After the Banquet (6 page)

Kazu could hardly believe her ears. “A lot of bother”—these were clearly the words of an old man.

After this telephone call they met frequently. Kazu even visited Noguchi’s house. Noguchi lived by himself in an old house in the Shiina section. Kazu was relieved to discover that the maid looking after him was middle-aged and ugly. In no time at all Kazu was busying herself with various details of Noguchi’s private life. She saw to it that a complete New Year dinner was delivered to him from the Setsugoan.

The shelves of Noguchi’s study were crowded with books in European languages. Kazu, unable to read even the titles, was awe-struck. Noguchi, well aware of the effect his books would exert on her, had arranged when Kazu visited him that they meet in his study. Kazu artlessly inquired as she looked around at the bookshelves lining the walls, “Have you read them all?”

“Yes, almost all.”

“I’m sure some of them are pretty spicy.”

“No, there’s not one like that.”

This declaration genuinely astonished Kazu. A world formed by the intellect and composed of exclusively intellectual elements lay outside her comprehension. Her common sense told her that everything must have its other side. But what continually amazed her in Noguchi was that he was one man without another side: he seemed to have no other face but the one he showed her. Kazu, of course, as a matter of principle disbelieved in the existence of such people. But for all her disbelief, a kind of ideal image, tantalizingly incomplete, was gradually taking shape around Noguchi. His stilted behavior had acquired an aura, indescribably mysterious and intriguing.

Kazu discovered on further acquaintance with Noguchi that the world had almost forgotten his existence. She marveled that Noguchi should not in the least be affected by this neglect. She was totally uninterested in the radical political views which Noguchi now held, but she sensed a disharmony which must some day be resolved between the newness of his ideas and the oblivion of the world. How could this life-in-death go together with vigorous new ideas? Even after Noguchi’s second defeat for re-election to the Diet, his name continued to be listed as an adviser of the Radical Party, but the party never sent a car for him when he attended a meeting, and he was obliged to hang on to a leather strap on the streetcar. Kazu, learning this, felt righteous indignation.

Each time Kazu visited Noguchi’s house she found something new to distress her in the same way that on first acquaintance she had been upset by the stains on Noguchi’s shirt or his frayed cuffs. Now she noticed the sadly asymmetrical front door, or the peeling, dusty paint of the wooden, Western-style house, or the liverwort sprouting inside the gate, or the bell at the entrance left out of order. Kazu was still not at liberty to make repairs as she pleased, and Noguchi was disinclined to permit more than a certain degree of favors from Kazu. His attitude was reserved, but it stimulated Kazu to seek greater intimacy.

In January, at Kazu’s suggestion, they went to the Kabuki Theater. Kazu wept freely at the sad moments, not missing a one, but Noguchi sat impassively through the whole performance. “What makes you cry when you see such a silly play?” he asked with genuine curiosity as they stood in the foyer during the intermission.

“There’s no particular reason. The tears just come naturally.”

“Your naturally interests me. Try to explain more exactly what you mean.” Noguchi teased Kazu in solemn tones as if she were a little girl. Noguchi had not the least intention of playing the fox with her, but Kazu felt at such times as if he were genuinely making fun of her, and she was afraid.

That day Noguchi lost his Dunhill lighter in the theater. His consternation when he discovered that the lighter was missing was quite astonishing: all the dignity and calm of a moment before melted away. It was in the middle of the second play of the evening that he noticed the lighter was gone, and he half rose out of his seat to search every pocket for it. The expression on his face as he muttered, “Not here, not here either,” bore no resemblance to the usual Noguchi.

“What’s the matter?” Kazu asked, but he did not deign an answer. Noguchi finally bent over and thrust his head under the seat. A thought crossed his mind while he was searching, and he said to himself in a fairly loud voice, “The foyer. That’s it. I’m sure I dropped it in the foyer.”

The spectators around him turned in his direction with frowns and disapproving clucks. Kazu, leading the way, got up and Noguchi followed her out. Once they were out in the foyer, Kazu asked, “Could you please tell me what you lost?” This time she was the calm one.

“My Dunhill lighter. I’ll never in the world find one of the old ones in Japan now if I try to replace it.”

“Over there is where we were talking during the intermission, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. It was over there.”

Noguchi was virtually gasping, and Kazu felt sorry for him. They went to the spot where they had stood, but nothing was lying on the bright scarlet carpet. The attendant at the reception desk, a middle-aged woman in uniform who apparently had time on her hands during the performance, came up and asked, “I wonder if this is what you are looking for?” The object she held forth was unmistakably Noguchi’s lighter.

Kazu was to remember long afterward the look of unconcealed joy on Noguchi’s face when he saw the lighter, and she would often tease him, “I wish you’d show that expression not only to lighters but to human beings too.” But such incidents did not in the least daunt Kazu. Her eyes were free of prejudice, and she saw only Noguchi’s childish, simple-minded attachment to his possession.

There were other similar incidents. Noguchi had said at the meeting of the Kagen Club, “Why don’t we drop all this talk about the old days? We’re still young, after all,” and that in fact expressed his attitude toward reminiscences over bygone glories, but when it came to articles belonging to the past, his attachment was extreme. As Kazu got to know Noguchi better, she often noticed him take out an old pocket comb and tidy his silver hair. When she asked him about the comb, it proved to be one he had used for thirty years. When Noguchi was young his hair had been so thick and unruly that the teeth of any ordinary comb were quickly broken. He had had this one specially made for him, a strong comb of boxwood.

Noguchi’s tenacious attachment to old possessions could not be laid simply to stinginess or poverty. By way of protest against the superficial elegance created by the relentless pursuit of novelty under an American-style consumer economy, Noguchi stubbornly maintained the English-style elegance of clinging to old customs. The Confucian spirit of frugality went well with these aristocratic tastes. Kazu had difficulty in understanding Noguchi’s brand of dandyism which exaggerated its unconcern with fashion.

Kazu, out for the morning promenade that she never missed even in the dead of winter, would wonder as she crushed underfoot the sparkling ice needles, which she liked better, which attracted her more in Noguchi, his aristocratic career as a former cabinet minister, or his present faith in radical ideas. His career had a glittering brilliance which readily appealed to the common run of men; his ideas, though she did not understand them, made her aware of something living and directed toward the future. Kazu had come to think of these two aspects of Noguchi as rather like complementary physical features, and, put as a question of preference, it was like being asked which she preferred, his sharp nose or his prominent ears?

Their love progressed with extreme deliberation. The first time they kissed was when Kazu paid Noguchi a New Year’s call at his house. Kazu wore a kimono of celadon-colored silk dyed with vignettes of white bamboo leaves, silver gabions, and dark green dwarf pines. Her sash was embroidered with a large lobster in vermilion and gold on a silver gray ground. She left her mink coat in the car before going in.

Nogochi’s gate was bolted, even on New Year’s day, and the house looked deserted. But Kazu knew that the broken bell had at last been repaired. In the course of several visits she had become aware that Noguchi’s maid, who would appear only after keeping Kazu waiting a long time, looked at her with an expression akin to contempt. Once when Kazu was present Noguchi had asked the maid to fetch from the shelf a book written in German, giving the title in the original. The maid had unfalteringly repeated the German title and, running her eyes over the shelves, immediately picked out the book. Ever since then Kazu had hated the woman.

In this quiet neighborhood removed from the bustle of the main thoroughfares, the only sounds that Kazu could hear as she waited at the door were the clear, dry, distant echoes of children playing at the New Year’s sport of battledore and shuttlecock. She always felt humiliated before the driver every time she got out of her car, pressed the bell at Noguchi’s gate, and then was kept waiting an eternity. The only sign of New Year at this house was the symbolic branch of pine at the gate, diagonally lit now by the clear winter sunlight.

Kazu stared down the deserted street before the gate. The sunlight brought into bold relief the complicated unevenness of the paving with its broken patches. Shadows of trees and of telegraph poles fell on the road. The black and somehow attractive thawed earth exposed in one place shone where a broad tire track was imprinted on it.

Kazu strained to catch the tap of the battledore and shuttlecock. The children seemed to be playing in a nearby garden, but she could not see them, nor were there laughing voices. The sounds stopped. Ah, Kazu thought, the shuttlecock has fallen. A while later a steady tap-tap told her that the shuttlecock was again bounding back and forth. Then the sound stopped again . . . During the irritating, repeated breaks, Kazu visualized the brightly colored shuttlecock lying in the thawed black mud. Suddenly these intermittent sounds coming from an invisible garden behind a wall suggested to Kazu some sinister game played in stealth where no one could see.

She heard the sounds of geta approaching the side entrance. Kazu braced herself, tense at the thought she would have to encounter Noguchi’s disagreeable servant. The gate opened. Noguchi himself came out to greet her, and Kazu blushed at this unexpected surprise.

Noguchi was dressed in formal Japanese clothes. “I gave the maid the day off,” he explained. “I’m alone today.”

“Happy New Year! Oh, you certainly look impressive in Japanese clothes!”

But even as Kazu stepped through the side gate Noguchi’s immaculate attire aroused a sudden flare-up of jealousy. Who had helped him to dress? The thought upset her so much that by the time they were crossing the hall into the living room she was quite out of sorts.

Noguchi made it a practice never to take any notice when Kazu was in a bad temper. He lifted with his own hands a container of the traditional spiced saké and offered some to Kazu. Resentful at having to start the New Year with unpleasant feelings, Kazu as usual gave vent to her emotions.

Noguchi responded, “Don’t be foolish. The maid helped me to dress. She doesn’t look after my Western clothes as well as she might, but when it comes to kimonos she’s on her mettle.”

“If you care at all about me, please dismiss that maid. I can find you any number who’ll be more attentive. If you don’t dismiss her . . .” Kazu broke off and burst into tears. “Even when I’m at home I’m so worried I have trouble sleeping at night.”

Noguchi opposed her with his silence. He was counting the jasper-like fruit on a plant in his garden. He listened a while to Kazu’s grievances; then, as if he had just remembered it, picked up the spiced saké container again. Kazu, her hands covered by a handkerchief soaked with her tears, took the large cup he pressed on her, only abruptly to fling it on the tatami. She wept, her head pressed against the stiff silk of Noguchi’s hakama at the knee. She was careful at the same time to spread the dry part of the handkerchief against the hakama so that the silk would not become soiled.

Noguchi’s hand quietly stroked the back of her obi. As he did so Kazu knew for a certainty that her smooth-skinned back, its rich, white resilience discernible through the pulled-back collar of her kimono, had caught Noguchi’s eye. Kazu recognized in the gentle, absent-minded movements of Noguchi’s hand something like a familiar melody. It was afterward that they first kissed.

Noguchi had a long-standing engagement to go with Kazu to Nara to see the Omizutori ceremony, but at the same time he was to be the guest of a friend, a newspaper executive. Naturally enough, all the arrangements of the journey were made by the newspaper. Besides Noguchi the party included an octogenarian journalist, an industrialist, and an aged financial columnist. Kazu could not understand when she learned the details why Noguchi should have invited her on what seemed a semi-official excursion.

It was highly improbable that Noguchi, who always distinguished between public and private matters, would bring Kazu along on the same invitation without telling the others. But if they were to travel at his expense, it would be better for the two of them to go somewhere by themselves. There was no reason why they must take a trip on which they would be so conspicuous. It was clear to Kazu from the reports of people who had attended the Omizutori ceremony that even if she and Noguchi made their way to Nara independently of the newspaper party, they would certainly run into the others that night at the Nigatsu Hall.

On top of everything else, Kazu was uneasy about the strain the trip would cause on Noguchi’s finances. She also disliked the prospect of feeling small before his distinguished friends. Kazu felt no hesitation in dealing with the most influential men in the country in her capacity as restaurant proprietress, but she disliked being obliged in her private capacity to talk to such people professionally.

Kazu could only make various conjectures. She was irritated with Noguchi for not furnishing her with an explanation. She finally became depressed about the whole thing, and went to visit Noguchi with an envelope containing 200,000 yen. She intended to offer it to him for the expenses of the journey.