After the Banquet by Yukio Mishima

preference, it was like being asked which she preferred, his sharp nose or his prominent ears?
    Their love progressed with extreme deliberation. The first time they kissed was when Kazu paid Noguchi a New Year’s call at his house. Kazu wore a kimono of celadon-colored silk dyed with vignettes of white bamboo leaves, silver gabions, and dark green dwarf pines. Her sash was embroidered with a large lobster in vermilion and gold on a silver gray ground. She left her mink coat in the car before going in.
    Nogochi’s gate was bolted, even on New Year’s day, and the house looked deserted. But Kazu knew that the broken bell had at last been repaired. In the course of several visits she had become aware that Noguchi’s maid, who would appear only after keeping Kazu waiting a long time, looked at her with an expression akin to contempt. Once when Kazu was present Noguchi had asked the maid to fetch from the shelf a book written in German, giving the title in the original. The maid had unfalteringly repeated the German title and, running her eyes over the shelves, immediately picked out the book. Ever since then Kazu had hated the woman.
    In this quiet neighborhood removed from the bustle of the main thoroughfares, the only sounds that Kazu could hear as she waited at the door were the clear, dry, distant echoes of children playing at the New Year’s sport of battledore and shuttlecock. She always felt humiliated before the driver every time she got out of her car, pressed the bell at Noguchi’s gate, and then was kept waiting an eternity. The only sign of New Year at this house was the symbolic branch of pine at the gate, diagonally lit now by the clear winter sunlight.
    Kazu stared down the deserted street before the gate. The sunlight brought into bold relief the complicated unevenness of the paving with its broken patches. Shadows of trees and of telegraph poles fell on the road. The black and somehow attractive thawed earth exposed in one place shone where a broad tire track was imprinted on it.
    Kazu strained to catch the tap of the battledore and shuttlecock. The children seemed to be playing in a nearby garden, but she could not see them, nor were there laughing voices. The sounds stopped. Ah, Kazu thought, the shuttlecock has fallen. A while later a steady tap-tap told her that the shuttlecock was again bounding back and forth. Then the sound stopped again . . . During the irritating, repeated breaks, Kazu visualized the brightly colored shuttlecock lying in the thawed black mud. Suddenly these intermittent sounds coming from an invisible garden behind a wall suggested to Kazu some sinister game played in stealth where no one could see.
    She heard the sounds of geta approaching the side entrance. Kazu braced herself, tense at the thought she would have to encounter Noguchi’s disagreeable servant. The gate opened. Noguchi himself came out to greet her, and Kazu blushed at this unexpected surprise.
    Noguchi was dressed in formal Japanese clothes. “I gave the maid the day off,” he explained. “I’m alone today.”
    “Happy New Year! Oh, you certainly look impressive in Japanese clothes!”
    But even as Kazu stepped through the side gate Noguchi’s immaculate attire aroused a sudden flare-up of jealousy. Who had helped him to dress? The thought upset her so much that by the time they were crossing the hall into the living room she was quite out of sorts.
    Noguchi made it a practice never to take any notice when Kazu was in a bad temper. He lifted with his own hands a container of the traditional spiced saké and offered some to Kazu. Resentful at having to start the New Year with unpleasant feelings, Kazu as usual gave vent to her emotions.
    Noguchi responded, “Don’t be foolish. The maid helped me to dress. She doesn’t look after my Western clothes as well as she might, but when it comes to kimonos she’s on her mettle.”
    “If you care at all about me, please dismiss that maid. I can find you any