After the Banquet Read Online Free PDF Page A

the maids. The middle-aged, intelligent maid looked up dubiously at Kazu. It was Kazu’s practice never to ask questions about business before guests, and Noguchi was obviously a guest.
    “No,” the maid answered, “everybody was in fine spirits when the party broke up.”
    Noguchi and Kazu quietly slid open the door of the room where Tamaki lay. Mrs. Tamaki, attending the sick man, looked up sharply at them. Her eyebrows were penciled in an extremely thin line, and the pin holding her black hat in place, slipped somewhat out of place, flickered in the light from the hallway.

4
    The Leisured Companions
    Ambassador Tamaki was soon afterward moved to the university hospital. When Kazu went to visit him about noon the following day, she was informed that he was still in a coma. She sent to Tamaki’s room the basket of fruit she had brought, then withdrew to a chair some distance down the corridor, where she waited for Noguchi. Kazu knew from her impatience—she thought Noguchi would never arrive—that she must be fond of him.
    Kazu, now that she thought of it, realized that for all her headstrong temperament, she had never loved a man younger than herself. A young man has such a surplus of spiritual and physical gifts that he is likely to be cocksure of himself, particularly when dealing with an older woman, and there is no telling how swelled up with self-importance he may become. Besides, Kazu felt a physical repugnance for youth. A woman is more keenly aware than a man of the shocking disharmony between a young man’s spiritual and physical qualities, and Kazu had never met a young man who wore his youth well. She was moreover repelled by the sleekness of a young man’s skin.
    Kazu mulled endlessly over such matters as she waited in the gloomy, dimly lit hospital corridor. Tamaki’s room was easily distinguishable at the end of the long corridor by the baskets of flowers protruding from the door. Kazu was suddenly aware of many dogs barking, and looked out the window. She could see under the cold overcast sky a large area enclosed in wire netting, a pen for the stray dogs used in laboratory experiments. An immense number of roughly built kennels, absolutely devoid of any semblance of order, was jammed together. Some were built like chicken coops; others were the usual watchdog kennels. No two kennels stood at the same angle: some leaned precariously, others had tumbled over on one side, no doubt tugged over by the dogs chained to them. The dogs were no less disparate: some were mangy and emaciated looking, but others were healthy and well-fed. All were simultaneously howling pitifully, as if appealing for sympathy.
    The hospital employees were apparently hardened to the dogs’ howling, and no one even paused as he went by the wire netting. Beyond the enclosure an old three-storied building—a laboratory—bared a row of small, gloomy windows. The panes reflecting the cloudy sky seemed like sluggish eyes which had lost all sense of curiosity.
    Kazu’s heart swelled with a warm rush of sympathy as she listened to the pathetic howling of the dogs. The intensity of her agitation came as quite a surprise even to herself. “Those poor dogs! Those poor dogs!” She was in tears. She tried desperately to think if there were not some way of saving them. This helped to relieve the tedium of waiting.
    Noguchi arrived to find Kazu weeping. One look at her face and he demanded, “Is he dead?” Kazu quickly reassured him, but in her embarrassment she had no chance to explain her tears.
    Noguchi blurted out the childish, nonsensical question. “Are you waiting for someone?”
    “No,” Kazu answered distinctly. A smile at last rose to her well-rounded cheeks.
    “That’s fine,” Noguchi said. “It won’t take me long to get through with the visit. Please wait here for me. I have nothing to do, and I imagine that you’re free during the day. People of leisure—that’s what we both are. Let’s go downtown and have