After the Banquet (20 page)

Noguchi’s words were in fact more prosaic. He turned to Kazu, and avoiding her eyes, said in a stiff, awkward voice, “I’m giving up politics. I’ll never get involved again. I had all kinds of ideals, but they don’t mean anything now that I’ve lost. I’ve made you suffer too. Yes, I’ve really made you suffer, but from now on we’ll live modestly on my pension in some quiet corner, an old man and an old woman.”

Kazu, still lying on the floor, bowed her head in assent and answered meekly, “Yes.” Yamazaki felt something strange about the feeling of heavy immobility in her figure. Kazu’s violent emotional reactions always had an ominous tinge. Her vitality, which did not know how to be satisfied with attaining one objective, leaped ever onward; her grief might trigger unexpected elation, and her elation in turn become the portent of despair. Kazu’s appearance as she crouched on the floor radiated unquestionable grief, and the back of her obi, racked by her sobbing, confirmed this impression with its gentle embroidered design of bellflowers, but Yamazaki could detect in Kazu’s body, apparently acquiescing meekly, a dark violence which had been forcibly suppressed.

When Yamazaki at last got up to leave, Noguchi politely thanked him and apologized for being too tired to see him to the door. Kazu, wiping away her tears, accompanied Yamazaki.

They turned the corner of the hall and were now opposite the front door. Kazu tugged Yamazaki’s sleeve to make him stop. Her eyes, which had been heavy with grief the moment before, were shining animatedly in the dim hallway light. The stains left by her tears, hastily wiped away without regard to her appearance, crisscrossed with the shadows under her eyes and nose cast by the hallway lamp and the streaks of her face powder, to mark her face weirdly with an actor’s make-up. Her expression had not changed, but her teeth flashing between her slightly parted lips and her glittering eyes made her look like some creature of the cat family stalking its prey. Her voice, which she kept low, had a domineering ring. “Damnation! We lost the election to Saeki and Nagayama’s money and their lies. And that worm Tobita—I could kill him. I’d like to kill them all! Yamazaki—isn’t there some way we can still drag Tobita down from his perch? Haven’t you something on him? If violations of the law are what you need, there were certainly plenty of them! Haven’t we some way of settling that Tobita’s hash? I’m sure you can manage it, if anybody can . . . It’s your duty!”

Noguchi, like most men of few words, was accustomed to attach great importance to his least utterance. This was especially true of any promise involving himself, but he did not doubt, for that matter, that other people would carry through any command he imposed. It was only to be expected that anything that he thought desirable and pronounced so should come to pass. Therefore, once he had announced on the night of the defeat that henceforth he and Kazu would lead the humble existence of an elderly couple, trying to make ends meet on a pension, Noguchi assumed that Kazu was entirely resolved to obey him.

Kazu had definitely said, “Yes,” that night, but during the busy days that followed, while clearing up the unfinished business left in the wake of the defeat and making thank-you calls, she became aware of the indescribable heaviness and darkness implicit in that one word “Yes.” It was a sign she had consented to enter the same tomb, Kazu’s hope all along. But the word was also a declaration of consent to travel together the moss-covered path that led directly to the grave.

There were various other matters to distract her. The election for the House of Counselors got underway, and speeches in support of the candidates were requested of both Noguchi and Kazu. The pleasure of helping others put them in a generous, cheerful mood, and produced a new note of humor in Noguchi’s addresses and of relaxation in Kazu’s. They were both more effective than when speaking in their own behalf. At dinner Kazu and Noguchi would exchange boasts about the reactions of that day’s audiences, though this had never happened during Noguchi’s election campaign.

Noguchi liked to think that, having lost all he had to lose both materially and socially, he had found instead a quiet happiness. This was an excessively simple, poetic attitude, natural at Noguchi’s age, but not especially natural at Kazu’s. Noguchi moreover at times exaggerated this mental attitude. One day, on his way back from Radical Party headquarters he bought a potted dendrobium.

Kazu met him at the door. “Goodness—you’ve carried the plant yourself!” she exclaimed. “If the florist wouldn’t deliver it, all you had to do was to telephone, and I’d have sent the maid to fetch it.”

A tone less of concern than of annoyance was apparent in her words. She hardly looked to see what kind of flower it was. Noguchi abruptly lost his good humor. Kazu recognized the plant only after taking the pot in her hands. This was the flower Noguchi had identified for her when they lunched together at the Seiyoken Restaurant long ago.

But this discovery bothered Kazu somewhat. The thoughtfulness Noguchi displayed in wearing on election day the suit Kazu had ordered for him deeply moved her, but the orchid failed to move her in the same way. She sensed that his dried-up old hands were playing a kind of trickery intended to win her over, that it was an artifice to force a connection between orchids brushed with rouge, the faded pressed flowers in her memory, and the fresh flower of the same species before her eyes. Such coquetry on the part of a self-satisfied old man seemed an attempt to make a facile coupling of old recollections with the future, to mingle indiscriminately the frost-bitten orchids in her memory with the living orchid, and in the melancholy wreath he had thus painstakingly woven, to make Kazu his prisoner.

Kazu’s defenses were aroused, but for several hours she acted as if she had noticed nothing. In their bedroom, however, she did not forget to ask, “What did you call that flower? You told me its name in the Seiyoken.”

When his usual spell of coughing before going to sleep had subsided, Noguchi turned over in bed with an exaggerated rustle of his cambric summer quilt and, with the back of his white-haired head turned toward Kazu, he weariedly answered, “Dendrobium.”

September came.

Kazu telephoned Yamazaki and arranged a meeting downtown, their first since the election. They agreed on the Sembikiya Fruit Parlor on the Ginza.

Kazu, dressed in a fine-patterned silk gauze, threaded her way alone through the Ginza crowds. Tanned young people, just returned from summer resorts, strolled in groups through the street. Kazu remembered the unaccountable excitement she had felt when she looked down on the inhabitants of the Ginza from the window on the fifth floor. But now the crowds were merely crowds and unrelated to Kazu. Nobody recognized her, in spite of all her speeches in every part of Tokyo. “These are the people who were off at summer resorts while we were sweating out the election,” she thought.

Yet despite such momentary bitterness, she could not shake off a sense of isolation between herself and the crowd, and a feeling that all her labor had been meaningless. Smartly dressed strollers were betaking themselves to their chosen destinations, wherever their fancy led them, in the hot sunlight. The crowd was utterly devoid of mutual ties.

Kazu at length came to the entrance of the fruit parlor where she was to meet Yamazaki, and admired the window display of foliage plants with shining leaves and rare tropical fruits. She became aware of a middle-aged woman in a white suit and white hat staring at her. Kazu in turn took a good look at the woman’s face. She remembered the thin-penciled eyebrows. It was Mrs. Tamaki.

Mrs. Tamaki apologized for the long lapse in her correspondence, then immediately added, “I’ll never forget all the trouble I caused you at the time.”

The words sounded to Kazu like an expression of deep-seated resentment. The two women stood before a bin of Sunkist oranges, and the bereaved Mrs. Tamaki, chatting all the while, was carefully removing one by one the magenta wrappers printed with thin English lettering and examining the skins of the fruit she was to buy.

“Did you go away for the summer?” she asked.

“No,” Kazu answered, rather indignant.

“I only got back from Karuizawa the day before yesterday. Tokyo is still so hot.”

“Yes, I don’t think the summer’ll ever end.”

Only then did Mrs. Tamaki become aware of the meaning of the irritation in Kazu’s tone. “But I returned to Tokyo, for the election, of course. Naturally I voted for Mr. Noguchi. It was a shame. I couldn’t have been sorrier if it happened to myself.”

“I’m most grateful for your saying so.” Kazu thanked Mrs. Tamaki for her obvious lie.

Mrs. Tamaki, after much deliberation, selected three oranges. “Even oranges have become expensive these days. And just think, in America they practically give them away!” Mrs. Tamaki, as part of her brave display of inverse snobbery, deliberately ordered the salesgirl to wrap just three oranges. Kazu glanced inside the deserted parlor, wondering what was keeping Yamazaki, but the only activity was the electric fans turning on a number of empty tables.

“My husband liked oranges,” Mrs. Tamaki went on. “Sometimes I offer them at the family altar. That’s why I bought them today . . . You know, it suddenly occurred to me that my husband, without realizing it, of course, played the part of cupid for you and Mr. Noguchi.”

“In that case, I suppose I’ll have to offer him some oranges myself.”

“I didn’t mean it in that way.”

Kazu did not herself understand why she was behaving so rudely. On a sudden impulse she motioned to the salesgirl with the sandalwood fan she had been using, and ordered her to make up a gift box of two dozen oranges. Mrs. Tamaki turned a little pale, and glared with twitching eyes at Kazu’s face, dabbing all the while with a folded lace handkerchief at the perspiration on her cheeks.

The salesgirl arranged the two dozen oranges in a large box, and decorated it with pretty wrapping paper and a pink ribbon. During this time not a word was exchanged between the two women. Kazu, gently waving her fan, sniffed the heavy fragrance of the fruit, which overwhelmed the delicate scent of her sandalwood fan, and savored the full bracing pleasure of this silence. Kazu utterly detested the woman before her. Her hatred was immoderate, and the pleasure of this silence afforded her the best cure she had for depression in a long time.

Mrs. Tamaki looked like a secret agent brought to bay. Kazu understood precisely the calculations which were going through her mind, and this gave her additional pleasure. Mrs. Tamaki was thinking that if it was Kazu’s intention when the wrapping was completed to offer the gift to someone else, she would be humiliated by her own groundless fears, but if, on the other hand, Kazu intended to offer the oranges to the memory of Ambassador Tamaki, Mrs. Tamaki would be even more humiliated. She was too agitated to look directly as the salesgirl busily executed an exceptionally fancy bow with the ribbon.

Finally the widow’s eyes met Kazu’s squarely. “Upstart!” Mrs. Tamaki’s eyes were saying. “Liar!” Kazu’s eyes said. She was sure that once Mrs. Tamaki got home she would nibble voluptuously on the three imported oranges . . .

“Well, I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon. Oh, I’ll have the oranges delivered. I don’t want to burden you with them now. Please offer them to the departed one.” Kazu pointed with her fan at the box of oranges, wrapped at last.

“Really! What does this mean? How perfectly horrid! Really!”

Mrs. Tamaki, still muttering incoherently, fled into the street filled with glaring afternoon sunlight, her small paper parcel under her arm. The sharply pointed heels of her white shoes lingered in Kazu’s eyes as she watched the retreating figure, and rendered her satisfaction all the more delicious. She thought that Mrs. Tamaki looked like a white fox escaping.

Yamazaki entered the shop just after Mrs. Tamaki left. He still retained his air of harassment from the campaign.

“You’re late, aren’t you?” Kazu said in accents of heartfelt joy as they walked toward the back of the parlor.

They settled themselves in chairs and ordered cold drinks. The shopgirl came to ask where the oranges should be delivered. Kazu, not wishing to mention Tamaki’s name before Yamazaki, asked the girl to bring the telephone directory. She ran her finger down the page until she came to Mrs. Tamaki’s address.

“I thought that such extravagant presents were strictly forbidden now,” commented Yamazaki.

“Please don’t say that. I need a change from too much shouting of ‘Please give me your support!’ all the time.”

Yamazaki was unable to grasp her meaning. He covered the uncertain look on his face with the hot towel brought by the waitress.

Kazu asked casually, “What’s ever happened to the Setsugoan?”

“It’s quite a story.”

“It has to be broken up into lots, I suppose.”

“Yes, I don’t see any other way. There’s a difference of forty or fifty million yen involved . . . I’ve talked with a lot of real estate agents, and they all come to the same conclusion. If you sell the property as it is, the most you can hope for is one hundred million, and you won’t find a buyer at a moment’s notice. A garden that size and an imposing building . . .”

“Does the price include the furnishings?”

“Of course. But if you offer the property in lots of four hundred or eight hundred square yards, you’ll have no trouble raising 140 or 150 millions. It’s a good location.”

“Then it’s your conclusion, I take it, that I should divide?”

“It’s a pity, but there’s no choice.”

“I’m too stunned to call it a pity or anything else.”

“Yes, I know, the garden and the buildings are in the National Treasure class. But still,” Yamazaki stole a glance at Kazu’s face, “I don’t suppose you could reopen it.”