After the Banquet Read Free Page B

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 her 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