The Mouth of the House

The Row

茶碗の列

Tea is tasted by north light. Nadeesha Herath had learned that on her first day, eleven years ago, and she had learned nothing since that was as easy to say. The tasting room of Harcourt & Perera lay on the fourth floor of an old office building in the Colombo Fort, with a single wall of windows facing north, towards the harbour, and a long white table on which, every morning at half past eight, the row stood ready: a hundred and twenty cups, behind each a little pot, in front of each a small heap of dry leaves, in each pot two point eight grams of tea, steeped for six minutes and not a second longer.

茶は北の光で鑑定するものだ。それは十一年前の初日にナディーシャ・ヘーラトが教わったことであり、以来、それほど簡潔に言い表せる事柄は一つも学んでいなかった。ハーコート＆ペレラ商会の鑑定室はコロンボ・フォートにある古い商館の四階に位置し、港を望む北側にだけ窓が一面にあり、毎朝八時半になると長い白いテーブルの上に茶碗の列が並んだ。百二十の茶碗、それぞれの後ろには急須が、前には乾いた茶葉の小山が置かれ、急須のどれにも二・八グラムの茶葉が入り、六分間、一秒の狂いもなく抽出された。

A broker does not sell what he likes. He sells what he judges. Every lot that went to auction on Tuesday carried in the catalogue a valuation and a price in rupees per kilo, and the buyers from Dubai, Istanbul and Yokohama, who had never seen the tea, bid on that number as if on an oath. Behind the number, at Harcourt & Perera, stood one single person. The house called him, without any irony, the Mouth. In a hundred and twenty-two years it had had five Mouths. The fifth was named Lionel de Alwis, was sixty-seven years old, tied on a necktie even in April, when the city groaned under the heat, and initialled every page of the catalogue L. d. A.

仲買人は自分の好みを売るのではない。自らの鑑定眼を売るのだ。火曜日の競売に掛けられるすべてのロットには、カタログ上で評価とキロ当たりのルピー価格がつけられており、現物を見たこともないドバイ、イスタンブール、横浜の買い手たちは、その数値を誓約のように信じて入札した。ハーコート＆ペレラ商会において、その数値の背後に立つ人間はただ一人だった。商会は彼を何の皮肉もなく「口」と呼んだ。百二十二年の歴史の中で、商会には五人の「口」がいた。五代目はリオネル・デ・アルウィスといい、六十七歳で、街が猛暑にあえぐ四月でさえネクタイを締め、カタログの全ページに L. d. A. と署名した。

Nadeesha walked behind him. That was her position, and it was the best the house had to give to anyone who was not the Mouth. She was the daughter of a tea maker from Dickoya, she had spent her childhood in the smell of the drying oven, and at the entrance test she had correctly matched nineteen cups out of twenty, which de Alwis acknowledged with the remark that the twentieth would cost her years yet. He had taught her everything: the sharp intake that sprays the tea across the whole palate; the spitting into the rolling bowl, without a drop going astray; the words, which were English like the house’s account books, brisk for lively, bright for clear, flat for dead and tainted for what must not be sold. He said the number, she wrote it down.

ナディーシャは彼の後ろを進んだ。それが彼女の持ち場であり、「口」でない者に商会が与えうる最高の地位だった。ディコヤの製茶職人の娘である彼女は、乾燥炉の匂いに包まれて幼少期を過ごし、採用試験では二十杯の茶碗のうち十九杯を正確に識別して見せた。それに対してデ・アルウィスは、二十杯目を見極めるにはまだ何年もかかるだろうと評した。彼は彼女にあらゆることを仕込んだ。口蓋全体に茶を行き渡らせる鋭い啜り方、一滴もこぼさずに回転式の痰壺へ吐き出す技、そして商会の帳簿と同様に英語である用語の数々――生き生きとした活気を表す brisk 、澄んだ明るさを表す bright 、精彩を欠いた flat 、そして売り物にしてはならない状態を指す tainted 。彼が数値を告げ、彼女がそれを書き留めた。

The profession exacted its price in small things. Nadeesha ate neither chilli nor garlic in the evening, she wore no perfume, and at twenty-eight she had not married a man who smoked and refused to understand that this could be a reason. De Alwis, who had lived by the same rules for almost fifty years, lived alone in Bambalapitiya, and his private life consisted, as far as the house knew, of neckties.

この職業はささやかな犠牲を求めた。ナディーシャは夕食に唐辛子もニンニクも口にせず、香水もつけず、二十八歳のときには、喫煙者でありそれが別れの理由になりうると理解できない男との結婚を断った。五十年近く同じ規律のもとで生きてきたデ・アルウィスはバンバラピティヤで一人暮らしをしており、商会が知る限りの彼の私生活といえば、ネクタイだけだった。