After the Banquet

  Kazu, howling like some wild beast, begged for forgiveness, and shrieked every imaginable excuse. She would grow calm, apparently losing consciousness, only to howl for forgiveness again, her voice louder than ever. Noguchi prolonged the torture, declaring that he would not let her out of the room until she confessed everything, it being evident that she had spent a considerable amount of money. Kazu babbled incoherently, “Money I saved myself . . . I used it for your sake . . . All for your sake. . . .”

  Noguchi listened coldly to these protestations. Then, by way of indicating his refusal to pay attention to a word of her excuses, he took a German book from the shelf and, turning from Kazu, began to read.

  A fairly long silence ensued. The room was dark save for the circle of light cast by the desk lamp. All that could be heard, apart from the sound of the rain and the occasional rustle when Noguchi turned a page of his book, was Kazu’s agitated breathing. The plump, middle-aged woman sprawled on the floor, the hems of her kimono twisted, was the only jarring note in this quiet evening in the study. Kazu was aware that her thighs were visible through her skirts, and that they rose and fell slightly with her breathing at the outer edge of the dim lamplight. She knew with certainty which parts of her flesh were exposed by the chill gradually numbing them. She pitied their undeniable futility, and knew by their coldness and numbness that the faintly discernible white parts of her thighs were being subjected to a total rejection. She felt as if Noguchi’s rejection flowed through their numbness into her body.

  Kazu at last rearranged her disordered costume, sat properly, and touching her hands to the carpet in a deep bow, declared that she would confess everything. She held nothing back from Noguchi, even to her mortgaging the Setsugoan.

  Noguchi said in a surprisingly gentle voice, “There’s no helping what’s already been done. But you are to shut the Setsugoan as of tomorrow, and from now on you will live here all the time. You follow me, I trust? Remember, you’re not to set foot out of the house!”

  “Shut the Setsugoan?”

  “Yes. If you think I’m asking too much, I’ll have no choice but to divorce you.”

  This threat frightened Kazu more than a beating. A great, dark hole opened before her eyes. “If he divorces me, there’ll be nobody to look after my grave when I’m dead . . .” At this thought Kazu made up her mind to pay any compensation Noguchi might exact.

  13

  An Obstacle in the Path of Love

  Kazu concluded, as the result of this quarrel, that she had no choice but to offer the Setsugoan for sale. The Setsugoan had already occasioned gossip, and was likely to be used as material for counter-propaganda. As far as Noguchi was concerned, it could only be considered the base of his wife’s undesirable activities. It enraged Noguchi that Kazu had mortgaged the Setsugoan without telling him, and used the money to finance the pre-election campaign. He had come to think that the best thing would be to extirpate the roots of evil by placing the Setsugoan on sale, and then use the money fairly and squarely to meet election expenses. Noguchi had learned for the first time how poor the party was.

  The disposal of the Setsugoan was left to Noguchi. Kazu had a fierce attachment for the Setsugoan, and words could not describe her grief at relinquishing it, but in the end she preferred to a beautiful garden the small, mossencrusted tomb of the Noguchi family.

  The complications of the sale, however, unexpectedly provided Kazu with a splendid excuse for escaping from confinement in Noguchi’s house and returning to the Setsugoan. Once back there, Kazu did absolutely nothing about liquidating the affairs of the restaurant. Her employees were uneasy about the protracted closing, but she kept them in ignorance of the impending sale. Safe in her retreat at the Setsugoan, she would daily summon Yamazaki and examine with him stratagems of every kind. When a good plan suggested itself, she was so excited she could hardly sit still, and she would immediately order her car to get ready. Thus, despite the severe reprimand she had received, everything in Kazu’s life—save for the closing of the Setsugoan—reverted to normal.

  Noguchi had requested a lawyer, a close friend of his, to arrange the sale, and before long a promising buyer turned up, Genzo Fujikawa of Fujikawa Associates. His counsel entered into negotiations with Noguchi’s lawyer, and it seemed as though a quick settlement was in the offing. The other party, however, refused to budge an inch beyond an offer of eighty million yen toward the asking price of one hundred million.

  Kazu happened to be at the Setsugoan one day when the maid announced a telephone call from Genki Nagayama. As far as she was concerned, she had broken relations with Nagayama, and she felt no inclination to go to the telephone. But Yamazaki, who was sitting beside her, urged her with a little push to answer.

  Kazu, despite her promise to obey Yamazaki’s directions to the letter, was annoyed at this instance of his interference, and at the touch of his hand on her knee she recoiled a foot or two over the tatami. The leopard-like resilience of her comfortably plump flesh made Yamazaki stare in astonishment. Kazu kept her head obstinately averted, her eyes on the garden soaked by the spring rains. The garden was a green blur.

  “What makes you get angry? All I did was to suggest that you answer the phone. I think you should.”

  Kazu did not reply. She had remembered Nagayama’s thick, olive-brown lips. Nagayama suddenly seemed like the embodiment of all the mud of half a lifetime. This thickset, power-saturated man resembled all the memories most painful to a woman. Even her refusal ever to have relations with Nagayama, her having been treated like a sister, originally stemmed mainly from tarnished self-esteem. However severely Noguchi reviled her, Kazu could always preserve her integrity, but one grin from Nagayama and she felt as if the depths of her being had been laid bare . . . Kazu, in short, disliked her momentary feelings of relief when informed at this juncture of a call from Nagayama.

  She rose and slipped off to her own room, where she had the call transferred. She said “hello” into the receiver, all but enfolding it with her body, and the secretary’s voice was presently replaced by Nagayama’s.

  “What’s happened? You’re still annoyed with me, is that it? Well, you can snub me all you please, I still consider myself your lifelong friend. I hear, by the way, that you’ve finally got around to closing the Setsugoan. But you’ll still serve me a cup of tea and some biscuits, won’t you? We’re still pals, after all.”

  “If I make exceptions, even for one person, the place isn’t closed anymore.”

  “I see. Do you intend giving up the restaurant and opening a special-service bathhouse for the working class—is that it?”

  “That would suit me. The younger and livelier the customers, the better.”

  “That’s funny. I thought your husband’s age was pretty close to mine.”

  “I’ve had enough of your offensive remarks. What did you say your business was?”

  “Nothing special. I just wondered if we couldn’t have lunch together for a change.”

  Kazu refused point-blank, explaining that she was no longer at liberty to do so. In that case, Nagayama said, there was no helping it, he would tell her over the phone. He then quite nonchalantly broached a most unexpected and important matter.

  “That stone head of Noguchi’s is giving us a lot of trouble. I sent a man to Noguchi—no doubt you know all about this—with an offer to withdraw the opposing candidate on the condition that if elected Noguchi would choose someone from the Conservative Party as his lieutenant governor. What could be more generous than that? But Noguchi, as usual, stubbornly refused to listen. It’s entirely to his advantage, and as long as he accepts that one condition, he’s sure to be elected. I trust you’ll advise him strongly to accept . . . I should warn you of something. If Noguchi turns down the offer, you’ll probably find you have trouble selling the Setsugoan. I’m telling you this entirely for your own good.”

  At this point Kazu hurriedly cut the conversation short. Her walk as she returned along the corridor to the room where she ha
d left Yamazaki betrayed her agitation. Yamazaki could tell merely from the sound of her foot-steps that Kazu was angry.

  Kazu slid the door shut behind her and, still standing, angrily exclaimed, “Mr. Yamazaki—how could you be so cruel? To think that an important offer’s been made to my husband, and you’ve never even breathed a word!”

  Kazu’s thin eyebrows stood on end when she was angry, and her mouth turned down in a frown. Her obi, tied somewhat low, presented a hard, flat, domineering surface, an impression strengthened by her practice of tying the sash band squarely in front in a countrified style, instead of at a more fashionable angle.

  “Please sit down,” Yamazaki said. He patiently explained the situation to Kazu, who sat facing sideways, her head obstinately turned away from him, like a small child. It would only have confused her, he said, if they had told Kazu of the offer, and the right course for her, in any case, was to devote her full energies to the campaign. Noguchi had refused even to consider the honeyed words of the Conservative Party, and if it were a proposal worthy of his consideration, it would be more effective for the party leaders to suggest this than his wife. The present telephone call had delighted Yamazaki because it showed that Kazu’s pre-election campaign was developing into a threat to the enemy. The Conservatives had put up a candidate named Gen Tobita, a desperate choice in whom the Conservative Party itself had no confidence, as the telephone call just now demonstrated. The reluctance of the present governor of the prefecture to resign, though he had long seemed on the point, was owing to the Conservative Party’s failure to obtain the Prime Minister’s endorsement for their candidate. It was a pity that Noguchi did not make political capital out of the offer, but as far as Kazu was concerned, the most important thing was not to become rattled: it was now clear that her efforts were bearing fruit.

  Yamazaki applied himself with painstaking care to the explanation. Kazu’s face suddenly shone like the garden in the first rays of the morning sun. Yamazaki, looking on her miraculously transformed face, thought it beautiful. It was as if a smiling face, complete to the last detail, had unexpectedly surfaced from under her other face, revealing in its new-born freshness not the faintest trace of the raging emotions of the moment before.

  “You don’t say!” she cried. “Well, this calls for a celebration! Tonight I’ll drink a toast with you!” Kazu stood and, throwing open the sliding doors, danced into the adjoining banqueting hall. At the other end of the room stood a beautiful screen painting by Tatebayashi Kagei depicting in the manner of Korin a curved bridge over a silvery stream and ranks of irises. Kazu opened the banqueting hall shoji facing the garden, and Yamazaki saw now a green corner contiguous to the wet landscape visible from the small room where he sat.

  Now that the Setsugoan was closed, it looked even lovelier in the early twilight of a rainy day than when filled with noisy guests. The chilly gloom of the banqueting hall actually lent greater resplendence to the lacquered furniture and painted screens. Kazu appeared to Yamazaki, looking at her from behind, to have become half a shadow picture, but she so overflowed with vitality that she seemed to have gathered into herself all the life which once filled this huge, empty room.

  Kazu stepped onto the veranda and, looking out on the garden, caught the door frame with the toes of her white-encased feet, like a parrot on a perch, and balanced herself precariously. The action had no particular meaning, but she remained on her uncertain roost.

  She stared at her toes. They stood out white and distinct between the dimness of the room and the hazy green outside, firmly curled, like an intelligent little animal. She spread open her toes. The shining wrinkles bulged in her tabi. Then the strain of being supported only by her toes in this unsteady posture spread through her body, bringing with it a kind of pleasurable sensation of danger. Just a little relaxation of the tension and her body would tumble onto the wet shrubs and the garden stones, and sink into the rain-soaked greenery.

  Yamazaki, stepping into the banqueting room, noticed Kazu’s body teetering back and forth in a strangely unnerving manner. He rushed up in alarm, calling, “Is there anything wrong, Mrs. Noguchi?”

  Kazu turned round and laughed aloud, showing her teeth. “What an awful thing to say! I’m not old enough yet for apoplexy! I was just amusing myself . . . But it’s time now for our drinking.”

  Kazu and Yamazaki made the rounds of the bars and cabarets. Yamazaki could not help noticing out of the corner of his eye, even in his drunkenness, that Kazu was busily distributing the extra-large visiting cards, even to the waitresses and bus boys.

  Noguchi bluntly rejected the compromise plan offered him by the Conservative Party through two or three devious channels. Several days later the counsel for Fujikawa Associates abruptly informed Noguchi’s lawyer that he could not agree to the terms for the sale of the Setsugoan. Noguchi’s lawyer discovered on investigation that pressure applied by Prime Minister Saeki was responsible for this new development. The Prime Minister, it was understood, had made a sudden telephone call to Genzo Fujikawa: “This is no time to buy the Setsugoan. It’s putting ammunition in the enemy’s hands, just before an election.”

  Noguchi was furious at the report. Yamazaki, who never got angry, declared that they now had a favorable opportunity to engage the enemy, and after urging Noguchi at some length, arranged for a public interview with the Prime Minister.

  Noguchi called on Saeki, his junior in years, at the official residence. In his usual pompous, awkward phraseology he condemned the Prime Minister for his underhanded interference in the settlement of a private transaction. The Prime Minister, smiling, protested deferentially that he had absolutely no recollection of such an occurrence. “Besides, I find the story a little too dramatic to be believable. Does it seem reasonable that the prime minister of a nation would make a telephone call like some cheap broker? Please use your common sense. I wonder if the simplest explanation isn’t that Fujikawa used my name in order to furnish himself with a plausible excuse for refusing?”

  Saeki treated Noguchi like an extremely old man, all but offering his hand to help him sit down or get up from his chair, wounding the pride of the old diplomat by such excessive politeness. True finesse requires a silken touch, but Saeki’s at best was rayon. “What does the little trickster think he’s doing?” Noguchi thought.

  Kazu sensed Noguchi’s bad humor when he returned, and comforted him without saying a word. It was hopeless now to try to sell the Setsugoan. Kazu did her best to hide her joy. She decided that she would have to make up for the treachery of her emotions by her political fidelity.

  14

  The Election at Last

  The governor of the prefecture resigned from office in the last week of July, and an election was immediately proclaimed. The fifteen days up to the tenth of August was the period sanctioned for campaigning. It was an extremely hot summer. Kazu, strenuously active again, took a second mortgage on the Setsugoan and raised thirty million yen. An election office was opened on the second floor of a downtown building.

  She and Noguchi had another altercation on the long-awaited morning of the election proclamation, just as Noguchi was about to leave the house to deliver his first campaign address. Kazu had, in anticipation of this day, purchased summer suiting of the finest English material, and had been at great pains to get a tailor to take her husband’s measurements. Noguchi, however, disliked the suit. He intended to deliver his first street address wearing a linen suit which had turned completely yellow with age.

  “I am standing for office as Yuken Noguchi, and not as a tailor’s dummy,” he announced. “I can’t wear such a thing.”

  Such childish drivel, as anyone could see, covered an undercurrent of narrow-minded dread. Who in his audience seeing the old man’s new suit would conceivably guess that his wife had provided it? Even Yamazaki had said, “He’s just acting like a spoiled child for your benefit, Mrs. Noguchi. Don’t worry about him. Just order the suit to the measurements of his old clothes.”

 
Kazu was not one to place much reliance on divine help in times of need, but that morning she rose at four and lit a candle before the Buddhist altar. She had decided to persuade the late Mrs. Noguchi to join their cause and cooperate in the interest of a Noguchi victory. Mosquitoes drifted in from the pre-dawn darkness of the garden and circled round Kazu’s hands when she joined them in prayer. There was no trace of piety in her tone as she silently addressed the late Mrs. Noguchi. “What do you say? Let’s join hands, one woman to another, and help him win somehow.” Kazu felt as if a beautiful friendship for this woman she had never met was rapidly materializing, and she wept a little. “What a fine lady, a fine lady. I am sure that if you were still alive we’d become good friends!”

  The mosquitoes repeatedly stung Kazu’s mellow flesh. She felt as though it would somehow help Noguchi to win if she could endure the itching. In this manner Kazu communed for quite a long time with the late Sadako Noguchi.

  In the meantime, sunrise brought the first intense light of the summer day to the garden. The garden was full of trees, and the sunlight shining through the stencils of leaf clusters stamped complicated shadows like paper cutouts in the center of the garden. Glancing over her shoulder at the garden stones, now a shining white, Kazu felt as if an auspicious crane had glided down through the sunrise: the stones suggested a crane with outstretched wings. She remembered now—when was it?—telling Noguchi as a joke that a crane was flying over the garden, and it had proved no lie. To see a crane now was indeed a lucky sign, but fearing Noguchi’s rebuke, she decided not to tell him.

  Noguchi woke soon afterward and took breakfast with Kazu, his usual silent ritual.

  “Wouldn’t you like a raw egg?” Kazu finally asked.

  He bluntly refused. “I’m not taking part in a grammar school athletic meet.” Noguchi was extremely vain about his unexcitability, presumably a product of his English training, but he completely lacked the sardonic, sophisticated humor which in an Englishman reinforces this detachment. Noguchi deliberately acted disagreeable that morning in order to prove that he was maintaining his usual calm.