Page:Modern Japanese Stories.pdf/43

about three feet high and a dwarf-plant with large hot-house grapes.

The waiter walked across the room and opened another door. “This is your dining-room, sir.” Watanabé followed him. The room was small—just right, in fact, for a couple. A table was elaborately set in the middle with two covers and a large basket of azaleas and rhododendrons.

With a certain feeling of satisfaction, Watanabé returned to the large room. The waiter withdrew and Watanabé again found himself alone. Abruptly the sound of hammering stopped. He looked at his watch: yes, it was exactly five o’clock. There was still half an hour till his appointment. Watanabé took a cigar from an open box on the table, pierced the end and lit it.

Strangely enough, he did not have the slightest feeling of anticipation. It was as if it did not matter who was to join him in this room, as if he did not care in the slightest whose face it was that he would soon be seeing across that flower basket. He was surprised at his own coolness.

Puffing comfortably at his cigar, he walked over to the window and opened it. Directly below were stacked huge piles of timber. This was the main entrance. The water in the canal appeared completely stationary. On the other side he could see a row of wooden buildings. They looked like houses of assignation. Except for a woman walking slowly back and forth outside one of the houses with a child on her back there was no one in sight. At the far right, the massive red brick structure of the Naval Museum imposingly blocked his view.

Watanabé sat down on the sofa and examined the room. The walls were decorated with an ill-assorted collection of hangings: nightingales on a plum-tree, an illustration from a fairy-tale, a hawk. The scrolls were small and narrow, and on the high walls they looked strangely short as if the bottom portions had been tucked under and concealed. Over the door was a large framed Buddhist text. And this is meant to be the land of art, thought Watanabé.

For a while he sat there smoking his cigar and simply