After the Banquet

by Yukio Mishima

  There was no answer, but Kazu went in and sat down. Noguchi was reading a book. He did not so much as turn in Kazu’s direction. She noticed first his head, almost completely white since the election, then the back seam of the kimono over his frail but erect shoulders. Noguchi, as always, wore his kimono awkwardly, and the seam was twisted to the left. His back, however, was extremely far removed; she knew that even if she had thought to straighten the seam, her hands could never reach it now.

  “I’ve been informed of all your activities,” Noguchi said after a while, his back still toward her. “Perhaps they were unavoidable as far as you were concerned, but I find them unpardonable. You’ve been unfaithful.”

  “What do you mean by that, please?” Her retort had a defiant ring. Noguchi was surprised at such forcefulness from Kazu, but he realized the next instant that there had been a simple verbal misunderstanding. He turned toward his wife for the first time and explained. Noguchi’s voice showed no trace of agitation, and his words were calm, but she could sense somewhere a terrible fatigue which provided a curious contrast to the high-minded content of his remarks.

  Noguchi believed that there was no room for divergence in human conduct, whether in politics or love. He was convinced that all human actions were based on the same principles, and that politics, love, and morality must, like the constellations, be governed by fixed laws. Thus, any one act of betrayal was exactly equal to the other acts of betrayal, and all were nothing less than betrayals of the fundamental principles as a whole. An adulteress’s political chastity and a chaste woman’s political betrayal represented the same kind of immorality. The worst crime was for an act of betrayal to spread infection to successive persons, thereby hastening a collapse of the entire structure of principles. According to this old-fashioned, Chinese-style political philosophy, Kazu’s circulation of a subscription book among Noguchi’s political enemies was tantamount to adultery: she had “slept” with these men.

  Kazu listened distractedly to Noguchi’s words. In the end, she knew, she would never understand these ideas. But she was scarcely less confident than Noguchi that her beliefs were ultimately correct.

  The present incident had made Noguchi despair utterly of Kazu. He gave up any illusions about the possibility of correcting each of her transgressions. His extreme slowness in making this discovery spoke for the optimistic side of this upright man. Noguchi was so blinded by his own righteousness that he failed to perceive the essence of things. Why had he made Kazu his wife? Was it not perhaps because the deeper Noguchi believed in his principles, the more he unconsciously required this woman to desecrate them?

  Noguchi was angry also because Kazu, though accommodating herself on the surface to his educational zeal, had not in fact responded sincerely to a single thing he taught her. Kazu, however, had completely failed to recognize in her husband’s educational zeal anything stemming from fundamental beliefs; she could only suppose that his zeal was a mark of affection. It is generally impossible to educate and change a mature person, and when her husband’s eyes shone, bewitched by this impossibility, she was right in interpreting this as a sign of affection. She had responded straightforwardly to this affection with a gentle submissiveness, having no choice but to get along as best she could with this logical passion for the impossible.

  It was inconceivable that Noguchi could have failed to perceive Kazu’s passion for things in constant motion, her fervor for activity, her innate love for rushing about, throwing herself completely into whatever she did. Kazu’s attraction for him undoubtedly resided in these qualities, precisely the ones to arouse the pedagogical ardor of a conscientious man like Noguchi.

  Noguchi required that Kazu faithfully obey his principles, but she was not so presumptuous as to hope that Noguchi would obey hers. Herein lay the loneliness implicit in her vitality: Kazu was hazily aware that she alone was capable of acting in accordance with her own principles. She possessed no logical passion of any kind. Logic merely chilled her. And it was this knowledge of the loneliness of her vitality that made Kazu always afraid of the loneliness after death.

  Noguchi’s next words, deliberately pronounced, were of course calculated to ignite these fears in Kazu. “Listen carefully. These are my final words. If you are willing to change your mind now, abandon your plans for reopening the Setsugoan, and sell the place, I am willing to pardon your almost unpardonable conduct, and to start again on a fresh footing . . . If you say ‘Yes’ now, you will barely make this last-minute reprieve. But if you say ‘No’ . . . I think you are fully aware of what that means, but I must ask you to remember that our relations will be at an end.”

  There flashed before Kazu’s eyes an unvisited grave in some desolate cemetery, belonging to someone who had died without a family. This vision of the end of a life of solitary activity—a lonely, abandoned grave covered with weeds, leaning over, beginning to rot—sent a fathomless dark fear stabbing into Kazu’s heart. If Kazu were no longer a member of the Noguchi family, she would assuredly travel a straight road leading to that desolate grave. This intuition of the future was insolently precise.

  But something was calling Kazu from the distance. An animated life, every day wildly busy, many people coming and going—something like a perpetually blazing fire called her. That world held no resignation or abandoned hopes, no complicated principles; it was insincere and all its inhabitants fickle, but in return, drink and laughter bubbled up lightheartedly. That world seen from here looked like the torchlight of dancers scorching the night sky on a hilltop beyond dark meadows.

  Kazu had no choice but to plunge in that direction, as her active energy commanded. Nothing, not even Kazu herself, could oppose its commands. And yet, Kazu’s energy in the end would certainly lead her to a lonely, tumble-down, unattended grave.

  Kazu shut her eyes.

  It gave Noguchi an uneasy sensation to see his wife, sitting erect, her neckline straight, her eyes shut. He thought that he was all too well acquainted with this woman’s incomprehensibility, but such an understanding was a hindrance: her present incomprehensibility was of an order entirely different from anything he had known before. He did not notice that Kazu was turning into a different woman.

  Noguchi was thinking, “She’s trying to discover some way to suit her own convenience again, no doubt about that. Her next step may be to persuade me with her tears. Whatever it is, I’m worn out by this woman. That’s possibly a sign that I’m getting old, but as far as I’m concerned, exhaustion is the only accurate way to describe my feelings.”

  All the same, he was agitated by the childish expectancy and anxiety one feels in the moment of waiting before fireworks explode in the sky.

  Noguchi had in this manner raised his final resolve into an airtight structure, and had driven Kazu inside. The course of events which led to Kazu’s being forced into choosing between two alternatives had, however, been initiated by Kazu herself, and one might more properly say that Noguchi had erected this stockade without a loophole, not precisely against his will, but out of a kind of weariness. He felt that whichever answer Kazu made would be all right with him.

  Noguchi dreaded most Kazu’s next, not unlikely change of heart, and the bother any shift would entail. On the surface he showed an adolescent fretfulness, but he yearned now to settle in some permanent fashion, at the first possible moment, the few remaining years left him. He had no further inclination for repairs, rebuilding, modifications in the blueprints, or recasting of plans. His mind and flesh were incapable now of enduring any uncertainties. Quivering like a piece of fruit inside a dish of jello, he waited impatiently for the moment when the gelatine would kindly harden. It seemed to him that the coagulation of the world would have to be completed before he could look up to the blue sky with an easy mind and admire to his heart’s content the sunrise and sunset and the rustling of the treetops.

  Noguchi, like many other retired politicians, had wished to save “poetry” for his declining years. He had never had the leisure to
appreciate that desiccated storage food, nor did he expect that it would taste good, but to such men as Noguchi, poetry lay hidden not in poetry itself so much as in an untroubled craving for poetry; poetry in fact symbolized the unshakable stability of the world. Poetry would make its appearance—indeed, would have to appear—when there was no further danger of the world changing, when one knew that there would be no further assaults of uncertainty, hopes, or ambitions.

  At such a time, he expected, the moral constraint of a lifetime and the armor of logic would melt and dissolve into poetry, like a column of white smoke rising in the autumn sky. But when it came to the poetry of security, Kazu was his senior, and she knew much better than he its ineffectuality.

  Noguchi did not realize that he would never love nature. If he could have loved nature he would assuredly have loved Kazu more expertly. During his walk he had taken pleasure in the last traces of old Japan visible in the Koganei area, supposing them to be the beauty of nature, but the aged cherry trees, the towering elms, the clouds, the evening sky had been no more than the idealized self-portrait his honest clumsiness had painted.

  Kazu’s eyes were still shut.

  At this instant Noguchi felt utter bafflement at the prospect of being trapped within a domestic life of eternally renewed instability. He was sure that even if he put his hand on Kazu’s shoulder and shook her, she would not budge, that she had solidified on the spot and would go on sitting there. And perhaps the months and years until he died would pass in stagnation, and the world would coagulate, not as he had expected, but in this weird form.

  Kazu slowly opened her eyes.

  While her eyes were shut her mind had resolutely crossed the mountain, and she had reached the only answer possible for her. She had immersed herself in the darkness of her closed lids and—perhaps now for the first time completely under her husbands’s influence—she answered as never before with perfect logic. “I’m sorry, there’s no other way. I intend to reopen the Setsugoan. I intend to pay back the money I borrowed if I have to work the flesh from my bones.”

  Noguchi was suddenly filled with terrible hatred for Kazu. He had spent the whole of the previous night in a rage, but today, since seeing Yamazaki and then Kazu, his rage had entirely subsided, and he had been able to act with an indifferent, cold resignation. He had not foreseen the hatred that suddenly welled up within him when he heard Kazu choose with dignity one of the two alternatives he had forced on her.

  Which answer had Noguchi expected? Would he have hated her less if she had chosen the other alternative?

  In any case, when he struck her in displeasure over her irresponsible actions during the campaign, he had not been so upset as now, when Kazu had evidently stolen his own weapon of logic and become his enemy fair and square.

  Unlike previous occasions, Kazu had not shed a single tear. Her fair-skinned face actually seemed cheerful, and her ample figure, sitting perfectly erect, had the exquisite poise of a finely carved doll.

  Kazu looked into Noguchi’s eyes; one glance and she perceived the hatred blazing in the old man’s thin, dignified frame. This was by no means the expression of the educator, nor was it the admonitory look in the eyes of the hard-to-please stoical father . . . Kazu, seeing it, trembled with joy.

  Not a sound could be heard from the world outside the tightly shut shoji. The lights in the room seemed suddenly to brighten: Noguchi’s simple bookshelves and desk, the scissors on his desk, the paint on the few articles of furniture, shone and seemed to stand out in more detailed relief than usual. The new tatami gave off a grassy fragrance.

  They stared at each other for a long while. This was the first time Kazu had been able to look squarely into her husband’s eyes in this way. Noguchi’s shoulders twitched with anger; his whole body loathed Kazu. She feared that he might collapse on the spot.

  Then she became genuinely afraid. She considered one way and another to look after him. But she was too far removed for her hand to reach him; the strength which only Kazu now possessed to soothe Noguchi’s chagrin was no longer for him. The same was true of Noguchi. Although his hatred was bit by bit subsiding, he knew that only makeshift expedients were left. From the moment that Kazu made her answer, his fist would no longer reach her body. Ludicrous as it may seem, a kind of courtesy now restrained his hand. This courtesy made Kazu feel as if a damp shroud were being wrapped around her body.

  After a long silence Noguchi said finally, “That’s your decision, is it? In that case, I intend to start divorce proceedings. You have no objection, I take it.”

  19

  Before the Banquet

  By mutual consent Noguchi struck Kazu’s name from the family register. Kazu gathered together her belongings and returned to the Setsugoan. When rumors of these events got around, the former employees of the Setsugoan, who had scattered in all directions when the place closed, reappeared one after another to request that they be taken back. Kazu’s eyes filled with tears of joy.

  The house itself was run down, but the garden was a wilderness. The former gardener came with several young assistants, and announced that by way of celebrating the reopening, he was offering his services gratis. He undertook to restore the garden as quickly as possible to its former condition.

  Whenever she had a moment’s leisure, Kazu delighted in going down into the garden to watch the gardeners at their daylong labors of mowing the lawn and pruning the shrubbery. At night owls hooted, and by day she saw the trim silhouettes of the kites which built their nest at the top of the tallest pine. Sometimes, as the weeds were being cut down, a small pheasant would scurry off toward the far end of the garden. The elder tree, which had been allowed to spread unhindered, was dotted with purple fruits, but still kept a few faded summer blossoms whose fragrance hovered faintly like some ghostly presence. The hedge of dodan bushes, the leaves now most brilliantly tinted, cast lovely shadows by the old gate at the entrance.

  Kazu, watching the garden take on day by day more of its former beauty, could not feel that the image gradually emerging like a thermotype was the same garden she had known. It certainly looked the same, but it was not the garden that Kazu had once treasured in her mind like a precisely drawn map that she had memorized and cupped in the palms of her hands. The transparent garden she had known to the last corner was lost. Each tree, each stone, in its proper place, had corresponded perfectly with Kazu’s carefully arranged catalogue of the known human emotions, but this correspondence was now lost.

  The grass was mowed and rolled. The branches which had intricately multiplied were lopped down and the sky brightened. The gradually emerging face of the garden was as beautiful as a woman gently waking from sleep and shadowy dreams, and its features were remarkably similar to those she had known, but for Kazu not one dot, one stroke, belonged to the known world.

  One day it rained and the gardener took the day off. The weather cleared toward evening, and the island in the pond, its thick growth of bamboo grass, and the water of the pond sparkled in the sunlight. The uncertain scattered light flickered across the pond, and the garden seemed to Kazu to express an uncanny joy she had never known. Again, on another morning the garden was enveloped in mist, and the pines thrusting their branches through the mist seemed to be surrendering themselves to some kind of unpleasant memories.

  Around this time Yamazaki sent an answer to the long letter Kazu had written him. She went into the garden that morning, thinking she would read the letter in the lingering, Indian summer warmth.

  The southeast pond glittered in the sun, and the sedate dark green of a huge ilex tree at the center, surrounded by old imposing pines, chestnuts, nettle trees, and oaks, marked the exact apex of the wood in the background. The stone lantern, the focal point of the broad expanse of lawn, alone benefiting from the long closure of the Setsugoan, had gained an antique repose; when the area around it was carefully weeded, it stood out more prominently and vividly than ever. The sky was clear today, and fine cirrus clouds drifted between the treetops.
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  The garden, once folded up so small, had swelled like a paper flower in water and had become a vast park filled with riddles and mysteries. In it plants and birds pursued their quiet occupations unmolested. The garden was full of things Kazu knew nothing of; each day she brought back one from the garden and, little by little making it her own, she would grind it in a small mortar . . . She tried rubbing it in her palms, her fingers, as she might rub a medicine, but the garden’s hoard of fresh, unknown ingredients was limitless, and would probably enrich Kazu’s fingers inexhaustibly.

  Kazu, stepping through the stripes of sunlight filtering through the trees, walked to a bench by the path, sat, and began to read Yamazaki’s letter.

  Thank you for your letter and invitation to the banquet celebrating the reopening of the Setsugoan. It may not seem entirely appropriate for me to offer congratulations, but forgetting my position for the moment, I should like to express my heartfelt best wishes.

  Your letter did not touch in the least on the recent unfortunate events, but was concerned exclusively with an account of how the garden is being readied for the reopening. I believe that I can imagine what prompted you to write in that way.

  When I think how in the past couple of years your confidence in your knowledge of people has been shattered, how you have obtained in place of peace of mind only uncertainty, and in place of happiness a new, painful knowledge, how when you tried to love you learned recognition, how you ended at the place where you thought you would begin, and began at the place you had ended . . . how you have been able to secure your present, peaceful uncertainty by sacrificing everything, my nature is such that I feel less sympathy than respect.

  When I look back now, I think perhaps you might have been able to enjoy happiness had it not been for the election. Mr. Noguchi might have been happy too. But it now seems to me that the election cannot be said to have been a misfortune in a real sense, for it smashed every kind of counterfeit happiness and resulted in you and Mr. Noguchi showing each other your naked selves. I have been wallowing in the bog of politics for a long time, and I have in fact come to be quite fond of it. In it corruption cleanses people, hyprocrisy reveals human character more than half-hearted honesty, and vice may, at least for a moment, revive a helpless trust . . . Just as when you throw laundry into a centrifugal dryer, it rotates so fast that the shirt or underwear you’ve just thrown in vanishes before your eyes, what we normally call human nature instantly disappears in the whirlpool of politics. I like its fierce operation. It doesn’t necessarily purify, but it makes you forget what should be forgotten, and overlook what should be overlooked. It works a kind of inorganic intoxication. That is why, no matter how badly I fail, no matter what disastrous experiences I encounter, I shall never leave politics as long as I live.