Light and dark

[159]

BEFORE HE continued, Kobayashi put down his glass and surveyed the room. The lady at one of the two tables where women were sitting, producing a beautiful handkerchief from her sleeve, was just drying the hand she had removed from a finger bowl after using it to eat a piece of fruit. The other female diner, diagonally opposite him, a young woman in her mid-twenties who had been stealing looks in his direction for a while, was engaged in animated conversation about the theater with her male companion, a coffee cup suspended in her hand as she eyed the smoke trailing upward from his cigarette. As both tables had arrived in advance of Tsuda and Kobayashi, it appeared that they were further along in their meal and would be leaving earlier.

“Perfect,” Kobayashi exclaimed. “They’re still here.”

Tsuda was alarmed again. It was predictable that Kobayashi was preparing to say things that would shock them in a voice he intended to be overheard.

“Behave yourself, will you!”

“I haven’t said a word.”

“I’m asking you not to. I can put up with your attacks on me, but please take a deep breath before you start insulting people who have nothing to do with us. In a place like this.”

“You’re such a timid soul. I guess you’re saying you couldn’t stand it if I carried on here as if it were that neighborhood bar?”

“Yes, in a way.”

“‘Yes, in a way’ means you made a mistake when you invited a hoodlum like me to a place like this.”

“Then do as you like.”

“You say that, but I bet you’re shaking inside.”

Tsuda was silent. Kobayashi laughed as though amused.

“I win. I win. You surrender, don’t you?”

“If you consider that a victory, then go right ahead and feel victorious.”

“I shall. But that means you better brace yourself for more and more contempt from me. And your contempt is a fart in the wind as far as I’m concerned.”

“Feel however you must feel. You’re an obnoxious piece of work.”

As he spoke, Kobayashi peered at Tsuda’s sullen face as if to look inside it.

“Don’t you get it, this is a real battle. It doesn’t matter how privileged you are or how many rich friends you have or how loftily you parade yourself around, when you’re defeated in a real battle you’re defeated. I’ve been saying it all along: a man who hasn’t tested himself with his feet in the real world is no better than a rag doll.”

“Why of course. There’s no one in this world who’s any match for a sly dog or a drunk.”

Kobayashi must have had something to say to this, but instead of replying at once he circled the room once more with his eyes, lighting on first one and then the other of the women at the other tables.

“That brings me to my third point. I feel I have to get it out before those women leave. Are you ready for this? It follows what I said before.”

Tsuda looked away in silence. Kobayashi seemed indifferent.

“In the third place, or, as I might say, my main argument. A while ago I asked you whether those women over there were geisha and got a scolding for it. I guess you were dressing me down for being a boor who doesn’t know how to behave around the ladies. Fair enough, I am a boor. And a boor doesn’t understand the distinction between a geisha and a lady. Which is why I asked you, what’s the stinking difference between a geisha and a lady.”

As he spoke, Kobayashi directed his gaze at the women for the third time. As if his glance were a signal, the woman who had been drying her hands with the handkerchief rose from the table. The remaining couple summoned the waiter and paid their bill.

“So they’re leaving at last. It’s a pity; I was just coming to the interesting part.”

Kobayashi followed the woman with his eyes as she moved to the entrance.

“Look at that, the other one’s leaving, too. So it’s just you and me after all.” Kobayashi turned back to Tsuda.

“Here’s the thing, my man. When I can’t tell the difference between French and English food and boast that shit and miso are the same to me, you’re not interested. You get that dismissive look on your face, as if the problem is simply my sense of taste. But the truth is they’re the same, my underdeveloped palate and confusing geishas and ladies.”

Tsuda turned his eyes to Kobayashi with a look that might have been saying, “And what of that?”

“Which means that the conclusion must also come down to the same thing. Just as I can assert that I’m happier than you even as you disdain me for my sense of taste, I have no trouble insisting that my circumstances are freer than yours even as you disdain me for failing to distinguish a lady from a geisha. In other words, the more clearly a man can appreciate that this is a lady and that’s a geisha, the more suffering he’s in for. Think about it. What do you end up with? You can’t stomach this one here or that one there, or maybe you can’t do without this one or that one — you put yourself in a straitjacket.”

“But what if I like how that feels?”

“Just as I thought. If it’s food we’re talking about you’re indifferent, but when it comes to women it appears you can’t hold your tongue. And that’s exactly the actual issue I want to bring up.”

“I’ve had enough.”

“No, apparently not.”

Exchanging glances, they smiled awkwardly.