After the Banquet (5 page)

The interrupted conversation was taken up again, Noguchi’s subject this time being orchids. Kazu, completely uninformed on this topic, had no choice but to listen in silence as the old man sitting before her paraded his useless knowledge like an adolescent. She could visualize Noguchi dozens of years ago proudly displaying his erudition to some girl he was fond of.

“Do you see those orchids over there? Do you know what they’re called?”

Kazu turned her head and looked behind her at a potted plant on a stand. It failed to interest her in the least, and she turned back, hardly giving it a glance. “I don’t know,” she answered. Her reply came much too quickly.

“They’re dendrobiums,” Noguchi said in a tone of faint displeasure.

Kazu was thereupon obliged to turn again and examine the flowers more attentively. They were hot-house orchids—not a particularly striking variety—in a small emerald-colored pot on a stand. A cluster of demure little blossoms daubed with crimson hovered over a stalk bare as a horse-tail. The intricate shapes, suggesting orchids twisted of paper, looked all the more artificial in the absence of even a breeze to stir them. The more intently Kazu looked at the dark crimson centers of the flowers, the more insolent, the more offensive they seemed, quite unbecoming to this calm winter afternoon.

Kazu was afraid after she left Noguchi that afternoon and returned to the Setsugoan that her lunchtime exhilaration might carry over unaltered into her professional working hours. She was pleased above all that someone had shown a special interest in her. This happiness made her realize for the first time how lonely she had been.

She had not felt especially agitated while she was actually with Noguchi, but no sooner did she say good-bye than a whirlwind of varying emotions swirled up inside her. First of all she surrendered herself to visions of keeping Noguchi supplied with clean, freshly laundered shirts and newly made suits of clothes. But Kazu’s involvement in this matter hinged on Noguchi’s sentiments toward her. Unless she could be sure of them, there was no question of any helpful intervention on her part. Kazu was astonished that uncertainty should have cropped up again in her life, that she should be faced with the predicament of being ignorant of what another person might be thinking. This was not only strange but extremely upsetting.

Kazu tried to think why Noguchi should dress himself in such shabby—if good quality—clothes, and this in turn started her on agonized conjectures about his income. He undoubtedly lived on a pension, and his income could hardly be adequate. For a man who had formerly served in the cabinet, these were certainly sadly reduced circumstances. That night, even as she was busy entertaining her customers, Kazu’s mind kept reverting to this subject. She wondered if there weren’t some way she could safely inquire into the actual amount of his pension.

As luck would have it, when she appeared in the private room where some officials were having a dinner party, they happened to be talking about what they would do when they reached the retiring age. This gave Kazu the chance to ask quite casually, “If ever the government should start supervising restaurants, I’m sure that the first thing they’d do is to retire old women like myself. But I wouldn’t mind. It’d be much nicer living on a pension with nothing to do than staying in a hard business like this one. How much of a pension do you suppose they’d give me?”

“Well, a women like you would rank on a par with a cabinet minister. Around thirty thousand a month, I suppose.”

“Oh, would I really get that much?” Kazu’s question had such a transparently false ring that the others laughed.

That evening, alone in her small room, Kazu lay sleepless, her head filled with fantasies of every kind. Kazu’s private quarters were, by the standards of the rest of the Setsugoan, extraordinarily shabby and bare. A telephone on a low table stood by her pillow, and around it were disorderly piles of leafed-through magazines. The room contained not one object remotely resembling a work of art; even the tokonoma was cluttered with stacks of little drawers. When Kazu lay down among the bedding that took up the whole room, she felt as if she were her own master at last.

She knew now that his income was thirty thousand yen a month. If that was the case, taking her to lunch today meant quite an extravagance for him. The thought made her more grateful than ever for his kindness. Having at last some concrete materials to work with, her imagination really took flight. She meditated on Noguchi’s former position, his present poverty, his resolute attitude in face of adversity. For Kazu, whose daily work was conducted entirely with men at the height of their fortunes, these attributes were the stuff of romantic dreams.

The following morning Kazu’s eye was caught by an article in the corner of the newspaper that made her cancel her normal stroll in the garden. It reported the death of Tamaki, who had breathed his last at the hospital the night before at ten o’clock. The funeral, it was stated, would be held at the Tsukiji Honganji temple in two days’ time. Kazu, anxious to pay a condolence call as soon as possible, went so far as to start laying out her mourning clothes, only to desist, remembering Mrs. Tamaki’s attitude the night of her husband’s accident. She spent the next two days waiting and being patient, a process which lit fires in the heart of this passionate woman.

Noguchi ought to have informed Kazu immediately of Tamaki’s death, regardless of whether an article had or had not appeared in the newspaper. His telephone call would have served as an index of his affection, or at least of his friendship. But no word came from Noguchi. Every time the telephone rang Kazu, suddenly timid as a little girl, looked faint with terror. She was afraid that the telephone call this time was from Noguchi, telling of the death of his closest friend, and that she would be unable to hide the joy in her voice when she answered him.

Kazu had never waited so impatiently for a funeral service. She had considered the beauty parlor on the previous day, but finally decided to postpone her visit until the morning of the ceremony. Kazu’s morning promenade on the day before the funeral made the gardeners stare in astonishment. She failed to greet or even scold them that morning, but instead made a hasty tour round the garden, her eyes fixed on the ground. This had never happened before, and when the proprietress of the Setsugoan embarked on her second tour of the garden, she looked positively demented. The old gardener, who had worked at the Setsugoan since the time of the former owner, said she reminded him of a witch riding on a broomstick.

No telephone call came from Noguchi even on the night before the service. Kazu experienced something akin to a sense of defeat. But the taste of defeat aroused in Kazu all the more intense feelings. It never occurred to her that Noguchi might be so busy with the arrangements for his friend’s funeral that he would not have time to get in touch with her. She did not consider any such comforting possibilities. She burned with a single thought—she had been abandoned.

The night before, guided by a thirst for revenge—though she could not be sure whether against Noguchi or Mrs. Tamaki—Kazu had made up a packet of 100,000 yen as her contribution to the funeral expenses. She thought, “It’s over three times what he and his friends get for their pensions.” She felt as if her only way to vent her feelings was to make such a huge donation, though neither social obligation nor past favors required it.

The services took place on a mild, sunny day, typical of early winter. Even the wind was gentle. Kazu, foregoing her customary stroll, devoted an inordinate length of time to getting into her mourning attire, after which she drove to a beauty parlor on the Ginza.

Kazu watched through the car windows struck by the winter sunlight how the young people walked along the street. She straightened the front of her formal kimono, and directed a knowing and intent look at the young people. They seemed to her exactly like transparencies: their sentiments, ambitions, little tricks, tears, and laughter were all absolutely apparent.

At one corner four university students—two boys and two girls—ran into one another and lifted their hands in exaggerated, un-Japanese gestures of greeting. One of the boys, dressed in a regulation student’s uniform and cap, put his hand on a girl’s shoulder and let it rest there. The girl wore a half-length coat of some downy, pink material. Apparently unaware of the boy’s hand on her shoulder, she absent-mindedly turned her eyes, half-shut in the springlike sunlight, toward the street.

The traffic light flashed green and Kazu’s car lurched forward. At that instant she saw an extraordinary sight: the girl in the pink coat suddenly snatched off the student’s cap and threw it into the roadway. Kazu instinctively looked out the rear window of the car to see what became of the cap, and was just in time to observe it being crushed by an oncoming vehicle. She also had a glimpse of the student on the other side of the street, stamping his feet in rage.

The driver had followed the whole incident out of the corner of his eye. “The girls these days—you simply can’t tell what they’ll do next, you simply can’t. What made her do such a thing? Imagine!” Kazu could tell from behind that the driver’s face had settled into a grim smile.

The lady in mourning replied, “It was just a foolish prank.” But, curiously enough, her heart was pounding, captivated by the girl’s brash gesture of throwing the boy’s cap under the wheels of a car. The act was utterly meaningless. But it had produced an oddly powerful impression on Kazu and everything, down to the student’s mussed hair when his cap was torn off, had instantly registered.

This episode lingered in Kazu’s mind as her hair was being carefully set at the beauty parlor, a process for which she had allowed ample time. She normally became cheerful and talkative while at the beauty parlor, but today she found little to say. Her face reflected in the mirror was well-rounded and attractive, but the beautician’s usual words of flattery were untrue: the face was definitely not young.

The funeral service at the Tsukiji Honganji Temple was fairly elaborate. The line of mourners filed past the wreaths. Kazu joined the line after handing to the receptionist her packet of 100,000 yen. She noticed two or three customers of the Setsugoan and nodded to them deferentially. Incense rose in the early winter sunlight with a refreshing fragrance. Most of the mourners were old men, the one directly in front of Kazu giving off a mechanical noise caused by the incessant clattering of his false teeth.

As the line edged forward it occurred to Kazu that the moment was drawing near when she would see Noguchi, and the thought so unsettled her that she could not keep her mind on anything. Soon afterward the bereaved Mrs. Tamaki came into sight. Her eyes looked forbidding rather than sad, and her gaze, when she lifted her head between deep, polite bows, always seemed to revert to the same fixed point in space, as if it had been jerked back there by a string.

At last Kazu spied Noguchi. He wore a suit of too tightly fitting formal clothes, a piece of black crepe wrapped around the arm. His chin was raised a little, and his face maintained a supreme impassivity.

After all the mourners had offered incense Kazu went up to Noguchi and looked squarely into his eyes. He did not so much as blink; he looked at Kazu with no trace of emotion and respectfully inclined his head.

It cannot be said that these moments at the incense-offering were entirely a disappointment. By a truly absurd process of reasoning Kazu persuaded herself the instant she encountered Noguchi’s expressionless eyes that she was in love with him.

Immediately on returning to the Setsugoan, Kazu sat down with a brush and old-fashioned Japanese paper, and wrote the following letter.

The next day Kazu, present because of social obligations at a dance recital given by some pupils, burst into tears at the opening refrain of
Yasuna
, “Love, oh love, leave me not in mid-air, love.”

A little before noon on the day after, she had a telephone call from Noguchi. He spoke quite casually and made not the slightest allusion to the matter about which he had been reprimanded in Kazu’s letter. His voice on the telephone was solemnity itself and completely devoid of humor, but the conversation, though broken by pauses, continued for quite a long time. They promised to meet again. Finally Kazu, unable to restrain herself any longer, asked with a note of asperity, “Why didn’t you yourself let me know what had happened?”

Noguchi was silent at the other end of the line, then answered indistinctly with a muffled, embarrassed laugh, “Well, as a matter of fact, there wasn’t any reason. It seemed like a lot of bother, that’s all.”