Otoyomegatari - Vol. 11 Ch. 72 - Vows

[erana1]

Page 16: With lots of story yet to be written, five fake bucks say that the end of the tale will be Smith safely taking that escape route through India after saying good bye to Karluk and Amira and family

 

[SotiCoto]

The other bloke:

 

[lespookycarrot]

Page 14 -- topmost panel, showing all 4 of them sitting down to a discussion:

I absolutely appreciate how everyone's way of sitting beautifully mirrors their personality.

 

[DanYHKim]

Wow! A signet ring is an even more significant gift than a watch!

The ring is the equivalent of giving one's hanko (The stamp the Japanese use by way of a signature.) For all the 'love never ending' symbolism that pastors like to use when talking about the ring in marriages, the significance of a ring is much more direct than that. Giving a ring gives that person the authority to act in the place of the giver. A ring's face, stamped onto wax, is the signature and approval of the family.

In the story of the Prodigal Son, the father restores his son to the family by giving him his mantle and ring. In the movie "Ben Hur", Hur is adopted by a Roman Senator, and shows this to another person by impressing the Senator's ring into a wax tablet. Henry Smith similarly carries a signet ring, a device specifically for affixing the seal of approval of his family, even though the written signature has, by then, supplanted the seal in common use. Giving her his ring symbolically gives her the same authority as a legitimate family member.

You have the absolute right of it. In these modern times it's hard to remember, at least for a Westerner, the significance of giving a ring to a woman whom you are married to. I don't know if the people of Central Asia have the same practice of using seals in order to signify approval, but if they did then she would have been absolutely dumbfounded by his gift. It is way more significant than an expensive watch

 

[DanYHKim]

I like how Smith's friend says that intelligence and research can look very similar. I suspect that he is actually using Mr Smith, and probably a network of other such wanderers, in order to do exactly that: gather intelligence. They don't say what he does for a living, but he is stationed in Ankara, and appears to have substantial means. He also has trusted agents whom he can send out to travel hundreds of miles in order to deliver a message, etc. As I recall, he also had letters delivered to Smith by way of a female Western traveler .

One could easily imagine him at his station cultivating relationships with these different people, native and European. He would be the one that everyone would go to in order to get travel papers or letters of introduction or just smooth things over. Just as Smith and Ali found themselves hosted by a wealthy man and his wife, given considerable hospitality during that time, then others would perhaps also find themselves with their travels facilitated by a letter or word sent ahead to another city. Adventurers, hunters for exotic game, scholars and archaeologists, trade representatives looking for connections to villages that make traditional rugs and tapestries, all of these would be referred to that man in Ankara. He would send them out with not much more than a sense of gratitude and obligation and some small errand. "Please pass this letter on to so and so when you get to such and such city." "If you happen to be in that region in the summer, I would appreciate knowing how the opium harvest has gone."

All of these little facts would be streaming back to him in letters from otherwise innocent travelers who just pick up a word here and there. And then he would pull it together into a report that he would pass on to Her Majesty's foreign intelligence service.

I am sure he is genuinely Henry Smith's friend, but he is also taking advantage of his school chum's predilection for bumbling around foreign lands to pick up more data then any Cloak and Dagger worker could obtain.

 

[friendly]

I find it sweet how Mr. Smith worries so much about doing something he's already set to do that he forgets to make it clear he intends to marry her first. He's already fretting about her traveling with him and dealing with his family! All the while she's ready to live as his servant.... they're both very sweet but slightly ridiculous.

But that's kind of what you want for a love story. If everyone was sensible we wouldn't have much to do.

 

[DanYHKim]

To me, Smith is like a child in an adult body or more aptly, an immature young adult. He cares more about his curiosity than his responsibilities. That's who he is throughout the story. There's the politically correct word where Smith labels it "research" and in a sense it is true for what he's doing, but from the story, it feels like he's always doing research in service of his curiosity, rather than vice versa.

Smith is an academic. Offhand, I can't remember if he has siblings, but his actions and activities say that he's like a third son. The third son in Amira's family is kind of a carefree guy, because he doesn't have the authority of his eldest brother or the potential responsibility of the middle brother to be ready just in case. He can say as he pleases, within limits. Smith may well have a doctorate in history of ethnology, but doesn't call himself "doctor" because (as we've seen in his travels) he will be mistaken for a physician. In any case, he doesn't act like he has responsibility to continue the family line or to prepare himself to take over headship 'just in case', and so is free to pursue his interests. As a scholar, he can travel and learn. He's proficient in the common trade languages of Central Asia, and is learning some of the ancient or older written languages as well. He can travel pretty freely, and has some pretty good connections (Remember how the Russians treated him when Karluk came to spring him from jail? That host family isn't just some bunch of sheepmen in a remote village.)

He also has a school chum who is with the British government. Smith might not realize it, but his letters, notebooks, and sketches (and photographic plates*) that he sends to his 'buddy' aren't just keepsakes. They are important intelligence on a remote but possibly strategic region. The old school friend is cultivating Smith as an informal spy; one whose bumbling and absentminded scholarly demeanor makes him seem harmless to the powers being assembled in the region. He's perfect, even if his intelligence gathering is random and imperfect. He is an important asset to the Crown, and yet the casual nature of his role also means that he possesses no valuable information to be extracted if he is captured and forcibly interrogated. And if his buddy in Ankara might feel bad if he learns that Smith was captured and being tortured by the Ottomans or something, there will be no need to mount an expensive and dangerous extraction.

*That camera rig is expensive. Smith's family would not have paid for it; they would rather that Smith lived at and managed their Indian tea plantation or something. Again, British Intelligence probably paid for the camera, chemicals, and so on. Smith, in his academic cloud, would not have given much thought to its provenance, but it was what got me thinking of him as an unwitting spy.