After the Banquet Read online

  As the seventh of November approached, Kazu began making plans. The most important thing with such guests was to express her respect. The same uncomplimentary jokes and familiar behavior which were likely to amuse men at the height of their powers might wound the pride of men who were once renowned but now living in retirement. Her function as hostess when entertaining such elderly guests would be entirely confined to listening. Later, she would massage them with soft words, and give them the illusion that in this company their former glory had blossomed again.

  The menu at the Setsugoan that evening was as follows.

  SOUP

  White miso with mushrooms and sesame bean curd

  RAW FISH

  Thin slices of squid dipped in parsley

  and citron vinegar

  CASSEROLE

  Sea trout in a broth of red clams,

  sweet peppers, and citron vinegar

  HORS D’OEUVRES

  Thrush broiled in soy, lobster, scallops,

  pickled turnips, liquorice-plant shoots

  ENTRÉE

  Duck and bamboo shoots boiled with arrowroot paste

  COOKED FISH

  Two baby carps with sea bass

  broiled in salt in a citron vinegar sauce

  VEGETABLE DISH

  Chestnut dumplings with fern shoots

  and pickled plums

  Kazu wore on this occasion a small-patterned violet-gray kimono with an obi of dark purple dyed in a single band of chrysanthemum flowers in lozenges. A large black pearl was set in her carnelian obi clasp. She had chosen this particular attire with a view to holding in her ample body and giving it greater dignity.

  The day of the reunion was warm and clear. Shortly after dark the former foreign minister, Yuken Noguchi, and the former ambassador to Germany, Hisatomo Tamaki, arrived together at the Setsugoan. Noguchi seemed thin and rather unprepossessing alongside the splendidly built Tamaki, but under the silver hair his eyes were clear and alert; a flash in them told Kazu why this unmistakable idealist was the only one of the assembling guests, all former ambassadors, who had not retired.

  The party was lively and sociable, but the topics of conversation were confined to the past. The most talkative by far was Tamaki.

  The dinner was held in the main reception room of the visitors’ pavilion. Tamaki as he ate leaned on a pillar between the black-lacquered bell-shaped window and the magnificently decorated sliding-doors. The paintings on the doors depicted in brilliant colors a pair of peacocks amidst white peonies. By contrast, the background was a landscape executed in monochromes, a curious mélange of styles in the taste of the provincial aristocracy.

  Tamaki carried in the waistcoat pocket of his London-tailored suit an old-fashioned watch with a gold chain, a present which his father, also a former ambassador to Germany, had received from Kaiser Wilhelm II. Even in Hitler’s Germany this watch had given Tamaki quite a cachet.

  Tamaki was a handsome man and a fluent speaker, a diplomat with aristocratic leanings who had formerly prided himself on his knowledge of the harsh realities of life. His present interests, however, quite transcended the contemporary scene. His mind was entirely preoccupied by recollections of the brilliance of chandeliers at long-ago receptions where five hundred or a thousand guests had congregated.

  “Here’s a story that sends cold chills up my spine every time I think of it. This one is really interesting.” Tamaki’s self-congratulatory introduction would have dampened the enthusiasm of even the most eager listener. “I had never gone for a ride on the Berlin underground in all my time as ambassador, so one day the counselor of the embassy—Matsuyama was his name—dragged me off for the experience. We boarded the train two cars—no, it was more likely three—from the rear. It was fairly crowded when we got on. I happened to look up, when who should I see before me but Goering!”

  Tamaki paused at this point to study his listeners’ reaction, but everyone had apparently heard the story dozens of times, and no response was forthcoming. Kazu, stepping into the breach, chimed in, “But he was a very famous man at that time, wasn’t he? You don’t mean that he was riding on the underground?”

  “He was indeed. Goering, who ruled the roost at the time, dressed in shabby workman’s clothes, with his arm around a teen-age girl, a real beauty, riding the underground, cool as you please. I rubbed my eyes, wondering if it wasn’t a case of mistaken identity, but the harder I looked, the surer I was that it was Goering himself. After all, I was in a position to know—I saw him at receptions almost every day. I was staggered, I confess, but he didn’t so much as bat an eye. The girl must have been a prostitute, but unfortunately that is one subject I’m ignorant of.”

  “You don’t look it,” Kazu said, by way of a compliment.

  “She was really an attractive girl, but there was something suspiciously coarse about her make-up, the lipstick especially. Goering, nonchalant as you please in his laborer’s get-up, was playing with the girl’s ear lobe and stroking her back. I looked at Matsuyama standing beside me. His eyes were popping out of his head. Goering and the girl got off two stations later. Matsuyama and I, still on the train, were flabbergasted. For the rest of the day I couldn’t get the sight of Goering on the underground out of my head. The following evening Goering gave a reception. Matsuyama and I went up close to him and examined him carefully. There was no doubt about it—he looked exactly the same as the man we had seen the previous day.

  “I was unable to restrain my curiosity any longer. I forgot my position as ambassador, and before I knew it I was saying to Goering, ‘Yesterday we took a ride on the underground. We wanted to observe how the ordinary people get about. I really think it was a worthwhile experience. I wonder if Your Excellency has ever done the same?’

  “At this Goering grinned, but his answer was profound, ‘We are always at one with the people and part of the people. I have never felt it necessary therefore to ride on the underground.’” Tamaki gave Goering’s reply in succinct German, at once adding a Japanese translation.

  There was nothing diplomatic about these former ambassadors despite their solemn appearance; they made not the least pretense of listening to what anyone else said. The former ambassador to Spain, hardly able to wait for Tamaki to finish his story, began to talk about his life as Minister to the Dominican Republic in the beautiful capital of Santo Domingo. The walk along the sea under a palm grove, the superb sunsets over the Caribbean, the dusky skins of the mulatto girls glowing in the sunset . . . The old man was quite carried away by his own painstaking description of these sights, but the eloquent Ambassador Tamaki, broke in again and turned the conversation to his story of meeting Marlene Dietrich when she was still young. For Tamaki stories about unknown beautiful women were of no interest; a world-renowned name, a glittering reputation, was a necessary embellishment to every story.

  Kazu felt uncomfortable with all the different foreign words thrown into the conversation, and it annoyed her especially that the punch lines of dirty jokes were invariably delivered in the original language. At the same time, men from the world of diplomacy rarely visited her restaurant, and she was intrigued by the special atmosphere surrounding them. There was no question but that they were all “elegant retired gentlemen,” and even if they were poor now, in the past their fingers had known the touch of real luxury. Sadly enough, the memory of those days had stained their fingers forever with a golden powder.

  Only Yuken Noguchi seemed different and stood out from the others. His manly face had a straightforward ruggedness it would never lose, and, unlike the others, his attire was utterly devoid of affectation or dandyism. Thick, strikingly long eyebrows jutted above his sharp, clear eyes. His features taken individually were impressive, but they warred with one another, and his lean build accentuated the disharmony. Noguchi did not forget to smile at the appropriate times, but he only rarely joined in the conversation, a sign that he was constantly on guard. Kazu could not help noticing such distinctive features, but what caught he
r attention especially on this first encounter was the faint smudge which clung like a shadow to the back of Noguchi’s collar.

  “Just think—a former cabinet minister wearing a shirt like that! Has he no one to look after him, I wonder?” The thought bothered Kazu, and she unobtrusively glanced at the necks of the other guests. The collars that mercilessly pinched the dried-up skins of these elegant old gentlemen all shone a gleaming white.

  Noguchi was the only one who did not talk about the past. He had also served as ambassador to various small countries before returning to the Foreign Ministry, but the gaudy life of the diplomatic set lay outside his present interests. His refusal to discuss the past seemed a sign that he alone was still alive.

  Ambassador Tamaki began again, this time with the story of a bygone dinner party, a dazzling reception at a palace, where the royalty and nobility of all Europe had gathered under the brilliant chandeliers. The decorations and jewels of all Europe were on display, and the cheeks of the old gentlewomen, wrinkled and spotted like faded white roses, paled in the reflections of the innumerable precious stones.

  Next followed stories of opera singers of former days. One ambassador proclaimed the supremacy of Galli-Curci’s Mad Scene in Lucia, another insisted that Galli-Curci had by that time already passed her peak, and declared that Dal Monte’s Lucia, which he had heard, was far superior.

  Noguchi, who had scarcely uttered a word, finally spoke. “Why don’t we drop all this talk about the old days? We’re still young, after all.”

  Noguchi spoke with a smile, but the surging strength in his tone made the others fall silent.

  Kazu was captivated by this one remark. It is the function of the hostess in such a case to relieve the silence by making some foolish observation or other, but Noguchi’s comment hit the mark so precisely, and expressed so perfectly what she herself would have liked to say, that she forgot her duties. She thought, “This gentleman can say beautifully things which are really difficult to say.”

  Noguchi’s comment was all that was necessary for the sparkle to fade instantly from the party; nothing was left now but the black, wet ashes smoldering after water has been dashed on a fire. One old gentleman coughed. His painful gasping after the coughing trailed across the silence of the others. For a moment, as was plain from their faces, everyone thought of the future, of death.

  Just then the garden was swept by a wave of bright moonlight. Kazu called the guests’ attention to the late moonrise. The liquor had already taken considerable effect, and the old gentlemen, unafraid of the night chill, proposed that the party take a turn around the garden in order to inspect its charms not visible by day. Kazu ordered the maids to fetch paper lanterns. The old man who had been coughing, reluctant to be left behind, bundled himself in a muffler and followed the others out.

  The visitors’ pavilion had slender pillars, and the railing of the porch projecting into the garden had the delicate construction found in old temples. The moon just emerging over the roof to the east framed the building in heavy shadows, and the maids held up paper lanterns to illuminate the steps going down into the garden.

  All went well as long as the party remained on the lawn, but when Tamaki proposed that they walk along the path on the other side of the pond, Kazu regretted having called the guests’ attention to the November moon. The five men standing on the lawn looked terribly frail and uncertain.

  “It’s dangerous. Do watch your step, please,” she urged. But the more Kazu cautioned them, the more stubbornly the old men, who disliked being treated as such, insisted on following the path under the trees. The moonlight seemed lovelier than ever through the branches overhead, and anyone who had come as far as the pond with its reflections of the moon could not have resisted the temptation to go round to the other side.

  The maids, instinctively aware of Kazu’s wishes, bustled about, shining their lanterns on dangerous rocks, stumps, and slippery patches of moss, and carefully pointing them out to the guests. “How chilly the evenings have become!” Kazu remarked, holding her sleeves to her breast. “And today it was so warm.” Noguchi was walking beside her, and she could see the puffs of his breath, white under his mustache in the moonlight. He did not choose to follow up her observations.

  Kazu, walking at the head of the party in order to lead the way, inadvertently went too fast for those behind, and the lanterns accompanying them bobbed frantically under the trees. The lanterns and the moon reflected charmingly in the pond. The sight affected Kazu more than it did the old gentlemen, and it filled her with a childish excitement. She called in a loud voice across the pond, “It’s lovely! Look at the pond, look!”

  A smile flickered over Noguchi’s lips. “What an incredibly loud voice! You sound like a girl!”

  The accident occurred after they had safely completed their turn of the garden and returned to the visitors’ pavilion. Kazu had seen to it that a gas stove was burning cheerfully in the dining room, and the old gentlemen, chilled by the night air, gathered around the fire, relaxing in whatever posture they chose. Fruit was served, followed by Japanese cakes and powdered tea. Tamaki had fallen silent, depriving the conversation of much of its liveliness. It was time to be preparing to leave, and Tamaki went to the toilet. When the others were at last ready to get up, they noticed that Tamaki had not yet returned. They decided to wait a while longer. The silence in the room became oppressive. The four old men acted as if their only subject of conversation was one which nobody wished to touch.

  The talk turned to a discussion of the health of each. One complained of asthma, another of stomach trouble, the third of low blood pressure. Noguchi, a grave expression on his face, made no attempt to join in the conversation. “I’ll go have a look,” he said quietly, rising. Kazu, apparently emboldened by his words to get up and investigate, showed him the way, walking quickly down the smoothly polished corridor. Ambassador Tamaki had collapsed in the lavatory.

  3

  Mrs. Tamaki’s Opinion

  Never before in her career as proprietress of the Setsugoan had Kazu been faced with such a situation. She shrieked for help. The maids flocked to her, and she ordered them to summon all the male employees. By this time the other members of the Kagen Club were clustered in the corridor.

  Kazu could hear quite close-by Noguchi’s calm voice talking to the others. “It’s probably a stroke. I hate to bother the restaurant, but I think it best we not move him too much. We’ll ask a doctor to come here. Leave everything to me. You all have families. I’m the only one with nothing to tie me down.”

  It was strange that amidst all this excitement Noguchi’s words—“I’m the only one with nothing to tie me down”—should have lingered so vividly in Kazu’s mind. Yes, those definitely had been Noguchi’s words, and their meaning, like the vibrations of a silver wire, sent a glow of light into Kazu’s heart.

  Kazu threw herself with utter sincerity into ministering to the stricken man, but all she could clearly remember in her agitation was Noguchi’s remark. Not long afterward Mrs. Tamaki rushed in. Kazu felt deeply responsible before her, but even as she was weeping and apologizing for her negligence—and there was absolutely no pretense in this display of her feelings—Noguchi’s words continued to echo vividly in her brain.

  Noguchi, beside her, reassured Kazu. “You’re taking your responsibilities too seriously. This was Tamaki’s first time as a guest here, and you knew nothing about the state of his health. And, after all, it was Tamaki himself who proposed that we go out in the cold for a stroll round the garden.”

  The stricken man continued to emit loud snores.

  Mrs. Tamaki, an attractive middle-aged woman who looked much younger than her years, was stylishly dressed and seemed unruffled in the face of her husband’s serious condition. She frowned slightly whenever she caught the sound of samisens from the main banqueting hall, where a party was still in progress. Mrs. Tamaki was exceedingly self-possessed, and when the doctor advised that her husband be left at the Setsugoan for at
least a full day, she rejected the suggestion firmly, giving excellent reasons. “It has always been a motto of my husband never to cause others any trouble. If I allow the Setsugoan to be inconvenienced any further, I dread to think how upset my husband will be once he’s recovered. After all, this restaurant has many guests, and it isn’t as if my husband were a customer of long standing. I can’t permit the proprietress to be bothered any further. My husband must be taken to a hospital as soon as possible.”

  Mrs. Tamaki enumerated the same arguments again and again in her elegant diction, thanking Kazu repeatedly as she did so. Kazu opposed Mrs. Tamaki’s decision. “You needn’t stand on ceremony,” she insisted. “Please leave your husband here until the doctor says it’s all right for him to be moved, no matter how long it takes.” This touching scene of old-fashioned courtesy, enacted beside the pillow of the snoring patient, was accompanied by interminable expressions of mutual deference. Mrs. Tamaki never for a moment lost her composure, nor did Kazu for her part flag in her undiluted, overpowering solicitude. The heavy-set doctor in the end was utterly exhausted.

  The patient had been carried into a little-used detached building. The room was fairly large, but what with the sick man, Noguchi, Mrs, Tamaki, the doctor, the nurse, and Kazu, it presented quite a congested sight. Noguchi, signaling Kazu with his eyes, left the room, and she followed him out into the corridor. Noguchi strode quickly along the corridor ahead of her, walking with such assurance that Kazu, watching him from behind, felt as if this were Noguchi’s house and she herself merely a casual visitor.

  Noguchi walked straight ahead, quite at random. He crossed over a passageway arched like a humped bridge, continued down the next corridor, then turned to the left. They emerged on an inner garden filled with white chrysanthemums. No flowers grew in the front garden, but the small back garden had flowers all year round.