“You’re a genius, Mrs. Noguchi,” exclaimed the teacher as they danced, “there’s no need to give you instruction.”
The assistant mayor stood outside the circle of dancers, looking on in dumb surprise.
Before long the two citified newcomers, the only dancers not wearing happi, became the object of the others’ attention. Kazu was already intoxicated. Perspiring freely in the bright sunlight, she melted into the human organism. She had only to brush against the bodies of the dancing women and smell their odor to forget at once her individuality and lose herself in the dance. She could feel no wall of any sort between herself and these strangers whose town she was visiting for the first time. The frantic beating of the drum on the platform and the piercing wail of the record were all Kazu’s body needed to become one with the dancers; the perspiration which trickled an instant later down her cheeks was no longer hers alone.
As soon as the song came to an end Kazu turned to the assistant mayor. “I feel completely happy,” she said. “I want to sing the Sado Okesa for everybody. There’s a microphone on the stand, isn’t there?”
A crowd of faces of village housewives gathered around Kazu. Most were past middle age, and looked as if they now enjoyed comfortable little incomes, but the sweat had ruined their holiday make-up and exposed leathery skins burnt by the sun of half a lifetime’s labor. The small eyes bright with curiosity, the friendly goldtoothed smiles, the frizzy back hair—Kazu had absolute confidence before such faces.
The assistant mayor, making his way through the crowd, escorted Kazu onto the platform. The steps were steep, but a certain amount of danger of this kind made Kazu happy. The assistant mayor called into the microphone, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have with us today the wife of the famous statesman of the Radical Party, Yuken Noguchi. She has come all the way from Tokyo to see our Folk Song Festival. I’d like to ask Mrs. Noguchi to sing for us the Sado Okesa.”
Kazu stepped up to the microphone and greeted the crowd. “I am the wife of Yuken Noguchi. It has given me so much pleasure just to see you enjoy yourselves that I thought I’d like to sing you a song, if you’ll pardon my voice. Please, everybody, dance as I sing.”
Kazu clapped her hands to give the time to the young drummer. A general stir went through the crowd below, watching her, but once she began to sing it grew still, and then everybody started to dance as if loosened of all inhibitions.
The trees and grasses all beckon to Sado, to Sado,
A good place to be, a good place to live is Sado.
I think of the past, then the tears wet my eyes—
Oh, Bay of Love on a night when the moon was misty!
Kazu stayed until dusk, by turns climbing down from the platform to dance and climbing back to sing. Several women from the Folk Song Association went up on the platform with her and taught her one of the local ballads.
At dusk the lanterns strung on branches all over the park were lit simultaneously. Kazu, entreated to sing a third Sado Okesa, again climbed the platform alone. The blackness of the surrounding mountains seemed to close in on them, now that the lanterns were lit. When Kazu had finished the song applause echoed from the hillside, a rare occurrence at such a festival. Yamazaki excitedly climbed up to the platform. “You’re a great success,” he said into Kazu’s ear. “The housewives of the Folk Song Association are saying that they won’t let you leave tonight. You’ve conquered Santama at last.”
“Do you think so?” Kazu asked, her eyes going out to the distant mountainside as she wiped the perspiration with a handkerchief.
“You must be tired.”
“No, I don’t feel too bad.”
While Kazu had been singing this time, something on a mountainside across the valley had caught her attention. It was a point of fire, now visible, now vanishing, on the black surface of the mountain which seemed to close in with the coming of night. Too feeble to be called a flame, it looked more like sparks thrown up now and then by a fire. Kazu could not remember having seen by day any houses in the fold in the mountains where the flame now rose, illuminated the area, then died out again. She looked carefully and noticed a trail of smoke extending diagonally upward to the ridge.
“What is that fire?” Kazu asked the young drummer. He had peeled off his shirt and was busy wiping the sweat.
“That fire?” he asked, turning to another young man. “What do you think it is?”
“That’s the chimney of the municipal crematorium.” The insolent looking, long-faced boy answered carelessly. Kazu remembered with feelings of sweetness Noguchi and the Noguchi family grave.
12
Collision
The customers at the Setsugoan dwindled each day. First of all, Genki Nagayama stopped coming. The last time he appeared sparks had flown between him and Kazu when she visited his room.
“You certainly seem to be throwing yourself into the fray,” Nagayama said, grinning.
“What would that refer to, I wonder?”
“But people are saying, ‘The enemy is elsewhere.’”
“You talk more and more in riddles.”
“All I mean to say is that you needn’t go to such extremes just because you’re in love with your husband.”
“Really? I’ve always thought that when a woman fell in love she could even commit murder without any qualms.”
“Murder could be forgiven. But there are worse things than murder. You’ve sold our tricks to the enemy.”
“When have I ever sold any secret of yours?”
“I’m not talking about secrets. I’m talking about tricks. What you’re doing now is to teach little baby Radical Party wicked tricks. The kind of wicked tricks which have always been our exclusive property.”
“The tricks I learned from you don’t amount to much.”
“I suppose it’d be useless to try to stop you, with your nature. Go ahead, do what you please. But remember, violations of the election law by the Radical Party can’t be overlooked. Be careful. Your pals can thank their stars they’ve never had any money before. That’s what’s kept them out of jail.”
“Thank you for your kind advice. But don’t forget, if I’m caught I’ll have quite a bit to tell the district attorney myself.”
Nagayama colored, and he fell silent. Then, perhaps deciding that it would seem childish to stalk out of the party on the spot, he treated the other guests to a few of his usual dirty stories before leaving much sooner than his accustomed time. Kazu started to show him down the hall to the door when Nagayama, putting his arm around Kazu’s shoulder, lightly patted her breasts. Such a dismal pretense at love-making irrevocably alienated Kazu from Nagayama.
The following day, when Yamazaki visited the Setsugoan at Kazu’s request, he found her in her room. She was being massaged and wore only a thin undergarment. Yamazaki was dazzled by the superb pink of the under-robe, but he recognized at once that Kazu’s slatternly pose, which might easily have been mistaken for enticement, represented the informality she permitted herself only with a man she did not love. The pink underrobe became disarranged as Kazu’s hips were massaged, and Yamazaki caught a glimpse of her dazzlingly white thighs. The thighs had a glossy luminosity incredible in a woman in her middle fifties. Kazu felt no sense of responsibility about leaving her thighs exposed.
“What can I do for you?” Yamazaki demanded. “Please tell me quickly before I get the wrong ideas.”
“Nothing special. I called you just to take a load off your mind.” Kazu raised herself a little, rather warily, like a woman getting up on a rocking boat. “I’d like you to stop worrying. Whatever we do there’s absolutely no danger of being arrested.”
“What makes you so sure? That’s the Committee Chairman’s biggest worry.”
“I did a little threatening, and now everything will be all right.” Kazu, without listening to Yamazaki’s reply, turned over on her stomach. As the masseur was rubbing her arm she added, “Now about that labor union dinner you requested the other day. I’ll be glad to t
ake it on, but please let me decide the cost.”
“Thank you very much, but remember, they’re not very well off.”
“Surely they can afford 300 yen a head?”
“Three hundred yen?” The figure was so low Yamazaki was astonished.
“Yes, three hundred yen. I know we’ll be needing their help more and more from now on, and I’d like to invite them without charge, but that would only burden them with feelings of obligation. Of course I’ll provide the finest quality of food and drink.”
Kazu gathered an unexpected harvest during the course of the conversation that day. She learned for the first time from some casual remarks made by Yamazaki, who assumed she already knew of the incident, that several months before the war ended Noguchi had petitioned the emperor to open peace negotiations. Kazu was overjoyed at this proof of Noguchi’s enlightened views, and reproached Yamazaki for not having mentioned it before.
Kazu proposed that they immediately prepare a pamphlet utilizing this information, but Yamazaki hesitated to do so without Noguchi’s knowledge. Yet if they revealed their project to Noguchi he would be certain to express his unalterable opposition. Kazu’s determination to carry through her scheme without informing Noguchi suggested that she now recognized no restraints.
She spoke fluently. “There’s no need, of course, to consult with my husband. We couldn’t hope for better material. It’s obvious that our only possible reason for using it is to help him, and we’d be guilty of negligence, wouldn’t we, if we allowed such valuable material to lie idle.”
In the end Yamazaki was talked into consenting. Kazu also got him to agree to a marvelous plan she had thought up one sleepless night—to print 500,000 calendars with Noguchi’s photograph. Each calendar would cost about four yen, and they would have to have a stylish design. The calendars would be distributed to all labor unions, and through the teachers’ union would find their way to the walls of the pupils’ homes.
Kazu described to Yamazaki the full range of her fancy, forgetting as usual the passage of time . . . The calendars would be hung on factory walls, next to seamstresses’ sewing machines, in children’s study rooms. Noguchi’s name would come up in family conversations even at the dinner table. “Who’s that man on the calendar?” “Yuken Noguchi, of course. Don’t you know about him?” . . . His photograph would always be smiling—but how rare were the photographs of Noguchi smiling! His photograph, graced by his dignified, elderly gentleman’s smile, must watch benevolently over many scantily laid dinner tables and accept cheerfully on its face the steam rising from the dishes. The calendar must steal in everywhere—by the bird cage, under the old wall clock, beside the television set, just above the little kitchen blackboard with its shopping list of vegetables and fish, next to the cupboard where the family cat sleeps—and Noguchi’s smile must hover over all. Then his silver-haired dignity and his smile must cause him to merge imperceptibly in voters’ minds with dear old uncles who many years ago brought them candy and stroked their heads whenever he visited the house. The smile must confuse memories, revive old, heavily romantic dreams of justice triumphant, and, as the name of an old ship in the harbor becomes a synonym for the future when it sets sail, his name must become another name for a future which would see wretched, smoke-stained walls battered down.
“When,” Kazu pursued, “the family cat gets up and stretches, it will rub its back against Noguchi’s face on the calendar. Then, as the old gentleman of the house picks up the cat, he’ll see the smile on Noguchi’s face. Never will his expression look so dear, so indulgent as it does at that moment.”
As Yamazaki was leaving, Kazu whispered one final bit of information. “You don’t need to worry about money. I’ve mortgaged the Setsugoan. Tomorrow I’ll have at my disposal about twenty-five million yen.”
The Radical Party and the labor unions were experienced when it came to elections with up to 300,000 votes, but they had no idea of the proper strategy when it came to an electorate of five million; they were in fact completely bewildered. Word to this effect from Yamazaki had inspired Kazu with greater confidence than ever. She came to think that the election was her Heaven-appointed task. It was a game in which one used one’s full energies against a virtual vacuum for an adversary, a constant wager directed against something whose existence could not be verified. She felt that however excited she became, she could never be excited enough, that however dispassionate she acted, she could never be dispassionate enough, and there was no standard by which to judge either. Kazu was exempt from one worry, the fear that she might be going too far. Yamazaki was no match for her in this. The time-tested veteran of Radical Party elections had gradually developed into an admirer of the grand-scale methods which Kazu invariably adopted.
One dark day of unbroken rain Kazu, returning to the Setsugoan toward evening, noticed one of her trusted maids standing at the inside entrance, a look of distress on her face. “Mr. Noguchi is here,” she said.
“Where is he?”
“He’s waiting in your room, ma’am.”
“What made you take him to such a place?”
“He came here a while ago without any warning, and walked straight to your room himself.”
Kazu stood rooted to the spot. This was Noguchi’s first unannounced visit to the Setsugoan. What sent chills through her was the recollection that the room adjacent to hers was filled with enormous stacks of calendars and pamphlets just off the press.
Her heart beating like a trip hammer, Kazu stood motionless, unable even to remove her wet raincoat. She sensed the dreadful expression her face must present in the hallway light. The old porter, who had accompanied Kazu from the gate, protecting her with an umbrella, stared at her face, forgetting to close his umbrella.
Every conceivable variety of falsehood suggested itself to Kazu. A genius for cheerful evasion was part of her natural endowments, and however serious the predicament facing her, she could always manage to dodge it nimbly, like a swallow threading a narrow path under projecting eaves. In this instance, however, she felt that silence would be the best evasion. There was no doubt about her basic good intentions, and basically she had nothing to feel ashamed of. But Kazu feared Noguchi more than anything else in the world.
As Kazu slowly removed her coat she glanced back at the rain pouring down on the path between the gate and the inside entrance. The driving rain was battering the vermilion pomegranate flowers. Spring was warmer this year than usual, and the flowers had opened very early. Their flame color continued to glow intensely in the approaching darkness outside. The flowers calmed Kazu somewhat.
She kneeled at the threshold of her room. “I’m sorry I was out when you came,” she said.
Noguchi, in Japanese clothes, got up without answering. All but kicking Kazu out of the room with his outstretched foot, he barked, “We’re going home at once. Come!” He strode out into the hallway. Kazu noticed that he had a pamphlet and a folded calendar in his right hand. As Noguchi crossed over the humped bridge of the passageway ahead of her, she suddenly recalled the same view of him the night of their first meeting, and she felt a rush of mingled sadness and affection. It seemed then that all she had done entirely of her own volition was actually the working of an unhappy destiny. She wept as she followed him.
The maids, long accustomed to Kazu’s tears, showed no suspicion that anything was amiss even when she weepingly left the Setsugoan. Noguchi’s mouth was set in an obdurate line. Kazu continued to weep in the car all the way home, but Noguchi did not utter a single word.
When they were back in the house Noguchi, still without a word, led Kazu into his study and locked the door. There was nothing of fire about his anger; it rose like a steep unsurmountable precipice. “Do you know why I went to the Setsugoan?” he demanded.
Kazu, still weeping, shook her head faintly. A trace of coquetry flickered in her attitude as she shook her head, though she herself disapproved of it. The next instant Noguchi slapped her in the face. She collapsed on th
e carpet and wept.
“Do you understand now?” Noguchi shouted, breathing heavily. “Today there was a telephone call at the house from the printers. I answered it. They said that the bill for the calendars hadn’t been paid, and they wanted their money. They informed me that my wife had ordered the calendars. I asked a few questions. I discovered that it was your doing. Then I went to the Setsugoan, and what did I find? Not only calendars! What is the meaning of this? What intolerable impertinence!”
Noguchi struck Kazu’s face again and again with the pamphlet. She had often enough had arguments with her husband, but never before anything like this. Even as she felt the sting of his blows, she stole an upward glance at him. Noguchi was breathing heavily, but his face was not distorted by anger. The coldness of his fury made Kazu tremble.
“You’ve smeared mud on your husband’s face. Just the kind of thing I could expect of you. You’ve done a wonderful job of besmirching my career. You should be ashamed of yourself, yes, ashamed! Does it make you happy that your husband’s become a public laughing-stock?”
He stamped on Kazu’s body as she lay on the floor, anywhere his feet happened to land, but his frail body was strengthless. Kazu rolled over shrieking, but his feet were in fact repulsed by the rich resilience of her body. Noguchi finally settled himself in a chair on the other side of his desk, and distantly regarded Kazu lying sobbing on the floor.
Noguchi’s denunciation, antiquated both in manner and language, intensified his aura of being the incarnation of the old moral virtues. His wrath was cast in a majestic idiom which delighted Kazu; all but swooning from pain and happiness, she deliberately reflected with her half-conscious faculties that Noguchi was the kind of man who, once he had angrily forbidden whatever deserved to be forbidden, would immediately revert to his normal blindness and deafness. This reflection, many times repeated, made Kazu indulgent again toward Noguchi, and even more so toward herself.