Bonf film continued

CONTINUED...(see below for details)

It`s important, at this moment, that you have an acurate picture of what my kimono actually looked like. If it were, for example, pastel pink with a dancing fairy motif, it would be fair to say I had it coming. (Uav uman skula). But it was not thus. My kimono was lemon yellow with narrow white stripes, patterned admittedly with navy and red flowers, but this is Japan, where flower patterns are normal - and anyway, it had been approved as sufficiently masculine by Yuuka and Mamisan, neither of whom (I think) particularly want me to advertise myself as a potential homosexual partner.
With that cleared up, let`s return to the dialogue. I already felt its significance - this was the key moment in any Bond flick, known to afficionados as The First Verbal Skirmish. It may take place on the golf course (Goldfinger), or often over the card table, before the big bets are laid and tense silence takes over(Casino Royale). A steam bath changing room, naked face to face, seemed no less an appropriate setting. Brevity is critical in these exchanges. They are never wordy debates on the relative merits of power strategy (guarded defence of imperial interests versus holding the world to ransome), but rather, terse pugilistic salvos, delivered in a casing of ironic good humour. All this of course, it was abundantly clear my opponent understood perfectly. 'Uav uma skula` as an opener, unbalancing me, then swatting my weak parry ('oh, really') with the deadly `This is man`s colour`. I was on the floor, reeling - like Rocky in the first two rounds against Ivan Drago in Moscow, all over the place, out of my depth.
But like the Stallion, I had my pride. I didn`t have Adrienne, but then neither did he in that one. She was at home in the US of A. Just like Yuuka was in the woman`s onsen next door, separated by a wooden, if not iron, curtain. I had to do this alone.
So bunching my fist into as tight a ball as I could, I took aim and delivered, totally out of the blue, an uppercut that sent twelve of his teeth skittering out across the changing room floor. In slow motion.
Of course I didn`t - that was me losing track of what film I`m trying to base this damnably overlong account upon.
I stuck to the plot, and I stuck to my guns. As you may know or guess, I am quite a polite person. I don`t go looking for fights and insulting people. You might call me mild-mannered, which hopefully is the good side of meek (this was no place for meekness). And so I decided to base my comeback on that old rhetorical strategy which I will term `the Ulterior Assumptive Hypothesis`. What the **** is that, you ask. Well, it is probably best explained by telling you what I said, which was...
`You must have been in Japan for a long time`.
Yes. That was it.
Do you want it again.
`You must have been in Japan for a long time.`
Note the present perfect modal construction please. It was - and therein, I felt, lay some of it`s elegance - like a fine chess move, an acknowledgement that the best riposte to a bludgeoning attack was not emulation but its opposite: to the Subject Verb Object Queen`s check I had pulled out a minute grammatical pawn maneouvre. I do not want to show myself wounded, my reply said, with your audacious and probably unwarranted critique of my masculinity - to do so, as much as to absorb it without answer, would entail my defeat. So instead I will present the initiative back to you, in a form of neutrality loaded with scepticism nicely camouflaged as geniality. In short: OK, you started this attack, please continue or withdraw.
A momentary wind of confusion blew across the face of the bear, but only very minute, so slight as to be imperceptible.
`No. I have been here since Monday`, he pronounced, and the smile widened to a grin.
It was now Wednesday morning. The attack was back on, the approach the same, but the stakes more than doubled - my subtlety had been thrown back in my face, not even given the credit of a proper answer. Was I to accept this and fold, or see his bet and abandon diplomacy?

TO BE CONTINUED...