to admire the magic and hold in awe their masterful conjurer.
To eliminate Sherlock Holmes, Doyle had to create the ultimate nemesis—a figure who would serve as the personification of evil, the very last antagonist and also the greatest, whom Holmes' would defeat before he himself was defeated. Since Doyle hated mathematics as a school subject, it was no great surprise that Holmes' nemesis was a mathematician—a diabolical genius with a high-domed forehead similar to Sherlock Holmes' more intelligent brother Mycroft. "It was not murder but justifiable homicide in self-defense," Doyle defended himself in front of his outraged readership for letting Holmes meet his end, "since, if I had not killed him, he [Sherlock Holmes] would have killed me."
A stroke of genius gave Doyle the idea to name Holmes' (Sherrinford Hope's) nemesis "Moriarty". "Mort" is the French term for "Death". The harbinger of death was a dark mirror image of Holmes himself: a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker, who sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of them (Sherlock Holmes's description of James Moriarty in "A Final Problem").
The parallel to Watson's description of the great detective in "The Cardboard Box" is obvious. Holmes "loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumour of suspicion of unsolved crime"…
The dark alter ego, or the doppelgänger, to use the German term, was a popular Gothic figure and, by this time, was already featured in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, or, more obviously and prominently, in Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Holmes resembles Moriarty more than he would ever admit. To solve the crimes, Holmes had to imagine himself as their perpetrator or perpetrators, and a veiled admission of his own inner darkness is reflected in his remark to Watson: my horror at his crimes was lost in my admiration at his skill.
c.
Shiho was in a halfway bearable mood when she was walking beneath a blue sky, but now that she is lying in this claustrophobic blue-painted bedroom with the clichéd slogan "I have a dream" (in a cursive white font on a pale-blue background), she regrets having talked with Sera-san about Moriarty and death. Shiho, too, has been grappling with her nemesis. Emotionally stable people will never consider suicide—the will to live is to them as natural as breathing—but she has experienced it more than once. She has gone through with it and was reborn as a consequence. And though she sometimes believes she has left it behind, the desire to sleep forever is still hiding inside her, ready to pounce whenever she feels drained of energy.
On a whim, she looks up Agatha Christie's Sad Cypress. The title has always intrigued her although she doesn't know the reference. As she suspected, it alludes to death. There is an excerpt from the song in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night printed as an epigraph, which she missed when she first read the elegiac novel.
Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid…
(the epigraph to Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie, taken from Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene IV, by William Shakespeare)
c.
One can leave the world wordlessly—tormenting friends and relatives with questions that will never be answered—or leave a tender, heartbreaking suicide note like Virginia Woolf did. The famous writer filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the river Ouse when she felt the old depression, which once drove her mad in her late teens, strike again. The public, however, didn't feel compassion for the sick when the sickness was "only" the blues.
Woolf's handwritten farewell letter to her husband ("If anybody could have saved me it would have been you…") was misquoted in the news. Her arguments, taken out of their original context and set against the background of the ongoing war, served as a hot topic for public mockery. Woolf was no longer a depressed writer scared of ruining her loved ones' lives with the potential repercussions of her madness. To the public, she had become a failure and a deserter.
If one leaves this world voluntarily, one should leave it like Sherlock Holmes—plunging down the Reichenbach Falls with one's nemesis and leaving only a walking stick and a silver cigarette case containing a farewell letter addressed to one's "dear Watson".
My dear Watson [it said]:
I write these few lines through the courtesy of Mr. Moriarty, who awaits my convenience for the final discussion of those questions which lie between us. He has been giving me a sketch of the methods by which he avoided the English police and kept himself informed of our movements. They certainly confirm the very high opinion which I had formed of his abilities. I am pleased to think that I shall be able to free society from any further effects of his presence, though I fear that it is at a cost which will give pain to my friends, and especially, my dear Watson, to you.
(from The Final Problem by Arthur Conan Doyle)
c.
Blue suppresses your appetite. This must be true since Shiho can no longer eat anything. The new eating disorder would worry her less if it weren't accompanied by insomnia—not insomnia as she knows it but the total, complete inability to sleep. At dawn, she is sitting at the empty breakfast table, observing with chilling clarity how her hands shake and her heartbeat flutters whenever she tries to stir her chocolate, wondering whether she will die in a few hours since she hasn't slept at all for who knows how long.
She can't remember how many mornings she has sat at the breakfast table alone—it's been an eternity ago that Shinichi last joined her although no more than three days can have passed. She idly wonders whether she should laugh. Hammett, who is touring around the isle with a theatre group that has hired him as their star child actor, would certainly laugh at her dependency, being one of the few lucky people who will never emotionally depend on anybody.
She feels vaguely guilty for this unexplainable nervous breakdown—Ran has more reasons to be depressed than she has. Leafing through Agatha Christie's autobiography only exacerbates her sense of guilt. It reminds her that Ran is suffering as well.
A terrible sense of loneliness was coming over me. I don't think I realised that for the first time in my life I was really ill. I was always extremely strong, and I had no understanding how unhappiness, worry and overwork could affect your physical health. But I was upset one day when I was just about to sign a cheque and couldn't remember the name to sign it with. I felt exactly like Alice in Wonderland touching the tree.
[…]
Many years later, someone going through a period of unhappiness said to me: 'You know, I don't know what is the matter with me. I cry for nothing at all. The other day the laundry didn't come and I cried. And the next day the car wouldn't start —' Something stirred in me then, and I said, 'I think you had better be very careful; it is probably the beginning of a nervous breakdown. You ought to go and see someone about it.'
(from Agatha Christie: An Autobiography)
c.
Evidently, she can't endure this kind of secret. Talking to Rei, however, doesn't help Shiho cope with the situation. Forget about the jerk, he has only suggested. "I can't leave New York at the moment, but I'll buy you a flight ticket and fetch you from the airport if you come here."
She wonders whether she has been the victim of a terrible joke, as Christie is no longer sure that the sentence she overheard was real. Children are happy creatures with short memories. Once Christie has internalized the lesson that coca cola is only infatuation and natural mineral water true love, the question of whom her otousan is in love with (it's only coca cola, isn't it?) no longer matters to her.
c.
A/N: Sorry for the giant chapter, but I didn't want to split it. At least I've moved parts of it into the next chapter, into which it fits as well. *stoops to cheating xdxd… I'm back from my short holiday and am diligently working on the fic. Hopefully I'll finish it next week.
Thanks a lot to all the lovely readers who have reviewed. :) And littlelinguistme receives an extra cookie for recognizing the Virginia Woolf quote in the last chapter. ;)