After the Banquet (19 page)

Kazu had thrown all her money and energies into the campaign. She had done all that human strength was capable of, and she had patiently endured every humiliation and hardship. Everyone knew that Kazu had fought well. Never before in her life had her passionate spirit been poured out so continuously and so effectively. Day after day her unique support had been her absurd conviction that once she put her mind to something she would certainly bring it to fruition. This conviction of hers normally hovered vaguely in mid-air, but during the past few months it had been planted firmly on earth, and she could no longer live without it.

Kazu attentively examined the water lilies. The water seemed to be a symbol of the countless people who would go today to the polling places in each district. The blossoming water lilies were Noguchi himself. The water under the flowers soaked the reflections in its depths, and bubbles rose as it stirred round each tiny spike of the flower-holder. The water’s only function, she thought, was to crave the favor of the lily blossoms and reflect them.

Just then a bird’s shadow darted across the open bay window, and a withered leaf was flicked from a small branch reaching almost to the window. It glided sled-like through the air to drop into the basin. The water was hardly ruffled, but the shrunken yellow-brown leaf floated conspicuously on its surface. It looked ugly, like a curled-up insect.

If Kazu had not been practicing her incautious divination, she would have removed the withered leaf without giving it a second thought, but now its ominous appearance so upset her that she bitterly regretted her folly in having started this fortunetelling.

She dropped into an armchair and sat there a while, toying with a fan. A television set stood directly before her. The bluish viewing screen would soon no doubt be displaying the election returns as they came in, but now it was still a blank. The morning sunlight slanted across its surface.

Kazu took her morning bath after Noguchi, carefully made up her face, then changed to a formal kimono ordered some time previously for this occasion. After days of campaigning during which she had taken no trouble with her appearance—sometimes deliberately dressing badly—her holiday finery today braced her body. The kimono was a silvery gray gauzy silk dyed to represent a cormorant fishing scene. The cormorants were lacquer-black, and the torch flames blazed scarlet. The obi, of brocaded silk, had an embroidered design of a waning moon amid thin clouds, worked in silver thread on a pale blue background. A diamond sash clip graced her outfit.

Kazu realized that such an ornate costume was likely to annoy Noguchi, but she was determined to be dressed to her own satisfaction when she went to the polling place. In any case, now that the sweat and dust of the campaign were behind her, Kazu needed to assuage her feelings by indulging herself today, while things were still unsettled, in some luxury after her heart.

She went to the drawing room to help Noguchi with his dressing. The sight of him standing there filled Kazu’s heart with joy. Noguchi was already dressed, and had himself chosen, from among the suits carefully pressed at Kazu’s command, the new one he first wore on the day when he announced his intention of standing for office.

Noguchi, as usual, did not vouchsafe her even the flicker of a smile, but this thoughtfulness and his avoidance of any reference to her costume touched her deeply. In the car on the way to the polling place, they sat side-by-side in silence. Kazu looked out the window at the row of shops exposed to the merciless morning sunlight. Now that she had had such an unforgettable experience, she felt that it did not matter any more if they lost.

This, probably, was the moment of greatest intimacy between a husband and wife with such unyielding personalities. Kazu’s euphoria was maintained intact until she followed her husband, through the popping flashbulbs and arc-lamps of the newspapers and newsreel cameramen, into the polling place in an elementary school, and cast her ballot in the box.

The counting of the ballots began the following day. Election forecasts printed in the three major morning newspapers showed a remarkably even distribution of opinion. One political expert predicted the victory of Tobita, another foresaw victory for Noguchi, and a third, without mentioning which side would win, predicted that it would undoubtedly be a photo finish with only a nose-length between the two men. Kazu’s state of frantic excitement had started that morning. A premonition of victory agitated her, and with it the conviction that if they didn’t win the world would crumble to pieces. The counting of ballots began at eight in the morning, and at eleven the first bulletin was issued. Husband and wife sat before the television set in the living room. The first to report were the Santama region and the outlying metropolitan districts.

Kazu, unable to contain her palpitations, murmured as if intoning a magic spell, “It’s Santama, Santama!” She suddenly recalled the strings of paper lanterns on the night of the Folk Song Festival, the blackness of the surrounding mountains when the lanterns were lit, and the enthusiastic applause echoing against the mountainsides. The sunburned faces of the farm wives, their little eyes filled with curiosity, and their friendly gold-toothed smiles all came back . . . She dug her fingernails into the armrests of her chair. The suspense made her feel suddenly hot and cold by turns. Finally she could keep silent no longer.

“That’s a lucky sign,” she cried, “Santama will be first to report. That’s one place we surely won.”

Noguchi did not answer.

The news bulletin flashed on the television screen, and the voice of the announcer echoed as he read:

The color drained from Kazu’s face, but her desperate resolve not to lose hope became like a sheet of iron wrapped around her heart.

By two o’clock that afternoon the election of Gen Tobita was assured. Tobita’s votes exceeded 1,600,000, and he led by a margin of close to 200,000 votes. The Conservative Party was victorious in the Osaka elections too. The radio commentators declared, “The Conservative forces have succeeded in maintaining their strategic hold on the two great cities.”

Kazu wondered how she managed to keep calm in face of this travesty of justice. The enemy’s victory was achieved entirely thanks to sinister machinations and money. She remembered the day, not long before the election, when the Radical Party’s money started to run out, and a tremendous flood of money had poured into the Conservative Party coffers. The money swirled through the streets with manic frenzy to capture the spiritually depraved and wretchedly poor. The money shone like a sun through the clouds, an evil, baleful sun. And while it winked in the sky, plants with poisonous leaves widespread grew thick, and rank grasses, cropping out in every direction, stretched sinister feelers from here and there in the city toward the clear summer sky.

Kazu listened without shedding a tear when her husband announced that they would go pay their respects to Radical Party headquarters.

That day Soichi Yamazaki kept missing Mr. and Mrs. Noguchi. They had already left when he visited headquarters.

A numbing sense of defeat gradually sank into Yamazaki’s flesh as he busily wound up affairs at campaign headquarters. The loss of the election, to be sure, was not entirely unexpected; he himself, at least on the day before the election, had in his heart clearly foreseen it. But there is always the lucky chance in ten thousand, and the characteristically unpredictable floating vote in the big cities sometimes shifts in unexpected directions. The professional’s resignation had warred again and again with an irrational trusting to luck, but now a loathesome, desolate fog blanketed his mind.

The disillusion which the radical forces have always experienced in Japan had been familiar to Yamazaki since the outset of his career. Indeed, one might say that Yamazaki always wagered that he would be disillusioned; it was as if he kept up a constant bet with his youthful hopes. Yamazaki ranked as a genuine veteran in election campaigns, and he was absolutely indomitable, but a kind of masochistic fervor lodged within him. Corruption in an election or the victory of moneyed power did not in the least surprise him; they seemed as natural as stones and horse dung along a road.

As a matter of fact, it would be correct to say that the coolness of Yamazaki’s mind occasioned his love for the furnace called elections into which everything from the most valuable timber down to the filthiest scrap of paper is indiscriminately thrown. He liked the violent swings of emotions induced by self-interest among those clustering around the periphery of politics. He liked the unpredictable forces which could carry men willy-nilly to exaggerated outbursts of feelings. The incandescent heat of an election was genuine, and he liked that heat found in politics and nowhere else, whatever the tricks concealed in the background.

He enriched the empty storehouse of his mind with such pleasures, and filled the void within him with the excited emotions of many people sharing the same disaster. He enjoyed feeling that in the end his own emotions were tinged the same hue as theirs.

To put the matter bluntly, there was something rather studied about Yamazaki’s mental processes once defeat was certain and he felt heavy fog engulfing him. This epicure of disillusion was a trifle fond of pathetic scenes and sensations of defeat.

That evening, in the taxi going to Noguchi’s house, Yamazaki was considering the role he would have to play, the warmhearted friend. This was the only unfinished business—he could do nothing else.

As soon as he entered the gate Yamazaki felt with his whole body the agitation in a household which has been struck by misfortune. A row of cars from the newspapers was parked before the gate, and a throng of visitors came and went, but the signs of suppressed feelings recalled the facial expressions of people paying a condolence call. Once they stepped a few yards outside the gate, they no doubt would all feel a weight lift from their shoulders, and laugh as though restored to life.

A crowd which overflowed into the hall jammed the house. Yamazaki took a look into the reception room and saw Noguchi sitting on a chair in the back of the room, surrounded by a crowd of reporters. A sound of muffled sobbing, increasing in volume, reached him from down the hall. He turned and saw Kazu exchanging downcast greetings and consoling embraces with the delegates from various groups. She was weeping.

Someone called Kazu and, hastily drying her tears, she went to the reception room, only to burst into tears again the moment she emerged. Once more she was called back to the reception room. She no longer had enough powder left in her compact to restore her face. Yamazaki put his arm around her and guided her to Noguchi’s study. “Please rest here a while, Mrs. Noguchi,” he said. Kazu slumped down on the carpet. Propping herself with one hand, she slowly stroked her throat with the other. She looked fixedly up at Yamazaki, the tears flowing from her wide-open eyes, like water leaking through a cracked vase.

After ten, the last reporters departed and a genuine silence descended on the house. Yamazaki, brought face-to-face with this silence, realized for the first time that this silence itself was what he and the Noguchi household had loathed and dreaded.

The smell of mosquito-repellent strengthened the wake-like atmosphere. Only the inner circle of Noguchi’s associates still remained. They sat around Mr. and Mrs. Noguchi, and scarcely saying a word, drank the beer served with light refreshments. One by one they inconspicuously withdrew. Yamazaki, who had stayed to the last, was about to leave when Noguchi detained him. By then it was after eleven.

The couple led Yamazaki into Kazu’s small sitting room. Noguchi spoke, “Thank you for all your trouble . . . I think I’ll change to Japanese clothes.” His words did not seem especially addressed to either Kazu or Yamazaki. Out of force of habit, he started to clap his hands for the maid, but Kazu stopped him. She took from the clothes basket a kimono which she had laid out for him, and helped him to change. Noguchi, accepting his sash from his wife’s hands, remarked, “It’s been an ordeal for you too, hasn’t it? You must take it easy now.”

Noguchi was weeping, his back to the others. This was the first Yamazaki had seen of his tears. Yamazaki touched his hands to the tatami in a deep bow. “I should have done better. I don’t know how to apologize.”

One glimpse of Noguchi’s tears and Kazu was unable to restrain her sobs any longer. She threw herself down in convulsive weeping.

It was not clear to Yamazaki what had induced the couple deliberately to request his presence at this scene. He could not suppose that they needed an outside witness for their mutual revelations of heartfelt emotion. The simplest explanation was probably that the Noguchis both considered Yamazaki the closest of their intimates. Probably too, having lost all public occasion to demonstrate their great trust in him and their appreciation for all his efforts, they were left now with only this extremely private occasion. Or possibly their degree of confidence and expectation in Yamazaki had achieved something like perfect balance, and without saying so in words, they both depended on him to spare them some of the terrible silence which husband and wife should have faced alone.

Noguchi, relaxed in his Japanese clothes, addressed his wife in words overflowing with an unmistakably oriental theatricality. No one could be less theatrical than Noguchi. This was true particularly of his public life, but when, as now, it came to revealing his private, domestic emotions, ancient, heroic sentiments seemed to show themselves within him. These, one might suppose, were his deepest emotions, his true feelings stripped of all outer trappings, but actually he was possessed by the old-fashioned rhetoric of Chinese poetry. His next remarks inevitably suggested to Yamazaki, sitting beside him, T’ao Yüan-ming’s
Return Home
or the lines from Po Chü-i’s
Forty-five: