After the Banquet (2 page)

This huge garden and house, deposits in the bank, negotiable securities, powerful and generous customers from the world of finance—these all were adequate guarantees for Kazu’s old age. Having achieved this security, it no longer bothered her that people might dislike her or gossip behind her back. Her roots were firmly planted in the society of her choosing, and she could look forward to spending her remaining years comfortably, respected by everyone, devoting herself to refined pursuits, scattering largesse on her travels and in social expenses, eventually tutoring a suitable successor.

At times, when such thoughts crowded her mind, it made her pause in her walk. She would sit on the garden bench and let her eyes wander far down the moss-covered path, taking in the morning sunlight spilling onto the path and the delicate movements of birds alighting.

Here not an echo of the rumbling of streetcars or the blasts of klaxons could reach her. The world had become a still-life picture. How was it possible that emotions which once had flared so brightly could flicker out without a trace? The reasons escaped Kazu. She was at a loss to understand where sensations which had once definitely passed through her body could have gone. The conventional belief that people achieve maturity as they accumulate experiences of every kind seemed to her untrue. She thought it more likely that human beings were no more than blind ditches through which sundry objects flowed, or the stone pavement at a crossroads printed with the tracks of vehicles of every kind which have since passed on. Ditches rot and stone pavement wears away. But once they too were at a crossroads on a festival day.

It had been years since Kazu knew what it meant to be blind. Everything seemed now to have sharp outlines and to be pellucidly clear, like her view of this garden in morning sunlight; not a single point of ambiguity remained in the world. She felt as if even the insides of other people’s minds were now transparent before her eyes. There weren’t so many things to be surprised at any more. When she heard that some man had betrayed his friend for money, she thought it likely; when she heard that another man had failed in business because of infatuation for a woman, that seemed likely too. She was sure of one thing at any rate—such disasters would never overtake her.

When people asked Kazu’s advice about their love affairs, her suggestions were adroit and to the point. Human psychology was for her divided into some twenty or thirty clearly defined compartments, and however difficult the problem, she could supply an answer to all questions merely by combining the different elements involved. There was nothing more complicated to human life. Kazu’s advice was based on a number of precepts and on being in the position to offer accurate advice to anyone at all in her capacity of retired champion. She accordingly (and quite naturally) despised the idea of “progress.” Could anyone, however modern he fancied himself, be an exception to rules of passion which have existed from remote antiquity?

“The young people these days,” Kazu would often remark, “are doing exactly what young people have always done. Only the clothes are different. Young people get the foolish idea that what is new for them must be new for everybody else too. No matter how unconventional they get, they’re just repeating what others before them have done. The only difference is that society doesn’t make as much fuss about their antics as it used to, and the young people have to go to bigger and bigger extremes in order to attract attention.”

There was nothing new or startling about this pronouncement, but coming from Kazu it had authority.

Kazu, still seated on the bench, took a cigarette from the sleeve of her kimono and enjoyed a quiet puff. The smoke drifted in the morning light and hung in the windless air, bright and heavy as silk. This moment had a savor that a woman with a family would surely never know; it brought the taste of assurance that she could provide herself with a comfortable life. Kazu enjoyed such good health that no matter how heavily she might have drunk the previous night, she could not remember ever having failed to enjoy her morning cigarette.

Kazu could not see it all from where she sat, but the whole landscape of the garden was firmly graven in her mind; she knew it to the last detail as well as she knew the palm of her hand. The tall dusky-green ilex tree that formed the center of the garden, its clusters of glossy, pudgy little leaves, the wild vines twisted about the trees on the hill in back . . . the view from the reception room of the main building, a broad expanse of lawn and an unobtrusive snow-viewing lantern in front, the island in the garden pond with its ancient pagoda and thick growth of bamboo grass: nothing, not the smallest clump of shrubbery, nor the least conspicuous flower, grew in this garden by accident. As she smoked her cigarette Kazu felt as if the garden’s exquisite perfection had completely enveloped all her memories. Kazu looked on people and society as she now looked on this garden. And that was not all. She owned it.

Kazu received word from a certain cabinet member that the Kagen Club would like to hold its annual meeting at her establishment. The Kagen Club was a kind of association of former ambassadors who were roughly contemporaries and who met once a year on the seventh of November. They had hitherto been unlucky with their meeting places, and the cabinet member, feeling sorry for them, put in a word with Kazu.

“They’re a bunch of elegant, retired gentlemen,” he said, adding, “All except one, who’s never quite retired. I’m sure you’ve heard of him—old Noguchi, the famous Noguchi who was in the cabinet any number of times before the war. I don’t know what’s come over him, but a couple of years ago he was elected to the Diet on the Radical ticket, only to get beaten in the next election.”

Kazu learned of the club’s plans in the midst of a garden party given by the minister, and she was too busy entertaining the guests to listen to more. The garden had been invaded that day by a crowd of foreign men and women. It was as if a flock of birds—not the usual twittering little creatures, but a chattering swarm of oversized, brightly feathered birds, had swooped down on the Setsugoan.

As the seventh of November approached, Kazu began making plans. The most important thing with such guests was to express her respect. The same uncomplimentary jokes and familiar behavior which were likely to amuse men at the height of their powers might wound the pride of men who were once renowned but now living in retirement. Her function as hostess when entertaining such elderly guests would be entirely confined to listening. Later, she would massage them with soft words, and give them the illusion that in this company their former glory had blossomed again.

The menu at the Setsugoan that evening was as follows.

Kazu wore on this occasion a small-patterned violet-gray kimono with an obi of dark purple dyed in a single band of chrysanthemum flowers in lozenges. A large black pearl was set in her carnelian obi clasp. She had chosen this particular attire with a view to holding in her ample body and giving it greater dignity.

The day of the reunion was warm and clear. Shortly after dark the former foreign minister, Yuken Noguchi, and the former ambassador to Germany, Hisatomo Tamaki, arrived together at the Setsugoan. Noguchi seemed thin and rather unprepossessing alongside the splendidly built Tamaki, but under the silver hair his eyes were clear and alert; a flash in them told Kazu why this unmistakable idealist was the only one of the assembling guests, all former ambassadors, who had not retired.

The party was lively and sociable, but the topics of conversation were confined to the past. The most talkative by far was Tamaki.

The dinner was held in the main reception room of the visitors’ pavilion. Tamaki as he ate leaned on a pillar between the black-lacquered bell-shaped window and the magnificently decorated sliding-doors. The paintings on the doors depicted in brilliant colors a pair of peacocks amidst white peonies. By contrast, the background was a landscape executed in monochromes, a curious mélange of styles in the taste of the provincial aristocracy.

Tamaki carried in the waistcoat pocket of his London-tailored suit an old-fashioned watch with a gold chain, a present which his father, also a former ambassador to Germany, had received from Kaiser Wilhelm II. Even in Hitler’s Germany this watch had given Tamaki quite a cachet.

Tamaki was a handsome man and a fluent speaker, a diplomat with aristocratic leanings who had formerly prided himself on his knowledge of the harsh realities of life. His present interests, however, quite transcended the contemporary scene. His mind was entirely preoccupied by recollections of the brilliance of chandeliers at long-ago receptions where five hundred or a thousand guests had congregated.

“Here’s a story that sends cold chills up my spine every time I think of it. This one is really interesting.” Tamaki’s self-congratulatory introduction would have dampened the enthusiasm of even the most eager listener. “I had never gone for a ride on the Berlin underground in all my time as ambassador, so one day the counselor of the embassy—Matsuyama was his name—dragged me off for the experience. We boarded the train two cars—no, it was more likely three—from the rear. It was fairly crowded when we got on. I happened to look up, when who should I see before me but Goering!”

Tamaki paused at this point to study his listeners’ reaction, but everyone had apparently heard the story dozens of times, and no response was forthcoming. Kazu, stepping into the breach, chimed in, “But he was a very famous man at that time, wasn’t he? You don’t mean that he was riding on the underground?”

“He was indeed. Goering, who ruled the roost at the time, dressed in shabby workman’s clothes, with his arm around a teen-age girl, a real beauty, riding the underground, cool as you please. I rubbed my eyes, wondering if it wasn’t a case of mistaken identity, but the harder I looked, the surer I was that it was Goering himself. After all, I was in a position to know—I saw him at receptions almost every day. I was staggered, I confess, but he didn’t so much as bat an eye. The girl must have been a prostitute, but unfortunately that is one subject I’m ignorant of.”

“You don’t look it,” Kazu said, by way of a compliment.

“She was really an attractive girl, but there was something suspiciously coarse about her make-up, the lipstick especially. Goering, nonchalant as you please in his laborer’s get-up, was playing with the girl’s ear lobe and stroking her back. I looked at Matsuyama standing beside me. His eyes were popping out of his head. Goering and the girl got off two stations later. Matsuyama and I, still on the train, were flabbergasted. For the rest of the day I couldn’t get the sight of Goering on the underground out of my head. The following evening Goering gave a reception. Matsuyama and I went up close to him and examined him carefully. There was no doubt about it—he looked exactly the same as the man we had seen the previous day.

“I was unable to restrain my curiosity any longer. I forgot my position as ambassador, and before I knew it I was saying to Goering, ‘Yesterday we took a ride on the underground. We wanted to observe how the ordinary people get about. I really think it was a worthwhile experience. I wonder if Your Excellency has ever done the same?’

“At this Goering grinned, but his answer was profound, ‘We are always at one with the people and part of the people. I have never felt it necessary therefore to ride on the underground.’” Tamaki gave Goering’s reply in succinct German, at once adding a Japanese translation.

There was nothing diplomatic about these former ambassadors despite their solemn appearance; they made not the least pretense of listening to what anyone else said. The former ambassador to Spain, hardly able to wait for Tamaki to finish his story, began to talk about his life as Minister to the Dominican Republic in the beautiful capital of Santo Domingo. The walk along the sea under a palm grove, the superb sunsets over the Caribbean, the dusky skins of the mulatto girls glowing in the sunset . . . The old man was quite carried away by his own painstaking description of these sights, but the eloquent Ambassador Tamaki, broke in again and turned the conversation to his story of meeting Marlene Dietrich when she was still young. For Tamaki stories about unknown beautiful women were of no interest; a world-renowned name, a glittering reputation, was a necessary embellishment to every story.

Kazu felt uncomfortable with all the different foreign words thrown into the conversation, and it annoyed her especially that the punch lines of dirty jokes were invariably delivered in the original language. At the same time, men from the world of diplomacy rarely visited her restaurant, and she was intrigued by the special atmosphere surrounding them. There was no question but that they were all “elegant retired gentlemen,” and even if they were poor now, in the past their fingers had known the touch of real luxury. Sadly enough, the memory of those days had stained their fingers forever with a golden powder.

Only Yuken Noguchi seemed different and stood out from the others. His manly face had a straightforward ruggedness it would never lose, and, unlike the others, his attire was utterly devoid of affectation or dandyism. Thick, strikingly long eyebrows jutted above his sharp, clear eyes. His features taken individually were impressive, but they warred with one another, and his lean build accentuated the disharmony. Noguchi did not forget to smile at the appropriate times, but he only rarely joined in the conversation, a sign that he was constantly on guard. Kazu could not help noticing such distinctive features, but what caught her attention especially on this first encounter was the faint smudge which clung like a shadow to the back of Noguchi’s collar.