Summer Storms and Temper

Thunder Over the Crossroads

"Every proverb a guest has ever left with me tells a person never to be angry," said the innkeeper, as the storm the two of them had watched gathering over the hills finally broke above the crossroads. "And yet here I sit, cross with the sky for blowing out my lantern twice before the soup was even warm."

"Then your guests have only been giving you half of each saying," said the traveler. She had pulled the bench back under the eaves at the first thunder, and now she sat on it by the door with her boots steaming and her small notebook open on her knee. "When you lay the proverbs of many roads side by side, very few of them forbid anger at all. Most of them simply ask you to wait, to count, or to sleep on it before you act."

The lantern by the door had gone out twice since sunset. Twice the innkeeper had cupped his hands around the wick and struck a new match, because a traveler caught on the road in a storm needs that small light more than on any calm night of the year. Now the flame stood steady again behind its glass, leaning a little whenever the wind found the gap under the eaves. The two of them watched it for a while without speaking, while the rain ran in sheets off the edge of the roof.

"Show me, then," said the innkeeper at last, pulling his chair closer to the light. "I have kept this inn for longer than you have been walking, and I have lost my temper with guests, with carters and with the weather more often than I would like to admit."

Losses Counted After Anger

The traveler turned to a page near the front of her notebook, where three sayings stood one under the other in her small, slanting hand. "I always read these three together," she said, "because they come from places that never met each other, and they still agree on almost every word."

In Japanese people say "Tanki wa sonki", "a short temper is a loss". They usually say it lightly, often with a smile, to remind someone that losing patience costs the angry person more than anyone else. In Swahili, "Hasira hasara" says the same thing in two words, "anger is loss". In Turkish, "Öfkeyle kalkan zararla oturur" turns it into a small scene: "whoever rises in anger sits down with loss". None of the three calls anger wicked or forbidden. All three simply keep an honest account of what it tends to cost, and they leave the choice with you.

Imagine you are standing at a bus station in the heat of a summer afternoon, and the clerk behind the window has just told you that your seat was sold twice. "There is one more bus at six, and I can put you on it without charge if you are willing to wait," says the clerk, already bracing for shouting. You feel the hot words rising, but then you remember the Turkish saying, and you sit down on the bench instead of standing up to argue. "Whoever rises in anger sits down with loss," says an older man beside you, who has watched the whole scene. "It seems to me that you have just saved yourself a very long afternoon."

"So what they share is the counting," said the innkeeper. "A man who keeps an inn knows better than most that a guest who leaves in a temper never comes back to sit under this lantern."

Counsel of the Night

The next three sayings, the traveler explained, did not warn about anger so much as offer a cure for it, and the cure was nothing more than sleep. In Russian there is "Utro vechera mudrenee", "the morning is wiser than the evening". It turns up in the old fairy tales whenever a helper tells the troubled hero to lie down and trust the morning to bring an answer. People still say it today to anyone too tired or too upset to decide well. In Italian, "La notte porta consiglio" means "the night brings counsel". In French, "La colère est mauvaise conseillère" warns that "anger is a bad adviser". Put together, the three describe two advisers who visit every angry person, one quick and loud, the other slow and quiet, and they leave no doubt about which one deserves a hearing.

Imagine you have quarreled with a travel companion in a small guesthouse about which road to take over the mountains, and both of you have said more than you meant. "Let us not settle it tonight," says your friend, folding the map with a sigh. "The night brings counsel, as they say in Italian, and we will see the road more clearly over breakfast." You agree, a little stiffly. In the morning the choice that seemed worth a quarrel takes the two of you less than two minutes.

"I learned that one without any proverb," said the innkeeper, and he laughed quietly. "When a supplier sends me a rude letter, I write my answer by this lantern that same night. In the morning I read it again beside the cold glass, and I put half of it in the stove."

Three Strokes of a Brush

The traveler nodded and turned the page. In Korean, she said, there is a saying, "Chameul in ja sesimyeon sarindo myeonhanda", "if you write the character for enduring three times, you can escape even a killing". It sounds fierce at first, but it is used gently, about ordinary quarrels in kitchens and on buses. The character it means is an old one, shared by several languages of the East, and it is drawn as a blade above a heart. Writing it three times becomes a way of holding the blade still while the heart cools down. In Chinese there is a longer and calmer form of the same idea: "Rěn yī shí, fēng píng làng jìng; tuì yī bù, hǎi kuò tiān kōng". It means "bear it for a moment and the wind drops and the waves lie flat; step back one pace and the sea is wide and the sky is open". It does not say that the other person is right or that you must give way forever. It says only that one moment of holding back often turns a narrow quarrel into open water.

Imagine you are on a crowded ferry on a hot afternoon, and a man with a large basket has pushed into the place by the rail that you had kept for an hour. "He has done it to three people already, and nobody has said a word to him," whispers the woman next to you, plainly hoping for a scene. You take one step back instead, and you find that the view from the stern is wider anyway. "Step back one pace and the sea is wide," you tell her with a smile. She laughs, because her grandmother used to say the very same thing.

"My own grandmother said it about a goat that stole her washing," said the innkeeper, and they both laughed.

Sparrows and Four Horses

"Now these are the ones I should have heard years ago," said the innkeeper, leaning over the notebook while a gust shook the lantern on its hook.

The flame bent low and rose again, and the traveler read him two sayings about words that cannot be called back. In Russian, "Slovo ne vorobey: vyletit, ne poymaesh" means "a word is not a sparrow; once it flies out, you will not catch it". In Chinese, "Yī yán jì chū, sì mǎ nán zhuī" means "once a word has left the mouth, even four horses cannot catch it". One language chose a small bird and the other a team of horses. Both pictured the same helpless chase after something already gone. Two more sayings come at the same trouble from the other side, by praising the closed mouth. In Irish, "Is minic a bhris béal duine a shrón" means "a person's mouth has often broken his nose", and it is said with a dry smile about anyone whose hasty words started a fight. In Spanish, "En boca cerrada no entran moscas" means "no flies get into a closed mouth". It is said in markets and kitchens as friendly advice to keep quiet when speaking would only make things worse.

Imagine you are in a summer market, bargaining for a woven bag, and the seller has named a price that seems far too high. "That is my last word on it, and my sister made every stitch of this bag by hand," says the seller, with a sharpness that makes you want to answer sharply. You open your mouth, then close it again, and you simply admire the stitching while you think. "No flies get into a closed mouth," says the seller after a moment, grinning. "For a customer who keeps calm in this heat, I will take a little off."

Anger in Its Place

"Do not think that the old sayings want us to swallow everything," said the traveler, closing the notebook on one finger. "Some of them stand up for anger when anger is fair."

In Japanese there is "Hotoke no kao mo sando made", "even the Buddha's face, only up to three times", meaning that even the gentlest person will lose patience if wronged again and again. It is usually said as a warning to the one doing the wrong, not as a scolding of the one who is angry. The patience it praises has a limit, and the limit is honest. In Spanish there is "Más vale ponerse una vez colorado que ciento amarillo", "better to turn red once than yellow a hundred times". It means that it is better to blush once and say what is wrong than to swallow it a hundred times and grow pale and sour.

Imagine you are staying in a guesthouse where the owner has charged you twice for the same night, and you have already let it pass once to avoid a fuss. "It is only a small sum, and the owner is such a friendly man," says your fellow guest, who hates any kind of scene. "Better to turn red once than yellow a hundred times," you answer. You go downstairs and ask, calmly and clearly, for the money back, and the owner apologizes and pours you both a glass of cold tea.

The innkeeper looked at the lantern for a long time before he spoke. "A flame needs a little air, or it chokes in its own smoke, but if you throw the glass wide open in a storm, you lose the light altogether," he said. "I think all of your sayings are trying to tell me how wide to open the glass."

Teacups and Mended Things

Two English sayings, the traveler said, belong to the morning after a quarrel. "A storm in a teacup" is a great fuss about a small matter, and it is often said kindly, to let both sides step down without losing face. "Least said, soonest mended" advises that a quarrel heals faster when nobody keeps going back over it.

Imagine you meet your travel companion on the station platform the morning after a sharp argument about a missed connection. "I am sorry about last night, because it was all a storm in a teacup, and the heat had made us both foolish," says your friend, holding out a cup of coffee. "Least said, soonest mended," you reply as you take it, and the two of you board the train talking about the hills instead.

The Roots of Temper

While the rain eased, the traveler told the innkeeper something she had learned from a schoolteacher on a long train ride. The English word "temper" comes from the Latin "temperare", which meant to mix things in the right measure. Blacksmiths still speak of tempering steel when they heat and cool it until it is hard but not brittle. Long ago a person's temper meant the balance of that person's nature, so to lose one's temper meant, quite plainly, to lose one's balance. A good temper, in that old sense, was never the absence of heat. It was heat held in the right measure, which is exactly what the evening's proverbs had been saying all along.

A Saying on a Ticket

Here is a small thing to try on your next journey. Choose one saying from this evening, the one that seems to fit your own temper best, and write it in small letters on the back of your ticket or on a card in your wallet. The next time a queue grows long, a seat is double-booked or a stranger pushes past you on a hot platform, take out the card. Read the saying slowly, word by word, before you answer anyone. It takes perhaps as long as writing a character three times, and very often that is long enough for the heat to settle into something you can use.

"I shall chalk the Swahili one on the doorpost, right under the lantern, where I will see it each time I light the wick," said the innkeeper. "Two words are about all the patience I can manage on a busy night."

Rain Leaving the Hills

By midnight the storm had rolled away over the far hills, where lightning still flickered now and then without a sound, and the lantern burned straight and clear above the wet stones of the crossroads.

That evening's sayings, set side by side, came to a gentle conclusion. A short temper is a loss in Japanese, anger is loss in Swahili, and in Turkish whoever rises in anger sits down with loss. The morning is wiser than the evening, the night brings counsel, and anger is a bad adviser. Three strokes of a brush and one step back can open the whole sea. A spoken word is a sparrow or a team of horses that nobody can catch, while a closed mouth keeps out flies and saves a nose. Even the Buddha's face lasts only three times, and it is better to turn red once than yellow a hundred times. A storm in a teacup is soonest mended when least is said. Not one of them had told anyone never to be angry. When the innkeeper asked where the road would take her next, the traveler admitted that it led over the high pass she had been afraid of for years.