open RP: Nick is pensive.

[mid_west_egg]

Nick Carraway is a Hufflepuff. However, sooner or later all Hogwarts students find their way to the Ravenclaw bar. He has a gin and tonic, and he's placed a doily carefully under the glass so as not to mar the finish of the piano. He plays piano the way someone might lay bricks: methodically, without verve, though taking pleasure in a job done

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[edomedpeddler]

Kusuriyuri enjoyed a good sake from time to time. And, there were some times more needful than others. Though he neither regretted nor would change any of the decisions he'd made, defending them was never easy.

He'd heard of the bar, though the concept of going somewhere and serving oneself was rather odd, he figured it was just another Western custom. He wondered if such a bar could have a good sake.

The odd music made him pause. The oddness was in the sound of the instrument, not in the precision of the player. Precision was demanded in traditional music. To hear that quality on a non-tradition instrument was...almost refreshing.

[mid_west_egg]

Nick was playing "I'll See You In My Dreams", from memory, when a curiously dressed fellow came into the bar. Without stopping, he turned his head to address the man. "Hope you don't mind a little music. If you need quiet to study, I can always come back later."

(( note: link will play song, though the song can be turned off. I figure it's about contemporary with the time in Nick's youth he'd have been taking piano lessons. ))

[edomedpeddler]

"Ah, no, it is fine. Please, continue." Kusuriyuri bows slightly. He turns to the bar and examines the bottles behind it.

He doesn't see any of the sake labels he recognizes. There is a plum wine he knows, but he does not feel like drinking plum wine just now. Hidden among the bottles, he finds one labeled seishu and decides on that. Below it, the proper serving set. He pours some of the sake into the serving bottle and takes it and the cup to a table where he kneels on the bench by it.

[mid_west_egg]

Nick nodded and continued playing. The piano was positioned such that the player had a limited vantage of the common room, which was better than no vantage at all. He could see a little of what Kusuriyuri was doing. The posture was as foreign as the man's dress and ... makeup? Facial tattooing? Nick had only been abroad when fighting in France during the Great War. His experience of the world was limited to matters Western in origin.

"I'd take requests," he said politely, over the sound of his playing, "but I guess it's not likely I'd know the songs you know. I'm Nick Carraway, an American."

[edomedpeddler]

Kusuriyuri looks up. "I am Kusuriyuri, from Japan. I do not think you would be familiar with Sakura, Sakura, would you?"

[mid_west_egg]

"Regretfully, no. Is it a song for piano?" To Nick, Japan is hardly more than a vague constellation of ideas, some of them rather confused with notions of China. Rice, calligraphy, exquisite little jade statues. "What does sakura mean?"

[edomedpeddler]

Kusuriyuri's eyes widen a little. "Sakura is a flowering tree that blooms in the spring. They remind us of how short life is."

Kusuriyuri begins to recite the words and behind them, you can almost hear the music.

[mid_west_egg]

Nick's piano trailed off into silence as Kusuriyuri began to recite. He listened with solemn attention.

"Beauty is ephemeral," he agreed, thinking of Gatsby's glorious parties, an explosion of light and energy and music, a brief and violent expenditure of so much vitality. And, thinking of Gatsby: "Yet here at Hogwarts, the dead come back to life."

[edomedpeddler]

Kusuriyuri pours more sake before answering. "So I have seen. Many of those I have met were dead. But, does return to life mean that beauty returns, or just its memory?" He drinks. "Is it the form or the truth or both?" he muses softly as he pours more sake into the small cup.

[mid_west_egg]

Nick sighed. "I'm not sure how to answer that, or even if there is an answer at all. Memory can be a ghost itself, it seems to me. It can haunt you for years, or for a lifetime if you let it."

[edomedpeddler]

Another cup of sake. "That is so," he agrees softly. "Memories feed mononoke," he adds, more to himself than his companion. He shakes his head. "I am Kusuriyuri," he says with a soft smile, "a medicine peddler, the only name I have anymore. Even I cannot remember my name." He sighs softly. The bottle he poured is empty and his cup is empty.

[mid_west_egg]

Nick pondered this, and as he pondered, he began again to play, the same song from the beginning rather than resuming where he'd left off: the music more quiet this time, a little dreamy in its slowness.

"A name's an important thing. My name's an old family name; when people hear it, people in society, they know I'm one of the Chicago Carraways. Gatsby renamed himself, and it's a subtle name change but somehow it makes a significant difference. What separates Gatz from Gatsby? It's just one syllable. I suppose it sounds more British that way ..." His song quieted further, undergoing an unintended diminuendo, with the movement of his thoughts. "How did you lose your name?"

[edomedpeddler]

Kusuriyuri quietly goes to get more sake, bringing the bottle with him, though he still pours into the serving pitcher before pouring it into his cup. He's not gone enough yet to forget that courtesy.

"I have lived far longer than most. In Japan, it is possible to know someone for a long time and never know their name. Especially when one is a traveling medicine peddler. I only sometimes knew my patient's names. Why would they have need for mine. I am just a medicine peddler. There will be another behind me. There was another before me. We are all Kusuriyuri." He sighs and pours some sake.

[mid_west_egg]

Nick attempted a summary. "In other words, you can't know your own name if others don't know and use it. It has to be heard and given back to you. Almost as a gift ..."

He stopped playing again, though he trilled an idle scale with one hand as he reached for his gin and tonic with the other. No reason, really, except that the talking made his throat a little dry. "In your case, you've subsumed your identity into your profession, is that it?"

[edomedpeddler]

Another cup of sake. "I have not given anyone my name to give to me. In Japan, it is overly invasive to demand a name." He feels less awkward explaining now, more due to the sake than getting used to it. "People are known by their occupation, by their position, by their calling. And, then, when needed, people are known by their family name. To become close enough to call someone by their given name, is to be counted a friend." He takes another drink. "It is not that I've subsumed myself but that is how things are."

Much more sake and he will need to put his feet down, though perhaps the drink will make the odd seating posture more comfortable as well. "How is it for you? Do you know everyone's name? Or, do they know yours?"

[mid_west_egg]

Nick was nothing if not a good listener.

In Japan, as Kusuriyuri explained it, Gatsby -- the man, the phenomenon -- simply would not have been possible. Occupation, position, calling, what were these to Gatsby? Everything in his life, every endeavor, was only the means to one end. Occupation: gangster? Bootlegger? Con man? It wasn't even clear to Nick after all this time what Gatsby had done to acquire his millions, only that whatever he'd done had been shady and that it had been somehow facilitated by Meyer Wolfsheim. None of it seemed even to touch Gatsby. Whatever he'd done nonetheless left him untroubled and clear, unbesmirched. His dream had burned away any imperfections with its white heat