Japan haunted him afterwards like a ghost. Afterwards he knew that he had shut his eyes. Afterwards he knew that he had nothing to remember, nothing but little sharp negligible details that had pricked his idle mind—the white crests printed on the backs of the blue-clad coolies—the paint on the women’s faces—the way the women’s toes turned in—the greasiness of the women’s hair—the deformed look of the women’s backs in the evening when they put on outer kimonos over their broad thick obi sashes—the angry officious voices of the policemen—the similarity of the Tokyo railway to the London Underground.... After rejoining the ship at Kobe he had defiantly read cheap books all through the Inland Sea. At Nagasaki he did not land. “I’m not a tourist—I’m here on business,” he told a little fat bald American business man, who had not asked him whether he were a tourist or not. Manila Edward ignored. He only saw one thing belonging to Manila, a small Filipino woman with gauze sleeves and ruffles starched as though she were an Elizabethan, who came on board with her husband, a little man, the upper part of whose body was sensibly clothed in a garment of such transparency that no single crease or roll of brown fat over his ribs and stomach was hidden. And here was Hongkong. Edward woke up. He was alive to the bland blue outlines of the Peak against the sky. Every scarlet and gold flutter of the paper prayers on the importunate sampans that raced for the liner was a message from Emily to Edward. People talked with English voices in Hongkong. Edward could hardly hear what the women said. England at last! He followed a couple of pink, small-headed subalterns to the hotel. He heard one say, “By Jove,” in a throaty English voice. Edward felt no longer despised and exotic. He saw that everyone in the hotel lobby looked cooler than himself. But the faces were English and not complacent. Or even if they were a little complacent—why not?—they were English. He ordered a cocktail. “After that I will look in the register,” he thought. “Perhaps Emily’s name will lie like a strip of light on the first page I look at.” He did not know Emily’s last name. He could hardly believe for a moment that he did not know her name. The cocktail was so good that while he was drinking it he thought, “I shall think of her name in a minute.” But nobody had ever told him her name. “I know Tam’s name at least.” It was a pseudonym. He deliberately interposed a blankness between his brain and this disaster of a China rendered empty of Emily. China to him meant Emily now. The divorce of the two words—China—Emily—was inconceivable. He studied the register. “If I see her writing I shall recognise it—though I have never seen it.”