After the Banquet Read Online Free PDF Page B

Two tomato-colored ad balloons rose in a sky hazy with soot.
    Kazu suddenly noticed how worn the cuffs of Noguchi’s overcoat were. Each discovery she made about him seemed to come as a criticism of herself. She felt that this at any rate was one discovery she could do nothing about, that it rejected any meddling on her part from the outset.
    Noguchi, surprisingly sensitive to her glance, asked, “Is this what you’re looking at? I had this overcoat made in London in 1928. As long as your heart is young, the older your clothes the better. Don’t you agree?”
    Noguchi and Kazu cut across Benten Island, surrounded now by withered lotus leaves, and passed through the entrance of the Gojo Tenjin Shrine to start the climb up Ueno Hill. The pale blue of the winter sky looked like a glass painting behind the delicate shadow pictures of the barren trees. They were still looking up at the sky when they reached the old-fashioned entrance of the Seiyoken Restaurant. The grill room had few guests at lunch time.
    Noguchi ordered the table d’hôte meal, and Kazu did the same. Directly before their windowside table they could see an old temple belltower. Kazu, delighted that the room was so comfortably heated, said with undisguised relief, “That was certainly a cold walk!”
    Kazu’s mind however had colored that chilly stroll with tints she had never known in her normal busy routine of entertaining customers. The walk had given her a slight surprise. Kazu seldom bothered to analyze her actions at any given moment, preferring to collect and try to understand her thoughts later on. She might, for example, suddenly burst into tears while talking with someone. The tears would flow even though she did not at the time understand what prompted them, her own emotions unperceived by herself.
    Even after Kazu commented on how cold it had been, Noguchi did not apologize for having obliged her to walk. Kazu therefore felt impelled to explain in minute detail how much she had enjoyed the walk despite the cold. Finally, after Kazu had gone on at great length, Noguchi broke in, profiting by the appearance of the first course. “I’m glad,” he laconically remarked. Noguchi’s face remained impassive even as he said this, but somehow he seemed happy.
    This was Kazu’s first encounter with such a man. Kazu always talked more than her customers, some of whom were extremely close-mouthed, but Noguchi seemed to be manipulating Kazu with his silences. She could not understand how this old man, so simple in all his tastes, could possess such strength.
    There was a pause in the conversation and Kazu looked around her at the stuffed bird-of-paradise in a glass case, the sober-colored material of the curtains, the plaque inscribed in Chinese characters “A Hall Filled With Splendid Guests,” an engraving of the old warship Ise built at the Kawasaki Shipyard. The picture, executed in the copperplate techniques of the early nineteenth century, showed the battleship Ise plowing through the fine lines of the waves, its red hull visible like a petticoat under the waterline. This turn-of-the-century Western-style restaurant, the former cabinet minister eating lunch in his old-fashioned English clothes—in fact, everything around her went so well together that Kazu, who prized the vitality of whatever was currently at the height of its popularity, was somehow irritated.
    Noguchi began to speak. “Diplomacy boils down to knowing how to size up people. That’s one art I think I’ve acquired in the course of my long life. My deceased wife was a splendid woman, and I knew it the first time I laid eyes on her. One look was enough for me to decide. But I’m no fortuneteller. I couldn’t predict how long she’d live. My wife took sick and died just after the war ended. We hadn’t any children, so I’m completely alone now . . . Oh—when there’s only a little soup left in your plate you should always tilt it away from you and then put your spoon