After the Banquet (9 page)

Kazu remained silent at her end of the telephone.

“I see . . . I have something to discuss with you in that connection. How about coming to my office straight away?”

Kazu pleaded that she was busy, but such excuses had no effect on Nagayama. “I’m the one who’s busy, and if I can find time to meet you, for your sake, it’s your business to come here. I’m at my office in the Round Building.”

Nagayama had what he styled offices in various places, by which he meant the reception rooms of his friends’ offices. Surprisingly enough, no matter which “office” it happened to be, he merely had to press a bell to attend to many kinds of business, exactly as if he were the president of the firm, and Nagayama was equally demanding of the employees. Kazu knew the office in the Round Building, having visited it several times previously. It was the reception room of a large industrial fishing concern. The president came from the same part of the country as Nagayama.

The day was rainy and rather chilly, normal early spring weather. As Kazu walked through the peculiarly dismal row of shops on the ground floor of the Round Building, she noticed how the hallway, wet with raindrops dripped from umbrellas, glimmered forlornly. There was something unfriendly and gloomy about the people passing by in their raincoats. The happiness Kazu felt this morning when she read the newspaper, so intense that she had actually made an offering to the household shrine, had been obscured without warning by this man she had supplied with money. Hadn’t she given him whatever he asked for, without expecting anything in return? It was unfair, she felt.

Kazu felt depressed as she was riding up in the elevator, but when she actually confronted Nagayama’s derisive smile, all tension disappeared and she became her radiant self. Kazu was glad now for this moment of the morning when she met, on a purely personal matter, a famous, extremely busy politician.

Nagayama unceremoniously blurted out, “There’s no rhyme or reason in what you’re doing. When did you decide to seduce this man without first getting your father’s consent?”

“Oh—I thought you were my big brother, not my father. Well, father or brother, it’s all one—you’re a pretty conspicuous target and you’re in no position to be lecturing me. I tell you that in advance.”

It wasn’t like Kazu to answer back, and her tone, a bit sharp, sounded unnecessarily brash. A smile never left Nagayama’s fleshy face, which looked rather as if broken gobs of clay had been haphazardly affixed to it. By force of habit he painstakingly rolled and unraveled a cigarette as he spoke. “I can’t imagine that at this stage you can be in such a hurry. After all, you’re past the marriageable age.”

“Yes. That’s right—dozens of years past it.”

After this exchange of pleasantries Kazu rather expected that Nagayama would next ask in the accents of the old-fashioned melodrama, “Are you really in love with him?” Then she would happily respond, “I am.” Nagayama, convinced of everything by her answer, would not say another word . . . But Nagayama showed no signs of playing his cards that way.

Nagayama perpetually fidgeted. He was the one man whose cigarette Kazu never knew when to light. She always had a matchbox or matches ready in her hand, and no sooner did a man stick a cigarette between his lips than a flame that seemed to have ignited itself would at once be brought to his cigarette. But with Nagayama it was different; Kazu never managed to attune herself to his actions. His stubby fingers with their spatulate nails were forever playing with something. Sometimes it was a cigarette, sometimes a pencil, or it might be a document or a newspaper. At such times his eyes had the uncertain innocence of a baby, and his thick, brownish lips were turned down in a pout. Just when it appeared that he was at last about to put into his mouth the cigarette he had twisted and bent out of shape, it would be returned again to its original place.

Behind Nagayama’s chair was a broad window opening on a panorama of rain-swept buildings. The heavy curtains of dark-green damask were pulled to either side. Bands of fluorescent lamps, lit since morning in the windows of the building across the way, shone through the rain, strangely close and bare.

“Supposing you marry Yuken Noguchi, what do you intend to do about the restaurant?”

“I’ll go on running it as usual.”

“You can’t do that. Sooner or later there’s bound to be a clash between the restaurant and Noguchi. The Setsugoan has kept going up to now mainly because of Conservative Party patronage, mine in particular. Don’t you think it would be funny if the proprietress was the wife of an adviser to the Radical Party?”

“I’ve thought all about that. Why shouldn’t I personally continue to be helped by the Conservative Party even if my husband belongs to the Radical Party? I’m told it’s quite permissible under the new constitution for a husband and wife to vote for different parties.”

“That’s not the point. Don’t you see that I’m worrying about your future? Anybody can see that you’ve drawn a blank. This marriage won’t do either you or Noguchi any good. With your talents there’s nothing you can’t do, but instead you choose to shut off your whole future. Look, Kazu, getting married is like buying stocks. It’s normal to buy when they’re low—why should you want to buy stocks with no prospects for improvement? Noguchi in the old days was really impressive, no doubt about it. But today—to make an impartial appraisal—the proprietress of the Setsugoan is worth a lot more than the former cabinet minister, Yuken Noguchi. You should have some idea of your own worth . . . The one thing still like you is your decision to keep the Setsugoan going. You’re not the type to shut yourself up in a house and act the dutiful wife. It’s not written in your face.”

“I’m well aware of that.”

“I thought you would be. That much you can tell by looking in the mirror every morning . . . I wonder what Noguchi has in mind. I don’t suppose he intends to take advantage of you.”

The color mounted to Kazu’s face. “There’s nothing underhanded about him,” she loudly retorted. “Don’t judge others by your own standards.”

Nagayama roared with laughter, not in the least annoyed. “Touché! But you’ve got to admit that I’m good at it. I get what I want without resorting to love-making.”

Nagayama at last stuck the cigarette in his mouth. Kazu lit it. He took a puff, then, abruptly changing the subject, started on a pointless dirty story.

Nagayama’s secretary came in to announce that the next visitor was waiting. Kazu picked up her shawl and stood up. Nagayama had in the end failed to say the words Kazu had been waiting for through the whole interview.

But Nagayama liked to give a warm, human note to his final curtains. Best of all, he enjoyed the illusion of capturing a human heart, and having coldly turned his eyes from Kazu to the rain outside, he looked back and called to her as she was going out the door, “Hey! You’ll invite me to the wedding, I hope.” He did not neglect his curtain line.

On the twenty-eighth of May Noguchi and Kazu were married.

Noguchi and Kazu were both equally unprepared for the wide publicity their marriage attracted. This was Kazu’s first experience with the assaults of newspaper and magazine photographers, and Noguchi for his part was surprised that the world had still not forgotten him. On their honeymoon at the Gamagori Hotel they visited the Yaotomi Shrine on Benten Island. Kazu was about to make one of her usual extravagant donations when Noguchi firmly restrained her. He had reproved her, he said, because such behavior was vulgar. His brief reprimand had a frigid aristocratic tone which chilled Kazu’s heart.

Their “irregular” wedded life began after their return to Tokyo. Every morning Kazu made a lengthy telephone call to Noguchi. Telephone calls failed, however, to diminish her innumerable sources of anxiety. Kazu, to reassure herself, consequently got rid of Noguchi’s educated servant and replaced her with two maids and a houseboy, all three trusted employees at the Setsugoan. On occasion she would summon them to the Setsugoan and hear their reports on Noguchi’s daily activities.

Every Saturday evening Kazu returned “home,” bringing with her an immense stack of presents for Noguchi. It did not take long for the Noguchi household to be filled with unnecessary supplies of liquor and food. Kazu’s periodic returns home were occasions for much commotion. She would make her entrance massaging her back and moaning about what an exhausting week she had spent and how hard it was to please customers. Then, throwing a glance around the musty, utterly unprepossessing room, she would declare, “Ah, there’s no place like home, is there? I always breathe a sigh of relief as soon as I set foot inside the door.”

It came as quite a shock to Kazu, however, when she learned that their Nara companions—though so generous with their felicitations once the old journalist had given the signal—were now spreading malicious gossip about her. They alleged among other things that during the trip Kazu had posed as Noguchi’s wife without caring what the others might think, that she had shown respect only to Noguchi and slighted the others, that she had talked back rudely to the octogenarian, that the invitation to the Setsugoan itself, though ostensibly a “return present” was actually intended to advertise herself (there being no necessity to drag people off to the Setsugoan for a wedding announcement), that Noguchi was to be pitied . . . Rumors of every kind reached her ears. When Kazu learned of this gossip she recalled the newspaper executive’s pinching her after Noguchi made his announcement, and felt as if the momentary sting—so funny and even pleasurable at the time—had now raised a purple welt on her shoulder. She passed her hand over the spot and angrily rubbed it.

She told Noguchi of the rumors. His reaction was to become furious. He declared that his only reason for having invited Kazu on the trip with the others and for having announced his marriage before them was that he trusted them all as friends. Kazu’s transmission of such rumors was thus interpreted as a wife’s attempts to divide her husband from his old friends. This was Kazu’s first intimation that her husband’s noble mind lacked sufficient powers of discernment.

An article ridiculing Noguchi appeared in a weekly gossip sheet. It claimed that Noguchi’s abrupt switch to the Radical Party after the war had proved to be merely an unsuccessful publicity stunt, and his marriage to Kazu would prove another. Kazu was astonished that people could be so subtly malicious as to link the two events, but Noguchi replied that it was best to ignore such attacks. He remained unruffled, at least on the surface.

Marriage had brought no fundamental change to Kazu’s life. She kept on display in her room at the Setsugoan the photograph taken on their honeymoon and occasionally, during breaks between entertaining guests, would go to look at it. The picture showed the newlyweds standing on the stone steps at the southern end of Benten Island. They had brought a photographer along from the hotel to take the picture.

The photograph was barely a month old, but Kazu’s appearance in the picture suggested that long-ago memories were posing for the benefit of future spectators. The memories already showed a certain coquetry. Kazu, noticing this, reacted against her all too restless nature, but the more she tried to suppress the intervening memories, the more vivid they became, and she finally let them have their way.

She and Noguchi had climbed beyond the Yaotomi Shrine, when suddenly the view, until then blocked by the trees, opened out before them in the clear early summer sunlight . . . Kazu, having just been scolded for her excessive donation to the shrine, was feeling quite dejected, and her relief was therefore all the greater at the sudden revelation of this brilliant landscape. “Ah, what lovely scenery! Just look. Isn’t it wonderful?”

“We’ll take the picture here,” Noguchi immediately responded. The photographer, balancing himself precariously on the roots of a pine alongside the steps, readied his camera. Husband and wife, standing midway up the steps, gazed out at the sea. Before them lay the island of Oshima. The sea, encircling the Nishiura Peninsula to the west and Mount Kobo of Miya to the east, sparkled peacefully. The Atsumi and Chita peninsulas, wrapped in offshore haze, seemed to meet in the distance, making the sea look more like a lake than a part of the ocean. The numerous fish weirs jutting irregularly out of the water strengthened this impression. There were no clouds worth mentioning in the sky. The whole day seemed a moment carved unaltered and flawless from the eternity of Heaven, and set down before them.

The unbearably painstaking photographer kept them standing in the same position for an interminable length of time. Kazu noticed that Noguchi, who had been holding himself stiff as a statue all along, was conscious of the camera at every moment. After all the years of being chased by photographers he still kept this inborn rigidity. Kazu, by way of venting her anger at Noguchi’s reprimand, took out her compact and rapidly inspected her face, managing at the same time to edge the reflected glare from the mirror artfully from Noguchi’s shoulder up to his strained cheeks. The tiny beam of light finally caught the corner of Noguchi’s eye, and momentarily blinded, he relaxed his guard. At that instant the alert photographer snapped the shutter.

The picture now on Kazu’s desk was not the one which caught Noguchi off-guard. Noguchi later obtained all the negatives from the photographer and discarded those he did not like. Kazu’s photograph showed a perfectly staid middle-aged couple standing in early summer sea light. Kazu, somewhat stooped, was half hidden behind her husband’s shoulder.

Kazu, surprisingly for a woman, was fundamentally unsure of the definition of happiness.

Her marriage involved no sacrifice, no confinement in a stranger’s house, nor any annoyance from a mother-in-law or sisters-in-law, but married life had on the other hand not brought with it any surge of happiness. When she and Noguchi went out together as man and wife, she felt a joy she could not conceal. But when she attempted to track down the ultimate source of this social pleasure, she discovered that it was connected with the melancholy delight which stole over Kazu’s heart in the middle of the wedding ceremony. Kazu had kept her eyes lowered as she drank the ritual cups of saké to hold back the tears, but she was thinking all the while, “Now I’m sure to be buried in the grave of the Noguchi family! At last I’ve found some peace of mind!”